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,

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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.

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The following episode of Cooking issues has been sponsored by Acme smoked fish. Located in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Aqp has been a mainstay in New York's culinary landscape for over 55 years. Using old world recipes Acme produces the finest smoked salmon white fish and sable that discerning palates demand. For more information on where to find Acme Blue Hill PE or really bad products, please visit www dot Acme smoked fish.com. Babe, you're on

cooking issues should use us radio. Dave Arnold coming to you live from Germany where I'm at the Berlin cocktail conference. Natasha sitting in the studio in Brooklyn. He's there to start. Hi, Dave. Hey, yeah. So this, this radio show has been literally phoned in, phoning it in from Berlin on my iPhone. So if I click or pop, you'll know, you'll know why. And Natasha, thanks so much for putting so Collins on as our interviews today.

Good and find your song.

Yeah. So you know, everyone likes to sell guns every now and again. So that's, that's

everyone has two ears and a heart, Dave.

Exactly. Exactly. All right. All right. So listen, so Natasha, can you read the numbers instead of having in front of me? And for some reason, I cannot commit it to memory?

Yes. If you want to call in and ask questions to Dave, who's in Germany, the number is 71849721287184972128.

I would really like someone from Germany called New York to ask me a question. While I'm in Germany. We'll see if we can see if we can get that going. And we'll be here live for the next 45 minutes or so. And meanwhile, I'm gonna take some email questions. So one of our favorite blog readers Shinder hanus, wrote actually from Germany, but not from Berlin. And he says, Well, why are the two most important beverages in Germany, beer and apple juice, beer for adults and apple juice for kids? You so rarely in cocktails, and you have any good recipes for these reasons. Shinar hummus is an excellent question. The problem with apple juice in cocktails is that apple juice is relatively diluted. So most cocktails that are produced in bars and therefore also most recipes that are written for them are based on the idea that you're going to make a drain and then dilute it with Chilean dilute it with ice. Now, the problem is, is that if you're using apple juice, by the time it's chilled, and diluted, it's just Much too watery so you don't have you're not gonna have enough alcohol and you're also not even have enough flavor of the of the apple juice. And so I think that's the reason why there aren't that many drinks using it. Now of course, the solution to this is to is to kill your drinks beforehand, right or mix them cold and then show them down so that when they're mixed together, you don't have to dilute it a lot with with ice a really good technique, it's actually freeze the ice cubes in a freeze of the apple juice and ice cubes, and then shake with the frozen apple juice. And this way as it's chilling and diluting you can get it really cold the same as the standard cocktail about minus seven Celsius. But as its diluting is diluting with apple juice. And admits technique works really well on Sunday, we do a lot I like I like apple juice and whiskey, I think it's really good when we use apple juice. So we're often making our own apple juice, and we'll we'll juice it with some ascorbic acid as an antioxidant. So the blue state stays clear, the sorry stays green or, or yellow, if it's yellow, Apple or red if there's a lot of red skin, and then, but it doesn't oxidize the important part. And then often we'll clarify it and mix it up. So we do a lot of work with that we've done apple and tequila we've done apple and, and bourbon, most of the time we were only doing the apple juice in his spirit because we tend to use very high quality apples. And we really want to show the flavors that have the specific Apple, most apple juice wasn't allowed to oxidize and clarify traditionally, the taste differences are muted somewhat. So that's one of the reasons we like to do it fresh. And some of our favorite apples are actually its kernel which is an old English variety, shops, Pittsburgh, which is an old American variety. But any local rye that you like, assuming it has a high enough acid balance, it has a good acid sugar balance, you can use of course you can correct acid sugar with malic acid, which is the acid from apples. Or you can you know, obviously you can add more, more sugar to it. We took our beers there is like a whole bunch of cocktails based on beers. They're just not seen as often. These days like Sandy's we do a lot of really old school hot beer cocktails where we'll use a beer. Usually an ale usually not a lager, usually an ale and, and like either a brandy, or sometimes whiskey, and then we'll flame it using our red hot poker, which can basically it can ignite a drink, you don't really need to ignite it but you need to get something hot like a hot stone or just very hot it when the weather like with with a lot of thermal wallop to it to give the kind of burn flavors that are really characteristic, those old style drinks. And I really liked to do that I don't have any good modern beer recipes off the top of my head for cold cocktails, but they've become extremely popular in certain bars over the past three or four years in the States. And I think you're gonna see a return to more beer based cocktails in the future, especially in restaurants that have they don't have a liquor license, right. So they can't serve liquor, but they can serve wine or beer. And so these places do a lot of interesting work with wine based cocktails and beer based cocktails, but unfortunately don't have any good recipes right off the bat. What do you think started? Do you think that's a good answer?

