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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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You're listening to the heritage Radio Network broadcasting live to the cosmos from the backyard at Roberta's in Bushwick Brooklyn oh god I

don't know where I'm supposed to be. Playing man. You got my head all twisted. And again, I can't get straight fishes

Hello, and welcome to cooking issues. This is Dave Martell, your host of cooking issues coming to you live from Roberta's pizzeria on the heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from roughly 12 to roughly 1245 going to be joined today in the studio with Maxine belay co author of Modernist Cuisine cookbook also Oh, here he is. He's coming through right now I see him. So I'll wait introduce him. We're also here with Dana, What's your last name? Good. Yeah. Good Year from the New Yorker. She's just hanging out, but she's Welcome to chime in anytime she wants. You put on a pair of headphones just once for you. Right. And as usual, we're joined with Anastasia the hammer Lopez who's sitting typing on her computer getting stuff done for the cooking issues machine. Am I right? Yeah. Berlin, Berlin. So hey, Maxime. Pelosi, here's your microphone, and your headphones. So, Maxine are doing well. Doing well. Mixing you are a graduate of what advice originally are archnemesis GFCI.

Is that true? Eisah. Yeah, very, very brief. And today's

Yeah, that's our arch nemesis. Ben then moved to what anyone who is hanging around in New York, in I guess the late 90s. Early 2000s. Jack's oyster bar right. Fantastic place. Did you work there?

I did. I did. I actually went to Jack's Lacroix surprise Stasia directly from ice. The chef left about two weeks later. And Jack lamb crazy as he is giving me the head chef job. So it was it was quite a transition for a young chef, but

a great mean, you know, I went I think once but it moved across the street. Right. I went when I went when it was on its original status once when it was across the street. Yeah,

I was I was there when it was still the little carriage house and it moved to the old mucky Moana space or is that

on Fifth Street? It's on Fifth Street. Yeah. Anyway, fabulous place great pedigree when moved from there to the Fat Duck. You know the Heston Blumenthal's famous joint right and and you were on the rest I started the development side and development I

began in the restaurant side and then they quickly moved me to the development side. That was my my calling all the research in the in the great dishes that Hasson would would push us to create.

And then we're tat was tapped by Nathan Myhrvold to, to, you know, you'll be a part of the Modernist Cuisine Dream Team. And so, you know, the three authors on the book, of course, Nathan, who's been on the show before Nathan Myhrvold, Chris Young, good friend of ours been on the show before and Maxine for the first time on the show. Well, welcome.

It's so nice to be here. Thanks for having me.

And Dana, who, again, may or may not chime in I don't know. Welcome to Is writing an article on strange meats True or False? True, true. Very good. Both. So listen, call your questions in to 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. So how you doing? Maxine was at our bar the other day how

I loved the Omega, you were right, the basil cocktail, the delicious, so fragrant.

Thanks, I appreciate it. Well, it's a technique we do at Booker index, which basically we just lost, by the way, best new bar timeout in New York to amaze on Premier, but it's good to lose to such a great bar made on premier anyway, technique where we smashed the Thai basil with liquid nitrogen. And what happens is when it's frozen that that that deeply liquid nitrogen, there's no sort of enzymatic degradation of the herb at all. And we can shatter it into super super fine particles, even just using a hand muddler, then add liquor directly that prevents the enzymes because the enzymes can't really working with the beautiful extraction. Yeah, it's like, second liquor success straight out. And then lime juice, the sorbic acid further prevents breakdown by events, and then shake it like a normal daiquiri from there now. But I like it's a good time.

The color is beautiful, but the just the aromas just Yeah, yeah, spectacular.

So before I get into questions, and I hate to do this to you, because everyone always asked me, you know, this is the question I have to ask you, if I don't ask you, someone will get upset it by all means. So what's what's next on your plate?

