Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from the Heart of Manhattan Rockefeller Center, New York City News Stand Studios, but gang is all here. We got the whole freaking crew in the studio today. Welcome guys. I'm gonna start from the back of the well, Quinn's not here.
Yeah, but I'm gonna say Quinn's not here. He's in the upper left, though. Quinn, you there in the upper left. I am here in the upper left. You're holding it down.
Well, sorry you can't be part of the part of the whole party down here. But we got Nastasi the Hammer Lopez in the back of the back. Hi. No, nice. Even when you're here, I can't hear you.
It's nice. Yeah, I know. Is my mic rigging? Yeah, yeah, now. You're gonna you're gonna just lob bombs.
See, this is what I miss. Like Nastasi just sitting there giving me the death stare, and then like lobbing a bomb over the top of my head. And then coming slightly closer to me, they got Jackie Milecules. Now listen, you uh so Nastasia is here tonight to today to do uh one of her West Coast dinners on the East Coast, and she looks excited. Oh yeah.
Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
You brought the you brought the nice weather with you. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, I love it. Uh she brings the rain with her.
What's that? What's that cartoon character where there's always a cloud over the ego? Yeah, yeah. Strong. Nice.
That's who uh my grandfather, nobody minds. Nobody cares. Don't worry about me. Yeah, yeah. Awesome.
Good character. Oh, yeah. Strong. Martyr. Everyone loves martyr.
Not true, people. Not true. Uh I got John right here. Pad. Yep.
Back from the great state of Connecticut. Small state best day wearing, for some reason, I don't think he's changed his shirt since St. Patrick's Day. He's just been like he is wearing his St. Patrick's Day shirt, though.
Yeah. Patty's pub for those who get it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And behind me, rocking the panels, Joe Hazen.
Hey! What's up? Great to see everyone. Yeah, yeah. All right.
So if any of you uh out there listening on Patreon have a question for uh the crew, uh, you can call it in to 917 410 1507. That's 917 4101507. But before I start, I want to say, Jackie Molecules brought me a gift from Taiwan that is from the the museum. What's it? What's the actual title of that museum?
The national museum. Yeah, it's a sick museum, right? Yeah, yeah. It's a crazy cool museum. It's a great, like if you're if you're ever in Taipei people, go make you know, go to the great bars, go eat all the awesome food, do all that stuff, go to the museum.
You know what I mean? If you have a spare second, go to the museum. Or more than a second. But he brought me what may be the greatest piece of museum swag I've ever received. Two of them actually.
I don't know if you can see this. Where's the where's the camera? A refrigerator magnet of, and you've heard about it on the show before if you listen. The meat shaped stone. So this is the this is a representation of the meat-shaped stone.
So to recap, I own meat meat shaped stone uh Instagram handle. I own that. That's me. And so uh what I want to have happen, but I never will. What I want to have happen, see, they discovered this stone in the shape of Tungpo pork, right?
And so they have it there, and everybody stands in line, me included, Jack, I guess also. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's like the big attraction. Yeah.
And this is almost, I mean, it's a little bigger than this, but this is basically life size. But it's pretty close. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's a tiny stone that looks like pork.
Yeah. And like uh like a good crispy pork belly. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I think you know what's a soft top.
It's a soft top. It's not like hyper crispy, it's a soft top, which I also enjoy. It's like before uh uh see uh finish, yeah. Yeah, well, or you know, like there's there's an honor to a soft, uncuous pork skin that is not meant to be crispy. We don't we don't understand that here because we're like, wow, he's not crispy.
Same with the same like with us in apples. Yeah. Like as a culture, we can't tolerate it. You know what I mean? But uh, yeah, so then you go to the did you go to the restaurant?
I forgot to ask you, did you go to the restaurant afterwards? No, I did not. They have a restaurant that serves the meat shaped stone shaped meat. Right? And so then my goal is just keep doing this.
And see how many iterations on the Instagram we can do. I think it's gonna turn into a meatball. I think eventually it will turn into a meatball. Yeah, it has to. Like an artist will start rounding it out, and then the chef will just start making it more and eventually it'll go into a meatball.
Well, if you don't tell anybody the reference, it could end up being lasagna. There's a lot of ways that somebody could like on the fifth copy iteration look at the photo or the drawing and say, is that what is that, right? Right. It's true, but I my feeling is that it will either end up being flat or spherical. Like one of those two things.
I don't think that there's like I don't I don't think that they the odds are you're gonna get a cube. True. Although, you know what? I can see lasagna. You can see someone being like, this is a slice of lasagna.
Right. That's what I was thinking. Yeah maybe. But anyway, if anyone wants to do this uh with us, I own meat shaped stone. So you have to go through me.
Like there is no way to the meat shaped stone Instagram other than through me, unless you want to be like meat shaped stone one nine six at you know, hotmail dots not planted his flag there. Yeah, it's like, you know, that was as soon as I had the idea, I was like, I took it. You know what's weird? We can do cocktail hour at 5 30 on the west coast, but we have to start dinner here at like cocktails at seven o'clock here. Yeah well you know why because we work out here suckers yeah like imagine I try to imagine I'm like uh I go to my wife be like oh yeah we're gonna go to this uh we're gonna go get cocktails oh yeah when okay when um five what that doesn't sound good sounds yeah and we don't drink as much as you guys drink here so that's also true says what based on what when was the last time you guys went out here I mean this week yeah but you're you're going somewhere that's the thing you're going somewhere you're gonna be drinking more you know what I mean I think here you're like oh what are we gonna do tonight we're gonna drink you know says the person who goes for drinks at five yeah but it's I don't know it's different I Jack describe it I I I agree I mean you're you're like you're like bringing full Italian vibes we don't drink anything bring us another bottle of wine what are you an alcoholic bring me a bottle of wine your one cocktail makes you an alcoholic morvino full Italian anyway uh speaking of drinking uh last night I did again the chartreuse uh hot chocolate event which put was postponed twice because of vicious weather and I was like no one's gonna come it's gonna be spring no one's gonna want hot chocolate anymore and actually so it wasn't Nastasia it was chartreuse that brought the cold weather back to us so that we could have an effective hot chocolate and it was I was gonna say this is your spring this is winter yeah oh car it's true California people yeah.
You know what I mean? Or he's in DC, which is like, you know, straight up malarial hellhole you know that's very fair. Yeah. Or, you know, like if you don't want that, if you don't want like that swampy DC action, don't they literally have a place called like swampy bottoms? Foggy bottoms.
Foggy bottoms, yes. And then it's a terrible name. Yeah, terrible. And then uh, you know, if you don't want that, you can go to like the mall, which is like a dust bowl. Do they still have that like unpaved dust hole that you have to walk on so that your legs get all freaking dusty?
