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.

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.

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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.

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Hello, and welcome to an on time addition of cooking issues on the heritage Radio Network coming to you every Tuesday from 12 to 1245. I'm Dave Arnold, your host of cooking issues here again witness Dasha, the hammer Lopes back from her Florida trip, calling all of your questions cooking related or otherwise to 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128 Today's show is brought to you by Hearst ranch. Hearst Ranch is the nation's largest single source supplier of free range all natural grass fed and grass finished beef since 1865, which is a long time, the HERS family has raised cattle on the rich, sustainable native grasslands of the Central California coast. The result is beef with extraordinary flavor that's as memorable and natural as the surrounding landscape. For more information go to www dot Hearst ranch.com that's www dot Hearst ranch.com They actually supply the ribeye for the heritage radio fundraiser. That was a couple months back the one where we did the bananas is to drink Delicious, right? Delicious, delicious, good product anyway. So yesterday was Valentine's Day. And what did you do for your well, I bought flowers cuz I'm lazy but the that's not the point. The point is it I was reminded by my I was reminded by my third grade son, the horrors that used to be Valentine's Day I was that kid who you know, when everyone was buying Carnations for everyone, you know, they would buy Carnations for their friend for like $1 like I was the one that got the mystery admirer carnation like they would they didn't think I understood that that meant that no one bought me a damn carnation. And so they just give one to you because no one's purchased one for you. You don't I mean, you know that kid? That kid was me, right? I mean, it's like Valentine's Day. Oh, geez. Oh, really? What's California gallon? See, everyone thinks New York people aren't sympathetic. But in fact, you know, like, they give out the sympathy carnation. We're actually good people over here in New York, for those of you that don't know us. Anywho so you know, Valentine's Day was, you know, basically a yearly living nightmare horror story for me. Actually, up until, you know, 1990 9091 92 Right when I was 20 was the first year I had a good Valentine's and it was the day I started dating. A actual, you know, Cracker Jack, smart, badass, verifiable, hot chick, whom I eventually married and who's my currently my wife. So anyway, so valentine's day ended up being good for me, but was horrible for the first 20 years. And my son had this happen. Uh, he was, you know, gave a Valentine to a girl in a third grade. And what she would never do. He's not that kind of a kid. He gives it to are completely rebuffed. Like yeah, Valentine on the floor. I don't want this complete horror, I felt felt awful in my in my, my younger son is brother, basically who's an equal mix of really sensitive sweet kid and gun loving crazy rough and tumble boy monster goes all right, where you're going to kick her in the face, or Dipper and poop. And then like, you know, no one's saying anything because they don't know what to say. Because this is crazy thing to say. And then after a couple of seconds like so which is it? Kick in the face, or dip and poop? Anyway, that was Valentine's Day. So I hate Yeah, no, no, no, I wasn't calling him out too bad. I guess everyone knows him knows my son anyway. So another thing we're announcing, we just sent out the press release for the museum of food and drink a fundraiser and the Museum of food. Do we have a column, or so I'll take the call first. So I can spend the adequate amount of time on the Museum of food and drink. Hello, caller, you're on the air.

Hi, I've been working a lot lately with preserved lemons and Indian line pickles and user co show. And I realized recently that I didn't actually understand kind of the mechanism of what's going on with salt, Kurian, citrus like that. It's the acidity, acidity and the salinity are too high for any sort of microbial or bacterial mechanism. So it's just got to be sort of the salt that sort of controlled rots, but I don't really know what's going on, the whole thing gets darker and thicker and the texture changes. were wondering if you could explain a little bit about what's going on

there. Wow, that's actually an excellent question. I haven't really, I haven't really thought about it, I'm sure that there's got to be some sort of, it's got to be some sort of bacterial growth, right? Otherwise, it would be purely an enzymatic reaction that's causing it to happen, which I don't think it is, because the thing definitely changes over time, right? So if it, if it changes over time, either you're dealing with an enzymatic process, or you're dealing with a bacterial slash enzymatic process, or it's probably not a yeast based or any sort of fungal based thing. I know that you know, who's an expert in this is Harold McGee. I'm going to, I'm going to speak to him relatively soon, I should ask him, you've caught me completely off guard on something that I haven't studied. I do know that if you that certain things do happen in them that look like they're like they're bacteria based. For instance, you can get you can get situations when you're curing them with certain kinds of lemons where you get like ropey substance forming in the in the cure lemon thing, which is probably some sort of polysaccharide, which I would guess, which I would guess is formed by bacteria, but could be just some sort of wonky thing happening to the pectin over time. I don't know. I wish I did. I'm sorry that Do you have a question? I might have an answer to this. Like, this is like the first time they've been completely 100% stumped on what the correct answer is right.

