Hello, everybody, and welcome to a brand new series on heritage radio network called the culinary call sheet where we give a peek into the back kitchen of culinary media. I'm your host, April Jones,

and I'm your co host, Darren bresnitz. Part of why we started the show was to offer an unofficial mentorship for anyone who's interested in learning about all aspects of food and video, whether that's TV, social media online, or just something you want to do for fun.

Absolutely what was once niche or a little silly, as I'm sure you remember, Darren, when we started out, this man has now become such a massive playing field for so many creatives using food as the medium.

It's something that has driven us professionally and personally, for so many years. What excites me the most about this show is that we're going to sit down with some of the industry leaders to hear how they made it and what drew them into this industry.

With 20 years in the culinary production game ourselves. We're hoping we can give through these conversations an insider's view into personal stories from the field, as well as an in depth behind the scenes look into some of the most popular food programming. In today's evolving culinary media landscape.

We'll be covering everything from how to style your food, to how to license IP, to developing your own ideas, and some tips from the masters of how to host your own show.

Yeah, it's a little bit of conversation, how to and how do you do the things that you do in color media, which I'm so excited about? I love so many of the guests that are coming on this season. We have talent from Food Network from Vice media eater refinery 29,

we've met some of the best people in the world both in front of and behind the camera. And we're bringing them all together to share their stories, their delicious adventure and their unique journey into this crazy world.

So to be the first to hear our episodes when they launched this fall, go to wherever podcasts are streaming, and hit subscribe and make sure to give us a follow at the Culinary call sheet on Instagram.

You're listening to cooking issues coming to you live on the heritage Radio Network. Today. We're coming to you not our usual day today. We're coming to you on Monday from noon to 1245 instead of our usual Tuesdays next week. We'll be back on Tuesday. Today's today's cooking show is brought to you by Whole Foods Market. You know you shop there I shop there. We all know who they are. You know they do. They do some good work. They try to do local stuff when they can Whole Foods Market. There's one near you. Okay, so today we're in the studio today with of course Natasha Lopez cooking issues hammer and live special guest Dave, one rich, award winning author and master of the inebriating beverage. Hi, Dave. Thanks for coming in. Dave. All right. But cooking issues is the show where we answer your cooking questions. And today I hope some of you call in with some drink related questions because there's no better person to answer them than Dave one rich author of imbibe the like several versions of the Esquire cocktail book right what else what else he got here? Like a bazillion magazine articles.

Pretty much a metric bazillion. Yeah, yeah, cubic bazillion. Yeah.

So right now you have a rare opportunity. You can ask any cocktail question you want. And we got you covered. Basically you get you want a science question? You want a history question? You want a recipe question? 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. Colin will be here for the next 45 minutes. So before we actually hit the drink making I did get one email question that came in on a on a regular cooking related issue. Eddie Shepherd from the United Kingdom, emailed us and he asked he's a vegetarian chef, and he wants to know how to do mommy without using dashi or things like this. Well, you're in luck, Eddie. Because umami is basically a sensation we get from protein breakdown, it's an actual sensation Do you have actually have taste receptors on your tongue that receive these protein breakdowns typically, you know glutamic acid is the most famous one and amino acid but you know other things as well. And they stay tell your body that awesome break broken down protein is coming in. But and this is a lot of times signaled by meats, vegetarian, or there's a lot of vegetarian things that are very high in umami and they're things that vegetarians often crave, for instance, a cooked mushrooms, parmesan cheese, anything aged with prote any age dairy product where it breaks down over time and forms. You know, amino acids free aminos has a lot of umami in it. Tomato has a lot of free umami in it and you cook it and you concentrate it in You can get that way. So there's many vegetarian ways of, of getting the mommy. I am not above spiking things actually with monosodium glutamate. It's totally natural, someone please call in and say that they're allergic to it so I can have this discussion with you. Anyway, the other question Eddie has real quickly is, is super useful for someone who doesn't do meat absolutely at a low temperature isn't as important with vegetables. But the CBT is great, because it allows you to do things like cook a carrot and have no flavor leach out and nothing go into it. So it kind of you can use it to accentuate the the actual vegetables get the actual vegetable flavor in, rather than changing it. So that's our cooking related question. And now we're on to beverages. Yes. Beverages, beverages. Okay. So we have a question coming in. For Dave Dave's working on a book now called,

it's called a punch the delights and dangers of the flowing bowl.

