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.

Hello, you're listening to cooking issues on the heritage Radio Network coming to you every Tuesday from 12 to 1245, where we answer all of your cooking questions, usually tech related questions, but we like any any kind of questions. We're here live in the studio at 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128 Call and I'm here today of course with cooking issues on Natasha Lopez the hammer and she's here to keep me keep me honest, I guess. Today's today's show is brought to you by Whole Foods Market. Whole Foods Market is turning 80 And they partnered with some of its favorite friends for 30 days of Twitter giveaways. Follow at Whole Foods sync or not. I'd say Whole Foods NYC I should read this beforehand really follow at Whole Foods NYC and use the hashtag WFMNYCB de that's Whole Foods Market. New York City Beat a WFM nycb de to qualify and win prizes from Brooklyn salsa company. Rick's Picks make good pickles. Gus SOTA Housing Works whose bookstore you should support on Lafayette Street in Manhattan and the New York Botanical Garden an excellent place to visit and more. Especially those really are good places to go. 30th birthday what I say 80 Oh 8080 30 sAm same says a 30th birthday hopefully just not yet at although more power to you Whole Foods. May You make 80 Right. Anyway. Okay, so today's first question is a follow up on last week's question from Ryan Santos. The first part of his question has to do with Natasha. He was the the person last week who asked for a date. I said don't even try don't bother. He still wants to know under Stasha sign. It's a Taurus not Sagittarius Taurus. Correct. I think he was saying that's his sign. Oh, I don't know. Anyway, his question is question was we have a new infusion technique. I'm not sure if we talked about it on the radio or not. But basically what you do is you take whipped cream maker and that takes nitrous oxide chargers, you put I usually use liquor but you can use any liquid. You put something porous with flavor in it herbs, like cilantro or Thai basil, regular basil, I guess things like ginger things like cocoa nibs anything porous. Basically. You put it in with the with the liquor, and you charge it with nitrous and you which is laughing gas, you know, most people it turns out a lot of people who use these things use it to get high right they use the last night yeah Sure, you know, anyway, okay. Anyway, I tried it once in high school, and I didn't actually like it. So I don't really use it to get high. But apparently, there's a lot of people out there who don't even cook who have the equipment to do this. So maybe they should try it with, with, with liquor anyway. So you charge it with nitrous, you swirl it around for about a minute. And then when you release the pressure inside the canister, basically, you you've the pressure is forced all the liquor into your into the food that you're trying to get the flavor out of. And when you release it, all that stuff boils back out again, and you have a really very, very quick infused liquor. You can see it on our blog, www dot cooking issues.com. It's a good technique. Anyway, Ryan wants to know, does this also work with solids? And the answer is yes. I haven't tried it. But Alex Anakee ideas and food go check their blog, did it with mozzarella and there's a bunch of other people out there now who are using this technique to infuse solids with with labor anyway. So that answers that question, right. Okay. Now, let's go to some other email questions. Now remember, we will answer your questions live if you call in at 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. Okay. So Sam Lichtenstein calls in or Stein? We think Stein, Lichtenstein. Okay. Anyway, Sam, wrote in and said, Do you disagree or agree with the following statement made by a fella by the name of Chris Onstad, who's the author of a comic book called a webcomic, called eight wood. And he has a cookbook, it's actually no longer available on Amazon. And Sam thinks it's a great cookbook. I have no idea because I've never read it. I haven't read any comic book cookbooks actually, have you? No, no, I'm willing to willing to read it anyway. So Chris Onstad, the author says in the book, once you make a potato, Chewy, and he's referring to hashbrowns, how you should never happen to hashbrown. Once you make a potato chewy, you're doing things too, it's so wrong, that it would be best if you just gave that person the potato and let them take it home and try to make sense of it themselves. Basically, if you make a hash brown that is chewy, and that is what is handed due to raw potato, and let him go home and work with it because you've done a far worse thing to him. And Sam wants to know if I agree or not. Well, I do agree that hashbrowns should not be not be chewy. But potatoes can be chewy, and be good. And so the first thing I thought it was our spicy potato ice cream, right? Because we make this ice cream and you read about it on our blog. I think I've mentioned it on the radio before right? Where you blend cooked potatoes, steamed potatoes into ice cream bass and you freeze it. And what you get is this chewy, stretchy potato ice cream and I think is is quite good. But I'm assuming that that's not what Sam was wondering about. So I did some more research on the internet. And most people point to potatoes becoming chewy when you microwave them and other people actually make chewy, sweet potatoes by dehydrating them for dog treats. Barely if you have a dog. They like dehydrated sweet potatoes. He has cut it to a sweet potatoes up and they turn almost into a rawhide chewy. So this led me to think well, what is it about a microwave that is going to make potatoes chewy? And this also leads to the answer that those people who are making the hashbrowns, Chewy, probably reheated the potatoes in the microwave, right. And what's going on in a microwave is you are dehydrating the potato relatively quickly along a fairly large surface because you're actually heating not just the outside of the potato but a good region of the inner portion as well. So you're very effectively dehydrating the potato in a microwave. So this is chewiness is probably a dehydration phenomenon right now, this led me to think a lot of interesting things. One, perhaps are especially potato ice cream is actually a dehydration phenomenon because freezing is actually dehydrating. So what you're doing is you take a starch, it's got a lot of liquid in it that you've cooked a potato starch in the this is the ice cream I'm talking about. And you start freezing it what happens, ice crystals are forming in the ice cream, and the water is being withdrawn from the starch complex as it's freezing up. So maybe the reason the potato ice cream is stretchy and chewy is we're partially dehydrating the potato starch as it freezes what he thinks does he good? Yeah, it's a good guy. That theory could be totally wrong, but it's what I was thinking about.

