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Great thanks. Yeah, yeah. Still alive, still breathing, everything good? Yeah, yeah, for now, yeah. I just gave myself a little bit of a head rush.
Maybe I'm getting too old for the intro. Who knows? Maybe. Who knows? You do put a lot into it, yeah.
Yeah, yeah. A little blood pressure goes to the brain. You know how it is? Mm-hmm. Uh, did you ever used to do that thing, John, where you would like purposely like squeeze so that your blood would like and and your head would start vibrating?
No. And then you like almost go black. You never did that? No, I didn't I did not do that. Yeah.
Yeah. Just me? I I think. Well, I don't know about just you, but not me. All right.
Uh we got uh Quinnie Quinn in the upper left. How you doing? I'm good. Yeah? Nice.
And uh do uh do we have Nastasia the Hammer Lopez calling in from the road? I am here, but I can only stay on for a little bit. Ah, how's the road show treating you, Stas? Um great. Wonderful.
I all the text that Nastasia sends me regarding her current job on the road, she you know, she is the road crew, and if you're a motorhead fan, but she uh there's not one that we can say on a family show. Like not one, right, Stas? I can't believe it's still a family show. The kids that listened 15 years ago are now like 20. Fun fact even though uh birth rate has been declining in most parts of the world, uh they still make new kids.
I don't know if you knew this. Interesting fact. Uh the uh why not keep we can we can insult each other all we want without going without going, you know, blue as they used to say back in the day. Anyway, uh we got uh Jackie Molecules, the Jack Insley Master. No Innsley, no Inslee.
Even Nastasia, who's literally like had to like stick her head out of a bus to make this call is on the call. Oh, well, what can you do, Stas? All right, so I was on the bathroom on the table, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Uh hey, have you gotten so far uh any like places that literally had bed bugs yet?
Oh god. I don't think so. Let's hop. I think it's a thing of the past. It doesn't really happen anymore, does it?
I'm sure it does. In hotels? Probably. Really? Yeah.
What people bring it with them and then they don't like what probably uh I don't know. Don't they like to have some sort of nuclear attack they can do to the room and probably don't do that every single time. Yeah, probably true. Yeah. Yeah.
What are your thoughts before well, okay? First of all, in the studio today, uh, we have guest uh Brian uh Heffling. If you're looking for him, he's an author, he's written out of five books. Four. Four books.
Uh if you're looking for him on the internet, remember there's an O before the E in Heffling. Right? We were talking beforehand that like, you know, back in Austria, it would have been her fling. Anyway, uh so what are your all thoughts on when they take a roll of toilet paper and tuck it into a triangle so that you know that they've looked at the toilet paper, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they've made it clean at all. What are your thoughts on the triangle tuck?
I think it's I don't know, it's useless because it's just the one time and then it's gone. So what's the point? Yeah, but they keep doing it. Even if the roll's half done, they put the triangle tuck on it. Yeah.
I looked at it. You know what I mean? I don't know. I feel like it's meant to signal that someone has attended to the bathroom before you've gotten there. I guess.
I guess. I guess. What are your thoughts on when you go to a super fine dining restaurant and someone's waiting outside the bathroom to like fluff it when you when you when you leave? Hate. Hate.
Don't let me see that. I want I don't want someone inspecting the bathroom after I leave. It makes me feel self-conscious. You know what I mean? Here's what they should do.
This is a terrible idea. But if you're really rich, what if they had a secret door to the bathroom? It'd like a little secret door, and someone could like crouch in after you leave until you never saw someone go in. That would be super creepy. Yeah.
If I had the money, I would totally do it. Anyway. So, Stas, what do you got? What do you got for the weekend review since you have to leave first? Um we made pickled eggs on the bus last night.
This sounds like a terrible idea. I love it so much. A farmer gave us a bunch of eggs from their farm, and we were like, we have to use them. So we made pickled eggs, and then tonight we're getting a slow cooker delivered, and we're going to make a pot roast for dinner tomorrow because we'll be in Alabama, and we decided to just sit outside and eat that pot roast. Okay, okay.
Let me ask a question. Like, do you this a it's a big bus, so you can run these pieces of equipment with no kind of yeah. Cause when you're when the bus is running, it can just run off their system. It's not using, you don't have to fire. I guess you have a generator for the whole dang bus anyway, right?
Yeah. Yeah. And a slow cooker, not that much energy, which is a good call. As opposed to some other things where you're actively boiling. Once a slow cooker's hot, it doesn't have that much that high of a heat input.
Smart moose. Uh but uh on the pickling eggs. And I and I got uh Sears all delivered today. Oh snap. Oh, I saw that.
I saw that. She asked for a rush delivery to wherever the wherever the venue was that night. So she's Sears all proline proline on the book. You gotta get some content. I know.
I know. And then we'll share it on the well, I'll share it, we'll share it on all three of our accounts. A four if John wants to, but we'll share it on all all three, all of our accounts, or four if Quinn wants to. You know what I mean? Uh yeah.
Anyway, that sounds awesome. I can't I can't wait to see On the Road Sears all in. Sick. The um I know it's gonna be ridiculous, especially because it's a pro. You know what I'm saying?
Because all we have left is pros. And for those of you that have only used Steersol 1.0s, the pro is, shall we say, more professional. I still don't have a pro. Well, if you had stayed on the job a little bit longer, you know, you don't get your perks forever, John. Yeah, no, clearly.
Clearly. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. I but I like I so every time Nastasi and I would talk to someone about like partnering with the Sears All, they're like, why don't you put it on a hose? Remember this, Doz?
Yeah. Yeah. Why don't you put it on a hose? And I was like, nah, no. I don't want to deal with the liability of it.
You know what I mean? Because to me, it's like it's just rife for somebody like really doing something terrible. So obviously what I'm gonna do is put one on a hose for myself. You know what I mean? I actually researched it like uh they make torches that uh attach to hoses, right?
And then you can uh they put like arresters on them so that you have to arrange it such that if you burn through the hose, the drain out of the hose is so high that it immediately shuts off the safety valve on the tank, right? So like that's the way I can make it safe, but I can't guarantee that you will do that. Also, like you need your own regulator because the torch needs a high pressure in feed, not like a barbecue level in feed. So someone if they plugged it into a barbecue level in feed, it wouldn't work for them, right? And I'm also gonna need a torch that has a high enough BTU output on propane, because no torch has a high enough BTU output on propane for it to work well in a pro.
