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.

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Hello, and welcome to cooking issues on the heritage Radio Network. I'm the host of cookie issues Dave Arnold here with Natasha the hammer Lopez coming to you live from Roberta's pizzeria in Brooklyn, New York. coming to you every Tuesday from approximately 12 to 1245 Calling all of your cookie related questions. 27184972128 That's 718-497-2128 Actually this time she prefers the non cookie related questions right do I prefer issues? Yeah, she she prefers just straight up issues and if you knew her better, you'd see why. Today's Come on now. Right. Today's episode is brought to you by the 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, the Hurst family has raised cattle on the rich, sustainable native grasslands of the Central California coast. The result is beef with extraordinary flavor that is memorable and natural as the surrounding landscapes. For more information go to www dot Hearst ranch.com That's www.hurstbridge.com Hey, Mr. Josh, anything interesting happened this week. Yeah. What? You can't divulge. Really? Yeah. Wow. I'm intrigued. Do I know this stuff? Yeah, I really. I feel like I feel like I'm being left hanging over pizza. I'm gonna well for all of you out there in internet land. I'm gonna get the real skinny when it comes to pizza by the way, the payment we get for doing this fabulous show every week is a pizza and a salad Correct? Yes, yes. Anyway. Not that we not that that's not good enough payment Jack. Just talking to pepper data that regular document for you guys. Okay. Okay, here come the questions from Andrew Cummings. Hi, David has Dasha. I really like all the stuff you do apart from providing me with tons of ideas. I think he's must be from England, Australia. I guess he said right, because he sells tons in the British fashion. Reading your articles and listen to your radio show. Keep my passion for food going well, thank you. He's a food technologist. A an honorable profession when done right. When done right and not a very honorable profession when done right. is wondering if I can tell him anything about cinnamon and it's gelling effects. A couple of years ago, he was working for a chocolatier in a small boutique store and saw the liquid comp components and pen forte which is a delicious kind of it's weird kind of candy dense. Sweet from Siena I actually like it Do you like it? I don't know it. You know it's that really dense dark with all the nuts and the candy fruit in it. It's got the it's got the wafer paper on the bottom and it stays good forever and you slice it into discs into wedges. Is it like a caramely? No it's not imagine like a fruitcake without the cake. Anyway, but It's real dense anyway. Sorry, sorry for interrupting the middle of your question there, Andrew. So he was making some panforte day and this stuff and turned into a thick slime. And he asked his boss about it and he said it happens wherever he adds a cinnamon, and he looked around on the internet for some explanation is why cinnamon would cause this kind of gelling effect, but could find no academic papers on it. I'm guessing it's probably some polysaccharide similar to what's in gum arabic, but he'd like to know if it can be extracted and used as a future gelling agent. Well, I was not able to find any information on that. Although there is a polysaccharide in cinnamon that some nutjob has named cinnamon as polysaccharide. There's some sort of BS health benefit or something like that. But it doesn't say anything about its gelling properties. I doubt it's exactly similar to gum arabic, gum arabic, isn't just it's not a bark phenomenon. It's a it's a sap phenomenon. So gum arabic is a mix of protein, small amount of protein, and gum SAP, although there could be some residual stuff in the bark, and clearly, there are many barks that are used for thickening for instance, you know, feel a powder, which isn't the leaves of the book, I always forget anyways. So yes, obviously, there's probably some sort of some sort of gelling agent. Another thing is pen forte is very, very thick and usually uses a boiled sugar component. So it's probably close to gumming up on you anyway. So the addition of anything, it's going to absorb water and have any sort of polysaccharide or water binding effect might cause it to gum up. But I'm interested in this I'm going to ask me if I have Nikki, Nikki, I'm going to ask McGee next time I speak to them if I can remember, an interesting thing is is it Cassia not regular cinnamon Cassia has in it coumarin, which is an anticoagulant, so the exact opposite of making things fake making things thin anyway, I was not able to find anything, but I'm going to keep my ears out for that and anyone else. If you hear anything about it or had experience, please write in and tell us because we're interested in that sort of thing. Okay, I'm gonna go on to hello from Adam. Adam has a big and related question that he hopes we can help him with. You think