Well, right now we're really it's been the book tour. It's been an incredible journey, you know, just sharing, teaching. You know, every different technique and all the aesthetic that we that went into creating oneness cuisine, we're able to share on so many levels, it's just so much information. And we're, by having this book tour, we're able to sort of unravel it and and look at the different aspects that went into to making. But going forward, we've had many propositions and we're not totally clear exactly what what the next phase is. We have a little project in the works that will come out soon. That's kind of exciting. But that's just that's I'm going to give you a teaser on that one, then

not allowed to tell me any more specific

nav they make you sent giant NDAs where I intellectual venture, so So I am bounced by all right. All right,

well, just you know, dropping it there that there is something coming, we just don't know what it is. Thanks for making me curious now and not giving me anything, maybe, maybe, maybe off air my full intention? Yeah. Well, you know, by the way, in case you have randomly tuned to this podcast, and don't know what Modernist Cuisine is, it is probably the single kind of greatest cookbook publishing phenomenon of all times, but probably I would have to say, of all times, well, that's very flattering. Yeah. Next to me, like people, like for instance, right? A patient says the only book on Roman cookery. It's not that it's a great book. But it's the only book right now we have a huge, a huge output of Cookbooks and food related books. And yet nothing that has ever been attempted much less successfully produced on this scale. It's amazing. I mean, anyway, astounding book. You know, and the thing is, is that, even though I guess the goat going Amazon price is what about 450? Now?

Yeah, you know, yeah, about 400. Yeah, so it's

not an inexpensive book. But as Nathan is fond of pointing out a lot of paper in that book,

a lot of paper and very good investment, per, you know, the amount of information you're getting, I mean, if you if you if you think about it, it's five volumes, you break it down. It's the amount of work that went into it. I think it's you know, as a as a young chef as a as a as a passionate foodie, whatever you want to call, you know, yourself. It's, I think it's a very good investment for your future creative. culinary adventures,

that's less than half the price per book of the of the elBulli books, for instance. Yes. If you're going to compare if you would have if you want to comparison stuff, that's the reference. Yeah. And what's, what's funny when not to speak on adrenal terms about it, but you know, everyone's wondering, well, you know, Nate Nathan, who has an unbelievable amount of money and absurd amount of money, really, when you think about it, he's a rich man.

He's very well he's very well for himself, and he's worked hard for what I'm

not saying anything new. Yeah, he's got a lot of multibillionaire. But absolutely. Everyone was like, Well, you know, this is kind of this is kind of one of the criticisms you hear as it eats, just because he has a lot of money, he's never going to make the money back. But in fact, the book is good enough, it's making

it's actually become becoming on the edge of profitable. And that was never the intention. But, you know, the, I mean, we thought we would sell 2000 copies, maybe. And now we're almost at 30,000 copies. And at that price point, yeah, we're recuperating, the, you know, the investment that was made. And that's, that's amazing. I mean, the fact

that it's actually going to be a profitable book, I think, is the greatest sign of success, success in terms of kind of the impact that it's going to make in the world, the fact that something can be at that cost can have that much money dumped into its production. Yeah, right. Which Nathan will never divulge what the actual number is. But we know it's a lot because, at minimum, you admit bare minimum, you had at least 15, you know, very, very qualified people working full time for how many years plus, then a lot more, three and a half, you had a full team. And then and then a lot more than the 15, for a big chunk of that for

the final year push when we really had to get everything together, it was almost 40, you know, including all the ghost writers and the copy editors. And it was it was a pretty massive team of experts in what they did.

And so the Yeah, and so for something of that magnitude to be able to break even just I think goes to show kind of how ripe the time was, for this information, the need for the book. And also, you know, just I think it's an interesting measure. So when when it's often not talked about, actually, in the when people talk about the book, they don't talk about that aspect. Absolutely.

No, and I'm glad you bring that up, because it was it was in terms of timing, and and people being, you know, open to what this means, you know, that that merging of art and science, which is a beautiful thing. And it's something that that, you know, a lot of classic traditionalists wanting to reject. And at the same time, when you embrace it, you realize that each each really enhances the other. And it's such a clean, beautiful relationship, that it's yeah, it was primed for that, and people are responding that way. And so that's, that's a testament to the progress we've made with with we're looking at the different roles of food.

It's something else, I think I might have commented on this show about it before, I'm not sure I can't remember. If you haven't seen the book at all, one of the interesting things about it is, and this is something I hadn't expected before I was able to see it. It's kind of how personal it is. It's not. In other words, it's not. It's not the Encyclopedia Britannica.

