Cooking Issues Transcript

Episode 63: Nirvana & Bagpipes


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broadcasting live from Roberta's in Bushwick, Brooklyn, you're listening to heritage Radio network.com.

Hello, and welcome to cooking issues. This is Dave Arnold, your cooking issues coming to you live every tuesday from the Heritage Radio Network. Roberta's pizzeria in the back and the little container they have cut here for our radio station. In the Bushwick joined as usual with Anastasia the hammer Lopez although a sickness Dasha Yes, right? Yes, listen, while I while I talk about and Stasha I'm going to I'm going to tell you to call all your questions to send 184972128 That's 718-497-2128 you gotta hurry because we're only here to answer your Thanksgiving related cooking questions or otherwise, for the next 45 minutes or say so I understand you're not feeling well.

No, you know, it was even more depressing. But getting on the subway and seeing everyone with their suitcases at Port Authority going home?

Well, well, they were at Port Authority so you can land him for that reason Port Authority is for those of you that haven't visited our fine city Port Authority is a hellhole I mean a 100%. unmitigated hunk of crap, one job, one job, one job, get people into the city and out of the city in an effective manner. So what are some things you need good transport back and forth? Right. Good signage. friendly staff people? Yeah. And you those No, no. Worst staff worse unless you work there. In which case I love you worse signage. heart you know, the building itself is split into two sections, with a road running through it. So you're like, where's my bus? Oh, it's in the other building? How come there's no sign saying it's in the other freakin building? Because this is Port Authority. What do you want an easy way to get in another city? That was wrong with you? Anyway, Port Authority sucks. The only thing that kind of rivals Port Authority for sucking has got to be Penn Station. Yeah, the other biggest hunk of crap in the entire city and also the other place it's supposed to get people in and out of the city relatively easy. Again, for those of you that don't take trains in the city, either because you're rich enough to always have a car or whatever. I don't know why. But for some reason, even at Grand Central at Grand Central, I can tell you right now on a program exactly what track your train will be on in a month and a half. Okay. At Penn Station. They like to wait until five minutes before the train is going to leave so that everyone with their luggage is smashing into each other down a tiny corridor to rush and beat each other up and like knock each other into the tracks to get to the train just make any freaking sense. Come on people. Anyway, alright, enough of that. Okay. Did already told me Common question. Yeah. Anyway so I think the reason it's dash is sick is because it's Tasha was in part aside from all the other cooking issues and you know, new company related work that we're doing. She ran the wedding celebration for our good buddy. Neil's Norn. And and Vicki, you know, Chef Neil's Norn our buddy had his wedding you'd never thought he'd never thought you'd get no till he found Vicky the right woman. And Miss Dasha forgets to tell me it's true story forgets to tell me hey, Niels requested that you make some cocktails for the wedding, which I would gladly do I'll do anything for Neil's doesn't, doesn't tell me makes them and was like, they've made them like the hell I made them. They were good. They were delicious. Right? But like, I'm not gonna take my recipe. If I make if I make Bobby flays recipes like, Hey, Bobby Flay made your chicken. Anyway, they were good. So you know, to you goes to credit. They suck too. You would have gotten the blame as well, because that's the way she goes. All right. Matthew writes in. Hi David, Natasha, I'm looking forward to today's show. This Friday, I'm catering a party in the host had requested me to prepare a filet of beef. That's tenderloin for all you other people out there. I don't have access to a circulator. Although there's a slight chance I can borrow one from some friends. And we'll have to cook the tenderloins from raw at the apartment where the party is I will probably cook one from medium rare to medium which is already too high for my taste, by the way, Matthew and another medium to well done. And in parentheses, that's not my choice, obviously not anyone's choice. What the hell just put a blindfold on the customer so they don't know how overcooked it is. And they'll enjoy it when it's cooked less anyway, if you don't have the opportunity to poke their eyes out so they can't look at the color. I mean, you know, you're gonna have to, obviously, if you do tenderloin, well done you're gonna have to sauce the sauce to be Jesus out of it in order to have it be even moderately edible, right or wrong. Right anyway. Do you have any do you have any suggestions, guidelines, temperatures or general advice for preparing, preparing a beef