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Hello and welcome to cooking issues is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Show coming to you live from Bogota, Colombia, calling all your questions to the studio in Brooklyn at 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128 starts in the hammer. Lopez is sitting in the studio in Brooklyn, how you doing? Are you doing all right. I was supposed to be doing cooking issues today from Brooklyn, but due to the hurricane which Anastacia apparently wasn't much of a big thing in our area. Anyway, my flight was canceled. And here I am in Bogota. Right. Nothing happened down there right now. Do

you have a caller? I know you want it.

Oh, I've got caller you're on the air. Hey, Dave, how you doing? It's Kevin from Virginia Beach. Hey, I got a question about um, I got some calcium hydroxide slaked lime. And I was thinking about different ways to use it since I got a lot of it. And I was thinking maybe you could use it for certification, but I'm concerned about interacting with sodium alginate and producing lye. And if that would be a problem. We're gonna if you have any experience with that. Well, anything here? No, I don't think it'll do that. Because no, I don't think it'll do that. Because you know, you, you add salt all this all the time to you add salt all the time to do things that have calcium hydroxide in the minute any gadgets and drugs for them, it's not a problem. So, you know, in order to form the lie, you need to, you need to start with sodium and then have the hydroxide already attached to it and then put it in, you're starting with calcium hydroxide, which is much weaker, so it's not it's not going to be not going to be an issue. Think about it this way. If you had pure ly, and pure hydrochloric acid, right? You don't retain the powers of those two things. You just end up with salt and water. You know what I mean? All right, yeah. And do you think it would pay off? Okay. Okay, so those are two separate questions. You can't taste worse than calcium. Calcium fluoride does, doesn't go right. It's horrible. But I think the real problem with it is with calcium hydroxide has a very low solubility. So I don't think that you would necessarily get enough calcium in there to have it set properly. It's interesting, I've never tried it. You know, calcium hydroxide. saturates very quickly. So typically, you asked if you're going to make something like a soaking solution for bananas, like Thai style, you can like mix it with, you know, water, let it settle out to the bottom, pour this stuff off the top, and that's basically saturated. A calcium hydroxide. Yeah. what it tastes like, it tastes like cement to me. I don't know whether that will set alginate or not. You have to see it's had to drop a cup and easy to test he said to drop a couple of bros into it, and see whether it sets it. But x drive each thing, let us know. Let us know what happened. We use it for obviously for Nick symbolizing Correns primary thing we use it for. If you were here in Colombia, you could chew it with coca leaves to release the alkaloids. Although I'm not necessarily advocating that you can use it to harden vegetables. You can use it to keep things up firm while preserving the color when you're cooking them. It's really good stuff, you know? Yep. Okay, awesome. I'll give us all you know. Thanks a lot. Thank you. Columbia, is Colombia has some amazing

fruits and Stasha I figured you're gonna say that.

