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Soos Hello, Happy New Year and welcome to cooking issues. We're back with Anastasia Lopez here sitting next to me on the computer as always, we don't have any chat today because he's still recovering from the New Year's festivities. He's sick. Well, what do you think made him sick? He has a cold. I see. Thank goodness. We have Joe in the studio. How you doing?

I'm doing great. How

are you guys doing? Well. How was your new year?

It was wonderful in warm sunny Los Angeles, California.

Los Angeles. Are you in Los Angeles? Now I was just out visiting. Visiting like friends

or what? Yeah, my girlfriend lives out there or is from there.

That's where to start Natasha hills from near Los Angeles. Makes me think it's full of bad people. messing with you. Call your questions live. 27184972128. That's 718-497-2128 and stuff we do for the new year is here. Yeah, nothing special. Well, we were avoiding each other. We didn't see each other over the entire entire thing. I was just hanging out with my family and then went to the booker index. I wasn't

avoiding you.

I didn't know I was waiting. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, we have. We have some questions. Michael Mackin writes in Happy New Year Michael. It's a he's our would you say he's our favorite vegetarian cookbook writer? Yeah, at this point.

I bought his cookbooks for two friends for Christmas.

Yeah. Nice. It was your own with your own money. Nice. I like that a lot. I liked that. She used the book or index card. Alright, alright. Alright. Michael writes in Chris Young Chris Young of Modernist Cuisine fame was now teaching I guess at a rival of ours like Johnson Wales, I think in Rhode Island. I think he's doing network wherever it is. Yeah, we're on the campus anyway. Christian friend of ours, like Milan was telling some entertaining stories about fluffing and like wants to know can we say that on the air? I think we can. If we don't describe where the word fluffing comes from, we can say it right, Joe? Yeah, just Yeah. Walk a thin line. Yeah, well, okay, so I think fluffing like it's such a good word. It needs to just be redefined as just keeping people pumped for their jobs. Put it that way. Yeah, exactly. Right. Great. All right, a fluffer is someone who keeps the more important person pumped and primed let's say, let's say say say pumped in prime. Anyway, so about fluffing with me and Tony the Tiger in Miami. Can we hear days version of the events? Yeah, sure. So what happened was, is that a number of years ago, we were asked Chris, Chris and I were asked to literally fluffed for Food Network talent at some event at South Beach. It's the only time to go twice or Daigo wants to South Beach I think once once Yeah, I don't really whatever I'm not gonna say anything about it. But anyway, the point is, is that Kellogg's the, the people who make you know, make good products, like the Kellogg's Frosted Flakes and other other well known cereal brands, they have they rent this amphitheater thing inside of this place called the parrot jungle. I think that's the name of it parrot jungle in Miami. Like, right, right? They're like, near the causeway. And the place is nutty. Like, the place is full of like crazy parrots and crazy trees, and all sorts of like, you know, like they have, they have a cockatoo there that literally used to have a picture of the cockatoo sitting on Winston Churchill's shoulder and this some some gun cockatoos still alive, because apparently, as long as they don't get sick, these things, they just don't die. They live to be like, 100 these freaking things anyway. So there's parents everywhere. And Kellogg, is like renting the place out for this South Beach Food and Wine Festival thing. And Chris and I are there because they have some sort of science friendly kids thing I don't even really know. But what it really was excuse for was to get like Jada, and you know, the Ace of Cakes, Sky and Guy fairy and you know, all these people up there. And so, literally, Chris and I would stand there and take science questions from the local Miami crowd. And their kids just like cooking it. She's just like this, but it was all questions that I hate. Like, you know, all like nutrition based anyway, we feel to the questions. And everyone, no one could wait for us to get the hell off the stage. So that Jada or guy for the air he could get on stage, or 20. Even Tony the Tiger was a much bigger hit than and then we were I mean, frankly, I think we did a good job. But you know, they weren't there to see you know, Chris Young and myself, you know, answer their questions about different kinds of sugars. But my memory is is that this the one question that the person was excited to ask his little girls like, raise your hand? Oh, yes. And she says, Can you give this necklace to Jada, she made this like pasta necklace. And I was like, Oh my God, I hope to God that Jada was good about it. And like, took it when I was like, Well, I was a kid. I don't know Jada. Like, if I went up and like, tripped her and she fell over. She wouldn't know who to call the cops and blame. She has no idea who the hell I am. I didn't say how I didn't say any of this. But I was like, but I will try to see I will put this necklace right here where her workstation is and hopefully she will put it on I don't even know what happened because as soon as it was time for the real people to come on stage. They like, you know, brought out the cane. Like swiped us off the stage and that was gone. Right? The stars tell you how good oh, this was Miss Dasha was flown out there to quote unquote, assist in this project. And she didn't even show up to the Met. True or false?

