Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live in the new year from Rockefeller Center, New York City, New Stand Studios, joined only in the studio today with Joe Hazen rocking the panels. How you doing? Doing very well. Happy New Year.
Happy New Year. Happy New Year's treating you uh so far so good. It's been wonderful. We had such a lovely time. Thanks for asking.
How about you? Uh I guess we'll get into it. Yeah. Uh yeah, yeah. And uh we don't have John today.
He's in Connecticut, still uh still in Connecticut. I hopefully he'll be back next week. But we have our entire West Coast extended crew uh starting down there at the bottom with Nastasia De Hammer Lopez. How you doing? I'm good.
Yeah. And actually, technically, is uh is Jack Insley Jackie Molecules, is he above you or below you, like like geographically in Los Angeles? I don't know. Because is there anyone that actually geographically understands where everyone is in Los Angeles or no? Because I certainly don't.
Not me. Yeah. Well, anyway, we have Jackie Molecules here. How you doing? No.
Sick but great. Sick but great. And then all the way up and off on Vancouver Island, we got Quinn. How you doing? Yeah, yeah.
All right. So uh it's been uh it's been a couple of weeks. Oh, by the way, people who listened live on the Patreon to our uh historic cooking issues doubleheader heard actually uh an episode that we have not been able to put up live because it turns out the information is embargoed. So that's another benefit. Uh you Patreon people have that when we make a mistake and give you information that we're not supposed to, you get to listen to it.
Isn't that right, folks? Yeah, now we've all been uh neuralized, right is that which uh which show is that where they erase your race oh is that uh men in black yeah man black yeah yeah uh yeah I mean you know whatever man that's that's the thing like you know when you're doing a live show sometimes you do stuff you're not supposed to and you hear the the the bleeps just you know for reference right so you have to join the Patreon to to listen live but just for reference things like uh public figures have been threatened and we had to bleep them out uh you know historic uh argument things have been said that you know you're not allowed to hear but if it's live it's live we're not uh you know we don't have a sensor on the uh you know we're not on a tape delay I'm not uh who you know who got tape delayed on uh on uh Saturday live who was the famous tape delay person there's a there's a couple anyway if you are listening live uh on the Patreon call in your questions to 917 410 1507 that's uh 9174101507 uh the reason Joe I was saying that my new year's has been uh something is uh Booker my son uh after you know uh our lab died in March he's been pining for a cat he's wanted a cat basically since he was a small child and finally you know a majority of people who come over to the house have gotten their uh their injections so they could be around cats without inflating like you know like a like a pom-pom and so we're like fine you know what I mean we when in you know for Christmas birthday because his birthday is soon we'll we'll let you go adopt a cat. We adopt this six-month old cat. Nastasia feels me on this because she's a cat cat person, but got home, great. Instantly got violently ill.
Like, I honestly thought she was going to die. And it's just the vet bills, like they get insane really, really, really quickly. So we spent most of our new years uh force feeding a cat. Anyway, she seems to be on the men. So uh all's well that ends well.
Is that how it works, Show? No. How about this? How about all's well that ends? Uh so uh what do you guys have since uh since the holidays?
It's been it's been a long time. Any uh food food catastrophes, any uh food triumphs, uh any you know anything anything? What do you got? I got a quick one for you. So so uh girlfriend and I drove across the country because my dad had to clear a storage unit and all my stuff was in there, so I had to they wouldn't yeah, it was terrible.
It was really annoying. First of all, before we start before we start before we start, how old's your dad? Uh 71. Okay, and does your dad live in a house in the suburbs? He had a house in Connecticut, like near Denbury, I guess, and now moved to Florida to a condo.
Right. So didn't want to move the storage. That's the one viable reason to actually clear out a storage thing. It's not that it's not like I'm not gonna name my parents here, but it's not like they just want to clear clear out their attic, but they're not moving. I'm not gonna call my parents out for this, but I'm just saying, you know what I mean?
Yeah, all right, all right. No, it's so that so anyway, like uh the cross country drive is great, and I figured you'd appreciate we stopped into um Guar Bar in Richmond. Did you know about this? No. There's a bar that they own, GWAR Bar, and it has all their like props and masks and things all hanging from the ceiling and on the walls.
They own it. Yeah. The band Guar owns it. Or somebody connected to Guar. I mean, GWAR, like all the original members, I think are either passed on or don't do it's it's like a collective of artists, you know.
Right, but it's it's not like the state. It's not the estate of Odorous Arungus that that's I don't believe so, no. All right. But um it's so divy, so perfect, and all those props on the wall. Yeah.
No, now uh questions. Are they playing like James Taylor on the jukebox? What are they playing? No, it was more of a guar vibe in there. And what were the drinks like?
A lot of fake blood? Did they have a fake blood fountain where they're where they're like, you know, arms flying off? The uh like is it like no, just a dive bar, man. And and but like the kind of people you at the bar, this was like a Monday night or a Sunday night or something. It wasn't even Friday or Saturday night.
There are people in weird costumes and outfits. Some people looked like they're falling asleep at the bar. It was kind of perfect. Exactly what you'd hope for. We should do a one-night takeover.
Oh, that'd be awesome. Imagine. Yeah. I would love to, Dave. You would never do that.
I can drive there. What? You know what? This is one of those things. Everyone hears it and they just believe it's true because you like saying it.
And yet, whenever you actually plan something, I have to show up. You know what I'm saying? That's that's the thing. I'm not gonna say what you said yesterday. All right, whatever.
You know, no, no, Arlish can go gallivanting around the country at a moment's notice. Anyway, um need a business excuse. Need a business excuse. Uh oh, I have something for you folks, and this is for Patreon people. If you're a Patreon listener and you live in the New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, major metropolitan area, and what you really need out of life is a free six burner wolf commercial gas stove with a full sheet pan, non-convective gas only, no electric hookup at all, standing pilot oven.
Well, now's your chance. All you need to do is come down to the lower east side with a truck and get it. Because uh I finally had to give up uh my last piece of well, it's not true, my crate maker is still commercial, but we won't talk about it. But my last piece of hardcore commercial uh equipment and move to a more human uh a more human uh oven. So I'm gonna be wheeling that thing out of its uh cherished spot.