so? Baking, baking, I think we can help. Yeah, I don't know. Okay, this is actually pretty complicated one so he's gonna read it straight out. He said You know, there are plenty of situations where you need to hydrate a dough to work to work it but where the gluten formation is the enemy for instance, pie dough biscuits, scones, cakes, cookies, etc. To keep the gluten under control, you usually use low protein flour, avoid overworking and then add a lot of fat and the fat basically is coating the flour particles and preventing the water from forming balloon. Okay, so and reasonably is right about experimenting replacing water in the pastry crispy in a pastry crust recipe with vodka, since apparently alcohol doesn't have the gluten activating properties that water does producing hypothetically producing a crust with even less chewiness than usual this is true. This is not only for pie crust, this is also for batters. So I mean the famous examples in pie crust land would probably be America's Test Kitchen. Chris Kimball's. You know his show that he's cooks illustrated guy where they have their pastry, their their pie crust recipe that includes a good portion of vodka in it does two things. One allows you to add more liquid so that you can make it a little more it's not as as not as flaky doesn't come apart in your hands. it volatilizes often doesn't form a lot of gluten so it can be rolled without getting tough. Right. So that's one application. The second famous one is probably Heston Blumenthal's fish and chips batter where he will add vodka to the batter to prevent sort of gluten formation to make it stay crisp. without it getting tough at all, without the batter getting tough at all. And without having to add a lot of extra, you know, starch binders other than flour to get it to be where he wants. So these are two very well known applications of alcohol being used as the well hydrates the wrong word because it's not water, but you know what I'm saying to give the dose some sort of plasticity. So anyway, so he goes on, he says, It sounds like the Holy Grail pastry crust is a dough with no gluten formation whatsoever. I wonder what would happen if you inhibit gluten formation entirely with the starch still be in granular form? I think you still want the granules be hydrated to some extent, even if they're just swelling, and sitting together and extremely delicate array with little intergranular entanglements so that you're not eating something that's going to turn it to dust when you bite down on it. Well, zero gluten formation 100% of zero gluten formation is actually quite problematic because it means the dough is extremely hard to work. This is why it's very difficult to work many Gluten Free Recipes, right? So if you're going to make I mean people do make pie crust and whatnot exclusively out of things like potato flour and rice flour for Gluten Free Recipes. But these dos are typically extremely hard to handle the same way that non flour dumpling wrappers are hard to handle. And the way that those are usually solved is he will pre cook pre boil a portion of your starch so at the starch will entangle yourself a little bit to give you a little bit of structure so that you can then form it into a workable dough so a little bit of information can be helpful for our is always helpful usually in formation of dough not so much in batters. So in batteries, it's not as big of a deal. But anyway, so So he goes on and his last thing is positing saying a while ago was talking about the free soft stability of gelling agents. And this came to mind what if we had a gel that had poor heat stability so that the gel was holding on to most of the water when you're forming the dough, but when it's heated, the gel loses its hold on the water and allows it to seep into the flour. And that would control the shape of baked goods and make it so that it had a fairly high water content. Without it for having a lot of good information. What I'm not sure if that would actually be useful or not, but if you want to experiment with it, because in general, it's very, very low water formation things still are delicious. The classic example is shortbread which is basically you know, you take of butter and sugar and a tiny bit of flour and barely get it to hold together and you bake it and is there anything more delicious than shortbread? No, no? You like it? No. Do you like you don't like it? I don't really like it. You don't like shortbread? Know what? It's like hard tech. Are you nuts? Who made your shortbread? Who made you surprised by my cheese? Oh my god and shortbread like hard tack. Oh, my God. Ah, anyway, I'm sorry for that outburst. All right, listen, we have a caller, I'm gonna tell you a first try and add our fluid gel. If you want to get some it's going to hold on to water but at the closer the boiling point will will melt out catholiccare Getting won't form a fluid gel. So you can't use it even though it's going to melt at a lower temperature. Hard tech indeed. Caller you're on the air.