And then I was thinking about microwave dehydration in general, I mean microwave is a great way to dehydrate some fresh herbs. It's also a really good way to make a small quantity of really crisp bread crumbs. It works a whole lot better than putting bread in an oven and drying it out. You just put you know thin slices of bread in your microwave and you slowly microwave it and what happens you have to be able to get rid of the water. But what happens is, is that the water heats up and boils off and then the it basically the microwaves focus on the area where there's water so the whole thing dries out very very, very evenly. And you get these incredibly crisp breadcrumbs or you know, croutons Whatever, very quickly, it's very good technique. The problem with it is, is that if any area of the bread starts to get warmer, because as soon as the water is gone, basically, there's nothing to stop the bread from getting well above, well above the, you know, the boiling point. And what happens is if any area starts turning brown, the brown areas, the burnt areas of the bread, absorb microwaves at a ferocious rate. And so they tend to grow very, very rapidly. So if you're not careful, you're your bread can scorch and you get these brown marks, so you want to be careful with it. But if you if you slowly keep checking as you're microwaving bread, it's a great way to make make croutons miss you know, this is also why if you go to a place that makes sandwiches this used to happen at this taqueria I used to go to because I love Mexican sandwiches, tortillas and they're one of my favorite sandwiches. Anyway, they would nuke their bread to reheat the bread. And every once in a while they over nuke it. And you get this little interior pockets of hard stuff in the bread styles. You know I'm talking about? Yeah, yeah, gross, right. Anyway. So these are all microwave dehydration things. But there's this blog. It's a vegan blog, I forget the name of it. It's something like Google endo or something like that. You can find it by searching microwave potato just but you know, they seem to have a nice blog, even though they're vegans, they seem to have a nice blog. And they have a technique for basically making potato chips, read a slice of potato chips, and you put them in the microwave, and you and you microwave them like 3040 seconds at a time. Keep checking them to make sure that they haven't gone that they haven't turned to Christmas start turning brown. And they dehydrate into these potato chip like things they're not actually potato chips because they're not fried. And God only loves a fried potato chip because potato chips or something like like 3040 or even upwards percent oil, the oil they're fried and, and to me, I want my potato chip fried if I don't want a baked potato chip, I've never liked baked potato chips. I think they're an abomination. But it's an interesting phenomenon. They said dehydrated potato chip and it actually works quite well. But if you under dehydrate them, they're very, very chewy. So, Sam, if you want to experiment very long way of saying if you want to experiment with with making cheap potatoes, I would recommend something like the microwave or a dehydrator and just partially dehydrate them until they become chewy, but not crunchy. And like everything else, you know, you know, what, what's the name of Chris Onstad, the author of the cookbook. He didn't like tree potatoes because they weren't what he expected. But a lot of times, you know whether something is good or bad. It's just a matter of expectations. If you're expecting french fries, and you get something chewy. Well, that's awful. But if you want something chewy and you liked the flavor of a potato, then there's nothing wrong with making sweet potatoes, right. Another note on microwaves, microwaves we talked about last time because one of our listeners is going to college and basically can only have a microwave. Well, I told her Staci said that I was a jerk for suggesting this but I told her to go out and get a cutting Stone made of silicon carbide throw it in the microwave and get it super hot to use as a searing plate. Well the good news is I tested this and it works fantastically. So go ahead and make your super high heat searing plates using silicon carbide cutting stones. Anyway, I think we have a caller caller you there. You're on the air.

