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

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

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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 host of good news. She's coming to you live from Roberta's pizzeria on the heritage radio network in Bushwick, Brooklyn every Tuesday from approximately 12 to 1245. Today Jack we're coming in exactly 12 on the dot, which does not happen. Unfortunately, we are not joined in the studio today with Natasha the hammer Lopez. She is taking my place at the beauty trade show in Florida Orlando Orlando Orlando. Yet, so she's Uh, she's down there roadmapping Scotch in in a rotary evaporator and then taking the leftover oak and making ice cream with it. And I'm assuming taking the the you know, the clear Scotch the we call it, you know, gray dog, the one that's been taken the oath taken out of it and wrote of I'm sure she just drinking that to drown her sorrows. Right. I mean, she's not, hey, no offense to Florida. She's not an Orlando fan. Let's put it that way. She's not happy to be taking my place in Orlando. But eventually today in the audience in the studio, rather, we're going to have Tony conigliaro and since nobody can pronounce his name, which I think means rabbit keeper in Italian. There's calm Tony see, but Tony see, it runs, you know, one of my absolute most favorite bars in the whole world 69 Colebrook row in London, fantastic bar. He has a, you know, a laboratory as well, where he does a lot of really high, you know, cutting edge work in cocktails, and was one of the cocktail bars where I first experienced, you know, the fact that you could use very high end, very high end stuff in a very comfortable, wonderful atmosphere. And so Tony should be here in a minute, but he is, as many guests have been trapped somewhere in Brooklyn and does not know how to get to Roberta's that happens and it does it does he left like he was in Brooklyn in Williamsburg headed here started like half hour ago. And it's not yet made it amazing. Anyway. Call your questions to 718-497-2128 That's Simone 84972128 It's kind of sad not having to stop you're here right? Yeah, I

can do my best I can make some faces and stuff. I know but I can hardly see your face. Somebody needs to sit across from you at that table and make faces right.

preferably someone like mustache who has like a peculiar knack for getting me angry, right? Yeah. All right. Anyway, while we're waiting for questions to come in, we have a question from Oh, this is last week's question that we didn't get to from Lee Kalman. And by the way, my kids ran my battery dry on my iPad. So I'm actually doing this this show via my iPhone. And case you didn't know I'm getting a little old so it's hard for me to read these tiny tiny letters. Anyway. Hey, guys love the show got my hands on three fresh lamb hearts. Well, since his questions from last week, I doubt the lamb hearts are fresh anymore. You know what I mean? Jack. I trim the first one in the modalities is simply grilled it with salt and pepper. It was delicious. The second I also tried to medallions and cooked at low temperature for 56 Celsius at six Celsius rather for three hours. And also had it was delicious, but had a very similar texture to the first attempt wondering how I might get a bit more tender on the third heart, perhaps another hour or two of cooking? Or since it's relatively lean cut. Is there nothing really to break down? What would you do? Well, Lee, I love heart, I haven't done a lot of work with the low temperature cooking on heart. But you know, the way that you did it first, which is you know, really grilled quickly with like a char on the outside where it remains to be on the inside is, to me my favorite on almost any kind of heart. You know, like chicken hearts, there's nothing that nothing quite like a grilled chicken heart. Like if I could grow chickens that just had hearts and skin that I would do that. I mean, I love chicken meat, but it's chicken hearts and chicken skins are incredible. But I think you kind of hit the nail on the head. It's relatively knowledge that relatively lean. But I believe and I did some research into it. I believe most of the muscle heart muscle isn't necessarily connective tissue, like it would be in something like a gizzard or something like that, which gets very soft with prolonged cooking. Heart is mainly just really strong muscle. And so I don't know that it's going to break down the same way as you know, a cut with a lot of collagen and it would with prolonged cooking. I'm not saying it won't. I mean, you could try a couple of days and see because it actually would work if you cook it for a long, long time at work, you know, because you can tell, even with very lean cuts, they get tender if they're cooked for a long time, but it's not really a pleasing tenderness. It's more of a machinist. So I don't know if you're gonna be able to get I don't know if you're gonna be able to get exactly what you're looking at with that but I did find an article called studies on development of tenderized chicken gizzard and goat Hart pickles. This is in 2009 It's aka Mighty is the is the author. It's an awesome name mighty anyway, they're studying traditional Indian heart and gizzard pickles. And they did something very smart. They slice it relatively thin. They Jakarta the meat somewhat to get penetration and then they brined it in a meat tenderizer. They were using a variety of natural tender risers. For instance, Ginger apparently has some tenderizing agents and enzyme and sub tenderizing. They're also using the late not figs themselves, but the latex from a papaya from fig plant or tree and a weird bittergourd extract that you can't get here in in the US to try it out. And they had very good luck tenderizing it that way. So you could try. You could try that. And then I read some other articles online or they haven't done it using a baking soda actually as a tenderizer. Presumably the lie the alkaline nature breaks down the protein structure somewhat and causes it to bind less strongly to each other and makes it more tender. But that but now I want to try these pickled these pickled goat hearts. When you when you just shout down on a jar of pickled goat hearts shack

