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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Hello, are we on? Yeah. Wow. We didn't have any song. Joe What's up trying out a new song.

And maybe that one won't work?

I think it's fine. It's just you know, I didn't I thought that was part of the whole you know, we're heritage radio network. That's the thing. It's like you need a break between the heritage Radio Network and the cookies to my right. My right. Sure this let's start this fresh people. Hello, and welcome to cooking issues. This is Dave on your host of cooking issues coming to you live every tuesday from 12 to 45 on the heritage Radio Network, broadcasting in a container in the back of what is it Roberta's pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn? Live as always witness Tasha hammer Lopez and with Joe in the engineering booth. No Jack today. Ah,

no, Jack's feel a little sick. Yeah, what kind of sick? I'm not exactly sure. It's some sort of?

Uh huh. Is it the kind of flu you can track from drinking on that? I'm just kidding. Jack was a very responsible man. Least about that. So I'm sure that's not it. Anyway, call your questions live. 27184972128 That's 718-497-2128 I thought actually, Natasha was going to be late because she had to run around like a nincompoop today because we have an event we have an event later this have what is the event we're doing anyway? For the new American new product stuff what the Stewart American new product stuff what's what's that new products that

Martha Stewart likes?

That happened to me American Yeah. And we're hoping out Are we one of those products that she likes? Just joking. I'm just joking. Apparently we're supposed to dress in caterers uniforms that correct. But all black, all black. So all the only requirement is all black. So sequins are all black fine. So if anyone out there knows a source in Manhattan, lower Manhattan, preferably for you know, not to svelte mail sequence units yards, please tweet them in so that I can go purchase my sequence units hard. You know Booker and DAX became recently obsessed with the word unit tard. And for that they were way ahead of me I didn't become obsessed with unit yards and the word units hard until possibly College. Right? When I was when I first started in bands, one of my dreams was to have, we were in a band called Jurassic alloplastic was to have a yellow sequined unit yard and velvet velvet coat with lapels that were about a foot and a half taller than my head that went up. I was big on Bootsy Collins and that kind of thing. Anyways, on to today's question. So to start, I realized that last week, I started answering a question and this is normal for someone like me totally went completely off base and never actually answered their question. So I apologize to Tom Fisher. Tom Fisher asked recently, this is not recently anymore, because it's two weeks, two weeks, whatever. I recently tried probably sciences recipe for low temperature ribs. And while the flavor was amazing, my guests were a little freaked out by the unrendered fat. Is there any way to do a combination of high and low temperature cooking to get the best of both worlds? Now answer the second question that he had, which was about sea bass. But I never answered this. It's kind of an important question when it comes to low temperature cooking. The answer is no, you cannot get the best of well, you can't get the best of both worlds in that way. Low temperature cooking, never renders the fat or the collagen out of the out of the meats. And so there's positives and negatives to this. One, the meats don't get as much gelatin and all sorts of broken down, you know, collagen, which has gelatin throughout the throughout the piece of meat and at low temperature cooked up item because the stuff, it turns tender, but it stays in place. And so if you have a portion of something that you in a traditional brace might get a little moistened by that by that that render stuff coming out, it's not going to happen and low temperature on the other hand, the benefit of it not rendering out. Well. The other benefit of it not rendering out is as your guests found out, they can be a little bit freaked out by what they think are big chunks of fat, some of which are big chunks of fat, but also big chunks of soft but unrendered connective tissue. But the benefits are that unlike a regular traditional braise, you can take most and only the shortest. There's a lot of bones, there's you know, it's much harder, but you can do a lot of fabrication work on low temperature cooked stuff. So you can get very, you know, nicely sliced pieces of low temperature cook things like ribs that are very tender that you can never do if you're doing a traditional cooking technique because they would just shred into into pieces. Right? So so the