That's why we recommend you you use uh, you know, map pro gas. But if I get to choose the orifice size, i.e. if I modify it a little bit for uh like an outside grill, then you could do a torch on your grill and imagine having the Sears All Pro like like like pistol gripped on the side of your of your grill anytime you wanted to use a little more you know what I mean? That'd be great. Be sick.
Yeah. Be awesome. I'm gonna do it. Cause it's only me I have to worry about. I don't have to worry about Jane and Joe Knucklehead.
No offense, Joe. Like, you know what I mean? Like going crazy and like blowing up their house. Anyways. Uh so that sounds fun.
Now let me ask you this. Were you like, what smells worse than cooking eggs? Cooking pickled eggs. Yeah, but every I mean, we were watching football cooking eggs and like going across Tennessee. So it sounds about right, right?
Yeah, yeah. Well, the thing is, is the tour long enough for the eggs to be done? Um, yeah, we have another ten days. All right, so at the end, it's gonna be just eggs on eggs. Now, did you go beet?
Did you go mustard? What variety of pickled egg? Well, the farmer also gave us some basil vinegar that they made. So I got regular vinegar mixed with basil vinegar, and then uh they gave us string beans and baby tomatoes, so it's all in there with the eggs. So it's so it's it's c it's a clear, it's a clear brine.
Yeah. Okay, okay. I have to say this. Uh maybe an old school opinion. I love pickled eggs.
I love them. That weird texture they get, I love them. You know what I'm saying? It's like you Oh, and they gave us duck eggs too. So they're those are in there.
Gonna take a little longer on the duck egg, probably. Bigger, right? They're bigger. Yeah. You gotta let me know.
The uh the you know, the thing with um you ever buy hard boiled eggs in a in a bag? Do you have them in there for on our fridge, yeah? Yeah. So the hard-boiled eggs in the bag have that hard texture without the awesome vinegar. They seem like it's the worst of both worlds.
Compared to what you're doing. You know what I'm saying? Compared to the pickled anyway. I like a mustard pickled eggs. Uh I'll let you know how it goes.
I gotta go. All right. Well, good luck with the eggs and the slow cooking and the Searsal and show us the content. Yeah. I will.
Next week. Bye. Bye. All right. For those of you that are uh I don't know which which side has which side says cooking issues with my hat.
Which sidephones are covering it. Oh, the headphones are covering it. So uh our good friends at uh Flower City and uh Public Provisions uh made flower hats that say cooking issues on the side. Oh, I love that. Any of you in the great city of Rochester, land of Jenny cream ale and the garbage plate, and also Public Provisions and Flower City should check them out.
Uh they have my favorite swag. I have a flower, I have flower hats. I should have brought you one, John. I'll bring it up. You should have, yeah.
I have one. Would you like red? How about red? I've got two reds. Sounds good.
It'll match your pizza planted shirt. Perfect. All right. Uh yeah, I got flour, butter, bread, and biscuits. Nice.
Yeah. Love that. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway.
Uh all right. So uh well, Brian, did you do anything? When did this book officially launch? It tails? Uh it it was officially published in uh mid-August.
We had uh we had an early shipment that we were able to get to Tails. Yeah, I see I see. Uh all right. So normally on this program, what we do is we ask you anything that's happened in the last week of note for you. Cooking wise or drinking wise, or just I tripped and broke my face and it got it fixed amazingly well in the last five days.
Anything you want. Well, I'll I'll tell you cooking wise something uh interesting and recent for me. I went, I uh I had a dinner with some friends where we tried to make um recipes that were sort of Roman in origin. Um I found something that basically it was medium boiled eggs, which is I think why I'm thinking of it right now, with a sauce made from just crushed uh pine nuts, honey, and and black pepper. Honestly, delicious, would make that again.
No fish sauce? Uh oh, and fish sauce, I'm sorry. That's come on man. No, no, no, you are right. Um, which for my purposes, I sub uh I use just Worcestershire sauce, which I I feel like there are maybe closer approximations than that, but it's not bad for him stand in.
So you live in uh Cambridge, Mass Massachusetts. Indeed. Uh and in the great state of Maine, they make a product called Maine Garum. It is not cheap. Really?
Yeah, it's not cheap. And it is fairly close in flavor to the Garm the one of the Garums that Sally Granger, who someday she's the uh I think current leading world garum expert. She how I met her once many years ago, and she gave me a sample of her garment. This is like twelve, thirteen, fourteen years ago. She gave me a sample of her garum, and I was like, this tastes like ishiri, which is a Japanese all gut squid gut fish sauce.
Uh very hard to get, but if any of you can get your hands on uh it on uh Ishiri, like the squid one specifically, not squid brand, squid gut ishiri. Fantastic. This small bottle one. I've had ones of varying quality, but that one that's all squid guts is and I was like, this tastes like that. She mentions it in her Garam book, which came out only I think three years ago.
But main Garum is delicious as well, slightly different. It ain't cheap. I'm just gonna go ahead and tell you it ain't cheap. Uh, but I would spoon eat it. It's delicious.
So yeah, you should definitely. And if you think about it, like Garam back in Roman days, this is one of Sally Granger's kind of big, you know, tenets is that Garum came in many different levels. There was rich folk garum, there was poor folk garum, liquomen, muria. There's like various levels of like uh how hard it was to make something. So all gut was more expensive because you had to gut all of the fish and then make it, right?
And and I think the yield was lower. That would make sense. Yeah. And she's using less salt than I mean, I should stop talking about fish loss. You know why?
Why, John? Because we've got Dennis Noan, Andrea Nguyen coming on uh in a couple of weeks to talk about it. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. And he's gonna, I think he said he was I saw him.
He was in he's from Houston, and he was in Houston, and I saw him, I did a pop-up this uh what did it what day is it? Tuesday? Two days ago at Agnes and Sherman. Uh, you know, uh Nick uh Nick Wong was on the show uh when he did his pop-up here at Golden Diner, uh, you know, Sam Ju's place right across the way. And I did a pop-up there with uh St.
George Liquor, and I had an awesome time in Houston. Awesome time. You ever go to Houston? I've never been to Houston. Okay, do you like Houston rap?
I have no idea. Hmm. Uh I love Houston rap. Okay. And the but like so, so they took me to see uh the hu Houston has its own.