Right. And so and so someone, because we mentioned that he was doing this, wrote in and said, I see punch, nowadays more and more, I see it all the time. Now, what do you think the the state, the modern state of punches and where the punches fit in, in a modern cocktail menu,

it's really cool to see like, everywhere you go into, you know, sort of the state of the art modern bars. And they're like tables of people sitting around a Punchbowl, just like they were 200 years ago, it's kind of cool. It's very fun. But I think right now, people are sort of at the stage of figuring it out. They've made a couple classic recipes, they've got a very sort of simplified formula that's been passed down where it's like, sour, sweet, strong, weak spice, five ingredients mixed together. But there's kind of coming at it from a cocktail head, and I taste a lot of these punches in there. They taste a lot like really big cocktails, they're very, very pungent. And they're great for just a couple glasses. But over the course of an evening, like, back in the day, they would drink punch, just, you know, bowl after bowl until they were all like rolling around on the floor, utterly inebriated, which, you know, we can't really get away with as much as we would like. But nonetheless, I think a lot of it is just so pungent. It's like having quail for dinner every day. Right? You get tired of it after a while.

So is it? Is it that they? Is it that they don't follow the original recipe to get an idea for what the original was meant to be like, and then build from there? Or is it just coming from a different perspective, like, I'm gonna have one or two of these, instead of going to be coughing these all night?

I think people haven't really just started working with it, you know. And for me, because of working on this book, I had to make many, many, many old recipes. And it took me a long time to realize that I was kind of doing it wrong. From the old point of view. I mean, these modern punches are totally delicious. It's just, they're very spicy, and you know, pungent they put a lot of bitters and chartreuse and vermouth and herbal elements, etc, which worked great in cocktails. But you know, they kind of cloy after about four or five small cups.

Are they overly strong as well, or

they tend to be pretty strong too. But I think, you know, that's partly I'm sure that has to do with consumers to the consumer is also expect something more like a cocktail. They don't expect this. This stuff. I mean, punch originally was like artificial wine. That's what people talked about. And so it would be, you know, right now, the artificial wine is more like California Cabernet and less like burgundy. And maybe, hopefully, over time, people will go a little more to the burgundy side, right. And

of course, our idea of wine nowadays has been somewhat warped, like we, you know, we're, we expect now like a 14% wine instead of like a, you know, a 12. Yeah,

and some of them are up to like 16, which is

right. You're getting into the cocktail.

Good luck. Good luck waking up the next morning after a couple of bottles of that.

Well, which brings us actually to another interesting question we had coming in about dilution, and they're asking about the proportion of water in a cocktail. And they want to know, you know, how the ice fits in and how the, you know, the ice breaks down, is coming from Chris in Greenpoint. Just wanted to talk about I guess, dilution and ice. And so why don't we take your take on it, Dave? And then you know, you've got a lot of stuff about this to talk for a billion years on this, but I won't because we're only gonna 45 minutes. Yeah,

I mean, you know, the standard dilution for a cocktail, the rule of thumb everybody uses is that the shaking it or stirring it with ice should add 25% to the volume and thereby diluting it by by that much and that you know, pretty much when I've measured it out that is pretty good ballpark measure depending on the kind of ice you're using and so on and so forth.

Right I mean, for me the interesting thing about that number is is that if based on what based on just the liquor weight I mean like you have drinks that have so many things in them Oh exactly you know or Yeah, cuz you know, your simple syrup is not a liquor, your your limes, not a liquor, your whatever you're adding in is not a liquor. I think, you know, having done a bunch of tests on on dilution and ice and proportions. I think the best way to do it to figure out what you like, is to make a drink way the base Make a drink, and then weigh it afterwards and see how much water you added. I mean, you know, that's the only way to figure it out. We did this, we found that we add that in a shake and drink. And this makes a lot of sense. If you think about it, you want your shaking drink to be more diluted than you know your Manhattan. You know, there

are different classes of drinks. I mean, the shake and drinks are sours already, they're already more dilute. You've already got as you said, you know, simple syrup and citrus juice in there.