Right. And yeah, I can think of I listened to all the episodes and I've never heard you missed one before.

You know, I should give you some sort of prize for a complete for complete stomped out. But what I can do is go I'll go online, and I'll go into like the actual literature search, not just like the regular internet. So I'll go into like a go into Columbia's database of science literature. And I'll see if I can't find the stuff and barring that, I will, I will ask McGee and he will tell me what's going on. And we did have a question where I did follow up next week. So Natasha is now being very good about making sure I follow up. So listen in next week for the answer to the question. All right. All

right. Then I'll post something to the forum for remind you cool, thanks

a lot. Okay. Oh, depressing. First call stunt stunt. Yeah, that's me. Big jerk. Anyway. So, museum Museum, so the Museum of food and drink, is it you know, a museum that tried to start a long time ago, 656 years ago, six, I guess. And, you know, Patrick Martin's and I are now trying to get back off the ground again, and we're having a major fundraiser and the fundraiser is going to be on Sunday, Sunday, Sunday, March 27. And it's going to you know, it's not cheap. It's what is it? It's cheap for the for the food for what you get is $250. It's it's not inexpensive, but it's a bargain. five hour extravaganza. Well, we don't know we up to five hours extravaganza anyway. So we're putting it on. And here's the current and what we're doing is we're getting a bunch of chefs and bartenders to come in to Del Posto which is a fabulous, you know, restaurant in, in New York, four stars. Our friend Mark Ladner is the is the chef there. And we're getting a bunch of chefs and bartenders to come in and cook things based on specific themes, right? So we're giving them a theme and their dish is going to be inspired by it. So here is the list in no particular order. Dave Chang, his theme is American foods circa 1491. So that's going to be all foods that don't have all foods from the Americas prior to the Columbian Exchange. That should be interesting. I'm thinking it's probably going to do something with acorns, which was a big native internet Native American foodstuff but also a big Korean food stuff so he could probably pull in like, you know, different levels of, of work there. So I'm assuming he's gonna do something with acorns but who knows? wildly different, you know from WD 50. My brother in law I gave him because he's well known tech guy. I gave him caveman food. He was he was kind of mad at me, but you know, what are you gonna do caveman food Paleolithic? Mark Ladner the host chef from Del Posto I gave him ancient Rome. And so while he actually texted me he was like hey you gave you gave mark a softball there with the ancient Rome but not really ancient Roman cuisine is extraordinarily different from modern Italian cuisine has a completely different basis that you know spice and an ingredient basis you know, based more on on luggage seed and fish sauce and you know, just a whole different ingredient base and then what's known so it's not really a softball. That's what he's gonna be doing. Niels Niels Norton. You know, kind of of the French culinary has one right? I gave him just to be a jerk. I gave him fad diets. See what he does with that fad diets? Cesare Casella, who's coming at the beginning gonna give us a whole bunch of delicious salumi to fit in with the fact that we knew he was going to bring some movie we gave him shriveled meat as his category. And then okay, Carlo from Roberta's, whose last name I've never been able to pronounce. I'm going to try it. Well, merace But you have to say like merace Anyway, I don't know how you're supposed to pronounce anyway. He's gonna do New York food circa the early 1900s or sounds late 1800s, early 1900s and 1900s, early 1900s. Okay. Brooks Hadley, the pastry chef from Del Posto is going to be doing Hebrew food and Italy because there's a big group of people that basically had to leave Spain during the inquisitions settled in Italy and brought some very interesting dessert things with them, you know, some of which are kind of big and my family. And Christina Tosi also have Momofuku milk bar or from Fukuoka and milk bar we're giving her is a tough one space food. Here's why we're giving her space. She was like space food. Why are you giving me space food? I was like, well, Christina Tozi. Other than being you know, the fantabulous Christina Tosi that she is little known fact. She writes a lot of the Hassett plans for the suevey programs here in the city that chefs have, and has it was originally developed by large food corporations like Pillsbury. And for the space program, the idea being that they needed they needed a zero tolerance food system because if an astronaut gets the poops in the in the space, it's a big problem. So anyway, so as Hasebe was developed in part for the space program, and it's now used, basically in all industries for food, and so I gave her that as a tip of the hat to her Hasebe skills. Audrey Saunders from the pegu club will be making drinks Thomas Wah from death and CO also Simon Ford the head, I guess headworn a bartender for Pernod Ricard, Damien volti from Prime Meats and Evan Clem from br guests restaurants and fellow techie related bartender dude, we'll be doing it all proceeds will go to the museum of food and drink please go to http colon forward forward Mofaz dot MOF ad like museum food and drink dot Eventbrite spell it improperly b r i t.com. That's HTTP. Forward forward. Mo fed.eventbrite.com. For more info. All right. That was a long plug anyway, because we want you to come it's going to be a great, great time. All right. Now on to real questions.