Yeah, amazing fruits. Fact, one of the reasons I wanted to come down here was to taste all the fruits. And we went out partying after one of the events with the ambassador to Colombia from the United States. And I was like, Hey, come on, you know, any week slip some of those fruits in a bag? You know? No, he's like, no way. There's no way there's no way we can get the fruits up in up in New York have shipped into the United States. And it's a shame they got the one of the main fruits over here that they got that really like a call up Lulo. And it's hard to describe these families. But let me put it this way. If you were going to come open a cocktail bar, down here in Bogota, you could do some pretty serious drinks. This Lulo drink, like has natural hydrocarbons. I don't know. It forms a forms the head almost like you're shaking with an egg white. Pretty cool stuff. Pretty cool stuff. If we have time later, I'll just go down some of the crazier fruits that we had. So let us get to some email questions. Boop, boop. Okay. Andrew writes in, and he says Andrew Switzer. Dear Dave as a former career barista espresso, this question is about espresso. Career abris I'm wondering if you can share more info on your home espresso setup. I know some of the various requirements to have a professional home machine, but I need help with the practical how to set up also if it seems to be too big of jobs in my apartment. Do you have any advice for achieving foaming milk for coffee lattes at home? My wish is a stovetop steaming device capable of achieving microphones at 140 with a traditional metal steel one, thanks a bunch. All right. So here's the deal I've had in my life two professional espresso machines and two different weird kind of home machines. The professional machine is the way to go if you're independently wealthy, then and you have a lot of space then purchase a two group espresso machine and install it in your house here are the problems to group espresso machine and I bought one use in an auction you know, I went into it was a this place was shut down as a result of drug activity in in you know, like in the upper hundreds in Manhattan on Broadway was a restaurant and they locked the restaurant shut. And when they reopened it a year later all the food was rotting and so no one else wanted to be in that auction but me I was the only person who was willing to stomach the stench of this place to go in and purchase equipment. So I got a a fairly, you know, nice to group wrenches to espresso machine for almost nothing. Of course, I then had to disassemble this and boil all the parts to get out all the nasty stuff that had accumulated in like animals may there has whatever anyway, so I got it to work. Problem with these larger machines is larger machines take a lot of electricity. So that one requires like a big 220 circuit. The good news is is well that makes better espresso than the equivalent one group machine. And the reason is that a traditional espresso machines, they use the mass of the equipment to provide stability, the temperature stability, and also the ability to have like huge amounts of steam on demand. So that machine even, you know, made better espresso than the single group professionalist machine that I have now, which is a lot. And Marco, the problem is, I didn't have to 20 I wasn't able to install it. So if you don't have to 20 or if you don't have a lot of electricity, you can get a commercial one group machine that will run off of 110. And if you have a lot of money, you can buy very temperature stable one group machines that run off of 110. But they're very expensive. The professional ones that like to do a boiler, or any of these ones have very accurate temperature control, very expensive. So you have to make a choice of how much electricity you're going to have. Secondly, you have to make sure that the coffee machine can live near a sink. So what you do is you put it near a sink, you put a wonder where your sink line is the line in your cold water tap, install a filter on your cold water, you unscrew it, put in a tea, where the water comes in, install another branch off of that, which is very simple as this all Home Depot, like you know, when our problems, no big deal, install a water filter on it, make sure you put a shutoff valve beforehand. So you can change the water filter without everything going wrong. You then under the sink there replace the pump for your espresso machine. If you have an external pump and most pro machines have an external pump, you put it down there. And then you run, you run the power wire to the to the pump, and the drain and the sorry, the the input line in right up. And then what's really good is to drill an extra large hole, oh, by the way, you're drilling a hole in your counter dimension. So you're drilling a hole in your counter behind the espresso machine that can make it into underneath your sink, then you want to install a drain hose, which they're not very big. And then tap that into the equivalent of a basically a disposal or washing machine, a washing machine drain that goes into the thing, you want to plug it into another one of those so that your machine so your espresso machine can drain, and make sure that your espresso machine is always above the level of your sink. So you can't, you know, have backups onto the floor at espresso machine if your drain clogs up. And that's basically it. I mean, it's, you know, it sounds like it's a lot but, you know, if you have a drill, and you can go drill in your set, you know, then you want to make sure you have a place that you can knock out espresso grounds. So you're gonna want to, you know, either to take a small, you can buy one, or you can make a KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK box, and it's helpful to have a trashcan nearby. But that's it, it's pretty simple. They, you know, as regards if you're not going to get a professional machine I haven't used anything that does a very good steaming job. That wasn't a pro machine. Because, you know, it's just it can be done. I mean, if you go to coffee geek.com Those people will sit around and make amazing foam with home machines. But this you know, they I think they they're always sucking wind a little bit because they don't have as much of a steam capacity as let's say even a single group 110 machine. But that said, you can do this all very cheaply. If you scrounge around and you can have me tell you this is extreme pleasure to just be able to use a freaking espresso machine like nature intended it which is having it plugged into your water supply and having it you know drain into your into your drain. Even if you don't have a commercial espresso machine, you can usually plumb them by putting a level sensor and an A solenoid valve to allow you to put high pressure from your meter mains, which is like 4050 psi put that into a gravity fed container and espresso machine. So there you have it. Anastacia you know that Bogota is over 1000 feet high. And I haven't had to do this much talking in a row on the phone and I'm actually feeling when it's from the altitude.

Wow. They're more than more than when you ride your bike here. Come in, what is it? I said you feel more out of breath and when you arrive here after you've written your bike in Brooklyn.