Hi, Dave. I love the show. By the way, lots and lots of useful hints. I have a couple of questions about hydrocolloid. Specifically, I've been using Algar and guar gum together size and Sam and Corazon to stabilize emulsions. And I was wondering if you have any tips for making them heat resistant, particularly like a Hollandaise or a verb LA?

Okay, what glory are you using?

It's just different guar gum on it. I got it from a will powder.

Okay. I don't know which will is a good guy taste it. If it has a bad taste to it, it means he's sourcing and is no offense to him, because I don't know what he's sourcing. But he's sourcing an inexpensive guar. And if that has a beanie taste to it, is it before I answer your question, it has a beanie kind of off taste to it, you're going to want to call a company called T IC gums and get there there's which is called guar flavor. It's flavor free guarentee 2000, or some crap like that, but it's flavor free guar. And that's that's awesome. Right? That's, that's really good. Now will might be sourcing that. So if you taste his guar and it tastes okay, then I stick stick with it. But if it does have kind of an off taste to you, then I'm looking to get another guar. Now what specific problems you having with with stability using that system?

Well, what it is it's a reasonable temperature, it is very, very stable, more stable than any holidays of raw making. But I want something that I can pour onto the plate, like at the same heat that I would pour like a demi glass or any other typical hot sauce. But when I get up to those temperatures, you know, like the 60 neighborhood they wore won't help it and it just splits eventually.

So even at 60, even at 60 I

wasn't I wouldn't be not precise was my measurements because I'm not keeping it in circulators chaos, keeping it trying to keep it just in the traditional steam table. We don't have that sort of control. So I was wondering like I have methyl cellulose is there any other products that are combinations of percentages that will increase the heat resistance?

Well, Metacell is probably Metacell is Metacell gels when it gets hot, so it's going to get firms and it's not going to stay portable. I'm surprised so when you heat guar what happens is guar loses some of its thickening power it doesn't get damaged in any way when it cools down it will come back to its thickness but guar loses a bit of its thickness as it gets heated up unlike Xanthan which loses its which only loses a very little bit of its abilities when it when it's heated up. Now, I wouldn't want to thicken the the guar at all because I mean add more guar because a you're going to start tasting guar and B it's going to get too thick when it gets cold. I'm wondering whether the heat the damage is actually happening to the egg proteins in it right?

Like I'm speak to keep it as more like a traditional Holland well at first I was doing hollandaise, that style then I tried doing verb law and had good results of both, but I'm trying to keep that original Hollandaise verbal on texture and I thought if I if I brought my percentage is too high, it became a bit too. I mean, you know what I mean? So I was wondering if because already I found that during the Xanthan and guar together made good results. I was wondering if there was a third guy to bring in there. That might bring some of that heat resistance without bringing my percentage is too high.

Tripled gum systems can be difficult because you can have multiple interactions with things So what you basically you don't have an emulsifier in there what you the only emulsifier you have are the while the egg in The one and the and the milk solids in the other. So you're both guar and Xanthan, the guar is acting basically as a thickening agent to prevent the particles from glomming together. And the Xanthan is acting as a weak gelling agent when it's not being stirred, right. And so that's basically your stabilization system, you might want to move to an added emulsifier. So, a good one in this choice might be gum arabic, right. So instead of using Xanthan, we use a mix of gum arabic and Xanthan called take a look at that also from tip gums, take a look at 310 s and take a look at two Xs and it's a basically it's a mix of xanthan gum arabic, gum arabic is going to act as your as your emulsifier. Right? And then the and the and the Xanthan is going to act as your stabilizer as a weak gelling agent when you're not staring and sitting on the same table. I've made butter syrup's just butter serves with that, that will sit on your bench or get heated indefinitely without breaking. So then if you're having further problems with breaking, you can add something like guar, or even a starch to something like egg yolk to prevent the egg yolk proteins from being able to to to coagulate and you know, in turn crappy on you. So, I would move to I would try a system of gum arabic and Xanthan and an easy premix. One is a tickle boy to 10 or 310 s which they'll sell to you or sample out to you. And or just get commercially available gum arabic and add it into that because I think what you need is to add an actual emulsifier. And the good news about the gum arabic is it's fairly stable over a wide range of heats. And it's also fairly stable over a wide range of dilution. So if you were to then suddenly use a like, like, like you could even fortify a liquid into that per block to thin it out a little bit and it would still hold it sauce consistency so it acts it's a lot more friendly than a traditional per block and it could make you could have like a base there. That'd be useful for a lot of different recipes.

Right right. Great. So a gum arabic definitely sounds like the next thing I need to try. I hear you with one more quick one before I go. The I heard you talking about gone by like candies just a second ago and I was actually planning on doing a wedding where I was gonna have candies at the end. What product is the best one is to get that that sour patch kids kind of stretchy jellies

well so like the classic American ones you want an American Sour Patch Kid those are gelatin mats just straight up gelatin. And in the I was

I was using that and now it was getting like more kind of solid comfortable before getting stretchy. What am I doing wrong?

I mean, I haven't I haven't. It's been a long time since I've worked at anything like that. I've never gotten really good results they but the from everything I've read like the gummy bears are starch molded. And so it's all about getting you know, that's why they have that poured looking back because they're molded into starch, right? So it's like it's it's all about getting your moisture levels right and just not rushing it like those gummy bears take a couple of days to make. So they're you know, I mean, it's so it's all about getting the moisture level right and having them dry in exactly the right rate. That's why gummy bears, they don't last in the bag. Right? You could tell if you got an old one because they turned hard and the and the young ones that are just right have the right texture. So I mean, I would look you can look in some of the old books like like that one that mentioned a bunch of weeks back, I don't have the name in my head by Kirkland called professional patisserie from like the 18 like early 1900s Because they have all the cornstarch recipes, but there are some modern books that also talk about that. I don't know whether Torreblanca book talks about that. But he talks a lot about cornstarch and molding. And it's interesting interesting stuff. European based jellies are more based on pectin but that's more of those fruit slice textures that your teas think into and and not seen as a gummy bear. Also good I think probably easier and faster to make.

