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,

we've met some of the best people in the world both in front of and behind the camera. And we're bringing them all together to share their stories, their delicious adventure and their unique journey into this crazy world.

So to be the first to hear our episodes when they launched this fall, go to wherever podcasts are streaming and hit subscribe and make sure to give us a follow at the Culinary call sheet on Instagram.

Today's program has been brought to you by fairway market like no other market and New York City institution that sells the best local, national and international artisan foods for prices that can't be beat. For more information, visit fairway market.com

You're listening to

heritage Radio Network broadcasting live from Bushwick, Brooklyn. If you'd like this program, visit heritage radio network.org for 1000s more.

Hello and welcome to cookie issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of cookies coming to you live from the Bank of Roberta's pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn on heritage Radio Network every Tuesday except for next Tuesday and the Tuesday after that, because this is our Christmas in New Year's episode. Here as usual with Natasha hammer, Lopez joined in the studio with at least temporarily Aaron from Heritage radio, Jack and Joe. How are you guys doing?

We're great. Yeah, Jack,

how was it? How was the Puerto Rico? I was awesome. Yeah. What do you do besides drinking and eating? What do you eat?

What did I eat? I eat a lot of chicken and rice, obviously. But I went to Vegas, which was which was amazing. What is that? It's an island off the eastern coast of Puerto Rico, which was it's mostly a wildlife refuge. And it was protected by the government up until 2003. And then it became open to tourists. So still not too many people have caught on it's pretty remote and incredible. Is that to one way or the other half of it the shooting range. Navy testing grounds sorta Yeah. Bomb. Yeah.

So we've saved the wildlife on half of the island and then bomb them into oblivion.

There was a hilarious sign that said no swimming in this area. Live explosives nice.

Like, oh, well, you know, we used to have that over here. For those of you that haven't visited our coast when I was a kid, I used to be there we're still fighting World War Two munitions off the coast of Sandy was at Sandy Hook in New Jersey and New Jersey. It's out there know what I'm talking about. It used to be all sorts of explosive stuff left over from World War Two just sitting in the middle of the in the middle of the bay there. Because I guess they would drop them off the ships when they were loading. Nice. You know,

quickly. I had a I had a question. I almost called into cooking issues, all the red wine. I was served in Puerto Rico. Right,

right. It was all served chilled. like well how chilled

like pretty like white wine chilled. Really? Yeah. And it was across the board at Everywhere we went, was

it hot? It was hot as hell? No, not really no. Well, you know, the French typically serve red wine much colder than we like we have a habit in the US, you know, except that the like, you know, even even at the higher levels of dining here in the US, we have a habit of serving our red wines, a lot warmer than they would in let's say, France or in other other parts of Europe. And, you know, certain red wines, like the first couple times I went over there were actually very, it was kind of difficult for me to get accustomed to, like, for instance, over there, you know, as you're going to us, they serve much, much colder in France than we would have here so much so that I got in an argument. Don't get an argument with a French waiter. It's not it's not going to help you out any but. But yeah, I mean, I wonder whether or not it's particularly I mean, you know, if you had like the red wine in France and thought it was too cold or No, yeah,

I have had red one, France, and it was not like this. So this is just

like a Puerto Rican thing, I think was an overly tannic?

No, no, not necessarily enjoyable. Wasn't bad. I just, I like my reds room temp.

Yeah, I mean, I like it. You know, I like it on the coast. My wife likes it a little colder than I do the red wine. Like, you know, she'll she'll pull a chess array and drop an ice cube in to, you know, kind of like, you know, if it's because my house gets really freaking hot, because I have the old you know, the old radiator heaters that, that make it like a million degrees inside your house in the wintertime. So you have to open the window, you know, I'm talking about yes, yeah. Anyway, sorry.

We gotta call her Oh, gotta

call her. Alright. Caller you're on the air.