This has gone Hey AlphaGo I was just asking I'm wondering if you heard about this. Bacon vodka. It's been out a little bit but I guess it's certainly game ground. Who's making it? It's it's spelled B A kon and it's a bacon infused vodka.

Oh infused.

Yep. And I've had in the Bloody Mary and it's terrific but was wondering if you had any other ideas or recommendations they use of it?

Well, I have not I have not tried it. I've had many bacon infused liquors specifically whiskies that they make here. Are you in New York or No?

Nope. Nope. I'm actually down in Marietta, Georgia.

Hey, how you doing? So the so in here in the city, there's was number of bars doing a bacon infused liquor and they do it with a technique called fat washing. And in fact washing you mix the bacon fat preferably a real smoky bacon fat like, like Alan Benton's out of Tennessee makes a really fantastic smoky bacon and use the fat from that is that's what they used, and you mix the fat up with the liquor and then you chill it and let it solidify. You take the fat off the top and you have bacon infused liquors. It's fantastic. I've never tried it with vodka, so I'm not sure exactly what I would, what I would what I would use it for. I'll say this though, that Lance is a guy named Lance, who's the master distiller over hangar one was making a series of meat and other interesting vodkas that were distilled where he distilled them rather rather than infused them. And he kept on having a problem with the bacon flavor getting rancid and he was distilling it and he couldn't really do a good distilled one. At least he hadn't last time I spoke to him, which I don't understand. Was that like a year ago or something like that now like nine months yeah, yeah. So it makes sense that it's an infusion. It probably would be good in a Bloody Mary. I'm sad to say I've not done too much experimenting with Meet the cures myself with the exception of I did a beef and tomato distillate once that I thought it wasn't delicious in the sense of what I go out and order that instead of a beer. No, you know what I mean. But it was it was good in the context that we were serving it as a small short shot next to a bunch of grilled tuna sent you. So it was so it was it was good. But this is definitely something that if you like doing this sort of thing, you could definitely try to do yourself just save up your bacon fat or any other fat that has a lot of flavor. And then you know, melt it stirred in with your liquor and then let it you know, put it in the freezer and let the fat come up to the top and solidified you could probably make your own and really play around with it. All right. I'm sorry, I couldn't give any more recipe ideas. I just I hadn't thought about it much that partially answer your question?

No. Yeah, I mean, I tried doing the just a bacon Martini. And that, of course felt kind of flat kind of like you were saying drinking the meat flavored one with a tomato all by itself kind of didn't, you know, please the palate and that's kind of what I experienced,

was wondering if you put any salt in. You know,

I didn't. That's a good idea that might cut back some of that. That weird flavor. Yeah, I

would put a little salt in because, you know, anytime you have something that started out either with salt or sugar in it, and then that stuff all sudden goes away. You kind of miss it. I mean, think about when you eat just bacon fat by itself, it kind of tastes a little bit. A little bit flat, a little fatty, flabby random, not in the fat since we don't I mean, it tastes so bland, right? So if you if you throw a couple pinches of salt in that and maybe even like a little bit of sugar, even though it's supposed to be a martini not have a lot of sugar into it. I think you're gonna brighten up that flavor quite a bit. You might bring it back to kind of where you want it.

Alright, well, that was very helpful. So I'll give the give that a whirl. All right.

Thanks for calling in.

You got it. Thank you.

Okay. Caller caller. All right. Hi. Caller you're on the air.

Hi, Dave. It's Julio Priscilla Morgan's friend.

Hey, good to talk to you. Thanks for calling. Hello. Are you doing well, Dora?

Sure. I finally got your number. I was at the restaurant this weekend and picked up on the cards.

Oh, nice. Nice. Oh, he's talking about the French culinary restaurant. I assume a great restaurant you said about the French culinary restaurant.

No, no, no. Roberto.