Yeah, yeah. There's like DC's great. Uh-huh. I won't stand for the besmirching of DC. You will not?
No. It's good city. It's Dana. Yeah. I've not been in years.
You gotta know where to go. The last time I went, I s was when my kids were still pretty young. And uh, we took them to all the sites, and there's just too many people in the United States. So that the lines that were like 20 minutes long when I was a kid are now like two hours long. Just because there's like literally twice as many of us as there were, you know, in the 70s.
Yeah, it's fair. But we did have a good time at Namek when we went. Remember? When was that? With Jessica, weren't you?
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's right. 2018, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So that's the most recent time I've been there.
But we didn't I didn't stay. I didn't go out. We were in and out on the train, in out. That was a great tour. Who was the guy that gave us a tour?
I can't remember, but it was absolutely exceptional. It was a phenomenal tour like this. I've ever had a lot of people. Yeah, you walk into a museum tour and you're like, oh, I'm gonna get a tour. Nice.
And then you you're with a guy who's like, yeah, um, my my dad was yeah, like all these. This room down here is dedicated to my dad. Yeah, it was that's me with Martin Luther King. Yeah, it's nuts. Nuts.
Yeah, great museum. Yeah. Uh anyway, all right. So uh you guys got anything to push a rep for the week? Quinn, since you're since you're alone out there in the in the ether, what do you got for us?
I mean, not alone, but you know what I mean. You're you're not in the studio list this week yeah I'm I'm adrift in the in the void of the internet. Yeah, yeah um this week we did another uh emu egg preparation I think you might like this one Dave okay wait but let me ask you a question before you tell me are you are you single are you single handedly keeping this emu farmer in business uh no apparently he's they're selling like fertilized eggs as well now are those to eat or to raise more emu farms are like are likely to be popping up okay it sounds like a like an emu bubble their NFTs I mean for the first time we got eggs we were we were on a wait list wow never would have expected wait so wait so what I'm getting from you before you go to the prep because I I know I'm keep interrupting you I want to hear the prep but is like you're on like allocation so now when the farmer offers you the emu egg you have to take it or you're off the list. You're off the list it's like the old turtly wine list or like the you know like if you don't take if you don't take their babies in you don't get their reels in you just gotta stay on the list is that what it is so you take everything like fertilized egg I'll take it I'll take it no we we haven't taken that fertilized egg yet although I have tried to convince my dad and my brother just I don't know it would if it would be good but we could make a horrific the world's biggest balut. Yeah John yeah, John mentioned that.
Uh having had balut, it actually it tastes good, but it would be horrifying at that scale. Yeah, it's a lot to take in. I feel like I'd be really juicy too. Or already juicy. Wouldn't it be better if it's brothable?
I don't know. It it they're brothy. The the creepy thing about them is is that as the bird starts to grow, it makes like a weird calcified like nugget that you have to like pee, you know, like almost like eggshell like nugget inside the thing that you have to kind of remove, and you're like, I don't understand any of this. Creepy. My first balut I had was in Laos, and uh it had feathers on it.
I think it was always a little little like you can eat them. But see, can't I had to pick some of these out, they were pretty much. Can't they be like uh prepared in different sort of like stages? Like mine felt more like a hard-boiled egg. Oh, really?
Yeah, it was pretty done. I don't know how else to put it, but I mean it's like a I think I think I think it's there's like there's like I don't think it's called balut if it's fertilized, but like very early. I've heard that called something else, but I forget the term. Yeah, no one wants an in-betweener. No one wants an in-betweener.
Telling you. I mean, you gotta be like on time with that too, right? Because uh an egg, a chicken egg is what, 20 days, 19 days, something like that? 21 days in that range, right? So if you don't have a long time, you'd be like, it's like avocados.
You keep your you keep your fertilized eggs in the incubator on your counter till the exact day. It's the moment. Yeah, you don't want to mess that up. Then you have you have chickens running around your kitchen. Not okay.
Not okay. Not okay. Oh my god, I once then, I'm not gonna get into it. I'm not gonna get into it because I'm gonna we're gonna get hate mail. But I I once contacted a hatchery about kind of this stuff, and the lady was horrified, and uh and I was like, You you sell birds that people raise to kill.
She's like, Not when they're not when they're babies. That's horrifying. I'm like, what? It's like it's not horrifying to kill them after six weeks, but it is horrifying to kill them right away. What?
What? Like, like the weird stories people tell themselves about what's right and wrong when they're literally selling animals to be mass murdered, and they're like telling me that I'm Dr. Mengela. You know what I mean? I'm like, that's not you know what I mean?
Like you're you're Yep. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Or like the time when I uh euthanized frogs for uh an art piece, and I got them from a place where literally anyone else who was ordering frogs, they would so if you it used to be I don't know, I haven't bought frogs in in years and years, but it used to be that you would go to the markets where they would have the frogs and they would be a a literal like uh tough boy trash can full of live frogs, like layers, layers, layers and layers of frogs.
And you would order one, they would reach in with their hand, like three-finger grip, boom, the back legs, pull the frog out directly on the chopping block, chop the legs off, and then scrape with the cleaver the still alive body into a trash track. So that is what is actually happening. You know what I mean? And so then people gave me guff because I was being like, no, please don't, please don't. And then like taking the frog, chloroforming them, spiking the brain, euthanizing them, and then using the muscles for an art piece.
This is a long time ago. And uh, yeah, I was like, you guys are all hypocrites. You know what I mean? You're all terrible people, hypocrites. You know what I mean?
People. What else is new? That's true. It's true. So what do you guys what do you uh what else?
What else we got? What did you do with the emuway? You didn't tell me yet. Sorry. Yeah, I yeah, we did a Spanish tortilla.
So we did uh fingerling potatoes and just some lightly caramelized onions. We had enough for two like you know, decent sized, uh, I don't know how big the pan is, somewhere between like eight and ten inch pan. We did like one uh omelet that was a bit more shallow, a bit more cooked through for the people that liked that more. And then we did a second one that was a bit uh, you know, creamy on the inside. And what are you what are you?
Are you a set are you a set man or a creamy man? No, you know, you know I'm a cream creamy man. Like that. Oh my god. Hey, listen, let me ask you a question about the Spanish.
Not that you would know this, but don't you kind of think the Spanish at this point should be like, yeah, I know we had the language first, but like really a tortilla is a tortilla and not this thing. You know what I mean? I did what I did think you know what would be really delicious. Next time we do Spanish tortillas, I'm putting it in a tortilla. I think that would be a great uh that's called a that's called a breakfast burrito.
You know what I mean? Like literally a wedge of Spanish tortilla with a little sauce of some sort, you know, tortilla, like that. Yeah, they have this place called Austin, and then this is what they do there. You know what I mean? Yeah, anyway.
