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Hello, and welcome to cooking issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host is coming to you live. from Brooklyn, here as usual with this dosha hammer Lopez. Hey, dude. Yeah, we got Jack in the engineering booth. We got a new person in the engineering booth never worked the show before. Correct?

No. Dedric first time Dedric Yeah, longtime listener. First time engineer.

Nice. Sweet. So we're gonna have to get some questions in the call out the Dedric.

Yeah, and we've got we've got a paper on the line.

Oh Piper's called in? Yeah. All right. So what we'll handle uh, first of all, call your questions to us at 184972128 that's 718-497-2128 but Piper's on the line because you know, listener friend of ours, John riper, not not Ripper, not repair, like the chef riper as in the fruits we're about to talk about shipped us a bunch of fall apples from the Washington and Piper hesitation. That's Piper how're you doing? Pretty good. Pretty good. Just pretty good, man. Real good. Yeah. Well, Piper is getting ready actually, for a we're doing a tasting of all the Booker and DAX products data labs. Is that true or false? True. And we have a we have a big what's called the bar meeting today. Yeah. Yeah. Nice. I'm not doing any of that right now. Wow. Wow. Anger on the air like that. Like that sweet anger on the air. So anyway. What? You're salty. Yeah. Salty, salty, man. Yeah, okay. We know you came over on the family's Piper Piper's family came over on the Mayflower and they still haven't kind of washed the salt out of themselves it's only been like 400 years or something like this you know since they came over? Right yeah almost 400 years now. Yes. Coming up big anniversary. Yes you get the family going to get together in Vermont and celebrate the Celebrate the subjugation of our great nation. We're gonna go to the lighthouse I think yeah, yeah. Well, for those of you that don't know Piper is named after a an old relative of his whose only job only job was to keep the lighthouse running. Right? Got drunk. Right? I'm not saying anything about Piper editorializing. I think on your part. Well, we know he didn't flip flip the light on. So either he's completely incompetent or a drunkard or both. How do you not flick the light on how do you not Light a lighthouse, it's your only job. Your only thing you need to do your whole life flick the light switch or you know, light it whatever they did back in the day, they had probably a big for no lens, whatever, I'm not gonna get into it. Anyway, this is the relative that Piper's family chose to name him after if this gives you any indication of the family. Yeah, okay. Yeah, my competency level. All right. So somebody who, oh, we have like a whole bunch of apples that Johnson and it was something like 15 Different apples like this. Some of them are my favorites like Ash meats. Colonel, everyone knows that. That's one of my, I don't know, if you've heard me yell about apples before it actually means Colonel are my favorite apples. But some varieties that we hadn't tried before. But one thing I will say John, and John did an excellent job. Now everybody knows that apples. They bruise and when they bruise the Polyphenol oxidase enzymes inside the apples cause the apples to turn brown and oxidized. And it's no prep, no one likes a bruised Apple, right. So even while of course, you would not like a bruised apple, but maybe perversely, you would because you'd like something, it's kind of blemished, you hate blemishes. Anyway, it's too hard to figure out stuff sometimes. But the point is, so wrap them very carefully, individually in bubble wrap over wrap them and labeled them which is awesome, except, I think what happened is, is that the bubble wrap was very effective at keeping the ethylene from the apples inside, you know, in close contact with the apples. And so I think we got some accelerated ripening on the apples in the box and transit. With me means if you've ever picked a bunch of apples before, you'll notice that as apples are, you know, as apples are getting more and more ripe and tend towards overwrite that all of a sudden, the apples start feeling greasy, and I think it's because of maybe an increase in wax production. But all these kind of when you pick them up, they had to kind of feel the feel of an apple that was a little bit overripe and some of the texture had gone from not being as crisp as I know some of the apple varieties is and it's a lot of the apples to develop some of the kind of floral notes that an apple picks up in the later latter stages of ripening now, Piper and mustache are both are both what would you say? Kind of re you know, got me a little angry, right not angry but disappointed, more more disappointed and angry. Because the they are two of the classic Americans who only like crunchy freakin apples. This is true or false. Yeah, yeah. So you only like crunchy apples, even though like why should Every Apple have to be crunchy? Like, like our reaction against non crunchy apples is because most of the non crunchy apples that we get in the supermarket are in fact bad quality apples, they're apples that are meant to be crunchy, that are stored too long, and they're mealy. Or we're used to mealy tasteless, apples like Red Delicious, which are horrible. They you know, most all 99% of the Red Delicious trees should be pumped instantly and turned into paper or burnt for smoking pork or something useful like this instead of producing the wretched quality fake apples not fake but that crap apples and hell crap apples. That's a good one, right? Instead of crab apples. I will use that one. But the Anywho. The point is, is that there is something that is not a Mealy disgusting apple, and it's not a crunchy apple and the term is crumbling. And in fact, one of the ones that John sent was Cox's orange Pippin. And you know, which is the classic, you know, UK dessert variety apple, and it is supposed to have kind of a bit of a crumbly texture in its later stage ripening, which I thought was quite nice, but I couldn't get these to Joe Camoes here to you know, to think outside of the you know, whatever box I grew up eating apples, I'll tell you what the sad sad effect of that is if you go to a farmers market in the US, and you buy one if you go to a farmers market here in New York, okay. Nowadays, you can find it anytime during Apple season, which lasts from roughly July until October, you know, November right when they get on even later for the keeping apples, you can find 20 varieties easily right. The problem is most of the growers who bring the apples will always pick them under ripe because they want them to be crunchy because they know that even theoretically food educated people like moustache and Piper are only going to like those apples if they're freaking crunchy. And the fact is, if you pick an under ripe apple to me, often it's worse than an overripe Apple because the flavors haven't developed yet. So a lot of times you get varieties and you're like man that tastes thin and acidic and kind of like just a bad version of a Granny Smith which is a one note kind of pure apple, you know, thin acid flavored apple. And the fact of the matter is, is that is that growers are just picking the suckers under right because Americans can't taste around a non crunchy apple. Okay, I'm done talking about that. But some of the Pipers got the notes, which is why I have him on the line. I didn't we didn't call him in just so I could berate him about his apple tastes, right? Yeah, that's an added benefit. That's a side benefit that you get. So so the ones we got were like ambrosia are laced with gourmet. What do we say? about the fiscal or maybe I don't remember we thought because I hadn't had that one before.