I have a question about temporary chocolate in the microwave. Most of the instructions I've seen are very complicated regard requiring a good candy thermometer and often instructions to use a microwave multiple times or add additional cold chocolate to the microwave trough it's during etc, etc. I've tried about three or four times simply putting two cups of chocolate chips into the microwave until they turn glossy and removing them stirring them until they melt. Each time this two step process has worked just fine. Are the additional steps and temperature precision really necessary. Have I just been getting lucky or something else at work? Kurt? Kasdorf? Well, I think you're just lucky Kurt anyway, but but the point is, is that if that recipe works for you, like you will be repeatedly lucky if you do the same thing and it's in it's working, then it should be able to repeat itself because here, here's what's actually what's actually going on and what why the recipes are so complicated. And by the way, you have to make sure that the chocolate is actually tempering right like so. You have to make sure it's actually getting a good temper. I mean, obviously anyone can just melt chocolate in a microwave. The question is, are you getting a good temper? If you are getting a good temper and by the way, for those you well, you'll hear anyway. So chocolate has basically the cocoa butter in it has roughly six ways of crystallizing right the cocoa butter can form six different crystal structures and those crystal structures have different different properties, right. So, you know, most of and those crystals have different melting points, right? So what happens is badly tempered chocolate is mostly in form four, which is also known as beta prime and good temperature chocolate is informed five, which is beta crystals, right? So what happens is, if you heat chocolate up, melt out all the crystals and then cool it down too rapidly, which is basically any kind of cooling that you're going to do to it is too rapid. It will form mostly a type four beta prime crystals. And what what those are, is they're soft, right? They because they have a lower melting point. So they're very soft. They have a lot of they don't, they're not hard, they don't have a snap, and they're dull looking, they're not glossy. All in all, they're kind of crappy. And even if even if you didn't care about all the fact that it didn't have good texture, and it melted too low. If you store those for a long time, they will convert from beta prime to beta. And that sounds like it's a good thing, right? And stylish because the beta is what you want. Yeah, but it's a bad thing. You know, why? No? Well, it's because all of the forms of as they get more and more hard and more and more stable. When they go from beta prime to beta, they contract. And when they contract from beta prime to beta, they squeeze fat out of the cocoa part and you get that white fat bloom on the top. So poorly. Poorly tempered chocolate will get fat bloom very quickly, even if you didn't care about the snap and all the rest of that stuff. Right. Okay, so and so that's why the typical old school hardcore tempering technique is you melt out all of the crystals by taking it up to you know, like, 115 or so Fahrenheit, sorry, Celsius heads, we're going to do this one in Fahrenheit. And then you rapidly cool it down to you know, in the in the 80s somewhere, and then crystals start forming, and then you reheat it up to about 94. So to melt out all the crappy beta prime crystals right now, all you have in there as beta crystals. Now, when you call it again, she'll be tempered, because those beta crystals will act like little seeds that everything kind of hooks on to right, it's all about seeding it right, the easy way. And that's if you're starting from all you have, you're on a desert island, you have a pot, a thermometer and a bunch of untempered chocolate, right, that's how you would do it. Most of the time, what we do is we just melt the chocolate, right, we take it up, melt it, bring it down into the range where beta crystals want to form in the 90s. Right, and then stir in chopped up tempered chocolate that already have the good seeds in the good crystal form. And then all of a sudden, all of the chocolate as it cools will form those nice stable beta crystals, right? And but you need at least you know about, you know, one to 3% of beta crystals mixed all throughout it. So you're stirring it right because it happened to seed it to seed it properly. Now, when you're doing it in the Nook, right, you're starting with, hopefully, with tempered chocolate, if you start with temperature chocolate, right, and you nuke it, so it's like you say just glossy on the outside, and then you stir it, so long as the temperature of that thing is in the beta zone right in the like 90s and not a low temperature where you're going to be forming bad beta prime crystals, right. So as long as as soon as that last piece of chocolate melts, you're still in that like you know 9090 9293 94 Fahrenheit range in there and 95 and that zone right then you will seed properly with beta crystals and it'll work but the reason they have it like taking it all the time and stirring it and it's sometimes throwing in seed chocolate is because they're assuming that you're going to overheat the mass of chocolate so that when it's all melted is not going to be in the right temperature range. So yes, you got lucky but maybe you'll get repeatably lucky if I were you I would save some seed chocolate to stir in after it's all melted just in case and you can take the temperature when it's done. And that should give you the answer so long winded but I mean truck a temporary is an interesting subject. The good reference book to get on chocolate that small is the science of chocolate by Steven T Beckett it's expensive but small and fairly easy to read. I think probably a smaller investment and faster to read than the other book that people use now trumpet science and technology by Emanuel fo fo Aqua right and I don't know that anyone uses the old chocolate references is when I started using back in the day which is Manaphy Murphy's big old chocolate book. Right and with that we will go to our first commercial break call it all your questions 271849721287184972128 cooking issues

