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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The following program has been brought to you by kin Vineyard and Winery. Kane Vineyard and Winery supports heritage radio and the growing movement to change how Americans eat and how we think about our planet. For more information visit www dot Kane five.com.

Hello and welcome to cooking issues. I am Dave Arnold. Cookie she's here today in the studio. Miss Dasha hammer Lopez coming to you live every tuesday from roughly noon to 1245 Calling all your questions, technical cooking or non technical cooking or not even cooking related to 718-497-2128 That's 718-497-2128 So Natasha, I'm excited because tomorrow, our new 3d printer arrives. I know right now, folks, Phil's you out there that no we have a basically a Cornell fab at home 3d printer which is an extrusion technology that is used to print food directly. What we're getting now is a Z Corp printer. Z Corp printer is a commercial 3d printer. And you can print basically in it prints and powder. So we were going to be doing mainly plaster molds. I think we're gonna be making plaster with it. It can do in color did you know it could do it in color and stuff. It's a color color plaster printer or in starch. But we'll keep you posted on what we make with that mustache is currently sticking up the studio with a with a some sort of space heater that's making the entire studio stink of electric heater with dust on it that just got turned on for the first time. Which is amazing, since it's almost summertime and it's actually quite warm and muggy in the studio. Very good. Very good.

I have eight cavities.

That's a very interesting fact. You know how many cavities I've had in my whole life. 00 For those of you that don't know dystocia besides not really enjoying most of the foods that we all enjoy even though she's in the food business SubSys almost entirely on candy and not as any candy. Mr. Atia craves any sort of sour candy, correct? Yeah, I've seen her in under under another interesting fact. Here's how she can claim that she does not eat the entire package of candy because she has an aversion to certain colors of candy. To be fair, based on whatever artificial flavor is in them. But I think it's also mainly a color thing. I mean, it is true that I blindfolded her she was able to distinguish which colors by taste so it's not that she can't do that. It's just I think that she has matched the color with the taste in her mind and it's the color that bothers her so tell everyone out there in case they're going to send you some sour patch or or sour crybaby candies that you'd like the most right? Which are the colors that you hate and stuff and cherry

red and lemon yellow and sometimes orange.