fillet with standard issue home kitchen equipment. I have about a three hour window from when I arrived at the house until the meat will be served. Okay, look at if you really do have to cook one of these suckers, Intel it's gray and unappetizing. You're gonna have to make a delicious sauce to go with it. I suggest something a sauce with a lot of fat in it that's bound that's not going to have the fat pull out a cream based sauce perhaps Perhaps onions, cassis and cream, some mixture thereof might be good with some reduced beef stock, right? So as it sounds good, right? Anywho. So that's one thing. Another thing if you if you're going to, if you're supposed to overcook it, because your customers want it overcooked, you might as well go ballsy and do a beef wellington because that's kind of ballsy right where you take you're going to sear off the meat. Then you're going to take a mixture of Pate and sauteed mushrooms and shallots and put it over the top of the tenderloin wrap the sucker and puff pastry and then cook it in a high oven guaranteed to overcook the tenderloin. But if they wanted overcooked anyway, that's what I would recommend. Now tenderloin is interesting. It's a it's a cut that a lot of chefs don't give a lot of merit to because it doesn't have a lot of connective tissue. And people think of it as a fairly as far as beef goes not having a lot of beef flavor. So chefs tend to make fun of the cut now, it can be delicious as a textural thing, and it does. I mean, come on. It does have some beef flavor, right? Yeah. So and sexist. It's usually like a lot of it. Basically, there's a lot of sexism. Newsflash, a lot of sexism in this business. And, you know, it's seen as kind of a lady's cut is kind of like it's the Cosmo of steaks, basically. So but the trick to cooking one is one not overcooking it, it because there's no connective tissue, it wants to cook at a very, very low temperature. So when I am using a circulator, I only cook it up to like 54.4 Celsius, which is very low rare, because it doesn't have any sort of fat really or connected you to protect it from overcooking, too. You don't want to cook it that long. Because even with a low temperature, even if you had a circulator, the meat would get kind of mushy if you cooked it for a long time. So if I'm presuming by the way you are writing the question that you want to keep it whole as a whole filet and then cut serving, otherwise, I will just cut it into steaks and cook the steaks, which is a lot easier to do well using home equipment. Now I'm gonna go radical on first of all, if you have to do at home equipment, I would put a crust on it. And then I would put it in the oven in and out in and out in and out in and out in and out of the oven to try and get a more moderate heat on it. So it doesn't overcook, but that's a pain in the butt. And if you don't do it all the time, that's how David Kinch like now replicates cuz he doesn't David Kinch, from Manresa. mazing chef, he moved away from using circulators and instead mimics the effect of a circulator, which is a low average heat input by moving the meat in and out in and out in and out of an oven, which at the same time has the high heat of the oven which Chris Chris and browns the outside while he's getting the low heavy average heat input. So he's doing it that way. You can do it that way. Here's something I suggest go to the apartment. Most people's hot water taps and an apartment are fairly hot. measure the temperature of the hot water using an instant read thermometer. If the water is within a couple of degrees of 54, like if it's 53, all the way up to like 5556. Then I would put the tenderloin in a Ziploc bag with a little bit of oil and turn the running water on if the water is too hot, add a tiny bit of cold water and it'll stabilize get a steady but not severe stream of hot water. Just don't work in an apartment by the way in a house because you typically run out of hot water but in an apartment, usually you won't. So you can run a steady stream of hot water over a Ziploc bag and I've actually cooked food this way in a pinch. It's completely eco unfriendly. But it will work bring it you want to make sure that the thing cooks through in under you want to cook it in about 45 to 50 minutes and tenderloin will cook through depends on how thick it is. It might take an hour and a half if it's really thick, and then pull it out. Pull it down a little bit and sear the outside of it. Is that helpful? Yeah, yeah. Anyway, so about 54 is where I shoot for for rare I do not go above 56 tenderloin is a very, very short window of yumminess. Okay. Now, our good friend, Ariel from UC Davis, is she postdoc now at UC Davis. Are she still a grad student? Was she postdoc, I don't know. Anyway, our good buddy who used to be at NYU is friends with Kent Kirschenbaum. And she gave us some very interesting information. She's running some tests on lime juice for us for herself really, but you know, it also helps us because, you know, people who've heard me yap about lime juice a lot know that