I wasn't flown out and I paid my own way. No, no, no, no. Your own hotel?

Because Because Because you wouldn't work with it to get the hotel. Your flight was paid. Excuse me. Yeah, go through and look your flight was paid. Or you could have had a paid hotel but you missed out here's an establish at the starship even when we're going on business so cheap. She's like, can I get stay in your hotel? No, I'm a grown man. We didn't have a business. This is like whatever. But the really good reason to go and the reason why it was an extremely worthwhile trip was a I got to see the the the cockatoo that was on Winston Churchill shoulder, but be it was the first time I went to the Miami Fruit and spice Park, which is I think one of the greatest places on earth and I've talked about on the air a bunch and it's a place everyone should go. And we went with Chris and I think he was pretty impressed by as well. Yeah, yeah. Okay, uh, Greg from Indianapolis writes in about pork belly and a spoon. Okay, I'm gonna go go Looney on the words boom in a minute. But hey, Dave, Anastasia and gang. I'm working on a new dish and I have a couple of questions. I would love to have you weigh in on first I want to do at Pine infused espuma. I want pine flavor to come through so it is recognizable but not overpowering. My question is on method. I'm wondering if I should simmer the pine in my liquid on the stove. Throw it in the bag in my suit supreme or use a pressure use pressure and an ISI whip or what do you think all right, Grant first thing? Here's what I think. I hate the word espuma. Okay, okay. I'll tell you why I posted about this. You can't read it right now because the blog is still down. We're working on People I don't want to hear it. I'm working on it. Actually, I'm not working on it. friend of ours named Paul's working on but Asuma is I believe it's just kind of like the Spanish word for phone. Right? I mean, do you don't speak Spanish anymore? Anastacia forgot to hold her Spanish because she had an Italian boyfriend once. I don't wanna talk about it. And but the point is, is that is that in English? espuma to me sounds like something you hooked up and spat out. Right? and stuff. You with me on this? Yes. It's disgusting. Yeah, yeah. So for me, I'm going to say that if you're doing it, like, I would just call it a foam. I would just call it a foam. I mean, if you have to say the word Asuma, say the word Puma, but I just I'm anti the word assume on an English language menu. If the entire menu is in Spanish, then go ahead and write as Buma. Right. Right. Right. But it'd be like it'd be like writing. I'm gonna have poached offs. Right that you know what I mean. You right? I have poached eggs, right? Yeah, right. But by the way, I like I hope you're not getting bent over me going on this diatribe. I just happen to not like the word. That's all right. It's gross word. It's gross. No offense. I'm not saying let's look great. We're pro you just anti the word is Kuma. Right. Okay? On pine. The interesting thing about pine is, is that I love pine. My favorite way to work with pine is actually to distill it. We, you know, several, many years actually, we've taken Christmas trees, purchase Christmas trees, rip the Christmas trees apart and distilled them. Remember last year? Yeah, we did a party for MTV, MTV Music. And we did we did pine pine gin and tonics where we were doing Douglas firs, and we were buying Douglas firs and stripping them down and distilling them in the roadmap and that's delicious. So the two things you want to make sure when you do it is one you don't oversleep. If you're using something like alcohol, which it sounds like you're not, but if you're using alcohol, there's a real danger that you're going to get kind of that detergente pine Solly kind of thing out of it. Because you extract so much of the resin, it probably won't be as big of a deal. If you do it in water I would do traditional, for instance, like a spruce tea or for pine tea is typically done either with new buds if you can get them it's not the time of year or with the needles, brewed for a fairly long time in hot water because they want to extract as much of the resin but you'll get a nice brew out of it be I guess I've done it almost exclusively in alcohol. I've never really done any water based pine stuff. You want to be careful to choose Well, aside from choosing ones that don't have weird pesticides on it. You want to be careful to choose a pine that's not to redolent of bathroom cleaner. And I have the same problem with lavender. A lot of times when you're working with lavender in a drink and I warn people because a lot of people want to work with lavender and they want to work with pine me I have a huge soft spot for pine I remember, sand Mason, you said work with pine a lot at WD 50 back when he was there. You know I've worked with pine a lot. Niels works with pine a lot. We all love it. But there's a good chunk of people out there that even when you do a really really good job with it are going to have that bathroom memories or cleaner memories. And like I say the same thing is true with with lavender. And so you have to be very careful to try it out on a bunch of people to see whether or not they're going to have the same response. It's very difficult as a cook to know what everyone's reaction is going to be to something just because you love it. I've learned this the hard way, believe me many, many times, the same thing happened is true, you know, a number of years ago with super low temperature fish that, you know, a lot of people were playing