It's not a cold textbook. By no means. Yeah,

I mean, there's a lot of personal feelings personal. I mean, it's it's

humor. There's I mean, there's a yeah, a lot of personal aspects. Yeah,

I mean, it's great. But anyway, so we have a we have a question on the book, someone who read actually from zymurgy, the blog, I guess, had a question regarding the special recipe in the book, and I'll read it, even though it's addressed to me. I'll read it to you. Since he's gotten a lot more about it than I do. I've attempted the monsters cuisine sour cream special recipe twice now with less than desirable results. So you're going to troubleshoot

this overview. Fix this one, alright, the issues

are that they will not form into a shape the first time I attended them, they basically dissolved into the ice water. The second time I received a new batch of Aktiva YG. By the way, that's meat glue. It's actually like a protein bond, or YG is the one that's made for dairy and protein stuff, made the recipe and split the batch into and then used it before we go on when you describe the recipe first so that people know what we're talking. Yeah,

so this is actually a recipe inspired by Alex Nike from ideas and food. And we really, as part of our beef cheek goulash, we wanted to have a modernist special component. And so that was the basis for creating the recipe. And it's a combination, I think it's cringy I have I have to look at the recipe for me to be fully aware. All right, but But basically, it's a dairy based space shuttle, where we were using the binding properties of active YG we also use an additional element of protein that we use albumin in there. And what you create is these very fluffy little dumplings that after being set with that enzymatic process, then are nicely toasted in brown butter and served as a garnish for this for this you know, very anxious 72 Arabic chick,

right and sort of the proteins in it. A proteins I guess, like proteins and also, the dairy protein dairy proteins are being bound together with an enzyme trans contamination meat glue set And then potion and toaster.

Yeah, well they're actually they're never actually poached the what we do is we save them after they've won standard depressives has begun. We save them into further shuts the maker into ice water, and you get this nice little dumpling into shapes. Okay. And then and then you give him a final fry to really give him that that textural contrast.

So the first time that Redmayne them it dissolved into the ice water the second time, received a new batch of the Aktiva YG made them and split the batch in to use one quarter of the batch as directed with the same results. Let the other half set in the fridge for 24 hours thinking that needed a time to set up. That was also not the answer by the way. Protein Joe made with Aktiva wants set if it's broken, it's broken. It's not broken. You're breaking. So that yes, so as as pointed out that was not the answer because that won't work. The last quarter that batch went into the freezer and other failure I can attest that I'm following the recipe to the letter but cannot seem to get this one down. I'm not sure if you know the formulation or not. But anything that you could add would be helpful. Gelatin water, sour cream, ricotta, whey protein isolate, which others gelatin into those

open. Yeah, given maximum amounts of protein capacity.

How come you don't do a? How can we oh, the cold water then sets the gelatin and then the gelatins crosslinked? By the YG suck? I would bet that they're not, I would bet that you're not they're not waiting long enough for the gelatin to get syrupy.

That's right. That's a good, that's a very good point. When you're when you have your base mixture, letting the telogen hydrates you know, at least I mean, doing that over an ice water bath until it gets that that syrupy consistency. And then and then setting it directly into the ice water is one of the tricks.

Yeah, I mean, I know a lot of people like for me, like one of the great meat glue applications involving gelatin is my brother in law while they do friend's veggie noodles, and like quinoa chips. And a lot of people have trouble duplicating that recipe. And I think 99% of the time, it's because they're not getting the gelatin,

hydration. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, one of the things that he wanted that said, well, one of the interesting things about a lot of these, a lot of these techniques is they really do require as sometimes it is helpful to see people do it. Absolutely. Because there's a lot of like, the hand and I know that you know, like, while they also used to do is kind of a well known in WD 50 A well known recipe where he would take carrot and cardamom things carry it carry carrot, whatever carrot, and then he would freeze it and dip it in a mixture of a kappa carrageenan locust bean, right, right to make his egg yolk.

They make the yolk with with the egg with the egg white.

Yeah, the egg white was a coconut coconut, like LPG. Yeah, yeah. Very famous. WD 50. Did

you have in the book? Really? Yeah. Oh, cool. Yeah.