Okay. Hello, Dan. This is Noah from the Brooklyn pharmacy. How are you doing? All right. Oh, good. I have a question for you. Shoot. Okay, I'm trying to make red velvet. What because without using a ton of nasty red food coloring. And I've purchased online beet powder, which is a beautiful sort of Vermilion fuchsia color. But I'm trying to figure out how to boost the color. In my in the My Little whoopie pie cakes. I have, what I read online was that part of the reason they started calling them red velvet is because it was a chemical reaction between cocoa powder and an acid. So we have some powder. And we're using natural rather than Dutch process. And buttermilk.

Well, I mean that Yeah, yeah. Like really color of the Dutch process is actually because of the Alkalyn nature, right? The super dark thing is is a result of the alkali processing in the in the Dutch process stuff. Yeah, so I've never thought about it. The the beet powder doesn't add a flavor to it. No. And how much? How much chocolate do you have in it?

It has? Yeah, yeah, it's a substantial amount enough that you can taste it, but it's not. It's not like a devil shirt. It's not overwhelmingly chocolatey. But you can taste it. There's cocoa in there, which I like. Kind of don't want to eat off the cocoa powder

either. And what's the liquid is buttermilk. buttermilk. Yeah, right. And but there's soda in it, correct?

Yes. And baking powder to two to one baking powder soda.

Right? I mean, typically for every cup of buttermilk or so you're gonna have about a teaspoon of soda and then probably twice that of powder. Is that true or No?

No. In this instance, it's a half teaspoon of soda and a teaspoon of powder.

per cup of buttermilk. Yes, yeah. Well, okay. Well, so here's what I mean. Obviously, this soda is neutralizing the buttermilk. I mean, that's what that that's what the whole soda buttermilk reaction is right? But okay, right, right. So but beats, I'm assuming that beats the more Alkalyn they go. I think beet beet coloring is an anthocyanin, like most of those other pigments like that. So the more acidic they are, the redder they are, right? This is why you know, in in a in a pickled beet, they're so bright, bright red, right? Yeah, yeah. And then the more alkaline it's going to go the the more purple and more blue, it's going to shade now you're always because of the brown counter shading of the powder, cocoa powder, you're always going to stay on the redder side, rather than the more blue and purple side. But I mean, I'm wondering whether or not you're shading it. I wonder whether or not you're shading it more towards the more towards the alkaline but that ratio that shouldn't do it too much because typically you're adding a lot more soda than that typical ratio and like a pancake batter would be like a teaspoon of soda per per your cup of butter. No right so you know and that that you know I've usually although I've never done the experiments taking that as a fairly, you know, like, you know, one to one kind of swap now. On the other hand, it's like you know, if you have a lot of residual acid leftover from the buttermilk it can taste weird. You know, you're your own used to actually drinking buttermilk straight but I'm wondering whether any residual acid, we didn't have to think about it like you've tried adding some extra acid to it to see whether or not just whether it shades up or down or No, no, but I

was thinking the next thing I might do Is, is add a touch of vinegar, just a little tiny bit like not enough to flavor it but perhaps enough to boost the acidity a tiny bit. Right. I

mean vinegar, obviously is, is what's the word I'm looking for volatile so you know some of that's going to volatilize off during during the bake? Of course I don't know, you know, I don't know, you know when that when the business is not me like typically anthocyanins, when you mess with them, you can shift their color even after they've been messed with quite quite substantially. Also, I am not sure. I mean, obviously beets retain their color when they're cooked. So yeah, so if you just want to like you just want to keep it on the on the acidic acidic side. I've never actually made the red velvet per like actual instructions. It takes a boatload of color, they put a whole boatload of red in that.

Oh, it takes so much really? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that was how I read something online. That was how they came about is it was the means by which they could sell extracts and food coloring. Right. Right. You were meant to, you know, I think the original recipe can find this online somewhere. You were meant to dump an entire bottle of red food coloring into the cake to make it red.