Sometimes orange. Yeah. Okay. And but he's interestingly even though the flavors are different, these are the same colors that you dislike in other sour candies. That's true. That's true. Okay, how many cavities? Eight, eight. Yeah. So yesterday I did the experimental cuisine collectives yearly. Yearly. hoo ha shindig thing, right. I gave I gave a talk and the star she was notably absent because apparently she was at the dentist getting her face drilled out. And she called me and said, I'm coming to the event, but I'm high on Xanax and Vicodin. I was like, why don't you go home and sleep that this is a true story or false story? Yeah. Okay, so, in the ongoing annals of cinnamon hydrocolloid, James McCulloch writes in from Australia, he says, I remember you were discussing the gelling qualities of cinnamon a few weeks ago, and he has been doing some experimenting. So basically, he did an experiment where he mixed cinnamon he said pictures of it, actually, oh my god, pictures aren't coming up on my iPad. It's unfortunate, but okay, so he decided to leave the cinnamon out of his spice mix until after water was added. So he made a spice mix, added water, and it was you know, thin and fluid and then added cinnamon to it. And after a while it got kind of thick and snotty, I believe is what is what you said. It's not to say snotty, gooey Joe, phlegm like texture phlegm? Well, it's interesting. phlegm is the phlegm like texture is the characteristic texture of a hydrocolloid called xanthan gum, which basically is used as thickening thickening agent but in higher concentrations, turns to I call it snot. You're very polite. I guess they're more polite in Australia than they are here. Calling it flat and maybe we should call it phlegm from now on instead of snot. Yeah, yeah. All right. So that's interesting. I tried to find and I've tried to find before and I tried to find again this morning the whether there was any known hydrocolloid in, in cinnamon, there is a there is a polysaccharide called Slyke, cinnamon polysaccharide 8x, which is supposed to have some sort of bioactive properties, but I wasn't able to find anything. I mean, it makes sense to me that groundup bark would have some thickening, which is what it is, would have some thickening power. There is a actual hydrocolloid gum called Casia gum, but it's from an unrelated Casia to what not unrelated but not the same Cassia that we use for cinnamon substitute, and also it's from the seeds not from the bark. I thought maybe that that maybe cellulose in the ground up. Bark would also act as a hydrocolloid. But cellulose itself doesn't really act isn't soluble at all until it's been treated either with acid or with other things to make things like microcrystalline cellulose, MCSE gum, or cellulose gum. So I don't know that it's a cellulose. But there's gotta be something in there. I mean, you can see in the picture that it does do something I hope I can find. If there's any hydrocolloid expert out there, can you please call and tell us what is in cinnamon that causes jelly properties anyway? Brian in New Zealand, so we're doing the Australia New Zealand show today, which I enjoy. And I've never been I've never been over there should go. You want to. Yeah. You know, Dave Chang just opened a new place in Australia and he loves it down there. He said it's fantastic New Zealand. I want to go to New Zealand because I want to go to the home of the New Zealand, the New Zealand grapefruit, aka the Portman orange, which was one of my favorite citruses on the planet that we had at gene Lester's ranch out in Watsonville. California. Was that one of your favorites there? Yeah, that was really delicious. But they don't ship it here. And they don't grow it here because because we're done. Okay. Brian has a comment on the thermal mix. And for those of you who don't live in Europe, which is most of us, I guess, right. The Thermomix is and I guess I haven't been Australia, New Zealand as well. Thermomix is basically is made for home but all of the fancy European chefs use them. They're basically a blender slash heater slash not really a food processor more, it's more a blender heater scale. And they have like a stainless steel trough that you do things in. And, you know, in the US, we don't really have them very, very much because they're not very widely distributed. And we use our vital prep blenders and so here's a comment from Brian. The question about thrown mixes the other weeks maybe write this email I absolutely love my Thermomix I got it almost exclusively to hydrate hydrocolloid cuts down on dishes saves me time in not needing to stir. I love it. I also happen to use it as a blender because it is there and it beats most other blenders out there, which is true, but I still want to vitae prep, Brian, I'm gonna have to go ahead and say entirely fair. That's an entirely fair set of comments right