Let's see the

which one, our lay our lay, he has to sift through handwritten notes. So while he's doing that, I'll talk about one of the ones that I thought was good. But that, you know, that these guys had some issues with and that is the Reuben net. Right. That's the one that I liked that, that, you know that according to the documents that we got from John, is the the greatest Apple ever produced. Is that, is that true or false? That? Yeah, that one or not? I believe. No, no, no, a nova. He said about it. He said it was the best apple ever. That's the one he was. I liked it, but you didn't like it, right?

No, yeah. He said it was the best using Apple in the world. I mean, I guess I couldn't get over the. The texture.

No, but you also thought the interesting thing about it was it was an extremely high acid, high flavor apple with some spiciness in it, right. And so kind of a funkiness at the end that didn't like right, but I'm wondering whether that was a function of the fact that it had been around for a little while or whether or not like that's part of it, but I think that that stuff would be good juicy. By the way. Here's another thing that's great about cocktails for apples, is if you're using an Apple for cocktails, then if you're using an Apple for cocktails, texture doesn't matter anymore, you all you have to care about is the acid acid sugar balance. And beyond that kind of whether there's any interesting spicy notes or other flavor notes in the apples, so I thought that ruminant I would definitely want to get a bunch more Reuben that did you juice the ones we had yet? We haven't had chance yet to juice the I'll do some Yeah, well juice the three that are left and check it out. Oh, wow, the stars give me some extra stuff to do. Don't worry, buddy. You don't have enough to do. Okay, so anyway, anything else you want to say from the Apple tasting there? Are you like? No, no, you go.

Let's see. I mean, Artland was a big hit. I think overall like the profile acid and sweetness is really good.