What I like about Houston rap is that I mean, there's like the the normal thing people talk about in in rap, but a lot of the lines are like you can tell that the people grew up unpopular. You know what I mean? You know, back back in the dude. Yeah. Yeah, dude.
But like, you know, like they and but like they also there's a lot of raps just about their cars. You know what I mean? It's like straight, like it's not anything, it's like, what's my car like? You know what I mean? And so like it's specific, like they have a specific car culture, slab, slow, loud and banging.
And it's like, so in 1983, 1984, Cadillac had these uh like um, you could buy them from the factory, but they were uh rims where the spokes poked out, swangers, and they made them in 83 and 84, two different styles. And then they discontinued them because they broke all the time and it was problematic, and I don't know whether they sold a lot of them, but they became like the Houston thing, and then eventually so many people wanted them, they cost so much money to buy originals uh that someone started reproducing them. Oddly enough, Texan Wire Wheels is not in Texas, it's in California. Odd. But uh they now make them up to like 24 inches wide.
So definitely not street legal, right? I looked this up on the the widest your car can be without an oversized sign on it, you know, in all 50 states is eight feet. And most highways, it's a little bit wider than eight feet because of internet, I think it's like eight feet six inches or something like that. But if you take a Cadillac, which is of course what you should take, and then you put 24 inches on either side, that's an extra four feet. So they're like, you know, clocking over 10 feet.
Those are street legal exactly nowhere. You know what I mean? And the entire trunk becomes a subwoofer, right? The entire trunk becomes a subwoofer. So don't try to bring anything.
You know what I mean? And the back, the back where you would normally put plush crap, you know, plush e animals or whatever, or your baby on board sign or whatever the hell you have, it that's where all of like, that's where all like the mid-range tweeters go. You know what I'm saying? Then so you have the you have the you have the elbows, the swang is coming out, then you have the speakers in the back. And they don't all have this, but like grant wood grain wheels, it's just very specific.
And then the most important, candy paint. You need to go to Ike's and get candy paint on the car. And I happen to, I can never drive one, because it would obviously it's New York City, and like, you know, I'm a 55-year-old white guy, but I love these cars. And so, like, you know, uh anyway, whatever. Not not for nothing.
So we made three drinks. Uh Houston really came out. We like had a huge crowd on on the fry uh Sunday. I was kind of surprised. I was like, Sunday, who's gonna come out?
People came out, had uh a bunch of good meals. I ate it, Agnes and Sherman, of course, had their uh stuff, which by the way, I still think like uh we talked about it. He may say uh Nick makes a uh like a cheeseburger fried rice. It's ridiculous. Yeah, it sounds delicious.
It's ridiculous because it's like it's so spot on. And it's got on it, well, here's what to me what makes it so spot on. First of all, it comes out with two slices of American cheese. If you look at his at his fridge case, not the walk-in, but the regular fridge case, he's got like row after row of like eat, like, did you know that they make a special easy peel-off, unwrapped, sliced American so that they don't stick to each other? Yeah, because I hate peeling off the off those blocks, but he has this special like interleaved one that is like easy to peel off.
Anywho, so it like the key to me is is it's got slightly wilted shredded lettuce on it. You know what I'm saying? And to me, that's what makes it taste legit. You know what I'm saying? That plus the fact that he like he really like he he walk uh burns like not burnt, but walk, like sears down like a bunch of ground meat and I for I forget what what he puts into that, and then like that forms the base with like the secret sauce on it.
And you're like, where's this been all my life? And one's like, you know, if he said some people, because they posted, you can get his recipe for it, by the way. He posted it maybe on the Houston Chronicle website or something like this. It's posted. You guys can go find it.
But people were making comments. Lettuce, ew, no thanks. Hey, grow grow up. First of all, a lot of people use lettuce in cooked uh in cooked preps, right? And don't knock it until you try it.
What are you, moron? You what are you second-guessing, Nick? Anyway. Uh I went to another restaurant, live fire called Basso, that uh so much live fire. I was looking, I was like, imagine trying to do this in New York.
John, can you imagine having full wood live fire in New York? Modern, not like 20 years old and your grandfathered into it, but like just so much heat pumping out of it. Oh my gosh, so much heat pumping out. I don't know how people could work that kind of a station. Yeah, went and I went to Josephine's where uh oh my god, the chef's name just popped up my head, but he's on the food and wines uh 10.
Yeah. Nice. Which is like obviously a great, great honor. Anyway, so uh had a good time. Nice.
Good time was hopefully had by all. People tend not to have a good time when I'm working with them. I have a good time working with them though. That's not true. I think they had an okay time.
Uh so shout out to everyone. Uh Agnes and Sherman, Nick, Lisa, and of course, David, who's uh running their bar program, uh had a good time. Um what let's talk about it. Hey, Quinn. What do you got for me this week?
Uh not too much this week. I didn't do anything too experimental. I mean my usual sacaca, but with some uh uh sesame oil in the dough and on the dough, sort of uh referencing uh the bread from the um the guest we had a few weeks ago. Um dancing lion, that uh chef couple. They make uh a facace like bread with sesame.
So I did sesame seeds and pumpkin seeds on top. Turned up pretty good. All right, so what what kind of sesame oil? Light or dark? Uh I think it was a darker toasted.
It was uh a fresh bottle. No, but like it was it was wait, it was toasted or it wasn't? Because there's different levels of sesame. You know what I mean? It was.
Yeah. All right. And so you enjoyed it. Yeah. You know, the next time I'm gonna make facaccia, never no, I'm kidding.
I'm kidding. The thing is, like, I figure like everyone's working on facaccia, I don't need to. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. That's like when you're making a recipe.
It's like, well, people are like, people are like, uh, hey, uh, why don't you work on aquafaba? I was like, other people are doing that already. It's not necessary. Unnecessary. Right?
What do you got, John? Anything uh you want to talk about it? Uh not no, nothing yet. Yeah. All right.
Nothing yet. And Brian, any more uh other than the eggs, anything else show up? Did anyone make Numidian chicken? Uh nobody made Numidian chicken. Um somebody did make a uh a beef dish that was cooked that was sort of like heavily reduced wine and cooked with fruit.
And it did, I think remind all of us that like uh you you see often in older recipes the use of sweet ingredients with meat in ways that we don't really do as commonly anymore. Um but it's often a very pleasant combination. Yeah, I think the Renaissance killed that for European cooking. Yeah, I think so. You know what I mean?