Yeah. One other problem I was having is when I coated them with with citric acid I was getting a little bit of bleeding. Do you know anything about that

would have been bleeding?

I guess I hadn't dried them properly. But they they are the other thing. I was doing half citric acid half shirts. I didn't want to call it with pure citric acid. I think it was the sugar when it contacted the jelly it started leaching water.

Hmm. That's interesting. It probably just wasn't I mean it I've never done a coating of a candy like that. They probably make the candy first and then spray it with something so they can pan it. Do you know what I'm saying? So they probably have Yeah, I don't know that for certain I'm saying that. I'm saying that out loud just saying it but I that's how I would do it. Rather than trying to control the the powder and the candy making it the same time. But call it something cornstarch or something like that. Well they mold them in cornstarch and then they probably they probably have something that they paint paint off the pan. I'm not sure what like maybe an alcoholic and then get it to it here. But I don't know I'd have to look into it. But the citric acid shouldn't cause you any problems. But go ahead and get some other acids to get malic acid get tartaric acid.

I will go in and find my gum arabic all I'll look for those too as well.

All right, give us a holler. Thanks a lot. Thanks a lot. Going onto our first commercial break on cooking issues.

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out Welcome back to Cooking issue so that was Jim Croce we haven't had Jim Croce as our as our middle music before right and stache Oh, yeah, we love Jim Croce because I used to listen to my mom when I was growing up used to play it all the time. But like she has a song where he's like this dashing, I always joke about this. He has a song where he's like, I know it's kind of late. I hope it didn't wake you and then he goes on, like have this like, like crappy love poem. Or he's like, I hope I you know, I just call to say I love you to song. But like soon as Sasha was going through it, we're like, you know, it's the phone's ringing at 3am. You pick it up, you're like, Oh, gee, this is new, it can lead or what? Gems? Snap out of it. Anyway. Okay. We have a question from see which one we're going to take next. We have a question from Johnny hunter in Madison, Wisconsin. Hi, I have a couple of questions about using Aktiva rm and dry carry meets Aktiva RM. But for those of you out there not in the know is meat glue, the wonderful, wonderful, wonderful product that glues any proteins together. First, does it work to glue two muscles together and then do a dry cure, he was thinking this might be nice as he was trying to do a dry cured ham without the bone. It would allow for better shape and, and less air pockets, etc. That's true. The way they do a boneless like upper Shooto is actually cure it bone in and then they d bone it and they have a very high pressure press that presses it into a handshake mode. That's why all shooters are the same shape, because they've been crushed into that mold. These are the ones that are bonus.