Roberto is okay. So there's two things by the way, just for a second. Like I work at the French Culinary Institute. We have a great restaurant like Hall, which is like one of the best deals in Manhattan. And then I do the radio show here out of Roberta's in Brooklyn, which is a fantastic restaurant does a lot of really great work grows a lot of their own product uses really high quality meats, including the meats from Heritage Foods, etc, etc. So we're talking about Roberta's restaurant, he had a good meal. So

fantastic. I actually went in early in the day and went back late that

night. Oh, nice. Nice double, double, double, double hitting great

double hitting, double heading. But I thought of you and I thought, you know, I may not be calling the right person, but I've been on a diet for about six months. And I'm trying to figure out what desserts I can have that have no sugar,

no sugar, or you want to mean, is this a not a calorie diet? This is a diet that you can't have sugar or is it just a calorie issue? Calorie issue? Okay. Well, first of all, you know, he's not a large man, he does not really need a diet, so you shouldn't worry about it so much. That's the first thing. And the second thing is sugar doesn't actually have that many that many calories, it's not normally going to be this depends on what you're eating, but a lot of times it's the the fat and other things in the item that are going to basically bulk up the caloric content so that you could do a lot of reduced again, nutrition not my necessarily my specialty, I'm more of a taste and a tech guy, but you can you can focus on obviously fruit based desserts have a lot of bulk and some fruits have quite a bit of sugar but some don't. And just a little bit of sugar, you know, brightens them up things things like berries, you know, we've done a lot of stuff that's fairly low in calorie and high in flavor. But they use a lot of technology like we made something that looks and eats like pumpkin pie but it's basically peach puree you put you know it's like not really achievable in a normal kind of restaurant it requires liquid nitrogen and a whole bunch of other you know and a centrifuge and a whole bunch of other fancy fancy stuff but I mean especially now this time of year you know if you're going to focus on I would focus on things that are satisfying but contain a lot of air with with a little bit of sugar and fat for instance we've cream is not that bad for you because it's primarily air. Do you know what I mean? So if you're if you're doing if you're like a kind of person who would go for a bowl of fruit and, and cream, you know, if you use like a really nice whipped cream, you can get a real luxurious feel, and it's still not going to be that bad on the calories. I always focus on eating smaller quantities of stuff that's truly delicious, rather than, you know, not being satisfied eating an even larger quantity of things that just don't taste as good. You know what I mean? And you know,

I walked past a box of Merengues the other day I thought maybe Dave has an answer how to make fat free Merengues?

Oh, well, Merengues are often I mean, a real Marang is often fat, you know, fat free if it's made without sugar. Sorry. Sorry. Yeah, it's tough. I mean Merengues mean, you feel them, they're so light, there's not actually that that much sugar thing about it. So if you cook, right, you're taking, let's say you take a dozen egg whites, and you whip them in in your kitchen aid and you put maybe a cup of sugar in right now you filled your entire KitchenAid bowl with, you know, with Marang. And the whole thing only contains a cup of sugar, which doesn't have that many, that many calories. So on a pound per pound basis. Marang is extremely high in sugar, but on a volume basis. And a lot of times we tend to eat based on the volume of how something looks, it doesn't actually have that much in it. Now the sugar is there, not just as a sweetener as a structural component, you can move to things that have the bulking capabilities of sugar, but without the calories, but then you're moving into kind of what's the word I'm looking for fake sweeteners, you know what I mean? So you can, you can do that. So if you want me like, I tend not to focus on those kinds of problems, because, like, you know, where I use a lot of ingredients that people some people are horrified by things like xanthan gum, carrageenan gum method. But my whole shtick is that I use them to try and make food taste better or be better not to get around, not to get around nutritional or economic problems. And so the upshot of that is I very rarely get to focus on problems that are primarily related to nutrition or to, or to things like calorie counting, because it goes counter to my mandate at the French culinary, which is to focus on, on quality first and foremost. You know, like, like I said, there are many, there are many things that have the structural So what typically what someone will do is, and sometimes they do it for diabetics of their they use basically sugars that have the same functional and sweetness of sugar, but just don't have the they don't have problems with the insulin. But what they tend to do is they add a bulking agent that has no calories, and then they add a high intensity sweetener that has no calories. So they have to use kind of a two part problem. You know, and there's people that have invented they invented this stuff called lie tests, which I actually don't remember how it's made. But it's a it's a sugar that has no sweetness and no calories whipped into a moraine just like sugar, and I was experimenting with it to make savory marshmallows, right. But you could also use it in conjunction with a high intensity sweetener to make a Marang that had kind of 00 calories other than the other than the egg white protein. Right, right. Anyway,

I hope this is gonna be a solution putting honey in the

no honey has like honey is just as many calories you know. And also, the problem with honey is honey is very hydroscopic and pulls water in. So it's very, very hard to make confections with 100% Honey, that, that don't weep or suck water out of the air. Which is why you know certain confections use honey and they need honey like terroni is a characteristically has a lot of honey in it. But other confections like when you add honey like if you're making chocolate, you can't really use honey as a sweetener, because it's going to pull water in and then ruin the chocolate. I say I say but I will. I will research this more. And the next time I see you. I will I will have some decent answers.

