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

and I'm your co host, Darren bresnitz. Part of why we started the show was to offer an unofficial mentorship for anyone who's interested in learning about all aspects of food and video, whether that's TV, social media online, or just something you want to do for fun.

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

It's something that has driven us professionally and personally, for so many years. What excites me the most about this show is that we're going to sit down with some of the industry leaders to hear how they made it and what drew them into this industry.

With 20 years in the culinary production game ourselves. We're hoping we can give through these conversations an insider's view into personal stories from the field, as well as an in depth behind the scenes look into some of the most popular food programming. In today's evolving culinary media landscape.

We'll be covering everything from how to style your food, to how to license IP, to developing your own ideas, and some tips from the masters of how to host your own show.

Yeah, it's a little bit of conversation, how to and how do you do the things that you do in color media, which I'm so excited about? I love so many of the guests that are coming on this season. We have talent from Food Network from Vice media eater refinery 29,

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

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

Today's program has been brought to you by fairway market like no other market and New York City institution that sells the best local, national and international artisan foods for prices that can't be beat. For more information, visit fairway market.com You're listening to heritage Radio Network broadcasting live from Bushwick, Brooklyn. If you'd like this program, visit heritage radio network.org for 1000s more.

Hello, and welcome to cooking issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of cooking issues coming to you live from Bushwick Brooklyn and Roberta's pizzeria on the heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from roughly 12 to roughly one o'clock, guys, how you doing? Good. I've got to say I was joined by you because I just said hello. It's better. Don't care. Don't care.

No, we didn't get any new submissions for songs. Jack, Jack,

Jack and Joe and the engineering booth both by the way accomplished musicians.

Whoa, wow, there it is. The call has been open. So I mean, let's put it at the top of the show here. Maybe maybe people pay attention more we need a new theme song

Listen, we like we got we want to keep all the themes. Yeah, I mean, so what what were you are you thinking I was thinking maybe like so we have like Cocktail Jazz like that, you know, the the vicious vicious vodka kind of redo right? The fishes fishes vodka that's, you know, from the Cocktail Jazz kind of, you know, theory of operation like Amos Milburn, that kind of stuff. And then you know, we have kind of a hardcore free version. Right? Right. Yep. So So what are we what are we don't have country?

We don't have a 20 country theme with us that we could use maybe like a hip hop beat theme. Oh, hell yeah.

Right. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, hell, yes. Yeah. But it has to be good hip hop. I know. Either good hip hop. Or like dominant really good way. Right. Like Lonely Island. Good. Dumb. You know what I mean? Or like, or like actually good. We're actually good. Which so hard so hard to get hip hop? That's like, mostly pops in between you know what I mean? It's tough. It's tough.

What about like a club? A club theme song mean? Like,

like, like, what era? Like? Like house like 80s house yeah. Or like that? Or like 90s like like 90s acid stuff like James Brown is dead but Who's that? That was LA style. Remember LA style? I don't James Brown is dead linen and we could do something like that. But the problem with them is that they came out with that song when James Brown was still alive.

What we really need is like a hollow notes type theme

Oh whose Do you know that would be amazing. I you know stars at any given moment stars and I might just break into a holiday song at any given any given second it might happen. You know what I mean?

Maybe instead of playing break songs, you guys can just sing home. One out songs on the break

all right so that's not allowed right with your way. I don't know it's also a little known fact that I kind of I have singing Tourette's and that I kind of involuntarily insert curse words into the middle of songs as I sing them mostly the C word no I never use oh wow in songs I use the F bomb and songs you're used to stashes you almost just cursed it was close anyway it's a it's a bad habit I'm trying to try to break it but you know that's that's that's what it is but if someone's gonna do country like I mean personally stars isn't like country know why Jack and Joe know why? Because because she doesn't like stories and that's just a sort of God starts my mind about that. It's

only since I started working with you that you taught like you'll play he'll play a country song it same country song over and over and you'll be like, can you believe that he left his wife for his dog and I mean Why did he do that? Same same breakdown of he analyzes the songs same songs.

Oh well first of all like I think some of the songs merit attention they married deep reading

way merits attention

what that's not true.