answer is no. But you can't kind of get the best of both worlds. Because if you rendered that out, you'd be cooking it to such an extent, you might have just done low temperature. I mean, you might as well just in traditional cooking for the beginning, there's no reason to do the low temperature step. So I what I would say is is that use each technique for its own for its own best purpose. So low temperature ribs, great for doing small portions that are sliced very nicely and sauce and served as part of plated dish components. Right. But if you want rendered out, you know, stick to your ribs ribs, like you know, you know grandma style. Yeah, which I love, then, you know, go go traditional, right? Mustache actually usually, I think prefers the traditional one on that, right? Yes. Although I don't think they're that I really honestly and I've said this a billion times, and I'll probably say it, you know, forever, there's no better or worse, it's not better or worse. It's, you know, can you achieve the result that you want to achieve? So anyway, Tom, sorry about that. Another thing I think one thing I mentioned last week that we had a question about cutting boards. I talked about cutting boards. I'm just curious out there if anyone out there has tried these weird multi layer cutting boards that are coming out of Asia now, where it's, it's like literally just stacked sheets of thin cutting boards that are semi laminated into one thick board. And then when the top gets dirty instead of cleaning it, you shove a knife into it and peel the entire top layer of the board. Have you ever seen this? Natasha? It's cool. It's cool. It's weird that makes a real you would hate it you know why? It makes a something wrong with the noise when the when the when the layers are separating is like mustache hates that because it makes her think of some sort of disease peeling off. Me I've made that kind of noise in the kitchen before not peeling a disease off. Right? Not not for that reason. But But yeah, and you hate that kind of noise right? I hate your breathing. So see, now that's classic mustache. Now for those of you out there who say mustache, you should give it to me like I give it to her. See that's the only time on the air she's ever actually said something like she would normally say to me in you know in the real world just so you guys get a get a picture of what's going on. Okay, very nice. Okay. Alvin Schwartz tweeted in with a couple of different questions. One was Have we ever tried a technique of cryo shopping so cryo shocking is a is something that was pioneered, or I should say, advocated by me. I don't know who actually came up with it. shucking oysters by putting the oyster into liquid nitrogen for a brief period of time that kills slash it messes up the musculature of yours stir such that when they, when they warm up a little bit so they're not frozen. You can get a knife in there and you don't have to worry about popping the belly and you don't have to worry about getting little bits of shell into your oyster, crash shucking. Now, I have to admit, you know, Chris, Chris Young and Nathan, Maxime and those guys, by the way, you know, none of that team together anymore. The whole team split up the whole original modernist like all three of those guys, they're all gone their own separate ways at this point, and the end of that era beginning of a new era. So the cryo shucking I've never had much luck with it, they are big advocates of it I've spoken to Nathan about it and I've spoken to Christiana about I forget exactly how many seconds he put it in the idea is not to freeze the oyster all the way through just to shock the bejesus out of it so that I guess kill it but so that you know, you can sit it relaxes enough for you to get your knife in without having to put too much force in it. Because when you're putting the force in it, that you get the that you get the problems of chipping shell and all that. Now knows, and I tried it years and years ago, years and years ago, and you know, we just never had much luck with that. We always maybe we over froze it. I don't know, but we never we never really. We never really were too jazzed about it. But you know, Chris is enough of an advocate of it that I think it bears me trying it again, at some point that the idea is to freeze it just long enough to get it to relax after it thaws, but not enough to alter the texture by freezing it you also want to make sure that you put them upside down when they're thawing so you don't lose any of the awesome precious juices that when you cry are shocked but shucking oysters is a huge problem. So anything that makes it work out better is probably a good thing to do. Should I share that Nick long story even though I'm probably not supposed to date Chinese listen. Okay, right. So Dave Chang Dave Chang is a huge

