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

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

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.

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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.

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Hello, and welcome to cooking issues. So we're back from a two week hiatus. Really unfortunate, hey, we didn't really mean to have it that way. Right. I was in Austria one day and Harvard and then Harvard and Austria. I couldn't. I couldn't call him because we were actually shooting. Whatever the thing I was I was in Austria for easy the people that make the whipped cream makers. I was doing some rapid infusion stuff over there. And then the whole crew was over in Harvard last week. We'll talk about that in a minute. Today. Join as usual. Natasha hammer Lopez. Hey, doing sounds good. Yeah, just have you know Joe's holding down the fort in the booth over there. How you doing? Joe? Where's Jack?

It's a little lonely.

Yeah, no, it's like where's jackets? jazzanova for us today?

Yeah, I guess not. He's just gone missing. I haven't seen him all day

because yeah, like apple picking or something at least very automated tonight. It's apple picking weather right now. I don't know if the apples are ready yet. But it's apple picking weather. Certainly. Speaking of AI here this year is going to be a good harvest for apples. So look for look for me to start screaming about how much I love certain apple varieties. They come in ash meets Colonel my favorite nobody asked me is Colonel drink so we're gonna if I can get a good supply of attributes colonel from day one. After I locate my supply of attributes colonel and buy everything I need. I'll tell everyone else where they can go get the actual leaf kernels because you know, we're allowed to hold a little bit back for ourselves. Mm hmm. Right. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Joe would even up to anything good.

No, I've, you know, I'm kind of like a very summer person. So I'm kind of just like mourning the loss of my favorite season, but really, yeah, but I guess it will be nice to like, go apple picking and stuff. Oh, yeah. Be great. Yeah. Plus,

I hate the sun. Oh, I hate it. Oh, it's my enemy.

Without it, I kind of like turn into a raisin which would you think would be the opposite?