Is that one of the ones that's a good keeper therefore it stays crunchy for a long time and that's why you liked it.

The one we had wasn't so crunchy now.

The mu two sweet Yeah, that's very good Japanese style the one we had with very high sweetness almost like a like Fuji with like a low back like not much of an acid backbone. Yeah, yeah. Anyway. All right. Well, anyway, thanks so much John for all those apples super interesting and we'll I guess we'll talk more about them as the time goes by definite want to get hold some of those Reuben s to juice them out, right? Yeah. All right. Thanks, pipes. All right. Tom Fisher writes in dear Dave, Natasha, Jack and Joe. I just made three gallons of age egg. Well, Joe did one show today. Like us? Yeah. Anyway, I just made three gallons of aged eggnog with the following recipe per gallon. 12 egg yolks, two cup sugar, one half gallon, whole milk, one cup heavy cream, one cup of bourbon, one cup cognac. And one cup dark rum. Like rye, you gotta read it. Like that kind of stuff. Now. Anyway, the mix seems very thin. Will this thicken over time? Or is there a problem with the proportions? If it will not thicken on its own? What would be the best way to fix it? Thanks, Tom Fisher. Well, that sucker should that should thicken over time. I've never actually made eggnog because truth be told, I don't really like economics does you like it? Alright, well, why don't we will make a batch of the lab and then, you know, I'll taste a little bit of it. And you and Piper compounded as per usual, just like pounding eggnog. Yeah, I'm not a big fan of most kind of milky drink. So I've never worked on it. However, I know for a fact. I was consulted a couple of years ago, someone was doing an article on the safety considerations when you're aging eggnog. And this is right around the time that Rockefeller you've so so one of the questions people have isn't necessarily about thickening. It's about safety, because you're storing raw eggs. You don't cook this stuff. So you're storing raw eggs in the fridge for a long time. And in fact, the interesting thing, that this article that I don't even know if that was quoted in it, but I was used as background on that I was talking with this person at the Rockefeller University, which is well known, you know, place here that does a lot of interesting, you know, bio and microbiology work in their lab. Every year they make aged eggnog right. So they make it at Thanksgiving time and they drink it at Christmas, and no one had ever bothered to test to ensure whether or not it's safe so they actually took a batch of eggnog, spiked it with salmonella and then incubated it in the in the fridge as you would normal eggnog and tested it to make sure that the salmonella was going to be dead and sure shooting the salmonella is dead, but you don't want to eat it. You don't want to drink it right away because in fact the salmonella was not killed immediately by the by the alcohol in it. But over time in the fridge. This becomes safer and safer because I think most of the recipes that for the eggnog they come in when you're eight using it like roughly 20%, or a little higher than 20% Alcohol. And if those levels, you're stable from a bunch of things, right acetyl bacteria is not really going to grow up there and turn your stuff to vinegar, you're not going to get a lot of fermentation of action or from yeast at that high alcohol level, and you're not gonna get any bacterial growth at that level. In fact, you'll eventually be killing bacteria, which is why the longer that stuff sits, the safer it is, now, there's still the possibility of a mold growing on top. So just want to make sure that you know, that doesn't happen. I'm pretty sure it's possible to mold growing on top, but you I'm not sure, actually. But that's what I think. Now the other side of it is, is that you have in that mix a bunch of different proteins, right. So you have I forget to use whole eggs or, or just yolks, I see. Use just yolks, I think some recipes might call for a whole egg, but I'm not sure anyway. But you have proteins in the yolk, you have protein in the milk, and protein in the cream, all of these proteins are destabilized to a greater or lesser extent by the alcohol that's in there. And so over time, are more likely to agglomerate with each other and thick in the beverage than they would in a normal aqueous solution, right. So over time, over slow time at frigid temperatures, you should notice a thickening of the product. Now I don't know whether there'll be ancillary thinning, if you store it for you know, like two years or something like this, I don't know. But from everything I've read, you will get a thickening that happens over the first three weeks, let's say now, simultaneously with that the products themselves are changing because they're not static, primarily probably due to enzymatic reactions and just the different compounds and they're combining with each other and altering their own flavors and knocking each other out. Yeah. So short stuff should thicken if it doesn't fit in, give us a holler back and I'll tell you how to fake thicken it was something like, you know, a small amount of Carageenan or Xanthan or some stuff. You don't want to goop it up if you don't have to. Right, right. You don't want to keep it up. Do you like do you like commercial eggnog? See, this is what I love. Here's the thing, right? It's like, we've had this talk last week right about the Twinkies. It's like if you grow up liking some crap, and then it doesn't matter whether it's high quality or not, right, because that's what you grew up eating. Guilty pleasure thing.