That's true but you can't let yourself mellow out when you're when you're in Bogota there's no there's no mellowing out. The weird thing is I didn't feel that when did the whole week it's just I guess it's just because of the the talking high speed because when I was doing my demonstration here is the first time like I said that had to be done in Spanish. And so it's weird having to constantly stop and like give like three sentences wait Give three sentences late. Give three sentences that They're very strange. Very, very, very strange. All right. Jason Lee writes in a question on eggs. So I know Dave's done quite a bit on low temperature a cookie, including the chart recently published in David Chang's lucky peach magazine, which that we've used that for how many times we use that chart and Stasha,

many Harvard uses it to woo Harvard,

Harvard using it was in Popular Science, what that chart is, like all over the place anyway. But I was wondering if you guys had any tips for other eggs, Braille dots, etc. I'm assuming times we need to be adjusted for different age sizes. But what about the composition of eggs are substances in different age different, and if they're the same as chicken eggs is the ratio of substances the same? Alright? Well, Jason, unfortunately, I don't have or didn't until right before this happened, have enough Wi Fi time to research the exact opposition of what's going on in these eggs. I will say this, chicken eggs and duck eggs, and quail eggs for that matter are different. The proteins in them are different. They're fairly similar, right? But they are different. And the reason I know this is because when you treat eggs with lye and salt, which is something we do for the Harold McGee class, and really like, I think we have it on the blog, mustaches. Remember, it's on the blog from a couple of years ago, you can just look up lie and eggs. And that lie basically denature the proteins, whether it makes it less able to bond with itself, which makes it such that it stays clear even when it's cooked. So that's pretty cool. And, you know, the doesn't work as well in chicken eggs, as it does in duck eggs and quail eggs. So you know that there's fundamentally difference between those two, those three eggs. Quail, interestingly and duck work better than chicken. Now, I haven't done a lot as far as cooking them goes, I haven't done a lot of experimentation to figure out what temperature whether there's a temperature difference, I know that a duck egg and a quail egg is going to be running at 62 Because I've done them. And I know that a quail egg will still get slightly, you know that creaminess that you would normally get a 63 Celsius, right, which is weird. But quail eggs cook much faster. And I think they also can drift into overcooked much faster a quail egg is done in like, you know, under 15. way under 15 minutes, you know what I mean? It's like, it gets done quick. At quail eggs, though, when you do a quail egg in a circulator, they're difficult to get out the way you would get out of chicken egg. So what I normally do is you get like one of those, one of those like cigar cuttings, things that are not there for quail eggs, and you chop the top and the bottom, not just the top to get the egg at the top and the bottom. And then you can shake the egg out. And you can get like you know, most of the eggs will come out properly. Whereas if you tried to do it by a cracking, you're going to lose like half of your eggs. So if you're going to low temperature circulate a quail egg, you're going to want to get one that can trap the top and the bottom of the shell off. duck eggs I haven't had a lot of experience with I mean, I know they're still creamy at 62. But I don't know whether they'll set you know exactly at 64 and the premium 63 They're obviously gonna have to cook longer because they're because they're bigger. But, you know, more interesting thing on eggs is and related to the proteins and basicity is and I think we put this in eater last week is you need to add a little bit of if you if you haven't problems pulling your eggs if you add a little bit of baking soda to the water, apparently it helps and and that's probably the trick because it makes it more alkaline and makes it so the proteins in the eggs bond less strongly to the membrane in the shell when you peel it which is kind of cool. I asked Wiley whether they do that the restaurant and the restaurant being WD 50. And indeed they do but they say the peeling eggs is still a a pain in the butt. Alright, so by the way, before I forget, I said on the blog a couple of weeks ago that that dragon fruit is a gross, awful tropical fruit. And I got a couple of people telling me that I was wrong and I was like Well look, I'm willing to be proven wrong. Well I came down here to Colombia and I had a fruit called papaya papaya is another basically word for type of dragon fruit. The ones they get down here yellow, and lo and behold. It tastes good. I like it. So I found a dragon fruit that I like also, you know, Natasha, you remember how I hate papaya? Yeah. Yeah, I hate it right? I mean, I like the green papaya like the question buyer. But I hate myself a ripe papaya in the States. It smells like like nothing you'd want like alternately. A sometimes it smells like a diaper. Sometimes it smells like vomit. This is no good. You ate them. No, no, I know. They're awful. Right? Here's their actual We get, in fact, in Colombia, right? You're not supposed to, you're not supposed to walk around the streets of Colombia showing off that you have a lot of blame. It's not a blame oriented society when you're walking around the streets. And I'm saying, you know, Faraj and the security here is intense, you know what I mean? There's, there's still, I guess, you know, worried about, I guess, props anyway. So the local phrase is to show you how good the pies are here compared to where they are in the States. If the local phrase here is, don't give the pie out. In other words, if you if you have this pie out, that you're giving out that people are going to come take it and take more, you know what I mean? So it's like, that pride is so ingrained that like the kind of national statement for like, you know, don't flash your bling. is what basically don't flash your papayas

cute Yeah.