around with like a lot of the chef's really loved it. But there's a good chunk of customers that even when it was done really, really well. They just didn't like it. And so just be aware when you're using a polarizing flavor that you are using a polarizing flavor and try to try to take it such that it's on the non detergente side. That's all that's all I'm gonna say. That said this deletion is hit also on dosing dosing is extremely important. So even if you have one that you really liked the aroma and you don't think it's gonna go to Pine Sol to detergent like we've done, I've done we've done Frazier's, we've done Doug firs we've done I think we've done balsam, you know, I've never had a really good source of Spruce myself. I used to chew on the needles all the time growing up because I've loved it. But you want to you want to test it all the time as you're making it to make sure that you're not going to go extract too much stuff and go over a bit or over pining over resume on it's there's a very very fine line you want to be careful and the same thing is true. Remember we did this distillation styles we had a very very strong distillate we had to water it quite a bit to get it to work exactly the way the way we wanted you. But that said it's a very good flavor. Okay. It's good. Yes. Okay. Second is from Greg. So I'm doing a low temperature pork belly. Unfortunately, I don't have a circulator justice Suvi supreme, so I'll have to do smaller pieces of the belly at a time. My first thought is to do a Brian rants, cook cvwd low and then sear it but I'd benefit from doing a pre sear before cooking low temp or my best off leaving it till the end. My goal is to have a nice crispy layer of skin on top. Also, since I'm planning on cooking the belly a day ahead, would it be best to reheat it in the bag the Day of Service and do my sear right before it goes out to the table. Okay, on the pork belly like I would cook it Way more than a day if you're going to go low, I mean, Wiley used to do his I think for 72 hours. I still remember that dish that was on I think his opening menu his his uh, it was Wiley's at WD 50, when he opened was, I think the first time I had had the low temperature long cooked pork belly. And that was actually one of the revelations for low temperature cooking for me was how much I liked that. And he, he, Brian, I think his took forever to do he brined it. I think with some nitride senator, my memory is right for three days or two or day, but one between one and three days he would Brian it wet Brian, I believe. And then he would vacuum package it, let it dry a little bit, then he would vacuum package it. And I think here's the key to why His thing was so good. He wouldn't pre sear he would press it. And he pressed it for a long time and let it cool down to get the skin nice and flat, I think and to get all the meat together then he would cook it for like 72 hours and a pretty low temperature. I don't know what he did probably 60 or something like that. And then are 62 Somewhere in there. And then he pulled it out. And then he would crisp it like a duck breast. And so I think he would this is what I would have done this my memory of it he you know, and he would crisp it on the skin side. And I think just like let the heat carry carry it over. I've done a bunch I've never done all I've never taken all the care that Wiley did to do it, we've done much more kind of off the cuff long cook ones, because we weren't doing it for restaurant service. But the key in this thing is Chris being the skin and what you're, if you pre sear it, my fear is that you're not going to have a very flat piece of skin. And it's gonna be hard for you to get a really good sear on and so when you when you have a piece of meat and you don't do the pressing, especially on pork and you really need that sear to get it crunchy. If you have a lot of undulations in the skin when it's against the pan and it's and it's rendering out. You'll get these blind spots on the bottom that aren't crunchy and they're just not as satisfying as the rest of it where it's like all hyper crunchy and delicious. Yeah, yes. Yeah. Okay. We got to we got to write in from our one of our earliest cooking issues readers back when the blog was working Shinder hanus. And, and it shouldn't hurt us very good to hear from you. Happy New Year. This is your loyal, loyal follower Shinder harness, it seems that the world has to accept the fact that you don't have the time and resources on hand to keep the world's best food blog cooking issues alive and welfare on new entries. But now your blog is completely unavailable. I used it as an important online resource and I'm missing it badly. Are you planning to publish it as an online blog archive? Please do so that would be great news. Otherwise, I'll promise to buy any book you're working on. And he says as a third alternative he'll leave in a huff and turn to Campbell's Soup for the rest of his useless life. Wow Chinar harness and he does not use any ends it Yeah, he's he's a good man. We he ends it in the framework of Russa which is I guess you know best regards gay friendly greetings after age. Dr. Yohannes? Coveting. Okay, well, Chinar has I've said this a million times, like honestly, people need to know out there. Like we're literally waiting for people to flip the right switches. It seems preposterous, but we don't have control of the blog yet. And we're working on it in a hardcore way. Not really. I'm not working on it at all. But we have other people who are theoretically working on is that true? Say well, do we have like,