But the The truth is, it's actually a very difficult recipe. If you've never done it before. It takes a lot of practice to get those egg yolks to work properly. And when you're first doing it, you'll get like, one in eight will work. You know what I mean? And then by the time you know, you've been doing service every day for a month, you lose one in 20 Do you know what I mean? But but there was always like the one cook in the kitchen, who their job was to do all 60 of those every day. Get them plated, get them away. And you know, they had the magic touch but it really comes from practice.

And practice. Exactly. It's a huge amount of practice. Yeah. And feel and you know, exactly.

So listen, calling a question to someone 84972128 That's 718-497-2128 we're gonna go to commercial break. Be right back with Maxine belay her new shoes arrive.

Booker T and the MGS. Nice coming back with cooking issues. Maxine bleh. Caller you're on the air.

Yeah. Hi, Dave. Thanks. I don't know how relevant My question is to your modern show today but I'm charged with making some dairy free mashed potatoes for this weekend. And I've seen some recipes online that basically call for like chicken broth or some milk substitute like soy milk or almond milk to stimulate the creaminess like that. That dairy would How to manage potatoes. I was wondering if you had any alternative suggestions?

How long do you have from now?

How I'm sorry, how long do I have? Yeah,

how long do you have to get the recipe together from today?

I mean, I'm making them Friday night.

What do you think makes them I would go for like an emulsion I would do like

with vegetable vegetable. I mean, if you really want the creaminess, you have to have some, like, vegetable oil base. And I'm not sure what starts with us,

I mean, are you know, if you're going to do I mean, you can almost get like a mixture of gum arabic and Xanthan like the tickle toy that we use. And you could do like an like an, what, like a very heavy oil water emulsion that'll hold as it dilutes, and or as it's mixed with a solid and you could get some of that you'll get some of that creaminess, and you could just choose a delicious oil.

I wonder if you could do a slurry of the like the potato flakes, hydrate them just a little bit and then blend in the the lack of vegetable oil and make that your your fat base.

I'm just I'm a little worried that if you don't pre emulsify it that it might break it could

but the amount of it depends on the ratio if you're doing like the hobby show or like very, like very high depression. Yeah, 2% fat, but if you want the anxiousness I mean, you know, even 15 20% fat. I think the amount of starch that you already have in the potato will act as a pretty good emulsifier for for a vegetable oil base.

Have you tried just a vegetable oil base yet?

I really haven't even played around with it that much. I've just kind of started looking into it right now.

Well, first, I will go bonehead simple, like we said and just you know, make mashed potatoes and beat some, you know, put oil into it. I mean, gently, yeah. Put it through like don't turn it to glue.

nurturing and mashed potatoes.

Yeah. And then after that, my next step would be to move into my next step would be to move into something like, like a tickler. Like xanthan gum arabic mix.

That's a great thing. What

about like, it doesn't have to be dairy free and completely like what about eggs combined with like an egg yolk? And

then the eggs are fine. They're fine. You know, just no dairy, basically.

I think, you know, yeah, you could go like old school like almost using the egg yolk, like super thick. But like,

instead of the gum arabic and Xanten just as normal?

Yeah, absolutely. Because going to add some of the emulsifiers that you would not

so you basically making a mayonnaise and folding it in. I mean, it's it's it's exactly that. Yeah, I think

if you're allowed to use egg, but just make sure you don't get the temperature too high. Exactly. You know, do you have access to the circulator?

Wait. Yeah, wait till the potatoes cool off a little bit. A little bit?

Yeah. Do you have a circulator? No,

no, no, I'm pretty much working. I live in Brooklyn in this. I don't even have a kitchen.

But if you just hit a 778 dollar digital thermometer, you check the temperature of your potatoes. Right? When you when you're before you want to serve them. And you fold that into give it that, you know, just that that would that folding? No technique. Yeah, I think that'd be great.

Yeah. The last minute Exactly. If you have a circulator, you can Ziploc and go but you just wait to the last minute Yeah,

last minute and potato season, you know, keep them starchy, whatever they are, that and it's very easy and user racers or potato males to have your your potato base. And then the last second, you fold it in with the right ratio. And that's something where you just keep on adding in just to get the right mouthfeel. And you just have to keep on tasting for that. Another cool thing that we love to do for to increase the potato flavor as well. If you're using oil, that's a great medium for that. You can take the skins from the potatoes, the potato peels, obviously, that you've taken away from before Exactly. And fry them in the oil beforehand that you're going to use for your mayonnaise, so that they have a beautiful deep nutty flavor. And then strain that cool that down make your mayonnaise like that. And then you'd have a really intensely flavored and creamy mashed potato local.