a lot of people prefer lime juice that's three or four hours old as opposed to very fresh lime juice and a cocktail. And so she's doing the preliminary studies on what's actually going on in the lime juice. And apparently the volatile the level of volatiles decreases rapidly over that first three to four hour chunk and other flavors are starting to come in. So that's it looks like there might be an actual sweet spot in the lime juice. If you'd like a specific profile, more to come. She is going to work on it more in the new year. But that's pretty interesting. And the other thing is that she wrote in about pungency, and garlic, which is something that you know, I apparently now got wrong and apparently McGee also we both got it wrong. There is a pungent cheese scale for alliums onions in particular, but I'm sure it also worked with garlic and it's called the pyruvate scale. So what happens is, is when when you convert Aliana, whatever it is to Allison, whichever way it goes from the non pungent to the pungent using the enzymes when you cut or crush garlic or onion that pungency has created also creates a molecule of pyruvate which is easily measurable and doesn't degrade. So what happens is they as fast so they make the they crush up on humans, and they use a relatively inexpensive piece of equipment, a spectrophotometer as opposed to like doing, you know, chromatography more expensive process, and they can measure directly the level of pyruvate that's there and therefore have a measure of how pungent the product is. So there is a measure of pungency that in from erielle and you can look it up even on Wikipedia I should have looked at it's called pyruvate scale, dum, dum. Anyway, she sent us a paper and you can you can just go look it up for those of you that have that sort of that sort of capability to look up papers pyruvate scale anyway. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. All right now, Jason, from the southwest of England writes in and says, I'm a dedicated podcast listener, but usually cannot listen, live and call in because I'm in England, although I'm a native New Yorker. So hopefully I can ask Dave a question via email. Here you are doing it. Here it is happening. Okay. I had an argument recently with some people, most notably my wife about storing coffee. She told me it should not be stored cold, I keep my current bag of coffee in the fridge and any supplies in the freezer. No one could explain to me why this was bad. And I assume that reducing the rate of oxidation in general spoilage by keeping the coffee cold has to be a major benefit given how fast coffee gets old and stale. My rationale also include the fact that the ground coffee is going to come to temperature super fast, given its low moisture content, high surface area and the fact that it's being immersed in 100 degree water. What do you think the science science says store it cold the people seem to be arguing against this for some reason. Thanks, Jason. Who ads in print stuck in southwest Western Well, listen. Hey, if you're gonna be in southwest England, Jason now's the time. Shout out to Somerset and the cider folks over there. You guys gotta be rolling an apple cider at this point. We maybe it's not done yet. But that's one of the apple cider producing kingdoms like centers of the universe right there. I mean, if I like like, in fact, if I had the time, I wasn't working on so much stuff. And if it wasn't Thanksgiving, I'd be getting on a plane right now. and flying to the other side. And you know, sorry, Summer, Saturday going to Kent to go to the brogdale collection and chewing down on some apples and having some delicious cider over there. So good time to be from the south. I mean, good time of year to be from the south of England, remember? Yeah, it was fun time. Good. Yeah. Fun Time. Fun time. Yeah, I'm sick anyway. That's fine to start the invitation by the way. Okay, so back to the question on coffee. Now, listen, I was not able listen, I was not able to find any actual scholarly research on this. But I will tell you the reasoning that I have heard over the years, and it's also, you know, not to choose sides with your wife, but that you shouldn't store the coffee in the fridge. And here's why. It's not the cold. It's not the it's not the coal that's hurting it, it's the fact that you get a lot of condensation as the temperature changes, up and down, up and down, up and down. So if you had, if you had coffee, in a hermetically sealed bag that had no moisture, or you know, the same amount of moisture at the coffee had it controlled atmosphere, let's say co2 Purge, nitrogen purge vacuum, right, and you pulled it in and out of the fridge, there might actually be some damage from temperature cycling. But the damage wouldn't be that great, because you wouldn't be getting any condensation from the outside from moisture coming into the outside. In a normal situation, there's moisture, and the condensation that moisture on the surface of the beans as the temperature changes is what's causing the problem. And that's especially going to happen if you're in and out in and out in and out. If you are going to freeze the coffee. Freezing is viable, but you have to make sure that there's no moisture in the package at all. So you want to get all the air out of the package. If you have the ability to flush with some sort of gas like co2 or whatnot, if it's not fresh, very fresh beans, by the way, when you roast a fresh bean, if you're used by that you should just roast you should roast your own beans, which is a load of fun, just get some green beans roast them, it's a lot of fun. I mean, it's really it really is and you can you don't have to get really some fancy equipment, you can start just with a pan and you know, spoon, shake it around. If you just invest I think like 20 bucks in a whirly pop popcorn maker, they make great, you can roast coffee very well, in that I know I'm gonna get some calls saying that I'm a jerk. But you don't even need a thermometer. You can do it based on sound and smell. Don't say Don't tell me when I said that. But you can do good coffee roasting just based on that. Or you can move to an air popcorn popper number of ways to do roast coffee, but then you can do it. But if you roast your own coffee, you'll notice that they gas a lot if you were to take freshly roasted coffee that you just roasted and sealed it in a jar. Assuming the jar didn't blow up, I don't think it would make enough pressure to blow up the jar. But when you open it, it will you get a blast of co2 out because the co2 is being evolved out of the beans as they age. And so that's why they actually have one way valves in these bags and stop the bags from puffing up so that the co2 can get out. Once the beans have gotten rid of all of their co2 beans, once the beans have gotten rid of the co2, then they start to oxidize much more rapidly. And they and they still don't know what I got me. I don't know where to get into that. But my point is, is that they want to be protected from oxygen oxygen is going to be their enemy moisture is going to be their enemy. So I think that that also your fridge has lots of meat. I don't know about your friends, you might have the cleanest fridge in the world but fridges tend to have a lot of strength in them. It will stank which is why like when a fridge when the power goes out, you realize how stinky your fridge is because it's not cold anymore, which doesn't dampen down the volatiles and when they smell it, so coffee which is very porous tends to pick up bad aromas. It tends to pick up moisture which condenses on it as it goes in and out of the fridge and so the consensus is don't do it. Yeah, good job. Yeah, all right. And the stash is happy with my answer. I hope Jason that you were happy with my answer. What should we take a break the starship thinks we should go to our first commercial break so we'll do that call an order questions to send 184972128 That's 718-497-2128 sees inside your heart shin guards to young Magnus needs your cancer Are you know kids forget Angel Hair Love Your Highness