Uh it's 36 inches wide for those that are keeping track of this thing and the burners scream. You know what I mean? But anyway, so if uh anyone listening, you know, the Patreon people uh get it first, uh I guess contact us on the Patreon, and then uh, you know, you know, Quinn since Quinn checks the Patreon, he'll he'll check it. But I only have a couple of days, so respond fast if you're gonna do that. A direct message on Patreon.
I don't know how to do that. You can do it. Uh, but the uh here here's here's something else. Uh so you know, Nastasi and I were talking about this about trying to do more social garbage for you folks, and my kitchen, you know, I'm no you guys haven't been to it, but my kitchen, current one, my old kitchen was actually perfect for shooting and is amazing. Like you you had huge basically it was uh if you want to shoot you guys know this, I don't know why I'm telling you this, but if you want to shoot good content in your kitchen, best to have an island, right?
This way you can you know shoot. And my old kitchen had not only an island, but behind me on the island, I had a six burner garland with a salamander, a commercial deep fat fryer, crepe maker. Uh I had a six-foot-long sink that I could take a whole striper bass into, and like sure, scales would hit the ceiling occasionally, you'd have to get the dried scales off the ceiling, but monster kitchen. And then when I moved ten years ago to get, you know, because you know the kids were getting too big and I couldn't like crush them into one room anymore, uh, because it was a tiny room. I mean, I know that kids live together in room, it's a tiny room.
Anyway, uh my kitchen's now a galley. So there are no sight lines in my kitchen at all. You can't shoot in it. So my son Dax was like, Dad, you gotta get one of those, you gotta get one of those Ray-Ban meta glasses. So I have these Ray-Band meta glasses now, and so I'm going to try to do more POV stuff.
So maybe for the Patreon, I'll start out with taking a quick POV video of this oven and somehow posting it to the Patreon. But again, move fast. Uh must be nice. Must what, to have uh the meta glasses? That's what I'm wearing now.
Do you know that like Delta Airlines says, because uh, you know, my my cousin used to work for Delta, she's like, Delta doesn't let you wear those. I'm like, the honestly, one of the reasons I got them is that my glasses that have uh that are trans not transitional, what's progressive, right? Right? They broke. So these ones, I put color form bifocals on them.
These are color forms. Cause you can't just buy progressive lenses that are like blank. Cause my I have 2020 vision up high, right? But you can't just buy readers that are only readers below for people like me that don't want to take their glasses off and on all the time. So I you can buy color form bifocals.
I'm not quite used to them yet, but we'll see, we'll see how they work. Uh anyway, point being that like uh Delta doesn't let you bring these glasses on because I guess it's an invasion of other people's privacy. But if these are the only glasses I have that I can read with, who are they to tell me I can't use them? It's ridiculous. Absurd.
Especially because everyone's walking around with a phone with a camera on it. What'd you say? You gotta put a little tape on the camera, maybe. No, or they can screw themselves. I mean, look like the the fact of the matter is, like, everyone has a phone that has a camera on it, and all the people who are sitting there pretending to do makeup, I mean, I guess they are doing makeup, they could also just be taking a picture with the other camera.
You don't know what the hell people are doing with their cameras. And this one at least, like, you know, Meta is like, oh, I'm gonna give a little light to indicate that you're being recorded, right? You do not have an expectation of privacy or like just around. You know what I mean? People can people can go to hell if they you know what I mean?
It's just a ridiculous thing to say. Here's another thing. My cousin, have I told the story before? My cousin who used to work for Delta, when she was uh an exec there for you know for a couple of years in in the HR department, she walks into a meeting. I probably shouldn't say this.
I don't know if I'm allowed to say this, but they were having a meeting saying what were going to be like acceptable emotional support animals and not because people have started bringing some absurd emotional support animals on airplanes. Like, for instance, you can't bring an emotion uh an emotional support alligator on an aircraft. Well, didn't someone bring a peacock? Uh something people are crazy, right? So, like there was a meeting, and they're sitting in the meeting and they're trying to figure out what animals to put on the on the do not fly list, right?
Right. And uh my cousin walks in, he's like, Oh yeah, you know, it's weird. When we just moved up here, uh, we had to, my husband had to drive up to bring the hedgehog because he didn't want to bother bringing it on the airplane. And the the CEO goes, that's it. Put hedgehogs on the list.
No hedgehogs on the plane, no emotional support hedgehogs. So you have my cousin to blame if you try to bring an emotional support hedgehog on Delta Airways. It just it won't work. So so now I want to buy like two emotional support hedgehogs and some meta glasses and walk in there cupping my two hedgehogs with my meta glasses and be like, yo, Delta, eat it. Anyway, but I won't.
This is just my New Year's anger coming out. I here, New Year's, right? New Year's. I have a firm suspicion that it's not the major stressors in life that get you because they're they hit it and quit it, right? Like a major stress happens and and you know, you you deal with it, you get over with it.
Maybe you have PTSD. But but it's the constant daily stress annoyers that really shave off the years. Don't you think, folks? Don't you think? So my so yeah, so my New Year's resolution is just radically increase the number of those daily stressors in my life.
I'm gonna make sure that not a single one of my drawers opens without catching as I open it, you know? Like that there's I'm gonna put a little spring-loaded thing that always just pops up and stops every drawer from opening. I'm gonna make sure my freezer never opens. You know what I mean? Because I feel like like I can shave a good, I could I could shave a good at least a year for every year I'm alive, I could shave another year off with daily stress.
I'm pretty sure I can do it. Anyway, old batteries mixed with new batteries. And I'll see and I'll call it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right.
Yeah, Joe, to your point. Yeah, so what I'll do is I'll take my fresh battery bin and my old battery bin, and I'll just go boom, toss them together. You know what I mean? Yeah. Love it.
You know what I mean? Yeah. Oh man. You know what? Or I'll have like lots of like flimsy boxes like full of tiny parts that just go boom and fall on the floor.
You know what I mean? Love it. Love it. Love it. Uh this is the kind of New Year's resolution I really feel I can accomplish.
Anyway. All right, what else you guys got? You didn't do any cooking over the holidays? I did, but I'm sure you did, so why don't you hook us up with some Quinny Fresh? Yeah, yeah.
Alright, uh let's see. Uh Christmas Day, we attempted our first uh biryoni with uh turkey, actually. That turned out pretty good. Why turkey? Just because you had it?