Uh sounds good. So uh again, I'll ask you the same question I asked you every time you've emo'd. Does it have any appreciable difference in taste between making it with that or making it with a chicken egg? Or is it just fewer but more difficult things to crack? Again, I I actually think again, I think the emu egg flavor is a bit milder.
So it actually helps the like potato and onion stand out more. But again, it is a very viscous texture. So when you get that set outside and uh you know softer inside, it's a nice texture. But what do you mean by milder, like less sulfurous, less eggy? Yeah, it's less it's less egggy.
Have you ever over overcooked it to see whether it goes green the same way, whether it has the same sort of like overcooked. I think maybe for science, you gotta do like a viciously overcooked emu egg, boil that sucker for like I don't know how too long, yeah. I don't know. I mean, remember that I mean every time you double the double the distance, you multiply by four the cooking time. So you would need to measure your egg diameter, and then uh, you know, it assume it's a sphere, right?
Which it's not. Oh wow, and then multiply uh like whatever that d dimension is, and then multiply the cooking time that you would by four, right? Whatever the whatever the percentage is. I mean, would I be would I be able to overcook a like ramicin of mixed egg, or does it have to be strangely I don't think you can because I know for a fact I mean you could, I don't know if it's gonna give you the same information. I know that like separated yolks and whites cooked differently, and cracked eggs sometimes cook differently from eggs that are cooked in their shell.
I don't know why, but uh, you know, I've had that happen. Because remember, in the 90s, sorry, 2000s, early 2000s, like chefs would do that all the time. They would break the yolks and the whites and cook them up separately. And once they've been broken, maybe if they're whole, it would work, but once they've been broken, they don't cook the same way anymore. Not the same temperatures, like nothing's the same.
The AEA suggests that they need to be cooked for 60 to 90 minutes. What is the AEA? The American emu association. Are they also did now are you? They have a recipe for deviled egg up here.
Oh my God. Like a single egg deviled egg with a giant piping bag. Here's the problem is the ratio is just not right. No one wants that much white in their deviled egg. Yeah.
No. You know what I mean? No. No, it doesn't work. I mean, it's a good stunt.
You know, there used to be the medieval stunt before they could get these things of like making like a fake egg and just like putting stuff in and cooking them like in like sacks, like pig bladders and whatnot, like making the double egg situation. All the a lot of the like, well, they're not really medieval. Most of them are early Renaissance, but they're all stunts. Anyway, what'd you say, Quinn? If you had a big enough egg like that, you could you'd have to like cut it up.
And then you could get like a choice slice with a with the right amount of white. Down from the middle. Oh no. Like a like a watermelon slice of of devil of no. I don't know.
Like just the idea of biting into a white that is any larger than a chicken egg white is like, no. I don't need it to be any larger than a chick, maybe duck. But no larger. That that's the most white that I want in, you know, poisoning my yolk. I do like sieved whites, actually.
Like sieved whites and yolks together on a toast with the caviar. Yeah, I'm fine with that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that works.
Yeah. Anyway, whatever. Uh all right. So are you gonna continue in your emutastrophy? Are you you are you gonna like become like an emu farmer now?
Is that what they're doing in Vancouver Island, emu farming? I mean, uh, we're we're we are not going to, but um, and you know, we'll we'll we'll get you know, we'll get an egg or two every so often and play around. Yeah. Uh you need to start eating cassawaries, the most vicious of all birds. The killer birds.
They're the birds that have the super sharp like back claw that like can cut through car doors, and apparently every once in a while someone's like, oh, cathetery and then the cassowary murders them every once in a while. Anyway, like, you know, ostriches are big and dangerous, but no one's ever like, I feel like I'm gonna get murdered. Yeah. No. But like castwari, even though it's much smaller, mess you up.
Mess you up. Anyway. Uh flightless birds. All right. So uh I'm not even gonna do anything.
I did this. What John, do you got anything for the week? We can review? Not really. I mean, made some beans, did some braise lamb tasted.
Rancho Gordo? Yes. Okay. Which ones? Tar bay.
Let me ask you a question. Do you think that uh he has ever discounted a bag of beans? I know he has never discounted. Oh my god, that was the hardest colour on the radio. We're like, hey, would you ever give uh the cooking issues people a discount?
Uh on he's like, I've never did he hasn't talked like that. I've never discounted a bag of beans in my life, and I never will. I was like, whoa, dude. I respect that though. I did.
Yeah. And it wasn't like respect the beans. I wasn't like F you. I was like. Fair enough, right?
Yeah. All right. Will you discount one of your jumbo things that you're saying? Ah, maybe. Yeah.
Maybe. They're highly valued by everyone. So yes, I can discount them. Um anyway. Uh hey, you know who uh who's I got a book uh coming out again?
Is uh George Moats. Uh his book is coming out like again right now. Bunch of new pages. Gotta get him back into hamburger this place up. Yeah.
Yeah. Another people. Is it a re-edition of the same book? It is, but it's like extra stuff in the way that like Liquid Intelligence, should that ever happen, has a bunch of like extra stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You know what I mean? Cool. Should that ever happen? It's it's gonna be too big for Nastasia. It won't be useful for her anymore.
She's gonna have to keep the old one because uh, you know, and if it's too thick, it will squish the food underneath that she's trying to keep one hot and one cold. You know what I mean? I'm gonna make a styrofoam edition just for you, Stas. It's just like uh like imagine that they will never do this, but imagine if they did an audio book, right? Of it, and then I could just give her like a like a like an SD card in styrofoam, so it'd be super light and even better at keeping like her like McDLT of life separated.
You know what I mean? I think that the McTeal the McDealT for those of you that don't know what that is, that's they McDonald's had this brilliant idea in the eighties, I guess, where they're like, the main problem of hamburgers is that the the lettuce and tomato wilt. That's the main problem in all of life. That's always what I'm saying. So they had literally the quote was we keep the hot side hot and the cool side cool.
And so you had this double like styro clamshell where like the meat was on one side steaming up that side of the styrofoam, and then you had the shredded, like like lettuce and and tomato and the bun on the other side staying crisp. And then you opened the McDLT, like housed it in two bites, and then threw the styrofoam. And it's still there. You could put the styrofoam is probably still in the landfill. Oh yeah.
Yeah, you can go find that stuff. But you know, that's so that's when, you know, Nastasi wants to bring the McDLT back with the new addition of liquid intelligence. When does that come out? Hey, it's not on me anymore. Oh no, but when but so when is it?