No, I think that's a good answer. Have you been drinking a lot of beer?

I've had some beers. So there's a characteristic beer from Berlin called doubler vise. That is the sweetness. The one I had with Woodruff chips. It's green. It's just like big Goblet of green beer and it's a little sweet. It's I couldn't drink a lot of them but whenever I go somewhere I like to try the characteristic beverage of the area but the first thing I learned from Toby that it was, it was mainly ladies drink, but I did enjoy it. I did enjoy it. So it was it might have been drinking, drinking quite a bit of beer. We have a caller

Oh, we have caller Hello caller you're on the air. I'm calling. I'm living down in Washington DC. And recently I've been trying to make I've been making sleekness vodka for quite a while I've got a secret stash. I've just been usually just soaking it for a couple of days. But when I saw the nothing to use with the EC canister, I try doing some with pressure pressurizing some nitrous oxide and trying to sort of blast some of the fresh, grassy flavor out. But something kind of curious happened. When I did it, I use the same concentrations I usually do. And, but it's pressurize it with two charges. Let it sit for a couple minutes about between two and three minutes. But the gas out and didn't want to heavily colored it's like very lightly so let it sit overnight in the fridge like you do and you know kind of look the Emeralds thing that it usually has, but it's now been like maybe a week later. And whereas the regular stuff will be still this kind of emerald color. The stuff has turned very tiny, very almost like a watered down coffee or tea color. And

I couldn't hear the very first part. But what was he saying? What was the flavor? Again, it couldn't hear sweetgrass. supress. Okay. Interesting. I mean, I would bet, right? Like my guess just off the beginning. And I don't know whether that's the main question because the main question about the color.

Yeah, but the color. Also the flavor profile is a little different. There's like, usually it's kind of Very Vanilla E and grassy. There's still the kind of like grassy vanilla thing. But there's also a more A No, almost like brandy cherry thing that's not usually there. So I was just wondering if the chlorophyll was getting blasted apart? And that's what caused it to change color. Have you got any ideas about what might be going on?

Yeah, I mean, I would almost guarantee that you're breaking some shells when you're doing it, and thereby releasing some enzymes, the enzymes are getting to work, busy oxidizing and creating some of those brown flavors. I mean, now, it'd be my guess. Now, I think that, you know, it's, it's definitely so like, for instance, when I'm doing an herb that no one has a tendency to go brown. When I do it. And I'm try to be as careful as I can and use not, herbs aren't brews. And also, they're not. And to not shake it real hard, I just swirl it around when I use those, because I want to minimize breakage. But also, you know, we've had some luck, but not great luck doping it with a little bit of an antioxidant. And problem is it's also going to add acid, so it's going to change the flavor, like ascorbic acid, use sodium, meta bisulfite, instead of NAD the oxidant. But I haven't tried it, so I can't talk about its efficacy. Now the difference in flavor between the two, I think you have two different things going on. Again, I can't really judge which one is, is working, by the way, for people who don't know what we're talking about, go on to cooking issues.com and look up, I guess, confusion, and ISI or EC and you can see it's just technique where we do very rapid infusions of flavor in, in with cream makers. And, you know, for me, it's really, it's really a good technique, because it allows us to do something that we would normally use a vacuum machine to do, which is very expensive. And you can do it, you know, fairly easily. And you can do it at home, you can do it in a bar, it's it's friendly. But the flavor, the flavor profiles are different than they are with a traditional infusions. That takes a long time. And so I think not necessarily better or worse, just different. So I think it's true that you're going to extract different flavors using this technique than you would using a traditional longer 10 days in there to lessen the difference is going to be but I also think you're probably getting some flavor change based on vaccination, don't you think? So I think that the actual oxidation is going to change the flavors. What do you think?

Yeah, yeah. So this is almost in a in a pleasant way. So it was a little bit. Just curious if, yeah, I guess it could be something in the medic to kind of breaking things down a little different.