Yeah. Yeah. I just go from pasty to lobster and back and back and forth. It's my two speeds pasty and lobster. So quota questions to 718-497-2128 That's 784-972-1280 By the way, Steve, if you want to tell him what happened in the Harvard know you, you you have a good spin on it. I do. So here's what happened. So like every year for the past, I think three years been going up to Harvard they have this like what's what do you call it science and cooking so my desk? Yeah. So yeah, science cooking, and do the first lecture with Harold McGee and kind of kicked off this kind of science you know, science cooking, you know, thinking because they figure in most of the chefs they're going to bring in are going to do actual chef demonstrations and they get you know, Harold and I doing some demo and some yapping to kind of kick it off and to start with the science aspect, right, right. Okay, so this year Harold's like Hey, Dave, why don't you cousin told me because he's like, Hey, why don't you bring the buffing gun up and we'll you know, we'll use the Puffin gun I'm like well you know, Harold the puffing gun is 32 What happened in the car first? Well Oh, well okay, so some torches got packed it what would it tell these people don't want to know this case we're packing the car. First of all. First things first, bought a miniature puffing gun which I think I might have talked about on the show. I'm not sure if we bought the same one that was used on Mythbusters program you can get it from Chinese popcorn cannon.com I believe is what's called Chinese popcorn gun.com I don't recommend you purchase this item unless you are well versed in adding safety gear because it comes with no safeties at all as we become parents anyway so we so Piper and I from you know Booker and DAX we built a huge safety cage for it so it's safe we added some overpressure relief valve so that we couldn't get wouldn't explode and if it did, nothing bad would happen etc. etc. Layer other safety nonsense. And then we load this thing which is only a couple 100 pounds really into my my Subaru Outback we drive it up to Harvard. But as we load this stuff in we put a bunch of torches in and we forgot to switch the torches into the full opposition safety note for you guys. So all of a sudden we're about to pull out of the parking lot we're here then we will put and start start we start smelling the propane because the Fortus we're on right now. So and you know Piper and Stasha are like you know this is better. This is just boating ill for the whole trip is what's happening now. So Piper opens the opens the you know that they case where we pack the torches and jokes which is makes me believe he did this on purpose. He's like, he doesn't talk like that either. What if I flash off this propane right now? Wouldn't that be funny? And then he clicks the button and flashes the propane off. Paper doesn't have much of arm hair anymore. Right and start it last hours. You enjoyed the ride you were right next to it. Right. Awesome. Sweet, right? So anyway, so I'm like, well, we've had our we've had our our blooper moment, right? So we go up to Harvard, you know, hot and heavy with this? Well, not well, whatever we to with this puffing gun, we unload it, we set it up in this in this now, for those who have never been to up to Harvard, they have this thing called the Science Center where everyone does a big science demonstrations, right? And we load it in there. And it's a public lecture. So it's you know, it's not students necessarily it's anyone from the community around Cambridge, Boston can come see it. I think it's free right it's free. So they show up it's you know, pretty full, pretty packed, you know house and we'd fired the gun twice to test it beforehand to make sure that we had all this stuff down. So we go to fire it and the freaking sealant around the inside of the puffing gun gave way and the puffing gun started to unspin which means and here's the thing when you're puffing gun relies on the fact that you're volatilizing the some of the moisture that's inherent inside of grains so we start with rice, let's say around 17% Moisture 50 I forget the one we have a fairly high moisture 17% We use initially Good thing you started with a relatively high moisture rice, you put it into the puffing gun, a small portion of that moisture is volatilized and used to pressurize the puffing gun and the rest of the moisture that's in in the rice is used to gelatinous the starch at very high temperatures. Right and then to flash off when you open the gun expand and puff it so the moisture has to to rolls there. If there's even a small leak in a puffing gun, a small leak, you vav when you volatilize the liquid it leaves and then you keep sucking moisture out and then eventually you don't have enough moisture left to puff or to build pressure and so you just scorch your product until like till scorch pellets. So I noticed that the pressure thing is fluctuating and I'm like, Oh no, there's a little leak. I look over I see the sealant pipe and I can see that it's on spinning. So in kind of a last minute attempt to get it to work I jacked the heat a little bit for a minute. Realize that wasn't going to get the pressure up but here's the problem. You have to vent it anyway because the pressure is going to keep going up and you don't want the safety to go off. Right. Right. So we knocked the thing open. It flies out we spray scorched we space we you know