huge on on oyster shucking. In fact, we saw him not that long ago in an oyster shucking contest at som where like all of the MOMO cooks were racing each other to see who could shuck oysters fastest. And so Dave Chang hates there's two things there's, there's there's three things he hates about oyster shucking one if you're slow and puny, he hates that right? He hates if you pop a belly that's a candidate is to him you might as well just punch him in the face is popping oyster belly like he like that that would make him punch you in the face. So we're going back to last week's like what would cause a foodstuff that would cause your friend to punch you in the face. If you shocked an oyster in front of Dave Chang and pop the belly. And the other ones if you serve the customer, an oyster with bits of broken shell in it that would also like that, like you know infinite tirades from Dave Chang. So there was an X turn years ago that Nick Wong saw do this actually, he was so frightened that he saw this hidden it stopped him so it didn't go out to the customer as far as I know so don't know don't want anyone to think that it went out to the customer saw the dude rinse an oyster under the water to make sure there was no show on it. Can you imagine that? Even I might lose my cool on that. I mean, it takes a lot for me to lose my my cool at anyone other than this dosha like if people don't think I get worked up but like honestly like to actually lose my cool at someone. I don't know. That takes a lot. Right. Yeah. You ever see me lose my cool on someone? I don't know. I don't think so. Now right now, anyway, crashing. The other question Alvin had was he's having problems with his roadmap roadmap is rotary evaporators used for low temperature? Well, it's a distillation rig that you use in laboratories. And it's got a couple of benefits. One, it does things at low temperature because it's under a vacuum. And when you put things under a vacuum, you can boil at lower temperatures, which means that you don't have any heat damage to to very fragile flavors like herbs. The other thing is, the other two things is Is it very gentle, very gentle, not just from a heat standpoint, but just gentle in terms of it doesn't have any a lot of bumping and boiling. So it's it's nice that way. And two, three, it happens under a vacuum. And since it's under a vacuum, there's no oxidative effects when you do it. So it's very good for a number of things like that. But if you're going to do illegal evaporation, even even illegal evaporation, I advocate using a cold finger because you want the maximum difference between your condenser and your boiler to get the maximum recovery of flavor volatiles from things like herbs and whatnot because remember, we're not doing primary distillation with a rotary evaporator. We're not trying to get rid of impurities like you would with a column still. So we're trying to get maximum capture of our stuff back in a rotary evaporator typically. So we want really cold things. So I use liquid nitrogen, but because I have a lot of it in a thing called a cold finger condenser, but Alvin's using, he says he's using dry ice and acetone and he says that the condenser is getting saturated. First of all, I do not recommend using dry ice acetone in food applications because I don't want acetone anywhere near the stuff I'm working with. And also you're going to get high like a kite. If you have a whole boatload of acetone sitting around and it warms up and starts volatile. I wouldn't I don't really like using acetone in the kitchen so I wouldn't do that. I would use dry ice alcohol. You can use denatured alcohol as long as you're sure it doesn't get anywhere near your food. Or you could pick up some like Everclear 195 I have or something like that and that stuff's fine, I would use that instead of acetone. The other thing is is that the dry I mean dry ice that's this is a classic lab way to do it dry ice and alcohol. But for some reason Anastacia back me up on this whenever we do events where we try the dry ice in the condenser, it never seems to be as smooth or work as nicely as when we do the liquid nitrogen in the condenser. For for some reason, I'm not sure why but we always get a lot more boiling and it's just it's always a lot messier and things seem to get stuck more. And for some reason we dry it is extremely powerful. And I tend also to dry for some reason when we do the dry ice alcohol, it tends to gunk up my vacuum lines more because when you're getting when you over saturate and something that's cold like that and you start getting vapor, moisture vapor or distillate vapor in your vacuum line or near the point where the vacuum line attaches to the condenser, it can clog up once it clogs up your thing you get saturated out, you can't get a vacuum level in there anymore. And the only way to fix it is to is to quickly put a blast of air through your vacuum line to clear it out by using the differential and pressure but when you do that, then you have all sorts of problems. So once that happens, it's very hard to get your distillation really right back on track. And so I find that typically one way to stop that from happening is to always start your distillation before you chill your before you chill your thing down get the get you get a little bit of a vacuum so there's not a great you know he conducted get a little bit of a vacuum going in your condenser before you add the dry ice and the alcohol don't put dry ice now call them the condenser and then start your distillation run. But it's very difficult and I really think that liquid nitrogen even though it's not as powerful as dry ice, and so therefore it would cost more in the long run and you have to keep refilling it I just find that it's a lot easier for me to for me to work with. I've we haven't had as good of luck with dry eyes. Anyway, I hope that helps. Should we go to first first break? Sure. We're gonna back for my first commercial break in a moment cooking issues.