That sounds that sounds great. What What kind of frying on that like, like deep frying or just kind of

just just indepen you know, and you have your skins in there and you wait until they get sort of, you know, crisp and golden. You don't want to burn them. You don't want to get any better flavors, but just exactly. You're just extracting the some of those really beautiful flavors.

Awesome. Thanks, guys.

Good luck. Let us know how it works out. Absolutely. Do we right? Yeah. Well, thank you so much. Thank you. Hey, do we still have another caller? All right. Caller you are on the air. Yeah. Hello. Oh, you got an echo. Echo. Now we'll deal with it.

So I'm a current student. I actually had a question kind of related to something I'm trying to do for my menu project. And so to two questions I need to create in large sheets and also I'm masking louder. Edible threads if you know of anything.

Wait large sheets of what and what was the? Yeah.

Okay. So for example, I'm one of the things I'm trying to use is Yuba, which is easy enough to get to a large sheet. But I was also thinking about using transglutaminase to bind in sheets been slices of meat into large sheets. Are you familiar with she Body? Body is a Japanese resist dyeing technique, like a very badass form of tie dye basically. Oh, yeah. Okay. And so the idea is to

sell screening, or is it? Is it sells silk screening? Or is it

self cleaning? I'm not sure. I guess so my idea is taking foods and finding them using these resist techniques, we actually weave thread into the fabric and then pull it tight and bunch of in different designs, and then you dye it and where the fabric is pulled tight, it was just dying to bind food, and then it would then resist different cooking methods through the different courses either by taking like a sheet of tissue mean, binding it very carefully, and bunching it and then soaking it in a V shape. So that it the bound portions resist the acid. They aren't exposed to the acid. And so some of it comes out as sort of a CV che cure and then some of it comes out there was this machine, for example. Okay, looking for an edible thread that is fine enough to do that sort of work with something as delicate as fish, but that is still edible.

How strong. How strong like scallion scallion comes to mind is the classic thread. You know what I mean? Like, like chives, or like long pieces that are then you know, lightly blanched. I mean, that's the classic, you know, thing like that. That works. I mean, I'm sure there's others.

Yeah. I mean, I mean, you can you could do starch based ones. I mean, that would be consistently making a starch paper based on like, maybe a really good pre hydrated tapioca starch. You make a leather, maybe a little bit of oil so that the weed breaks down in your mouth more easily. And I think I think that might be but then it may hydrate.

have a tough time when it's in contact with. Okay, so you need something waterproof, right? Which means that you're dealing with mean that right there is a problem. So now you're basically down to long long scale pant plant fibers.

Where you could do a gluten base, actually. Oh, yeah,

you can make that strong enough. Yeah. Oh, absolutely.

Yeah, we've done it with with pasta, we've done it where if you do if you cut them just fine if you could do a very fresh pasta enrich with with about depending on the flour using five to 7% vital wheat gluten and bothered because really good brand. And you could get you could get a very sort of, you know, Platinum elastic thread. That would be you know, very workable, but also break down as you chew very easily.

Can you hit it with RM to make it even tougher that we've done

that for the for buckwheat? Because there was we had the protein content? We didn't have enough of the starch, right? So yeah.

worked very well to me first. You guys heard of holly collagen threads?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. doesn't break down so nicely though.

In the mouth. Yes.

It feels so nice. Yeah,

I mean, obviously, like, well think about it this way. I mean, collagen on the outside doesn't break down as nicely as like intestine for instance.

Tripe would be cool. That would work. Yeah, yeah. Only come trip isn't amazing. Yeah.

Yeah, we're bored or like long like carefully cut pieces of sausage casing Yeah. As for gluing sheets, it's no problem. That's no problem that's just meant to do it. Here's my one recommended recommendation. The only time I've ever had meat glue provide an off flavor in a dish that I've done was when I glued a glued many, many layers of different colored fish together and then vacuumed them together. Whenever you have a so so the first time I did it, I overeat gluten and I vacuumed it I let it cure in the vacuum bag. And then I had I pursued a flavor that and the second time I did it I used a much less amount of meat glue, vacuumed it and then before like right after I crushed it into shape. I cut the bag open and then it could air out in the fridge. Yeah, yeah. So

yeah, was you especially with fish. When I am butchering before you put the sheets together with You cut in across like you're doing fishing or along the grain to kind of provide stability.