moustache and I actually saw it a beautiful we had this thing if you look at the YouTube videos of these things in action in in China, everyone fires into what we lovingly call the filthy sock. There's like a filthy sock on the ground and they fire this stuff into that they then you know, whatever. So in a stash and I made our own filthy sock. I think the filthy sock is quite nice. Yeah, I broke my sewing machine on it and Mustachio broke her sewing machine not so it's a two sewing machine filthy sock problem. It's anyways, so we live and we fire all these like burnt rice pellets into the filthy sock and I think it's over. Right only we set off the damn fire alarms and the entire building had to be evacuated and there's a bunch of like science science people in lab coats like sitting there moping not being able to do their experiments on this on the sidewalk. So all in all a freaking nightmare. Right? My Favorite was is that that it got picked up in in eater? And then the comment was someone if someone were to come in, you didn't miss much. There's a reason this guy's never had a chef's job. Right, obviously comment like that. Oh haters anyway, so that's what we've been doing for the past week. I'm gonna take some questions that already tell them what number to call into. I don't say 24 72128 74 97228 Let's get some questions because we have a bunch. GLORIA Goodwin writes, Glory Goodwin, and I'm gonna mispronounce your name. Gloria, what do you think? Ruhija Ruhija? Yeah, Rihanna with a major, major major. Sorry, I just butchered your name. You'll listen, people, people who have written in more than once know that I'm going to butcher your name right? So you might as well just give me a little pronunciation guide so that I don't butcher your name, which makes you feel bad makes me feel stupid. It's a lose lose situation, right? I hate butchering people's names. Speaking of butchering names, riper John Ripert, who, who by the way, tells me how to pronounce his name. Edward is not Ripper. It's not repair, whatever. It's riper. Thanks for the peaches, buddy. Peaches were delicious eights and peaches. quite tasty. Although I have to say listen, here's my feeling on peaches. Sorry, I'm gonna get to the thing the second the peaches. I am. mustache and I only really agree on one thing in life. Right. And that is that the best peach is actually a nectarine. Right. That's that's the kind of the only fundamental thing that we agree on in terms of food. You like nectarines better? Yes. Yeah, okay, but but that but that's because we get in general kind of crappy peaches here in New York. You probably get got better ones when you were growing up in SoCal. But anyway. So but as peaches go, right, so there are people who are adherence. So John sent us some of these donut style white peaches, and then some regular yellow, you know, I don't know the variety actually. Did he incentive, right? I don't know. Anyway, yeah, there are lots of varieties. He sent me the breakdown, but I didn't receive it. So I was just eating blind. Awesome. Great. I love that. Anyway, so like the white donut what white peaches in general are so floral, but they lack the acid backbone. Does anyone know of a peach variety that has that floral characteristic that has the acid backbone to kind of back it up so that it has that kind of awesome peach flavor, which I've never had. I don't like white peaches very much because it's too floral. Yeah. Do you also not like cannot remember how there's excellent dessert varieties of apple that are extremely floral and that we were having in our in our tastings, I kept them which one comes to mind, but you know, some of the pear main stuff like this. You didn't like those either, right? Really? Yeah. Because you like more of an acid kind of means that she likes you know, likes her mouth to be smacked around a little bit by acid by acid. I don't want to hear anything people. Okay. GLORIA Goodwin Ruhija on tequila. Hello. In December of 2011. I made several bottles of this fabulous tequila sauce. And it's from a simple recipe for tequila hot sauce. That was posted in 2011. I gave away several bottles as gifts and kept one for myself. I used about half of mine mainly on fish. And it's wonderful. I believe it's from Hill Country the recipe. I think I gotta go look it up anyway. And it's wonderful. I then forgot about it and it got pushed to the back of a cupboard. Do you think that is still okay to use after all this time? or would there be any risks that Chili's have lost all of their color now, and the patrol silver is quite dark, but I would think that the alcohol would prevent bacterial growth. I just wanted to make sure before I use it, thanks, Gloria Goodwin reheater, Professor of Anthropology, which is an awesome job anthropology cool subject at the University of Minnesota. Okay, you you are in good shape here. This is totally safe. Now the question is, what's going to happen to the taste of it after all this time? And I don't know, right? Because the taste is not going to be 100% stable, but you everything's pretty much at this point, what we call reached equilibrium. So it's not the it's not that it's probably all of all the same, right? So some of the color was leaked, they didn't leave out all of their color, they leached out probably to the degree, they're probably equal in color with the patrol bottle, you know what I'm trying to say stars, right? I'm fumbling around trying to say