Right? Well, as soon as something oxidizes, right, that's the thing I think people don't people. So when you add something like, like an antioxidant, like ascorbic acid, for instance, to and I'm talking a little bit about this in the last question. And when you actually like this, you know, yes, you're preventing oxidation, which is a visual cue that something's going on. But it also radically changes the taste, you know what I mean? I mean, that's why apple juice for instance, doesn't brown apple juice doesn't taste like fresh apples is because it's gone through this oxidation procedure. It's not just that it's been heated, although it's not just it's been clarified. But the actual oxidation where it goes brown is changing the characteristic flavor refresh apple into the characteristic flavor of the of the apple juice. So I think he might have going on. And I think you also might have just perhaps a different extraction of things from it in general, you know, yeah.

So are there some other instances where you notice that oxidation has maybe actually like improved flavor? Because or is it generally a negative trends?

I mean, I think it depends people really like apple juice, you know what I mean? And so oxidized apple juice, I mean, it's not what I'm shooting for. So I tend to go try to make it taste as fresh as possible. But again, oxidation there is not a bad it's just, it's just different. We normally associated as being negative because we're used to, we're used to it being a negative characteristic. And for instance, things like pesto. And I think most herb oxidation, like like basil oxidation. And cilantro oxidation has a very characteristic flavors and we're we kind of shun those flavors. And so it takes on a bad name, but there's nothing inherently bad about oxidation. I think that story once on the on the cookie issues before, but I'll say it again, Real quick, there's no pressure I said it, but that you know, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, which I won't use their name, but it's Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. They, they're characteristically oxidized, the fats oxidized a little bit in the peanut butter. And that's the characteristic taste of the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. If you actually put oxygen scavengers in the packaging so that it doesn't oxidize a little bit. Nobody thinks it tastes like a Reese's Peanut Butter company more than they don't want to buy it. So it's you know, yeah, so oxidation, it's all in the eye of the eater or in the mouth of the eater, I guess. Yeah. I hope that answered your question. Thanks for calling in and you can post something to the blog if you have more results with this sweet grass because I'm interested we haven't used any sweet grass confusion so

yeah. Once we have some more systematic stuff, I'll put it together and show you guys but thanks for help. Very

good, thanks. Thank you

all right, take a break we have how it works take a break

so we're going to our first break and we're gonna come back live from our our to continent cookie issues from New York and from Berlin start asking questions most summers I still use this mature on this

Dave, you're on.

A Welcome back to Cooking issues coming to you live on the heritage Radio Network every Tuesday, even when I'm in Germany. So we're coming to you live as I guess I started us on the studio in Brooklyn. Roberta's pizza, and I'm in the Berlin cocktail conference in Berlin. So, Duncan from Sacramento writes in oh, by the way, call in your questions. We're still here for about another half hour or so Anastasia, given the numbers

71849721287184972128.

All right. Duncan writes in from Sacramento and says he's trying to make a stable foam from beer. So we've had a couple of beer questions if I like to say all these questions are working together today. I think it'd be interesting to do a beer mousse, or deconstructive Black and Tan. However, I have not been able to get a dentist stable foam peg, it hasn't worked and I'm not sure jellen would set up well in the presence of alcohol. Now Duncan, if you're looking to do a traditional mousse, style texture with gelatin, I guarantee you gelatin will set the beer fine. First of all beer is not that high in alcohol. So it will affect it a little bit. You might have to use a little more gelatin than you would normally use. But it's definitely going to work. I've done chalets of champagne many times with gelatin and it works fine if you want to make a knot moves but just something as dense and phony, get a really good result. I will steer you to the same technique as Sam Mason, formerly Atlas WD 50 and Taylor restaurant and currently has a bar is named for some reason to have in Germany has escaped me. He uses a product called Metacell F 50, which is a methyl cellulose product that is basically can whip anything into a moose steps are mostly a foam. But like then, you know not quite as fancy shaving cream but much denser than your normal foams that you make. Like an egg white. It's like an egg white Marang. And in fact, we use it to dehydrate foams into Marantz and I think we have a recipe somewhere on the blog, don't we study for that recipe and the hydrocolloid problems. And so and so he famously made a Guinness foam using Metacell F 50. And it makes a nice, dense, stable, like a little bit thicker than the head on a Guinness, but like oh, that kind of nature. And so that's a really good technique. Another one that you can use. If you don't like metal shell, you can buy metal shell, I think, retail, I think in the Sanctuaire website, and also tariffs, spices website. And some people have a little bit of a gripe with Metacell because it's one of the only things we use, it's not quotes all natural. It's not a chemical that is natural, it's modified cellulose product. So then people have a problem with that sometimes we use something called Versa whip which is basically they have a soy based version of it which is soy protein as a whipping agent and they have a casein milk based protein Versa whip that you can also get at I think if both of those suppliers, and those can whip things into a denser format Five verb to be difficult to use. I think methods show F 50. And remember F 50 Don't get a different method cell F like Frank 50. That one I think is really easy to use it whips up like an egg white, you might have to add a little bit of a thickener like, I don't know, xanthan gum or multitaction or something to the to the beer to get up nicely, but should work.