Any like sin beautiful sheet of fish is going to be absurdly delicate no matter how you do it. Unless you're literally cutting less, you're literally cutting in a big piece and then preserving the sinew along the cut, which is possible, like, you know, we've done too and as soon as delicious, you know, but you're going to be tough getting big pieces that stuff you could you could you could hit somebody in the face where they won't break. But

if you were to, if you're like partially cure the meat, then you might have Yeah, I mean, if you give it I'm not sure I would actually do it, Brian. But if you were to do like three and a half salts, the percentage, you know, to water 2% Sugar, Brian, you might be able to get a little bit more elasticity. And I think structure to the first.

Yeah, I mean, the best way to slice unless you're going to do some sort of special slicing is to par for par freeze it, don't freeze it all the way just to get it apart, freeze, throw it on a very high quality meat slicer and go directly in between sheets of wax paper, and then keep them almost frozen until you're about to use them. Because once those things die out the night,

it's over the transglutaminase still work? Well it's frozen, or would you apply frozen

Nissa Nissa thought in order for this what you what you do is is because when we you know when I was doing it, I would take the you know fairly stiff but not fully frozen sheets, I would layer them. And then as soon as the salt and sugar from the cure hits them, they melt out and then you have a block but then you don't lift them again. That's it. You know what I mean? They're done. Yeah, you know? All right.

Excellent. Thank you very

much. And if you want to see a video, I have a video on cooking issues on the blog, I think are linked to from a star chefs video I did where I did Mocha magani, which is the Japanese metalworking kind of, you know, technique. And you can see the kind of in practice like thin sheets of fish glued together is not what you want to do, but might give you some visual pointers on how to handle the products. Yeah,

yeah. Excellent. And I'm really curious to see how your your, you know, this all comes together. This is send us some photos.

I will definitely send you guys some photos. I have a friend who does a lot of food photography. He's very interested also who wants to document it. So I will definitely send you guys something. Awesome. Excellent. Thank you very much for talking with me today.

Thank you. So do we have any more colors? Should we take some email stuff? Let's see some emails. All right. Do some emails. Yeah, I heard there was someone that heard that. Which means we lost him. Okay, let's see. I'm probably you know, it's nice. We're getting some calls, which means I probably won't get to all the email questions. Anything that I missed this week, I will try to get next week. Michael writes in about nutmeg. Here's a question. I recently ordered a set of food grade essential oils from I've tell you, which is Mandy, I've told you work with her over there. She's like

we haven't worked with anybody that worked with Daniel Patterson for a while and that's

yeah, she's good buddies with Harold McGee. And yeah, and so she has she's a basically a perfumer out of San Francisco or there abouts Bay Area and she does a lot of interesting stuff and she actually has a line and waves phenomenon that just launched but I haven't seen because I haven't been working snowmen like how long you're gonna mean I'm forbidden to buy kitchen equipment people by the way, like literally if I bought another anything revise. Yeah, right i mean anyway, so recently or ordered a set of food grade essential oils from I'll tell you a fun stuff, especially for those of us that don't have a roadmap. Well the roadmap doesn't make essential oils just be clear on this. roadmap does distillation but not the steam distillation that is what happens when you're making essentials to kind of a different piece of equipment. I don't do to steam distillation because I don't have a rig for it. Anyway. You guys have the baller rota come hang out. Anyway, the thing is, is like I say like anything I ever negative I would ever say about these guys is strictly due to jealousy, just straight up jealousy. All right. Okay, so one of the items in my set is nutmeg, essential oil. I seem to remember from reading soul on ice, which is I guess, Eldridge cleavers book. That nutmeg was a popular prison hallucinogen with horrible side effects. So now I'm a little scared to use this stuff. Is there a chance that the hallucinogen is concentrated? Or conversely, a reasonably if it was left behind, left behind? Or whether it's not in the oil to make sure it's completely safe? Okay, look, the compound there's several possible psychoactive compounds in nutmeg. One of them is Murrison is the kind of famous one Parsley Seed Oil has a lot of it and if you go to arrowhead which is like the place where kind of thinking druggies go to put down their kind of mental thoughts on this is where I go. Most of those people aren't using nutmeg. They're using Parsley Seed Oil, which has a high concentration of this in various cap capsules. Listen. That compound Murrison is is aromatic and it's actually characteristic of nutmeg. So There is no way that you making a dish that you enjoy the taste of are going to get poisoned.