Paul working on it? Paul doesn't have a date. Paul still figuring it out?

Oh, my, you know, it's like, it's like, if we just went into selling Cialis, none of this would have happened. We could have just split it with whoever hacked us wherever they are, you know what I mean? And just like, you know, kept on running, but you know, it's it wasn't too bad. We're gonna get the information. I can promise this information will be back online. I have hopes that you're right. I don't have time to do what I was doing back then. Maybe we can find some people. The real problem is, is that it's hard to find people who want to write things, kind of the way that I want them written but this kind of ties into another question. Not a question a comment. Steve Crandall wrote in and he said he, he's giving us a point out to another blogger. And his name is Greg blonder the bladder, I don't know him. Do you know? No, no. Greg blonder is a friend and colleague, a physicist who's playing with food a bit, you may enjoy some of his online articles. And I read these articles on diffusion and brining, and it's some of the best writing on brining that I've ever seen on the internet and you want to use guys everyone who listen to this, I think would enjoy it. www dot genuine ideas.com. And so he does lots of really awesome things like he's testing brining and he is in order to test nitrate nitrate penetration into into meats during a during like brining with caring salts. He bought nitrite he went to an aquarium shop and bought a nitrate test paper for aquariums to test the nitrate level because of what fish make nitrates when they're in there. And he was using it as blonder paper and testing the diffusion of nitrates into into meats, which was I thought, like that is freaking fantastic idea and then he was using some sort of some sort of salt assay to literally paint the A surface of meats after different brining things to see how far salt had penetrated in, which I thought was fascinating. And then so many years ago that, you know, I tried to do unsuccessfully was to use dyes to try and look at Brian penetration. And that's when I bought a bunch of fmdc blue one, which if you put into gel caps and give people they will, they won't know it necessarily, but they'll poop green. I'm not recommending you do that. I didn't do that. But I know that it works, but I didn't do it. Right, right. Well, Natasha, open up the bottle of fmdc blue as like I told us like it came in the mail. I was like, started Do not open this, do not touch this. And just you know, her nature, it's not in her nature to not fool around with stuff and like put fingernail marks and everything and everything and like mangled mutilate. I knew she mess with this one. Because when I came back, her face was entirely blue. Entirely blue. Remember that? I was like, and I showed her the mirror she's like, anyway, so but the problem with fmdc Blue is fmdc Blue is rather large compared to things like salt. And so it also it's, you know, doesn't it doesn't work the same way. But this guy that I don't know, but probably like to meet Greg is showed a really interesting result, which was that if Brian with acid it actually kind of forces the meat fibers apart and then allows larger things like the blue dye to penetrate further into the surface of the meat but not very far. Fascinating stuff. And then even more fascinating on this on the subject of brining in this is something that I hadn't heard before. This was new to me and opened up a whole world is that you know, you get x amount of Brian penetration, salt penetration over time during a brine, but then the actual cooking process pushes the Brian further into the meat and he shows it with these tests that are relatively conclusive and like really cool images. So Steve, thanks for pointing that out. And while Steve Thanks for pointing that out, and and I'm sure I'm gonna go read a whole bunch of other people go read that stuff too. So with that, we're gonna take a brief commercial break Corniglia 270-497-2128.

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Hello, and welcome back to Cooking issues. We have a caller caller you're on the air.

Hi David. Johnny Kirk from Memphis, Tennessee. How

you doing all right yourself.