Okay, so yes, this would work. This would definitely work. I mean, make sure that you add some you know, hacking might help you because you could salt in that interior portion. And so when you're carrying your own hammer, a lot of times you'll get taint or lack of care along the bone line because it's not going in, especially through the fatty areas. And so this will give you an opportunity to get some of the cure on the inside of the meat as long as you didn't oversold it. And then you could still glue even over a light salting there and you're not going to get a lot of bacterial problems mean the one main problem you're going to have from doing it is you're going to be introducing bacteria into something and then gluing it shuts so you want to make sure that you're killing bacteria right away there so definitely put some nitrates nitrates rather or tried to guess hand trades and some salt enough salt to kill whatever ails you on the surface of that because otherwise you're going to be in deep deep doo doo. I don't want you to get anybody sick. Second question on Miglia was about rolling cured bellies. Tom he mentions Thomas Keller's recipe and under pressure for rabbit bacon. I was like rabbit bacon. That's crazy rabbit bacon as a pain in the butt Think of how small the belly on a rabbit would be. But he didn't mean that he meant rabbit with bacon not bacon made from the bellies of rabbits because even Keller's not that decadent to like, kill 1000 Rabbits for one serving although maybe he is I don't know. I mean don't really know the guy so. So basically what Keller does is he layers rabbit up with bacon using Aktiva using meat glue. And Johnny's try this with a couple of different animals, including rabbit and goat. And after he cooks the bellies and slice them and roast them in the oven they come apart. So is there any way to do it since the meat isn't separate when it's cooked at a high temperature? Thanks a bunch. So here's the problem your I read Thomas Keller's recipe in the book and it's not apparent how much kind of meat do you have to add and he's layering slices of bacon together with like one layer of meat glue, you need to make sure first of all, when you're gluing things that have a lot of fat, you're not actually gluing the fat what you're doing is gluing the connective tissue, the college and of the different proteins that form the network of the fat before it's rendered, which is why you can't glue rendered fat you can only glue glue, Oregon native fat, native fat. Yeah. So basically, if it's rendered, it can't be glue, what you are gluing is the stuff that ends up being a teacher role. And if you were to cook it long enough, that's the protein residue, okay, so you want to make sure that all of it has a thin dusting of meat glue on it. And then even at high temperatures, this stuff won't come apart. If you brutalize it like you fry it in an oven. Sometimes the violence of the frying can make the meat pieces come apart, but the bond itself won't be damaged as long as you have enough meat glue, such that connective tissue is always touching connective tissue. So I would make sure that you get both sides of any belly that you were doing. You might even want to switch instead of using active RM using Aktiva je s which uses gelatin as its bonding agent is going to be a little bit stronger of a bond. And also you can paint it on and make sure you're not missing anything. Just don't add too much liquid or it's going to be a problem to color also recom and under pressure using a like a like a save like a handheld save don't use that use like a cocoa duster because it's going to get a much finer coating. So you should be able to get it to work if you if you do it and on a side note, I had a lot of comments on our blog recently coming from nut job wingding freak shows who are anti meat glue because of some knee jerk reaction that they think they're going to butcher and their butcher is serving them some sort of like hacked up piece of hamburger and selling it to them as a whole steak and it's all based on some crappy crappy expos a in quotes because it's not an expo say it's an expo say something that's not happening on a show in Australia called Today Tonight Show the show itself has an oxymoronic freaking name today tonight to dumb name for a show only only you know I don't understand like unless you're a listener in which case producers I love your love your show had me on but the basically it's it's saying that like like some of the quotes that are absurd. Anyone who's ever used meat glue before are even an expert can't tell that something's been glued together with meat glue. And anyone who's ever looked at a piece of meat before in their lives can tell the difference between a bunch of scraps glued together and foisted off as a whole cut of meat. And and one it's been you know that it's a real honest to god muscle. So I think they're making a kind of tempest in a teapot about a problem that doesn't really exist. And they're also saying how it's a bacterial nightmare? Well, because when we're using mikli, one of the things have to be really careful of is that you're taking in you're putting things possibly contaminated with bacteria on the inside of your meat, which we before you thought was relatively sterile. But the trick with that is not. It's not that that's unmanageable. It's just knowing that's what you're doing. And anyone who's properly trained using meat glue knows that they have to kill that bacteria that they put on the inside. So I encourage all of the listeners of this to go around find these blog posts with these morons who think they'll