the really only safety risks that you have with this sort of thing aren't with aren't with liquor like tequila or with oils, right. So if you're packing on oil thing like this, then it would be you know, fairly unsafe, if you were going to do a pepper in an oil situation, you'd have to guarantee the microbials safety of the pepper before you put it into the oil, right? Either by increasing the salt content or increase the acid content through fermentation or whatever. In that situation, you have to be worried about safety. And if you did do something like that, for the oil, then the problem would be that you were you'd be adding things that would cause the oil to break down faster salts, acids, things like this. Which is why for oils, you usually want to add dry items or you just don't store them that long or you remove the high liquid items here. The high liquid item is very quickly being the liquid is being very quickly replaced by tequila. You And even if you were to add a preposterous amount of chili to the tequila, you're never going to reduce the alcohol content lower than even if you used over half pepper right to tequila, you're still only going to probably drop the proof down to, you know, little above 20 20% rather and at 20% You're still golden, you know. So you're there's no safety there no safety issues at all, whether or not it still tastes exactly the way you want different question, but use it away. And you should make a note of how things taste. And this is actually something that we do all the time when we make liquors into good practice whenever you're making liquors or infusions is to not use the last little bit and save it for a long, long time and kind of see how the flavor drifts over time because we very interesting, instructive, yes, yes, yes. Although Deborah tells story about the radish liquor, no. So you know, I do lots of liquor infusions is one thing I do. And I don't know like five, six years ago, I made a forget whether it was Western radish or daikon. It was Daikon, but it was like pinkish, it was pinkish, so it must be regular anyway, made a radish infusion into I think it was gin. And it tasted fantastic. Right, smelled like farts, like straight up farts. So I was like, Okay, I'm going to stick this bottle on the shelf, and I'm going to taste it, you know, once a month for the next couple. And I tasted it. I didn't taste it. Every month after the first couple of months, I let it go. But over the course of like three or four years, I've waited for the fart to go away. Fart never went away. We didn't take that with us when we moved out. Now, because it turns out fart in a radish liqueur ployment appointment. Okay, so I've got two questions on fermentation today. I'm gonna hit them both kind of at the same time. You know, we should get Dan Felder from the Momofuku lab because he's like a fermentation nut. The guy spends all of his time thinking about fermentation, right? We maybe if people want to tweet us and maybe we'll try to get him to come in here and we'll have like a specific fermentation related think he charges the whole kind of thing is that the same charges? Transfer what