Today's program has been brought to you by Whole Foods Market. Are you a locavore? Our Northeast Regional forger for Whole Foods Market Sure is. She spends her time traveling around the New York City Metro Area sourcing the best new or interesting artisanal and handcrafted local products for our purchasing teams at the local store level. Part of our commitment to our local suppliers includes assisting them with the process of getting their products sold at our stores. Whether it's suggesting packaging designs, pricing or distribution methods. She's helping some of the area's best new products reach savvy shoppers and Whole Foods Market stores. Today New York tomorrow the world for more information visit Whole Foods market.com.

Wow, Joe, I liked that. I like that. In the back of that. It's very I don't know that it's Whole Foods sounding but it's like, you know, right.

I don't know. But that's exactly Whole Foods. But yeah, it definitely threw me for a loop.

Meaning you need to gain that. That's that Jack's work

now that's not Jack. That's actually Rachel wardens boyfriend is in this band. And he does the theme song for her for her show too. So

yeah, nice. Nice. All right. All right. Well, welcome back to cookie issues calling your questions live to 74 to seven to one to eight. That's 24 972128 Tom wrote in said Hi Dave and all's it's not those mustache now. You're the all too. She's like No, I don't care. I don't care. I'm reading my tweets. We actually know what she's not because Estancia hates all sorts of social media. She detested she detest social things in general, actually. But especially Media related to being social right. Now, she also likes ordering shoes online but hates when other people do it. Shoes. Oh, yeah. You're right. She's wandering jackets. Literally. She's sitting here. She always says that she's doing work. She's sitting here. I know. She's sitting. She's sitting here. orderings Is that what you're doing? Like what? See? Here's the thing massage all day has her face in the computer. She's like, you don't know what I do. You don't know what I do. The first time I ever went and actually took a little computer. She's ordering jackets and not just any kind of jacket like, like early 90s beige barn jacket. No, it's like J Crew stuff German like store. What the hell does that have to do with anything we're doing right now and cooking issues?

Nothing. Anything at all. I'm gonna send you though.

What was my last question about?

Oh, thank you. Just Harold monkeyed me oh do you like this?