say it's banned in the EU. Well, it's not banned in the EU. thrombin based meat glue is banned in the EU not trans contaminates, which is from an enzyme thrombin is a blood clotting factor that's used as a meek was used as a meat glue is banned in the EU. And it was banned in the meat in the EU for Dumb Dumb reasons. It was banned because the morons who were doing the legislation couldn't think of a valid use for it because they're not cooks is another problem of a non cook, too. And they saw too much of a problem where you might do something fraudulent. And so they banned the use of that but didn't ban the use of the other one, which is more prevalent. The thing that makes me really angry about this is that it's so easy to bind together meats with crappy binding agents like Carageenan. And like the way they make dog food. Everyone when they see a bound piece of meat thinks it's been bound with with meat. Meat glue is actually an expensive and nice way to bind things together without the use of a lot of fillers and gelling agents, which is how people can rip you off if they really feel like they're going to rip you off anyway. So go out there and smack these people upside the head with some knowledge because they need it. Okay, sorry. Okay. And from Australia. This is from James. Hey, guys, greetings from Australia. I'm assuming James is not a member of the Australia Today Tonight Show? Hopefully not. He's been enjoying the blog for a while. So it's probably not and getting into the podcast. So he has a question for the show. He's been struggling with oven spring in his bread for two years and he stumped so far, I'm going to be him. Now. So far, I've managed to work my way through every single problem apart from the vexatious side bust out so when he's cooking in the oven spring, what's happening is, instead of going along the slices the bread, he's getting a burst in the seam along the bottom of the bread and splitting on the bottom, which is not what he wants to have happen. And he's tried all the different kinds of things you can tried varying his different hydrations from 60 to 85%, using autolysis, which is a process where you start the the the mixing of the flour and knead it a little bit, let it rest for a while and then and then meet it again. Mixing different batters making different kinds of starters, different kinds of Hendry hydration, different kinds of mixing different kinds of flowers, etc, etc. Different kinds of form, salt ratios, different kinds of risings, different proofing levels, different baking, yada, yada, yada. So he's wondering what the heck is going on. And so he says that some time now uses a different esteem technique. It's called steam via ice wherever everyone who bakes bread knows that, that steam formation from for many types of breads, the information in the very beginning of bread, baking is extremely important. And so you've been trying one of the ways that you throw ice in and it gives you a constant rate of steam because the oven can't evap can't melt and evaporated all quickly enough. So you have steam that last little while. Whereas if you just throw water in a very well vented home oven will just obliterate the steam, you're not going to get enough steam. So he wants to know what to do. Well. I was going to say that most times when you get a bad burst in the bottom, it's actually because you're using you're not doing a good enough forming technique assuming that everything else is okay. You're not like giving a good skin to it when you're forming it around. But you say you've tried that. So I would go out when I have a question. I don't know whether the bread baking community respects them but I like going to the fresh loaf, which is a blog, which is pretty interesting. And also there's a kind of a nut and I appreciate nuts. There's a guy named Steve B and I forget what his what his A blog is, but you can find him Steve B. And he, he experimented with a lot of crazy stuff and he found a steamer. That is I also forget the name of the company that manufactures the steamer. But basically what you do is you take a hotel pan, you drill a hole in it, you put it over your bread, as soon as like as soon as you put it on your stone, and then you you you take and you rig up a garment steamer with a nozzle, and you pipe steam into the hotel pan for like 20 or 30 seconds and then put it in the oven, and then a couple minutes later take it off. And that more closely mimics the steam that you're going to get out of an oven and I have never used it but it looks really interesting. So you might want to try. And so and there's a couple of people on the webinar experimenting with these like handheld steamers and hotel pans upturned hotel pans. So I mean, I wish it was still wintertime and it kind of still feels like it. But I wish it was because it's hard for me to do a lot of baking in that because my oven is gets like mighty hot, mighty mighty, mighty hot. In addition, I'm curious about like, what the actual mechanism of steam is because it seems kind of confused. People say multiple things that like, I'm gonna have to do more research on the actual everyone knows that steam at the beginning helps the crust formation, everyone, but a lot of the scientific explanation seems kind of bogus and I started reading some of the documentation this morning, but I didn't have time so maybe it's something we'll deal with later on it on a different different who's gonna watch it? Alright, so why don't we then take our second commercial break? And while we're going to it why don't you remember to call in to 718-497-2128 That's 718-497-2128 cooking issues