I think with turkey because you had it? Yeah, we had fresh uh fresh local turkey, and then rant about fresh turkeys. Did I already go on my rant about this? If you go to your store after Thanksgiving and you see a turkey that says fresh in the freezer case, I know you, I'm just telling people, beware. That thing was fresh and was frozen improperly in the store instead of in a quick freeze at uh at the place.
No go ahead. Sorry, go ahead. Yeah. So we got a fresh turkey from the farmer, and then we also wanted a dish that would utilize the new uh saffron. Uh so you know, biryoni seems like the best way to utilize a both without you know making a bunch of different uh dishes.
Has Amazon has Amazon kayaked over with your shipment of uh Iranian saffron yet, so you can do this side by side? Have they made it across the channel? No, not yet. Uh huh. But uh, you know, for for a uh a tougher protein, you basically park cook the meat most of the way there and then assemble the berry islanding.
It turned out pretty good. All right. Alright. Uh um New Year's, we did a red wine cork stew. Because again, we had some in the freezer.
Similar in style to a uh beef or meal. Okay. Turned out really good. All right. Nice.
I have some some of those some stew recipes gonna come up uh later, I think, because someone asked about it. Uh I was in Connecticut for um Christmas, so I didn't cook. Uh did I not cook? What did I bring? I brought a honey baked ham.
You know who knows how to make a decent city ham, right? Honey baked ham corporation, spiral sliced ham. That means the power move is you buy the whole ham, you eat it until you're done eating it, and then you make soup. I'm about to make the, I'm about to make the soup. Like in the next couple of days, I'll make the soup, and that's the money with the bone.
And I think that they make, you know, a decent uh a decent spot. I think they invented the spiral slice technology, the honey-baked ham corporation. So you're gonna make the soup with beans? I am gonna do beans. Uh kind of beans do you do?
Black eyes? I you know what? Okay, listen, I have made my own. I I like uh I like I do like but I like like a black-eyed pea situation. I didn't do my standard New Year's thing either.
This I didn't make the my I usually make hop and John and I'd make that, or I don't do Italian lentil style stuff. I gotta be telling you, dude, you know, as I get older, I just bought the honey-baked ham like bean soup mix. It's just like boop, boop, boop, done. Although you know what? To be honest, making bean soup is also pretty much like boop, boop, done.
So, anywho, uh, it turns out Dax, who is back from Denmark, uh, if he had stayed a couple days longer, I would have made split pea. He goes to me, Dad, I like split pea soup. I'm like, you never told me you like split pea soup. I love split peep soup. I can make split pea soup.
Splitview soup is easy and delicious. You know what I'm saying? Whatever. Uh what else? On Christmas, I didn't make anything.
I already talked about T2, Thanksgiving 2, right? Because we did that right before the thing. So I didn't do that much uh, I didn't do that much major cooking. Is that true? That can't be true.
I'll think about it as we as we talk. Uh what else? What do you guys got before we go to questions? Anything else? No?
No? All right. Uh I as my new oven and stuff comes in, I'll be talking more about I I decided to go get a Bosch, by the way, oven. I'm a little nervous because I'm sure the electronics are gonna break on it. The reason I went with Bosch is because this oven, A, fits where I need it to go, and B, it goes up to 550 degrees uh Fahrenheit, right?
As a standard setting, it goes up to 550. Now, I have to have all gas in my in my space for my cookware because we don't have enough electricity in the house. You can't you can't do electric. And I would much prefer to have an electric oven because then I could go in and PID it and I'll do all the stuff that I normally do. I'm gonna try to keep this oven so that every modification I make to it can be immediately undone for warranty purposes.
But I will say this. I'm not saying that I'm gonna do this because you shouldn't do this, but this temperature sensor in a Bosch oven and in many ovens is what's called a a PT 1000, right? So it's a it's a resistive uh temperature sensor that um as the heat, as as the temperature increases inside of the oven, the resistance goes uh up, right? So, and if you download, which of course you can, the service manual for the oven, it'll tell you what the resistance of that sensor should be at every temperature, at you know, enough temperatures. Furthermore, there is just a simple standard plug that plugs the probe into the board in the back of the oven.
So what you can do is just add a resistor in uh in parallel with the resistor that's there, which makes it look like a lower resistance, therefore giving you, let's hear it, higher temperature. So uh one of the things I can't do with this new oven is my stone bowls, my toll sods, my Korean stone bowls, because I need to get those up to about 615 degrees and this and the burners won't be hot enough to do that. So I may or may not put a switch with a resistor on it so that I can take them up to 615 in the oven. That may be the only modification I do. We have a color, caller you're on the air.
Hold on, I was like, caller, what's up? Hey Dave, Josh from Norfolk here. How are you? Hey, all right, how are you doing? Doing good.
Have you been to Guar Bar? I have been to Guar Bar many times. I uh am actually friends with their touring sound tech. Wow. Nice.
Virginia Natives Guardian. I did not know that, really? I always thought they were RISD. I thought there were RISD kids back in the day. Huh?
All right. I don't know. I guess because their skills are high. We claim them. Nice.
All right. That's us in outer space. Um I have a uh in emulsification question. Um I'm working on getting trying to figure out how to get orange oil to incorporate into a syrup without coming out of solution. Um I've tried a little bit of gum arabic, which is helping a bit, but I'm uh hoping you got something uh a little more heavy duty.
What is the end application? Is it a soda base or or a uh is it a soda base or a shake like shake and drink bit? What are you looking to put it into? Uh stred drink base. Okay.
That's the problem. So you want it clear. Ideally, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
See, most of those emulsions with those oils are cloudy, right? Because you're not gonna make a a micro emulsion with it. And um the oil I have is pretty clear. It's like a 100% pressed uh orange oil. Right.
But when you make the emulsion, like think about this. If you take uh water and oil both clear and make an emulsion, now it's cloudy because the refractive index is that the two things are different, and as the light goes in and passes from the continuous phase through one of the, you know, um, whatever you want to, what do you want to call my cells or something of the of the of the included phase, it def it it, you know, diffuses, diffracts out, and then you get like that hazy effect. So like one of the ways to tell whether you have an emulsion or not, or you know, a suspension or an emulsion, because remember, think about this an emulsion is really a suspension, right? Is that it's not clear. So the way the only way you can get clear emulsions is to do a micro emulsion, right?