If you look at like all of the like just pre-Renaissance, like late middle ages crap, like the court food, the international court food of the time, had a lot of sweet meat dishes. Not sweet meats like we meat that is sweet. Uh I forget which one of them, whether it's form to curry or whatever, has like a pretty sweet chicken salad recipe where it's like like pretty sweet. You know what I mean? Because it was a luxury item, so of course they over they oversweetened.
They're like, you know, luxury. Yeah. You know what I mean? You want to show off how much of a sweetener you can use. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And you know what's funny also, obviously, is like any time someone like includes austerity measures, then the people who have money will find ways to make that quote unquote austerity, they'll co-opt it into something only rich people can afford. It's the same way. It's like anything, anything can be co-opted. If there's a reason to do it, it can be it can be mutated and co-co-opted. But uh how do we get on that?
Oh, by the way, if anyone on the Patreon is interested in this, uh, I will post if if you ask Quinn or John, whoever's reading the Discord, I will post my Numidian chicken recipe, which is I have a modern uh adaptation of the Apecious recipe, uh, that I did when I was going to write an article on it in the New York Times, and I forget why that article fell through, but I went through the entire process of uh and Roman a lot of Roman birds and Roman foo uh foods, before they were roasted, they would be kind of lightly poached before they were roasted. So, you know, obviously that's a horrific idea from a modern kind of perspective, but I think it's a mistake not to follow the recipes. Now we don't have the same chicken they had, obviously. It's a different chicken. But uh, and I wasn't able to source, I built it around a modern American chicken and not like, you know, uh an older chicken.
But um the, you know, I do my best when I'm looking at old recipes to instead of saying that's ridiculous, being like, well, someone actually cooked this way at some time. So let's do that. You know what I mean? And see, see what happens. I obviously, since laser is maybe or maybe not extinct, people think they maybe they found laser.
So laser is the is the uh resin or like root resin that is now usually replaced by assafetida, which is one of my or hing, which is one of my favorite uh spices that I don't use as much as I should, along with fenigreek. So uh the Romans liked it so much because it was not able to be cultivated, it was wild that they that they drove it to extinction, harvested it to extinction. Supposedly Emperor Nero was the last person to have it, which checks out. Yeah. Uh but so the modern uh replacement for it is Hing slash acetata, but there has been research in the past five years that maybe people think they have found the actual laser, which would be nice.
That'd be very cool. Yeah. Anyway, so uh if that wait, John, what do you say? You say what'd you say you did this week? Nothing.
Okay. Well, no, I don't know. I've been working, but some things that I will announce, but can't announce yet. All right. Yeah.
Oh, that's why you said not yet. Yes. Not yet. Yeah. Yeah.
Uh. So Brian's new book is Dryads. How do you like to pronounce it? Like that? Dryads, yeah.
But like, no, but like the like doesn't. Dryads. Dryads. Okay. Spirits of the trees.
Spirits of the trees. And so I went to uh I went to your launch party at Tales of the Cocktail, and uh you had humans dressed like trees. Uh we sure did. Yeah. Um shout out to Paper Doll Promotions in New Orleans.
They were great to work with. But yeah, we I mean the the uh the word, of course, is is Greek mythology. It's a tree spirit, tree nymph. And uh we thought that would be a uh a nice touch, I think, for the the real um the grand unveiling of the book of tales. You're getting an odd my wife uh wanted me to ask you, are you getting an odyssey bump?
Uh I haven't seen one, but uh but maybe uh as as that sort of filters into the into the I do see more people talking about Greek mythology than I did a few months ago. Oh, I mean that's not uh I mean that's uh obviously true. You know, this is how this stuff works. Like what's his name? The uh what was that Percy Jackson?
Like Percy Jackson came out, and a whole generation of kids likes Greek mythology. Now this can't comes out a whole generation of people like seeing the movie, they're gonna be like, oh, Greek mythology. You know what I mean? Mm-hmm. It's strange how our culture works, but that's it.
So you gotta ride that, gotta ride that dryad. Now, so this is a term that you coined for tree-based spirits. I technically am not the one who coined it. Um I I I sort of came up with the notion of the category, and I was describing it to uh a a a dear friend. Um, in advance of Tales of the Cocktail 2023, we did a seminar that was on this concept, but before the book was even uh before I'd even had the thought of doing a book about it.
Um and I was talking to to uh my friend Elizabeth on the phone and and um saying one of the things I'd like to come out of that seminar if possible is let's standardize what we call this. Is it gonna be tree spirits or sap spirits or what is it? Because it's this is not sap spirits. Well, and not in English, and sap. I mean, it clearly I agree with you, right?
In the end I didn't settle on that. I was just I was rattling off, you know, the the names that had occurred to me up to that point, and she just said dryads. I was like, come on, that is brilliant. We have to use that. Um she does not remember this conversation.
So it didn't happen. But I do, I can tell you exactly where I was standing when I had to. It's hard to do a double take on the phone, you know, but I did. Um yeah, so so credit to her for the name. Um, but uh I have I have taken it and I've run with it.
Yeah. I mean, uh I was thinking about this on the way over, and uh coinage is coinage is such like uh a and usage is such a thing because like uh you know, over the years, every thing most things that I have ended up coining, I regret intensely. You know what I mean? Like uh some of them thankfully no one else uses, like Hustino is so stupid for the t for the process of blending a spirit and fruit and and then and then spinning it out in a centrifuge and then using the resultant liquor as a uh as kind of like a straight poor old-fashioned dumb. Uh but thankfully no one's picked up milk washing, I regret as like a uh like a bactivism to fat washing because it's not the same.
It's caused a lot of confusion of like why you're doing that versus just like milk punches. Uh I regret that. I regret. I regret a bunch of stuff. I also like give up on coinages that I hate, some coinages, like for instance, well, it's not coinage, but like the use of sou the term sous vide to apply to temperature control.
I detest it. I viscerally hate it because it's inaccurate and leads to bad thinking. But most miscoin, this doesn't leave to yours doesn't lead to bad thinking. But like most coinages lead to bad thinking. That one does, right?
Um like uh people calling like vacuum infusion, pressure infusion back in the day leads to wrong thinking. Uh so but I gave up on sous vide because that's just what the world calls it now. Yeah. I'm still railing against the use of the term reverse, unless you actually mean reverse. You know what we reverse?