there. And yes, you do still want to vitae prep because they kick some serious butt. I like myself Aveda prep, but I think you're right. You know, when we teach hydrocarbons, it can be a pain in the butt sitting there stirring and you can turn a thermal Mix on low and just have it stern ag or from cold and heat without even watching it and it's not going to scorch. So I think I I think you're right. I'm going to take back anything I've ever said. And if you do a lot of hydrocolloid work, I'm going to say to the thermal mix is an awesome thing to have sitting around, especially for heated hydrocarbons, which would be ag our Carageenan. I don't know, you know, gel and, you know, even anything like that. So that's a good call. Brian. Thank you. Thank you for the thank you for the comment. Derek boqing writes in on gummi bears, he's a blogger, and he was a contestant on Top Chef Canada. Oh, I don't know. I don't know how he did. I hope you did. Well, Derek. He called it a few weeks ago about making heat resistant per Blanc. And we were talking about gum arabic, and xanthan gum mixed when we get from TSE gums. You know, the one that we asked for almost anything for alcoholic drinks. He hasn't gotten it yet. But he did try some of the pointers about making gummy bears. And he asked a pastry chef friend about making gummies. And she said the same same thing that we said, which is that you have to make starches out of molds out of cornstarch, and he wants some ideas on on these molds. Well, here's the thing, you don't buy, you don't buy a cornstarch mold, what you do is you take cornstarch, and you dry it out for a long time. And in a dry room, usually, you know, a couple of days in like you could use a dehydrator I would guess or like a low oven really, really dehydrated. And if you really want to do a bang up job, see in the days when they were doing it back in the days, you know, the 1800s, late 1800s, early 1900s they would. And to this day, I mean they still do it but no, it's just old technology is you would take the starch, and you would use it and after a while it would absorb crap out of your candies and it would become old or dead I think they call it dead starch dead I think is what they used. And but it when you got a new batch of starch in the starch didn't hold impressions very well. So what they would do is they would take a certain portion of their dead starch and then sift it back in with their brand new starch and do their molds, right. If you don't want to have to do that I would go to the national starch Corporation, national starch, food innovations brand, they make something called new mold, and you MOU LD new mold, which is cornstarch with a small amount of mineral oil that's been mixed in so it holds an impression right from the beginning without having to already have starch that has stuff in it to have it really take a mold Well, after you get your new starch, put it in your dehydrator at like 60 Celsius or something for you know, like 24 to 48 hours, something like that to really dry it out. Then what you have to do is you build a box almost like a frame with a bottom in it. So you know like you can use you know, one by twos or whatever. And if it makes night on the bottom, get it nice and flat. Put your starch in it then take a ruler and strike it flat across and now you have a bed of cornstarch that is you know perfectly even and flat right now you take another piece of you know stiff like a Schneider board and you make this is how you do the mold you take the shape that you want it so you have to have like little little like like wooden waxed or like really smooth it has to be really smooth or like plaster or whatever, gummy bears or whatever and they're all on this board and you press it into your cornstarch mixture and then you lift it up very carefully right and that is how you mold it's now you have a bed of cornstarch with a bunch of shapes of gummy bears or stars or hearts or chickens or whatever in it and then you deposit your gelatin and or whatever whatever you're going to do and then it depending on the product something like like gelatin with gummy bears, you would then put it back in your dehydrator for you know, up to a couple of days at a slow dehydration rate if you dehydrate too quickly you Case Hardened the outside and they never they never set properly. So it's there's a couple of articles you can read on it if you're interested. One that I would suggest that's pretty interesting is modeling diffusion of moisture during stoving of starch molded confections by MB sudarsan and gr Ziegler coming out of Switzerland and the University of Penn State University here in Pennsylvania. So take a look at that article and see whether you get any good information and with that I will go to our first commercial break but please call in your questions to 718-497-2128 that's 718497 to one to eight cooking issues