Right. And the interesting thing about stirred cocktails, if you look at it is how long would you say the average bartender stirs a cocktail? Maybe 20 seconds. Something there. Now,

that's that's a, that's even a lot, right? And it's usually even, you know, in the 15 range, right?

And And what's interesting about stirring as opposed to shaking and dilution, is that shaking, does this dilution very fast if a if a bartender shakes their drink for 15 seconds, they've probably they've made it to you know, after that point that there's diminishing returns on chilling. And then but even that's way too long, right? Yeah, but in stirring, especially if you like a boozy drink, which I do yeah, but but the day Exactly, exactly. Well, we have the same one so but the in a stir drink it turns out that it takes upwards of a minute to get to that same level of dilution as you would shaking for 15 to 20 seconds so there's there's a lot there's a lot more room for error and room for artistry in staring

well it also depends on what kind of ice you use for stirring I use I'll use like finally cracked or almost snow ice. That's and that the dilution is fast in that but it doesn't it's not more than 25% because it gets so cold instantly

right? Yeah, well that's that's it was during is all about surface like shaking is so violent, that everything happens fairly quickly. Stirring you can make it actually faster than shaking, if you use find enough, find enough is the dilution and the chilling can be can be almost instant. But like if you notice, like bartenders who want to have their stirring be more effective, they'll crack their ice as they're doing it. And I thought that was a bunch of hokum until I realized that ice you know, has a lot of water sitting on the outside of it. And when you crack ice right before you stir, you're getting more surface area, which makes for faster, you know, colder drinks, but you're doing it in a way that's not adding extra water because you're making newer dry surfaces. So it's actually good practice to crack the big ice. It

makes a huge difference. I mean, you can stir as you said with cubes it takes like a minute. I find drink stirred with like the large cold draft cubes that everyone's using nowadays take they never get as cold as I would like.

Right right. I mean, people need to think people they think big ice is the answer and big ice is big ice I mean it's good at what it's good at and it's bad what it's bad at it doesn't have a lot of surface areas not very fast at chilling it's it's really good at filling up a glass.

It's really good as like, keeping your your drink cold for a very long time without completely watering it down. But you know, the funny thing is studying like mixology in the in the 19th century, if I can use that dreaded word mixology, those guys, then they got their ice in big blocks, they had to butcher it up as needed. They had different size, ice for every kind of drink, they had Shavers. So they can shave it right off the block, and you know, expose a new surface that would be dry, shave that and put it in and so they they had a lot more flexibility than using just cubes out of a machine, which a lot of the the newest places are starting to approach now. Sure, like Richie, varnish. And in LA, I mean, those guys are really serious about using different sized dices for different effects. And that's all it is. It's a question of effects. There's no, no one answer for

that. Right. I mean, the funny thing is, is a lot of times you'll hear bartenders talk about, they'll give some kind of pseudo scientific reason for why X y&z works. It's like, listen, is your drink good? Yeah. You know, does the presentation good? And you know, that's pretty much it, because I can get into the science of it with them. But often I find it doesn't necessarily help them make their drink any better. Well, yeah,

I mean, you can have a drink. That's scientifically good. And still tastes like crap. Yeah, that's unfortunately the case.

Exactly. Exactly. Well, that's a good question, Chris. Thanks for calling in and you brought up the word mixology. And I used to I used to actually kind of think it was bizarre, because, you know, it's the same thing with people calling themselves chefs who aren't Yes. I think there's a lot of honor and being a cook. I don't see anything wrong with the word bartender. But what if you're not a bartender? That's right. That's exactly that's exactly right. And also, it is an old word. It's not a new word. I think people don't necessarily know that mixology has a long history

goes back to the 1850s. And the funny thing about it, it was it was coined as a joke was in a bit of like pattern of, you know, a guy calling the bartender, mixologist of typically fixins like, you know, like tipples and it was a joke. And I think that's kind of important to keep that joke aspect in mind is not serious stuff. I mean, you can treat it seriously. But you can't treat it that seriously. You know, you should still ask to have that element of fun and play in it because otherwise it becomes work and why would you want to like have your drinking be work.