Reverse cooking, where I take cook stuff and somehow magically make it raw. That's reverse cooking. You know what I mean? But like uh things that don't necessarily have a set direction cannot be forward and or reverse. Rockbaker, who we were just talking about, is uh mentioning dry branding.
Yeah, okay, trying to also get me. It's called salting. We have a term for it. And he's just trying to push my buttons. Yep.
Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if you know this, but um, people have been salting uh uh things since let me think forever. Forever. Prehistorically.
Anyway, uh I mean, okay, whatever. I can't get I can't do it. Okay, so you're and even before you had that seminar, you you write in the book, you're like, there's this category that somehow doesn't seem to exist in Americans' radar. Most, most even like, I guess, not unless you're extreme northern European, like not even Europeans' radar, right? Uh, of spirits that are made from tree liquids, not like tree exudates.
We have like resin-based crap that we do all the time. Yeah. But like uh tree sap, like, you know. And so you're like, this is a category that the more you researched it, like the more you're like, oh, this has actually always been a thing, and it's a thing like a lot of places, just not here. And so, you know, in your desire to further the drink milieu, uh, you decide to go do some like heavy diving on.
Is that accurate? Would you say it's accurate? That's that's uh pretty accurate. So since the majority of people who listen to this probably have never tasted a tree-based spirit, they can't get it in their local uh liquor mart unless they look carefully uh or know what they're looking for uh or why they would want to look for it. Why don't you give us the pitch on tree spirits?
Um sure. I I will say uh more of them might have access to them than than they might think. Um one of the things that I've done as we've geared up for the launch, we have a companion website now, um, drinkdryads.com, everybody. Um and there's a page on there where I give uh I I list which dryads are available by US state, um, to my knowledge, and the name of the either you know, the distributor, the importer, the producer, whoever the sort of statewide point of contact seems to be. Um I think in the end, uh there are twenty three states plus DC that are listed on there, which I had never organized that information in that way until I was doing the website, and I would not have guessed that the number was that high.
Um but part of the reason for that also is that there are a handful of U.S. states where there are sugar maple distillers um active, including right here in New York. There's three of them. Um lots of sugar maples in New York, as it turns out. Um these are uh I I think I'll start the pitch with the the way that I came to it in the first place, which is if you think about what sugar sources we use to make alcoholic beverages, distilled spirits in particular.
It's not it's not a long list if you limit yourself to what's going to be available at the local liquor store, what's going to be on a given back bar. You know, there's a lot of flavors that get incorporated into spirits, but the the base distillate is very often coming from a cereal grain, sugar cane, um, some species of fruit, usually grapes, and once you get outside of grapes, the the the quantity of production, you know, in a in a commercial way like that uh falls off pretty rapidly. Tubers, some tubers. Some tubers, yeah. Some sugar beets.
Yeah, some starchy, you know, people who don't really care what the input is. They're people who don't even list what the input is sometimes. Also true. Yeah. Um and that has uh for a very long time that has seemed to me like what well surely we're more imaginative than that, aren't we?
There's gotta be there's gotta be other things that we can make spirits out of, and as it turns out, there are. I use carrots as an example a lot, but it does it does feel like there was a there was a point maybe a few years ago where there was carrot O de V all over California. Well that was because of what's his name, Riesitbauer. Yeah, delicious. And that stuff's amazing but unaffordable.
Yeah. He grows his own carrots, and he and it's it's great. But you know, unless you're rich, it's a taste. Yeah. Whenever I go to Skernick carries them here in New York, by the way.
And so if you if you any of you are fortunate enough to go to one of Skernick's uh larger tastings, he will sometimes come out and then you can ask him for whichever ODVs you wish to try. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's how I taste all these things. Because we don't we can't put that on our back bar. No one will buy it at our back bar.
Sure. You don't have a big enough back bar. Anyway, sorry, go ahead. Carrots. Yeah.
Well, no, I so there's a there's a distillery in Maine that makes a gin from a carrot distillate base, um, which I first had, I don't know, 10 years ago, something like that. Main carrots are delicious. Um high in sugar if they let them stay in the ground long enough. Good. Um underappreciated, I would say.
Um so there's there's things like that. You know, I I was aware of Sri Lank Interact, which is a coconut palm sugar spirit. That's chapter one of of Dryads. I I you know, because Salon Iraq is, you know, uh back in 2013-14 when I was starting to get interested in this sort of stuff. That was one of those names that you would see in the books uh that would talk about spirits that used to be available in art so much anymore.
Um usually you'd see Ceylon and Batavia together and uh in those lists and then Well you got Batavia back. Right. Uh so though for those of you that don't know what we're talking about, back in the uh back, you know, in the before time, before information was widely shared and widely available on everything all the time, there were a couple of references slash people that you know all cocktail nerds would read. And, you know, in that list you would hear people rattle off spirits that you could not obtain normally. Yeah.
Batavia Rack was one, of course now Skernic, uh Skarnick, uh House Alpens uh brings in Batavia Iraq at a good price as all house alpens products are. Um Although that's not strictly speaking, is there any tree stuff in that? Um no, although interestingly, historically, it seems like there probably was. Um That's it's rice and sugar cane. Yeah.
It's mostly sugar cane. Uh my understanding, um, and I I think that this is something that I got from Dave Wendrich, um, is that at one time it would have been uh palm sugar and rice. And then over time their uh you know, sugar cane cultivation is gets very widespread in Indonesia. It's you know, it's it's a less expensive sugar source relative to palm sugar. So you end up with all three going in for a while, and the sugar the sugar cane proportion keeps rising until eventually there's no palm sugar left.
Yeah, money's money. Yeah. Yeah. Um the other's Okaleho. Uh, from Hawaii, uh coleha, I think is how it's like And that is being produced somewhat or was a couple of years ago.
I've never tasted it. I've seen a couple of distilleries that have made products uh that are labeled that way. I'm not I I think at least one of them is in infusing uh T root into a spirit that's made from something else, but I at least one of them is actually fermenting and distilling the the root. Um this is T T I, I think. Um these are like the unobtainiums that we used to read about and I'm like, oh geez.
Yeah. Anyway. So I mean the O colihao again is another spirit that's made from something that, you know, wait, what's that? What are you talking about? This th there's a root that I've never heard of that grows in Hawaii that you can make a whole spirit out of?