We have a caller.

So we have a caller. All right, call you're on the air.

Hello, my name is Derek. I call I wrote in a couple weeks ago about a question about velvety meats. Oh, yeah. Anyway, thanks a lot for the I had another question I wanted to ask about today, which is, you mentioned a week or two ago, something I've heard before about cooking smoothies, that's as long as you sear it, you're basically face because the inside of the meat is basically sterile. But I had to give this a second thought last week when I got a piece of monk fish and found some worms crawling out of it. And wanted to ask about dealing with parasites. And if you had to those obviously aren't only on the surface, but I know they're easier to kill than a lot of bacteria. But I wonder if you could address the issues with those and how you might go about doing it.

It's interesting question you pick monkfish, which obviously is full of parasites also pad fish full of parasites. Worms, I mean, luckily, I don't know about my fish. But the ones in cod fish aren't going to infect you. But they're incredibly disgusting. You know what I mean? And the, you know, in general, but the same thing was true for traditional cooking and Suvi. There. So, so our discussion is basically when you're, when you're cooking something cvwd Often, we don't cook things, enough to pasteurize them enough to kill all the bacteria that's present, right. And the reason we don't is often if you cook something that long, that texture can be ruined, right? So that's true on certain beef muscle cuts like tenderloin, like filet I think if you took it long enough to pasteurize it, or at temperatures where you're going to pasteurize it, they you can, you can damage the the texture, but it's definitely true on fish, you really it's very hard to cook most fish are pasteurized, because you don't ever really want to get them in general up to the temperatures that could pasteurize them. And even when you do, you don't want to hold them to that long exceptions, like striped bass can take those kind of temperatures, but so you don't tend to pasteurize now on something that could hit a parasite like Todd Fisher a month. The the fact of matter is that we are doing a traditional cliff, you're also probably not getting the internals up high enough to be any different than you wouldn't see Veen because you are overheating, you're really sharing the outside and killing it. So I think my point was safety and Suvi is that I don't think it's any less safe than a traditional method that makes sense at all, or no.

Oh, that makes perfect sense. You know what it does? I know that a lot of these worms and things can be killed just by three of the and or at much lower temperatures than a lot of bacteria and just generally makes the same so unless I'm making sushi out of it, it's probably okay, that sounds about right.

Yeah, if you buy a sushi braids first, first of all, like there's different, there's obviously there's parasites in fish that will infect you. And those are the ones that they get rid of by freezing it so anytime you're going to buy a sushi grade fish has been frozen to kill off those parasites. Right. So when you're dealing with a sushi grade product, you're good to go. With regards to like the worms on a big piece of cod fish, let's say my I had to go research they have researched my recollection is that those are merely gross and not harmful. But I'm not gonna swear I'm not going to tell people that you know, on the radio, because I haven't looked into it, but But I also think that they're, like you said, I think they're probably fairly easy to kill. And then if you're, you know, that's why like, I'd be a little worried about doing super low temperature work on a fish is going to have a lot of parasites because then you know, you might get one of those suckers wriggling out of the plate and that would be that would you know customers running out like three meals you know, we would be a nightmare you know, huge nightmare. We've all seen like worms coming out of pod or out of monkfish, me, they're just there. You don't I mean, and so like for instance, the the famous low temperature cod recipe, extreme low temperature cod recipe is by one Rocha from the the Sufi book that came out a number of years ago in Spanish, which is, you know, you know, one of the first books and you need a really good book started you still there. I heard a click.