That's great. That's great salesmanship right there. That's, you know, yeah, yeah. It's like, you know, we enter contests, it's all about, you know, how many boxes of Rice Krispies Can you dump into a recipe you win, you know, if your recipe requires 13 boxes of Rice Krispies, and you've won. But if I was, if I was going to do this, I would a I would test I would make a regular vanilla cakes flavored with beet powder, not even vanilla, just like white cakes, flavored with our, with the addition of the beet powder, I would probably do three different ratios. And then you know, for for flavor to see where you are, then take the highest one that you could do without a major flavor impact. And then I would push the acid over three. So I would bake probably a total of six cakes in a white cake recipe, like smile, like you don't have to bake a whole batch, you know what I mean? Like, in fact, you could make one batter, and then you know, do you know three at a time, do a small test. And then and then on the basis of those results, you know, try try to do one that you think is going to be way too little one you think is going to be way too much, and one that you think is somewhere in the middle. And then usually within a couple of iterations of recipes like that you can hone in on exactly where the magic number is, which is a technique that we use when we're testing out low temperature cooking recipes the same way we we tried to make sure that Oh, that one's too weak. And no, that one's too strong. And once you once you establish the boundaries, then you can hone in very, very, very quickly. It's just like that old game of what's that game called moustache where you have to guess a number and you have to guess you guess higher and then lower. I don't know anyway, but

yeah, county fair game where you count, you know, you're just the number of beans in the jar,

right? Right. Or you want to go in the least number of steps. So you want to make sure that you you go too high, too low, then you cut that in the middle and find out where that is and then you keep you keep going and and usually you can get very accurate results on one or two variables within about three or four tests. Do you know what I mean? Okay, assuming they're normal variables, and it's not like some strange hydrocolloid interaction. But I'd be curious if we Tweet, tweet the tweet, add cooking issues and let us know what happened because I'm curious about the result of the beat test.

Okay. All right. Thanks very much. I appreciate it. Have a good one.

You too good luck.

The game's called guessed the number.

You know, Jack Jack always liked the backhand. Backhand slap. He just mad me about the cold wine. Cool wine. Okay. Did he didn't have any good pork over there? Don't they don't?

Oh, yeah, of course.

Do they do the zinc cook pork there? Is that a Jamaican thing?

I think that's a Jamaican thing. But they're like these beach side check things and we had a bunch of crispy pork skins. What do you what do you call it? Why am I forgetting

to Sharon? Yeah, thank you, Sharon. How do they do it? They're they do it hyper crispy or fatty, fatty, crispy, Fatty,

crispy.

Yeah, like that. Yeah, I like them all. I like there's no there's no real kind of kind of any sort of crispy crunchy pork skin product that I find objectionable? I kind of unless they're, you know, poorly done. But they're Yes. Delicious. All right. Well, welcome back. Jack. Thanks. What are you doing for? What are you doing for the holidays here?

I'll be sticking around here. Not too much.