That's amazing. Um of course, people in parts of the world they're making, you know, spirits out of uh bananas, right? Or out of uh I think there's a cassava distillate that's a very good thing. Um sure. Starch.
Yeah. Um they do uh Jerusalem artichoke, topin and bo topinamburg. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. In Germany. Uh yeah, I think also some people in France, but Germany, I think, is the one.
Yeah. Yeah. Better b better to do that than to eat it and and uh and toot your brain out if you eat it. Listen, cooked, cooked, they're great. But like really cooked though, not lightly cooked.
You know, for those of you that I don't know, have no like, you know, gut like you know, microbiome and you can consume it without inflating like a balloon. Good on you. Anyway. You don't want them, you don't want a medium rare. No, right, right.
This is why people don't chomp down on like raw agave pina either. You don't want to like be pounding inulin, you know what I'm saying? Anyway, yeah. Cause you can't digest it, but the bacteria in your gut certainly can. You know what I mean?
Um. Um well, yeah. So that this this is sort of my source of curiosity. That was the the loose thread that I started pulling on was you know, what are these other spirits that maybe somebody's making, maybe you're more theoretical, but like why why can't I get them in my liquor store? Why are they not on on back bars when there's so many plants that we cultivate as sources of sugar and starch, and in any given place I'm seeing like 10 of them being used as sugar sources for spirits.
Um maybe 20 if you're at a place with a really broad selection of like fruit brandies or something along those lines. Um and for me, that was that was the thing that ultimately led to realizing wait, and just within that, there are so many trees that people are are using. I mean, there's a ton of different species of palms that are that are being used across South and Southeast Asia and West Africa in particular. Um and that's before we get into the the sugar maples and the birch trees. Um so I I think the the core pitch for me was curiosity.
Like I I want to try the spirit that's made from a sugar source that I have never seen made into a spirit before. Um and I would not be terribly surprised if a lot of listeners to this podcast feel the same way. Yeah, exactly. So uh speaking of that, uh if anyone listens, they have a question about tree-based spirits in the next 20 minutes or so. Call in your questions to 917-4101507.
That's 9174101507. If they want to know how to listen live, so they can call in. What should they do, John? Go to patreon.com/slash cooking issues. There you can find all our membership levels.
Um each membership level gets you access to different uh features, uh, access to the Discord, access to our live in studio feed, um, prioritize questions getting answered, uh discounts with our partners. Edward from Edwards Age Meets is going to be sending us that goat zoom, which will be exciting. Kitchen Arts and Letters discounts. Especially on dryads. Yes, exactly.
Especially if you want to purchase right now the book Dryads, a kitchen arts and letters, now might be a good time. Now would be a great time. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, check it out.
Patreon.com slash cooking issues. Yeah. Uh here's a random question before we go back into the actual subject. Since you can make it from spirit, like randy any any fermentable source. And since I know, because I I used to have books on this subject, don't ask me why.
You can convert chicken poop to uh fuel grade ethanol, right? So it stands to reason that if you had a good enough still, you could make chicken poop vodka. I uh I suppose I can't argue with that logic. So I mean, I have to say, I don't know that I want chicken poop vodka, but I know that I want somebody to make it. You know what I'm saying?
You see the difference between those two things? Yeah, I do. I definitely do. Yeah. Uh sometimes I say I feel like your motto must be don't try this at home.
Yeah, definitely don't. Definitely don't. Definitely don't. You would need a really good still. You don't want any of that stuff coming over.
Yeah, you really know what I mean? You would definitely want to triple distill that one for sure. Oh yeah. Yeah. Anyway, yeah.
Okay, back to trees. Back to trees, yeah. So now in your mind, do you separate like monocot stuff, i.e. palm-based and uh, you know, deciduous tree products? Uh that's a great question, and I don't.
Uh I'm using a very um uh what you might call a social or cultural definition of what a tree is. Um is it a is it a tall thing that you can rest in the shade of? Great. Can I lean on its trunk? Awesome.
I'm counting palms as trees. Um I know that botanically that is a little bit. I mean, it's not I think it's good, but I mean like they're definitely, you know, they're different. Like they're you know, they're you know, again, monocots and dicot, they're different. So I just wonder whether there's a whether there's a flavor difference between them that's noticeable.
There are flavor differences, um, but the those probably come from a few different sources, not just not just that. Uh like how wide is the palm range flavor-wise? In other words, just based on the not the technique of the maker, but on the actual sap that's coming out. Yeah. Um the there's a pretty broad spread, even within palms.
And again, we are talking about a bunch of different species. Um I I can throw out a few kind of specific tasting notes to to give a sense of this. The uh the palm spirit from the Philippines, Laminog, um, is uh very uh I I often find a lot of like sour and fungal notes. I get green olive and like kind of overripe papaya. Um but of course, bearing in mind Does overripe papaya mean diaper?
Uh no. Not specifically. Um papaya is like a not good papaya smells like diapers. I uh will have to see uh in the spirit of don't try this at home, now I feel like I need to get a papaya and just let it sit a little bit too long and see if it also smells that way to me. Aaron Powell You can accentuate that by uh circulating it uh I forget the numbers.
We I used to have the numbers that people would do to like fast ripened papayas in circulators, but when they're in they they would come out oh I don't like I like papayas where they grow. I don't like papayas here. Sure. Um fair. Uh uh I I will say to be clear, I I I meant this these tasting notes to be positive.
All right. Uh hey, diaper's not always bad though. Okay, great. Yeah. As long as we're on the same page about that.
Cat pea's not always bad. We wines. We were we were just talking about making fun of cut of chicken poop. So I and I use the word we very generously, I think because I say a question, dude. Just a question, man.
Um But so in contrast to that, i i think uh think sort of in the in the rum agricole kind of family for some of these palm spirits because they are uh gonna be fermented using exclusively wild yeast. Right. So what's the bricks coming out of a palm tree? It is um like I want to say it's on the order of uh t 12. So high in meat that you can do a direct ferment.
Yeah, I mean it's it is fermenting in the collection vessel before you even Yeah, I mean it's kind of shocking when you rew what you're saying and what I've heard from other people, like how fast this stuff ferments and when it comes out. Um but I mean in other words, no one with uh with a broadleaf tree is getting a sap higher than like probably three or four percent. And so they need to either concentrate it or dope it with sugar. Are you allowed to dope it with sugar in your mind? Uh I would say no.