Is that how you feel about soda to maybe soda?

Okay, so I'm a little weird. I grew up drinking diet soda. There was always diet soda in my house. I can't drink regular soda. It's like it's like drinking candy for me. But I can pound diet soda. Because there's like no, no syrup. And I like I haven't drunk it in a long time. So now it tastes chemically to me. So it's not it's not as awesome as it used to be, you know what I mean? Whereas I used to pound pound pound it you know what I mean? Like back in the back in the saccharin days. I was pounding it, you know, like I went through saccharin and NutraSweet and I never got used to the Splenda crap and I won't drink stevia that stuff wretched. But I mean, now nowadays, you know, ever since college when I went to college Okay, look, people who live in the East Coast seltzer is freaking cheap, right like since since I've been a little kid it's like two bottles for $1 Vintage seltzer two bottles for I don't think seltzer has been on the West Coast. I think it's an East Coast thing like out in the west coast. They drink sparkling waters. That here in the here in New York, we drink seltzer water, you know, and then you get on the airplane, and you're like, I want Seltzer and they're like, club soda. You know, you're like No, I want like ripping New York seltzer water. It's not just New York, you know what I mean? And that stuff is cheap as hell. So when I went to college because I'm, I'm a cheap skinflint some some you know what, right. And so I was like, I'm going to train myself to like seltzer. I hated seltzer. When I was a little kid. I only liked soda and Crystal Light. And if you because I believed in me. And the the what I did is I just sat there and for like a week straight drank only Seltzer and then ever since then I couldn't couldn't get enough. And then when I went to freegan College, which is why I trained myself not only did they have soda and Seltzer on tap, so I didn't need to train myself at the dining hall. Not only that, but if you go to the freegan because I never shopped at convenience stores before because I lived in the suburbs and we shopped at a supermarket right? So I go there and I find out that a convenience store they rip you off equally for all kinds of soda whether or not they put flavorings in it or not. And then when I'm showing up at a store and I have two bottles, right one that contains just sparkling water and the other one which contains sparkling water flavor, color and aspartame. I'm like well I'll be god damned if I'm gonna pay Canada Dry the same amount of money for putting less crap in the bottle. And so even though I liked it less I would buy the soda that is how freakin cheap and demented I am. Now if you take commercial break, sir, right commercial break coming back with cooking issues.

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back Alright, so call your questions 278-497-2128 That's 718-497-2128 got some hot sauce in from New Zealand you remember? Like I don't know it was a while ago we had some questions in from New Zealand about hot sauces that how to preserve them well. It turns out that Rory am the person who was making the sauce having the questions from New Zealand a place that I would love to go ever since I when I was a you know what watching Xena Warrior Princess great program. Were you more of a fan of Hercules or Xena Warrior Princess? I didn't watch either. Really? Why? Because people like wasn't on cable I think on cable it was like channels while this channel live and I thought Yeah, yeah out here. It's 11 Yeah PBX crap channel. Are you on crack? Listen, like you know, like Xena Warrior Princess and Hercules

the crap channel they did he called the WB didn't he call something else? Yeah,

WB I can't believe that you're calling Xena and Hercules crap. That was that was like grasping that was groundbreaking TV back then. Xena. Xena was like, you know, one of those early like, you know, Wonder Woman was she was kind of like, demure like you know, super heroine, Xena like was like kicking ass and taking names all the time. All the time. You have no appreciation for that.