Thanks. Exactly well, I've come around to the word mixology. We could talk about a word and we come back that I've not come around to molecular because it's always people taking themselves too damn seriously and it's an awful terrible word and please erase it from your beverage memory. Plus a lot of the drinks aren't good but aside aside from that, we will talk about that when we get back we're also going to talk about what are we gonna talk about Dutch distilled spirits

talk about that and the craft distilling I think is another big buzzword these days that we could we could kick around a little

bit all right so we're coming right back at you with Dave wonders his his cooking issues

so much phone call your name I don't want people to know if you're getting down but gonna have we're gonna have we're gonna have all right everybody, read now All right. I'm gonna get back at it

you're listening to cooking issues. I'm Dave Arnold. We're here to answer all of your cooking and today drink related questions, please call in your questions to 71849721287184972128. Today we're here with Dave Wooldridge and we are talking about booze, right. So in the last segment we we started in, and I won't spend spend too long on this, because anyone that knows me has heard me go off on this a great length. But we were talking about mixology as a term and how you know, I've kind of come around with it. And Dave was making the excellent point that you kind of have to be light hearted about it in order for it to work

or should be fun in some way. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

And then molecular. mixology, though is a horrible thing. Yes.

Well, you know, it's one of those. If by whiskey questions, it depends on what you mean by molecular mixology. If you're making stuff that's new, different fun, and not perhaps, overly pretentious, that's great, you know, if you're treating it like, anybody behind the bar has to be in a white lab coat and measuring things by you know, jewels or something. And you're, you're in the presence of technological genius, so shut up and take your eat your cocktail or, you know, drink your appetizer or whatever, then then it becomes a little a little much,

right? I mean, I think that you know, the operative word here as you say, you know, potentially so you don't want it to be pretentious. And I think that kind of like one of the best applications I've seen of this is you know, Tony, Tony Khan, Khan Neil Yarrow. Is that good? That's excellent. Yeah. At 69 Colebrook row in in London. You know, they use all the newest all the newest stuff in fact stuff that you know, almost nobody else has and yet their bars completely unpretentious.

You know, it's a normal bar. I mean, you can you know, just go in you can have a beer and be very happy there. They wouldn't make you feel weird about it. Right. I

mean, they have a trainee band playing

it's got hospitality it's got fun it's got a little bit of nightlife going on

right yeah, it's not Dave wonders his ultimate bar for any listeners out there Dave wonders his ultimate bar has a rifle a rifle range in it and you can shoot while you drink this is like an old

19th century standard. I would have to do what they did back then is they had cute girls as the sort of running the rifle range in the bars. And you would shoot and try to beat their score which drove the men nuts because those girls were all crack shots and the guys were all drunk right and so they kept paying and paying and paying and trying and trying again to to beat the sober data is good. Good business right?

It's the same it's the same as the mechanical bulls now like you always have the one woman tending bar is extremely good at it. Yeah. You know, it makes all the men look like idiots. And then they line up to pay to get thrown. Yeah,

cuz they don't want to get beaten by that itty bitty girl. Right, you know, preying on me All stupidity is a growth business.

Oh, yeah, always. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. That's never gonna go dry. No, God, no, that will is never gonna get. So, okay. So I don't know how we got into that but so that's our take on molecular mixology. Keep it keep it fun, don't be pretentious. And also, you know what makes them delicious drinks.

I mean, one thing I see a lot with is right now it's sort of at the look at the tricks I can do with it. You know, let me make something that tastes like something else. I'm kind of waiting it. I mean, a martini only tastes like a martini. Right? Right. But a Manhattan only tastes like hopefully, right and a Manhattan only like a Manhattan I'm waiting for molecular molecular mixology or whatever we're gonna call it now a technological, bartending, whatever, to come up with it's drinks that are like that, that aren't just tasting like something else, right, you know, and aren't playing around with, like, let me mimic this, let me mimic that.