Well, I don't have a date because uh what happened, what what happened was uh I handed all of that changes and edits in, and they were like, Oh, we didn't think you meant this much. Oh, and so they're like trying to figure out like Well, we should plan a bunch of parties, right? No. Okay. I am No I'm gonna like less that's one of the reasons I need to know relatively far in advance, is I need to go like drum up some liquor company fools.
You're not fools, people. But you know what I mean? And uh like do do the old, I mean, I didn't do that the first time around because stupid. Because stupid, yeah. Yeah, you know what I mean?
Like, but classic. Yeah, it'll be fun. Because like uh those parties are actually like book launch parties for uh cocktail books can be fun. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Sometimes they're not. A lot of times they're not. But they can be fun. Yeah.
Yeah. We know how to make a good party or a weird party. That's true. Yeah, weird. Hey, so uh yeah, we said this, well, we've cook we've covered in some other this one, but like, yeah, any time Nastassi and I have a stupid idea and we're gonna be together, Nastassi's like, no, we're gonna do that dumb idea.
And then we're sitting there doing it, and then people are like, Why are you doing this? And we're like, I don't know. But yeah, it's art. Somebody who was like, it's art. Yeah, Stas was once got berated recently, was berated by a friend of ours for for doing these things, and and was like, Nastasia, why the hell are you doing any of this stuff?
And Stasi's like, What w I don't understand the question? What do you mean? Like, what like this is what we do. We don't know why we do it. Yeah.
It's such a burn to tell somebody like, why do you do the things you do? Yeah. Why? Well, I think because they don't make money, maybe. Yeah.
Well, I mean, my wife often wants to know what I'm doing because it doesn't make money. You know what I mean? It's a fair point. If it doesn't make dollars, it doesn't make sense, you know. Oh, is that your is that is that who who came up with that one?
Um, oh I'm gonna forget it's a rap lyric from Oh man, I should know that. I'll have it by the end of the show. All right. Uh all right, so while you guys are thinking of uh crap, I'll just rip through some questions. Shall we?
Yeah. All right. Uh our good friend Kevin uh wrote it is a million years ago. So I actually saw him in person when I was in LA, but I'll still read it because people might want to know. No.
So uh with more and more kitchens moving to induction burners, we've been looking into high quality donabe pots that are induction compatible. Models we found use something they refer to as induction compatible coating on the outside of the donabe. Do you have any insight into what this is that makes it compatible, the longevity of the coating and whether it's possible to buy or make this coating uh or paint it? Kevin, unfortunately, and I know you did the research too because I spoke to you about it. This is all hokum.
Here's what they do they embed an iron plate into the clay. So Danabe is like the clay bowls, and it would be amazing to be able to make anything like that induction compatible. Uh, but and uh you would think that they could make some sort of like super iron-rich clay that would work, or like maybe a glaze that was thick enough that was like had enough uh conductivity and iron in it that you could get it to work. But alas, no, they just embed an iron slug into the clay and well it's not they choose an alloy and a clay body that have roughly the same rate of expansion so that it doesn't shatter itself as it opens. How durable it is, excellent question.
Have no idea. But uh yeah, uh like would I trust one with an iron slug in it over an open flame? No, probably not anymore. You know what I mean? Whereas like low-fire pots, usually you can put them directly on a flame.
That's the awesome thing about a low-fire pot. Yeah. But uh, yeah, so that's unfortunate. Uh like I really wish uh and I've said this a million times, but I'll say it one more time in case someone's about to make the mistake. Don't buy one of those induction rings that allow you to put up a non-induction friendly pot onto an induction burner.
The reason you shouldn't buy them is they don't work. That's the reason you shouldn't buy them. Because what happens is is that that thing will get real hot, but then there's like a very big, there's a very big temperature jump between that slug. There's a big thermal barrier between that and your pan. So unless you had like if you went to a metal shop and had someone like compress and heat and sinter that slug onto the bottom of your pan, then it would work fine.
You know what I mean? But you can't, and they don't. And so what happens is that slug viciously overheats, viciously overheats, and it'll probably you could mess up your induction. It definitely is gonna be a lot hotter. It's gonna start stinking like burning electronics.
Like I I've had bad, real bad luck with them. I'm sure you guys have had bad luck with them. I've never done it. But if someone out there is gonna try to buy one and they're gonna be like, why doesn't this work? And the reason is because it can't.
And I've tried actually uh also to throw one of those slugs into a clay pot and cook by having the iron slug in the liquid on inside of the clay pot. I couldn't get it to work because it was too far. The the the iron that was too far away from the induction to have it effectively couple with my control freak. Anyway, someone could solve this problem, but they probably won't. Not enough money.
Not enough money for someone to solve it. Uh Lionel Hutz, I had a very interesting and delicious pizza the other day from a place called Truly Pizza in SoCal. You guys been to Trulie Pizza? Nope. No.
I mean Southern California is a big place. Yeah, that could mean anything. California's a long state. It is. Is there any state longer than California?
I don't think so. Long. Could Texas deceptively be long? I don't think so. I think California's still long.
I mean, Alaska's wide and tall. Alaska's freaking huge. Very big state. Big state. Yeah.
Yeah. Um, anyway. Uh the pizza had tons of micro blisters on the crust that provided a textural component to the pie that made it really satisfying and fun to eat. How do they achieve a crust like this? What causes the blistering in baked doughs?
And how could someone control the size and the amount of blisters? That's the last point I don't know how to control the size and the amount. However, uh classically the way to do that is a uh cold, uh cold ferment or cold long ferment in a fridge, uh like retarding the dough. What I don't know uh honestly is uh because I was thinking about this, is whether because people have different explanations for why the blistering happens. I've heard, well, because it's colder in the fridge, CO2 is more uh, you know, i is more soluble in the dough.
So the CO2 stays in the dough, and then when you heat it, it makes little blisters as it fleets. That's what I've heard. But my I'm trying to remember if you take a cold fermented dough and then fully temp it up to room temperature and like you know, before you fire it, I think you still get some blisters, in which case it's not unless it is true that you could you can have super saturated dough for hours or super saturated liquid for hours and hours and hours. I mean champagne doesn't go fully flat instantly, you know what I mean? So it could that could still be the reason, but I I don't know.
It would be interesting to see if you like let it sit out for a long time or like par heat it a little bit. But anyway, that's the explanation I've heard. I don't know whether it's true or false. Who knows? Uh all right.
Um I remember back uh during the transition from Contra to bar Contra, uh you mentioned the transition. You mentioned that you were testing to see if you could put my money where my mouth is and use the BDX cocktail cube for shaking drinks. Uh whatever came with this. Well, we do. Yeah.
That's what we do. We every shake and drink that we make, we use trash can ice and a cocktail cube. And it works great. But you know, but the problem is, as Nastasi and I know all too well, you can't make money trying to get some a factory who doesn't care about you to sell you something for too much money and then try to sell it at a reasonable price to someone in the United States at, you know, it let me tell you this. If a thousand people wanted them and you made three dollars a cube at the end of the day, you've made three thousand dollars.