I do but I don't care about that.

Yeah, I liked the idea of it more than the actual

Oh man. You guys very depressing depressing me okay anywho Rory dropped off some hot sauce we're going to taste it here on the air it's called 90 mile mile capsicum sauce from do North although do North it's interesting. Is it like he's actually do South he's in New Zealand and the brand here is do North weird. Is it do north or do North cannery very well anyways, so the taste of it is mild and very peppery. And it reminds me kind of of a liquid form of mean I hope this is kind of what you shoot with liquid form of you know, peppadew peppers, the ones that come from, from South Africa, they bring them in, they sell them in, in kind of high end grocery stores of the sweet red peppers that are served in Brian. No, you really don't know what that. I mean, if I saw it, he saw it. Oh my god. Okay, so we'll take that in a minute. But meanwhile, here's the question. As promised, disable the sauce you and your listeners helped out with all the way from New Zealand a question for the show. While here in New York I bought one of those Flexi mesh bred molds with the aim of cutting it in half so it will fit in a home oven however the salesman at JB prints I wonder who it was and he was Tim he's not really gonna fly that much said that this would expose the fiberglass which would then burn How can I get around this is there any way to seal off the fibers once cut happy to try anything keep up the awesome work and excuse the he says excuse to get on open I was told that you have to say budget now. Oh, is that true? I don't know. Anyway, we've been on the road for five weeks now regards Rory and all right Rory Listen, fiberglass will not burn fiberglass will not burn fiberglass won't burn because it's glass. However, there might be some problem of fraying at the edges. And it is true that on the edges I've seen because you've seen Silpat stars at the at the back of the school that are cut and they always start getting really brittle and fraying around where they're cut. So there might be something else going on there but fiberglass itself is glass and hence won't burn. If you want to seal it because you don't want little fibers pulling out and getting brittle and fracturing and breaking apart on you which I have seen happen. It might be possible to get some adhesion of silicone on silicone and TIG actually just paint some silicone on it. The problem is you have to make sure that you get food grade silicones there are and I don't know if all silicones are compatible with each other, you know what it means to us. And then also you have to be sure that it is indeed silicone, which I think they are I'm pretty sure the one you're talking about are the ones that JB prints or the thin brown ones. You can kind of see the mesh inside of but anyway, it might be possible. I don't know there's Teflon tapes that can handle very high heats but I and they're meant for things like vacuum machines on the seal rod and you might be To take Teflon tape and put it over the thing, but I'd have to double check to see how high the adhesive temperature can take in those things. Because that's going to be your main, your main problem is going to be the adhesive tape on the on those Teflon tapes going bad, but I can give a check and then give a shout out on the Twitter later because they just go to McMaster and look up the temperature range. I think he's Yes, that's McMaster McMaster. We've got some spoons coming in in a minute Rory, and we'll take your sauce live on the air. Okay.

I have a Twitter question if I can just fast track that through. Doug go ahead from Mark Hayes. And it says gluten free ramen alkaline rice noodles possible looking for answers.