I would Yeah. I mean, I'd never considered that before.

Why don't you get get Patrick to order us up some goat hearts. I mean, I have the procedure right here. I mean, it's it's pretty dang simple. They give you the whole thing.

October was good season for him. But I don't know if he's getting more.

Yeah, it is a good heart season. Right. But if he if he pickled them, we should be able to have them you know, all year all year long, right. Also, another way to tenderize meat that you might not want to do is ionizing radiation at high sterilizing doses of high high high sterilizing radiating doses caused changes in meat proteins resulted in increased tenderness. And God knows what else actually I shouldn't say it's stupid. Like, for many years, people were against the irradiation of fruits, vegetables and meats because they thought thought that somehow the the food was going to glow in the dark and so there's a whole group of people that are anti irradiated foods. To me, the only real argument against a radiating foods is if the if the actual radiation sources unsafe to the workers unsafe to the environment, which I don't know if they are not, and be does the crap taste good or not, you know? And so that's how they did that glow in the dark sushi. No, no, no, that's like that. I don't really know research that once for a very short amount of time, that's like a bioluminescent protein. I mean, the one that like you see Ferrania in the Pops To call yours, Tom is glowing. Yeah, it's a bioluminescent protein. When you when you radiate food, I mean, there's not. I mean, all the studies that I've read, and they're all old because they were trying to use basically the byproducts of all sorts of awful tests and things they were doing. But, you know, basically, there's no residual radiation left in the food, but one of the issues is, you'll get a textural degradation of the food. Over time as its radiated, it's the same problem some people have with very, very high pressure, high hydrostatic pressure, sterilization, things like oysters, they say that there's textural changes, and it usually means that you've broken broken the stuff down somewhat. So this can either be seen as a positive or a negative mean, one person's tenderness is another person's machinists. Me personally, I like meat, I like to taste the muscle, the fiber structure, I like it to be tender. But I like the structure to be intact when that structure starts getting broken down, such as something that is naturally kind of chewy becomes tender to me. To me, that's mush if all you're doing is breaking down collagen, and the collagen breaks down, but the muscle fibers are still intact. That's tender to me. So to me, it's a it's a fine line. Anyway, we've got a caller. Oh, caller you're on the air.

Big fan of the show in which he has a doing I have a science question and a recipe question for science question is, so my father is diabetic and tries to treat exclusively with diet. So it's forgotten dessert, but was thinking of trying to do brains for him. And you've talked a lot about how the importance of sugar not just as a sweetener, but as a structural component. And I was curious if you have thoughts on Merengues with without sugar and just the sugar alcohols, I know Earth for tall has gotten a lot of press. If you have thoughts on that dimension?

Well, I haven't specifically done it. I mean, I, the one we always keep around is isomalt. And I'm trying to think if I've ever made a Marang. With I guarantee you a Moran with isomalt would work. It just won't be as sweet. Do you know what I mean? So you'd have to I don't have a lot of experience, doing one to one sugar replacements, ie trying to keep stuff sweet. Do you know what I'm saying? I have much more experienced trying to get the textural properties of sugar without the sweetness. So I'll use things like glucose syrup. And or if I want something harder, that's gonna have a lot more of a gelling property, I'll use isomalt. So, which is one you mentioned? I forget resveratrol? And does it have similar sweetness properties to? Sure

it does. It's just sugar alcohol that the body doesn't break down. And it doesn't have a lot of nasty gut properties that a lot of other sugar alcohols have.