I think the other guy Yeah, that's right.

It's a It's Sorry, I have to do this. I'm in Germany, but that recipe is famous, but it was mistranslated as cod. So people basically said that they were heating colleges extremely low temperature like 100 Fahrenheit. In fact, it was salt cod where all of the there was reconstituted Salt, salt cod bacalao. And so you know, all the worms are obviously killed. But anyway, when you think sadly that Good answer.

That's a good answer. Dave, do bad we lost the guy. All right.

Hopefully that helps. I know that over there. So don't get a second question, which is you've been trying to learn with cast iron. We've been having trouble with food sticking intermittently, they said, as far as he can tell the pain of season, but sometimes omelets will stick to it. And sometimes they won't. Well, I think this, I think, I can't see your pen, obviously, because I'm in Berlin, but the and you're in Sacramento, but things can look seasoned, but they're not really seasoned as well as if they had been seasoned for years and years of use. So the initial seasoning isn't really enough to make something kind of bulletproof nonstick. First of all, nothing's bulletproof nonstick, but I think what's probably happening is you probably have a couple of high spots in the pan that can cause adhesion, and then once it hears it, here's pretty well to that point. And so maybe you didn't get a coating of oil over one particular section or dried out, or somehow you got adhesion to the pan, and the more you use it, the less and less it's gonna stick annual, especially with newer cast iron, they're, they're rougher and surface, I tend to find that, you know, until you build up a really good season on them. They're not really even though some people theoretically think that the roughness is going to help you in nonstick phenomenons. I don't I don't happen to be one of those people who, who believe it. I mean, I think there's been a lot of discussion on on the blog, if you look at the blog on this thing. It's called what to call it sounds like heavy metal design. Yeah, I haven't researched it recently. But you know, my, my thoughts fresh from the researcher, or in that post, if, if anyone wants to go back in and look at it. Chris Anderson writes in, and he says he enjoys the show, which we appreciate, right? So I appreciate that. And he says, What is the correct ratio and making a simple syrup? Every recipe I find seems to have a different proportion of sugar to water. Doesn't dilution depend on the application? And then and then it goes into question about the shelf life of the ship should be stored in the fridge, etc, etc. Will that make the sugar crystallize? And he's noticed that it when he infuses things into it like lavender or lemongrass, it tends to last? Not very long before it starts to mold on the top. And the treasure since the last longer? Can you extend the shelf life eccentric cetera? These are all interesting questions. First of all, let me start by saying that there is no correct, there's no correct simple syrup recipe. Like there's all different ratios that you can use, and what's what, but a particular recipe isn't going to taste the same as what the writer intended unless you use the same proportions and they asked for. So I tend it, we at the schools tend to use what's called a two to one simple syrup. And everyone makes it different in a bar in a bar place they tend to make their syrup based on volume because they don't have scales, they have cut measures. So they'll bake they'll make simple syrup based on volume. Now luckily, standard American granulated sugar weighs about this close to the same as water on a volume basis, just lucky. So they you know, a weight, simple syrup, and a and a volume simple syrup are about the same when made with us granulated sugar. Now in a bar, they tend to make one to one simple syrup because they're not heating it even they're using super flashy, they're using super fine syrup, which is going to make it sweeter because it's denser. So erase what I just said. But they're using superfine sugar which which, which dissolves very quickly, and they're stirring it because they don't necessarily have a heat source right there. And they want to be able to make their simple syrup without heat. So they tend to make a one to one simple syrup. And they tend to do it by volume. And they tend to with superfine sugar. So like that should be like that's a bar recipe, just a simple sort of one to one. That's probably what they mean. Now, another reason that bartenders tend to use a lighter, simple syrup like that is because it pours a lot faster and you leave a lot less syrup in the bottom of your jigger. The downside of it is that that's will share it also adds a lot more water for an equivalent amount of sweetness, so it can throw off the dilution in recipes. In certain recipes, I tend to prefer to add sugar in the form of sugar and make a denser syrup, simple syrup. So when usually, unless I say otherwise, my simple syrup is two to one, two parts of sugar to one part water by weight, and then heated until it dissolves and then allowed to cool down. And when I need it in a hurry, I do a four part I do four parts the sugar to one part water, heat, it's all dissolved and I throw ice cubes to chill down quickly. And that's how I make it now the more sugar you put in a simple syrup, the the more sugar you put a simple syrup, the less chance you're gonna get a mold developing a one to one simple syrup is definitely going to mold over time. If you store it in the fridge. It's not going to mold over time. I don't think I've never really haven't got moldy in the fridge. But yeah, then you have to devote storage space to it in the fridge. A two to one simple syrup probably won't mold as much it'll still load if it's outside. And you keep it in the in the fridge as well. Now you might get some crystallization in your two to one, but you're not going to get that much crystallization and a two to one I wouldn't worry about it so much. Now when you're using a syrup, the question of whether or not you know what kind of shelf life you're gonna get out of it, a lot depends on and by the way, if you have to leave your ship Let's hear about because, you know, whatever you don't have fish, bass or whatever, if you're going to keep it for a long period of time, if you, you know, once a week, just bring it up almost to the boil and let it drop down again, you're going to, you're going to kill the mold in it, and you get to extend the shelf life again, because it's not going to get unsafe on you. Now you're doing an infusion, something like an herb or whatnot, you're probably getting more water and tailspin, if you're gonna boil the thing you're infusing with it with the sugar, right, then you might be killing some stuff into it, you're probably introducing some some spores whatnots mold into it. And you'd probably also giving it more of a substrate to act on. That might be one of the reasons that you're getting more spoilage. I haven't researched any specific, you know, mold inhibitors, although that's an interesting question, maybe we should look into it's not easy. But I think you're going to definitely increase the life of those things by putting them in the fridge. And I don't think that any crystallization, definitely not on a one to one and even on a two to one. I've had two to one in my fridge for months. And you'll get a couple of crystals around the bottom of it, but not a huge, huge deal. So in terms of consistency, I don't think there's a best or worst there's what fits your cookie style best we have both one to one and two to one around. It's all about being consistent from time to time.