The your the way you say that reminds me of this. I don't know if I talked about us on the air. I was in Italy many years ago and they had a McDonald's thing. It was a McDonald's ad. And then in Italian underneath it said, MC resist it. Can you resist it MC resist? Anyway, it's stuck in my head for like forever. So you know, here's the deal, though, with the ramen noodles, what you're doing is you're trying to strengthen the gluten proteins, right? And so since there aren't those things in there, I don't think you're gonna get the firming effect because the firming effect from the Alkalyn stuff isn't due to a starch bolstering aspect. It's due to a protein bolstering aspect, because gluten, the gluten network gets stronger as things become more Alkalyn you know, to a point now that said I believe someone else asked about you should text pipe no pay no Piper who is like our resident gluten free expert because he himself is gluten free and is good at researching things. Whoa, wow. Not to tell him about that bus throw you just did there. But you know, because he is like that you think he would work on it? But I'm like Piper Have you thought of anything good with that. He's like, No, it's all garbage. And then let you know who you know. Thanks. You know who is not gluten free but thinks about this a lot is Mark Ladner from Del Posto. We can ask him to see if he's come up with anything but he doesn't deal with with ramen style stuff, right? I mean, specifically, like it's the bite. I'll think about it. I'll see if anyone has done any research to ask, can you send me a like an email to do some research today and they'll email it back to you and next week? We can talk about it. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Right. Hey, Josh from San Francisco writes in Hi, Dave. And Stasi, Jack and Joe recently set up my own home carbonation rig with a five pound co2 tank. After drinking gallons of soda water. I'd like to try my hand at carbonated cocktails. What are your recommendations for carbonated cocktails to make it home without a centrifuge? I know you mentioned on the last show that you can make your gin and juice recipe using only ag or clarification. And I'd like to give that a try. Is clarification absolutely necessary for these recipes? Any other good ones? I can try clarify it or not. Thanks and love the show Josh from San Francisco. Well, looky if you're gonna put juice into a carbonated cocktail, and you want to get the kind of levels of carbonation that you know, that I like. Then you're going to need to clarify because otherwise, you're going to get just loads and loads of foaming. If you don't want to clarify it and you want to if you really don't want to clarify as simple as our clarification is not that difficult. It takes only like a half an hour stars hates it. Right? She won't do it. It's one of the things that she refuses to do. You know, that list grows every day, every day, the list of stuff that Natasha will refuse this I was emailing you about the gluten free essay you hate clarifying ag or clarification. clarification. I will not do that. Yeah, but like I'm saying that list keeps growing. You're like, you're like I've done it. I don't need to do it again. And a lot remember all that. The she leads. At one time we one time we had a problem, right? And we were doing an event for I don't know how many hundreds of people and we did freeze thaw and something messed up like some somebody messed something up with the freeze thaw and the freestyle was broken. So we had to all set it and we needed it within like two hours. That was a rancid, rancid day. Remember that and we got it done. Yes, you got it done. It was just a just a damn nightmare. Anywho. So look, I mean, you can start out with carbonated cocktails just doing like simple things that aren't clarified. If you like whiskey soda, you can make whiskey so I don't happen to like whiskey soda very much. But you can make whiskey sodas, that's not a problem. Just make sure you chill everything, you can then move to what I call fluffing existing cocktails. So just taking tonic and gin, chilling the hell out of them and then carbonating that 42 psi if it's roughly minus seven or eight Celsius, but you know, like, that's the first step without having to clarify then add stuff like lime juice at the end. So if you're gonna do a clarified drink, and even if you're gonna make your own tonic and or make your own mixers if you're only adding a small amount of unclarified juice let's say you're adding a half ounce of lime juice at the end, then just carbonate almost everything and then put the lime juice in at the end and that's going to be least damaging to your carbonation levels. Alternately, if you have to add something that you know is going to foam only put a small amount of product in your bottles and carbonate it like like instead of three times which was normally what I do with carbonation three times, do it like 5678 times and really blast all the air off the little nucleation sites that you have inside of the of the lime juice or whatever juice you're using. You're never going to get as low a foam amount as you would in and therefore you're never gonna get as high carbonation amount as you would if you clarified it, but the more you get written because there's their surface active compounds in the lime juice that cause it to foam no matter what you will reduce somewhat the amount of foaming you'll get and you'll get a better result with unclarified juice if you just carbonate many many times what do you think? Yeah she's like I don't care I don't care. Phil from Bristol UK called by we have another question we got to get to Phil's question before the

way yeah

right my fill right your fill? Yeah yeah, yeah. Okay fill but not not not your fill different fill fill from Bristol writes in hello to Dave Natasha and the gang a year or so ago I had a kick a kick I can say kick ass because it's a movie. Did you like that movie?

I'd never seen it gave me all the synopsis I needed.