cherishes. The feeling for you don't know how many times I've heard I don't know how many times I've boosted I don't know how many times I can get you into someone who can cherish me as much as I cherish you.

More I am not going to show you that I am not going to be the one new Sharia schemes. I am not going to be the one to share what seems to be the life that you can cherish as much as to your online weekend that matters. Do you have the right amount of letters, Charles? Thank you.

My goodness and Sasha My goodness cherished this games things that every single day every single day, I always seem like I always think some like a horrible variant of it. I've never actually seen cherish. I'm always do it's always something horrible and not cherish shades to send a stash is paying me back for hearing all of my all of my different different unsavory versions of cherish. All right, call in your questions do 71849721287184972128 All right. So we had a question in from Oh, another question from Derek from Derek barking about talk to 10. He has been making a tomato tart to 10 at work and has been falling apart when he d molds it. So it's another molding question. That's interesting. So towards the 10, you know, for those who are Tata tart, anyway, so for those of you out there who aren't hip to it, it's a you know, it's the famous French, you know, upside down Apple doodad, which, you know, apples, cook them, after the apples have been cooked down, have lost a lot of their moisture, you can then also add some then reduced juice as long as it's really reduced. You put a layer of of a pastry on the top, throw it in your oven, you cook it, and when the pastry is done, you pull it out, and then you flip it and unmolded and there you have it, right. So the the he's making home with tomatoes, right? And so I my guess is the reason that he's tried a bunch of things to try and keep it holding together. He's been making a tomato water gel to pour into the molds with guar and pectin and Aguilar. But they've been they've been not really working as well as he wants. So I need to figure out exactly why it is not working. I wouldn't use guar pectin and Aguilar to hold it together. If you really want that sucker to hold together, what you're going to have to do is use something like GLM, which is once it sets is never going to unset in which case you would then cook it, then let the thing come down to temperature, right, come down to the gel and sets then heated slightly again, in case there's some like sugars there and then unmolded. But the problem is, is the real way talk to 10 is supposed to unfold is that the sugars stay liquid, whereas the fruit holds together enough with its own sort of like gelling power and pectin. And fact it's been caramelized. And then it on molds, I think your main problem is, is that you have just too much water in there. And if you're going to add a chalet I it's I think it's still going to have your your pastry come out kind of soggy, I think your main goal here is going to be to get rid of water. So what I would do, and actually MELISSA CLARK from you know, who writes the New York Times at least used to think she still does, right, I don't have no idea. Anyway, she did an article in 2008 on tomato tart 10, where she had a very similar problem. So she switched from larger tomatoes to smaller tomatoes and made sure that they were just cooked down a lot before before she added the pastry on on top. So I would consider using smaller tomatoes, squeezing the seeds out after you peel them. But don't throw that away because that's how the flavor reducing that first before you while you're cooking the tomatoes and then add that reduction back and then put the lid on top of it. Just make sure you have enough sugar in there to hold it to form like a thick caramel that's going to hold everything together and make sure that your water contents not too high. And if you do that you should be okay. If you're going to then bolster it with a gel, I would do it with a gel that doesn't melt and the only ones that don't melt that taste good would be something like gelatin and I would use a low Aysel gel n which is the firm one the brittle one because that one is clear and it's not going to give a cloudy appearance to your to your chart to town. So the sound good suggestion. All right. So hopefully that works out for you. Let us know. Let us know how that goes. Okay, Sue I have another series of questions from our good buddy Ken Ken Ingber and says that we we neglected to make the joke about terroir when McGee was on and we were talking about road mapping dirt. But it's funny you should say that because that is exactly what so we're talking about a couple of weeks ago someone called in and they had a road map. And Harold McGee was online and asked what he should be making with a road map, which is a vacuum still. And McGee mentioned that one of the famous early cooking applications of rotary evaporation was the Rocha, the walker brothers at El Clarkin Roko. One of the great restaurants in Spain, they put dirt water into a roadmap, and then distilled off the essence of dirt, owed to dirt. Oh, to tear and then although I don't know how to say it in Spanish, do you know Do you remember that? You know, in the stashes the Stasha? Is is you've ever seen part? Have you ever seen born in East LA? No. Never seen born in East LA. You remember the song? Born in the USA? Yeah. So Cheech Marin did a cover on that call was born in East LA, and it had some successes, a video. And then he is he's an American, and he lives in a Mexican descent, who lives in East LA and doesn't have an ID on him and gets deported to Mexico. And his whole joke is that he doesn't speak Spanish. Right? That is Natasha, so Natasha could be in East LA. You know, close to where she's from. Not have Id get deported to Mexico and not speak any Spanish. That's that's conceivable. Right. That's right. So you could be living that movie lost it. You could be living that movie. Yeah. Okay. Anyway. It's not that it's a good movie. I enjoy it because I enjoy anything with Teach teach Marina. But anyway, so how do we get on there? We were talking about roadmaps. So l Clark and Roca famous dish is dirt water with oysters. And then but the actual reason that they did that was because they wanted you to experience no joke that terroir, like in a literal sense, the terroir of their region. So they would get dirt from this particular you know, forest that they used to go and play in as kids. And it would have that moist. That moist. Here comes this space heater again, this actually turns on, you pretend that I can't smell it. It's cool is not at all, folks, folks. If I ever wore shorts in my life, which I don't because I hate them. I will be wearing shorts right now. Anyway. Cheese, so they say that, so they wanted you to experience and in the in one rochas like his words. And because I asked him about it years ago, he wants you to experience the feeling he had as a child right after the rain in the morning when you go out in the forest and you get that smell mixed with, you know, local oysters that they can also get by so literal terroir was the reason behind that, that dish. Okay, so here's Ken's question on onions and other things and mirepoix and sauces. I was making a veggie intensive tomato sauce for weeknight meal, mushrooms, onion, carrots, carrots, green peppers and garlic. But several questions came to mind. And he hopes that they are of general interests. Well, let's see. Is it maybe I need a primer on onions some recipes talk about so Tang onions for five to eight minutes, my onions hardly changed at all in such a short period of time. And if you jacks up the heat, he cinches the edges of the onions but don't really accomplish much else. If his goal is to soften the onions wouldn't an hour and a half and tomato sauce do that? And if my goal is to caramelize caramelized the onions, what aren't we talking about a much longer period of time that any home cooks spends on the Insert tomato sauce. And so the question is, what is the softened done? Okay. It's an interesting question. So there are a bunch of things that are going on. And he's going to ask about because because I pre read the questions. I don't want anyone out there to pretend that I haven't read the questions before they come on. And I just know all this crap off top my head, although I really do anyway, the book to get on this whole subject of onions and I know we've added garlic, onions as well. And I know that I've mentioned this book on the show before but it's really kind of a one of a kind thing is garlic and other alliums, the lore and the science. That's a good title right by Eric block. And it's one of the only kind of books on food that I own that has a preface written by a Nobel Laureate. And this book was brought to my attention as most other good things are by Harold McGee. And while this book is very highly technical and huge chunks of it are only going to be of use to trained organic chemists. It also has a bunch of sections on cooking that talks about interesting things and also about things like hair. Chapter Two is all things Allium alliums, which you know anything onions, garlic, leeks, alliums and literature, the arts and culture so it's really an all around book and it's one of those books that you kind of need to have in your, in your in your house, just so you can say that you have, like, it's not even that I mean, it's expensive. I'm not gonna say it's cheap. I don't have the price here. I would guess it's like 50 bucks or some crap like that. But for 50 bucks you have like the world's repository of knowledge on onions, for instance. The chapter 6.4 on page 320 is use of onion as an insect repellent by capuchin monkeys. abbazia is that I have this in my house and you don't Don't you feel less less good that you don't have a book that you can flip open and learn about the use of onions and insect repellent by cabbage in monkeys anyway.