I mean, for me, I'm happy because this is what I for those of you out here, this is what I kind of do for a living. And, you know, so I'm not Pooh poohing it or make fun of it. And this is how I make a living is using new techniques and a lot of it in cocktails. And you know, the goal should be to make something that has legs to make something that people want to have again and again, ya know what

I mean? It's not like, Oh, that's cute. I'll have one. So that's what martini,

right? So you know, Mr. Bhatia, and I work on a drink that I think has you know, legs, but no one would think of it as being you know, a high tech cocktail. It's a, you know, either nectarine or peach depending on the quality of plum juice, those juices pumped juice, clarified. Bourbon, little water and simple. And, you know, this is a delicious this is delicious drink

that clarified juice isn't easy, though. That's the key. Right?

Exactly. But to me, like, that's good use of technology. Yeah, I agree. That's a drink. People have that drink. And they say, Hey, you know what? I would like another one of those instead of hey, that's interesting. Can I have something else? Yeah, you know what I mean? And that's

maturity with everything you know, that's generally when it comes around to his people have like, kind of played around and found the little tricks that get them into it, and then they start taking it seriously. That's when you start getting interesting stuff, right? I mean, as long as it's not too serious,

right? Well, that's the thing. I mean, you know, it's yes, it should. I like it when people take their craft seriously, but they don't beat you over the head. They don't make you feel good or bad or disguise the effort a little bit. Exactly. Alright, so another thing I like to work on and there's a lot of new both techno and retro going on now is distillation and I know you're really interested in this Dave's even want to talk about maybe the new movement for very like micro and craft distillation.

Yeah, this is this is something that's spawned heated debate lately. On the web in person. We all just got back from tales of the cocktail in New Orleans, the annual booze fest for sort of high end bartenders, mixologists. And people who want to sell them things. A lot of money. You think Pernod Ricard late. Yeah. Oh, my God. Hundreds of 1000s. Yeah, it seems like but anyway, for now. Yeah. Nicely done. Yeah. But and this is one of the things it's like a perennial source of debate. It's right now we're in the midst of this renaissance in small scale distilling in the US. It turns out laws have been liberalized. This is one good thing that the Republican hatred of regulation has brought us to balance it against losing the Gulf and all that other stuff. Oh, well, at least we got boost.

deregulation has been a net loss.

At least we got micro boost. Yeah. But you know what happens? There are a lot of people who have started up and they don't really have, they haven't spent years distilling. They haven't trained to do this. They're entrepreneurs. They buy some green neutral spirit from Archer Daniels Midland, they put some botanicals in it, you know, sort of what they heard goes into gin, they run it through the still that they bought, gleaming, new, you know, sort of steal, steal some maybe some copper plates inside. And then they bottle it and suddenly they're crafts people. I mean, they're they're good business people. It's interesting. But that's I don't think that's craft distilling. I brought an example that we here in the studio can taste that you guys will just have to either dream about or think of C in your nightmares. Wait a minute, let me let me get the sound effect proper. Oh, yeah. This is from Holland from the Dutch Geneva Museum, Geneva being Dutch gin, which is sort of a it's actually a cross between gin and whiskey. And this is made from rye malt, and barley malt, and a little bit of juniper berry, made an 18th century stills completely crafted by hand by a guy who has been doing it for 15 years, only available at the museum and it's utterly unlike anything you'll ever taste.

Let's taste this. And then while we're while we're tasting it. We have a question coming in. Okay, let's taste it tasted. It is different. You can smell it. What's What's the Granville?

It's two thirds right 1/3 barley malt, wow, it's really not as grainy. It's totally smooth and clean. Right? It's silky and aged a little bit like botanicals way down. This is craft distilling. And you know, a lot of this stuff is just not craft. It's delicious. It's interesting, but this takes a real commitment. Wow, this is done over like coal fired stills. Utterly. Everything is done in the 18th century style. Everything is handmade. And this is handmade by one guy.

Let's get the name on this product. Again. This is

an old sheet on original single malt Geneva, you've got to go to Schiedam and Holland to get it it's worth the trip. He

or she chairs. Okay, we have a question. Who do we have on the line?

Hi, this is Wendy from Brooklyn. Hey, Wendy. Hi, um, I'm actually new to New York City. And I was wondering, Dave, if you could recommend any mixologist in the city who you really like?