Um, but uh you know, no one has yet appointed me the official regulatory authority over that. But you would prefer not. I yeah, I feel like in the same way that uh I would hesitate to um you know endorse that in an agave spirit, for example, right? Like I mean, if you if you're doing it, if you want to make a spirit that way and you're disclosing that uh fine, make the spirit if it tastes good, great. Yeah.
Um that's always the answer. If it tastes good, great. Yeah. Unless you're poisoning the planet. Uh I I right.
Ideally don't do that. Um but you know, my my interest here is in spirits that are getting some sort of interesting character from the trees themselves. And I think that uh I I would be much more interested in seeing a spirit that is uh just sourcing its sugar from that tree. That's I mean that's that's the source of the project in the first place, right? So so to go back to something you said earlier, agriculture, for those that aren't like, you know, cane spirit people.
So like, you know, the the big breakdown in cane spirits is do I uh make a molasses or a concentrated uh sugar syrup out of it, or do I use the the cane juice directly? If you use the cane juice directly, you have serious time constraints because it's, you know, you like anyway, it's just a different, it's a different process, makes different things. So it's the molasses versus kind of agricultural. I'm sure the same thing applies here, no? Oh, absolutely.
Um and this is actually uh th there was a there was a moment when I was researching this book when I got a taste of a laminog um uh a spirit that is intended to be as close to lambanog as possible, but is made in California. Um in California, there is not an active like palm sugar tapping, toddy tapping industry in the way that there is in the Philippines or in Sri Lanka or in Indo or in Indonesia. So they're making the spirit using just palm sugar, refined palm sugar that is available as a as a you know, as a commercial product. Um and when I tasted it for the first time, that that was that was another like uh kind of double take moment for me because it was as though someone it's as it's as though there's there was some sort of an algorithm that you could run on a rum agricole to transform its flavor into that of a molasses rum. And someone had r had had taken lembanug and had done that to it.
Which is, of course, exactly what happened, right? It they did transform the flavor by an analogous process of cooking and preserving the sugar before uh before fermenting, and of course having to use a cultured yeast rather than wild yeast. So it has many overlapping flavor notes with the with the sort of fresh fermented lambanog that I've had in the Philippines, but also it has some of those kind of cooked sugar notes. I would say the total number of detectable flavors is reduced. Chaotic again is is is not a bad thing here.
Um but it was it very dramatically mirrored the the sort of molasses versus fresh cane um distinction in a way that in retrospect is obvious to me, but had not even occurred to me until I experienced it by tasting. And uh in a similar vein, but it it's so funny. So if you're gonna use molasses nine times out of ten, it's molasses made to be nine times out of ten, not always. It made to be a byproduct because I made sugar with it and sold sugar, right? Yeah.
Uh whereas here, when you're dealing with broadleaf trees, you could either reduce to use for what you need for fermentation, or you could reduce to syrup and then redilute it. And I know for a fact, one of our listeners uh is a maple syrup, or was a listener anyway, but probably still is a maple syrup maker, said that there is a huge uh difference between different maple syrups depending on how they were reduced. And they in fact didn't like this is what why I'm coming to this, they didn't like vacuum-reduced maple syrups because it didn't have as the same cooked taste that like a straight fired all the way under atmospheric pressure maple syrup did. Because remember to make maple syrup, folks, you have to take it down from whatever its tree bricks was to uh 66 in order for it to be, you know, around 66 bricks. Uh and so it's gotta be the same thing when you're using these sugars.
Like how cooked down are they? Like how were they cooked down? You know what I mean? It's gotta be a difference, but it's probably not enough producers of it for you to be able to do that research, right? Aaron Powell Well, uh what I can tell you, uh the something I've heard from uh from a number of the maple uh of the maple spirit producers is uh some of whom also have you know maple syrup businesses that they are, you know, that they're running and this i in some cases keeping the lights on as they scale up their small, you know, maple distillery.
Um a lot of the time these days you will get maple syrup that is um you know uh where water gets stripped out by reverse osmosis or something along those lines um to to concentrate it a lot of the way and then they'll boil it the rest of the way. Right because it takes energy to boil um so in terms of like how much of the process is is it a hundred percent boiled down, that's uh that is not something that I have had enough kind of granularity to be able to um investigate between different products. Right. Also for I mean, this is unlike you know something that is like a more tropical item. I mean, one of the big things about deciduous tree runs is they happen at a certain time of year.
Right. So, you know, it's probably hard to also worry about making a distilled spirit from a lightly reduced thing when you're screaming like a demon to get all of your sap preserved into syrup. Yeah, you know what I mean? Uh and also, but here's another thing that I was thinking about is that uh deciduous trees, the sap changes radically from the beginning of the run and you know, after the thaw and when the tree starts coming back, you know, uh uh to the end. And usually like towards the end is much higher.
Well, I don't know, but the sugar level is such that when you get the proper level of reduction for sugar, there's also like a metallic kind of taste that you don't necessarily love, which is why what they don't call them A and B anymore. But like A, you know, I'm a B guy or what they used to call B, but then you know, they they will, if you ask them, because they're not technically supposed to give you like the the later runs as a syrup. But I wonder whether those are the primary ones that are getting made into maple distillates. Oh bingo. And yeah, has anyone done like an A, a B, and then like the late runs to see what the difference in flavor is, or maybe maybe those metallic notes have no impact on distillate flavor.
Yeah. Um so uh from the for the folks that I've talked to, um the one of the advantages of using that kind of later season sap is uh that it is um less expensive generally. Uh you know, sometimes that might be diverted for like industrial flavoring applications rather than for table syrup, but you know, it's still been produced. Um and even some of the producers who have their own sugar orchards have said it is m the most logical thing for us to do is to sell our early season syrup as syrup because that commands a relatively high price, and then buy the it's still maple syrup, so it's still expensive, you know, relatively per unit of volume, but the less expensive um like late season stuff from other producers and use that for our distillations because the the character you're describing that makes it inferior for you know putting on your pancakes does not appear to be a problem for the uh for the spirits that are produced. Uh maple spirits do have an interestingly uh sort of mineral quality, I've noticed.