All right. I'll call you next week.

All right, thanks. Thanks for calling. And we'll talk to you soon. All

right. All right. Bye, bye.

All right, your caller you're on the air.

Hi, I have been reading a lot lately about ethnic foods and the trending popularity of specific ethnic foods like Indian food growing in popularity, and I've had Indian food and restaurants and really liked it. But I've always been reluctant to prepare stuff like that at home. So I'm wondering if you have any advice or tips on specific Indian dishes that might be a good starter American dish to prepare.

Okay, so you've never you're, what kind of Indian dishes do you like?

I mean, pretty much every Indian dish that I've ever tried, I've enjoyed I like stuff like butter, chicken or doll things like that.

Right? Okay, so I would I would shy away from any of the dishes that for their completion require specific pieces of equipment. So for instance, certain Indian dishes require the use of a special oven called a tandoor. That's basically shaped like a vase and very high heat. And so things like non things like 10 You know, like tip like typical like Tandoori chicken or chicken tikka masala, things like that, to really get the flavor as as just how you would want in a restaurant requires a tandoor. Right? Not that you can't imitate those at home but you know, it really, if you really want to be satisfied, make 100% Those are going to be difficult so I would not do those First. Secondly, I would go get a good Indian cookbook if you don't if you don't have one, because the best way to first is to eat some like you've done, but then to really immerse yourself in how a specific cooking system works. So if you grow up like I did, basically, you know, where in the house to go to was some Americanized form of kind of basic Mediterranean Italian style cooking, right, which that's my upbringing, is you know what to do, when you put a pan on, you know, you're going to put in some oil, some onions are going to go in there, you're going to saute and then at the end, you gonna put your garlic wherever you know how it flows, right? So what you need to do is read a couple of cookbooks, Indian cookbooks that just get a feeling for the flow of how Indian cooking works. So you're gonna start here similarly with like, you know, with probably ghee, which is a melted butter, and then, you know, things like, onions and then you know, maybe, you know, ginger or whatever spices things, then you're going to probably saute your spices because that's a characteristic part of Indian cooking is the saute the spices, bring out the aroma and then start adding other things, right. So like, I would read a couple of cookbooks a good one, it's vegetarian, but Lord Krishna is cuisine I forget was the one that I bought number of years ago, I'm sure it's been surpassed. I'm sure it's dated. But I would get like a, like a fairly authoritative Indian cookbook, one that has enough recipes for you to try but focus on ones that are more about the mentality of Indian cooking, because I think that what you really want to do is immerse yourself in the mentality. And, and, you know, I do a lot of curries. They're also really good when vegetarian friends come over, because there's so many good Indian vegetarian dishes out there. You know, it's one of it's one of the cuisines that is based on, on vegetarian dishes. And so, you know, and actually, if you ever, you know, again, I'm not, you know, supporting being a vegan, but if you have a vegan friends come over a lot of times, you know, if you substitute, if you use dishes, like for instance, there's a dish that I really love to make called Navar, 10. Curry, right, and I do my own version of it. It's Americanized, but basically, it's a sauce, where you start by saw Tang onions, and then you put your spices like it's got coriander, it's got cumin, it's got it's got ginger, it's got some hot pepper in it. Regular pepper, you know, a host of other things. But then you also saw take cashew nuts in it. And then you after you do that, you add some tomato paste, coconut milk, pineapple, you blend the whole McGill and then you can toss it with any kind of steamed vegetable you want. And it's delicious. Navar tan curry, it's delicious, delicious curry. And if you if you use a coconut milk, and you use olive oil to saute instead of butter, you have a vegan dish. And so you can if you have a vegan coming over, and you know it's a really good way to make it and have hassling it's vegan that you also like another another, you know, trick with Indian food is really sourcing the ingredients, I think I'd really focus on sourcing some ingredients that are a high quality. And that, you know, allow you to achieve that authentic taste. So when you're getting a rice, you're going to want to get, you know, one of the actual Rice's that they would use in a particular particular dish, I mean, often you're going to use a basmati or something like that. And you know, do it with a little with, you know, throw some some spices in when you make it. But again, the key to anything is to first taste what you've done. And so you know, whether you've hit the target or not, right? I mean, I've never been to India proper. It's one of the places on Earth, I'm really dying, dying to go. I've never been but first, you know, I know what American Indian food tastes like. And so and I know what London Indian food tastes like, but I don't know what Indian Indian food tastes like. But anyway, so you have a target. And that's good. Now figure out the fundamentals of you know, what it's like for someone to step into a kitchen in India, what they're thinking what is going to go in the pot, and then the recipe itself isn't so important. It's more understanding the flow of how they cook and how they're going to be doing it. Does that answer your question? I hope?