God I want everybody read now All right. I'm gonna get back into debt as high as I can When I move like

this Welcome back to Cooking issues call in your questions. 271-849-7212 Wait, that's 718-497-2128 and although that's the longest we've played that song during the intermission, we still have not made it the funky D he's gonna make it the funky D in a little while but we'd be here all day if we waited for James to go down to funky D although it is well worth the wait. I encourage you all to go out and do it to death as James, I guess actually did since he's now dead anyway. Right? Dumb, really dumb, dumb, man. What do you want out of me? Okay. Jason writes in from England. And I think he was listening actually to two weeks ago, saying that he was listening to me answer the question about cooking texture using hydrocolloids. And he says more conventionally you just use high high gluten flour, and he won't get a ready, ready cookie, he'll just limit the spread, which, you know, actually got confirmed and said last week from Christina Tosi. But here's a you know further confirmation that what you want to do to get your cookie to not spread so much is use a high gluten flour. Jason adds a secondary thing, which is also let the let the cookie rest in the fridge for 24 hours, I guess that will, I guess, develop the dynamic, while the cold will limit the spread, as we say but also maybe developing some of the some of the flour more I don't know. But anyway, thank you, Jason, for that tip. Now, we had a question and it sent me off on like a bunch of research. So you're gonna have to hear another one of my long winded nonsense things. But Chris Anderson writes in to your long winded welcome. Oh, we have a caller. All right. Caller you are on the air. Hey, how you doing? Dave is doing all right. See if we get a double stump this week. What do you got?

My name is Matt. I'm

actually calling from Chicago. Hey, Chicago. Hey, Matt. From

actually I used to work in New York with Wiley and Mark and all those guys.

You're not at? You're not out there with Mike Sharon. Right. Where are you cooking out Chicago.

Not. I'm actually a sous chef at a steakhouse. But they're just ultimate crazy busy, but it's a whole different story. My question is, I'm really interested in the nitrous infusion using the isi Greenwater right. And I was wondering if you tried it with any viscous liquids like say honey, or some kind of scented syrup?

All right, I haven't but if I if Okay, so here's the thing, right, honey has honey is just extremely thick. Right? So if I was going to do it, I would I'm assuming it would work. But I think you'd want to keep the whole thing like more like warmer than we normally keep it right? So I would put the whole isI in or EC which is at the day like now you see Geez anyway. Oh no, no, I do it all. It's not you it's me. I can't because in here it was one and in Europe it was the other and they're trying to make it both the same now but like no one can keep it straight and when I say no one mean no one else seems to have a problem anyway etc. So I would put the whole thing into a into a warm Ben Murray for a while and the reason is you just need it to be thin enough to get accurate you know to get punched into the pores of your product right. So if it's if you get it nice and liquidity it by warming it then I think it should work you know and but you have to you have to keep it liquid like warm during the whole process down to the time when you're venting it so that it can also bubble back out again. I've never tested it but I have I have high hopes that it will work and we put it that way. Outstanding sound cool, but give it a shot and then let us know how it works.