Welcome back to Cooking issues call your questions do 71849721287184972128 So the Nirvana folks like to Nirvana that was what I grew up with. So I'm at this wedding that Natasha is running right?

This was not my fault.

Hey look. So the DJ is playing all kinds of easy, you know, not easy but you know like, you know, brick house like wedding kind of stuff, you know, my in my head anyway and so like you know I'm dancing by oh by the way I'm gonna kind of a lunatic dancer and I was with Vicki are in terms of like an awesome Staten Island lunatic dancer. Awesome. Amazing. And my wife were dancing, and they throw on, you know, they throw on Smells Like Teen Spirit from nirvana. And then like what, what? What at a wedding, I was like, Look, if you're going to do that, the only appropriate way to do that is to go complete Mosh out headbang slam. So I'm like, alright, you asked for it. You played it. And so I started doing that the headband now it's not the same as when I had long hair back in 19 You know 9091 But you clear the dance clear the dance floor me I was like trying to do the little shoulder shake. It's freaking nirvana. Anyways, you know, thank God it wasn't 1991 or like some giant football jock would have started doing it and smashed into me and knocked me halfway across the this is my memory by the way. Now, this is what my life used to be like anywho my neck is still sore. So it turns out that when you're 40 going on 41 If you haven't done the headbang in a while, you might want to stay away. Today's show is sponsored by modernist pantry supplying innovative ingredients for the modern cook. Do you love to experiment with new cooking techniques and ingredients but hate to overspend for pounds and supplies and only a few grams are needed per application? Modernist pantry has a solution. They offer a wide range of modern ingredients and packages that makes sense for the home cook or enthusiast and most cost only around five bucks save you time, money and storage space. Whether you're looking for hydrocolloid pH buffers, or even meat glue, you'll find it at modernist pantry. And if you need something that they don't carry, just ask Chris Anderson and his team will be happy to source it for you. With inexpensive shipping to any country in the world modernist pantry is your one stop shop for innovative cooking ingredients. Fans have cooking issues that place an order of $25 or more before next week's show, we'll get a free sample of transglutaminase aka meat glue to experiment with over the holiday. Simply use the promo code ci 63 placing your order online at modernist pantry.com Visit modernist pantry.com today for all of your modernist cooking needs. meat glue,

we've talked about it I like

it though. It's good stuff it is good for the holiday season little meat glue. Those guys they like us as modern as pantry guys. It's good. We met them no never met them in person anyway. So what are you doing for the Thanksgiving?

I don't know yet.

You don't know. I put my order in for the turkey. I do the turkey farmer did you guys remember his name that Turkey farmer Larry Serral Larry Serral the heritage meat turkey farmer right I guess like it's done done the turkeys are slaughtered they're dead. So you can come in from where does he live? He lives in Pennsylvania where is Kansas Kansas? Same thing Kansas Pennsylvania same thing, same thing. Anyway, so he's uh he's here at Roberta's eating which is awesome because I'm about to go to the heritage meat stand Essex street market by the way you can now just any any Joe como who happens to show up in the Lower East Side of New York and go purchase Haridas meets at the Essex Street Market little known fact by people who didn't already know it. And, and I'm gonna go pick up my turkey today. And next week I'll report back how she's doing. I don't know you know what? You know what I'm thinking? I'm thinking I might I look I've become lazy in my old age as soon as you hit 40 You instantly become lazy. Sorry, all you 45 year old you're lazy sons of guns anyway. I think I'm just going to burn this sucker out.

What are you doing Thanksgiving?