So for those of you that don't know what we're talking about sugar alcohols are generally undigestible. And so they add to what you would consider your bulk fiber content. So they can cause what's nice with flatulence. And ruddiness whatnot. Is that is that a polite way of putting it you think? I think those delicate Yes, yeah. So. So if it has similar sweetness properties, I mean, the great thing about isomalt aside from the fact that it's not sweet, which I like is that it's it doesn't pull a lot of moisture out of the air. And so it maintains its structure for a long time. And I don't know the properties of the other sugar alcohols, but it mean look, I know isomalt works. So I'm sure the other sugar alcohols assuming that they don't pull too much water out of the air and turn into a soupy mess would work as well. You know what I mean? Oh, great. Okay,

I'll start experimenting.

Can you a favor and send send us a note and tell us how it worked out for you?

I certainly will. So a recipe question if you don't mind. So I'm among the Legion throngs that have decided to hack together our own immersion circulators. And it's been really fun to play with. I had fun trying to do head to head recipe comparisons where you start with very similar base ingredients as to show off the effects to skeptical friends. Chicken worked well did a buttermilk marinated chicken and either a high heat roast or a slow cook with a flash fry. And it was a lot of fun to sort of compare and contrast the different effects how the marinade took, etc. I was curious if you have other suggestions of recipes or ingredients where you can do a really nice comparison, that scientific you start with the same ingredients and show off the power of slow cooking

mean, strictly speaking, slow cook versus normal Cook,

slow cook versus normal cook or just the fun that you can do with low temp food.

I mean, the cheapest and easiest thing to do and it's not I mean, it depends it's impressive if you haven't done it before for someone, obviously eggs, you know, show it showing someone an egg at 63 versus 62 versus 64. People are like Oh, I get it that's pretty awesome. Steaks are are a good one to show kind of equal done equal doneness all the way through obvious See, here's what's interesting is not better or worse, but like a very like a slow cook on a short rib. Some people prefer most meat. Like if you tell someone that it's if you tell someone that it's the same thing as a braised short rib, then generally they like to break short rib better if you just tell them here's like a really cool cut of meat. In general, people really liked the long cook things like short ribs, because they have an intense meaty flavor. And they cut it they cut tender like a steak. So a short rib that's cooked for 24 hours at let's say 50s at like 57 to 60 C is going to have the texture of a skirt steak, which is pretty amazing for people. You know what I mean? Or cooked for 24 to 36 hours is going to have more of a tender steak texture. People kind of liked that as a comparison. It's interesting to compare that side by side with the traditional braids because they're totally different. Not better. Not worse. Different. Yeah, but get give those a give those a shot.

All right. Thanks so much and keep it

up. Thank you. Tony. See Tony The Rabbit Man Tony conigliaro is in the studio. Hello, how you doing? Good. How are you trouble getting here? Yeah, yeah. All right. So I described you a little bit to the audience. As I don't know what I said. I said, fantastic. Bartender drinks factory lab. Six, nine Colebrook. Row. What's the name of the hotel bar again? ZESA townhouse? Yeah. Yeah, apparently also awesome. Bastard. Yeah. So. So anyway, so we actually had a question in for you know, you and I talked about cocktails. And then after that, I think we'll go to a commercial break and bang out some stuff on second. Stasha, who's not here today, because he's in Florida, tweeted it out yesterday. So we got an A good question for you. Okay. This is from Kevin for us. Hope you and Dave are doing well. I've really been enjoying the last few shows. I just saw you have Tony C on today. So I had some cocktail questions to send your way. What are your thoughts on the binary interactions of taste combinations? I've read a few papers that essentially say that sodium in both sodium chloride and MSG, suppressed bitterness, sugar, and acid and cast in suppressed bitterness and sugar and acid cancel each other out, etc. Do you have any methodical approaches to adding small amounts of flavors to find the perfect balance? Or do you have a standard ratio you apply? How do you know how much salt to add to a cocktail? That's a perfect question for you, Tony. Yeah,

we just bounce it around in my head for a few seconds.