I'm doing good. I had a question about cookery and surveyed the yolks, okay. rigged up some PVC pipe. You know, of course cleaned it out real good and put some acetate you know inside of there right and put saran wrap around the bottom. Put egg yolks in there. And I thought I had secured it with the So I was saran wrap all around, right? And I posted at was 64 degrees for about an hour, right? And it came running,

right. So here's the thing. The couple things the one of the weird things about egg yolks is that they don't cook at the same temperature when you crack them out, as they do when, as they do when you cook them in the shell. And I don't really know why. I've tried to like wonder whether or not it's like there's the slight the basic nature of egg white, I don't really understand why you think that being surrounded by the egg white would actually raise the temperature which coagulates because the base there is, is going to weaken the protein. But for some reason, egg yolks are they set at a different temperature outside of the outside of the shell. The other thing is, is that if you add salt or sugar, then you drastically change the temperature at which the egg yolks set. Now I've never done a full set of experiments to figure out but like before I would go through all the trouble that you're doing, I would I would just like take some egg yolks almost in ramekins at different temperatures and see at what temperature you can get them to sit fully outside of the shell. But I'll tell you it is different. It might also be different. whole egg yolk out of the shells in order to separate egg yolk it's not broken, versus one that's been mixed with a fork. I don't know whether or not it's going to be different or not. Because I've never run the full set of tests. This is one of the original years ago things that Wiley was asking Harold McGee when we were doing the original Harold McGee class at the French culinary. And I never really I never really got a satisfactory answer for what was going on, I just know that the temperature is different. The other thing I'll add is that I wouldn't, I wouldn't trust the PVC even even with the cleaning. You know, at this point, nobody really knows what the plasticizers do to us or to people that we're serving. But you know, everyone knows PVC does have plasticizers in it. And then no matter how well you wash it, it will leach out over time especially into fatty things like like an egg yolk. So if you're getting direct contact now, I know you have acetate in there. And so there's probably not a lot of direct contact. But you know, I at this point, try to shy away from PVC when when I can, even though but you know what, though, for tests, you know, they're nothing beats it. Because it's so cheap. It's so easy to work with, you know what I mean? But I would definitely say you're gonna want to jack the temperature. Did you add salt or sugar to it?

I did not. I did one I did about three tests that did add salt to the second one. I didn't add salt to the first one. What, what would be the, I guess the best conduct? Is it conduction through the PVC pipe?

Well, yeah, it's not the it's not that the PVC I mean, the PVC is a bad conductor. That's true, right. But it's not that the it's not that the PVC was a bad conductor, I think it literally is that you need to jack the temperature higher, I would try. I'm trying to remember what Wiley used to do. While he used to do, he would make egg tubes in in vac bags, he would make tubes out of vacuum bags and then seal them off and cook the egg yolks that way. And I'm going to want to say he had to put it as high as 70 Celsius to get it to work exactly the way he wanted to. So I think you're going to need to all the PVC is a bad conductor, I think you're going to want to go higher, like up almost up to about 70 degrees C. And then if that sets too hard for you, then you might want to pull it back. But I believe that in his old I forget which dish it was where he had the egg tubes like that. But I think that they were done up at 70 when they were

mostly a big dish. I don't know. Okay, so how would he go about setting them in a in a bag? Where it's circular?

Yeah, well, he they were I think what he was doing was he was like putting them in a in like he was sealing the bag, almost like flavor ice pops. And then like, you know, injecting a folding, cutting off the ends where they were pillow shaped. But mainly, there's a bunch of things you could do. You could get test tubes. The question is, how would you get them out of the out of the other sides? You know, I think the technique that you're using as a test would be fine. I mean, you might want to move to like, like an acetate line stainless steel pipe or something like that. You know what I'm saying something that's a little more that is a better conductor and also is definitely foodgrade. So if you go to like McMaster carr.com you can I don't know what size you're using, but I'm guessing you're probably using like half inch or three quarter PVC, something like that. And if you're Yeah and if you're if you're In that you can get something with the same internal diameter made out of like 304 stainless, that's, you know, seamless on the inside smoothbore and thin, and you can buy like a one foot length of it, you can cut it with a hacksaw and a two, six inch lengths. And you know, you can probably get that for in the range of 15 bucks or something, something on that order, especially, you know, and it's going to be completely non reactive. And if you line that with acetate, you should be able to pull it out fine, you know, and then you know, and then if you don't have to make too many of them. And then the good thing about those things is you can use them an infinite number of times, they're 100% food grade, and you know, they won't break and you'll have them forever.

What was the website, you said, Oh, mcmaster.com,

which is mcmaster carr, and it's one of the they charge a little more than other people do like a lot more like 30% more, but the great thing is they have something like four or five warehouses all over the country. And so they're never more than one day, you know, usually, at least you know, most places I've been there never more than one ground day away. So if you order by 6pm, whatever your local time is, then it usually shows up UPS ground the next day.