And and I do find myself now wondering whether that is perhaps derived from the uh the character you're describing in the syrup, um, just at a at a level that is more acceptable in a distilled spirit um as opposed to sort of overwhelming the flavor of the floor. Well it'd be interesting if if if one of those producers has like a small test like pot still that they use for testing out ideas just to get them to do a to do an early run and a late in a small volume just to see what the difference is, you know? It'd be fun. It would be. Um I might have to pitch the pitch this to a couple of things.
And and and uh by the way, uh people, normally I I try to say that there's no such thing as better or worse. It's just different. And I wanted to love late run syrup, so I bought a bunch of it. And I just could not find a decent use for it. It's just not, you know, it wasn't good.
I thought I thought, you know, maybe not good in pancakes, but that that it's gonna make this cocktail taste more interesting. Nah, I wasn't able to wasn't able to do it. You know what I mean? Yeah. You gotta try fermenting it.
Yeah, I can't. Well, yeah. Duh. Now I know. Well, fermenting and distilling.
Fermenting and distilling, yeah. Fronting and distilling. Uh for all I know, the minerals actually are better for the fermentation. I don't know. It could be.
Um it could be. Are they difficult to ferment? Uh maple it maple is. Um this is something that I've I've definitely talked to. Uh some of the producers have have said it took them a while to figure out kind of how to get a consistent uh fermentation out of it.
Um one of the people who's who's distilling in Quebec is uh a microbiologist by trade. It used to work for a for a yeast vendor. Um so she had a bit of a head start, one might say. Um but uh yeah, it it is it is tricky. And I have also attempted a little bit of maple fermentation myself in the course of working on this book.
I was like, oh I what if I reversed the um you know that molasses versus fresh cane thing I was describing earlier? Like every maple spirit is starting its life as maple syrup. No one that I'm aware of is using like, you know, uncooked maple sap. Right. Well, like I say, you would need to reduce it by at least three or fourfold to get a decent level of alcohol.
Right. You know what I mean? Um which you can do without cooking if you're using a verse osmosis machine or if you're uh using uh concentration by freezing, which is the thing that I experimented with, which is uh is possible um and is uh uh time consuming and inconvenient, but it can be done, right? Um this is this is how uh this this is a way that maple sugar was concentrated, or at least one of the ways that maple sugar would have been concentrated before Europeans got to this half of the world. Um uh th th it would have been boiling in in earth and wear vessels as well.
Um but like it it is a very ancient indigenous technique to freeze maple sap. Because guess what? It freezes overnight when maple sap is running, um, and to use that as a way of concentrating the sugar. Now, you will lose some of the sugar in the ice also, which is a disadvantage of this technique versus the others. Um but this is all sort of tangent off the fact that I was uh very interested to try concentrating maple sap without book it without cooking it and seeing if I could get it to ferment after that.
I will need to run this experiment again. Aaron Powell So it did not ferment well. It uh something happened. The flavor definitely changed. There was some sort of microbial activity, but I wasn't I I don't think I was getting significant alcohol content.
Were you pitching or going wild? I was going wild, which is uh, you know, perhaps another uh another issue. You're running two experiments at once. Pitch it. You know what I mean?
Pitch the yeast. In a way, I was running even more than that because I've I have done no intentional home fermentation in my life prior to this. I've left a you know a bottle of apple cider open in the fridge a little bit too long a few times, but I've never actually home brewed before. So can I do this at all was another experiment that I was running at the time. Yeah.
But uh it's always weird how different because like because as you say, the palm ones, it's like you would have to go to Herculean efforts to not have them ferment because they ferment so fast. And there's at least one producer that does. They bring uh they bring like uh cultivated yeast to the to the the plantations where the palms grow so they can you know pitch that as soon as possible um because they want to control the fermentation and their distillery is back in the city, so it it would be pretty far along by the time the the uh the the palm sap got there if they didn't do that. Right. Now uh one of the things you you mentioned is how uh I see if it was a while ago that I I read it, but kind of like you know, a cautionary tale against kind of uh exoticizing these things because these they're not exotic where they come from.
They've been there forever. They're not new or like you know, some sort of like like Johnny come lately product. This is like things that have massive cultural lineage, it's just we don't happen to know about them. Uh and it's uh if my memory serves, like you could this kind of struck you as you were traveling around and like going to the places where these things are made and consumed on a daily basis. But I don't know if you want to talk about that.
Oh, yeah, sure. I mean the analogy I think I I think the analogy I use in the book for Sri Lanka in Iraq is uh if you're in Sri Lanka and you find out someone drinks Iraq, it's like being in the United States and finding out somebody drinks bourbon. It is it is uh, you know, not everybody does, sure, but it is an extremely normal thing for for a person to do. Right, it's not niche. Yeah, exactly.
And of course, if you're if you're in Sri Lanka, like what are the main ways that Iraq is being consumed? If it's not being drunk straight, it's being mixed with coke, it's being mixed with ginger beer. It's you know, uh which is again like socially on the level of going into a bar and saying, I'll have a gen and tonic. It's it is extremely normal. Right.
Now, if you go, which you should go buy dryads the book, one thing you've done for people is you have uh compiled a bunch of rest cocktail recipes for use with these spirits and how to get them uh obviously not as up to date probably as your website on it, but like uh of spirits, but not just your cocktails, you went and got like a bunch of uh fancy bartenders to do it as well. I yeah, I I wanted as much as possible to reflect the way the spirits are already being used. Um and to I I I collected recipes from the countries where the spirits are produced, and in some cases from other places where they've been made available. Um yeah, I I I didn't think the book that the world needed this book to be full of just my cocktails. Right.
How open, uh we have a minute left. How open were the different producers to you coming in and doing all this research? Were they a welcoming crowd in general? Oh the producers were very welcoming. Um, you know, there were people that I reached out to that I never heard anything at all back from, but I I very rarely got someone saying no thank you.
I would get I you know uh I I would get people who say, Oh yeah, we're we're gonna set aside a day, we're gonna give you a tour of our of our facility. We're uh like I got I basically got to tag along on a on an education trip in Sri Lanka that are they had already planned for a group of bartenders from Singapore um that one of the distilleries had organized. So the the producers were were very, very helpful. All right. Well, thanks Brian Hefling for coming on and talking about dryad spirits of the trees.
Go drink you some tree sap, folks. Thank you, Dave. Pleasure to be here. Cooking issues. Here's a show we recommend.
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