So uh you can do micro emulsions. I don't know any way I don't, you know, I don't know any way to do it for food, you know, but it it it it it can be done. Now you can have it not clear, that's easy, right? And uh for food, nothing that I know of beats gum arabic for um keeping stuff in suspension, emulsified and in susp well, emulsified, uh, over wide temperature and dilution ranges. It's just expensive.
You know, so you could just use more of it, right? But I always then stabilize the syrups with Xanthan so that they don't separate as much, right? That's why I always use a mixture of Arabic and Xanthan, which you know, they used to sell under Ticoloid, they might still, Tino, uh 30, 301, 210s or 310s, but you know, now I just make my own mixtures of Arabic and Xanthan. I don't have the ratio off the top of my head, but you know, you're using them on the order of like a percent and a half of Arabic. Were you using that much?
Uh I would have to check my sheet, but I think right around there. Right on a on uh on a yeah, is that a was that on a full basis or a liquid basis? It might have been higher on a liquid basis, because remember, you got to remove the sugar from your from your mental calculations. And that should hold right the orange oil. They used to use what's called brominated vegetable oils, right?
Uh like they would weight the oils so that they like the oil phase would actually be heavier and then it would stay much closer in weight, but you know, uh, I don't know, I guess it's not good for you brominated vegetable oil. I don't know. I guess, you know, and that would help stabilize the emulsions. What do you got, Gwen? Dorothy O'Neill has several videos about both uh emulsions in general and and he reviews some patents from Crystal Pepsi for making clear uh emulsions.
I think she just uses sucrose esters or um play thervey? An actual clear emuls, first of all, like the less stuff you put in, the less oil you put in, the clearer it's going to be, right? So for instance, you know, uh I did a bunch of tests with milk, and this is an interesting thing to do. You know how much stuff's in milk, right? Because you can look it up.
And it takes a very large amount, a very small amount of milk will make a very large amount of water cloudy, right? Uh, because it doesn't take that much suspended stuff, right? And to make something clear with large amounts of oil in it, right? The only way to do it is, well, lar even reasonably small amounts is to have the uh actual size m be m so small that it no longer bends light as light goes through it. And I don't know of any like bar friendly way to do that.
Now I haven't reviewed the crystal Pepsi stuff, but my guess is they use a microscopic amount of oil in it, right? So, you know, I don't know. Yeah, we'll we'll look at look look at look into it. Uh also uh can this product you're making could it be alcoholic? Because then you could just as soon as you dilute it, it looshes out.
This is the problem I this is the problem everyone the first time the first time they do use a rotary evaporator, they they use all of these uh like you specifically things that have like anist flavors in them, right? You make these beautiful like liquors and then you water them and boom, they go white. You know what I mean? Because boom, that you know, you've gone below their their uh threshold of uh solubility. So these are all like, you know, these are all games you can play.
It's just a question of like, oh, uh, and orange oil does it too. So if you if you distill oranges into liquor, you can make a nice clear uh like orange flavored thing, and then you hit it and it looshes out. You know what I mean? Like fast. So what I used to do, like Thai basil and orange peel really looshed.
Tasted delicious. You know what I mean? But looshed like a monster. Dave Harold wrote back. Oh, oh well, okay.
So hold on a second. Wait, wait, uh Josh, we answer this question or not. Yeah, I was looking, I just ran my numbers, and uh I am using a little less Zanban than uh one and a half percent if I'm gonna do it. Oh, no, no, Zanthan are using a very small amount. Arabic.
I'm sorry, sorry, gum Arabic. Yeah, yeah. I haven't I haven't used any Xanthan in it so far. I would use Xanthan. I would use Xanthan.
I forget what my numbers are, really, honestly, I'd forget, but I would use I would just start with uh whatever your Arabic percentage is, like divide by 10 and use that in Xanthan. So like go up to two on Arabic and like a and like you know, two percent on Xanthan or like one and a half, one and one and a half point one five, somewhere like that. See how that see how that works for you. Okay, killer. In the new year, have you finally realized in the new year that a hot dog is indeed not a sandwich?
Uh you can pry that opinion off my cold dead arm where I have it tattooed. Um, don't tempt me. Don't tempt me. But yeah, yeah. I mean, it would go well at your guar bar takeover.
Yeah, oh my god. Oh my god, can we make a fake your arm and then sever it at the guar bar takeover and then like have like a fake blood cocktail be spraying all over everyone, and like people can like lose your fake blood arm? I mean, I'm I'm sure I'm no more than two degrees of Kevin Bacon away from the people who run that place. So I could make it happen if you want. Yeah, let's do this.
Let's do it. You know? Um Business Excuse. Yeah, business excuse right here. And we can have uh we could have like someone dressed in the outfit, this hippie thinks a hot dog's a sandwich, wham, cut your arm off.
Stuff spreading everywhere. You know what I mean? I'm always happy to sacrifice my body for the game. Yeah, they could be playing preschool prostitute in the background, you know, some old classics, you know what I mean? Anyway.
Yeah. Hey, on the way out, that's a guar song, by the way, folks. I didn't make that up. All right. Yeah.
I recently treated myself to a Kunricon pressure cooker, and I don't know how I lived this long without one. Me either, dude. Me either. Oh, be speaking of which though, I I uh have any has anyone who's listened to my voice here ever bought, maybe you have, Josh, a uh a wherever chicken bucket. No?
Anyone know about the wherever chicken bucket? The wherever chicken bucket is the only ever device sold for home use that was specifically intended for pressure frying chicken. Huh? Huh? Huh?
Yeah. What's that? Well, they stopped making them years ago because they're wildly unsafe. But uh since they're designed for it, I kind of want to get my my hands on one. Uh the trick with them, right, is all about temperature control.
You see what I'm saying? So, like I'm I'm keeping I'm keeping it my eyes peeled for an electric one because that one is set to a thermostatic temperature, or because you can't put a wherever chicken bucket on uh a control freak induction unit because it's all aluminum. There's no like induction plate on the bottom of it. So you can't like you know, accurately induction do dad, one of those things. I mean couldn't be welding problem.
No no no you no no someone should someone should come up with a business where where they'll take your old pot and they'll spot weld or like you know like like some like stainless onto the bottom of your aluminum wear. But to uh Joe's point here, uh the issue is that is that if everything goes well it's fine. Yeah. Yeah but I'll never forget like there's some kitchen things that happened to you that you don't ever forget. Right?