That's a little turkey. I'm gonna burn it out. What else is there to do? Be thankful for my family. I'm kidding. So we're going to mistake which is where my in laws live, but I'm gonna burn out the turkey and probably roll it and then and then cook it that way I think that's the easiest way you know I just don't have the time this year to do the you know the the aluminum skeleton and pumping the oil although it is the best damn Turkey I've ever made. Anyway, on to questions. Matthew writes in about braised colors. Thanks a lot for answering my questions last week. This week I'm working on a sandwich for my business based around red wine braised beef. I'm raising chuck on the stovetop and red wine and beef broth after slowly simmering for a few hours I pulled the beef apart and reduced the brace to a glaze. Everything comes out pretty well except for the color ends up being grayish. Ideally, I want to end up with something that color of red wine or Concord grape juice, Concord. Delicious mustaches favorite. Any ideas or suggestions would be a great help. Thanks, Matthew. Okay, look, here's the one assume let's let's knock right off the bat, you're not using an aluminum, I mean, not not aluminum, you're not using a reactive pan, that's going to cause a color problem, right. So typically aluminum or copper, anything that I'm assuming that you're working in stainless, or some other form of something, it's not going to cause any sort of color and based on the metal bang, done. I think anytime you're doing a long cook and you're reducing and you have a lot of stuff like beef broth, or browns, the colors are never going to be as punchy as you want me to say gray usually I'm used to going kind of a brownish color. And then that brown can go somewhat grayish, if there's fat that ends up getting emulsified into the braise. So I'd make sure you try and skim the fat after before you before you reduce it down to a glaze get the fat off of it. Also, you might the flavor is going to be different, like the real depth of flavor, you're going to want that that you know brown meat stock, but you might move to like a white veal stock, which you can reduce a lot more without getting a huge color impact from all the brown bits. You know if you don't brown the meat as much, but again, all that stuff is what makes it delicious. So I think it's going to be hard to kind of punch the color now you can cheat but it really you know change not ruins delicious changes the flavor by doping up the color with things that have very high colorant values like jelly, like Concord grape jelly, but that's going to add Concord or tomato paste or something of that nature is going to punch, punch the red up. I'm interested in hearing anyone else whether they have any suggestions on this. I mean I like a braised kind of sauce but they always do look kind of gloopy unless you just create the sauce from scratch instead of having it be part of the brace you know like have the brace be the brace save that sauce continue to braise it and then just make a specific sauce that has a specific color profile casies for whatever to go with it. What do you think stuff sounds good. She's I don't care. I'm sick. Don't give a crap I'm sick. Happy Thanksgiving. Okay. Colin writes in you mentioned on last week's show that tannins and pectins combined and persimmons as they ripen to make them less astringent can add packed into something tannic like black walnut booze, for instance, to reduce the astringency. I tried an ln two that's liquid nitrogen for all you folks out there freeze last year to dehydrate the tannins at your suggestion, but that did not have a strong effect. Sorry. I'll try pectin. But if you ever tried something similar Thanks, Colin. Okay, look at look at what happens is 10 and will complex with pectin in fruit right in a blending situation. Blending. That's you look it up anyway. Or listen to last week's show. But the most effective way to do a tan is like to bind with proteins a lot. So if you really want to bind the hell out of tannins, you're going to want to treat it with a protein based wine finding agent. So what are your choices already in your fridge, most likely, egg white. So mix and you can look up the proportions in you know in a wine finding on the internet, but usually egg white, and salt. Figure why the salts there I think to enter make the proteins act better. I don't know why it's there, frankly. And water to make it easy to mix in, you stir it into your liquid. And then over the course of like a week or two, the egg white proteins will combine with the tannins into larger into larger complexes. And when they do that, they'll slowly sink to the bottom and then you can rack this stuff off the top. So that's classic way to do it. Even more hardcore than egg in terms of its ability to remove tannins because he is going to remove tans but not necessarily that much gelatin. If you if you dissolve gelatin, mix the gelatin in the gelatin will complex with the tannin and then over time settle out into the bottom and you can rack it off. If you ever centrifuges, you can do it even easier. So it's typically these also milk proteins can do it if you if you combine a milk proteins but the problem with milk proteins is I think in order to get them to settle out properly, you might have to have a fairly low pH which I think you won't have in your walnut core. So it's you know, it's it's a question and also I think the gelatin will work at basically any pH but typically these things are done at Wine pH but I would use this sort of this sort of technique or move to something like Kaita sandwich you can get at a Um, you know what, stick with a protein. Don't tell me how it works. So one of those things should work. That makes sense. Anyway, whatever, whatever. Anyway, okay. Erin from the Northern England English show today. By the way, our good friend Tony conigliaro is engaged from six, nine Coburg road engaged. We were having a long time ago, but I don't think we've mentioned it on the air mazing to know Ricardo, anyway, good people. Okay, Aaron writes in. Hello, Anastasia and Dave, I'm still loving the show. Thanks very much very inspiring. I like that. He's like, assuming that we're going to turn to crap. He's like, I'm still loving it. I was expecting would be crap by now. But I'm still loving it.

A lot of people are responding to are you listening?