Yeah, I didn't see the second one. I had a kick ass piece of eggplant den Gaku. In Barcelona of all places, the miso topping it's you know, it's the grilled grilled X, Y or Z with the miso stuff they got the miso topic itself was great, but what was truly dropping was the eggplant the center was creamy but structurally intact. The skin retained its blue black color. I've been trying to recreate this so far the closest I've come is by steaming the egg plant in a pressure cooker initially, this reproduces the cream texture and the absence of physical agitation goes some way to maintain the structure the acids of cooking and oil also improves in my opinion. Eggplant Enos of the eggplant off topic this pressure steam pre Cook is also great for fish fragrant eggplant well recipe for which you can get in a future Dunlops book I forget which one it's in. I don't think it's landed plenty I think it's every grain of rice or whatever the new anyway. The fish fragrant eggplant however hitting the sweet spot between perfectly cooked and overdone is difficult because of course you're in pressure cooker and the skin still gets that tired. Tired dough brown look it's a good it's a good way to describe like anyone like trying to describe a tired, tired dull brown look. Can you offer any advice look tired who?

Meredith Vieira last night at that award show?

What award show at Autism Speaks oh she was there? Yeah, yeah. tired Tired. Wow that's rough. Why why are you hating on Meredith Vieira all of a sudden hating on Meredith Vieira

brought to mind your face

What the hell jack you getting this you there and listen to this like just like hate down like woman on women hate them for no reason

I'm gonna get tell you somebody else look that prior there was a man I'll think about it

all right. You think about that and try to try to be you know equal opportunity with you're tired. You know what I used to look you know, I used to call people who who like look tired. I call them Merle like Merle Haggard because haggard means haggard but Merle is also haggard looking out. Oh, you look you know I love Merle Haggard. Do I want to hear anything? I love Merle Haggard Okay. Okay. Off topic was pressure steam precook also great for fish fragrant eggplant which contains no fish by the way it's just like in the sauce that you might also cook fish in fish fragrant anyway. However hitting the sweet spot between perfectly cooked and overdone is difficult and the skin gets that tire dough brown look that Meredith Vieira might enjoy according to the Stasha Well, I'm just repeating what she said I think is a horrible thing to say and kind of you know, inappropriate. Okay, so much so they had to repeat it. Can you offer any advice would using Peptan methyl esterase or something similar be a way of cooking the eggplant without breaking it down? Would an alkaline solution applied to the skin mean that the anthocyanins maintained there would maintain their blueness? And do you have any more advice for getting more eggplant in his out of the eight plant thanks for the great advice down the years and best wishes Phil from Bristol Okay, well listen. We're gonna go sign ins go brown. It sounds like a like a like a like a PSA that you read when anthocyanins go brown. When other scientists go brown, that's not usually a pH shift problem right pH shift problems with anthocyanins are blue to red. So in an alkaline situation the anthocyanins are going to be more blue and acidic situations are the signs are going to be more read. And in fact, what you're writing back and you know the Japanese President Kaku maybe think about in Japan they have I think I don't know because they didn't let me see it but they the Sookie model these pickles they had these Do you remember these? If you haven't when we were there was it after you when we weren't together? They had those bright blue pickled eggplants at the breakfast. Yeah, they were bright blue and mosquitoes. I asked me girls like what the hell do I really do this but I think I was looking at the pH of rice bran pickles, which is I think how those are done, and they're only mildly. They're only mildly acidic like they're fairly close to neutral. So the anthocyanins is going to maintain their blueness. So these pickles are bright blue. I think McGee said that he thinks that they just add food coloring to it, they just cheat. But those things are amazing. And it might be true that fermentation in that case is also helping to preserve some of the eggplant color with the anthocyanins. Okay, back to where we're back to what we're supposed to be talking about, which is the color. when stuff goes brown. It's usually a result of two things either you've cooked it to the point where it's brown made it crispy, Brown did right. Or you have some sort of enzymatic issue and eggplant contains a whole bunch of and we talked about earlier in the show with apples poly phenol oxidase enzymes, and that's why you get a lot of browning in a plant. Typically what I do when I pretreat an eggplant and when I do what I treat an eggplant I'm gonna fry it or do anything to it, is I'll throw it and I like eggplants dance, because usually I'm doing a Italian style press where I'm going to bread them and fry him because if you don't like a plant parm, there's something wrong with you, right? That's That's delicious. Right? eggplant parm,