So get this book and it describes in detail what's going on in onions, and garlic, and leeks, and so forth, when they are being cut, when they are sitting around when they are being cooked at different rates, and describes all the different reactions that are taking place. And therefore it gives you an insight into what's going on. The one unfortunate thing that they don't cover in here is an A maybe, I don't know this guy, Eric block, but maybe I'll call him because they don't go into what happens specifically with pressure cooking, which is one of the reasons I bought the book because I'm very interested in pressure cooking alliums, garlic and onion and things like that it's one of our main, it's one of our main things that we do is pressure cook things like garlic and onions. Anyway, so So buy that book. But here's the thing, the flavor of onions is changed by heat. And the in the in the arresting of further production of flavor in the onions is arrested by heat well before the onions themselves start to soften because you're breaking down the tissue. Okay, so there's the flavor development, and the flavor changing that the heat is providing, that is going on at the same time that your heating and then once you get above 85 C for an extended period of time, where you break down the pectins and the hemicellulose. And actually soften the onion. So if you're making a sauce, and your goal is to basically, you know, provide a certain type of onion flavor that happens relatively quickly in cooking, that it's not necessarily not necessary to get them all the way soft, as long as you get them up to a heat where you've deactivated the enzymes and you've kind of I guess stabilized the flavor somewhat, then the cooking and the sauce will take you the rest of the way in terms of making any soft, right? Assuming you cook it long enough, it actually takes a long time in a thick tomato sauce to have onions go soft, because the water is not as available as it would be if you were cooking it in water. And that's also frankly, another thing you could do if you're not getting high heat flavors, you could just put the onions in with wine or whatever, flash them off so that they're almost boiled, and that'll get what you want if you're not providing any color. Okay. But if and if you want that deep, caramelized flavor, where you're actually altering the, the sugars in the onions, II then you need to cook at a lower heat so that it doesn't scorch. Because when you scorch the sugars, the flavor turns different. And most of us say worse, unless you're burning the onion to make that the darkened up like a stock. Most of us don't want that accurate burnt flavor. So then you need a lower heat for a longer period of time to get those kinds of caramelized notes. And you can do anything in between, but you're obtaining different flavors. So everything depends. As for the other ingredients. So So So then after that, he says he says, admittedly, I always cook onions in bulk. So I acknowledge that the volume of onions I cook will increase the time for any kind of saw Tang, but he thinks this point stands that's true. Especially if you cook in bulk, you're going to basically be steaming the onions, breaking down the tissue and then only after they've been steamed and broken down. Are you really going to get those kinds of flavors and but you know, honestly, it's difficult to do a good onion. If you're going to make like an onion tart. Let's say it's very difficult to do it in under under half hour, I'd say when you say instruction, something like that. And I guess he has he has the same question for mirror PA, which would be that you know the classic like onions or onions or leeks, carrots and celery. So Fritos by assuming means a Spanish version, which would be garlic, onions and tomatoes are the holy trinity of Creole cooking, which I guess is onions, bell peppers, and celery. I think it depends like celery, I don't think you're getting that much out of celery and the saute except for your densifying it by saw Tang and have the structure break down before it's been in a liquid right. Same thing goes mean bell peppers, I don't think you're getting that much out of except for your you're getting some brown flavors off of the off of the meat of it. But I don't think you're winning that much carrots have a lot of sugar in them. So you could be getting some caramelizing effects out of the carrots and it depending on how you treat them. But I don't cook a miracle long enough to get those kinds of flavors in my carrot. So I don't really think that's going to that's going to happen. He then says more generally which are the veggies really ought to be sauteed before adding to a sauce for example mushrooms. They're better sauteed for the texture but where they retain the intensified flavor after they've been tomato sauce a long time and say yes, especially on something like a mushroom. If you're cooking in a sauce. I think the liquid is going to diffuse into the mushroom because of mushrooms is basically a porous sponge. So if you cook the mushroom by itself and then let it shrink down, then it becomes a denser item that's not going to absorb as much Should liquid and so I think you'll get a fundamentally different denser, more intense result if you saute your mushrooms beforehand anyway and then as regards garlic I think it's a good idea to add your garlic much later when you're saying onions because garlic does have a tendency to scorch very readily and turn extremely accurate the flip side of that is if you're cooking garlic in water in a pressure cooker in which case doesn't matter when you add it because you're pressure cooking the whole whole dang thing. Alright, let's go to one more break calling all of your questions if you have any questions you people out there 27184972128 That's 718-497-2128 Cookie issues this lecture we'll move on this is my little girl stars