Oh, yeah, right. It's one of these. There, you there anyway, I would really like to improve how I present my food. I'm not looking for super fine dining level of presentation. But I would like to incorporate as much as possible that quality into the food I serve people at home. I'm in the north of England haven't found any appropriate courses anywhere near me so far. Can you recommend any resources online or in print? To help me learn all the best? Thanks very much, Erin. It's an interesting question, actually. It's a very interesting question. And it's one I was thinking about this morning. And I don't have I don't have a good answer. So I'm just going to talk about it. We used to teach a plating course at the French culinary. But no one's taught it because noses kind of a monster Plater. But they, you know, they don't teach it anymore. plating at home, is always, it's difficult, because usually, you're the only person doing the plating and you have to get all the components together and serve it out. So it can be a little more difficult. But if what you're interested in is just, I typically at home will serve family style. And then the question is just making the individual dishes look nice. So you have to look at it from a range of a range of ideas. One, are you just talking about what the food looks like? In general? are we really talking about plating, if you're just talking about what the food looks like, in general, then as you're making choices, you make choices, not only based on taste, but based on how something's going to look in the end, right. So you'll choose things, the obviously taste is the primary thing you're going to choose. But you'll think about that color is going to go really nice with that. And instinctively, you start making choices about how things like that are going to look at that, oh man, that color would look really nice, what flavor would go really nice, it has that color. And you could bring like a pop, you know, like, like really something nice and poppy to color wise, right? Or, I'm going to use a different kind of a cooking technique because I don't want it to look over reduced or brown or something like this, right? So that's the first step. The second step then is is actually once you get the colors and the and the look of the food to be what you want. Now, how do you present it? And the best way to do that is to just read not I don't have any good, I've read some I'm not going to even recommend it. But the ones I'm sure there's great ones, I'm not insulting. If it happens to be someone here that's written one, please tell us which one it is I'll take a look at it. But some of the old plating technique books that I've read, I don't really, first of all, they they tend to be dated by the time they come out. And you know, they're kind of a kind of, I don't know, it's just, they've never really been inspired by them, you know, what I would do is just go look at a bunch of Chef cookbooks that put out restaurant meals, and you get an idea for what's possible with plating. So if you're looking to do food at a particular in particular style, then find the cookbook of a chef who's respected who does that like if you want like, kind of hey, I'm a I'm a badass big meat jockey go get the pedicure Shawn book and like, you know, he'll show you how to stick a knife through a sandwich or something like that, you know what I mean? Or if you want to do something kind of really like high end plating and fresh and new go look at like 11 Madison's all played it out, you know, the new cookbook, but I would look at a cookbook. So I'm going to think more about this. And hopefully people will write in and tell me things that they like so that next week, I can mention them on the show. Do you have anything? No, no, I think that's a good idea, though. Yeah, but I'm interested in hearing from you know, this week, you can prove your listening by writing in with ideas for blading technique. Like resources, right? You live in the middle of nowhere. Yeah, yeah. I mean, the other thing is like you can practice like there's certain plating techniques you can learn like you can learn to canal something right? And let's look online for YouTube videos on how to canal or you can learn how to drop you know oil onto a soup with a with a squeeze bottle. I mean if you want to do some fancy playing techniques, learn to do good work with a spoon, like the brush the schmear learn it learn to drop things out of squeezed bottles. That's kind of old school anyway. Look up mustaches is trying to punch me in the face telling me we had to take our second commercial break. So we'll come right back call your question is 271-849-7212 Wait 718-497-2128 Jeez, All Cisco

fly just attacked me. Welcome back to Cooking issues. So the star show you're gonna you're gonna even though you're sick you're gonna go to the Thanksgiving Day Parade this year,

so I'm gonna watch them blow up the balloons too. I like that.

I wish they would explode the balloons. I hate parades do anything. What? Why kids gun? No, no, no, no first of all my son Booker, could you imagine him in that crowd of people

Passons blown up around natural history. That's cool.

Yeah. Yeah, whatever. I've seen it. I've seen every parade. And listen, you know what I like bagpipes. You don't like bagpipes now? No, I

do. It's just you would you know?

bagpipes are amazing.

It's sad. Sad sound. It's

not sad. It's stirring. Look. If you get married, bagpipe.

Oh my god. Yes. funeral? No,

it's not only for funerals. I want all of Scotland to punch Anastasia in the face. And next time you see her kidding, don't do that. Not advocating any violence. But I'm saying yes, funerals because it's stirring. You're also supposed to play bagpipes when you marching to battle. And you play the do weddings.

I wouldn't know what that

bagpipes are always appropriate. Anytime stirring music is appropriate. The great highland bagpipes is appropriate. Okay. It's an amazing instrument. Anyway. I enjoy bagpipes. What do you think every parade is a funeral. Why do they have in the parades

that guarantee yet? They don't have them here.