One of them, Nastasia the Hammer Lopez, Piper Christensen and I were in the Eldritch Street lab back when Booker and Dax had a lab on Eldritch Street. We had our induction unit, commercial one, you know, screamer, and a giant uh pot, I think was the biggest I think it was Coon Recon, but it was the biggest one that uh that they make. And we had a a pot of stock going for some reason. We had a full pot of stock going and it was at 15 PSI. You know, and I for those of you that don't know I did a bunch of posts a years ago and I still stand by this that you don't want to have your pressure cooker be venting when you're making stock.
So the old school jiggler pressure cookers that are like those things uh in all of the taste tests and we ran it multiple multiple times this the pressure cooked like chicken stock that we made with a a pressure cooker that vented was much, much worse than a press than one made in a pressure cooker that did not vent, aka the Coon Recon, and worse even than just making it on a stove, not in a pressure cooker. Okay. Uh just tasted flatter. And we think it's just it's venting off all of those aromatics at at you know at that high temperature. So I've been a non-venting pressure cooker person forever.
But there is a safety device on the Coon Recon that is a little, it's a little, it's a little like spring-loaded megilla that you can see on the thing. It's like a little looks like a little cap, like a little vent cap. And as it's coming up to pressure, right, the steam comes up and out of it, and you'll hear it hiss. And then it's supposed to, as the pressure builds a little bit, and then goes silent. So the it's a piece of silicone and it loses its compliance over the years.
So Nastasia and Piper and I are in the lab and we have this giant thing of stock and it's hissing. So I'm thinking to myself, my stock's getting ruined. So I walk over and I'm trying to tap the piece of uh the piece of rubber that the the piece is, you know, that the little plunger is in. I'm trying to tap the rubber to get it to seal, right? And of course, because I'm an inherently angry person, I tapped it too hard and I popped it into the top of the lid, and then a geyser of boiling, not just boiling, 259 Fahrenheit stock, rocketed towards the ceiling, hit our rather high ceiling, and then rained down all over everything and everybody in the kitchen.
Remember this, Daz? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was real bad.
It was real bad. And so, like uh, or here's another one. Uh uh first time I deep fried a chicken, uh a turkey, right? I forgot to uh make sure that there's no way that you could that you could get the like a rocket going. So I basically created the turkey became a rocket motor because I completely cleared out the cavity.
And so when I put it in, water that's in the turkey thing formed like a venturae and the and shot oil directly up out of the turkey's butt, like straight out of the turkey's behind, up like a good two feet into the air and rained all over everywhere, destroyed the lawn, destroyed, you know, ruined Thanksgiving, stuff like that. So things like this lead me to believe that when you're dealing with high temperatures under pressure, and oil that if it gets on you is a real day ruiner, that it's fine until it's not. Leave it for the geologists. Yeah, it's fine until it's not. Uh okay, Harold's thing.
Well, I I I gotta ask the question first before we before we say what the answer is. I gotta ask the question. So you're saying I should do that. So you're saying I should do that. All right.
When Rick wrote in and says, Does anyone know a source for Harold McGee's legendary low tannin nuts, walnuts that Dave has mentioned in the past? And you texted Harold and apparently he got back to you. He said, Hey Nastasia, long time agreed that my nuts bring us together. They were a promo. Uh uh.
They were a promo from the California Walnut Board. Just found the email exchange, November 2009. Memories of the Gene Lester excursion, worst trip ever. There are a couple vendors. He didn't say that.
That was anastasia side, right? That was anastasia side. He didn't say that. All right, go ahead. We didn't have lunch.
Who sell fresh harvest? But did he say the name of it, the variety of a lone tannin nuts? No. No, he's being elusive. Coming together with his nuts.
Um, anyway, um great. Soupy dupes. All right. Did we cover and smother everything we've been talking about so far? Covered and smothered.
Nice. All right. Tony Tony. Tony Tony, you need one more Tony, and you're Tony Tony Tony. You know what I'm saying?
Anyway. Or is it Tony Tony Tone? Tony Tony Tony? Tony Tony Tony. Tony Tony Tone.
All right. Hey, uh, my son, who brags about his uni oven all the time, got me an ONI oven stone from my birthday. And I can't express how disappointed I was when I opened the box and found uh the stone not an oven like his. Oh. One of but I have to say, Tony Tone.
A stone is gonna come in a smaller oven, a smaller box than the oven, unless your son totally punked you and handed you uh an oven box with a stone in it, which would be a pretty especially since you were Jones and you also have the new electric one. Maybe the electric one is in a similar size box. That's like a full-size stone. A stone is still just the thickness of a stone, and an oven still has to fit something into it. I mean, I don't understand.
Could be a big, big box, though. Hey, listen, as someone who's in the business of trying to ship things to people, you know what you choose? The smallest box. The smallest box. You know what I mean?
It's only Amazon that only has like five sizes of boxes, so we'll send you like, you know, you know, a tiny thing in a giant box. Although they even they've stopped doing it. Um, I won't tell your son, because I don't know, don't know who they are, that you were disappointed at the gift. Uh so here's the big question. Looking at YouTube, one can literally find arguments for putting a pizza stone anywhere in the oven.
There's even top rack advocates. Uh, where should I place the stone? I'm leaning towards putting the stone on the very bottom of the oven between the racks. But at this point, my partner uh in in uh parents for Nastasia's benefit, I assume, a woman insists that I'm simply crazy. Um, I put it on the oven.
Yeah. I would put it on the bottom. Like, why not? Like the real question is I don't know, it really depends on your oven, right? So and where your oven is sensing temperature.
So if your oven is uh like most ovens are sensing the temperature in the top, right? So, like for instance, I happen to know the thermo the uh PT1100 in my new oven that hasn't shown up yet is in the upper left-hand corner of the oven. So anywhere near the bottom, and you're probably gonna get it hot. You it in general you have to put it, you have to use like an IR thermometer or something and check to see where it gets to the right temperature when the rest of your oven is the right temperature. Anyone who puts a stone in the top, they're probably doing it just to increase the thermal mass, right?