Well okay good. This Tasha has this thing that she says I asked questions and don't wait for the answer we don't have all day it is a 45 minute program Harold. Harold the crazy stuff she's a crazy person by the way for those of you that don't know Anastasia crazy person, Tom writes in. I've recently started making sourdough bread and some other fermented goods. My wife loves the new food but can't stand the vinegar flies. I put up with them until recently when they started attacking food mid prep traps do trap flies, especially the ones I baited with water and soap to break the surface tension pear slices and sprouted then roasted barley but I don't want to cook for fly there is a lot of work sprouted and roasted barley first of all I hate sprouts. With the test spreads everyone out there. I know that a lot of you like sprouts. I don't like them. I don't even like sprouts that everyone likes. I said this many times before. Please don't serve me a pea shoot. I know you like it. I know everyone else likes it. I do not like it anyway. I mean, I like to sprout barley, you know, not to sprout it but to germinate. I mean that's like the basis of many of the foods I mean foods drinks, they're like in the world are based on the notion of sprouting barley. But you know, but don't I should say germinating it anyway because you know, when you're doing malt you don't want the the accursed buyer to come all the way out of the out of the barley because it's eaten up too much of the too much of the carbo is used, and you don't have enough leftover to make your delicious delicious beer, or your delicious delicious whiskey. So don't do that. Anyway. I don't want to cook for flies. And it seems like the trap attracts and then kills extra flies, leaving roughly the same amount to be a nuisance. When I put the ferments in the fridge, the flies abate rapidly. So there isn't some other problem in the background. What do you do? What can I do? What do professionals do? I can't imagine flies will be tolerated in a good restaurant or factory. Thanks, Tom and pls. Dave, did you take any philosophy classes from Michael dela Roca at Yale? He is my dissertation director. If you did take his class, would you give him a shout on an air shout out on air? Well, I'm happy to give him a shout out. But no, I don't think he joined the faculty at Yale before I graduated. I graduated in 93. And I looked him up on the internet. And his dissertation was in I think 91. So I don't think it was on the faculty at Yale when I was there. And actually, I think I haven't looked at their faculty recently to see whether any of the old guard from back in those days was is still, you know, they're sure some of a lot of them are still alive at a bunch of young young people teaching us but I don't know if they're still there. But I'm gonna give a shout out to anyone doing their philosophy dissertation to Yale, shout out. I love that man. Like, you know, again, whatever. I mean, I looked him up. You know, Professor, della Rocha is does a field that I didn't do so much. It's kind of early modern philosophy stuff, I was more I did to two very different sides of the coin. I spent most of my time worried about Plato and Nietzsche. I end up writing a whole boatload of my papers on Nietzsche, Nietzsche is designed for like an 18 to 21 year old, angst ridden philosophy student at an Ivy League institution like that writing is just like, I need to go back and read it see what are still like, it'd be interesting whether 41 year old may have gets the same kind of feeling from reading Nietzsche, Nietzsche reading your essays, no crap on my essays. What the hell did I know? I was 20. But I mean, I know the actual work, go back and read Nietzsche. Have you ever gone back and stash and read some of the old stuff that you read in college and see whether it's still like whether you have any feeling about it at all? I mean, the what I'm worried about is I go back and I read it, I just feel nothing would that be weird to spend like, all that time and then go back and feel that thing? Of course, it served its purpose or whatever. Here's the story. So vinegar flies are similar to what are a named fruit flies or drain flies. They're all different variants of the Drosophila like melon Gasser you know, the famous for filament mountain Gasser the ones that they did all the genetics experiments on fruit flies, they're the same thing. And I hate them. I detest them. I would wait. I'm sure that they serve a great ecological purpose. But I would wipe them off the face of the earth. I absolutely detest them. And they're the bane of bar's existence is because, you know, so actually just apropos of nothing, but if you own a bar and you watch someone come in and do a health inspection of your bar, what they do is they go in, they grab your bottles of booze, they swirl them and put a flashlight in the bottom and they're looking for dead fruit flies on the inside of your bottles. Now the health inspector that we had didn't have the brains to realize that we're not going to have that problem because we don't have speed pours on our bottles. There's no way for flies to get into our bottles. Also, we're saying we weren't sure if it's actually technically illegal to do an infusion of fruit flies. If you raise food grade fruit flies, could you do a fruit fly infusion and have a bottle that was totally full of fruit flies like 100% just fruit flies and great alcohol as an infusion. Aside from the fact that infusions might be technically illegal, would there be a further a further illegality as a result of the fruit flies and themselves. It's unclear to me, we're not going to please have to have 100% kidding. But just wondering about whether it's the fruit flies themselves that are inherently some sort of the health hazard, right? I mean, the health hazard from a fruit flies that it might land on something that's incredibly gross and then land on your stuff. I want to I told you, I want to make little T shirts for flyers, I'd say my last landing pad was poop. You know what I mean? You want to make a t shirt for flat? Yeah. Or somehow, like, you know, maybe a little video that were a flyer saying, you know, because a flyer is like, Yeah, we could write. Yeah, my last landing pad was poop. I mean, that's the problem with flies, not fruit flies, but flies. Anyway. So off the off the topic, I would look up the Ohio State University Extension factsheet entomology on vinegar, palmists, or small fruit flies, Drosophila, multiple different species that the genus is addressed to love. Okay, here's the issue. They live anywhere there is stuff they can feed on. So the obvious one that we think of is fermenting products, fermenting fruit, they're attracted to that kind of a thing. liquids. Also garbage. Also mops that you have out that are mops that are they're wet,