I'm also I'm also getting some air and they're because they're flooding. I don't know whether I need to come straight out of the fridge or off, phrase them and then put them in the Karlovac in the PVC or the you know, the correct vessel.

Right well they for me, if you freeze them there'll be almost solid if you freeze and thaw and egg, the egg yolk there'll be almost saw the problem is you'll get a little bit of greening on the colors never quite right after you freeze the egg yolk on the membrane on the outside. And if you mix it, that will probably be ameliorated somewhat. But if you're using something like a stainless steel tube, you what's if you have your vacuum machine, this is always a fun experiment to run Put, put a bottle in there with a cap on it real loose so that if you if you if the caps on it, it's you know the stuff will spill out of it and then put put liquid into the bag with the bottle. And when the air comes back in all liquid will be shot into the bottle which is it's hilarious experiment to watch because literally the liquids forced and so if you were to if you were to put stainless steel tubes with a little bit of extra egg yolk into into a vacuum bag, you're then the egg yolks will shoot themselves into the tube.

Okay, so you're cutting out a little bit I can go back and listen to what you said but Alright, so what flow what's the best thing to do to not float?

Oh well aurvey At the French culinary his technique whenever he was doing a hand wrap is something that wasn't in a vacuum machine is he would just take a couple of stainless steel like butter knives or spoons and do a couple wraps of cellophane with the with the butter knives or spoons and those suckers will sink right to the bottom

any other any other advice you can give me on this or anything else?

No, I think that should work. Like try it up at 70 And if it's too hard for you start scaling back but I would do your next test at 70 degrees Celsius. And I would like I say vac bag it and go back and listen to it and you can hear if you vac bag the vacuum machine should push the eggs literally into the tube for you. You know and and that should that should work that should work for you. But shoot us a Twitter at shoot us a tweet rather at at cooking issues if you're having more problems and we'll give you some pointers already. Okay. Are you okay, so we had a question in from Berryman Casey, Happy New Year's cooking issues team. I bought an immersion circulator about six months ago, but I have not, but I have not done a multiple our slash days recipe. The circulator came with a free can wear professional container but no top I'm concerned about excessive heat loss and evaporation when it is unattended for a significant number of hours, which will be better polypropylene balls like the ping pong balls, or the custom cut lid that the website sells or something else. I hit this one first. So I use at home I have the lid that's cut. And that thing works great. If you don't have it, you should just wrap Saran over, you know, a plastic wrap over the top of it. Anything to prevent evaporation. A and when I'm doing a long cook, you know live long, long cook. I'll even wrap around the gap in my pre cut top with saran you get almost zero evaporation and you can run a three day cook without ever having to add water. I would keep checking it obviously because duh, right? But, you know, but it's not a problem. And I've never used the ping pong balls. I've never seen anyone use the ping pong balls in the real life. I've heard of people buying the ping pong balls and I've spoken to people who used to use the ping pong balls and no longer used to ping pong balls. But I've never known anyone who actually using them the ping pong balls are really good for electroplating businesses, right? Whereas, or anyone who has a lot of a highly volatile chemical and you need to go in and out of the bath a lot, and so they prevent evaporation. When you're doing a long Cook, you're not going in and out of the bath a lot. So the easiest thing to do is to just cover the whole thing with saran wrap or with it with a tight fitting lid, right? The only time you really need to be to have those things like I say when your service going in and out and during service. You don't need to necessarily have such a good lid on it right because usually you reheat temperatures aren't as important as your cooking temperatures. So if you get like a like one degree cooler at the top, it's not such a big deal. And you can just go in with tongs and pull the stuff out and not have to worry about these ping pong balls getting all over your kitchen, going to your dishwasher getting lost, you know, I don't know your dog's swallowing it or whatever. You know what I mean. So I don't know anyone who bought the ping pong balls and loved them enough to keep working with them. You can buy I don't know how much they charge I've never purchased in my life a pre cut lid. You know I always buy a lid and I use a hacksaw. I think that they've changed it back in the day when they used to pre cut the lids they would cut the lid in the center of the thing which is a waste of space and your camera. So I would always cut the lid on the in the corner. Here's another tip for you if you buy an extra lid, and this is going to be you know, I don't know whether you're using this at home or whatever, but if you're if what I used to do still do around New Year's of Christmas whenever I have a big party I would take my lid and I would saw with a hacksaw holes to fit round Bain Maries in it and then I would drill holes so that I could put a spring and pull them down and I would put stainless steel Bain Maries so I would literally have parties where I had sliders staying hot in the circulator that I could reach in through a little you know, gap I cut in the lid and then I would have like queso dip in one and chocolate fondue in the other all running out of the same circulator all kept hot. So you know, you have Cambro lid and some ingenuity and a saw and you can get a whole bunch done. Okay, second, my department I don't know what department you can see what department department in what I don't know, like what will say its purchasing. I have no idea right anyway. Second, my department annually has always like purchasing as a department you think about because they get to do the cool stuff, right? They get to buy all the stuff purchasing. Yeah, yeah, purchasing. Okay. Second, my department annually has a soup contest for the government coveted golden ladle. I have made chicken gumbo shrimp bisque. Matzah ball soup. I love matzah ball soup. Do you like multiple soup? Never had it. Never. Never. Do you know that? That. That's crazy. We should like someone out there has to invite Natasha along with her mutual friends and maybe mark over for like one small suit. Right? Yeah, yeah. Good because I think you would like it a lot. What's not to like? Do you like you've had you had matzah balls, but only only the mutant sweet one I may have. I made a mutant sweet matzah ball because I was working on a monster ball. I was working on a matzah ball. Drink. It didn't work. We didn't end up using it. But it was all based on. It was all based on this. We use this kind of like nice Japanese whiskey called Yamazaki. And so the joke was we were going to make a drink called Yama. Kazuaki that was Yamazaki with a sweet maple syrup, malt matzah ball in it. And I made the matzah balls were actually quite good. I've never had a kind of sweet matzah ball before. But they were good, but the drink was just awful. Did you have that one? Yeah, it's terrible. Right? Who