Anyway. Okay. Do going up. Have a question from Chris. About blue strength of color in case you want to do that first. All right, caller you're on here. Yeah. Hi. My name is Jesse. I have a question about juice extractors. And I was wondering, for under 300 bucks, is there one that you recommend? Highly? Okay, well, what kind of juice? Um, juicing vegetables and fruits? Would not citrus? No, not citrus, no. And not sugarcane. And not sugar cane and not regress? No, not wheatgrass either. Okay, because those are, those are tough. So the one that we typically use in the school and it almost every chef has, and they can be had for well under $300 Is the Champion juicer. Okay, the gym in the Champion juicer, basically, the way it works is it's got an auger and then little teeth, and it just, you know, you push the stuff through and pulp suits out the front and juice goes down the bottom. And you can even put the pump through a second time, if you want to can also grind peanuts, and you can grind cocoa nibs to make chocolate, it's good to good machine. It, you know, it tends to heat your juice up a little bit. You know what I mean? Yeah, so, if you're having a problem with your juice overheating, and especially when I make it, I tend to force stuff down the throat of the machine. So quickly that like it tends to overheat. I've had, I've had the base of the champion the motor, like almost catch on fire, and like, you know, I've melted the internal complimentary of it, but that's after like, you know, like, over an hour of continuous, heavy, like, you know, basically, when I choose like that I juice as if I was going to the gym and working out, you know what I'm saying. So it's, it's, you know, that's not going to happen that much for more money. Some people like the Green Star Juicer, which is basically a set of gears that mashes to stuff. However, I've never used one people that I know that have used it to say that the yield is not nearly as high with the GreenStar as it is with the champion. Now there are a bunch of other juicers that I've seen on the web and even seen kind of in person that seemed to they work on different principles, right, that work like centrifugal, so they grind it, and then then it's intrinsically separated out. And some of these reportedly make very good juice. The problem is, is that they a lot of them don't have a lot of capacity. So if you're making a little bit of juice right there, okay. But if you want to make a boatload of juice, like if you're doing a party, or if you have a lot of people coming over or whatever, then you're not going to want to sit around and burn out a smaller juicer, you're going to want something that maybe is a little bit less, maybe had a little bit less yield on extraction, maybe warms up a little bit, but it's kind of a robo monster, right, which is what the champion is. So I actually don't have a lot of information on the other kind on the kind that is like a little bit slower, maybe a little bit more gentle, but can't handle a lot because I can't personally use a piece of equipment that can't pump out, you know, a gallon of juice in a reasonable amount of time. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. So, and how do I have to say, you know, on the other end of the spectrum, if you have a bajillion dollars, if all of a sudden you win the lottery go out and buy a new truck faster, like the professional ones that you see that look like they look like a tower and an airport and have a tube coming out of them? Yeah, I've never used one before, because I've never worked in like, you know, one of these places that uses for living, but by the way, none of these users will do regress sugarcane. And they're not for Citrix, which is why I asked you those questions. But you put, you put an apple on a Champion juicer, you have to push on it to get it to come out, right and that's just what it is. When you want I put an apple into the neutral, faster thing, I felt like it was going to suck my arm down into it. That's how thirsty it was to eat these apples. You know what I mean? Respect to that machine. The other machine that some people like very expensive, is the Norwalk, which is basically a press. But again, I've never used it. I don't know how concerned you are about heat changing it versus just you want it easy to clean, and pop out a whole bunch of juice. Are you more in that category? You want to be more well and pop out a boatload of juice when you need it, but not necessarily need to do that much. Exactly. Yeah. Send us a champion. Have you used it before?

I think I've used it once in a restaurant. Yeah.

Yeah, most people have them, you know. And most people were usually fairly, fairly happy with them. I don't know how much more cost to get the commercial one. The commercial one basically has a stainless shaft and better bearings on the motor versus the whole machine. Otherwise, I think they're fairly similar. It's easy to get replacement parts for it. And I don't know anyone that doesn't like their champion. Okay, great. All right. Well, thanks a lot. Good luck with it. Thanks. So to start you think we should go to the first break all right, well hold your questions to Cemani 49721287184972128 cooking issues.