Yeah. What about Eunice Dasha? I'm going home for three days to home is now something like what point in your life where is home? New York? Yeah, I know. The place that I grew up. Ah, yes. Yes. All right. Okay. We have some questions in this was actually to miss Dasha. Christine doesn't care what we think what I think but anyway, she says, How's it going? This is an email I guess sent to actually the ERIN Right. Yeah. I'm hoping to get some advice from Dave as a Christmas present for my husband because apparently I'm an influence on him, which is, you know, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Christine. Anyway, Ryan has my 27 year old husband has been a musician and teacher for the past 10 years, but food has always been a big part of his life and he's one recently realized that it's a passion he wants to pursue. He has been tearing through days podcast learning and experimenting with local and regional cuisine. We live in Singapore and volunteering at soup kitchens to try out his chops. I've really always wanted to go to Singapore. Yeah, Singapore here has like amazing gardens going soon, really. I mean, Singapore, apparently has, like, you know, obviously has like, great, you know, street food. Like apparently it's amazing and apparently very easy to visit, so long as you don't spit gum on the street, in which case you're gonna get whipped with a with a you know, whip dipped in horse urine anyway. He has endless resources. But the biggest question on his mind right now is whether or not to go to culinary school, we might be heading to Sydney in six months. And the most respectable most reputable school is found there is Le Cordon Bleu, and I don't know anything, by the way about the Cordon Bleu in, in Australia, right. So I don't even know whether it's run by the same people or whether it's licensed out or anything like that. Just you know, word I don't know. Although we have some Australian, we, you know, I don't know if we still do we had some Australian listeners, maybe they can tweet into cooking issues and see what they what they think about that school and how it is anyway, while he's still trying to find his niche. He really enjoys using molecular gastronomy techniques, and is partial to comfort diner. Type who? Listen, Christine, you know, I don't know you probably don't. But like, for all you out there, you know, I disliked the word molecular gastronomy and intensely dislike it. But I know what you mean, though. I know what you mean. I know what you mean, when you say, like answer my question. My question. I'm not into this stuff. But the sciences. Yeah, she's like, I don't really care. My husband wants to know, I don't really care. Right. My wife asking this question. Yeah. All right. Just as your start stars loves stars loves to give it to me. I tell you what, anyway. Wait, okay. Okay. The biggest question is whether or not to go to culinary school. Okay, let's, let's, let's just handle that right now. So your husband is a musician, and a teacher. Now. Here, I don't again, I don't know how it works in Australia. But here in here in the US. There's a you know, obviously, I, you know, taught at a culinary school for many years, specifically technology at the French Culinary Institute, now the International Culinary Center. And many of my good friends and relatives. And you know, business partners like Dave Chang and why they do frame actually went to that school. And it's an argument that I get into constantly with chefs about whether or not you should go to culinary school. Now, there's a huge generation of chefs here that say, No, you shouldn't go to culinary school, because it costs a lot of money. And you can just go work your ass off instead. Right? And that's the argument. And so you know, and to which I always reply to them, yo, name someone in your generation. And by your generation, I mean, between 35 and 45, right? name someone in that generation, that's, you know, made a huge name for themselves here in the US who didn't go to culinary school. And the fact of the matter is that almost all of them did, right, almost all of them in that generation did. Now, just take that, take that that where it is. So there's a huge group of chefs who have gone anti culinary school, mainly because of the giant price tag associated with it. So they assume that the price tag is just too high. And here's the truth. Like, if you expect to go pay a huge amount of money, and somehow make that back as a line cook, then, you know, I don't know that that necessarily is money well spent, unless your parents are going to pay for a vocation you're going to have for the rest of your life. Right, I would say it's fair status. The other issue, I think that a lot of chefs here have in the US who are, you know, at the top top level, you know, are not gonna name any names. And this, but you know, you've spoken to a bunch of them is that a lot of people coming out of culinary school now are going into it because of the popularity that food has in the media these days. And so there's an expectation among, there isn't not me talking, because this is not me talking. But you know, that there's an expectation among the younger generation, or even among career changers who are going to culinary school, that they're going to go to culinary school, they're going to come out all of a sudden, they're going to be doing interesting work in a kitchen. And they're, you know, or they'll get a TV show, or they'll get to this or they'll get to that, when really most of the time. It is a crazy, grueling, brutal job that, you know, nine times out of 10 is isn't glamorous. In fact, the glamour of it comes from, you know, just getting brutalized day in day out with large amounts of work for very small remuneration. So, that's the kind of argument I think that that, you know, a certain group of chefs will make against cooking schools. But however, would they I don't think they see the other side of it, which is there are a whole group of people for instance, who might not necessarily want to be aligned cook want to be exposed to professional cooking school for another reason, maybe They want to own a restaurant without having to go through all this stuff. And they have the money to start a restaurant, right? It's a valid reason to go to cooking school, maybe my sister in law Miley, who now runs the Food Network magazine, you know, decided to go to cooking school so that she could be a better food journalist. And it certainly has, you know, served her in good stead, she's had, you know, been nothing but you know, going up since the moment she went through is going up beforehand, because she's an incredibly driven and talented person, but in other words, but the school served her in good stead. So you just have to really analyze why it is you want to go to cooking school, and what you hope to get out of it and go in there with your eyes wide open of what exactly you're paying for. And I think that's the you know, that's the key to it was fair. Yeah. Okay. Kind of a long winded answer. But it's a pleasure to an important question. I mean, obviously, my livelihood was based on cooking schools. And so when you go, if you would take my course, for instance, on low temperature and Suvi cooking at the cooking school, you know, I think that was worth it. I think that we're gonna forget what we charged for it, or at the school charge for it. I mean, it wasn't cheap. It was expensive, but we gave you a lot of value for it. I mean, the other thing is, you know, the reason cooking school is so expensive, isn't really that people are getting mean that I know of people aren't getting astoundingly rich off of the cooking school, per se, it's that there's was a lot of bodies that have to be hired to to, you know, produce a lot of food that isn't necessarily getting sold at market rate. And, you know, we got to buy a whole boatload of chickens, and we gotta buy a whole boatload of you know, it's just it costs a lot to run. It's not that cooking schools, typically with the exception of something like CIA, which is actually a.edu are typically for profit, but that doesn't mean that they are rapacious. Right. Okay. Other questions include? Is there such a thing as too old to become a chef?