Or maybe they they were getting uh hot spots because like uh they were right over uh uh an element. I mean, it really depends on the how your elements are and how the heat from your elements needs to be moderated out. I used to have uh a heated stone, so like I I put a a heating element onto the stone and then embedded it in refractory and then temperature controlled the stone itself independently from the oven. So that allows you to do like a a lot a lot of stuff, but it's a huge pain in the in the behind to do that. And so when I did when I back when I did that, I had a stone on the bottom and a stone on the top independently heated and temperature controlled.
But it doesn't sound like you want to do that because your your partner already thinks you're nuts. You know what I mean? And there's really something to be said for having someone else be able to walk up to your oven and just turn it on. You know what I mean? Like when people came over to my house before and I had like a four-channel like temperature controller with all these buttons, and you know, all they want to do is reheat something, and you have to like read them, you know, a manual on how to do it.
It doesn't really, you know, it's not the best. What do you guys think? Nothing. Nothing. No thoughts.
Nothing. Nothing. It's like you UConn Cornelius. Put the put the put the pick in the ground, pull it out. Nothing.
One day I'll get a peppermint mine. Woohoo! Uh Eric from Sacramento writes in, hello. Well, would it be possible to get the spec for the bishop's wife that Dave mentioned in the last episode? Oh man, I somehow I didn't see this on my way over.
I have the spec, but I always get it wrong. It's bronchamenta. I'm gonna want to say it's three quarters of an ounce of bronca menta. And then I'm gonna wanna say it's like ounce and a half of uh of cognac, a light cognac, right? So like not a V SOP, even though that's the better song.
No one wrote a song called VS. You know what I'm saying? You want like a lighter cognac because you don't want uh all the wood. And then it was, I want to say a quarter of an ounce of or like a short quarter of an ounce of two to one uh listen, we say demorar syrup, but really we just mean dark brown sugar. That's the that's the that's the thing that no one talks about.
It's really just brown sugar. Anyway, uh I mean there are people who use real demorar, but I'm not one of them. Anyway, so uh that, and then you red hot poke it. Now, the issue with making this thing at home if you don't have a red hot poker, is um it doesn't have that much sugar in it, so I don't know that you'll be able to do the trick where you burn it on the bottom of the oven, but that's the spec. And you you burn it, uh, and then did we put a twist on it?
You know what, Eric, I'll look it up again. But this is basically what it is, and I think they put it on the Instagram and you can see how we serve it. And I might they might even call out the recipe. I should tell them just to put the recipe on the Instagram when they do that stuff because like why hide it? You know what I'm saying?
Why hide it? It's not the recipe that makes the reason that people come to the bar, it's because we have the red hot pokers and all this other stuff. So there's never a reason to hide your recipe. You know what I'm saying? Uh the other thing is that we now serve it with the Tim Tam, so you have to do the Tim Tam Slam, which we've discussed, the Tim Tam Slam.
Just Google it if you don't know what it is. I'm not gonna go through the whole Australian Tim Tam Slam to, you know, for fear of triggering nostasia. Uh Dave, I want to give a shout out to somebody in LA that people should go eat there. Okay. Um Adam Leonti uh has a restaurant called Alba, and it is reasonably priced Italian food, and everybody should go.
What is reasonably priced? Like the pastas are like, you know, $16. Like, not like $28 or whatever. And it's in like a really beautiful space, and everything is like like wonderful and delicious. Yes.
And is he milling all his own stuff? I didn't ask him. And uh he lives there now, not here. Yeah, he lives here now. He doesn't really like it, but yeah.
Yeah, well, you know, that's it is you know, the good uh like all the good people, they don't like it anywhere. That's what they find. You move and you're like, oh my god, thank god I left where I was, and you're like, oh wait, I'm just unhappy. Yes. You know what I mean?
I'm just an unhappy person. Uh yeah. Uh speaking of, uh uh, I followed Ariel's lead. I should, when I say I did, uh Jen, my wife Jen got me this for the the Christmas. I went to go see the uh waiting for Gado with uh winter and and Reeves.
Good. Is it Godot or Godot or good? It's gado, but you know, we everyone grows up, including myself included, calling it godot because that's it looks like it's some sort of French word. And it was originally written in French. You know, the original original, and then it was rewritten it as waiting for gato in in English, because he was you know bilingual, uh Beckett.
Uh, but it is supposed to be uh goddo, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. And the the the That's a great story. Yeah, and the two other characters also were fantastic. Oh Pazzo and uh, you know, and the and the you know, they call him pig, what's Lucky, Potso and Lucky. Uh real good, uh really good sets, and enjoyable.
But you know, it's also I I enjoyed it, and uh, you know, I'm a little talking a little out of turn here, but you know, my wife never comes on the show, so I can tell her story for her. Normally I'd let her tell it. But she she she saw it, and this just shows what happens, you know, with life. She's like, when I read this, you know, when I was young, like I thought of it as theater of the absurd, but now when I see it at this point in my life, I'm like, this is just real. This is just reality.
You know, this is just the way life is. It makes sense to me. Which is, you know, anyway. Uh what are we talking about? Oh, shout out.
Adam Leonte, unhappy. Okay. Yeah. Uh I also have uh I also have a a moral uh quandary. So a friend of the show, Peter Kim, right?
Yeah. What do we call him, Dave? Oh, uh well, he used to be when he would come on all the time, uh, our favorite punching bag. Okay, let's say you invite somebody to a New Year's party of like a Okay, listen, since I know the answer, let's open this up to the rest of the crew. Oh boy.
All right. Of like a legend, like uh like a musical leg. Like somebody that's right, okay. So it's just so people know, it's not Carol King, but somebody at that level. No, it's let's no, let's not even say it's a man.
So uh so you bring them to this house and you're like, listen, I need you to just chill and be like uh a wallflower, right? And let's say this legend starts singing. Let me ask one question first before we go. So these are your friends, your contacts, and you're like, I will invite you to this event. Please just freaking chill.
All right. So this legend starts thinking are in the room. Right. And th then they're like, no, I'm not, I'm not thinking, 'cause this is like, you know, this is too much. I can't possibly.
But then your friend decides that he's on the level of this legend, and he s gets up and starts singing and grabs their guitar. Is is that okay? I mean, is it is it something that I get to watch and laugh, or it's my or I'm you? You're me. Yeah.
If I'm you, it's not okay. And if I'm anybody else, it's hilarious. You know what I'm saying? But how was it received? How is it received though?