I make a good eggnog and eggplant parm for things Anastasia like

it Listen, let me say I'm cooking issues like like like you want like you want like like through the hoop like down to your arm slam dunk kind of a situation like elbow slam with stars any any hearty Italian, any hearty Italian fare. What do you think I was gonna say? Oh, yeah, but only certain colors but I mean like any hearty Italian fare that's properly done. As long as you cook it right. The stash has no patience for undercooked or overcooked pasta,

undercooked pasta,

but not zotoh You don't like undercooked? undercooked risotto is an abomination. You like undercooked pasta? Have you liked the pearl? The senator? Huh? You're a gross human. I thought we had this discussion areas. That's the way mark cooks has passed. No, I've been his restaurant many times. He cooks it until it just under cooks a lot

more for me and i Where's the line between the den day and undercoat for you Dave if there's

a freaking starch pearl in the center of it, and it looks like the starch is still crystallized and it hasn't absorbed any water yet. I'm just gonna have you what I'm gonna give you I'm gonna give you a feedback and a bag of raw pasta.

Let's have him make what I like and let's see what you think if it's if it's if it's okay,

we can do it on air pasta tasting right? Yeah,

he hates undercooked risotto right. Ready. If you want to cook risotto, you should die as Chris.

Strong.

Well, I mean, we're all gonna die. But I mean, it's when you when you die, you'll be held to task for if there is an after. You know what I mean? They'll be like, You undercooked result. Oh, that'd be like one of the blessings in the list. You know what I mean? Yeah, you stole that Twinkie, you undercooked risotto. Anyway, so what we've been talking about I don't remember, but it was a plan or a plan plan. Eggplant. So anyway, so it like I think the main problem is, is you need to cook the eggplant in an absence of oxygen and relatively quickly in order to preserve the color. This is my guess I wasn't able to find any actual scientific literature on it. But that is my guess. So you know, your pressure steaming. Probably the issue is, is that oxygen is getting to it as it's being as as the pressure as the steam is coming up. Oxygen is getting to it before this stuff. I mean, you might want to try doing a pre plunge in boiling water before the thing is cooked just to set the anthocyanins at the skin and destroy the Polyphenol oxidase enzymes. The problem there is when you cut it, if you haven't inactivated the enzymes all the way through, my guess is that you, you'd still have the issues because the enzymes, if any of the enzymes that aren't inactivated, get to the skin, that stuff will happen. I think I had to do some tests. But anyways, what I was getting to is if you have a vacuum machine and you put a noose in you right before you're going to do it you just slice the eggplant let's say into kind of large pieces, not really throw them in a vacuum bag. Add some ascorbic acid to it not a lot you don't want to tart but just to get rid of some to you know have its antioxidant power behind before it didn't suck a vacuum on it, the flesh will condense and go bright green as it condenses and the skin will maintain its color and then if you blanch off in the bag, you should be able to maintain a perfect color on the eggplant. Then you can cut it out of the bag and do any finished cooking you do you will affirm the inside because you're going to get rid of all of the error that's on the inside. You will have if you salted it right when you throw it in the bag. You will also have gotten some of the liquid out that makes it soggy. And lastly but not leastly because it's condensed it will be more egg plantea What do you think? Good? Yeah, is that an answer? I'll do that today. Yeah, a plant farm so a lot of work are backing machine works right? Oh, let me just back in and take it home and fry it off or whatever. Why do you have to cook dinner for someone? No, me? Well, good news, but a plant farm sucker keeps oh, let's try before we get kicked off the air today because we have to leave a strict one at one o'clock. Why don't we taste the 90 mile mile QFC themselves from Do north in New Zealand There we go. Take I remember it's only a sweeter side but it's not like a hot it's not like a hot pepper sauce. It's kind of sweet said it's good it's good right? It's like an intense pepper flavor but like some sweetness it's really good I like it Rory I think that you make a good product