dish rags that are wet, sponges there are wet. And he's garbage that you know, is lying around. Now, the lifecycle of them is, you know, between seven and 14 days, so it takes a while and they it takes a while for them to grow. So most likely, you have a source somewhere that is sitting around for long enough for it for these flies to grow. Now, do you want to know what the most likely culprit, I think is for something like this is if you're not keeping a wet mop around and you're not keeping fruit out. Right, and you're not having these kind of problems. drains, it's your drains that are the most likely place where these where these things are coming from poor, they're coming from outside most screen mesh, most Windows screen mesh is not big enough, we sorry, it's not small enough to stop these flies from coming in. So all of the you know the the sights, you know the technical sights on it, you need what's called a 16 mesh or finer, which is finer than most screen mesh to exclude these flies from coming into your kitchen. Also, they can enter through, they are attracted to light at night. So if you leave a light on and you have a screen open, they're attracted into the kitchen and they'll then find a mop a rag or any place like this to to go now the drains are a problem because you can get a biofilm which is like a layer of slimy gunk that inhabits the inside of the drains all the way down into where the trap is in the drain. And normal washing even with hot water isn't enough to kill and or wipe these things out because the contact time is not long enough. And so what you need to do if you want to see whether this is where they're coming from is and this is a you know read this on several the technical sites is you want to put tape over a portion of the drain leaving enough like so air can get in and out. And then overnight and then come in the next day and see whether or not there's any flies stuck to the underside of the tape which would be indicative that the flies are exiting from the drain pipe in order to lay their eggs into and do their nasty nasty work. So so how to get it out of the drains. You can you can like every couple of months, you can remove your drain your the actual cover on the drain, take a scrub brush and bleach and scrub that stuff out. Then pour a bio enzymatic bio cleaner that will that will eat away at the coating that's on the inside of the drain pipe and then flush multiple times with boiling water or and then you know periodically pour boiling water down your drains to make sure that you're getting rid of it. So that's that's one way to do it also covering up covering up any source where they might go in that's wet, not keeping any of that stuff in your in your kitchen. Remember, they're attracted to light and to moisture. Now here's another good one. You can use insecticides like pyrethrins to kill these suckers, but you don't necessarily want to have those things laying around something you might not be aware of. But that I like quite a bit is a product called Gentrol. Now Gentrol is a something called an insect growth regulator, the actual active ingredient in Gentrol. And you can buy this at a lot of stores. You can buy it I think on the Amazon is a hydro preen and hydro preen and you can look it up, just look up hydroplane. If you look up Gentrol you'll get a bunch of like things trying to sell to you if you look up hydro Priene hydro p r e n e, you'll get websites that talk about the actual product itself. What it is, is it is a hormone analogue. So insects use different hormones to try and you know try and signal within their bodies that they need to move to the next level of either growth a different instar with their inphase or, or to lay eggs at all port their reproductive and growth cycles are regulated by hormones the same way we are fortunately for us, mammals and insects have different hormones. And so we can use a hormone. And it's not the actual hormone, that's the insects, but it's it's analogous to it effects the same systems that the real hormones do. And we