I asked Nastasi that and her reply was I don't know if you remember, Stas, you said, I couldn't tell staring through my blind rage. Yeah. Yeah. That's classic though. Listen, classic.
You know, when when you give a ride, when you give a ride across the river to a scorpion, it will sting you. You know what's gonna happen. You know what I mean? It's like this happens all the time. Like when people uh you know ask me to do things and they they get things that they don't want, I'm like this is all able to be anticipated.
Same with Peter. It's all it's all pre-known. You know what I mean? Yes. You know?
Anyway. Um TV what is it? How do you pronounce this again? I always ask my question. We gotta ask them.
It's it's thank you very much. Oh, thank you very much. Now let me ask you a question. Do you consider polenta to be mush? It can be.
I mean, like if someone says I'm gonna get mush, do you think polenta counts? Yeah. It is scrapple mush. Are you allowed to let it reset? In other words, can mush be set as a block and then fried.
I feel like that's a philosophical question. If it's set, it's no longer mush. Right. That's why I feel it. So you think you think you you a mush has to be fresh.
If it's allowed to cool and then recooked and no longer mush. Like there are mushes that will mush. Ain't no mush. Ain't no mush I ever use this days as mush. By the way, people, all of you overnight oat folks, why not just cook it?
Why not just cook it? Like i I guess you're trying to reduce the like, you know, I I I feel that most overnight oat people it's some sort of health thing, and I would guess that there's a lot that is less bioavailable in an uncooked, just waterlogged, uncooked oat than there would be had you cooked it. Well, I mean, aren't aren't uh rolled oats or quick oats technically cooked? Uh par cooked, I guess. I mean par cooked.
Well quick quick quick oats are like fully cooked, I think. I don't know. If they're designed to like dissolve in like that's instant oats. Yeah, well. Anyway, point being uh just cook those dang things.
Like, just cook 'em. Just cook, just cook it. Just cook it. You know what I mean? This is a good use for a rice cooker, P.S.
Good use for a rice cooker. Um, so uh thank you very much. Is it possible to make sweetbread charcuterie? Uh I have a pack in the freezer and trying to figure out something interesting to do with them. Well, what do you mean?
Like, cure it? I've never I've never seen I've never seen dried or cured sweetbreads. Not saying it's impossible. I've just never seen them, and they're they're kind of good, just breaded and fried. Like they're sitting there saying to you, bread me, fry me.
You know what I mean? I like do you guys like sweetbreads? No? Not not a thymus. Yeah, I've actually ever had them.
You've never had some thymus glands, dude? Gotta go thymus. I think people wouldn't here's the thing. Sweetbreads is the dumbest name on earth. 'Cause the they agreed.
They don't look like sweetbreads. They they obviously aren't related to breads or sweets. Like why? Why are they called sweetbreads? Yeah.
Yeah, it makes no sense. Makes no sense. You know what I mean? Anyway. And they're not even gross.
So it's not it's not like calling like a butthole something, right? It's not like you're serving a butthole and calling it a sweetbread to try to take away the uh the the mental image of a butthole. You know what I'm saying? I I guess it comes from a 16th century term. Um where bread meant flesh or meat, and sweet meant pleasant or delicate.
Haven't we progressed? Could use a rebrand. Could use a rebrand. Yeah. I mean, but thymus isn't the answer, right?
It sounds like a it sounds like a primus cover band. It's no good. Nobody wants that. Um nice thing about the sweetbread is it requires you, it requires you to murder the young of the animals because uh the thymus disappears over time. So yeah.
Babies. Lamb sweetbreads, delicious. Anyway, uh so no, I don't know about that. Can you go Dave? Can you know more about how you're gonna have a bunch of micro stressors this year?
I gotta think about it, because I was literally just thinking about it on the bike ride, uh, on the bike ride over here, just like things I can do. Um, you know, like I would say a good half of my closet doors can now shut. And, you know, maybe I should make it so that none of the closet doors can shut, right? So like you're trying to stick like that luggage that you have in the like up on the high part of the of the of the closets, but now the the door springs open on you. You know what I mean?
I I think to really make it the best is like you have to the the nice thing about a uh a a repetitive stressor is just to get it so it's very close to being right but isn't right so like so like you shut the door and the magnetic latch catches and then two seconds after you release it poop it pops open again you know what I mean like that's that's when it's the best you know what I mean you don't drive do you I do I do yeah but how about your driving stresses well you know that's why I use I-95 because uh past the same person multiple times I'm like guys keep on jumping each other yeah I in fact you know like if I had the money I would hire someone to just zip around in the lanes to go in front and then fall behind because they chose the wrong lane and like almost cause accidents constantly right so my my three favorite roads that I like to take when I when I'm feeling mellow and need some stress I like the BQE love the BQE Bruckner and I ninety five I mean like with those things and then you know on if I'm really feeling I want to treat myself I'll just back and forth through the Lincoln tunnel. You know what I mean? I do have to say I I I'm very proud of myself because every year we end up going over either to the Soho House or Pasties for Christmas Day dinner and I this the other morning I woke up I said are we going to New Jersey again this year? Because every year I go, I always take the wrong turn I end up going to the tunnel and go to New Jersey and it's a big fight in the car and everyone's upset and I yelled AW This year I figured it out. You didn't go to New Jersey no jersey.
No Jersey? You made it all the way to meat packing without going to New Jersey, huh? You're the only one. You're the only one. Oh man.
Hey, uh, is is uh is our friend Jeremy Tom Shek still the chef there? Did you ask? Or you No, I didn't. It was a really, really nice ambiance. Yeah.
Yeah. I went years ago and Jeremy was running it. I don't know if he's there or if he was there on Christmas. Uh uh. Yeah, yeah.
So uh those are some more stresses uh to look forward to in in life. Um let me see. Um, from uh not so uh Serena, longtime uh friend of the show, uh says, she says, I'm a low quality individual and I love diet soda. Now listen, I also like diet soda. I used to drink only diet soda.
Oh, yeah, I love it. And I'll say this, and I've said this many times, but in case this is the first time you're hearing this, this is not a rant, this is just a PSA. When you are shopping for a party, and you're like, okay, there is only two diet soda drinkers for every eight regular soda drinkers. How much regular soda should I buy and how much diet soda should I buy? The answer isn't eight bottles of regular and two bottles of diet.