And I got another thing on the Google effect. I was listening to the old shows on the land to work the other day and I was like I honestly I didn't believe that you could cloudy the water. I used to drink prosthesis a lot and I didn't think of the water the liquor would get cloudy just by dilution. And so I had to try it. And the interesting thing is, is that it does obviously get cloudy by dilution, but if you put in a microwave for less than 10 seconds, the cloudiness goes away. And then by adding more ice cubes to it, the cloudiness comes back. So I tried it with with boiling hot water, I tried to add water to water. And I still get the cloudiness still comes in from dilution, but it goes away much faster with heat. So that's an interesting, interesting thing.

Yeah, so. So when you're heating, that actually makes sense to me, right? So what's happening is, you're adding water. And as you add water, you reach a point at any given temperature, where the oil is no longer soluble in that percentage of ethanol, right. And so it forms instantly forms little micro droplets of oil. And that's what makes it look cloudy. If you let it sit at that temperature for a long time, sometimes depending I don't know with pasties, but with some of the stuff that I make that that cloudiness, the oil will actually float to the top and then it won't be cloudy anymore, right? But what you're saying is you heat it, and when you heat it, you're re increasing the solubility of the oil into the remaining ethanol fraction, right? Presumably you're not boiling, if you boiled it, you'd probably make the problem worse. But by heating, you're increasing the solubility of the product and causing it to go clear again and then when you drop the temperature again, but adding ice you're doing two things. One, you're watering it down more which is going to increase the the drop out and you're also decreasing the temperature which increases it drop it that makes sense. That's interesting, but I've never experimented with it before.

Yeah, it was just a weird thing. I thought I had to try it out. But let you know. Alright, cool. Thanks a lot. Thanks, man. And I'll let you know I'm the honey girls.

Okay. Very good. Thanks so much. Oh, we have another caller caller you're on the air.

Hi, Dave. Was Mr. Ellison Nepalis the other day and I cut them into cubes and I was just soaking in some water and I noticed this gelatinous substance was forming. And I guess that's the, the the substance of the cacti used to like retain moisture in the desert. Right.

Right. It's like well, they're hydrocolloid similar like what aloe vera has right?

Okay, so is it like a mueslis like okra or like filet or is it a completely different

you know, that's interesting. I haven't researched whether or not it can be used as a thickener it is sure is slimy interestingly enough on Sunday I was cooking no polish and you know how I mean when I when I cook them I always you know, I tried to get the I tried to get the spines off with the minimum of damage because I know they're going to ooze out a lot you know and so I usually grill them first and then let them cool down of it before I slice and so they don't get to slimy on me, but I've never tried to actively actively extract the slime so Did did you do then did you decat the slime off that was in the in the water and then try to use it for something or No,

I did not. But we'll try it in the future. But the first thing I thought it was like okra and other other sickness. I wonder how it would compare?

I mean, I'm sure it's probably all different hydrocolloid have different actions. And we're used to thinking of hydrocolloid as being these things that come in powdered form. But in reality, hydrocolloids are all not all most are, are just like what you say they come from natural sources, and they've been discovered in natural ways like most of the seaweed, seaweed, like you know, you can extract Carageenan from Irish moss by boiling it right, or you can and so okra basically, is has this kind of snotty, slimy stuff that is actually a natural hydrocolloid, just not one that's used industrially so it doesn't get lumped in. But you know, many products have, you know, the things so there's a chef from Spain, I forget who it was who did it but you know, made a made a lot of demos basically, using the natural hydrocolloids and Aloevera. Right. Although I guess if you if you do that wrong, it can give you the poops because of the latex but yeah, but the so, you know, to answer your question, I don't know. I don't know of any commercially used cactus based thickening things, but you know, it is it is some polysaccharide right. So it is some hydrocolloid. And then the question is, what are its what are its properties? It doesn't seem like it's a gelling hydrocolloid, right? It seems more like a thickener if you if you ask but the question is like Will it thicken without making to making things to slimy it's a fairly slimy stuff you know what I mean? It's it's more on the order like you say of okra, and so when you overthinking with okra as opposed to filet like like those those those things can take on a bit of a slippery nature right which I actually kind of liked for those dishes, but some people don't. You know what I mean? Like some people, some people don't get down with the okra I happen to think that okra is one of God's gifts to humanity. I love okra but a lot of people a lot of people do not. I don't know why it's fried okra is one of the great things in the world. Anyway, um, So I think again, I have noticed this effect. But I haven't seen whether there's any you know what I'll do again, I'm not going to cut this as a complete stump, by the way, because I do know what you're talking about. But what I'll do is I'll try and see whether anyone has characterized what the polysaccharides are in the Nepalis. And by the way, for those who don't know what the hell we're talking about, I realize no Polish are like prickly pear cactus leaves, you can buy them in Latin stores. Be careful because some of them are relatively innocuous, but some of them the spines can be pretty nasty and can get in your fingers when you're working with them. Scrape the scrape off the spines with with a knife I cut off usually the very tip end which is only part of cut off because it's hard to scrape that thing accurately. Brush with oil, salt, pepper grill. Enjoy because they're delicious. They're also kind of sour, they're slimy and kind of tart and kind of delicious. Don't you think? So? I think so. Great. Yeah. Anyway, so I'll try and see whether anyone has characterized what the polysaccharide is in there. And meanwhile, you see whether you can thicken up a steel with him and give us a holler back All right, thanks. Very good. Thank you Take a Break All right, we will take our Nastasya telling me we will take our second commercial break even though that was a short segment because I took the longest to last anyway 718 What is it says 184972128 That's 718-497-2128 cooking issues