Yes, it does, actually. And with respect to something you said about the different flavors and the spice mixtures and things that go into Indian, from what I understand, there are many different recipes that can make up a gara masala, for example, or like a curry powder. So just looking at the shelf, you know, in the grocery store, it appears that there's a bunch of different products that you can buy that kind of would help along that way. So I'm excited to start trying some of those,

right. And you know, it's funny, you've tried a bunch of different ways, they're all very different. Eventually, if you really get into it, you're going to want to make your own spice mixtures because they're just going to be a lot fresher. And you can tailor them to your to your exact needs. Think about it this way. It's you know, in the US we think about, you know, we're amazed at the kind of variation in something like a Garema saw things like that, but, you know, but if you go to North Carolina, right, the difference of like 20 miles in North Carolina is enough to cause a fistfight over what you're going to put in your barbecue sauce. Okay, you know what I mean? And so, you know, when you think about it that way, and you need to go to India with which is huge and has so many people in it, you know, it's it's it's an extremely extremely varied and interesting cuisine. You could spent a whole lifetime doing nothing but Indian food and it would it would repay your efforts. No. And I mean, it's like a huge it's a huge and interesting journey that you're embarking on. So really regional. Yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah, very much so very much and again, I only know the surface of it just because I haven't had a chance to travel over there yet. But I wish you well, and I'm sure you're gonna have a lot of fun.

Thanks so much. I appreciate your advice.

Thank you. Okay, so I have another email question coming in take a break we're taking a break okay, we'll take a break and we'll come back with more questions on cooking issues radio. Oh you feel good so much bone in here I have gone ahead have we're gonna have we're gonna have oh my god god I want everybody who goes right back into debt Hello, and welcome back to Cooking issues. I'm Dave Arnold here with Miss Dasha Lopez the hammer. And we're here to answer your cooking questions for a couple more minutes at 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. So Jesse emailed in and asked, Do you guys have any advice on slicing mint without turning it black? as soft as I try, it still ends up turning black. Interesting question, Jesse. So what's happening in Mint, or basil or anything like this is that as you're cutting it, you're breaking the cells as you break the cells, the the enzymes that cells rupture, and the enzymes within the cells can mix with certain compounds inside of the mint. And they form brown, brown colors. And there's very little you can do to prevent that, with the exception of it's not how soft you cut the sow soft, you cut the mint, it's going to cause it, it's how sharp your knife is. So if you use an extremely sharp knife, right, you're going to rupture as few cells as possible, you want to use a very thin, very sharp knife and slice it and you're going to get the minimum amount of blackening of the cells, right. If you even if you cut softly with a dull knife, you're just mashing it right. You also don't want to just whack it around on the board. You know, that's why people they roll their their leaves up and then they slice not just gently but you know, with very sharp knife. Another technique you can use is you can blanch the men briefly in boiling water. And what that's going to do is just kill the enzymes. Harold McGee, the author of on food and cooking had a second book called The Curious Cook. Unfortunately, it's not in print anymore, you can get it on Bookfinder. But the Curious Cook has a long chapter basically on pesto, where he deals with just this kind of problem how to make a pesto, which is the same problem as meant it's basil, but they're in the same family has the same problem, how to keep it bright and in a pesto. And it's really interesting. An interesting chapter read because it it really shows what we do in general here, in cooking the way we approach it, which is to break it down into a series of variables, and then try to figure out what's going on with each one of the variables. And the entire book. The Curious Cook is about that. It's really, it's a shame it's not in print right now, because it's a very good command companion piece to on food and cooking. Whereas on food and cooking is more of an encyclopedic reference with some lore about you know, cooking, the Curious Cook is more how to become like Harold McGee, right? How to think like he does like, or, for that matter is similar way to think how we do when we're cooking, which is to break break things into a series of variables and try to understand what's going on. So you can get a copy of the Curious Cook and read it it would be used. It's useful for everyone in a way of figuring out a method of thinking. So blanching the Mint has the problem that you Do you change the flavor it's no longer fresh. You can cut it under alcohol and that's going to not but it's in alcohol that I mean that's what I would do cut it under alcohol but it's, it's, you know, that's it usually only useful in alcoholic beverages so it's it's a difficult problem. McGee experimented with using things like ascorbic acid and that doesn't really scorebook acids and antioxidants stops many things from turning brown, he didn't get it to have that much of an effect and basil probably because it didn't get to where it needed to go fast enough before the Browning happened. I bet if he vacuum infused ascorbic acid into the mint leaves, he would have been able to get a decent result. But alas, he did not have a vacuum machine, or even an ISI whip or to check it out when he was writing the book. But that might be another another way to go. But if you're not, if it doesn't matter that's not hyper hyper fresh, quick Blanche will help. Otherwise just use an extremely sharp knife and be ginger about it. I'm sorry, I didn't have any sort of magic bullet for you, Jesse. But that's, you know, you chose a tough problem. So, okay, so onto a separate and weird phenomenon.