The song sustain again, that meet that guy Dave

Yep, you're back on. Hey, welcome back. You're on the air cooking issues coming to you live from Brooklyn and Bogota, Colombia, where the weather is always like fall. It's crazy. It's like falling all the time actually, like the weather a lot. Pretty good. You can even though we're on the equator, it's it's like so high up in the mountains, that it's always kind of like, it's like basically fall weather like early fall weather, which I enjoy. If you go to metazine, which is you know, it's also in the mountains, but like slightly lower. They call that one eternal spring because it's like 10 degrees warmer than here. So it's always springtime. They're always designing like literally nothing changes. weather wise, they have a rainy season where maybe it rains more but like weather wise the temperature. It's always the same. Crazy, right? Yeah. Then we went down to carta Hana, which is like on the water, and that is freaking humid. Breaking human anyway. prior questions still sound quality questions. 271-847-2128. That's 718-497-2128 By the way, Warren Columbia. guys down here. incredibly nice. incredibly nice. Probably do a blog post on by the way. I haven't had blog post I've been internet challenged. Often when I'm down here, and telephone challenged, and cash challenge. Do you know that they I came down here. And my bank Chase decided that they want to ask them for a replacement card and they would give me a temporary card. You know, temporary cards don't do you have money. They don't take money out of banks internationally. So we've been I've been like basically mooching off of my new friends here in Colombia. For the last week,

why are you money two days ago and you never gave me the code.

I don't understand how we're starting, or whatever. What we will do a little understanding is that travelers who are going abroad, please get your financial crud straightened out before you go or you could be a moron like Dave Arnold. That's basically the point. Right? So Chris writes in about the bloom strength of gelatin, can you explain how to convert between different brooms bloom strength of sheet gelatin? I have a recipe that calls for silver strength at 160 bloom. We only have gold strength 200 bloom handy. Thanks. Okay. First of all, Bloom force Bloom is is kind of a weird definition of the strength of gelatin. And literally what it is, is they take gelatin, it's been cured, you know, for like, you know, 17 hours at very specific temperature like 10 Celsius right at very specific concentration, like, six, six and two thirds, 6.666%, right. And they push a push a little plunger that they make standard into it. And they figure out how much force it takes to push that plunger, four millimeters into the surface of the gel, right? And they give you that force in grams. And that's what Bloom is. And by the way, most of the measures used in foods are weird, crazy lunatic things like this, where some dude in a factory was sitting around saying, Hey, listen, I gotta figure out how to measure this greatness. We make this like we like now, this is the standard for all time. So you like I don't know, he uses whatever, he wants a ball of color and a pen, whatever. But he makes standard for all time. It's named after him bloom and he pushes it down, he writes the stuff down. So this is how the food industry works. So the question is, how do you convert it? So you can't just simply, you know, other places have published, you can't just simply exchange like say, Hey, I have one that's a 200. Bloom, I'm making these can make math easier for me, I wanted to 200 bloom, and one that's a 100. Bloom. So I'm just going to use twice the 100 bloom, right? It doesn't make it doesn't make sense. Here's another thing, people like to use number of sheets of gelatin when I usually don't, and to kind of figure out what's going on. But the fact of the matter is, is that typically you buy sheet gelatin, in grades, right? Platinum, silver, bronze, gold, right. And the thing is, is that as it goes down the line, Platinum is the strongest Joe, it's usually as the highest bloom strength, it's usually the clearest gels that don't have any brown, right, some of the lower strength gels have undergone some hydrolysis, there can be some browning in them, it's like they're not as you know, not as good looking not as clear anyways, the lower the strength, the gel typically like, the higher, the higher the weight of each sheet is because they're attempting to keep the gelling power proceeds similar, if that makes sense. But if you're going to substitute a weight, then you have to do some sort of conversion. Now. As you change the concentration of gelatin, right, you're not, it doesn't scale. So in other words, if you double the concentration, you don't get exactly twice the, you don't get twice the strength of the gel, typically, you get much more than twice the strength of the gel, right. So you can't do a straight conversion. A very good thing to look at on the web is something called a gelatin summary and conversion. And it's a really useful, like four page Word document that you can download right off the thing by a UI, there's Albert, Albert luster imports, and their mustache, you'll be happy to know that they're Swiss. And they provide the formula where you take and you multiply by the square root of the ratio of the bloom strengths. If that's not gonna make more sense, both put it this way, if you have a 200, Bloom strength gel, right, and you want to figure out how much to use of 140 bloom, you do 200 divided by 140, right. And then you take the square root of that. And so if you needed an exiss example, right off their sheet, I'm reading it off their sheets. So don't say I'm plagiarizing. It's right there. If you have 10 grams of 200 blue gelatin, and but you you know, the recipe calls for 10 grams 200 bloom, but you want to use one, it's 140 bloom, you take 10 times a square root of 200 over 140. And that is how many grams of the lower bloom strength gelatin you want to use. And the reason for the square root there is as I say that it's not a linear, it's not a linear thing. Anyway, I hope that helps. And you should read that read that little paper because it's kind of cool. Anyway, it's got lots of kind of cool pictures. And it's titled gelatin summary. And that's what he has. It also gives interestingly stuff that you don't, it has a bunch of actual conversions for known things like how to convert platinum feed weight to NOx powder weight, how to convert NOx powder wait to go away by NOx powder, which is the one that's actually that we use when we're doing our gelatin work is actually pretty darn good. It's got like it's between platinum and gold and actually closer to platinum. So that's pretty good, right? Yeah, it's really good. Wow, yeah. So not show it and even though it's in the supermarket turns out to be serious, but kicker, right. Nice. Nice. Alright, so I tried coca tea by the way, that was it. That was me fine. It's like you know, it's we went to the like highest point in Bogota, which is Montserrat day, which is like you have to take up this like crazy travel to the top and it's, it's way up there. And they have this like little market over there. And so they sell all kinds of local Colombian products. And one of which is coca tea, which is basically just the coca leaves. And I tried it and you know, I didn't I didn't feel didn't feel anything really didn't do anything to me as far as I know, and someone got me a bag of the leaves, but I'm pretty sure they're illegal to bring back to the United States. And since I'm flying around from here to Panama and Panama, the United States with a bag loaded with knives, and, and white powders loaded in Ziploc bags, I don't think I'm going to take the chance of actually having any cocoa products on what do you think?