We need to take a break Dave they're doing me

all right so we're taking a break come back with the last thing when a cookie issues you still have time to call in? We? Show? Somewhere Okay, Dave, you're on. All right. Welcome back to Cooking issues. During the period to time and scope, we're in Berlin, and we're in New York. So some time to call. In fact, it was number

718497 to 1287184972128.

So, Jay wrote us and asked us a question about protein and flowers. And he, he or she is Jay referenced. McGee, Harold McGee. And so rather than answer this question, I'm just telling you, Jay, I'm going to wait because Harold McGee is actually going to come and teach a class in less than two weeks, whether it's again, the session,

October 21, and 22nd. That's it Thursday and Friday.

Right. So Harold McGee is actually coming to the French culinary all day, all day. Today class, he's coming to teach there on the D class, we'll probably put something up on the blog in advance of it. But anyway, I'm going to be spending some quality time with him. And you can too if you want, there are still spots, go to the FCI website, French culinary.com and look for the Harold McGee lecture series. But I'm gonna spend some quality time with him and he is really up on these kinds of things and has done a lot of research. So Natasha, I'm gonna put the, the protein question, flower protein question down as a whole because I want to give Jay a better answer when we're hanging with Nicki. Alright, so now we have a question. See if I can find it. And the thing is, when I cook for my this is a teddy Teddy. The vehicle writes in and says when I cook for my family, my dad cannot eat salt or any food that contain salt, so I have to cook salt. without salt for him. I still cook for the rest of my family with salt. He does not believe that salt can make food drastically better, but I tell him it does. Why the salt makes food taste better. And is there any way to make food taste good without salt? And by the way, Teddy does not think it is possible. So you're right. It's not possible. It turns out that a So I don't know whether your dad disliked salt or whether or not he is one of the few people that has actually sensitive to salt from a blood pressure situation. But I mean, salt, sodium chloride is, is 100% necessary to your survival as a human being? Okay? So your neurons don't work without sodium like, you know, we don't work, there is no life for us without sodium and we don't make it ourselves, we have to take it in. And in fact, mammals and other things, even humans, although there's some controversy about how it works, because no, some controversy, but we have what's called salt appetite. So other than thirst, where you're like, I'm thirsty, I need liquid. The only other thing that works that way is salt. Where there's like you have a salt. Absolutely. mammals do whether or not humans have the same kind of salt, salt thing that that primates do is a question. So salt is definitely something you need. But you don't necessarily need to sprinkle salt on things. Because food that you eat naturally contains more or less salt, depending on where it is, naturally, the product needs have certain amount of salt in them, because they come from animals and animals contain sodium. But you know, natural mineral waters contain sometimes a good bit of salt and depending on which one you choose how there's plants and grow, like for instance, the Assam fear or sea beans grows on the on the seashore, and it has so much salt in it that I don't I don't even need to add salt to my salads when I make it with that. And I like salt a lot. So, you know, definitely, you know, you're always Consuming salt. It's just a question of whether or not you add salt. So then the question is, well, you know, do you do you need to add salt to food and for me? Yes, you know, you too. So first, the classic food that sucks without salt is bread. Right? And so everyone in the world loves Tuscan cuisine, myself included. I love it. Except for the bread is horrible. right sizing come on the breads hard.