following is a public service announcement from Heritage Radio Network. Tune into green horn radio hosted by Severan von Scharner Fleming every Thursday at 2pm. Green horn radio is radio for young farmers by young farmers helmed by acclaimed activist farmer and documentarian Severn Fleming. Green horn radio is a weekly phone interview session serving Americans cutting edge under 40 farmers. Again, that's every Thursday at 2pm on the heritage Radio Network.

Especially that is a weird Bowie song you chose I feel like Marlon Brando when I look at my little china girl with a weird song

weird. When I forgot that we should have played was it was the abracadabra that's

Oh, yeah. Okay, so. So next week for one of our break musics. We're going to play Steve Miller's abracadabra

worse. Yeah. Steve Miller's long Yeah,

unless someone out there in internet land can can come up with a worst Steve Miller song to play a more horrid, abysmal, like depth of hell,

given the story they have how they asked him to create a song. Well,

our theory is that our theory is is that you know, they needed to come out with it with a new album to go on tour so that they can go on tour and play all of their older, really good songs. And they come into the exec and like he's like, hey, it's abracadabra, I'm gonna reach out and grab you. That's the song and they're like, Yeah, that's funny, Steve. Yeah. What's the real song? He's like, No, that's it. Anyway. So next week, unless one of you can come up with a worst Steve Miller song that's going on the list, right? Yeah. Yeah. No one's gonna come up with the worst song. I mean, you could look any beside anything. Yeah, and yet they still play it at every crazy dance.

It's on the radio still.

Abracadabra. Jack, can you think of a worse Steve Miller song? He's shaking his head. Yeah, no. Anyway. Okay. I've got a question on vodka sauce. What do you say about vodka sauce in your view is the purpose of vodka purely because the alcohol a release a certain flavor compounds and then B boils off or so some residual alcohol on the sauce that is itself a benefit? Am I correct in that the flavors will be released by wine as well. But unlike vodka, the wine will impart a beneficial flavor of its own even after the alcohol blows off. Okay, well, a couple of things. One, alcohol never truly boils off mean you lose a bunch of it. That's true. But it never truly boils off. And in fact, I think it's it's been a while since I've researched this. And I myself have never done side by side taste test of the same exact sauce prepared the same exact way except for in one you add a bit of water and then when you add vodka and then correct them for the same level of final reduction at the end of the sauce, right? It's possible to do it and then doing a side by side blind tasting. I've never done it Do you know anyone that's done that? No, no, I don't either. I mean, it's interesting test. I don't really have the time to run it right now. But it would be very interesting test to run. If someone else is yet Natasha loves pasta, if anyone in the greater New York area wants to run that side by side test and invite us, we'll come right. Yeah, yeah, we'll come anyway. But I think that the the effect of vodka sauce is supposed to be from residual alcohol that's left there that has relatively little flavor in it that were vodka. And so it would be the volatilization of the of the aroma compounds in the residual alcohol that I think is providing some of the effects, although the residual alcohol content is still quite low, so even if you don't drink alcohol, I don't really think it's a problem. But it really is true that not out. Not all alcohol boils off. We did have to run a test on that a number of years ago, because Neil's got called for I forget who it was some TV show made him do it. And we had to do a bunch of research on it. But there's still quite a bit I know what we did. We found bade alcohol straight and then did alcohol and water tests without a lot of complicating effects like sugar and tomato sauce, and then did dented refractometer readings of the result to see what the residual crap was left in it. And in fact, there was residual alcohol content. I don't remember what the numbers were though. Do you know you were there for that? was before you were there. Okay. And speaking of alcohol, we have a question in non alcoholic cocktails from Christian Swan poll. You think I'm pronouncing that right. Swan poll? It's one poll also from New Zealand. This isn't you know what we need to get our butts on the New Zealand First of all, do you like lamb you better like lamb?