Is that worth it? That's not capitalism. No, that's not how that works. This isn't like, this isn't like, yeah, monopoly era where you're like three thousand dollars, I'm going to buy my cigar factory. You know what I mean?
It's not how it works. You know what I mean? It's just not worth it. You we we would need to sell, even if you sold a hundred thousand of them, right? Then you've made three hundred thousand dollars.
Now, out of that, Nastasia and I gotta get we gotta get paid, we gotta pay insurance. We gotta do marketing. We gotta get we got all this stuff. So like, you know, unless you're making huge, if you're doing something inexpensive, you need to sell ska skascades of them. You know what I mean?
And then you gotta get multiple SKUs, right? So you gotta be like, well, what else can we use this for? And Nastasia, it always gets mad at me because I'm not willing to say it's useful for something that it's not useful for, right? And I'll be like, you know what? It's the world's greatest paperweight.
You know what? If you're a little bit of a prickly person like me, maybe it could be your best friend. It's a design object. Yeah, yeah. It's oh G, OG.
Oh j'y. Yeah. Uh yeah. I wish I had that in me because then you know, maybe Nastasia and I could have made some money. You know what I mean?
We still can. Zing. All right. Um, okay. What do you think the asterisk after nibble means?
It's from Nibble Asterix. What do you think the asterisk means? Like it's not. I put there. Because we've discussed this before, but it's marked to readdress.
Uh-huh. Oh, why? Why did I want it? This is about my hood, which still works great, by the way. Here's the one problem.
If you're if you're like me and you have a difficult time, because I was talking to Harold McGee about this. Harold McGee is also getting a hood, putting a hood into his uh into his apartment. I still love my new hood. Um, if you're like me and you have problems, uh, so it's not just low light situations that I'm not good with, and I think maybe a lot of older people have this problem. It's also like if there's a lot of light in one place and like not enough contrast in another, I can't see.
So like I can't see there's a dot. So it has these like, remember on old school stereo equipment, there'd be like a big silver knob with knurling on it and a small indented dot. Yeah. Yeah. I can't see that indented dot anymore because when the hood lights are on, like all I see is like a massive light coming at me, and I can't see the dot anymore.
So I have no idea which way to turn the knobs. So I'm gonna get like some nail polish. I was gonna say it's pretty easy fix. Yeah, but I just haven't done it yet. But like that, that's the main thing.
And you know how like remember my New Year's resolution, I don't know if you remember this, is like more small. What's it what's it called? Uh well, death by a thousand cuts, like more small irritations. Like, I just need more small irritants in my life. So I feel like not only do I not deserve to know which direction to turn that knob, but uh, I feel like it would actually make my life too much better to know what was gonna happen.
You know what I mean? So you gotta keep it the way it is. Keep it the way it is. Yeah, yeah. I gotta I gotta walk up.
Yeah, the best part about it is, and this is like me, me, me, me, right, is that like I have two motors with two independent switches. So I don't know which one I've turned, like I I can't tell which one's off and on necessarily because it's the same noise because it's going through this thing. So like I'm like turning, no, my problems are so hard. But uh but you need that little bit of stress every time. A little bit of stress, keep it there, keep it there, yeah.
Keep it there because I don't want to have to go to the BQE, because then if I if I have to if if if to increase my stress level, I have to get the car and go to the BQE. Now I gotta pay the $15 or whatever to come back to downtown. You know what I mean? Did you enjoy that driving through? No.
No? No. It's worse than LA traffic. Oh, give me a brain. Well, there's just more mysteries now with all the congestion toys.
Like, I don't I you know, um it is not worse than LA. It feels worse. It feels worse. No, because nobody needs to drive here. You can just get on a subway and that's fair.
There is nothing stopping me from getting on the Long Island Railroad. Yeah. Other than your hatred of the Long Island Railroad. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Uh no, that that whole getting in and out of Long Island thing is a freaking nice. Oh, yeah. Terrible apocalypse place to live.
Truly. So for those of you that don't know what we're talking about, we have this uh question. The question we ask anyone when we first meet them, one of the first questions we asked them is so you moved to New York, so what are your plans for the apocalypse? Like, how are you gonna get out? And so, you know, everyone has their different, like, you know, my I can't.
So here's the question. You I can't I'm not allowed to choose something that doesn't allow me to also rescue my family. Right? It's harder. Makes it much harder, right?
Because like what you want is just one of those parachutes with the with the propeller on the back. Yep. You just go up to the roof of your building, brrrrrr. Gone. Over any river.
Yeah. Climb every gone. Not my family, though. Yeah, not my family. Because you know, Booker would never put one of those things on his back and go.
Not ever. You know what I mean? I would have to knock him out like Mr. T, strap him to my chest, and he's tall. I wouldn't be able to see over him.
You know what I mean? He's light, but he's tall. But now you only have three people, the two people to take with it. Yeah, but Dax would not have been a problem. Dax would want to scrap the thing on.
He'd be looking for the apocalypse. The other good one, Zodiac boat. Zodiac boat. They in fact there we've talked about this before. There is a company where like super rich people who send their kids to live in New York and are worried about it, can rent a zodiac boat, and you it's yours, and someone sits there and maintains it, make sure the battery is working, make sure it's gassed up, make sure it's got a radio, make sure it's got like a lot of money.
You said you were gonna hot wire like any boat in the East River. Yeah, for sure. Oh, that's a good call. Yeah, hot wire a boat. That's a great call.
Yeah, but like other people who are better at hot wiring get there first. You know what I mean? So yeah, so like this company, I don't know if it's still there. There are more boats than there are people good at hot wiring. Yeah.
You think so? More boats than there are people better at hot wiring than you. But there's no yeah, but there's no boats right by my house. I'd have to go pretty far. I mean, boats aren't designed to not steal.
I mean, they're not like cars. You know what I mean? Like it's they're there for the taking. I mean, you know what I mean? Anyway, and like my point is that like you could you could get a rig, like an in-text with like like an in text small in text, not a real zodiac, but a small in text with an outboard, you could fit that in your house, probably in your apartment, run down to the water and be out.
But it wouldn't be a fast enough boat. You really want like what these guys, because they got like, you know, a f 200, 300 horsepower motor and they're pfft, they're out of here. Because how long do you have before the apocalypse sets in? That's I don't I don't know. Who who can say?
When I was a kid, it was a 15-minute problem. You had 15 minutes. From the time they the time they push cooked if in your New York, that's it. From the time they push the button, you got like 20 20 minutes or so before before the missiles hit. Yeah.