An interesting one, I think it's called the impending Bay effect in Pemba, and Pemba. What do you think in Pemba Pemba effect. And what that is, is, it's just interesting because it just shows how you can be wrong in so many ways. It's been known for a long time that if you take and you heat water up versus water and it's cold, and you put them in the freezer, that it's possible for the hot water to freeze first. Right? That seems counterintuitive. Yes. That's right. Yes. Right. In fact, it seems so counterintuitive that you would say things like, well, that's absurd, or ridiculous or impossible, or that someone who says that must have a cog lose, right? Because on a simple on a simple level, you know, physics you think, well look, the hot water, when you put it in the freezer has to chill down to zero right before it freezes. And the cold water starts closer to zero. So it's going to get there first, it's going to freeze first, right? It just seems physically impossible that anything else would happen. And yet, it does. And and it just goes to show it this simple thing. It seems impossible, but it's true, was observed by a schoolboy. In what country was he in? He was some it was a country in Africa in the 60s. And he observed this phenomenon as a child and was laughed out of the school. And then later, you know, kept on basically saying, look, it's true. And turns out he's right. And now they've named the effect after him. His name was Mr. Pemba. Right. Pemba. Anyway, so Anywho? So the thing is, is how can this possibly be true? And it took decades decades for scientists to actually figure out what the heck was going on, in in this in this situation. And the new scientists back in March of this year published or talked a reference to paper that was written a 30 page paper written by a guy that had spent 10 years researching this problem. And he thinks he's, you know, finally come up with the answer. And the answer is this, it leads to an interesting phenomenon, the phenomenon of super cooling. So super cooling a liquid means that you cool it down below its freezing point before it starts to freeze. And the reason this happens is because ice in order to form it needs to have a nucleation site for a crystal to start, it's very hard for crystals to start forming and water to become ice. So they need these things called nucleation sites. So when you super cool something, you super cool it down to a point where the ice can nucleate and then bam, the whole thing rises back up and temperature to freezing, and starts freezing starts freezing up. That's how ice forming works. So it turns out that by heating a sample, you actually alter the nucleation sites such that they can't super cool as much before they freeze up. So in fact, the massive ice does freeze faster, if it's been can freeze faster if it's been been heated. But it led me to think then of the concept of super cooling, right. So there's super cooling, and there's super heating water is pretty interesting. If you you need to super cool it below zero degrees to get it to start freezing up, right? You can also superheat it above 100 degrees. Because same way, it's very hard for ice crystals to form. It's also hard for bubbles to form, right. So bubbles need a nucleation site. That's why if you have a super clean glassware like hyper analytically clean glassware, like you use, like chromic and sulfuric acid to melt all of the organic crap out of the inside of a glass don't do that. But if you did that, then you filled it with champagne, you get hurt no bubbles, because there's no place for the bubbles to form. So in superheating, what you do is you take something that has no nucleation sites like you've boiled at once, right? You stick it in a microwave, which heats it all without a lot of convection currents because it's heating it around instead of heating it from the bottom. And then you pull it out. It's well above 100 degrees. You throw sugar in it and it instantly boils and splashes boiling water in your face and you get horribly scarred and have to go to the hospital. It's a known phenomenon. Anyway, back to microwaves, right anyway. So super cooling can also be used right. And so there's a chef Seiji Yamamoto in Japan who has an apparatus to do super cool leaves extremely clean glassware, I guess. And he puts water or water base liquids in and he chose them well below zero. And then as you agitate them, right, you just pour you agitate him, you create little bubbles, those little bubbles become nucleation sites, and it starts to form. So he has these really cool demos. And I believe it's on YouTube, where you take supercooled liquid, and he pours