What? Well, I don't care. I don't like the Thanksgiving Day Parade. The heck?

Just marching bands.

Yeah, marching bands back home

can we just do the rest of the show with bagpipes in the back?

Yeah, definitely. Definitely. We have to put in the greatest rock and roll back of all time as your wedding. It's not really great work, which is long way to the top if you want to rock and roll is the greatest use of bagpipes in rock and roll my right? Yeah, yes. Okay. Back on back on task back on task back on cooking issues task. Alright. Sorry. Anyway, on record. I do not enjoy a parade except for the bagpipes. Okay. Steve Santana writes in I was wondering if Dave could go over a few CV questions relating to duck breasts should the skin be scored before bagging or just before searing said the breasts be bagged with butter or better yet rendered duck fat if I can find some over the fat already under the skin be enough with the same results from the last two salt or not the salt post apply to duck breasts to and should the duck breasts be chilled after cooking. And he's asking 40 minutes to 64 Celsius as the time and temperature for cooking before searing. Okay, I'm just gonna go over this. First of all, don't cook the duck breasts that high. I would not go standard. You know, like Long Island Peck and style duck breasts 57 degrees Celsius for 45 minutes is sufficient. I wouldn't go above that. If you have a tougher duck breast. Sometimes you can go to 58. I don't recommend cooking duck breasts longer than about an hour because it doesn't happen all the time. But they can start tasting livery and the color can start going gray if they're cooked for too long. So I would not recommend cooking the duck breasts too long. Also, I don't bag the duck breasts with anything other than the duck breast. They don't really need it because here's what you're gonna and I don't cut it or do anything beforehand because you're not really rendering out fat at those temperatures. If you're cooking to 5057 58 You're not really rendering a lot of fat. So what I would do is bag the duck breast, put it on a table squash the skin side flat so that later on when you sear it, it will it will be flat against your pan. It's going to sear out properly. Now I know the good folks at Modernist Cuisine, you know young Myhrvold belay, they I think do a priest here cryo SEER they freeze the duck skin and they they poke it with holes and they freeze it. Then they then they bag it then they cook it then they refreeze it in the spirit. I typically I haven't done it side by side, so I don't know what's better. I typically don't see my duck breasts before because what I'm doing when I do my CV cooking is a technique I call low temperature or to read for insurance purposes I'm ensuring that the duck breast is cooked throughout to the temperature I want and then I cool it and then I sear it off as though I was doing a traditional cook on it. The only difference is is it now all I'm focusing on is crispy, delicious skin. So I'm not worried about cooking the duck breast clean, it's already cooked. So all I'm worried about that is rendering the fat and crispy skin out. And so that's a it's a whole there's a whole range of techniques like that that I call low temp, you might call it subido though you're wrong, it's low temp unless it's in a vacuum bag which this is for insurance. I do that with ROCE I'll do it with poultry. I'll do it with a lot of things and in what it lets you do is get a lot of traditional taste and texture. But at the same time ensure that you have the meat cooked properly and that you're only focusing on one problem at a time getting the skin right instead of trying to get the skin right and the meat right at the same time. Okay. Now as regards scoring it Niels and I have to agree with them here because I did a side by side detests scoring the skin on a duck because when you score it a where you score it you tend to overcook the meat because the steam when you're rendering goes up and over cooks the meat at that point there's a there's there's fly mageddon By the way going on outside something. There's something crazy always going on outside of Roberta's pizzeria today is fly mageddon They're like running around smashing flies with with papers. What

was it last week?

I don't remember it last week was indeed Jesus. Well, that's every week at a pizzeria. So anyways, so where was I? So I would use Here's a technique that Modernist Cuisine does, which everyone can do and I think is awesome. Go to your local pet supply store and purchase a dog combing brush the one with all the little spikes in it. And instead of scoring the skin on the duck breast, whack it a few times with the dog with the stainless steel dog comb. And that way you can render out a lot of the fat without overcooking the meat. It's a great technique. I've tried it. I think it's awesome. Do not solve the duck before you cook a salted duck maybe right before you sear it. And that's the that's the way to go. What do you think?

Good. I'm gonna make a shout out to the guys who listen at Blue Hill at Stone barns.

All right, make a shout out. Hi. Well, that's quite a shout out and Stasha You really know how to shout out. Be like for the guys who lives in Blue Hill stone barns keep it farm in that's a shout out. Anyway, okay. Tim Hayes from Eugene, Oregon writes in regarding I'll just read it. Hi, Tim, from Eugene, Oregon here where I need to tell you how great the podcast is and ask you a question. I usually stay on the savory side when cooking. But lately I've been seduced by the sweet recipes from Christina toesies Momofuku Milk Bar book, specifically the incredible cookie recipe she has kindly shared with the world. My favorite cookie of hers is a corn is the corn cookie. I enjoy the corn cooking quite a lot. Do you like to corn? You don't like corn and cookies? You're a low quality person to stash although I love you, but you're low quality. Okay, wow. Yeah. Right. I mean, you know what?