Why that we've had this discussion. I don't mind it. I like to say horrible.

But he started he thinks that you can sprinkle salt on Tuscan bread and all of a sudden make it real bread. I completely disagree because I have baked breads where you accidentally forget to put the salt and how many out there just happened to you forget to put the salt in. And then you pray that you can make it better by adding salt. Here's why you can't because first of all salts not throughout the dough. And second of all the salt actually affects the texture because it affects the way the gluten works. And so you'll notice that the crust on a salt was bread. The reason Tuscan bread looks like crap on the outside that sallow looking crust is because they don't have salt. And the reason that texture is not as good is because they don't have salt. And the reason it doesn't taste good is because you can guess why Natasha

doesn't have salt.

Right? Because then that salt. And you can't fix those problems just by sprinkling salt on the on the outside, that's like rolling a turd in sequence, you know what I mean? It just doesn't work. Now, you know, so another place where salt is, you know, often useful, not just repay standpoint is with meats, because salt actually increases the water binding capacity of meat. So the you know, when you bind something, you're actually ensuring that it's going to be juice, you're by applying some salt to it beforehand. So it's actually performing a functional characteristics there. Now the vast majority of the of the, you know, huge sodium intake, by the way, like our grant great grandparents generation ate a boatload more salt than we do because they had to eat everything preserved or had to eat more preserved things. And we do. And in fact, they were more heavily salted preserved meats were more heavily salted in the old days than they are now because now we have refrigeration I just read a scholarly paper, I forget what it is, I can't reference it. But they said that nothing more drastically reduced the salt intake of the population in general than the the refrigerator because now all of a sudden, we didn't need to salt anymore. So this a modern idea that we consume so much more salt now, because of processed foods in quotes than we used to. It's absurd, because salt used to be everywhere, everything was salted down to preserve it, you know, prior to the advent of refrigeration so. So we love salt because we need it. It also makes things taste delicious, you know, so, so effects. First of all, you don't need to solve a lot as long as you don't need to make something salty to have the salt have a beneficial effect. Like for instance, a little bit of salt and a drink. Even if you can't taste the salt, it's going to round out the flavors it changes your perception of aroma. So when you add salt to a broth, it's actually changing the aroma of the broth because he alters the way the volatiles are basically like the amount of them they're captured allows things to release come off and you actually get a stronger impact of volatiles and the aroma, you know, it tends to be synergistic, so it makes other things taste better without even necessarily having the perception of salt. And they tried to get around that by adding things like MSG, which can also increase the palatability of something without adding a lot more salt. Although gram per gram, MSG adds about 1/3 of sodium that salt does because we usually get mono mono sodium glutamate doesn't have as much salt per gram, as sorry, as much sodium per gram of salt does. And so sodium people are worried about by the way, most of the flavor comes from the sodium. The chloride is kind of usually along for the ride, right? So but the other thing about MSG, even though it does have sodium in it, you typically would use a lot less MSG than you would use salt because it's more potent. So anyway, I mean, it's a long way. I don't know whether I've started you, I totally answer this question. We have kind of like,

yeah, what's what's wrong with his dad, right? Like it for health reasons. He just doesn't like salt. But