Hey, let's hold real quick.

We have a caller. Okay. Caller you're on the air.

Hey, this is Josh, there's actually two of us here. We're calling to settle a dispute. Maybe you can help us. Oh, okay. So, your suggestion, we're now using the DMT sharpening stone? Okay. I feel like it does okay. For me, my buddy has a what's it a Gleason? right thing. And he feels like it gets sharp, but it doesn't stay sharp with this stone. What is there? Any beef to that?

Man, so Okay, so for the for those of you that don't know what the hell we're talking about DMT is a diamond sharpening stone, and I use it using the interrupted Red Green. I'm sorry, you're using the two sided red green with the interrupted pattern? Yes, yeah. Okay, so we're talking about a fine slash extra fine, which doesn't really have much, meaning you can go look up the equivalent micron values of the abrasives on it, sharpening stone. And what I like about this particular stone is that it's extremely lightweight, it stays flat forever, it doesn't need to be Trude. And it's just in my mind extremely easy to have and use. So it's not something that you have to like worry about and soak or like that's not really heavy in your kit doesn't, you know, so it's very low maintenance, I think does a good job. The question we have here is, is it someone is sharpening with it and thinks that they can get the stuff sharper? Doesn't necessarily stay sharp? The only way to really tell? Is the question is what were they sharpening on before? Were they using like a Japanese like a very, very fine grid, Japanese waterstone?

What were you, that's what we were using before. And my theory is that it gives like the illusion of sharpness by Microsoft raising it more than actually owning the edge, much like a razor.

Right? So I mean, the big the big argument in sharpening is, what are you trying to trying to accomplish? Right, so for most Rough and Ready kitchen work, what you really are doing is not taking it to a super hyperfine polished grid. And there are it's very, very sharp but there are some kind of micro imperfections in the in the blade that help when you're cutting things like tomatoes, and so you know there it's so in fact you can have something that is that cuts very well even that's not done shot, you know sharpened to the same grit, let's say as it's not a polished grit, this is making sense. So however, the hyper polished ones, I have my doubts that most people with their hand are accurate enough to do to get an edge that is super except for on like a traditional Japanese knife where it's fairly easy to get the angle exactly right. But you know are good enough to get a hyper polished edge. It's so true along it that is also at the right angle that is not going to get rolled if you take it to a hyper hyper polished edge. I don't know it's an interesting it's an Just in fact, we'd like you know, someone, someone would have to settle it with a microscope and just look at it. I mean, I, I became several, you know, years ago, especially as people started ruining my knives by picking them up and using them for brutal tasks that I was fine. Only going to the level of grit that you have on the on the on the, you know, the finest part of that DMT DMZ or whatever it is the diamond stone, right? Because it's easier for me just to do two, three swipes the beginning of a prep session than it is for me to worry about the the hyper polish. Now I used to go, I used to use an edge Pro, I don't know if you know that system, Edge Pro, you can go down to extremely fine, highly polished grids and have very, very accurate edge angles. You ever use that system? Guy, right? Yeah, it's a guide on a rod and you set the angle extremely precisely. And then you just go through all of your knives that are at that at those edge ratios. And you can take it down to you know, that you take it down to base basically to almost like below toothpaste, you can go up to a mirror polish on that thing very quickly. And I used to use that except for I found that I just wasn't sharpening my knives as much because I had to bust the equipment out and do it. And yes, you know, you'd have those crazy hairsplitting stuff now. So I used to do I used to leather strop everything as well after I was done, because I was also using a straight razor at the time. And you know, and so it's just something that was part of part of my repertoire. But I found that it was just, it was too much for me to keep going all the time doing it. And then I moved to the diamond stone and found that my average sharpness was increasing, just because my maintenance sharpening was so fast. Does that make sense? Or no?