are we doing that for?

Which we've seen we could do it somebody we were doing it for? I don't remember really? Anyway, it didn't work. We didn't tell it. For those of you out there. Like, know that we were unsuccessful in our matzah ball cocktail. You might be more successful, but anyway, be that it's made. Matzah ball soup, corn shatter I like corn shatter. Do you like corn shatter I like a corn shatter corn shatter Goodman, amongst others and a finished second so many times that they felt bad for me two years ago and they gave me the golden spork as a consolation prize. So what's the name of that person from all my children, Suzanne Luci Susan, Susan Lucci. So he's like the Susan Lucci of soup in the purchasing department. This year, with what I thought was a delicious Asian chicken and corn soup. I finished completely out of the running. And so now have even lost a golden spork. I have eight months to tinker and experiment to come up with this year's winning entry and would like to take a Modernist Cuisine approach. Could you provide me with a syllabus for success? And finally, I hope that one of your New Year's resolutions is that you will that you will accomplish will be fixing and updating the blog. Bear in mind, Casey. Okay. Here's the thing. I think your problem is is the first thing first thing you should do is never enter contests. I've learned this because it's only heartbreak. Berry. It's only heartbreak. The other thing is is that if you look at it right you had scourge. I'm not discouraging it. I'm just saying I don't enter contests. I don't like them. I don't enjoy them. Except for eating contests, which I always win. But the but here's the thing, right? So let's let's look at this. So the Asian chicken and corn soup I don't know your audience, but you have to know your audience, right. So you can have the best tasting most nuanced thing in the world. And if you show up and your audience wants, you know, you show up with, I'll give you an example. I did an event once and with nails. And Niels and I had spent like a lot of time making the fresh clarified, really good apple juice, I think we were using I think we're using attributes kernel, which is my favorite apple, and fennel, and we, you know, clarified these things, and then bounced it with gin. And we had a little clarified, you know, a lime juice in it, we carbonated it, we've done all this work. And, and it was frankly, it was a good drink. You know what I mean? You know, one of our best I think that we did, and we went to an event, and it was it was a Chardonnay crowd. You know what I mean? And so we showed up, it's like, it's like bringing you bringing the wrong tool to the job. You know what I mean? So like here we and you know what, that is depressing. And that's actually the event that caused me to learn that what you the most important thing to do is to know your audience, and to create a slam dunk for that audience. That said, you also have to make an interesting for yourself so otherwise you're not going to you're not going to be interested you know, if you're just cranking out you know if what they want a Chef Boyardee is still not going to be interesting. If you just cracking open cans of Chef Boyardee and pouring it into a into a bucket. Which reminds me my uncle Ralph yesterday. What am I? I asked my uncle Ralph has said to me once I was like what, you know, I don't know what he goes. He goes, What do I look like Chef Boyardee? I was like kind of Uncle Ralph. You look kinda like frickin chef where to he doesn't really because if chef Moyer Ji was he was from Jersey Monica Radford look like Chef where the I love uncle Ralph anyway, so and he talks kind of like that live on the roof anyways. So know your audience. Secondly, the question is, what are you going to do? Modernist I think not Anastasia doesn't like these because she doesn't like a lot of the flavors that we did when we did it. But the concept is sound. And I think nut milks are make a very, very good base for a soup. So you can take a traditional soup that is really good. And switch it out for a like a nut milk base. So a pistachio milk, cashew milk, or a, you know, an almond milk, any one of these kinds of like, and you don't have to have a really expensive equipment to do it. I do it in a centrifuge because I have