The levels would be ridiculous. Yeah, written

by people who people who typically, to get hallucinatory effect out of it. People will do things like great a whole nutmeg, or two, and then kind of like somehow choke it down. And it's described as the most vile thing that they've ever done in their lives. And then like three, you know, hours later, they start feeling some sort of psychoactive effects. This is not something that you would accidentally do. You know, I mean, could you take that oil pack and into gel caps? Pound it and do yourself harm? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, one of the problems with nutmeg is that it because so, you know, psychoactive substances are kind of, you know, the thing with them is there, there are certain psychoactive substances that, that the danger level is fairly close to the psychoactive level. And I think nutmeg is closer than many in that kind of spectrum, which is kind of where the bad kind of, you know, rep comes from. Because, you know, if you eat one graded nutmeg, your, you know, you won't die. But if you eat like three, like there might be renal failure or something like that. So it's like, and, you know, an order of a three is not a safety level that most drugs would be happy with, you know, between activity and death, like it's not a happy number, like an order of magnitude is a more friendly kind of a number. But anyway, don't worry about it. Like what I'm saying is, don't worry about it.

A little grading here and there. Yes. Also, apparently,

up and again from arrowhead. The stuff degrades over time, similar to thujone, which we're going to talk about in a minute with absence. And, in other words, so if you use nutmeg that's old, it's lost some of its principal. So you know, even if you somehow are able to, you know, choke down, you know, that jar of McCormick ground nutmeg that's in your grocery store, mostly gone? Yeah, that's mostly gone. And you probably not that I know that it recommended, so don't don't worry, don't worry, right. Absolutely. Don't worry. We might as well do this on a on a similar one we have in from Tom Fisher and Lansdowne PA, longtime listener. First of all, he has centrifuged question. Let's knock that out first. Right. Okay, before we get to the thujone government centrifuge, good. I'm glad to hear it. That's one of all of our favorite pieces of synergy. My baby. Yeah, you're on the cutting edge, by the way, like in 15 years, let many more high quality restaurants are going to have centrifuges, and people won't think that you're a freak show when you suggested they go get one.

It's coming to homes to this is the next Cuisinart. You know, really, they're going to make one thing, so I think they were very curious about it yesterday. So let's see.

Really Oh, but by the way, before we get this question, yesterday was the ICP. I didn't go because I had a bunch of events I had to do, but they haven't. Thank you The award ceremony. And last year, modern schools he was about to come out. And I co hosted with Chris Young, you know, one of the other authors, and we I was telling him joking that next year if you don't win every damned Book Award, you know, it's going to be a travesty. And in fact, you guys went through we went through including one that they made up for you. Right, like profound what was it was it

it was, Oh, God, it was like, just in like a future invention, or, you know, it was they were very gracious and we were very, very honored to receive these awards