I'm so immune to it. Why? Why would you say to me? What are you talking about? Like low quality when you call me that? i It's like a it's like a nice love thing. Yeah. When other people hear you say it. They're like, Whoa,

yeah, no, it's with love. I don't want anyone I don't want anyone to be like, Whoa, he just called her a low quality human being.

One day will be low quality human being exactly.

Well, depends. Do you hate corn and peanuts? No. Do you hate biscuits? No. All right. All right. Okay, sorry, specifically the incredible cookie recipe she's so kindly share with the world. My question relates to the epic hardbody 10 minute creaming of butter and sugar that the rest of her cookie recipes require. And by the way, what we're talking about here is Tozi recommends a very long creaming process 10 minutes where the sugar and the butter or cream together and then the eggs are whipped in and the basic idea is is to generate as much by the way if you heard that flap 10 seconds ago it was part of flying again going on in reverse. So they created a prolonged creaming step, which a lot of air into the cookie and provides the structure that she likes in her cookie. And so she's very, and we work in the milk bar commissary, I can say they cream the hell out of that stuff. Anyway. So my question relates to the epic hardbody 10 minute creaming of butter and sugar that her recipes require. I see the reasons for the step to aerate the mix. But her peanut butter cookie recipe got me thinking she mentions that you only need to cream this recipe for about three minutes because of the emulsifying properties of the peanut butter. Sure enough, the mix fluffs up much quicker. So a two part question. What about peanut butter makes it such a great emulsifier? And would it be possible to use emulsifying agents to quicken the creaming and other cookie recipes? Now I guarantee that the way that sceetos he figured this out was she noticed that her peanut butter stuff was wheat was getting the amount of air beaten into it much more quickly than other things. And then the question is, is it really the emulsifiers in it that are doing it? And I did some initial research. And it's hard to find, apparently look, protein like protein, there is protein and peanuts. And that protein can probably act as somewhat as an emulsifying agent. And then the second question is, well, perhaps there's what those flies but he's got this cigarette. Crate Staci, she's crazy. She's crazy. Anyway, so I looked up, peanut butters, industrial peanut butters, I looked up Jeff and I looked up Skippy. Okay. Now everybody knows some people know I should say, if you grind your own peanut butter, you buy natural peanut butter. The peanut oil separates from the peanut solids and has to be whisked back in right peanut butter is basically you know, solids kind of emulsified into A into peanut oil. So GIF does that little gif. GIF does that by adding mono and diglycerides, which is a straight up emulsifier. So if you use GIF, you are adding you're adding an emulsifier into your cookie mix. And that will help incorporate air right. But if you look at Skippy is label, Skippy doesn't put mono and diglycerides in their regular peanut butter. Instead, they substitute a certain amount of peanut oil for a hydrogenated fat. And then hydrogenated fat, which is solid instead of liquid at room temperature prevents the separation of Skippy peanut butter. Okay, so there's two basic ways that they can stop the separation peanut butter emulsifiers. Or with adding a hydrogenated fat, my prediction, look towards more people adding emulsifiers because less and less people are going to want to add hydrogenated fat because of the bad rap hydrogenated fat kids. This guy is freaking serious about killing flour. It's like, it's like seriously, it's like it's like, you know, war crimes against flies. He's like going crazy. Anyway. But that leads me to think actually, I think what's going on is it the peanut butter itself is acting as a whipping agent, right? So when you're creaming sugar, and butter, the sugar particles in the sugar before they dissolve and melt are acting as basically they're carving holes in the butter as your as your whipping and they act as a whipping and air rating agent. And I think that tiny particles in peanut butter are also acting as a whipping agent, which is why you can actually whip peanut butter. If you add a little liquid to it, you can whip it up on its own. So I think it's probably not the emulsifiers that are doing it. But the fact that the peanut butter itself is acting as a whipping ah, I could use a peanut butter cookie right now maybe I'll go to milk bar and steal peanut butter cookie are we going there? We're going to milk bar because I have work to do. But I'm going to I'm going to steal a peanut butter cookie. So if anyone there is beyond notice I'm going to steal a peanut butter cookie from him. Anyway. I hope all of you have a fantastic Thanksgiving and a delicious delicious delicious turkey on your turkey day.

Thanks for listening to this program on the heritage radio network. You can find all of our archived programs on heritage Radio network.com, as well as a schedule of upcoming live shows. You can also podcast all of our programs on iTunes by searching heritage radio network in the iTunes store. You can find us on Facebook, and follow us on twitter for up to date news and information. Thanks for listening