and as he pours it, it turns to ice forms a slushy, which is pretty cool. And just the impending effect got me thinking. But unfortunately, it's not possible to freeze an entire block of ice solid, in order to freeze entire block, like a thing of water solid using super cooling, you'd have to super cool it down to negative 80 Celsius. And that's just not possible, you can't get really, you're probably at best only going to get a couple you know, 1010 2020 best degrees, not even below zero. Celsius, but before it starts to nucleate. So you can bet you can free something like a quarter, a third A No, no, probably no third, probably a quarter of the water into slush, which is pretty cool. But my favorite way to do this is actually a multiple effect is when you put soda in a freezer, and you pull it out just before she freezes and then you uncap it, and then all of a sudden turns to ice right? And then I like that because I like super cold bla bla bla bla bla. Anyway, the reason this happens is twofold. One, carbon dioxide is dissolved in the liquid, and that actually lowers the temperature at which it wants to freeze, right? It's a freezing point, depression, when you uncap it, all of a sudden carbon dioxide leaves there's less carbon dioxide, the freezing points less depressed. So now all of a sudden, the liquids more super cool than it was before. Secondly, those little bubbles provide nucleation sites as crapload of them like all at once I almost cursed on top, I'll just find a crapload of these bubbles all at once. And so the entire thing basically just turns to a mass of flaky ice crystals. So I'm still trying to figure out a good way to use this in in the in the kitchen. You got anything to stop? Do you think that there's any kind of use for that? I don't know they have no. Now. She's probably right. Which brings me kind of she's a star she's always right about we're not really always right about these things, because there's many things like I say, just negative, right? Like she you know, in case you meet her, right. Like I say she does many things that she doesn't like for no apparent reason like french fries, or you know, for some reason she doesn't like french fries doesn't like potato chips, except salt and vinegar, which is bizarre, bizarre, bizarre, so you can't really trust her on these things. But in this case, I think she's right. Just because although supercooling is really, really cool mean well, sorry. Nifty, right? Super cool is really nifty. It's probably going to end up being just a gimmick. And on the topic of just a gimmick. I'll mention one last thing before we leave. And this is a cool gimmicks. If any of you out there have liquid nitrogen and a vacuum machine. Which you know, you should have both frankly, you know what I mean? And this was told me by Johnny Xenia pacers have a John George, who in turn learned it from Chris Young was working with Nathan Myhrvold on the Miracle book that's coming out at the end of the year. If you stick liquid nitrogen into a vacuum machine, and then you close the vacuum machine and let it run for several minutes, all of a sudden ice starts forming on the top of the liquid nitrogen, okay, then as soon as you release it, the vacuum the ice goes away, so you can never touch or get to the ice right ever. And and so Johnny was like was wondering about this and I did a bunch of research and what's happening and it looks really cool. It's like this like frosty snow ice forming on the top of the liquid nitrogen, what you're actually doing is forming nitrogen ice. And it turns out that liquid nitrogen which you know clocks in around minus 200 Celsius in that range minus 190 Something Celsius, atmospheric pressure, solid nitrogen isn't that much colder than liquid nitrogen right. And so what happens is, is you put the liquid nitrogen you let the container come up to come down to temperature so you're not boiling for that reason too much. Put it in a vacuum machine and you suck a vacuum on it. What you're doing is evaporating a crapload of nitrogen off the top of the vessel and you're actually evaporative ly cooling the liquid nitrogen down that extra couple of degrees Celsius and forming solid nitrogen snow on the top of your and it looks really cool and it's really you know, whatever anyway, so you can YouTube it if you if you want to see it but you're forming solid nitrogen snow, but yet you can never touch it another another pain in the butt in kitchen technology anyway. So that was this week's cooking issues. Join us again next week at 1212 45 and another shout out to Whole Foods 30th Birthday not their 80th Birthday Happy Birthday all foods don't know where