I think at the end of the day, you can read papers, and you can you can look at lots of sheep is how its works in your mouth. And you've got to keep trying and try. I mean, when we're kind of making cocktails, and we're kind of working on stuff, you know, we it's almost like an artist has a blank canvas, until you've kind of put something on that Canvas, then you don't know what else is going to happen on there. So we kind of guesstimate sometimes off some of the, you know, kind of literature we read, and then kind of work it up and down until we get the perfect formula that kind of could involve like making a drink or, you know, a mix, you know, up to 3040 times until we've got that exact kind of resonance that we want in our mouths. And that we think will work once we give it to a large, larger audience. So I think a lot of these kinds of papers, just they use them as vague guidelines, I don't think you can ever ever say that will work universally until you've actually kind of tried how it reacts with all the other ingredients.

Right? I mean, I'm sure you have like a go to starting point. For those of you that don't know, Tony, like if you walk into his I don't know, if they he still does this, but if you walk in when they're actually doing testing, they'll have various and Tony is a as been putting words in his mouth, he's right here, you can talk for himself, but a big proponent of sub threshold. You know, modifiers, like salt, and other other flavors like that, that you wouldn't necessarily be able to pick out. In fact, he doesn't want you to pick them out. But they're there to kind of round and punch flavors up and down. And I remember one time I visited his bar. And they were working with I forget what the particular ingredient was. But they were the eventual cocktail was going to have a fairly small amount. And so they were trying to figure out what their mix was going to be, you know, that was going to I guess I don't know, whether you're going to bitters bottles, or what but they were using a micro pipettor to basically make a bunch of iterations with very small differences in particular components that would then and they're not going to pull out a micropipette or at the bar, but it's to help them figure out what their base is going to be to work with when they're actually behind the bar. So that's something you still do.

Yeah, I mean, I think that that experiment, there was something that ended up in the dry martini we did, which was to make a dry martini dryer, and rather than it kind of being a flavor it was an effect which was using kind of a condensed tannins that we got from grapeseed. So we kind of masqueraded them then rotate them off. So they were very, very concentrated in you could have like, you know, 10 microns per liter of remove, sorry, per liters or for move that will have an effect even when you put it in a drink. And we use micro pipettors for that. And, you know, we kind of started fairly high, I think we started around 50. And even adding 50 microns to a bottle of Vermouth. And then making a martini with it dried, you know, puckered your mouth up so much that it didn't work. So we kind of, you know, again, it's just trying and then seeing where these things go. Because, you know, sometimes these papers are kind of, you know, use pre made, chemicals and whatever else that you buy from laboratories. The difference with that, and I suppose kind of what we do, we're kind of a bit more fast and loose in as far as we're making these ingredients ourselves. So, you know, we can't test the amount of kind of tannins in something by ourselves. So the register is basically in our mouths, which I think it all should be anyway.

I mean, that's the most important instrument. Yeah, it's, it's the most accurate. Yeah, and it's what we're mixing for. We're mixing for the mouth, not for the HPLC machine. Yeah, exactly. You know, while the mouth and the nose I guess, and the eyes, but we're mixing for the human being for the human being. Yeah.

You just were clever instrument now.

Exactly. Yeah, pretty good. Sometimes works sometimes. Yeah, exactly. But, you know, I know at the bar, one thing we tend to add, I mean, look, obviously, we have go to ratios of acids, we all have our own favorite, basic sour ratio in our head, that we can move up or down on depending on what the mood you know, what mood strikes us or what the, you know, the additions we have to at our, and I also I personally have a basic salt, you know, at the bar, we have a, our standard salt solution is 20 grams of salt and 100 milliliters of water, dissolve it, put it into standard kind of American non Imperial drops, but a standard American eyedroppers. And, and, you know, depending on the drink, you know, most citrus drinks, get a drop or two, depending on how much we want. Like for me, a daiquiri is a one drop drink, usually, and most of our Tequila drinks are to drop drinks. Because people like a little bit more of an edge on their tequila drinks. So I think I think there's, you know, once you start incorporating something like salt into your, into the routine of bartending, you're going to find kind of go to go to ratios that you like, and then Tony takes it another step further, because, you know, every time I've worked with him, he really enjoys fine tuning. Yep. You know what I mean?