But you know, they know only after a couple of minutes, it takes them a minute to figure out the trajectories and stuff. So really maximum, if you were if you were on the phone with the president getting the note, you'd have 15 minutes. 15 minutes. So unless you have a helicopter, you're toast. No, the the move is to pick a good album then put it on and have a cocktail.
This is why I never thought I would live in New York City when I was a kid, because I assumed we would get nuked off the planet. Maybe it'll happen still. Hey, there is still time. Yeah. This service is still a thing, by the way.
Yeah? Yeah. How much does it cost? It's not saying, but plan B marine.com. This is inside.
Wow. Different types of boats, different sizes. PS people, they're not paying us. Here's the Today's show is brought to you by brought to you by plan B. If you can't steal a boat, go plan B.
If you really need to GTF uh GTFO, go to plan B boats on cooking issues. Uh but here's the messed up thing about it, because I I actually looked at it, right? Because why wouldn't I? It's the internet. Yeah.
Uh you're not allowed to go use the boat. Like for fun. Yeah. Oh. Well it has to be ready for the emergency.
Yeah, but if you're on the boat, then you can go. That's the thing that's so stupid. It's like if I'm paying all this money for a boat, that's why it's a scam. Because like if they if it was really my boat that was there for me in case of emergency, then why can't I just use it whenever I want? You're paying all this money.
The apocalypse comes, you call them, they're like, it actually doesn't qualify as emergency here. Apocalypse is not listed on the code. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, Con Ed caused this one, so your insurance won't pay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Exactly. Uh by the way, people, that literally happened to us at Booker Index when uh Sandy hit all of the downtown businesses, all of our insurances, none of them would pay. None of our business interruption insurances would pay us for the time we were down Sandy because it was a human being at Con Ed who didn't flip the switch or they turned it off. Something there was something that someone at Con Ed did where the insurance is like, go sue Con Ed if you if you and we're like, Oh, you suck. What a world.
Yeah. What a world, what a world. Uh that's funny. But you know, I I I heard a very funny story about a CEO showing off a server building, and um, you know, where they keep all the servers and I you know, IT stuff, and he was showing off on on a big tour, and there's a huge red button. You would think the like hey he hits the freaking red button, the whole system goes down.
That's like uh that's Homer Simpson moment right there, if there ever was one. I basically am Homer Simpson, I think. You know. Uh I even live near a donut store. I live near donut.
I live right there. You know what I mean? Anyway. Uh all right. Carver M writes in.
I am curious. This is a question I can actually answer. I am I'm curious about the properties of ultra spurse and how it differs exactly from general corn starch or starches in general, and or any benefits or detriments to using it instead of cornstarch. Well, Carver M, ultra spurse. There's uh what's the other one?
There's ultra, you want spurse. There's also ultra-text. Yeah. Ultra text. Yeah.
So the the two the here's the both tex and spurse are what's called pre-gelatinized starch. And so they're like wandra flour, right? Which is pre-gelatinized flour. And what that means is uh unlike regular flour, which even though it you think it's soluble, there's parts of it are soluble, the proteins will actually kind of like bind with the water, but the starch itself doesn't. That's why if you take cornstarch and put it into water, it like settles down to the bottom over time because it's not really soluble.
Only the broken and damaged pieces and you know, it's a suspension otherwise, right? So what ultra-spurse and ultra-tex are are pre-gelatinized. And so what that means is they you can you don't have to heat them again. You can heat them, but you don't have to. So if you're not gonna cook it later and you just want to add some thickening, you use ultra spurse or text.
The reason you want spurse is is because of the word spurse in there, it's for dispersability, right? So it's what's called a pre-agglomerated starch. So if you look at tex, it like looks like powder. Whereas if you look at spurse, it looks like almost like grainy, like nutritionally yeasty like stuff. And so it won't clump as badly.
So if you need to, if you need to throw something in, uh use that. Or you can use wonder's another good one. Potato flakes are also like uh pre-gelatinized. The problem with potato flakes, potato starch in general, is that if you then uh beat it or whip it too much, it kind of can lose its texture. And if you overcook it, it kind of loses texture.
But still, like I've I've thickened things with potato flakes. Cool, you know, uh, because they're not as easy to get as they used to be, at least not in my neighborhood, without flavor. Because they all come like pre-buttered and buttered, yeah. You know what I've never cooked with? I was considering doing it because I have so much of it at home.
So like Booker and Dax, Dax, you know, he doesn't live in at home anymore, but like they call him popcorn Dax because he makes da so much popcorn. Booker used to make a lot of popcorn. So I store in my house, I have like, you know, you know, in case there's another situation where like the market shut down, I have a bunch of flavor call and I have a bunch of like butter-flavored coconut popcorn oil. You know what I mean? It's important.
Yeah. But the well, like I've never just cooked with the popcorn oil. You think it'd be good? Like, what else would you want cooked with movie flavor? This is a great question.
Like, would you want a pancake cooked in that instead of butter? That could work. Yeah? Or like what else would be I was thinking, no, biscuit, I don't think so, man. That's that's a good one.
No, because they have the solids, which I have used, but I now have the liquid one. We have a lot of it. I need to go through it. I can't just keep it there forever. It doesn't last forever.
What would that taste like on a like a steak or something? Probably terrible. Cook the steak in movie theater oil. Yeah. Put it on uh a corner in the cup.
Huh. Yeah. Yeah. You know what? I'm gonna do it.
Next time I do burgers, I'm gonna do them. Corn oil. Burgers and corn. Yeah, I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do popcorn burgers, of course.
Yeah, popcorn burger. Call it moats. Safety skills. Um I'm sure somebody in in Mississippi already does it. Like he just did the Mississippi slug burger and I missed it.
So anyway. Uh all right. Uh Wen Rick writes in, uh, just got back from Oaxaca, did a market tour where the guide asked any dietary restrictions. I answered no, but then the tour guide gave us a whole bunch of empanadas full of brains after I'd eaten them, is when they were told. Uh granted, I did not declare any dietary restrictions, but uh this happened to me too, where you just don't expect someone's gonna serve your brains.
You just don't expect it anymore. No. Uh and the question is um, you know, with prions and you know, bovine, spongiform, encephalopathy and all the different forms of encephalopathy that you can get. Uh, should we still eat brains? Would you guys eat brains?
I mean, I have, yeah. We have, but do you? Uh I'll order it if it's there. Usually you'll order it if it's there. Yeah.
If I see some veal brains on the menu, I'll probably order them. Yeah. Yeah. It's they sound better in French. Yeah.
Sure. I don't know. Sign me up for two of those. Yeah. Yeah, it sounds good.