There's so many. I mean, you're there. 10 years ago, there were about five bars where you could get a great cocktail in New York. Now there are at least 50 I mean, if you go to death and company, anybody there will make a great drink. Anybody will make a great drink at pegu club or PDT. I mean, this place is all in programs. Now. It used to be you'd go there and you'd catch the good, good guy or the good girl behind the bar, and you'd get a good drink and then you'd go back the next time it'd be somebody else. And it wouldn't but now like Clover Club in Brooklyn, where do you live? She's somewhere in Brooklyn. Yeah, somewhere in Brooklyn.

She's still there. And we still have run the line.

Okay. Oh, well, because you know, now you've got options all over Brooklyn too. Right? There's 19 Street in Manhattan as a couple great bars right house. There's a new one that's fun and excellent there. It's fantastic.

It's a shame we lost her because the real operative question is what kind of drink do you like what kind of experience do you like because there's so many it's gone beyond you know you just sit down to people people have created whole kind of the bar as an as a certain type of experience you know if you want you know fun Tiki we can get you now high quality fun Tiki if you want, you know, you can go

to painkiller on the Lower East Side and have like, drink out of half pineapples and have you know, the drink actually be carefully made by people who don't just throw throw crap into a blender and dump it out. Again,

that's just not usually my style. But I you know, we were there together. And I had a good time. Yeah, it

was good. You know, it's a real Renaissance. This is the golden ages. Certainly not since you know, 1920. Have we seen anything? That's good. And this is probably better than then to at least at the high end? Yeah. So it's cool.

All right. So Wendy, I'm sorry that we lost you. So let's talk more about this product. So I'm still drinking it.

So yeah, I mean, this is, this is what like, sort of craft entails is. It's everything is done by hand, small production. They mash their own grain on the site, they distill it three times and these ancient I think they're restored stills, but they're built exactly, you know, to the ancient style. It goes through the steel three times and then gets stored in pits in the floor, which was a fire prevention thing is you keep your distill it below grade level. Yeah, but distillation is actually dangerous. It's actually dangerous. Yeah, and this is these are little tiny distilleries the way the Dutch always did it. They didn't have big mega distilleries. They had lots of little ones. And they all made more or less the same thing. You know, they had traditional ways and and you would buy your stuff on the spot market. The coca your your gin is good. Your gin is maybe less good. We'll get the good one. But you know that that kept them competing to have the quality up there weren't these big monopolies?

Right? I mean, I wish you guys, you know, could smell the nose on this thing. goes on forever. Yeah, no, I mean, it's really,

it's unique. It doesn't smell like any other spirit. It's not, you know, there's nothing else like this. That's, that's sort of what I what I hope to see from craft distilling is come up with stuff that I've never tasted before, right, come up with stuff that just is so different. And so cool.

I mean, part of the problem with I think, with craft distillation, and I'm going to insult people, you know, that actually, that I like people that I actually like, I'm about to insult him, but not because I want to just because it's you know, people want to get into, for instance, that whiskey business, but they want to have product inside of a year. Yeah, you know what I mean?

Those two, those two are not compatible. You know, it's your business model is good for a business model. It's not good for a craft model.

Right. But you know, but I think they're, the desire is good, they just want to have product but it's, you know, the problem is, is that that's why the you know, these are traditions that were built up over a long time and some of them just take a long time to get it right. You know, and

I mean, it takes years to age whiskey, at which point your capital is tie it up and it's that's admittedly, that sucks. But that is sort of what it takes to make like really, you know, a barrel aged well aged spirits, there's a lot of speed aging going on, they'll put things in little tiny barrels and kind of speed it up a little and that can work. It's just not you know, the same as the those seasons in and seasons out the spirits going in and out of the woods as it expands in the summer and contracts in the winter, etc, etc. So,

right, I mean, the proofs in the palette, but I think that if you go and look, most of the time, you know, train pilots can they pick out the ones that have been aged for longer, but this stuff is, you

know, this is coming, I mean, the, the smart people in there, many of them, and the good, good craftsmen of this are, they have stuff that's aging that you know, in two or three years is going to be out on the market, and it's going to be fabulous, and that's going to be really exciting. It's just right now it's hard to get utterly excited about it for me because I have to taste a lot of this stuff professionally, like blind tasting. And you know, it's you're competing against a pretty well established bar, pretty high bar. So