that bad year to write a different book. Anyway, okay. In the cooking world, that is okay. So, especially a professional book and or one that purports to have amazing photographs, because you're just gonna get swamped. Anyway. Okay, so God has sent a few just bought me some strawberries. But I have an issue, I tossed the strawberries in the blender at a two grams per lead per note two grams of picknix Ultra SPL, which is an picknix enzyme for 500 grams of strawberry if that's you know, more dose than you need, you could probably do one in that amount, but two is not going to hurt you. You just don't want to put so much pectin x in that it that you start it has a slightly fermented aroma. That's fine. Don't worry about it. Blended until slightly warm good practice rested 10 minutes good practice tend to 20 good practice. If you do something that's going to break down like bananas, you don't want to rest it any longer than 10 because it'll start to get kind of brown flavors and spun for 10 minutes. I would don't say what speed I'm assuming you have a centrifuge to do about 4000 times the force of gravity 10 minutes is on the edge 10 to 15 is better at those speeds just because it will clarify almost instantly but the puck solidity is going to get a lot higher when you go faster. Okay, got a very solid puck and crystal clear juice. Glad to hear it. But on top was a layer of what appeared to be the same material as the puck with floating on top like a vinegar. Mother scooping it out clouded the juice but spinning for five minutes more clear it up nicely. Is this result of air bubbles trapped in the mix? Yes. Yeah. If you have a vacuum machine, vacuum that sucker out break it before and get the air out. No problem. Right. Absolutely. Right. I mean, this is something that you know, Maxine And I do every day and glad to hear got it running all day. Ours actually is acting up I have to get a new motor. Okay, yeah, it's not gonna replace the motor to yeah, if you're using a centrifuge that only goes up to about 4000 G's the buckets really aren't it's not like a hazard to life and limb but your motors will have to be replaced eventually it's about $900 problem in the one we have anyway. Now the second question the different question Absolutely. Years ago when Epson first first became legal legal to sell in the US I bought a bottle maker seemed very energetic about saying it was free of contaminants like through John's from the wormwood does not contaminate an ingredient people are so crazy all right. It seemed alright bases. Yeah, right anyway, it seemed alright but nothing to write home about. More recently, a friend got a bottle and was telling me about it saying it was made from the original illegal formula. I said I'd like to try. I said I tried to thujone free version years ago and laughed and said thujone, free absinthe is like alcohol free rum through Jones what makes it special? So what's the real deal? Thanks for doing the show every week. Okay? So look through Joan is another purported hallucinogenic you know, psychoactive compound that is found in warm wood, which is one of the that's the characteristic or from other than the anus tastes from absent, you know, and all of the later ones like you know, not later but different ones like for No, not the regular one or Riccar or pasties or any one of these southern French like I'm a I'm a small man in Marseille drinking stuff. Not small, but old. I don't mean small physically. But yeah, it's good. But it's especially good in the summer in Marseille when you're sitting out you know what I mean, Marseille is a great town by the rules. And yeah, Marseille fantastic town. I really like it. Anyway. Point is that through Joan in, there's a lot of research out there, the one that you should go look at. Again, you can get to it via arrowhead vaults. But there's a bunch of papers out there, where they studied old pre ban absent bottles and found that modern Absinthe has roughly similar levels to older absent that the longer that and that's not really high enough to get you cranked up on foods owned by itself, unless you drink so much that the ethanol is going to have you stumbling and falling over. So is there some sort of synergism between like the smaller amount of foo John, that's actually an absence. And, you know, who knows who can tell, but like most of the studies that have been done quantitative studies out there point to the fact that really what's happening is you're getting drunk, and horribly drunk, especially if you're trying to see how much absent that takes you to have to join effects you're going to be plastered, plus or simple SIBO effect. Right? The other the other thing is, is that Wormwood through junk quantity and worm witness has also been checked, goes down radically as it's stored on drying. So if you have your own Wormwood, or other Artemus species sitting around, and you and you then like take it right away and make absent they're gonna have much higher thujone levels. And if you take a commercially prepared one that you get an herb shop that's been dried sitting around for a year, and you're gonna get a much lower quality of food, but quantity but even so, the numbers seem to indicate that you're not going to get Crumped on the on the foo Joan that you're going to get shellacked by the ethanol now through Joan is, is it a regular sage? Well, it's one of those to go look it up on the internet's and it's super high and foo Joan, I'm not telling you to go take this, right. But if you need to know what to do, Joan, goes like go get a proper dose response really, you know, relationship off of the internet's any one of these, you know, herbal drugs sites has many, many users who have put this stuff in make sure that you don't listen to anyone that doesn't tell you like relative quantities and different oils and also body weight phenomena, things like this, because you want to get your doses. And I've never I've never tried it. I've tried other things that other people exposed as opposed to psychoactive effects. Like for instance, you know, when I was in Colombia, we were doing coca leaf infusions with coca leaf tea. And yeah, and I've never done cocaine. So I don't know what that's like. I didn't feel anything different. But I had people who had a lot more than I did report that it kept them up at night, for instance, so there was but a lot of extra energy. Right, but a lot of this could just be mental. Do you know, do you absolutely see, well, if you tell someone you're having coca leaf infusion