I get scarcity mindset. So when I see something on a menu, I'm like, ooh, ooh, I usually can't get that. Yeah. Really? Yeah.
Yeah, I don't I don't eat those things. They're good. They taste good. Yeah. Don't eat.
Yeah. Uh because you just don't know. Like then the next Jakob's Kreutschfeld variant that's gonna come out that's gonna toast you, you just don't know what it is. And so I just stay away from stay away from it. You know what I mean?
Um, you know, maybe because it's also I don't love it. It's not like yep. What do you what do you think the risk level is of emu brain? Uh I mean, what is that? Like a teaspoon?
Like, how big is an emu brain? Like how big of a brain can an emu have? I guess I can find out. I don't know if you know this. Bird brained.
And here's another thing. Like, I don't think that they're on the list of smart birds either. Like crows, smart. Smart as hell. You know what I mean?
Parrots, smart. No one's like, you know, that bird is smart as an emotion as smart as an emu. Smart as an emu. This doesn't come up. You know what I mean?
Yeah. They look dumb. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah.
Um I don't know. I mean, like, I think the risk is relatively, I think the the as you go further and further away from human, well, I don't know, but avian flu can cross. Yeah. Right? So the, you know, I don't know what, but that's that's an actual like a virus.
I don't know how uh I don't know how the the the usually the brain problems are prions, which are like, you know, weird protein fragments that can somehow self-replicate in your head and cause problems. I don't know whether how transferable they are. So I don't know. What are the odds really? Yeah, I mean, I don't know.
Odds are incredibly low anyway. Yeah. Yeah. Although, like every culture who has a habit of of cons ritually consuming brains from people ends up getting pretty gnarly. Well, okay.
I mean Yeah. I mean, but it's a thing. I mean, like, not like, you know, it you know, has been a thing over you know, over over the history of humanity, it has been a thing and it has caused medical issues. You know what I mean? Don't eat.
Yeah. Don't eat, don't eat it of brains. Why? Do you are you uh considering buying all of this farmer's emu brains? Do you have them saving them in the freezer for you so that you can have like like a pate to emu brain?
Again, eventually we're gonna get access to emu meat. So I mean I have access to all kinds of meat, but it's no one's like handing me the brain. The only time I like usually like the only time that like it's actually a problem for me is when we get like the cup with cell where you had get the the lamb's head. And then you're like, okay, I have to now because you split the lamb's head in half. I have to eat it because it's part of the whole yeah face.
I guess that's the last time in in uh China I must have had uh rabbit, like the whole rabbit head. Yeah. Yeah. I guess I've had that brain. Yeah.
So like I'm not gonna be a jerk. I'm fine still. Yeah, I think. Well, that's the thing. You don't know until later.
I don't know. Yeah. Real quick, uh, Tyman on the Discord said he going back to the butter stuff, he made a very successful Papa John style garlic dipping sauce. Oh, yeah, that checks. You know what?
Booker freaking loves Papa John's pizza. Yeah. Oh yeah, make them make a mayo. Just make a mayo with the with the butter oil. A butter mayo?
Fake butter oil. I could try. I have enough of it. Like, I'm just trying to imagine convincing people at my house to eat it. You know what I mean?
Probably be good on French fries. Sounds like the kind of uh themed dinner party you Nastasia should do. Only only popcorn oil. I can't believe it's only butter. Uh flavor call.
Yeah. Can't believe it's flavor calls spray. Remember like when Fabio used to do the I can't believe it's not butters? Yeah. Yeah, dude.
Yeah. Guy has no sense of humor about getting hit in the face with a bird. None. None. Uh he's like, it's dangerous for the bird and for me.
I'm like, suck it. Suck it, Fabio. Uh okay. Um, Owen K. Uh Owen had K had a question about a WD 50 recipe for like, you know, Twizzler related things out of, but you know what?
I'm just gonna wait until Wiley responds. I'm gonna text Wiley the answer about the question in his cookbook, and then he can get back to me. He's in Vegas right now and doing some sort of Wiley related thing, probably about that TV show that he's on. Uh which I don't have Paramount Plus. So I'm like, I gotta go steal someone's Paramount Plus so I can go watch Wiley on the on the on the TV.
Too many services. And someone was like, can't you just turn on CBS? I'm like, I don't get broadcast TV. No, who does that anymore? I mean, do TVs even can you I do.
Do you have an antenna on your TV? Yeah, I have that old TV in my Oh yeah. That little black and white TV. Do they still especially have the bunny area antennas, right? Yeah.
Do they still I mean maybe in LA, do they still literally broadcast TV here? Yeah, I think they have to. Yeah. Really? Yeah.
So I could like sh put up an antenna and watch TV. Huh. Who knows yes? Like channels two through nine or something like that, right? Or 13.
I don't know what it is, but yeah. And that's why we still have an FCC. 13. Yeah, that's what it was. Okay.
Uh noted. But anyway, Owen, I'll get that to you. Uh as soon as he responds. Uh Michael L, my second A Nova oven version one has failed and it's out of warranty. Yeah, it's out of words.
I'll say it's out of warranty. Uh what do you recommend as a replacement? Sous vide is not a requirement. I can use my jewel for that. Umbi moisture management would be nice.
Nine times out of ten, I'm just making pizza, roasting veg, and using it as I would a typical oven. I actually don't love it for a pizza because uh it can't get that hot, right? It's like I use it constantly as uh a keep warm. So for me, like the the magic of that is reheating and keeping crap warm and at the right moisture level. So there is no inexpensive like sub-4,000 or sub-3,000 replacement for that.
My mom said she's gonna, I mean, I don't have the money or the electricity for it, but she might actually get the Gag now, in which case I can test it at her house and see whether or not the Gagnau combi is all it's cracked up to be for those of you out there who have that kind of cash to spend. Um but I have not found a uh a small, inexpensive thing that can do any of that. If you're not, if you're just gonna use it like like an oven, then if it's big enough for you, uh it'll do pizza. Breville makes a decent pizza standalone. Wiley actually likes it.
The issue with Breville's pizziolo uh uh oven is that you make one, then wait, then make the next, then wait, then make the next because it's plugged into a wall socket, and so even though it's very shallow, it there's a limited amount of energy it can suck out of the wall. So you have to let it recover its its uh thermal energy before you do the next and next and next, or just get three of them, plug them into three sockets and you know, round robin those suckers. Uh but you know, I uh my battery to cuisine uh is I have my real oven, you know, but then mostly during the summer, I'm using a Breville uh uh smart oven, the the biggest one they make, which can do a whole chicken and it can do, you know, pizza, it can do bread if you get the if you get the um cast irons that aren't too big where the handle's not too big. They make cast irons for this purpose that don't have a lot of like frippery and handles and crap sticking off of them. Those will fit into the Breville nicely so you can do good bread in it.