Right. I mean, I know that when I you know, when I do distillation, I'm not really working on creating new like a new a new spirit or new or, or even an old one I'm, I'm more interested, more interested in flavor, putting flavors into things meant that's, I think, a different that's a different a different process. I'm not saying I'm not saying there's skill involved, obviously, because sometimes I do a good job, sometimes I do a bad job and you know, learn more every time I do a distillation run, you know, been doing it for, you know, four years now or so. And you learn more all the time, but it's not the same. It's not the same thing. I'm trying to do something different. I wouldn't say it's in the same category as basically someone making this right, right. It's a different it's a different thing altogether. Yeah. But

I mean, I would like to see more of that you know, I'd like to see people making new spirits from grains that haven't been used before I'd like to see people making handcrafted liquors from scratch right you know, stuff like that is you know, using distilling their own base spirit taking wine making you know, nice fresh brandy and then flavoring that with oranges and making like an old school orange course out everybody would use that it's just I just don't see the need to kind of keep making gin and vodka the same way that everybody else's Yeah, you know, it's like, okay, but that's alright. But you know,

before we go to break we're going to get a break in a second you mentioned before they buy a lot of their straight liquor from Archer Archer Daniel can ABM yeah and so it we just recently you would love this next time you're at the French culinary where you know we're where we are. We ordered from a chemical lab 200 Proof ethanol we ordered a crap ton of it at at check this out. We only paid think like $16 A litre for it for 200 for 200 Straight tomorrow anhydrous alcohol this stuff is Remo has no

nothing right it's just alcohol. Yeah, no,

we diluted it down to 40 We retreated oh god damn this is sweet. Vodka you ever Oh my god. No seriously it's the best ever and it's so cheap make Smirnoff look spendy

oh my goodness craziness yeah

all right cooking issues coming back at you in a couple of minutes

was was was lose my home when I live on this mod a promise to stay real street and sober bear with me be the boss slip before the man was over.

You're listening to cooking issues on the heritage Radio Network. I'm the host of cooking issues, Dave Arnold, calling with all of your cooking, and today drink related questions to 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128 you still have some time to call in. We have Dave wonders in the studio. Dave one rich, has one zillion awards, both for his magazine writing and for the, you know, he's written of course, the Esquire cocktail books are several of them. How many of those editions

actually only wrote one of them, but that was the last one. So

the one I have anyway, you wrote the one I have, yeah. And, you know, wrote imbibe, which was we actually, before we go into what you're working on, in, you know, at the moment, why don't you talk a little bit because imbibe was kind of a landmark cocktail book. And, you know, and it was, it was had kind of a unique premise for cocktail books. Well, it

was sort of the right book at the right time. Imbibe is purportedly, a biography of Jerry Thomas, who wrote the first bartenders guide, but since he was a bartender, you know, the materials, I had enough materials at the time to maybe write 30 pages of good biography. And then the rest was I talked about his drinks and where they came from, and all the tools that he would have used and his fellow bartenders, and then I had just chapters of recipes, with a gave the original recipe and then kind of talked about how I would go about recreating them. And that actually, before imbibe, there have been a lot of fabulous cocktail books. But I think imbibe was one of the first books written acknowledging that fact, you know, it was like, Okay, you already have the wonderful basic cocktail books, you already have a couple of vintage cocktail books, you've already got Dale to Grace craft of the cocktail. Gary Reagan's joy of mixology, excellent book, both excellent books, Ted Hays, vintage spirits, and forgotten cocktails, you've got those. So this is for those people, you know, so the people who already have an overview and it was kind of let's get back deep into detail into the 19th century, find out what is discoverable about how American bartending evolved and became what it is. And, you know, I was I was the right guy at the right time for that, I guess, I think it really

hit a chord, because you know, there's so many people in the cocktail world who, you know, the mode for a long for a long time for the past eight years, let's say 558 years in cocktail world of people who actually knew what the hell was going on was to kind of was a kind of recapturing of lost knowledge and a hunger for history, I think. But those people didn't have anyone doing any actual modern scholarship on it. You know, you had a couple of older books like The what was that called? The Wild West?

No, wild west bartender's? Yeah, Bible or something. It was a good book.