What does the leather stropping do exactly that removing metal as well?

I think so. I think I think what it's actually doing more, and I've never really had any one, you know, I just it was something I started doing. Because, you know, some old timer told me to do it. I think what it's actually doing is, you know, if you were to look at the edge, it'd be fine kind of breaks in it. I think remember, when you're stopping, you're stopping the opposite direction that you would normally sharpen, you're you're stopping you're, you're scraping the blade, you're scraping the edge, you know, you don't I'm saying it's the opposite direction. And I think what you're doing is aligning it better, I think what it's really doing is is aligning it similar, but in a more gentle fashion than a steel wood. Even though you're in a steel, you're going in the forward direction and stroppy going in the backward direction. I never used to compound my strop like it compounded once and then like over the years, I just kept on using it without adding more compound to it. And it really made a huge difference. Because you know, the test that I you know, I always do the same test is I take a relatively flimsy sheet of paper, hold it and see whether I can just put my knife through the piece of paper and have the paper fall into two pieces, because it's an easy way to find nicks in your blade, you know, even like micro nicks, you know, you would you would take it but that cutting that paper also can misaligned your edge a little bit. So then what I would do is I would do my sharpening, cut the paper and then strop it right afterwards. And then I was good to go. That's what I used to used to do. So he's just had a leather you know, veg tanned leather strop hanging, you know, next to my next to my salamander and just shoot beforehand.

So can I can I reiterate the question, just phrase it differently? Yeah. That's the tool. You're what the tool you're using to sharpen your knife change how your knife held in it?

Yes, I think that's true. I think that's true, but I think it depends. In other words, I think it can be true. I don't think it's necessarily true. But I think it can be true. I didn't know the words I what I don't know is whether or not an edge that's taken to a lower grit that has, you know, what, what is commonly called in the, in the, in the, you know, sharpening world microserver ones, I don't know whether those edges are any more or less long lasting than an actual polished edge. I think it is true that you can probably shoot for a polished edge versus a micro serrated edge. Does that make sense? Sure. Yeah. So I'm kind of taking an in between. I'm taking an in between I'm taking an in between position there. But you know, there's,

I agree with what you're saying. So I think that if you could have a diamond diamond sharpening surface that was as the same amount of grit as a stone, a super fine one and you actually got a burr on it, and then save that for off. It would be the same, right? But what I'm saying with with this, the one that we're using, it seems like it's really sharp, because really micro serrated, like alliteration are easily like eliminated and you're left with like not that sharp of an actual by the

way, it is actually really it is a it is a fine grit not as fine as the finest waterstone however they They do make an even finer one that I don't have. It's just more expensive and doesn't come in to duel in a duel grit Dogra scenario mean just to throw an extra thing out, throw it into it, there's there's no book that came out I think in the 90s. That is mainly outdated in terms of the the theory behind it. But it's called The Razor's Edge book of sharpening. And it was by a person who was a consultant to the meat cutting industry. And his his gimmick used to be he would shave him, he would sharpen a double bit axe, and then shave with it. And so he helped heals the Guinness record for shaving himself in record time with a double bit axe is probably the only idiot that's ever sharpened his face with a double razor shaved his face with double bit axe, but there you go. And his theory of sharpening is actually if you want long lived edges, and I think people still advocate this, although not as much is you, you, you do two different angles, your final sharpening is at a less steep angle, and I don't even know whether people still practices, I still do it kind of intuitively, that you really want two different edges, the one is the hyper, the hyper thin edge, you know, that, you know, is down, it used to be, like, you know, very kind of wide, you know, like, you know, 30 or so, but everyone's gone down to like 17, you know, below now, but, and then you'd put a slightly more shallow one in it, that's a lot tougher. You know, and those, that sharpening technique was written for the kind of lower quality Steel's that were, at that point, still the highest end of knife that most people had in the 90s. So the newer Steel's probably can take an actual finer edge all the way along without shattering and pitting. But, you know, I don't know, take that for what it is, like, his point was that a longer you're gonna get a much longer lasting, a sharper edge, if your very last sharpening is at, you know, a more oblique oblique angle, but a very small oblique angle right at the cutting edge. Does that make sense? or No?