Um they work, they work fine, they're not that expensive. They're fairly robust. Um that's what I use. That and the ANOVA, but I would not give up my ANOVA. I bought another one used uh off the internet just so that I could keep that keep warm function because I love, love, love that keep warm function.
Um Mathman. Uh I want to get more into making fluid gels to use in cooking and baking. I'm interested in making a coffee fluid gel and would love to hear what kind of desserts might benefit from one. Would chocolate cookies uh half dipped in coffee fluid gel be interesting? I think you want a gel for that, not a fluid gel, right?
So, like the trick used to be you would do a gel-in gel and it would snap set, and then you could put that on the outside of something, but it's gonna make your cookie soft. You know what I mean? So to me, a fluid gel is more like it's like for plating, you're like shabloing, bam, and you can make like a line, and then it looks like a gel, but when you put it in your mouth, it eats like a fluid. So, another suggestion or question could you put it as a as a as a cookie filling? Sure.
You know what I mean? It's it's a little liquidy. It its main thing is to look solid but then disappear in your mouth. That's its main shtick. So any any, you know, like they're really good at uh making heat things that like are heat proof.
So like heat proofing, uh heat proofing, like you can add a fluid gel to a whipped cream and they become intensely stable. Um that's what that's what I use. At home in desserts, what I use them mainly for is non-gelat and stabilization of whipped creams. And you can also acidify a fluid gel, add it to whipped cream, the cream won't break and it'll just sit there forever. I mean, like, I did a test of stabilized whipped cream with a fluid gel, and I just shh I did it in my in my whipper, uh, my EC whipper, and uh I left it there for four days.
And it like it dehydrated and like everything, but it didn't sink, didn't die. Uh that's that's those are some ideas. See what you want more. A zoo writes in, I have a lot of free time now. Must be nice.
Uh I have a lot of free time now. Uh as I'm mid-career change sabbatical. I live around the corner from two very well regarded bars in San Francisco. I was interested in seeing if I could start uh there uh working prep part-time. Uh reading liquid intelligence and applying some of the techniques at home has been great, but it'd be cool to learn how to do these at a professional scale.
Any advice on getting started, just showing up with a resume pre-opening still work. Uh I have no professional bartend experience. So any advice for not making a fool out of myself or pissing off important people at bars, I like drinking at. Well, uh, first rule is make friends with these people first. Right.
Especially if you're remember that in something like prep, uh nowadays when everyone is getting paid to do things, they're actually investing money in you by hiring you and training you to do something and they need this stuff to work. So you have to get them to trust you. If if if you're coming into it and have been worked in the industry before, you have to kind of get them to trust you. But you could probably get a trail or two on on training, but just be get friendly with them. You know what I mean?
Like do a day or two of of trails, see whether you actually like making the same thing every day. See whether it takes a certain mentality to not just like want to do something, but want to like be like, oh, I already learned how to do this. Okay, great. Now do it that way every day the same way. I also wouldn't work at your favorite bar because then you'll hate it.
Yep. Wow. Good call, stuff. Yeah. Yeah.
I'd also say that just in getting friends with the bartenders and the staff there, even if there isn't an opening at that place where you want to work, they have friends at other places that they regard and might know of openings at where you can get your foot in the door. And this unless they're like me and have no friends. That too. Yeah. True.
But uh so Stas, what level of bar? It'd have to be a bar you're spec, but not a bar you like for you. Well, what if they end up hating prep? Then, you know, I would go for something that yeah, they don't really care if they screw over the person by leaving. And might might it maybe be easier to get uh an entry level job like that somewhere bad or kind of like lower brow, and then at least when you're having a conversation with the better places, you're like, well, I at least have this experience.
Uh you know, you're not coming from zero. Right, but I think this person wants to do it liquid intelligence cramp. Well, you gotta start somewhere, right? I mean start somewhere. It's like yeah, maybe you start like learning how to make regular cocktails and uh but they don't want to they don't want to be a bartender, they want to do prep.
Wow. Mo I mean most bars who like aren't doing the techniques don't have a lot of prep. Fair enough, fair enough, fair enough. Juicing limes. Well, that's something I mean, yeah, juicing the limes, juicing the limes.
That's where did we do breaking the law before we were on air or after uh so no one knows? Juicing the limes, that's a good one. Yeah. Uh huh. Uh good interesting uh variance of opinion here.
Um Timone writes in, uh, any ideas for how to pull off popcorn, pop in place popcorn. I have an idea for a spring themed meal where the first course is a steel wire bonsai tree with Sakura scented popcorn blossoms, and they want like to use heat guns to pop them on. And uh uh while this sounds like something that Shonda Rhymes would make, like you know what I mean? Like like some Bridgerton kind of like pre-thing, you know what I mean? Uh I I don't think this is gonna be possible.
You know what I mean? Uh I tried to heat gun. Uh I I I even have a tiny heat gun at my house for like solder reflow work, and I I put it on some popcorn this morning after I read this question, and nah. No, no dice. No.
No. I just don't think it's gonna work. I think like what else would explode? I had this idea. What if you put like little firecrackers into candles?
And everyone's like, that's a terrible idea. That's a horrible idea. Yeah, it's great. Even Nastasi was like, we can't do that. I was like, at the party, can we make candles where we put like little firecrackers and tie them in so that we don't know where in the taper they are, so like at a certain point.
Surprise! Your face has been burned off with wax. Or just one of them, like a shoshita. Where's the hot one? Yeah, that'd be great.
Yeah, right? But then I was like, oh, that's a terrible idea. Well, because we're in a canyon. So if you start a fire, oof. I always forget, I forget California has a different relationship with fire.
New York, we love fire here. I mean, you know, it's just not as big of an issue here. Yeah, you know what I mean? Like we're it's not as triggering here. You know what I mean?
Uh all right, Desert Platypus, I do not have time to go into frozen drinks now, but I'll do it another, I'll do it on another session. So it's been uh good to have the crew in the room, you know. Uh unfortunately, I will never move to LA and you guys will never move back. So I might come back one day, who knows? Really?
Yeah, maybe. Huh. Who knows? And when you're it's sick of all that nice weather, yeah. All that chill, relaxing.
Well, I want more fire in my life. When you don't want to go out, you're so sick of going out for 5 p.m. drinks, and you need to wait until 7, you're gonna come to come to the great state of New York. I missed the 4 a.m. last call, yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Although you know what? I I think late night drinking here is actually coming back. You know, it was decent points, but it was dead for it was dead for a long time. New York wasn't not a late night town for a while.
Uh, but I think we're coming back. Who knows? Not for me. Hell with that. Cooking issues.
Timestamps may be off due to dynamic ad insertion.