charges are is like, time, Dave, do you know about the show on on, on heritage that's called fulmen about it. It's a nice fermentation show and learn about it. Probably my favorite font of all time. Yeah. Has that Dan Felder bent on that one? No, but I will recommend Yeah, or I can have him here. I

know Dan, and I believe that my hope over the years was centrifuging things probably get me a freebie of him coming on his radio programs does see this is a little insight into see that thing which he says I think he charges That's just her being mean. No. That's just the starship trying to be vicious person. It's a little insight for you people into what I live with every day. Okay. Timothy writes in about, about tomatoes. Thanks for explaining what was going on in that Kowloon Walled City spring roll wrapper video we saw we talked about this a couple of months ago probably this like amazing city that had no rules. It was like all built up like in this weird kind of really crazy style. Like really, you know, it's like a steampunk dream nightmare. Kind of anyway, no rules. Like do you like that? Would you like to know rule place? No, no. Okay. I found the recipe for those on Joe pastry. And his article Chinese Spring Rolls getting recipe from 2012 and I'm going to give it a shot sometime soon. A more pressing matter. I just started my second batch of a pronounced this Italian head. I'll have to pronounce it and then she just gonna laugh at me because my computer would conserve a crude though. The Pomodoro Yeah, yeah, I see. I learned this when I was in Austria. I took German in college, right. And when I went to Austria they they were like, Hey, your your accent because my German is horrible. But they're like your accent is so good. It's because Arnold Schwarzenegger comes from comes from Austria. And so whenever I speak German, I just think about watching Arnold Schwarzenegger movies. So instead of like, you know, so instead of saying like our skits, I can it like an American I'm like, oh, skits, I can it like this. And they're like, how your pronunciation is perfect. And then I was like, This is hilarious. It's like I've never been to Austria before. It's like this is great. So when I do Italian I just think about gsra Just think about Chisora and then Tedric our good friend a good friend of ours chez reconciler amazing, amazing cook nice hosts to write good, good, good people's. Okay, and they made second batch of this stuff which I won't read pronounce following the instruction in Sandor Katz's that he printed in the art of fermentation, which I reread almost cover to cover last night. Good book. You read that yet? No. Do you like fermentation? No. No. Okay. You don't like the idea like the products but you don't like the idea? Yeah. Okay, I follow the recipe to the letter. Last year, adding 20% Salt by weight which was unsurprisingly extremely salty. What role does the salt pray in preservation now remember 20% It's not a typo. I looked up the I looked up the tech Nik in the book. And so this is like not a typo that Timothy is sending us this is actually what they had 20% The recipe says the finish pace was originally kept indefinitely at room temperature a level of preservation I don't need the fridge seems like an obvious place for it, I found a post from the Nordic food lab, where they use a percent salt for the similar recipe, the same same recipe. In fact, they also got the recipe from from the art of fermentation, where they use a percent salt but I'm curious if I can go even lower the limit for how much salt I can use. The original batch was how salty I wanted my dish to be. And I'd love to get away from that I eat to use more of it. Keep up the great work, Timothy. Okay, yeah, that is a fent aesthetically high salt rate. And the way that this product is made, it's kind of strange is you poke tomatoes, and you throw them in a bucket. And then you let them nothing, nothing. And you let them ferment and bubble and let white mold grow on the top. So as I saw a picture of the white mold bubble bubbling on top, she's making her kind of it's like similar to a vegan face, and you and you scooped the mold up off the top when you're done after it's fermenting, and you pass the liquid solids through. Like, you know, the equivalent of you want to get the solids out right the liquid, he doesn't really have mentioned how to use but the Nordic food lab people they like it right, so then you have the liquid, which apparently is very fruity and awesome smelling according to the Nordic food labs, you know, description of it, and then you have this solid paste, you then need salt into that pace until it becomes like a dough. And then that dough is like sticks around indefinitely. Right. So that's the basic thing with 20% Salt, you're basically turning it into a tomato paste, salt situation you are using it as salt. And yes, it will keep probably forever at that salt level. But you're right that you're only going to be able to use a small amount of it. So you're never gonna be able to blast the tomato flavor out because you're adding such a small amount. What you know, now the Nordic food labs 8% salt is going to be fine. I'm sure you could do 4% Salt, even and be okay because remember the water activity and that's already fairly low, you've gotten rid of most of the liquids. So you're dealing with almost it's already been not dehydrated, but forcibly had water removed from it. So it has lower water content, you're needing salt into it more, and you're packing it down. So I would bet you could get away with four or possibly even a little bit less. But remember the thing is by adding salt any further like the level of salt that you add is going to change the what what bacteria and what other Flora are going to grow on it right so the different salt levels shifts the speed at which fermentation takes place any further fermentation past the the saltless in the giant bucket fermentation, and also shift the balance of what's going to be growing on an interrelated question. Marty and Eagle Rock about pickled peppers, pickled peppers, Peter and Piper in it. Yeah, so you know anyway, you know, my my son, that's not a hard tongue twister to say. Say it when Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. Yeah, but I mean, how many? How many? How many pickled peppers Peter Piper picked. A peck you just told me a pack. You picked a peck. A peck is a half bushel people. It's a volumetric measurement get with your like fruit measurements here. A peck is a half bushel, okay.