I just Julie's there. I want to go there for that.

Yeah, but do you enjoy eating lamb? Alright, so you don't hate land? I

don't. All right, good.

Lamb is some delicious stuff. Gotta go to you know, we in New here in New York, we get a whole bunch of New Zealand lamb but I wonder whether they keep the best product for themselves. What do you think? I think so. You think so? Well, but the thing is, like, I'll eat lamb when I'm there, of course, but I'm gonna I'm gonna basically like eat New Zealand, grapefruits till I plots. I'm just gonna eat pork and oranges until my body explodes. So

you can't eat grapefruit when you're on Xanax that was I did.

There's so the in grapefruit. There is and the perceived the literature says that the stuff that's in grapefruit that means that you can't have it when you're on any form of statin or anything like that. There's a bunch of drugs that interact with is a chemical called bergamot. And this is what I've been led to believe. And so I talked for with a concussion Baum at NYU a number of years ago seeing whether we could maybe get rid of the bergamot and I think since then someone has postulated a way to do it. I think I saw some patent literature recently on someone basically getting the burger mountain out of grapefruit juice, but my question and no one as far as I can tell, do the research on it is burger Mountain is one of them and think about the name bergamot and bergamot right? And Bergamot is the classic flavoring in Earl Grey tea. And so my my question is, is it is Earl Grey tea? Not okay to have it? Are there significant levels of bergamot and in Earl Grey tea such that you shouldn't have it and when you're on statins or other medications that are affected by it. Now, the truth of the matter is, is that what happens is is when you when you take grapefruit when you're on these medications, it changes the your response to dose, right. So I think some medications, it can increase the response and some medications that can decrease the response. But theoretically, if you have the same amount in your system all the time they can correct for the fact that you are are ingesting grapefruit. But grapefruit isn't something that you typically ingest it at a constant rate every day. So maybe like Earl Grey tea drinkers, maybe they drink it at a constant enough rate. It's not a problem. Maybe it's not a problem at all. I'd love if anyone out there has any information on bergamot and levels, and statins and bergamot and levels and Earl Grey tea because it's something I've never seen discussed. No doctors ever tell you. They tell you Hey, stay away from the grapefruit, but they never say Hey, stay away from the Earl Grey tea. And a lot of people like Earl Grey tea, right? Do you like Earl Grey tea? I like Earl Grey tea I don't drink it, but I like it anyway, how the hell we get on that? Oh, New Zealand. Man we man we go on tangents. Right. He's you know, I got some serious issues. Like, like yesterday I was I was at this talk for the for the experimental cuisine collective. And someone asked a question in the audience because Maxine Maxine belay from the from the Modernist Cuisine book, you know, along with Chris Young and Nathan Myhrvold, he was there along with Grant and they were giving. They're basically talking about the book and actually giving us some food, some really delicious food from the book they served out. Yeah, they served out the rare beef jerky which is one of the famous dish is in the book now or becoming famous dishes in the book where they make a, they make a beef jus at a very low temperature like 52 Celsius, which is as low as you can go and be bacterially safe basically for 53. I forget somewhere in there in that range. And, and they serve it read and I had it at, you know, at the kitchen lab, when right before the book was released when I flew out to Seattle, but I had at this time cold, they served a cold for the summertime, and I think it was actually even better cold. It's this bright red color. Anyway, and they served, you know, some other stuff, interesting stuff, great, you know, great stuff. And someone asked a question. So, you know, is there anything else to know? Or as we figured everything out? And I was like, what? That's weird. That's really weird, right? I wasn't, you know, I was like, we haven't even asked all the right questions yet. And I was thinking back to Roy Fong with tea guy that we met for the Imperial tea garden in, in, in San Francisco. And I was like, you know, look, you know, you could spend your whole life studying, you know, like, a single type of T and, and not not really, not really know. Know everything. Anyway, again. And so but then I was like, then I when I when I when I said that as soon as I said that I didn't add this I was like But me personally, I'm way too scattered spend my life like, which is why like, you know, in a way like I love all this like kind of generalist work that we do because like I don't I'm too scattered and I go off on too many tangents to study. Just one thing forever. What do you think?