Yeah, that's definitely something we do, just because it's, it's the, you know, being able to replicate these things over and over again, that I think is important, because there's nothing worse, I suppose, than going to a cocktail bar and having, you know, the same drink that you really love, but it comes out in different variations each time. So we try and narrow that band down as much as possible by using some of the micro pipettors equipment like that, just because it makes it you know, super accurate and using kind of super accurate scales and things like that.

And the attorney by the way, for those of you that don't haven't had a chance to go to 69 Kolberg row is he's the master of bussing all this equipment out behind the scenes, but when you show up at the bar, it's like you know, a tranny band and a honky tonk piano. And so there's like, there is no lease the, you know, three times what that I've been to London and hung out basically, exclusively, a six and a callable grill is, you know, you wouldn't know, from being there that you're dealing with someone who is taking such precise care of their drinks until you taste the cocktails, which are fantastic. And so it was one of the first places where I really saw in practice that you can have, you know, a real palace have caught up to the cocktail, but in a completely friendly atmosphere, which is, you know, something that hasn't really been replicated too often.

I think that was, you know, it was always a consideration. And it was something that we wanted to do, because I think the minute you kind of have the bartenders talking about, you know, the science of it can be pretty boring, you know, you know, the atmosphere needs to be conducive to, you know, I want to talk to you, let's have a conversation or, you know, there's, there's the distraction, you kind of go there to get distracted, you know, if there's, you know, there's obviously people that want to know more and that's, you know, that's open as well, but our focus is to run a bar that is enjoyable, and it's fun and has you know, it's about hosting, it's about bartending, it's not about kind of geeking out,

made a book or index which is you know, the bar that, you know, I'm running now with Tristan, the, you know, I think we really fell into that trap early on even though I knew I didn't want to fall into that trap a lot of the tech you know, the techniques were so new to the crew that they were just excited about it. I think there was a little there's quite a bit at the beginning too much talk maybe to the customers about it and we really kind of I think trying to ratchet that back because it's really just about the job what you

do as well as a lot fighting kind of watching you last night in the excellent bother you was the you know, it's fun to watch you kind of do the thing because then there's a point of interest I think, you know, some of the things we do aren't that interesting like micropipette is aren't interesting to watch but it's watching you and watching you kind of carbonate stuff and you know use the liquid nitrogen and and all of those things is a visual exciting thing to actually to watch. I think that brings a whole heap of stuff to the table.

Yeah, interesting question. I just want to make you know, you want to make sure that that nothing that you're using is a gimmick and then it doesn't become which I thought I don't think we do like so for instance, you know, Booker and DAX we're very, we're very low on garnish here. And I mean, kind of at this point specifically, it's not that I can't make a bunch of crazy garnish is just you know,

there's talk of Pringles last night wasn't Oh my God,

that's a great garnish. I hope that makes it in the bodega week are Pringle Frankel garnish. And of course, you know, Brits don't know what a Pringle is. So we had to go through a long explanation of what a Pringle is to Tony Pringles. You know, Pringles are a kind of a miracle. Pringles was like one of the biggest r&d development budgets on a food product of all time, and it took like 20 years to pay back and Pringles finally started making money like 20 years after they did because of the amazing like investment in potato chip molds that they made for the Pringles in the can development and all that crazy crazy stuff. All right, so another cocktail question from Kevin in Sydney quick break first break Oh all right, we're going to quick we're gonna break come up with some money for that seven to one to eight cooking issues

you know why? Because I don't need people looking. First time for some reason. What's the reason? I'm okay with any sense of the word Trust and a cut when I needed them I need to be the guest and VP beebeep enough to play with Kenny cheeks went to Boston and split his books just because you got a great brand so you can read live in it. And y'all, Amy gave my heart to a woman who never happened before ever makin I got no passion. I've got no patience and a eight week checkup we knew

we'd be Costco sized pimpin up in NYC baby.