this oh man gotta do like this need to get this number in no

I can right away I feel so down I need to get down in order for me to get started I got to get an audible me to get down I got to get in deep. Need to get in deep down down

Oh yeah. Down D that's the balls goes down to D. Everyone else goes up. James goes down. Back here cooking issues call in your questions. 27184972128. That's 718-497-2128 All right. Chris Anderson writes in he says, I've tried making authentic French macaroons back at home a few times. And while they taste great, I don't seem to be able to achieve the Polish flat look of a lot of the law Deray which is you know, the famous French macaroon shop and Paris, mine tend to crack and collapse as they're baking. Would it help to use an Italian Marang instead of a French? Could the Marang be too stiff? Is the oven temperature too high at 180 Celsius? Are there any modern ingredients I could add to improve the result? I'd really appreciate your advice. So first of all, when we're talking about these these, you know macaroon macaron, whatever you want to call them. What we're referring to here, the Laduree style is basically a sandwich style with either a ganache or jelly filling in between two soft almond and egg white based delicious things. They come in various colors. And they like fried okra are one of God's great creations. And I love them. So okay, so here's the thing. I have a lot of things to say on this subject. Right. But I will I will tell you that first and foremost, I just walked up to one of our pastry chefs today and was like alright, you know, this guy is having this problem. What do you think? Here's what here's what Chef Juergen one of our lead pastry instructors said, One, what kind of sugar you're using if you're using a coarse sugar to make your Marang or folding with the sugar with the almonds. Try going to a try going to a my brains go on a finer grain of sugar. He also said that if you're if your things are cracking and collapsing, perhaps you aren't deflating your preps you aren't deflating your, your your egg whites and enough before they go in, so there's too much air left in the mix. And there it's puffing up too much and cracking and collapsing. I thought that was really interesting. Because most of the time when you try to do a recipe with an egg white, you want to make sure not to deflate it. And he's saying, Well, maybe you're not deflating it enough. I thought that was very interesting. The other thing is, I'm not sure I didn't do the conversion from Celsius to Fahrenheit. But if your oven is too hot, it can puff up too fast and collapse. Also, remember, most recipes tell you to leave the door ajar when you're cooking these things because I guess they want the steam to escape. So those are all those are all things things to look at. But in the course of researching your problem, I came across these things which you may or may not find find interesting. One is just a book that I think everyone should own. But nobody does. It's almost completely unavailable. It's called perfect bakery and confectionery by the Regional craft school and Natasha is going to be gloating, because I'm pumping a Swiss group and she's like, she's Queen Switzerland. But this craft school in Switzerland puts out this series of books, but this one perfect bakery confectionery is unavailable, except through them. It's like $99 really makes me angry. And I can't find it on book find or anything, but it's one of the great pastry books, because what it does is it has pictures side by side of hey, what happens when the flower is too fine, to course, just right, it'll show you a picture of all the bakeries stuff. So they have like a four page section on macaroons, but they're unfortunately they're not the kind you're talking about. They're the old school Italian, denser, not sandwich based cookies. Alright. Secondly, I will go through a a short history on the macro is the macaron obviously, originally in Italian product, and apparently derived from the same word as as macaroni beat, because it's ground it's basically any form of kind of ground almond paste and sugar. That is then has egg whites added to it, right. The French ones, you know, are beaten egg white, but they don't have to be beaten, they can just be mixed in for a denser, denser macaron. That was the original one take into taken to France with the meta cheese when they went over. The coconut stuff is a later is a later edition where almond was in whole or in part substituted with shredded coconut. And so that you know that's how the coconut macaroon. So most Americans, you asked me about a macaroon and they're thinking about a coconut product, but that was actually derived from the almond based one. Now the back of the macaroni that we're talking about that sandwich everyone credits, everyone credits, you know, the sky at law Deray in the early part