arbery Go Could you help him please this car see the number on the matchbook is old and fade out. Living in LA with my best old ex friend Ray. Gosh, it's such a new and sometimes hate. isn't saying Go and give me the noble aim. You can find this.

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You know, Jim Croce is visiting hell on that operator operators just trying to do her job. You know, and he's talking about his best old ex friend Ray, who I admit is a jerk for running away with his woman. Or maybe the woman ran away with him. It takes two to tango takes two to tango. Do you roll better or best Bessell ex friend was so mad man ends up non pleasing the call. Yeah. Jerk. Anyway, so. So I have good news that I actually did something I said I was going to do and I ordered an AeroPress coffee so I can finally say what I personally think about the AeroPress coffee. We've talked about it a million times on the air, it only costs 2495. So I ordered on Amazon, and it makes a perfectly fine cup of coffee. I might use it now as my as my taken my pet bag, coffee maker. But here's what it doesn't make espresso. It doesn't make espresso but an interesting note coffee thing. I learned something recently, that there's this thing called Cup of Excellence. Have you heard of this? No Cup of Excellence. What they do is they get all these people from every different country, every different country has its own Cup of Excellence, a lot of coffee producing countries. And there's a huge competition where they're cooked again and again and again. And then the winner and an all small lots are auctioned off and someone has to buy the whole auction so for instance, Dallas brothers, who was one of the sponsors, the museum thing we did the latte art judging contest gave me a bag of Rwanda's 2010 cup of coffee, Co Op Cup of Excellence coffee, and it sells for a lot more than regular coffee. It's like 30 $30, a pound green, green, green, wholesale green. And it was very, very good. Cup of Excellence go to to check it out. Go to cup of excellence.org. Anyway, so those interesting No, no, no, no, moderately interesting. Alright. You still have about 25 seconds because I got two more questions to answer to call in your questions to 718-497-2128 that said 184972128. Okay. Colin, good old Colin. No, boy, one. This isn't enough. He said specifically. This has been a customary question. Yeah, but it's also a controversial question. It is. Let's read it. No, it's not actually weird seaweed in the sky. shown I read the first sentence and then I forwarded at 6am to Dave yes that's that's what happened so she was like oh my god he's talking about weed seaweed. You know with Colin nothing is like what it seems an honor the This is Colin speaking in honor of the upcoming for 20 Holiday although for 20 is a holiday for me it's my wife's birthday but Easter is is actually in the stashes birthday which is for slightly fluences. Well, rows aren't yet reborn. Reborn. Yeah. Anyway, so yeah, so this year, Natasha gets Easter. I've had Easter on my birthday before. Yes, yeah. James had Easter on her birthday before one of those crazy one. Anyway, Colin has a question that pertains to weed. And of course, is there some sort of cannabis related holiday for 20 is the check you know more. Wow. So it's not Easter. It's some holiday that that us old fogies aren't familiar with. It's been around forever. All right, whatever. Colin has a question about weed. Of course. I'm not really interested in cannabis. Of course you're not it seaweed that catches your eye his fancy seaweed salad is is freaking awesome with its al Dante crunch and ubiquitous sesame dressing. Since I don't speak Chinese I guess or Japanese I've been able to track I have been able to track down good way to use in a salad. I see the fresh stuff and some Asian groceries but the sections near the sea cucumbers where nobody bothers labeling stuff in English. A project I've been sitting on for a few years is to try cultivating seaweeds in order to have fresh, unlimited supply of weed. I just saw a McGee's on food and cooking it says with Kami kombu and see lettuce are commonly used in salads. And so he wants to know if I have any tips on what you should look for and market or what species make a good salad and tips on PrEP. And have and since I've used saltwater aquarium before made them can do I have any tips on sourcing and growing some hydroponic weed, okay? The problem is that a lot of the seaweeds that you use are too big to basically to basically grow in a normal situation, although things like what calm they are, and kelp and all these things are routinely farmed. I mean, that's how they do it. Like you very rarely get wild anything anymore. But it's just they're so big that it's hard. It's hard to do, you can gather your own on the coast, which I've done a bunch of times with limited success. Unfortunately, I haven't done any research recently, back in the day, the the book that you know, that everyone had was called Cooking with sea vegetables by Sharon and Rhodes. Unfortunately, it's kind of like an it says nothing against anyone it's kind of hippie dip and I'm much more into like straight up, you know, killer information and like pictures and this was looks like it was written in the 70s or 80s. And I've had it probably you know, since forever and it's like all black and white. It's not really up to date. Someone needs to tell me if there's an up to date new, new seaweed but but how you use a seaweed depends a lot on what Oh, you want a good website. It's interesting. The person who made it apparently doesn't want you to find it because it's very hard to find. But seaweeds at the Pacific North northwest by Brianna, good. Good Schmidt and the website. I don't have here the name of it. But she has a pen diva forward slash seaweed or something like that. But she has good pictures of all different seaweeds that you can get in the Pacific Northwest and how they taste because she ate them cool, which is pretty cool. So she has a good list. I recommend you go to that. But

pen diva.com/seaweed louch Extra best.