I wonder what JC thinks

of dashi sure he doesn't want dashi your bougie that was like the best. We went out to play that thing again. love that stuff. Okay, today's show is sponsored by monitors pantries, supplying innovative ingredients for the modern cook. Do you love to experiment with new cooking techniques and ingredients but hate to overspend for pounds of supplies only a few grams are needed per application. Binders pantry has a solution. They offer a wide range of modern ingredients and packages that make sense for the home cook and enthusiast and most cost only around five bucks, saving you time, money and storage space whether you're looking for hydrocolloid pH buffers or even meat glue, you'll find it in modern his 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 monitors pantry is your one stop shop for innovative cooking ingredients. Modernist pantry carries pure coat be 790 a modified cornstarch that can be used to create films classes and fruit leathers, glasses, glasses. Not that kind of glass Tony. Fans with cooking issues that place an order of $25 or more before next week's show, we get a free package of pirkko to play with. Simply use the promo code ci 76 When placing your order your order online at monitors pantry.com Visit modernist pantry.com today for all of your modern cooking needs. I've never used I've used crisp coat but I've never used pure code crisp coat is like a batter coating these things like the film formers they use for things when you're frying, they form a film so that grease theoretically can't penetrate and they also help with better adhesion. And you know things like this you usually use in like so like in flour you use like a temp percent by weight to fry things. I haven't used it in a long time because my for our coding is good enough. I don't need any crisp code or pure coding. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. It's all good stuff. Especially if you're going to do something like, oh, like 10 Pora stuff, but this stuff sounds like it's not actually used for for that it's used more to do to cast like, like glasses and fruits and sheets of starch shirts. Great stuff. I just don't have that much experience with it. Okay, second cocktail question is on Joanne ice cubes. I'm trying to find it. Okay. I know that you've made jelly and ice cubes before. I'm intrigued by the concept of a non melting ice cube, especially if it could be a better heat retention than a standard ice. Plus, it'd be cool to have an edible cocktail within a cocktail. My question is, have you had any success getting the Chilean to stay clear when frozen? Maybe a different hydrocolloid combination would work? No, it will. It will not stay clear. It won't stay clear.

I've not tried to actually yeah, I've worked with malice, sous vide cellulose before. Yeah, we made like absolute ice cubes and put them on spoon and then lit them and then they melt melted

after they cool. Yeah, yeah. But and they clear when they're when they melt. But they're when they're solid. They're white. Yeah, especially with absence. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, Joanne, here's the thing. When you use a sort of hydro for like to lock in water that's frozen for cooling, you're never going to get quite the cooling pattern, you'll get theoretically the cooling power. But what happens is, when you're chilling with ice, the outside layer of the ice melts, that water instantly goes into your cocktail chills and dilutes. When you've locked the water into a hydrocolloid, you have an A, believe it or not, water is a better insulator than ice. So you inhibit the chilling effect of the ice. It's on the inside of the cube as it goes. So it will keep a drink cool, but it's never going to be as effective as ice ice is damn effective, chilling agent. What I did do recently because they're quite small, I have to go on Ellen. Ellen have to I'm going to I'm going to be on Ellen DeGeneres later this week for her St. Patty's Day cocktail. And they didn't want any of the drinks that we actually had on our menu. I don't think I guess I don't know. Not a fan. I don't know. But they. So there's always a kind of, I'm doing a bunch of wacky stuff. So if you watch it's not stuff that you'd actually see at the bar, but one of the things I'm doing is breaking apart raspberries with liquid nitrogen and then using the raspberry beads that as basically Ice Cube BBs to shake a drink to chill a drink. It's already been diluted, it shows it down and then you know you get the raspberries and you drink it with a straw and you suck them up like you know, in your in your mouths. Like that pretty much stuff like that. So you can shake with frozen fruit might one of my favorite techniques.

Is that word lines as well.