of the 20th century with inventing it right and the guy's name I forget what it is. I have it here. Pierre de Fontaine, right. That was the grandson of the original letter A right he they say he invented this idea of, of making a double decker macaroon. Putting ganache in, in the middle. And I don't think that's I mean, that's what everyone says. That's what everyone on the internet says. But I was researching this and I went to one of the great one of my favorite other favorite pastry books, which you can actually get for free on the internet because it's old. It was written in 1904. And it's called Modern Baker confectioner and caterer printed in 1907, rather by John Kirkland is a four volume set, and you can actually get them was published in England, and you can still get it cheap. And these are a fantastic, fantastic set of books, state of the art baking from 1907. And actually, I think they were kept revising it up till 1930. And copies are still cheap. It's four volumes. And you can get each one for like, you know, 13 bucks if you're in England, but it shipped over here, it's like 20 bucks, because that no one in the US has, it's an English only thing, which is where I bought my copy. But I was researching macaroons, then. And prior to when Lata Ray was supposed to have invented it, right, they had, they had something where basically, they would always sandwich the macaroons together to form a nice appearance. And that's why if you read recipes, and this is only for macaroon heads out there, they'll tell you to put it on parchment on a and when you pull it off the baking sheet to put some water between the parchment of the thing to make the macaroons come off easier. In fact, they were on wafer paper before and put on water which dissolve the wafer paper and you could pull it off and the bottom will be tacky. And you could stick the two macaroons together and make a macaroon on macaroon sandwich. Now one of the recommendations that this book makes I think is very interesting is if you have problems sticking these two things together right then because maybe they're not wet enough or they're just not sticking then you can take some some apricot jelly they recommend and white between forming what up a standard lingerie style macaroon. So maybe this dude at law Deray humped up a bunch of macaroons one day and was like these things aren't sticking together and then put ganache instead of a jelly in between them all and sold that as like you know the cool thing because they definitely popularize them, you know what I'm saying? Anyway, so those are my thoughts on macaroons, and you should definitely go out and look on the internet for Kirklands modern bakery and confectionery or buy a hardcopy like I have hasn't really good section on molding and cornstarch. And as a lot of me even though it's very old has a lot of a lot of if this goes wrong, do this, if that goes wrong, do this etc, etc, etc, a really great set of books. And they also have an interesting thing to say about macaroons if you're making macaroons in the US and old school, they're talking about old school time macarons here, right? If it is it, they're very influenced by the amount of oil in the almonds. So if you're making it from scratch with California almond, you're gonna get a very different result from if you're making a macaroon with like a European or Marcona, something like that it has very high fat content. So a lot of the California almonds we get have a lower fat content. And what they're saying is, is if your almonds don't flow well enough, if they're too pinched up, you're probably using an almond with not enough fat. And if they flow too freely, maybe you're using one with too much fat they were talking about buying almond paste that were adulterated either with nonfat products or with or with extra fat, but it's something that I've never thought about I thought was very, very interesting. Anyway, so. So that's that for the macaroon. I love macarons Don't you love macaroni was like one, right? I would like one right now as well. Anyway. Okay, so now on to the last question, excuse me have to reach over and get the paper. We are a paper based show today instead of an iPad Bay show today, which is very interesting. Okay, Joe bluet. Who is a at Dallas? Where's the Dallas college? I don't know, the first page of Dallas, Dallas, Dallas, Dallas, Dallas. Yes, Dallas. Anyway, he writes in and says some very kind words about about us. And he said he had a couple couple questions. Right. So one he was he's, by the way thinking of building his own rotary evaporator. And he's a chemistry major at the University of Dallas. He's trying to he's thinking about building his own rotary evaporator. So am I saw my job. But unfortunately, I haven't had the time to do it. Hopefully sometime, very soon, I will have the opportunity to do that. More on that in a couple minutes.