Yeah, I think that's not

as wise right? Yeah, I mean, I'm not exactly sure how the law goes. I should have researched it before I before I came in, but thinking that this is going to have to stay with some friends in in Colombia. There's no way I'm gonna try and bring this back on. If you imagine, if you imagine like they find the coke bags, and then they find like, all the bags is like xanthan gum and, and, you know, it'd be crazy, crazy. Bad news, horrible, horrible idea. Yeah, I've had some bad ideas before but I think that might be the most horrible of all those interesting in terms of coca you know, there's a lot of obviously controversy about the growing of cocoa because it's used to make cocaine which is then shipped in the states and causes many problems, etc, etc. But what's interesting is that we went to a museum called the gold museum down here and it's all about pre Columbian gold. And this you know, the coca is the product has been used by the people around here for like 10 bazillion years, you know, I mean, like a lot of the gold implements that they had way way away before anyone showed up a you know, demonstrate that this is they use this not talking about refined cocaine but like this as a as basically a normal part of their daily life they had, you know, they would have pouches that like beautiful gold rich, most people would use just hollowed out gourds, but like gold pouches to carry the lime, they burned shell, the calcium hydroxide to use to activate the coca leaf strongest. So it's, it's interesting, it's really, you know, part of the historical culture here, which makes it a little bit more difficult to say that we should try to stop people from growing in anything. It's kind of interesting little question. Yeah. All right. So Brian writes in with several questions, and so we'll try to hit some I'm gonna go in reverse order. All right, Brian. Ryan bought malic acid citric acid at the Homebrew store. Good news. I want to use them in cocktails and other stuff such as jabs, pate to flee any other assets. I should get any thoughts on the best applications? Well, yes, you can get some tartaric acid, although if you have citric and malic, citric and malic are the two baller acid if you have citric amount of citric acid malic acid, you can do a lot right now like acid is the acid that is typical and apples, right apples malice. And citric acid is the acid that's typical in lemons now. And if you taste them by themselves in small quantities, like they taste like the warhead, that they're that they're you know, the Apple warhead. The other one tastes like lemon warhead warhead as a candy. If you are the sour patches, if you buy tartaric acid, like that's one of the main acids in grapes and so that provides a great Pinot if you mix two parts of citric acid to one part malic acid, you get the acidic flavor of lime, which is the one that I use most. And I use it as a corrective right. So if you don't want to add lines, or you know if you just want to correct the acidity of the juice slightly, we use these acids all the time if you jack them too much, you tend to throw the juice out of balance when you say so Anastacia some other acids, we get our lactic acid in powder form which can give alternately like a sauerkraut eat or a sausage you taste depending on the application because you know, having some lactic acid, you know, interact. That's a good one. I use one called succinic. But I don't recommend getting it it just makes very, very authentic lime juice but very hard to get the lactic, lactic a huge tiny amounts of lactic acid, the and the malic acid and citric acid tartaric acid are all pretty much available. I think from homebrew and wine shops. The other one obviously you should get his ascorbic acid which is vitamin C, which is a very good antioxidant if you're making apple juice and whatnot. But, you know, there's some athletes I want to get a hold of that I don't have like quinic which is a strict astringent and is part of the characteristics stuff and things like apples, but I don't have a source for it yet. I want to try you know, tiny quantities of other bizarre acids but until I want to can't talk much about them until I find a source for them. But it's good news, you're gonna love that we always love having that stuff around. Just like I