I don't know. Probably little line pips. Yeah. Grapefruit works. I haven't tried line because the line the vesicles are so small. I mean, yeah, one of my favorite is not going to give you a cocktail with a cocktail. But one of my favorite things to do, especially at home, if you don't have a lot of gear is to is when you're using non non concentrated mixers like grapefruit juice or apple juice, freeze them solid, like ice cubes, and then shake them instead of with ice because they break into a slush. Because you know juice doesn't freeze as hard. Yeah, so they break into a slush in the tins. And then and it gets really freakin cold and you're dilutions always right, because you just shake it to the whole SON OF A BITCH turns to a slush. I mean, no, I mean, yeah. Okay, so let me see. I gotta I gotta try and split between just like Tony and I having a conversation and and some of these questions because you guys have a lot of questions in. Let me go to we see. Oh, here's a here's a good one. Okay. Steven Garrett from Wellington, New Zealand. You ever been to New Zealand? I've not yet. I'd love to go. Yeah, because you're a Xena Warrior Princess fan. boatloads of rings, I think Lord of the Rings. See, I'm like Lord of the Rings. Like, I never really I saw like one or two of them. But you know, like, you know, Xena like, hit me right at the right time. Like, you know, as you know, there's a question that you missed last week about hearts and cooking. I'd love to hear a little about tar tar of heart. Yeah, Red Heart tar tar. I've never actually had it. But I'm sure it's good. I mean, one of the problems that organ meats is they have to be really fresh because the way that they're processed and cut out they tend to spoil quickly because they're exposed to more bacteria than whole muscle cuts. Right? And that's just a kind of a fact of life. Hearts probably are okay because they are a big hole muscle cut us wash off the outside or whatever, trim it. I've never actually had heart tar tar but I did look up. Basically most of the recipes I found online trace back to a friend of mine, Chris Constantino, who is known for his cooking of, you know awful meaning awful, not awful, you know, awful. There you go. And he has a beef heart. tar tar Puttanesca style that means a torn up hearts in the style of horse Right. Yeah, that's kind of that translation. Yeah, yeah, it's not far off. Yeah. horsetail Heart, heart chop anyway,

kind of see where you're going with it.

Yeah. Anyway, so yeah, he has a recipe. It's very easy to find, and it looks interesting, but I have not had I'm sure it's good kind of chewy meat. Are you a meat tar tar kind of a guy, Tony.

Oh, I can't be. We've not had that. But I've kind of partial to.

Yeah, right lasted a little, you know, he has some interesting stuff. And so just look up, you know, look up his thing. Also, following up on the Sodastream to carbonate alcohol Sodastream. Enter that they have that UK so to speak. It's the home carburetor. I've recommended for a while adding an extra tube to it. So the tube can dip down low enough so that you can get it into alcohol and carbonate it without getting foam over basically. So following up and associating to carbonate alcohol, it works. Extending the tube to the bottom of the bottle, but it uses a lot of gas to make wine sparkly have to carbonate, vent, carbonate, vent and carbonate and let it sit pressurized for a good few minutes. And it has to be almost ice cold. Everything you've said is true. But as the only damned way to carbonate something properly. Yeah, is, you know, if you come to the bar, and you see us carbonate, where we'll carbonate four or five, three, or between three and five times on any of our drinks, just to get rid of all of the little nucleation sites that are in it so that we get a nice stable bubble. And we have it more than ice cold. In fact, one of the big things I have to beat out of the bartenders heads is to put our carbonated drinks on ice because ice is only at zero. And our carbonated drinks are at like minus eight. So you know when they when they're putting it when they're putting it on on ice, they're warming it, you know. So it's like, like, like, don't do don't do it.

If you add water to the mix pre carbonated with the alcohol because a lot of that I've tasted alcohol that has been made sparkling and flavors. Very, very odd.

Yeah. So we like I once did a bottle bottle strength carbonation. And if you're going to carbonate something at bottle strength, it has to be absurdly cold, like minus 18. See, you know, otherwise, the perception of alcohol, it's just crazy. If you get it down to a temperature where like they say you're going to let's just use straight gym, you know, if you're going to get it down to a temperature where it's like syrupy in the freezer, then and you carbonate it, it's quite enjoyable. But as it starts to warm up even a little bit, it's to me kind of unpleasant. And then if you add anything like a sugar or an acid to it for flavor, it just goes way out of balance. And I think the main problem that people do, when they when they're carbonating liquor is they serve it to high proof. So you know, if you're if you're serving, you know, a stirred cocktail is going to be probably somewhere in the area of like 17 18% and a shaking cocktail, I have to go do the math again. But a shaking cocktail is going to be somewhere down closer to like 14 15%. But like a carbonated cocktail should really be all the way down at like 12. Yeah, you know, so