can essentially provide birth control to insects. So the cool thing about this hydroplanes Gentrol is it's totally food safe. And it's not a human or mammalian hormone at all. So you can spray it on surfaces that are typically difficult to totally eradicate all water from porous wood surfaces, things like that, things that can trap a trap and hold moisture and a great breeding places for these these wretched flies, you can spray Gentrol on them, you know, a couple of times it lasts for a good long while in there and it will provide continuous birth control for flies such that they will not be able to reproduce. Okay. So you know, we use this and by the way, it works on almost all insects go to read. If you want to read a scholarly paper on it, go read hydroplane mode of action, current status in stored product pest management, insect insect resistance and future prospects by SM Mohandas that's available. It's in the magazine crop protection 2006. And it's available for free on the usda.gov website. And it goes through what it does, and all of the studies of it. And it's it's good stuff. It's gentle. It also wipes out cockroaches. And it also wipes out moths. So you know, and I think it also might work on flower beetles and things like that. So if you're having some sort of hard to crack infestation, that's probably due to some things somewhere in your kitchen, you can't find that these suckers are attracted to spray this on it they'll go back to where they came from wherever they lay eggs and those eggs will not be fertile. So it's it's good stuff. Hope that the way things good good job. Do you like to gentle All right? Did you ever use it? Did you take some you don't? Do you have any problems that your house really even though you live in Hell's Kitchen, house kitchens, like you know, it's like the older of a building you live in or the more people in it, the harder it is to kind of eradicate these things. We once had a you know, I've had it work wonders on cockroaches in general. I mean, I like it. And you know, it's nice to find something because I have two kids in my house. I don't want to spray a lot of poisonous stuff around you know, I mean, I used to have no pets. Now we have the two hamsters diverged say on the one hamster escaped, like he has had the hamster. Hamster escaped. But another hamster on the other hamster showed up like week and a half later, like the prodigal hamster. He was totally emaciated and messed up. And like, you know, like, like, you know, on on a forced march kind of situation my wife saw and was like, Ah, she thought it was some sort of crazy row. She was like, Oh, my God, rain or you come back and gets Rhino. And like we had two cages, a mini storage cage, right. And the big one and the new hamster Sulu had the rent the run of both hamster cages, right. And then all of a sudden Rhino comes back. And Sue gets shoved in the small cage and Rhino gets his big cage back because the hamsters can't live together because they might, you know, rip each other to shreds. And we were like, holy crap. And we're like, wow, it's just like the prodigal son from the Bible. You can leave you can do whatever you want. Hey, Dad, how's it How come you're so much nicer to the one that did all this other crap? He's like, I always had you as a son. But this son I lost and now I have him again. What kind of messages that crazy. I Well, here's the thing. Here's the thing that now look, for those of you that aren't parents or I've never been or a younger, whatever. Okay, when you read the prodigal son and you know, section of the Bible, you're like, that is some load of bull What the hell is that? You know what I mean? Like, this is horse crap. But then once you become a parent, you understand it. Really? Why? Because it's true. You think you've lost something and nothing is worse than the loss. And then when it comes back, it's like, oh, you know what I mean? It doesn't mean you give them the bigger cane. Don't kill the fat and carrot. The prodigal hamster is back. Oh, yeah. Caller you're on the air.