Totally makes sense to me. Yeah.

Yeah. But you know, you might want to take a look, again, I haven't read that book in a decade or more. But you know, at the time, it was, you know, a revelation to me, but my feeling is probably it's outdated at this point.

Okay, thanks a lot. Thank you very much.

All right. Thank you. Okay, so, questions again from Christine, how about a quick break? Oh, all right. Come back we'll come back with Cookie

This is fish is fish is vodka by the meat ballers on heritage Radio network.org.

Hi, I'm Steve Jenkins from fairway markets. We support heritage radio network because all you folks listening are so genuine so dedicated, serious food, so much a part of what this country needs to strive to become people like you are few and far between and it's obvious to us at fairway that we've got to stick together. Our desire is that the word gets out about heritage radio network in its support for serious food foodstuffs that offer memorability and, and timelessness authenticity and rarefied quality. This country grew too fast to have established any degree of a heritage Europe had centuries to develop. America has not heritage Radio Network serves to hasten the evolution of a society that often appears coarse and uninterested. For more information, please visit fairway market.com.

And welcome back to Goodman issues. Okay, more questions for Christine? Is there such a thing as too old to become a chef? Well, no, not I know, I know, someone. No, no, but there is this take this, there are a lot of chefs out there who are prejudiced against people who are starting later in their career. And just be aware of the fact that there is a lot of prejudice out there in the community. Because, you know, there, there's a lot of chefs want to be able to beat on people who are in their kitchens in terms of time and labor. And their feeling is that you know, people who are getting a later start aren't going to stand there on their feet for 12 hours, you know, and take the heat of the kitchen and you know, take all of that stuff and not going to put up with it as well as you know, as a really young person, but I think that in general that's a bad it's a bad thing to do. It's a bad it's a bad thing to assume about someone you should take everyone on their own personal merits. You know, my, my grandpa, who you know, he was kind of a jerk but you know, when he was 65 he would go out into the lawn and you know, wrap a cloth around his head, you know, rip giant rocks out of the round and then do a backflip, he could have kicked the snot out of any 18 year old prep cook coming, you know, through most kitchens, and he would have done it all day, just to make you look bad, because that's the kind of guy he was. So I think, you know, there's no such thing as too old there. There are people who, as they, the majority of people, as they get older, aren't going to have the stamina, but it's not the age. It's just it's just that's the way most people are, what do you think Ferris does? too, if there's only one kitchen gadget you can have, what would it be and why? Well, I'd get an immersion circulator. You know, bang, I would get an immersion circulator. Because that's going to change the way you cook, it's going to allow you to do things that you couldn't otherwise do. If you already have an immersion circulator. And for some reason, you don't own a Vita prep Blender. I would go by that. If you know, those are the two main things, you know, that I have at home that most people don't have, if you're rich, I get a pacojet. I love that thing or a vacuum sealer. But even if you're not rich, I would go out and get a Vita prep or an immersion circulator. You know, you know, you have a fighter prep. Yes. Doesn't know you want one though, right? Everyone wants a fighter prep. You know what if you think people, only people who don't want vitae preps are people who don't have when you're like, why do I need that? Because as soon as you have one, you're like, oh, anyway, you know, and if you have a lot of space, get liquid nitrogen. It's not really a gadget. But you know, safety, safety with liquid nitrogen and three, what are your thoughts on turducken? turducken is where you know you stuff, you know, bird inside of a bird, typically a turkey then a chicken than a duck. What are your thoughts on turducken? Is there a secret to getting to cook more evenly? Yes. First of all, do not arrange the meats in the way that is standard. It's a bad arrangement of meats. The way that they do it typically is they put sausage in between all the layers of meat, and then just overcook the entire thing, just overcooked the hell out of it. And then assume that the grease from the sausage is