But he also is looking for a budget centrifuge. And I think we posted on that a couple of times trying to find a budget centrifuge, don't go to budget, right, make sure that the centrifuge is safe. That's, that's what I'm gonna, what I'm gonna say. But he has a question that I want to get to. And he says, I really love the multifaceted aspect of the culinary arts that you get to deal with. And what you do is something I'm interested in the mixture of organics or fact and kinetic chemistry is fascinating. How do you come to have such a great job? And what do you recommend I do to move towards such a position? Okay, here's what I say. One, you know, food science is we don't do food science, right? We use science to make food, which is kind of a fundamental difference. Like I don't really, I don't have like a big, you know, I can't do quantitative chemistry, I can't do anything like that all the stuff we do. There's no real analytical work. It's all using principles and ideas with either standard kitchen cooking where, or things that we've repurposed as standard kitchen cooking, where so when I'm using a centrifuge, I'm not using a centrifuge to do to analyze something, I'm using it to try and create a delicious product, right? When I use a rotary evaporator, I mean, although I am purifying and distilling, I'm not doing it for the same reasons that a chemist says it's not part of an analytical study, right? Or even a production of like drug or something like that. So what I do is very specialized, and it's in and we read a lot of science and I love science I do and you know, I love it. But what we what I'm actually doing day to day, is cooking. And so we're you know, we're what you have to do to kind of get to do the kind of stuff that I get to do is cook a lot, you know, and so, and not just with science and tech stuff, do a lot of cooking, you need to have a lot of cooking under under your belt, you need to love cooking, you need to love tasting, you need to taste everyone else's stuff. You need to be curious about all different ingredients and what they do and how they interact. And I think McGee said it best when he when he No, he wrote a book called The Curious Cook. And that's the name of his. That's the name of his second book, sadly, out of print, hopefully he brings it back into print. It's a very personal book. And it basically just shows that you know, what you need to be McGee is two, well, what you need to be McGee is to be like a real sweetheart and also smart, you know, very smart and also read a lot, but be very curious and be very observant about food. And that's, you know what you really what you really need to do. The second part of it is you have to make friends in the food world. That's the sad truth. You know, you could sit around and be you know, know a lot and do a lot. And if you don't have friends, it's hard to network and get an actual job where someone will pay you. And so luckily nowadays it's a lot easier with the internet to get to know people and to become more known in these kinds of subjects because the subject matter people it's a very small group who you know, care about technology cooking, but it's, you know, you can kind of get in touch with them more than you used to, but of course the bar is higher than it was you know, Let's say, six, six years ago, when I started doing this, five years ago, when I started working at the French culinary, there were fewer people who are known for doing it, and the bar to entry was lower. So anyway, that's what I recommend, cook a lot, get to know some people in the food world. And, you know, eat a lot and cook a lot. That's basically the answer. And while we get to it, he says, Thank you for putting your experimentation online, it's been a pleasure reading about them. And hopefully, I can try some of them eventually. Again, thank you for the compliment. And I will say we apologize. Yet again, for the lack of posting we've had recently recently, we've been very busy, very, very, very busy and working on some new ventures. So I am now officially March 1, going to basically be starting my own consulting company, which is we've been working on, which is why we haven't written been posting so much, I'm still going to be the Director of culinary technology at the French Culinary Institute, I'm still going to be teaching classes, and I'm still going to be maintaining cooking issues as the French culinary Institute's cooking blog. And you'll be happy to know people who bother me about not posting that I will be contractually obliged to write one post a week or at least for a month. But it allows us to do some other fun stuff like we can take on outside people if they want to work do stuff or cooking issue. So if there's someone out there, who is doesn't mind getting beaten down, because we'll beat you down, doesn't mind. You know, who is a complete perfectionist when it comes to like thinking about things? Right? Who you know what I mean? Right? and stuff. Show me I'm a pain in the butt or pain in the butt. Yeah, but you know, if you like the style, right? And if you if you if you think the way that we think, you know, then maybe, you know, if, if it doesn't bother you spending, you know, a zillion years worried about what what's going on inside of a corn kernel during next amortization. Well, you know, maybe, maybe, and you want to do this for little to no remuneration, maybe you too, could work with cooking issues. And that's this week's cooking issues. We hope to hear from you next week.