I shoes crew, it's Brian and go. Oh, hey,

Brian. How you doing?

Good. Okay, my question is I'm looking for your tips to make the best pancakes and waffles.

Ooh, what are your What are your criteria for for a good pancake and waffle? Because the answer depends.

Okay, so not soggy. Got a little little crunch on the outside. It's got some some fluffiness to it. And I'm also interested in in maybe going to savory route also. So both both for breakfast and, and, and for for dinner.

So So for dinner most people on their pancake style things will

read with with kimchi or something like that, right? I mean,

they'll like, most people want a different texture on a dinner pancake than they want. They want usually more crepe, like on on a dinner style thing. And the secret to crepe like things is to let the batter rest a long time not only because of hydration issues, but to make sure all the air is out because it's very hard to get a good spread on a crepe if there's any air leftover in the batter. Okay, but thin thin right now. But if you want to do standard pancakes and waffles, if you do, if you research old recipes on pancakes and waffles, you'll find that the major difference between them in fact in some ways, the only difference you need to pay attention to between them is that a waffle recipe is going to contain a significant amount of oil or oil like thing like butter, okay. And the reason is, is you need something to you need something to reduce the sticking to the sides of the of the waffle iron. So if you try to do a lower fat version of a waffle, you'll, you'll find that it just sticks like like like nobody's business. Modern day waffle irons have a Teflon coating on the inside of them and are much better at releasing and so don't require as much fat in them as the old school recipes. And so you'll see a lot of more modern recipes really toned the fat level down because the fat level can be quite high, we're talking you know, like over well over half of a cup of half a cup. Well like two sticks of butter worth Yeah, well over a cup. Right anyway in in like a four and a half cup flour recipe. So you're a significant amount of I find though that I like it better with that high amount of fat in it. Now, I used to try various different things in my pancakes and waffles. So I use the same long story short, I use the same recipe because I'd rather have the more fat in my pancake recipe than the less fat in the waffle. It makes it easier to remember. So I use the same batter for both pancakes and for waffles. So the recipe also what I do is I hydrate a certain portion of the flour in my liquids before I before I start working I use buttermilk because I liked the results I get so the recipe that I actually use at home, it's not really measured, so I'll have to give it to you is I use a quart of buttermilk, right the regular culture like buttermilk, which isn't actually buttermilk, but that's what everyone calls better milk. I use a quarter of that five hole I use extra large eggs I don't know why but I always have five extra large eggs. I then add a portion of the flour I usually add like a cup and a half my wife and actually liked the taste of it so I if I'm going to use a non traditional flour at this point, I add it then and I use a lot of times use a mixture of oats and or buckwheat flour and or cornmeal and or you know some little bit of dough you can't use too much wheat term some of that some or holy all different kinds or, or should party flour at this point. I add it now right at this early stage along with vanilla which I usually use vanilla at that point and if I'm going to use it rum and also sugar to taste to make it a little bit sweeter, that's what I would omit for a savory recipe. Okay, blend that thing together and allow the hydration to start there's so much there's so much there's so much moisture in that that you're not going to develop any gluten don't worry about and I hit it with a stick blender to get it really well blended at that point. You don't need to worry about gluten development at this point. I melt I also salt sorry, add some salt to it. I then melt chemical leaveners yeah add that later. So then I add so I let that hydrate for a little while. Then I melt two sticks of butter which is I guess a cup or mixture of oil depending on what you're doing. If you don't want the butter. I mix I blitz that and then I add a portion of the remaining flour and then it sounds like a lot but four and a half teaspoons of baking powder and I used to only use four and I used to also make a thinner recipe with the flour I added but I decided I liked my pancakes thicker and so I add a slightly more baking powder I take it up to four and a half and I add a little more flour to make a stiffer if you want it thinner and you want the pancakes a little thinner and not quite as fluffed out more or less cakey then take it down to four teaspoons and don't add as much flour at the end. So four and a half teaspoons baking powder and two teaspoons soda to counteract the acidity from the buttermilk and to do extra leavening. Then I stir in enough flour to get the consistency the texture I want. And I cook I cook them on a large crate maker actually because I have a crate maker from France. And what I usually do is I'll hit it with a little bit of a high initial heat to start the crust going through. It's also there's a big wallop of a heat load on your pan. because there's all that moisture sticking to it, and then I'll reduce the heat down. Wait for the bubbles, when they break, I can see that I've cooked enough through my pancake for a good flip time flip and cook out. That's how I That's my standard pancake. And I use the same recipe for waffles, I tend not to try any of them more calm. I've done them many times. But I don't do a lot of the more complicated stuff like separately with the egg whites and and then fold them in because I find that it reduces the structure on the inside of the waffle or pancake to the extent that it's not what I'm looking for anymore, if that makes sense.