Yeah, anyway. She's on top especially because you call them out. No, no, no, not right. Not right. So no. So anyway, I suggest you collect your own. I've done it some people suggest against collecting your own because once seaweeds have been ripped off of their rocks, you don't know how long they've been batting around in the ocean and therefore there may be they might be flat or rotting or something like that. But I've never died so far from collecting wild seaweed. Oh, by the way, going back one thing you can raise in your aquarium by is a certain varieties of sea lettuce, green Lavra, you can rate raise in an aquarium, it's going to be an expensive proposition, but you should try it and knowing you probably will. So you should probably probably give that give that a shot. I think how you treat it depends on what it is. So for instance, even something like kombu we use it in salad after we've used it to cure and cook a duck. So like nose would have this old recipe where he would wrap a duck breast in combo because Combi cure current curing that is awesome, right. And then after we cooked it, we'd peel it off and then we'd slice it finally and then you can eat it and it's really crunchy. Same thing with MACOM if you don't over soak it right, it's still got a little bit of crunch, you slice it thin and then you can have it as a nice as a nice salad. So how you use the seaweed is going to really depend on what state you get in and you're going to have to refresh it and usually it's dried so you're gonna have to refresh it if you get it fresh. I would just here's what I would do in general if you see something in that in that market, just buy the hell out of everything. Just buy every damn thing and then taste it and then you know just try to compare pictures on the internet to what you can find cars. There's a relatively few number of ones that are commercially sold. You know, you're calm a hijiki RMA lovers Norreys a different types of kelps. So you should be able to do a mix and match and then when Number of the characters names. I remember once I went to Chinatown looking for pig's bladder, which is legal to get in the US. And what I did is I went on I went on Google and translated pig's bladder into into Mandarin and then printed the characters out and then drew a picture of a pig with its bladder and then pointed to it. And I think I got my point across because they were laughing their their their butts off, but they didn't give it to me, apparently, because it's illegal here. All right. So since we don't appear to get any more clothes, I will our last story for the day will be what we're going to do tomorrow. Yeah, we're going to tomorrow. eater really early. Yeah, it's a little too early for a burger, frankly. But Eater is going to come to my house because I no longer have a kitchen anywhere. We don't have a kitchen in Brooklyn yet. And I don't have a kitchen in the FCI anymore. So since I'm kitchen less, I'll be cooking it in my house, which actually has a pretty mean I have a sweet kitchen. Now, the kitchen anyway. So we're supposed to do our version of the ultimate burger. Now the problem is so many people have done their versions of the ultimate burger, right you have the Modernist Cuisine version of the ultimate burger, which involves a lot of steps and you know, they they cook their their burger for actually for a long time. I'm not a fan of cooking a hamburger for as long as they are missing not fat, but it's not for me, because like certain types of meat can take on a kind of gaming livery. Note that I don't really that's not for me in a burger. Like for me like the longest I'm going to want to cook a burger is probably about four hours. That's about it. Not tomorrow, because I'm not waking up that early burger anyway. So like you I also don't like vacuum packing burgers down because I think they get to kind of smashed. So I'm a fan. The way I like to do it is to take the meat mixture. Give it a quick fry to set it and then put it I'm going to grind bacon into it though. Okay, it's delicious. Right sounds I was thinking I was going to use a combination of short rib, Chuck and bacon, right? Grind it. I like a real loose pack and relatively thick and then fried quickly just to keep the surface intact. Then I'm going to put it into probably butter or maybe maybe like a butter that's been mounted almost like a bird blanc with with some some hybrid USB stock haven't decided yet. And then because my wife, right, my wife birthday tomorrow, so I really shouldn't be doing this. It's my wife's birthday. You already did this already. On her birthday. Yeah, but listen, she's not gonna be there. It's gonna be in the morning, my wife is flying to Boston tomorrow. So I have all day to fix whatever I do, right? To get a new place. I'm gonna get to places fireproof anyways, I'm gonna get I'm gonna light up because this is the best way to finish a burger off right, I'm going to cook it in butter in a bag at about 55 degrees for a couple of hours. I'm going to pull this sucker out. And then I'm going to build a small bed of hardwood coals on the inside of my house under my hood, in the mini webinar that I have. I'm going to build the temperature up till it's about the temperature of the surface of the Sun such that it's basically melting the Weber into my into my stove. I thought that's my liver. Well, I let you have it. You never took it home it I bought it and was never reimbursed for it. So yes, I gave it to you. And I'm going to use it one more time before you take it. You've had a year and a half or more to take it to your house and you never have I've moved it like three times. Yes, yes, you definitely have cooking issues. So anyway, I'm going to fire it up in my in my house. And I'm going to grill like hyper grill it basically on the surface of the cold. Put a nice crust on it. And then I'm going to do my favorite bun. And here's my favorite bun. It's it's no close beef on weck style from Buffalo it's going to be caraway seed and salt on English muffin. Homemade English muffin. I think just regular cheese. I think just regular cheese, like American jazz something I don't know, maybe like rear and rear and then and then I'm probably like the monitors goes into a really cool thing where they take and they flash and fuse a tomato with like a vinaigrette or something like that, which is a really good idea but since it's not tomato season, I can't get a decent tomato I might just use pickled green tomatoes to do the pickle and the tomato at the same time. I like fresh onions I'm gonna put some fresh onion on it and Stasha give me the give me the stinkface grilled onions grilled onions but this you have a freaking grill there but I don't like to me okay it's just a matter of personal opinion we can grow some monies for you but to me a grilled onion is in between it's not a sauteed onion and it's not any it's in between crap. drawl onions give me nightmares. We mean like really like, like, how so? Why? I don't know. My mom told me Well, wow. Okay, well, the I'm going to leave everyone out there with the image of nostalgia, having onion nightmares, and I'll come back next week for cooking issues where hopefully we can discuss some of these onion nightmares cooking issues.