say correct acidity. If you're going to make a soda and it has to last a long time, then you can use a Malic citric blend with simple syrup to approximate law I'm gonna just squeeze a little fresh line repeal, and at the end you get a good line back out. But I mean, nothing beats the real thing. Right and fashion. That is right. In nothing like the real thing anyway. Okay. Second question. As Brian speaking again, I have made my own vinegar. It is snapped, except for the damn vinegar flies, and vinegar is tasty as well. What exactly is the vinegar mother? And is there any culinary application for it other than for making more vinegar? That's an excellent question. And in fact, one of the hairs radio hosts is an expert vinegar maker, I don't know if he talks about it on the air, so I won't call them out. The when you make vinegar, what happens is is you take you basically take alcohol, and that's you know, somewhere around 10% alcohol, and you expose it to oxygen, when you expose it to oxygen acetyl acetyl bacteria grow on acetic acid bacteria grow on the top while they grow all throughout it right and they're turning the ethanol into into acetic acid. Okay? Now, like I say they require oxygen to survive. So what ends up happening is that they tend to form a bunch of what's called bacterial cellulose, right. And then they float that stuff float to the top and formed a layer. Now the bacteria then after they use up the initial oxygen that's in the acidic in the stuff that you're turning into vinegar, as they use the initial oxygen up, they tend to only exist in large quantities actively in large quantities in the top of the forming vinegar, right where the oxygen is. And so they sit there chillin on the top of the of the vinegar, making acetic acid from the ethanol, and at the same time are producing bacterial cellulose. And so that layer is basically living bacteria and bacterial cellulose. So yes, you can lift it off, and use it to make more vinegar. Right. Or there's a it's I've never heard of it done with with vinegar closers before with vinegar mothers, but there's kind of a well known Asian Filipino dessert called, what is it called Not, not to Coco. Right. And what that is, is, is it is the gel produced basically vinegar mother, right there, what they do is, is instead of having a jar that's tall, right or a jug, and where they're trying to prevent, I guess, excess moisture loss and whatnot, they spread coconut water in, like in like a several inch thick layer in large sheets. And they use a very specific Seto factor. But this works with any any acetic acid bacteria. And it grows a thick layer of bacterial cellulose on top, which is the same thing as vinegar mother, there's this one is just happens to produce a lot more of it. So it makes it a lot thicker. So what they then do is they take off the top layer, and they soak it, and then they think they might even boil it and they get rid of the acetic acid flavor. And they have the this basically gel produced from the thing and then they infuse it with syrups and make it sweet stuff like that, that believe not, not that the cocoa I think but it's basically vinegar mother. So you could take the vinegar mother, soak it, if you're gentle with it, because it's probably not going to be as strong. And then maybe boil in a syrup and make a gel out of it. And you know, tell us what happened, compare it to compare it to the one from Asia. Anyway. That's an interesting question. The third question that Brian has is, oh, by the way, he is one of my favorite terms. He's like, I have a lot of questions. And he said, I hope I'm not bogarting the radio show. I haven't heard bogarting in a long time. Anyway, okay. black garlic is all the rage. How's it made? And can I make it at home? Alright, so for those of you that haven't been paying attention to like hip new ingredients over the past couple years, black garlic is a kind of garlic that originated in Korea. And people bring it over here as black breasts not really black, it's kind of brownish black, right. It's actually it's not really black. Yeah, it's dark, dark, dark brown. And it's kind of gooey, it's still in it's in the clothes, and it's gooey gooey, and you spread it on things or do whatever you want with it. And it's very, very sweet. And it's has like sugary like