if you look at the proportions of classic cocktails, there are about that we use if you see an ATM machine, the alkalizer that measures all the kind of bricks but also that kind of a so we were shaking, you have one? Well, we borrowed one, very expensive, but we borrowed one other company, it was quite on par alkalizer is an awesome, it's it really is awesome, because you can check all the you know, the bricks percentage, but also the ABVS. And we were talking to her about the the perfect parameters of where flavor will hit and where you taste the best. And it was between, I think between 14 and 19. So within those kinds of, you know, parameters, you've got like a, you know, the most enhanced amount of flavor,

right and when you carbonate that punches stuff up, which is why you have to drop the I always drop the alcohol level in a carbonated drink.

Yeah, but the Tom Collins, you'd add slightly more shoes that kind of floats the flavor a little bit more anyway. So

yeah, I mean, interesting problem, but most of the time, and I also remember when I first started carbonating I would basically I would just shake a drink, and then carbonated and those are too alcoholic and end up tasting too syrupy, and they fatigue your palate quite quickly. Whereas it just tastes a little bit odd like the acid balance goes off a little bit and just add some, like lighten it a little bit with water, you know, not a boatload but you lighten it a little bit with water and the whole thing just becomes more pleasant as long as you keep the bubble level at the same Are

you guessing with with come dogs are using other gases too.

I have the ability to do a nitrous co2 Mix and when I make water, I use nitrous co2 Because I want to soften the bubbles a little bit. I want to have the same liveliness, but I want to say Often the bubbles and nitrous is going to soften. It adds a little bit of sweetness and some creaminess. But really, it just softens up that bubble. But because I

was found that that's the co2 can actually make things more acidic. And it kind of registers as that.

Yeah, it mean, you know that like that. The studies show that eventually it is your sour taste receptors that are responding to what an enzyme is doing to the co2 to or where co2 affects a particular enzyme pathway on your tongue. So it is related to acidity. And it does actually produce acid with you know, carbonic acid, you know what I mean. But I think the, what carbonated drink does, is really complicated, you know, I find that if you taste a drink flat that you want carbonated, it should taste a little too weak, and a little low in acid. And also I like it a little low. And sugar is something that tastes balanced as a sipping drink. Like, it just gets like syrup and almost soda. Like for me, I don't want like a soda like flavor in my cocktail.

But sweet people, because they're related Tessa was I think it was Bernard Lee who's for food pairing, did loads of tests on the aroma on top of cocktails that have been carbonated. And the results are so so varied and all over the place just because you know, what you're adding to the mix is a hell of a lot of Roma, because that co2 is carrying and almost stripping the flavor into aroma and then taking it to the top of the drink. So you've got a whole other kind of spectrum to look at, rather than just flavor because if you taste in Manhattan, there is some aroma but there's not as much. So that kind of whole aroma. Spectrum kind of makes it dry outside. Isn't

it jackhammering? Welcome to Roberta.

Well, we'll kind of change your perception of the drink as well. And that can vary quite a bit.

Yeah. And Manhattan is one that your your entire perception has changed and I think for the worse I detest carbonated Manhattan's or that they're, I think they're hideous. In fact, I use that as the demo of when carbonation goes bad. The other thing is, I think it's, it's you can make very excellent carbonated rum drinks, but I think it's also very easy to go wrong with a carbonated rum drink, you know they can taste they go from being a delicious drink to almost fake tasting. There are great carbonated rum drinks I've had other people's good carbonated rum drinks I've made carbonated rum drinks that I also like but it's like it's a difficult thing I think to do you have to be spot on with your mix I think to carbonate a rum drink properly. Jim carbonates like nobody's business like almost any gin drink can be made carbonated and it tastes delicious. Or can be made to taste delicious. It's difficult like it's difficult to do a carbonated tea beverage because the tannins get blown out you know what I mean? Like they are amped up is what I mean you know and so it can be it can be difficult alright Jax we go to one more commercial break 718-497-2128 Check me out to set you free let a stranger saying his story bad is cheap and so I got a place already get you tell I'm in your corner don't be too much together