Yeah, a lot of kind of bad histories also, but I think people were really kind of hungry for this sort of book. And so I think it just hit the right chord. Well, I

think the one really good decision I made on that book was to address technique in detail. You know, instead of just giving the recipe, I broke each one down, talked about the techniques to execute it, the ingredients at some length, and I just went on and on about this stuff. But it walks people through the recipe, rather than just saying, go figure it out yourself. We've given you the tools, I think that actually was helpful to a lot of bartenders, because I go to a lot of bars, and I do see it behind the bar, which is very flattering and means that I can try to twist their arms into getting free drinks, right?

Well, it's, you know, it's extremely well received book at least in you know, in the circles I run in, you know, I have it, I've read it, I like it a lot. But so now you're coming off this book, this book was at three years ago, three years ago, 2007 and 2007. So you coming off of this book, and this book is about a very deeply American subject. And you know, the history is really, you know, it's very, it's very American field book, right. And then you're coming off of that, and now you're working on punch and punch is a little bit different, right? Yeah.

Originally, I had a huge chapter on Punchbowl drinks in the Jerry Thomas manuscript, and my manuscript is way too long. And my editor said, you know, we can't publish this. It's way too long. You got to cut something. And I looked at it again, I said, you know, none of these Punchbowl drinks turn up in like old newspapers in about American drinking. And it turns out, you know, they were probably put in there by Jerry's publisher, just to kind of make the length and he didn't really engage them in any way. And I realized that's because they were really English drinks. So once I cut that book and gave that part, it gave the Jerry Thomas book focus, but it also kind of gave me my next book because I gotta go back and deal with this stuff. And this is a story that kind of that takes me much back back into England and The British, I guess you could call it the British invention of mixology, of mixing strong drinks based on spirits. And it really comes out to have been a British innovation and this invention of punch, or discovery of it. Nobody liked the Martini. Nobody will ever know exactly how it came to be. But you can certainly figure out the conditions under which it was created, mostly sailors running out of wine, and beer and needing something now, so what era we were talking about early 1600s, maybe the very end of the 1500s.

So you know, back and forth, back and forth. We were us anyways. Yeah, it's not Oh, it's not like we couldn't have invented it. No, no, we

just didn't get the chance. Yeah. And you know, it was certainly very popular in America before it was popular in Britain. But the sailors that it was, it was English sailors, as far as I can tell. Although it could possibly have been Dutch once too, right. We won't talk about that.

Right. But like Dutch in the actual Dutch sense, not Dutch meaning bad or fake?

Yeah, no, no, yeah, we're real, real. Real. Eating Holland. Yeah.

Now the just about punch for a second, maybe you can talk a little bit, you know, the pop kind of fake etymology, you said it was fake, that punch means only the punch comes from? Yeah,

I mean, there's this idea that punch comes from the Indian word for five, which, you know, punch is like Hindustani. Because punch has five ingredients, strong spirits, water, citrus, sugar, and spice. Now, often, it had four ingredients, often it had six ingredients. So that's put that beside the thing. Put the put that to the side, there's also it only this comes back to one guy's theory, who was a classical scholar who visited India in the 1680s, you know, almost like 6080 years after punch was invented. And he says this, because he seemed learned it gets picked up and becomes orthodoxy. And nobody ever really questioned it till a guy in like, around 1900 working for the Oxford English Dictionary put out an article saying, you know, this is maybe a little bit fishy. And I only found that article after I'd been sort of come to the same conclusion. So I was very pleased to find it. But

it must really be fishy because the OED as great as they are has always sucked with food entomology. Yeah,

exactly. And this guy's this guy put out this article, because they wouldn't use his theory in the dictionary. Oh, yeah. And he questions it pretty, pretty strongly as you know, it's like, why the English didn't mangle sudden somehow didn't mangle this one word, all the words that they've mangled. It's like, okay, there's that there's the fact that punch was an English word for kind of round things in general, and bowls, etc. There's, there's all kinds of stuff. So one really does, has grounds to question that etymology. It certainly shouldn't be printed as like gospel truth and moved on from there as it is. So it's a tangled tale, the history of punch, it gets very complicated. There are lots of byways and interesting factors that have barely been researched. So I'm sure somebody will write a book that will prove that everything I say in mine is wrong. Before we head forward to