Dear Dave Mustachio, Jack and Joe. Although Jack doesn't care enough about you, Marty from Eagle Rock to show up and listen to your question, I'm just messing around. I'm making a lacto fermented pepper sauce using Tibor chilies. And recipes on the web suggest everything from 2.5% to 10%. Salt by weight, I went with 4% and that's the concentration I use for pickle brine. So to three kilograms of chili I added 120 grams of salt as well as a liter of 4% Brian, but I got to thinking that because the chilies don't have much water weight in them that this match is mash is way more salty than my pickle brine. So I'm afraid I might have screwed myself. I love that when people say stuff like that. I said it all the time, because it's true. Most of the time, I have screwed myself. So my questions are what is the optimal salinity for lacto fermentation? How can you best measure it given it the various vegetables have their different water contents? And how long would you age this stuff? The McElhenney company agents their stuff for three years, but I know the fermentation will be over in a couple of weeks. Well, that's Marty and Eagle Rock. Well remember, there's done and then there's done right. So things that are fundamentally done in a short amount of time still have aging effects that take place over a long over longer periods of time. And the McElhaney parents. I've never been to Avery island where they make Tabasco but apparently the whole place reeks of freaking Tabasco you ever been down there? No, my wife went and because you know she grew up a part of her life in Louisiana and she got there but like it's so weird like the McElhenney is like it's weird. I'll go someday anyway. So it's there is no such thing as the one optimum salinity right? Different products have different optimal salinities I did look up this though, unless the Tiber chilies have fundamentally a lot less water than something like a bell pepper I would looked on Cal peppers.com and Cal peppers.com Which is kind of a good website called Pepper cap pepper.com Cal pepper.com. In another article I looked say that the solids content of pepper is pretty low. So 432 tons of 33.7 tonnes of jalapeno only contain 2.6 tonnes of dry matter, which means that the balance, it's well over 90% water. Now Now you could be having a lot of stems because they're Tiber chilies, it depends on whether you stemmed them or not. The stems are obviously gonna have a lower water content, but you're probably dealing with something has a fairly high water content, so I wouldn't worry about it from that point. However, you know, you a lot of people will use a four or 5% brine without adding the extra salt to make up for it and then what they're actually shooting for is like a two and a half percent Brian once everything's done, so it's you know, it's very confusing. Most recipes just give a Brian strength and they don't do the calculations to figure out what the actual finished salinity is going to be after everything is is you know, done out. Now I do know that people pickling bell peppers prefer a higher if their whole to not going to be chopped up. I think they prefer a higher initial salt level to kill or to prevent endogenous In other words, like occurring on the pepper already strains that they don't want from proliferating before the fermentation really starts. But you can get rid of that by just a quick branch, right and then go in with a lower salt situation. But the Thai chilies aren't that big anyway, so I'm thinking you would probably wouldn't need super high salt concentration. With the exception of if you don't break the skins at all. It's going to be hard for it to penetrate the skins because the skins on those things that can be kind of a pain in the butt sometimes a yes or no. So my, I guess the long and short of it is yeah, you you didn't necessarily screw yourself. It's not absurdly high because those are so freaking hot that how much can you really eat anyway, you know, in our lives, like you're not gonna be adding that much salt because how many Tiber chilies? Can you sit there and just pound I mean, I used to train myself to eat Hobbit arrows just to be a jerk until my wife could no longer kiss me when she came home from work because my lips would burn her mouth, right? So it's not like I'm saying that I can't take hot fluids. Although I haven't been trained in SPIN several decades since I really trained myself hardcore. Well, almost two decades. But point being is that even in my prime, it's like you can eat you can eat Thai bird, you know the tide. But you know, you're not going to eat so much that you're gonna be like, Man, that's salty. I can't have anymore. I can't stand it because of the salt. You know what I mean, as opposed to the capsicum. But anyway, I did also look up some other stuff in March your question, what is the optimum range? And all the papers I looked at said there is no optimum range depends on what you want. So I looked up an article you can get on the internet from Geneva from Geneva as agricultural extension which I love, I love. They've done so many awesome things like someday maybe we'll do a live well, because we won't do it. But like a whole show on the history of the Geneva agricultural extension and what they've done for agriculture in the great state of New York. But a guy named Carl as Peterson in 1959 wrote an article aptly titled sauerkraut, and in sauerkraut, you know, they wanted to get very, very small, like low low salt concentrations. So they were they were dealing with between one and a half, or, you know, not really supposed to have one and a half like the FDA in 1916. When they came out, they wanted sauerkraut to be between 2% and 3% NaCl. Right, that was their rule between two and three. Although they studied in here, ones that were lower and ones that were higher. The problem with low salt if you go too low, there's a couple of things that are wrong with too low when you go too low. Things tend to grow that can make vegetables mushy. And so if you look at it, you want a certain level of salt that makes things mushy, to prevent things from getting mushy and you can also add things like calcium or dye Valium, a dye Vaillant can is to help that as well or use salt that is high in calcium magnesium impurities. But you want to add a certain level of salt so that you know they don't go mushy on things like sauerkraut but not so much salt. It's too salty to eat another article called kinetic growth parameters or different amino lytic and non emila lytic lactobacillus strains under various salt in pH conditions by Ms. Rao said that four percents a good number all around number but that's but sauerkraut that'd be way too high of 4%. Sauerkraut people like Debnath aircraft, what are you crazy? What are you nuts? Interesting fact. When you're mixing sauerkraut in the old days, there was a phenomenon where they would it would take the crowd salt it and throw it into giant vats. And when they threw it in the giant that's somehow the actual compression of the cabbage hitting inside of the VAT as it's packing in, would cause there to be a low salt concentration in the middle A high salt concentration on the outside. So in the low salt concentrations where there wasn't enough salt, you would get mushy sauerkraut and when the salt concentration was too high the the growth of the lactobacillus strains that they have in, in sauerkraut which I forget what they are some some kind of stock thing I think they, they don't grow fast enough to out compete or to cause the, this yeast this yeast that makes pink sauerkraut, right? The yeast from growing, he doesn't spoil it. But you'll get this situation in these giant vats like several tons of sauerkraut where the center of it's going to be mushy, and the outside is going to be pink but the overall assault level was right in red pink kraut. No, by mistake, I mean, not me that people make red crown on purpose. Anyway. So what do you think the answer the question? Yes. Okay. And you know, go read Sandor Katz's book I love it, but he's like, he's very much in the in the realm of, don't worry about it. You know what I mean? Like it's going to work, just taste it and see how it's going. It's going to work. The odds are, you know, if as long as you are better than you know, 2% salt. You know, you're going to be it's going to be gravy. It's just a question of then what organoleptic Lee what's going to happen and increase in the salt slows your fermentation, and shifts the different species that are going to be growing on it. Okay, Paul, ye writes in I hope this is the correct email it is I have a lot of leftover food grade lye sodium hydroxide beads from making pretzels. And I was wondering if I could use these beads somehow to make ramen noodles I previously made alkali noodles. Using the recipe from Lucky peach. I was thinking that I could substitute the Big Soda, ie sodium carbonate based sodium bicarbonate. With sodium hydroxide beets, I would normally just test this myself. But a lot of sources I've read online say that it is dangerous to consume sodium hydroxide. So I wanted to get professional opinion. Thanks, love the show pol II. I have a checkered past with the lie. Here's what I say. I'm assuming you've already done this, label the hell out of that container, take label the top of the container, label the side of the container and draw skull and crossbones all over the container. I don't know whether they haven't told us in a long time. But I there was a situation once where I was moving stuff out of the lab at the French culinary and when we were moving from the FCI to our new place, and someone said, Hey, what's this and show me a quart container, right? And I was like, I don't know. And I dip my finger in it to taste it put it on my tongue, which I'll never do again. And it was lie because it was the one container stuff we keep around in the kitchen that is horrific ly dangerous. And it melted a huge hole in my tongue eventually grew back.