one, but you can you can just blend it, you know, in a blender with how you know super hot water and then strain it through, you know, Muslim to get the milk out of that makes a really good base. But it sounds like you know, if they didn't like the Asian thing, I don't know what they want. You don't I mean, you know, you can use you know, make your own stocks, obviously with like, you know, with a pressure cooker, as long as you have a non venting one I would look up everything in Modernist Cuisine on stock making on soup, but really, like you need to get back with me on what style of soup you think is going to be the one that they're going to go for because that's the first choice, you know, then then make making it making it kick butt is the next thing. There's no sort of, like, catch all like, best soup idea. It's more like, you know, what's your goal and then we can brainstorm towards getting there, right? Yep. Okay. Okay, Jeff on baking steel, and Indian cookbooks first time caller longtime listener love the show. You've made the process of cooking and learning about food extremely enjoyable and expose me to people equipment and techniques I would likely never otherwise have known that's nice. Moustache has a smile as the first time usually it's vegan face or something but she actually had a smile. It was her I'm going to kill everyone smile, but it was still smile. Yeah, that call that that's that's improvement. That's your new year. Oh, by the way, our New Year's resolution. I think, you know, Jack was here, and he did not like it was to yell at each other. Listen, so far. It's been like a day, but oh, it's been a week. Yeah, yeah. Good job, guys. Yeah, nice. Okay, you've inspired even, he's like Jax. Like, why the hell would you not want to yell at each other? Yeah, that's all the fun. Yes. Okay. Yeah, yeah. You've inspired me to do a lot more cooking at home and more importantly, to really love it. That's really nice. I like that a couple of questions. I just obtained a baking steal and lo the results I'm getting with the Modernist Cuisine at home Neapolitan pizza dough recipe, what procedure and a recipe do you recommend for sauce on a standard Neapolitan pie? And two? Do you have a quick Indian cookbook recommendation? I'm looking for something reliable but extremely basic. I'd like to read about ingredients technique and have some solid recipes for the basics you see in almost every Indian restaurant. Okay, let me hit and there's a third question. I'm also going to hit but let me hit the Indian one first. I actually only own one Indian cookbook, and I bought it when I was in my early 20s. Right after I graduated from college. And it's called it's really it's old. It's from the 80s it's called by your Munna Debbie. It's called The Art of Indian vegetarian cooking. And at the time, it was this huge encyclopedic book, which is why I bought it and it's not good. It's not like simple by any means, but and so I was like, wow. And I read it. And it made a huge impression on me. You know, but I thought maybe it's going to be really, really dated. So I went to amazon.com. And I looked up, and I looked it up. And it was been it's been rereleased. And it still gets really good reading. So in other words, people, it's not as dated as I thought I didn't have time to go back and reread it. But it focuses mainly on Indian vegetarian. Now, over the past 10 years or so I find that I very rarely buy. I rarely, rarely buy cookbooks, on whole genres like that, unless I already know nothing about them. And I'm just trying to get a flavor for it, right. So in general, I would buy cookbooks that are on very specific regions, or by a specific author that I want to work with. When I'm researching ingredients like black salt, for instance, which is a really interesting Indian ingredient or when I'm researching acid, fetida K hang or any of these things. I tend to do a lot of internet research and not buy books or if I buy books, their technical books or you know, technical papers, or historical papers. So I don't have very current knowledge that said, obviously, matter Jaffrey is very well known cookbook writer, and I think she has some shorter books, that might be a good place to start. But I'd love someone to tweet in what their recommendations are on this on this subject.