going to keep everything tasting good, but when you know and juicy, what you want to do is go turkey, then chicken, then duck, and you want to cook it with an immersion circulator meat, glue it together D bone it meat, glue it together, and cook it at roughly 6465 until the center of it Celsius until the center of it's about 57 where the duck is, you can put a sausage layer in between the chicken layer and the duck layer. And that sausage layer will take up the temperature difference between what you want the chicken to be and what you want the duck to be. And you should be able to get 65 on the turkey 64 on the chicken between 6463 and, and like 58 on the on the sausage and then 57 on the 57 for the air on the duck. Pull it out, fry it off and you should be good to go. Just make sure that you dry off the skin so the skin gets all nice and crispy, crispy. And that's it right good. Okay. Eric, who writes in? He's uh, who pineapple, which is an awesome. What's it called Twitter handle? Hoo, hoo, hoo, pineapple, you pineapple. Okay. Hi, Dave, looking to make the fries from your blog. And by the way, I know the blog is broken. It is not my fault. We're trying to get control of it. And I've been told that the person is going to work on a swearing on a stack of Bibles. They're going to get that sucker fixed over the New Year's thing of a Blap. Right? Yeah, true. Okay. So I know it anyway, looking to make the fries for your blog. I recall 14 minutes cooking in a in a blanch and then two fried eggs. What's the temp on the front? Okay, so my current fries are not the ones that did on the blog. I still use the enzyme. I do have french fries now because I like to have french fry better. So I cook it for a little bit longer. I cook it until I can't stand it anymore. Firstly, firstly, so getting the enzyme actually you know at home I don't have the enzyme as much so I've been doing it the normal way and they've been good. Here's the issue. The temperature which you fry depends on how much you overcook the them to begin with, the less you overcook them and especially if you're not soaking them in enzymes beforehand, you want to do your initial fry at a lower temperature and fry it for longer. Why to get more moisture out of the out of the initial out of the potato. So what you would do is you would take the fries, you would blanch them in in water right and then you dry them off with a fan or in a convection oven to get the surface moisture off. Now if you're doing a three eighths inch or smaller fry, then the drying step doesn't need to be forced dried, you can just let it flash off some steam, especially if you've done the enzyme soak. If you haven't done an enzyme soak right you need to get more water out of there to get the to get the crunchiness on it. What you're going to want to do is make sure that you dry them off let them cool down under forced air so that the moisture leaves with a half inch fry even with an enzyme so you're going to want to blast some of that moisture off. Now depending on how overcooked the fry is, you're going to want to adjust your first fried temperature now at home because I don't have the time to do the full procedure necessarily because I never know I'm making French fries until it's too late. I'll omit the enzyme step and I will just turn my fryer initial fried temperature down to like, you know, 300 to 7315 Fahrenheit right. And then what you do is the initial fry, it's not a time on the initial Friday, you're waiting for a crust to form you don't want to go dark right, you aren't going to stay blonde. You know they can take a little bit of color but not a lot but you want to lift the basket out and keep tapping them. And as soon as they form a nice hard crust, that's when you pull the fries out of the first fry right. And the longer you can go the more moisture you're getting rid of and the crunchy you're going to get on the second time of the fry. You just want to don't do it too much. In other words don't get too greedy too much moisture you could go all the way to what we call a hollow fry which I don't like but you know you probably won't do it on a half inch fry. Then immediately after you pull them out the crust will get ruined by the moisture from the potato leaving and logo soggy and then you Chris ma bought a second fry at roughly 360 degrees Fahrenheit till they are crunchy crunchy crunchy and brown. Right? Yes, yes. You know what Natasha does not like french fries. Here's a good though. Oh, thank you. That's very sweet. Are you is this are you started? So we have a New Year's resolution people new year's resolution is mustache is not going to purposely say things to piss me off and I'm going to try to yell and scream less.