So be careful with it, but used mean you ate it when it's in pretzels and small amounts of lye are in fact fine to use. You just have to get the pH right. I didn't have time to look up the numbers to substitute the you know how much how many grams of lye to add to get the same pH as you did with sodium carbonate. I will say this, they both have the same cat and sodium. So you're not dealing with switching a cat and mouse. So it's not it's probably the what I'm saying here is probably going to work right? That you know most of the effects, I think in most of the effects in noodles from using can sway and other basic things are as I believe strictly pH dependent. It's not. And plus I got to remember to look up exactly what's in con sway which which bases are used. But if you're using a sodium based thing for a cannon anyway, you're not going to have any dye Vaillant carry on for instance, calcium effects like you would like it's important. It's not important, but there are different effects when you use calcium based basis like like calcium hydroxide, you know a lot pickling lime when you're doing things like next amortization, because the calcium has some effect on on certain structures depending on what you're doing. But that in this case, I think you're going to be fine. It's just a question of making sure that you don't make it way too Alkalyn. I've, you know, you consume sodium, I mean, you put it in pretzels, it's going to be fine. Just don't use too much. And look up how to substitute to get the proper pH. If I'd had time I would look that up for you. But I didn't get chance. You wanna take a break. And we're gonna go to our first commercial break. We'll be right back with cooking interviews.