there's got to be some people that don't like salt. There's only like one or two groups of people in the world that are known to not add any salt, I always forget what they are is probably like, probably like some like, like, anyway, culture or something like that. There's, but again, they're eating like, you know, whale meat out of the out of the ocean, like, and I don't even remember whether it's in you. And I just made that up. But there's very few cultures in the world that don't use salt. And because it stuff tastes good, you know what I mean? And then I'll do some more research on it and talk about it at at a later point. Instead of another note, what do I think of grant a gift is a very bar. Right. It gets, as most of the readers will know, is the chef at Alinea, which is a very, very fine restaurant and eating there twice, has extraordinary meals, and I was there. I have not been to the bar. I said

no idea, though. I do

not know if it's open here. They've had some YouTube videos up. So maybe, maybe they are, but I'm sure whatever grant does is going to be good. But I just haven't tried it yet. Now. Yeah, one more question from who's just one. Steve. By the way, Steve, says PS thanks for talking about the issues of tall cooks. We're trying to get Mark Ladner right. Now maybe we'll I'll just get his while you get his comments separately. And we'll just say what he said about that. That's good. Yeah. So yeah, so we can, we can we can do that. But he's basically he's a, he's a physicist, and he's interested in ice. And he was just talking about something really cool, which is he makes spherical lenses out of ice. So he can start fires outside. That's pretty cool. So basically, he says that you can basically with your hands just take a block of ice and smooth it out, you know, you know, heating it to make a decent enough sphere to light a fire using it, which is I think it's pretty cool. I'd like to try that. But so you're wondering about the problems of making clear eyes, because you need clear eyes to make these these lenses. And he was talking about the difficulties. And as we talked about clear eyes on the radio at all.

I feel like we did or maybe you touched on it a little bit but not not in good.

Yes. So basically back in the day, prior to you know, mechanical refrigeration, most ice that was used in in restaurants, bars or an ice houses with harvest and ice it was harvested from lakes and rivers in the wintertime was sawn out and big blocks. And they kept in huge insulated ice houses for use throughout the year. Now the benefit of this kind of ice is that it's formed in thin layers. As Steve mentioned to me, he knows much better than I do, because he's a nuisance, but it forms in thin layers. And what happens with forming in layers is that the impurities in it gas and any other actual dissolved impurities don't get integrated into the crystal structures like crystal matrix when the ice so when you're freezing in your in your in your freezer, here's what happens. You have an ice cube tray, it starts to freeze on the bottom, the impurities are getting concentrated in the center as as are the dissolved gases. And then at a certain point, the top of your ice cube freezes over. And then the inside first of all expands. It freezes because ice expands as it freezes. And all the impurities are there and the gas is there. And you have a big like messy, you know, cloudy ball in the middle of your ice cubes. You know what I'm talking about? Right? Right? Yes. Yeah. Right. So that's what's happening. So lakes in lakes, that doesn't happen because you're depositing thin layers that are constantly being washed, and the layers are built up into totally clear. And Steve points out. That's the same way icicles were formed, which is why icicles are also clear. So I guess you can maybe make a good good lens out of that. The problem was doing it at home is it's just not easy. Even just diecasting your ice cube phase in a vacuum machine isn't going to necessarily it's not going to give you clear ice because the top will freeze over and as he inside expands and breaks the crystal structure and reforms, you'll get parts that are that are cloudy. Also, three inches difficult or using distilled water won't solve the problem. The only way to really solve it is the way that the Prineville climate manufacturers that make the machines for ice carvers, right. So ice carvers require clear ice. And so bartenders just started using this when they call it climb velice, which is very clear. And it basically works like a lake upside down, they make sure that the freezing happens from the bottom of the cube up, and they keep the water circulating on the top, so that the top can't freeze over. And as it's built up slowly over the course of a day or so it takes us forget, like between 24 and 48 hours to freeze one of these 200 pound blocks and the client belt, like as it's freezing slowly up, none of the impurities are incorporated, and they're concentrated in the water that's on top. And at the end, they just drain that the impure crappy water off the top, and they're left with a block of perfectly pure crystal ice. And so that's how it's made. Now, it's difficult to do at home. You know, unless you have like an anti griddle and you know, a chest freezer, but it's not something you can just kind of do in your freezer. The good news is, is that clear ice looks amazing. And it's the only one that you can really carve well, because it's very easy to carve and doesn't shatter, that's not really going to make your drink taste better. That's the good news. Anyway, how are we doing on time?