The answer is at least equal amounts of each because a diet soda drinker drinks eight times as much diet soda as a regular soda drinker drinks of regular soda. So really, it's like almost like turned on its head. And regular soda drinkers can't understand this because a diet soda drinker is not drinking it as a sweet treat. It is a means of hydration for them. Right?
Right? So just a little thing. So I'm years ago moved off the diet soda train and moved on to the seltzer train, right? But you know, I used to drink almost exclusively diet soda. Anyway.
Um, so I don't think it's low, low quality. Uh I mean, I mean, technically it is, but you know, you know what I'm saying. I mean, we're all low quality individuals, aren't we? Uh sometimes like the i i i if you can't admit that you're low quality, that's the sign of irredeemable, right? You know?
Yeah, that's something lower than low quality for sure. Right, right, right. If if if anything of uh, you know, being part of the cultural tradition I'm from uh means anything. It's that we are all low quality individuals. You know what I'm saying?
Um that's right. Yeah. Uh anyway, back to diet soda. Sometimes I want something more interesting. So I want to think of ways to make my case of Diet Sunkist uh Diet Sunkist.
You know what Diet Sunkist uh, I used to drink Diet Sunkist. It's sometimes like the off brands, you ever buy an off brand of of orange soda, and then when you're when you pour it, you realize that there's a ring of like orange gunk stuck on the outside of the bottle, on the inside of the bottle at the level of the thing. That is on the on the cut rate sodas poor quality uh orange oil stabilization to go back to the uh you know what we're talking about with Josh earlier in the show. And I will add, uh the um uh they add special cloudy agents to orange stuff to make you think that they've put more uh put more orange oil in it than they actually have. So they sell clouding agents to make it appear that they have done a uh a a more impressive job of making the orange soda than they actually have.
Uh and those are, you know, small emulsions. Anyway, I want to add some bitterness to tone down the sweetness. I like adding Sue's, uh, which is obviously alcoholic, but I want to know what interesting bitters I can add instead for dimensions and keep the out content to zero. Well, you can use bitters bitters, which are still alcoholic, but are very easy to buy, and that's, you know, those are fun. But for this, uh, I would just start making there are certain tinctures that are extremely uh potent, right?
So one of them is wormwood. So the I typically make a tincture that is uh three grams of wormwood leaves dried in 200 grams of boiling water, and because it's easy, right? And I just make it and you, you know, you agitate it as it cools, and then you, you know, you let it sit, and yeah, you can let it sit overnight if you want, strain it, press it, and like literally like a couple of mils of that in your drink will go pow bitter it straight up. Gention's another good one, right? So like I would just get like gention, wormwood.
Um I find that things like you know, quasia and you know, quinine are good, but I though the in terms of a non-alcoholic bitterant that is like real powerful and consistent, wormwood is hard to beat if you like the taste of it, right? And gention also is good and can be made very strong in a small quantity, and it's kind of hard to beat. And then if you want to move to more, you know, interesting things, you know, most of the more interesting ones, you want to get more of like the aromatics out of them. You have to use in slightly higher quantities. So I don't know if you want to get into that, but we can we can talk more about it if you want.
Just ask more. Uh Kev writes in uh forgive me if this was answered over this is I'm I assume this is Kevin Jung, but I don't know. Forgive me if this was answered a while back, but uh there's been an Instagram reel going around from Fallow Restaurant where they add baking soda to their chicken brine along with vinegar at the same time, P.S. because I saw it. So it's not like they added baking soda and then added vinegar and then quickly did something.
It's like they make a brine where they add baking soda and vinegar at the same time and claim that the baking soda acts as a tenderizer. A friend who's opening a rotisserie chicken concept asked me about it earlier and whether it was something smart to do. I'm under the impression that the baking soda vinegar reaction effectively nullifies the alkaline tendering properties along with producing carbon dioxide. But my you know, my gut instinct is that this is a load of malarkey. Well, Kev, it's also mine.
Uh maybe they're getting some of the flavor of the vinegar, but uh look, me, the whole tenderizing effect of baking soda is the theory behind it is that you're lower, you're increasing the pH. And by increasing the pH, you're increasing the water holding capacity of the meat. You're also making it taste like baking soda. So, like most people who do it then wash wash it off. So there is some sort of like surface uh, there is some sort of surface effect to it, but um and I could imagine a stepwise situation where you use uh, you know, but I I don't see how this could possibly be effective other than to introduce the kind of some of the flavors of having vinegar in it.
Uh but you're you're essentially making sodium acetate when you're doing this. And uh I just don't see how having sodium acetate in your brine is going to be more helpful than just salt. Uh, but I'm willing to be wrong. Um see, uh Andos wrote it in, I have 43 seconds left. Andos writes in a few episodes ago, Dave mentioned a pressure cooked carbonade, which is the Belgian uh stew.
Uh have I posted it? I think I did, but I can mention it real quick. The main thing is just in your pressure cooker, use a lot of onions because they uh you lose a lot of the flavor of onions. So I use four uh about a kilo or a little over a kilo of beef. I use like 700 grams of onions.
I cook them down uh in the pressure cooker for a long time. Salt, uh, so and then it's separate pan, salt, uh sorry, salt and the onions, yeah, olive oil, and uh dredge your meat pieces in flour. I use about uh 25 grams of flour to about a kilo of uh roast, and then you know, salt, pepper, uh cook those off to get a nice brown crust, then take uh uh bouillon. I use chicken or chicken stock, but you can use beef stock if you want, and uh 12 ounce bottle of uh of like a le uh leffe. I use leffa, like a not too hoppy, not too bitter beer.
Reduce that down to about a cup. The reason you want to reduce that to a cup is you don't want a lot of liquid in it. You want to reduce it as much as possible. Add some sugar, I add some thyme, uh, and you'll congrect with black pepper and whatnot. You put that in with the meat uh and the onions.
Then here's the real trick. You take about 225 grams of like dark pumper nickel brown bread and you spread mustard like a good spicy mustard on the top. I use about 60 grams of mustard, then you close that up. You let the bread sit on top with the mustard. You close it, you pressure cook it for as long as the meat requires.
It depends on the meat, but it's gonna be somewhere like 20-25 minutes. Let it come down. When you open it, mush the bread up into it, the thaw sauce should thicken up and you should have a delicious day. Cooking issues.
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