Hi, I'm Steve Jenkins from fairway markets. I've devoted my idiot career to the old ways, the old recipes, the old tools, the old geography of where serious foods come from for centuries, and I've strived to make these wonderful things available to New Yorkers for 37 years. So it's a fait accompli for us to support heritage Radio Network, and I hope you will too, and I hope you'll keep tuning in. For more information, please visit fairway market.com

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I think fundraising season is over, but just be on the lookout for some new pieces that we're going to be putting out, putting out like three to five minute segments best stuffs coming up soon. So you know, check out the homepage, heritage radio network.org G.

Now you want to tell our our listeners who about the whole new the whole new homepage is as Jack described this already.

I don't know if Jack has described it. But it will be unveiled shortly. And you're going to see this whole new format with different radio spots about you know, health pleasure. So it's going to be a little bit more newsy. But still with all the programs that you love,

sweet. Alright. Nick writes in Hey, Dave, Anastasia, Jack and Joe, Nick from Seoul, Korea again, when Dave touched on tofu in the past, he's talked about how there's good flavorful tofu and then there's the bland, watery kind you come across in supermarkets. It's mainly I think it's the they ate, they probably don't do a good job making it and B they just soaked the hell out of it and water. I mean, that's it. For me. The main trick is, is that when I'm making the finished question, I don't believe there's mentioned how to go about making the good tofu. So how do you make good tofu? And what are the primary differences? What are some helpful references being on the web or in print that you can recommend? And also, do you know of any places when we go for some good tofu experience? Well, I don't I mean, if you're in Korea, I'm sure you can get some amazing tofu I really love kind of like, you know, Korean kind of cloud tofu soup. So there's a place here in New York that does it that like but, you know, you're in the kind of the motherland of that of that kind of a situation. And that's really the only tofu restaurant I go to here in New York. Do you go to you ever go to tofu restaurant? I see. I'm trying to remember I've had good home tofu home homemade tofu in restaurants, I'm trying to remember remember, were mean to me the main, the main thing is, when you make it yourself a you get to choose what texture you want. But B I never ever put it in water. Right. So after it, you know, after you do the curds, and you ladle and you do whatever level of pressing or not pressing depending on how soft you want it. That's it for me, right? So it still has some of the weight in there, which I like. And it hasn't like all of the you know, the flavors of soy, which I actually happen to like haven't been leached out by having it in big buckets of water for a long time. You know, so to me, like, that's the main, that's the main difference. So you know, the reference that I always give, it's kind of outdated. There's a book I want to get that I don't have called Asian tofu, discover the best make your own and cook it at home by Andrea. And when I don't have this book, it gets good ratings on Amazon. And it's definitely one of the books on my list of things to get. But you know, when I first started making tofu, I don't know like, you know, 17 years ago or something like this. That far, maybe 17 years, maybe not, maybe 1515 years maybe. And the book that I used was kind of the only book at the time in English, called the Book of tofu by William Shurtleff, and Akiko Aoyagi, I think is how you pronounce her name. And here's like, now, this might be it had been superseded, but at the time, and I've talked about these guys before, the you know, their goal and they have I think, what's called like a soy Institute or some like this in California, and they're still going strong, even though I think they wrote the book in like 1980 Something is their goal is to save the world through better protein consumption. And you know, soy, they wrote a book of, you know, famous book on soy, a famous book on miso, and I believe they have a couple other famous ones. Now here's the thing, you need to go buy their book, because it's not that expensive, and you need to own it. But there's a bunch of different versions of it on the on the web to buy I'm not sure if it's still in print or not. You want to make sure you don't get the mass market paperbacks because the mass market paperback is the recipes are hacked up in a weird way that makes it impossible you want to get the larger format paperback is good. And the hardcover including the hardcover one where they bound the book of miso and the book of tofu together is fine. The smaller mass market one at least the edition that I own, and I've owned like four copies of this book I gave one to Anastasia if you ever use that book but the tofu book I gave it to you didn't remember I had to anyway as it got lost it's gone. Somebody else named mustache okay did a nice where there would be no reason to give it to me. You did not. Well, who else would have asked for it? Mindy? I don't know. And then you know, I only got whatever make sure you get the right one. Yeah The other thing is is that I don't really follow his his tofu works like this. You make you get your soybeans you soak them you got to soak them for the right amount of time. Then you blend them with different amounts of hot water you change the temperature depending on how you want to do it you blend the hell out of it right and then that's determining how thick your soy milk is. Change the thickness of soy milk you know, depending on what you want. I don't remember my specific specs but I use fundamentally the exact water specs that are in the tofu book and shortlist tofu tofu book, then you boil it for a certain amount of time. Now remember, this is the messy part because it will boil over and cause problems because you have to inactivate certain anti nutrients in the in the soy. You then take it and you stir in a coagulant right now traditional Japanese coagulant would be nigari which is the salts leftover from a bittern is another word for the salts leftover from the production of sea salt. So sea salt primarily sodium chloride, and then the bittern, then nigari leftover primarily magnesium, calcium was other salts. And those are the ones that you use for tofu. Now I you know at the time didn't have an access supply of this crap. So I just went to the Duane Reade, which is our local pharmacy here although stars you hate Duane Reade you hate CVS, you hate Rite Aid, and I hate all the rest. Okay? You go and you buy Epsom salts, right and Epsom salts is what is it that might be magnesium chloride, I got to look it up, but you don't want to use too much Epsom salts or it'll it'll make the TOEFL run through you if you know what I mean. But but but because it's a laxative, you know I'm saying but I small amount of Epsom salts is stirred in the cat ions in the Epsom salts cause the tofu to coagulate break. You carefully move it around to get the to get the curves to coagulate without beating it up too much. And then you ladle the curves out extremely gently into a container and you either press it down with weights if you want it firm or not let it in. That's That's it. So you know, you can use gypsum, which is I believe calcium sulfate, but I got to look it up today and look it up beforehand. You can use a gypsum, which is Chinese kind of traditional. You can use nigari which is kind of Japanese traditional he claims you can use seawater although I've never had luck doing it. And I know you can use Epsom salts because that's the one I use most often but it very simple to do and definitely worthwhile. Just don't soak the hell out of it in water which is how you ruin that stuff. We're good I want some that tofu soup now. This stuff is so good. It's like never been pressed. It's just like the clouds of tofu. I've just graduated. We've laid it out and put in a soup. I don't know what it's called in Korea now. I'll figure it out. I'll ask Oh, as someone who knows. Okay. Matt writes in. Hey, guys, I need to make a no sugar added sorbet. For instance, I'd like to make a sour lemon sorbet. How would I go about that some online research turned up some vague ideas like using gelatin, alcohol, guar gum, and some other things to stop it from freezing solid, but I haven't found anything concrete. Any ideas? Okay. Yeah, so all of those things, yet, none of those things are going to do exactly what you want sugar to do. So the question Matt is, do you want to have no sugar for a flavor point or is it because there is a dietary restriction involved? See, alcohol is going to lower the freezing point of your of your of your product straight up it will but if you've ever tried to freeze high alcohol stuff, it doesn't it doesn't modify the texture in the same way that sugar does. So the product like is going to it's not going to have the same texture as if it was done with sugar. Now if you used alcohol and then maybe added some something like a stabilizer and make it gummy like a gelatin or guar then maybe you can get it approximating what a you know real real sorbet is going to be but it's never going to be quite distinctive sugar, you know, has very good texturizing properties now. What you can do, if you want it to be very like fairly unsweet is to use a much lower sweetening power sugar. Okay, now I haven't actually had