Yeah, no, that's right. Actually, he was talking about that late last night with someone. Yeah, yeah. Even though you can't.

Yeah, even though you weren't at the discussion. Hear me say that. Because you were high on Xanax was just talking to yourself. Was there someone there? Yeah, it was a hallucination. Okay. So Christian asked. I'd like to start by saying he loves the show. Thank you. Keep up the good work. We will we will try to. I heard last week that you were doing non alcoholic drinks for a party. I have to do the same thing for a party of my own. Unfortunately, I don't have awesome things like wrote of apps, but I was wondering if you have any pointers or ideas, I don't really have any experience with any form of cocktail alcoholic or non alcoholic, and he knows that I'm somewhat of an expert in this respect. Well, we hope we hope anyway, right? So he thought he might have something interesting for him. Thanks for your time. Christian Swan Paul from New Zealand. Okay, so here's the thing here's my feelings on non alcoholic cocktails. If you serve something non alcoholic I would go for something that is carbonated because it's just more festive if you serve a something that's not carbonated. It just seems to me to be more like juice. What do you think and Stasha mean do you think that a Bloody Mary a Virgin Mary Virgin Mary is a good cocktail? Yes a Virgin Mary is good so I mean a traditional Virgin Mary, but depends on what time of day I mean, you don't want that in the evening. I'll tell you what we did. We took coriander seed, we lightly ground coriander seed, then we cooked it in, in simple syrup, so one to one sugar and water. Then we let it cool we kept on tasting it while it was going. If you cook coriander seed too long, it becomes too much like a heavy spice note and you lose some of the citrusy notes we used untoasted coriander seed. Then keep taking we used quite a bit actually keep tasting and then when when you feel it's where you want strain it out. Okay, then take something with a lot of spice in it. That has a lot of heat but not very vegetable we used to Thai Thai chilies they're very hot so we didn't have that much. Make a separate simple syrup with a Thai chilies right. Then take a coriander syrup, put a pinch of salt in it. Then Then add the Thai chili because of coriander syrup is very nice but it lacks something in the back end in the middle of the palate. You want to add a little bit of that Thai chili syrup to it not enough to make it spicy, just enough to to fill up the back of your throat a little bit like like a ginger ale. And then you want to add malic acid and citric acid if you don't have that stuff two parts Citrix one part Malik if you don't, and that's going to add some limey flavor to it. If you don't have that, you could just bite the bullet and use real lines. But the problem is with real lines unless you follow our clarification directions on the blog www that cooking issues.com You're gonna have issues with foaming that are going to cause problems even if you strain it. And that's a really good syrup to have at a party and you can just pour seltzer water on top of that and it's delicious, right? You like that one right? It's good. Or you could clarify any number of juices and make nice light cocktails with clarify juicers but I just I tend to think that that if you really want people to think you're doing something for them that's non alcoholic get some sort of a carbonation rig and carbonation rigs are fairly cheap nowadays. I don't think we ever posted on getting one but they're fairly easy to get and carbonation in general you can do in an ISI rig or something like that. So the ones we did we did a coriander soda like the one I told you that we then did we made clarified raspberry juice and clarified strawberry juice. You know we use the centrifuge but you don't need it. You can use a A lot of different techniques have you given by the juice, and then carbonated. Just remember when you're working with cocktails that you're going to want to balance when you're tasting them, especially because there's no alcohol there, they are going to tend to lack something in the kind of the mid palate and in the back of your throat. So you're going to want to add like spices very good to add like in the form of that type chili syrup that I'm talking about. Just to round it out. Not a lot to make it spicy. Don't forget to add a pinch of salt, which is going to round out all the flavors, especially fruit flavors, not enough to make it salty, but just a little bit, and it's going to be a you know, balancing kind of fruity acid and aromatics I think is where you're going to want to go to so we executive vice. It's good. Yeah. And then of course, if it's sometime in the morning, Virgin Marys are great this tomato juice. And you know, like whatever forms a spicy stuff that you want it if you want to make tomato water that's a little more intensive, and I recommend buying a centrifuge. Just kidding. Anyway, this has been cooking issues, come back and see us next week, every Tuesday cooking issues.