some people say like balsamic I don't really get I don't really get that anyway, but like it's what it is taste like what it is. And it's pretty good people like it also doesn't make your breath stank. The way that regular garlic does, and if I have time, more More on that later was doing now. So you know, we pressure cook garlic to do the same thing. And we're working on, we're working on trying to get some funding to get a garlic specialist to run some tests for us to verify why freshly cooked garlic doesn't make your bread stick because it's stuff that's in garlic, that stuff that's in garlic, that does make your best steak and is extremely punchy and shouldn't be broken down by the temperatures of a pressure cooker, but apparently is. And he has some theories, but we have to run some tests. So more on that when we when we do it. But the way black garlic is made of people. By the way, I did some little bit of research, and I haven't been able to find anyone's definitively says what's going on. But people say that it's fermented and if not fermented in the traditional sense, right? Because the temperatures are too high. Here's how it's made. You, you basically keep the garlic at home. Some people apparently, so get some done beforehand, you keep it and by the way, some people say soy sauce, so it's unnecessary, not needed in boba, okay, you take the garlic, and you keep it above 140 degrees Fahrenheit above 60 degrees Celsius, right. And, but you can go all the way up, right according to some of these sites, all the way up to like 80 or 90 degree Celsius, you still have have it eight, I wouldn't do that I would never take it, you know, above softening temperature of the garlic, which is going to be you know, in the 70s or 80s. Celsius. So, you know, I would keep it down lower, where people recommend like 4050 Celsius, which is in the 100 140 and a little above range. Don't go any below that, because you go below that you can have bacteria growing on it, right. So they keep it hot. And they keep it basically from drying out so it doesn't desiccate over time. And they keep it for a long time. So on the order of 30 days, the higher the temperature probably the the less time it's gonna take. But that's how they make it. So it's done hot for a long time, and then allowed to cool down. And there you have it, some people in a patent read online. So people put charcoal in with it to try absorb some of the odor odors as it's being made. I don't know if that's truly necessary. But the easiest way to do it is to use a dehydrator. So if you're lucky enough to have an Excalibur style dehydrator, then you can. So the sheet style dehydrators are tough, because you don't want to actually dehydrate. So you want to kind of like like put plastic wrap put like put the garlic in a container that's nonreactive, but plastic wrap or whatever over that container. So that doesn't lose all its moisture. Now it's basically a controlled humidity environment. And then you put that into a dehydrator, and you set it at like, I'm gonna make up a number, like 150. And you let that Fahrenheit and you let it run for like 30 days. And and there you have it. And so, so that's it. So it doesn't appear to be an enzyme reaction it's going on. Because of those temperatures, I'm pretty sure you're going to, at least maybe initially it is but you're gonna break it down, broken down a lot of the enzymes over that period of time those temperatures, I would guess, right? And it's not a fermentation in the sense that it's not bacterial, or yeast derived. And this is why in the science literature, it's just referred to as h garlic. I think what's happening is, is that a lot of the compounds in garlic are pretty unstable. And if they're just held at these temperatures for very long periods of time, can produce these kinds of crazy things like, like age, age. What do you think breach the registration? Yeah. All right. So anyway, I was supposed to be in Brooklyn, I am flying out tomorrow to Panama, where I'm doing a demo in Panama City for a bunch of cookies for people. And I'm going to do an EKG may demo there. Maybe using some of the new EKG may stuff that I learned when I was working with Dave Chang on his iPad app, after which I will be in Harvard next Tuesday, giving a lecture to bright you know, bushy, whatever bright eyed bushy tailed college students about the wonders of science in in cooking with Harold McGee, which should be a blast. Unfortunately, that means I will not be doing a live show because it's during the actual cooking issues time that we'll be doing the lecture. So I look forward to speaking to you all in two weeks. Send us your questions, cooking issues.