That's not true. hope someone's writing a story theme song for us right now.

I hope so to look and you know what, you know stars and grow watching TV so like you know, we're Oh, yeah. How do you not like a story song? If you grew up watching Gilligan's Island about the

story Gilligan's Island time you play the look here.

This is not yes. Because it's

like the same analyzation every

single it's not even a word. Not even a word. Analysis every single time

not even a word. Can I trust anything you say if you bust out non words on me. You know, but like, like certain injustice is jacking Joe like they hit me so I have to mention them every time so not country, but TV theme songs you familiar with the Gilligan's Island theme song? Oh, of course. Yeah. You're familiar with the first season of Gilligan's Island.

I'm probably I used to watch a lot of reruns as a child of Gilligan's Island, right? Gilligan

was like one of my best friends growing up. I watched that stuff constantly. Yeah, I bought a Gilligan hat because I liked him so much. Nice. Nice. Anyway, so the first season was in black and white, right? And this song, which we all know, you know, at the end, the millionaire and his wife, the movie star, the professor and Marianne, you know, you're on Gilligan's Island. Right? Right. We all know this. The original season it was was Gilligan, the skipper to the millionaire, and his wife, the movie star and the rest. And the rest and the rest. The rest. There's only two of them two people. Yeah. The time it takes you to say professor and Marianne, you could have just said in the rest. It's like the same thing. They changed it. They changed it, but I don't know. It just seems like crappy. Everyone knows Mary Ann's a hot one. Why didn't she get on it? You know what I mean? Anyways, I like story songs. I like to think about the stories and songs and why people made particular choices. You know, I like Merle Haggard. How did we get on this? It's all because of the theme song. Alright, okay. So call your question is 278-497-2128 That's 718-497-2128 PS so I'm not going to go into the full rant. Because Because I you know what, my veins will first burst I was up last night. quite late writing. So, Mike astride Mike gotta name I can't I can't you know, I can't pronounce names Mike. Mike. F strati Addis that's kind of a nice name as stratiotes I hope I got that right. says Hey, Dave. I was wondering about MSG. Is it safe? What's with all the gloomy posts about it? Mike? Mike, how you do this to me? How do you make me go back and listen to old shows? No. Stars. That's that's an absurd that's absurd

heritage, say and look for MSG specific shows. And then it's not a theory rant.

It's not okay. I'm not gonna go into the full rant. Mike. Let me just say it tell you this. I'll give you a couple of brief bullet points to use against people who talks about MSG. Most arguments against MSG, either rely on a number of really, turd basket studies about the actual reported effects on people. And then there's a lot of hoo ha hokum bad science about excitatory neurotoxins. Because if you it turns out if you inject a you know, MSG into your brain, it's not a good idea. Don't inject anything in your brain, by the way. But, you know, there's a bunch of research that neonatal primates can get brain damage if you give them large amounts of MSG, you know, without anything else, and it's because, you know, it can cross the blood brain barrier in primates, but not in in in humans. In fact, If your body produces MSG, your body produces MSG, or not MSG, but it's because not monosodium, but it produces. It produces glutamic acid in your in your head, it's used as a neurotransmitter, it's then converted to glutamine and transported back across your blood brain barrier to be excreted. So you're a net producer of it. There's no credible decent evidence that it's bad for you. You don't consume enough of it for it to cause your blood levels to spike in any way unless you would eat it pure and a large amount of it. And the only decent studies done are double blind, controlled studies where the actual MSG was administered in gel caps, that couldn't possibly be detected by taste. And all of those show that there's no problem. And yet despite all this, and Stacia continues to believe that she has some sort of reaction to it, true or false does. No,

I just don't need it anymore.

It's kind of kind of a course crap is that trying to get out of Sandia?

I just don't need it. Alright, you need in your snacks that

MSG and the snacks for consumption, we use it in our test. You only use it in tests. No brains. No brains, stars, no brains. Now we use it like I use MSG Piper, when he was with us. brought out of MSG, we did it to test snacks because what you do is when you're testing snacks out, you want to test how much kind of umami punch you need to add to the snacks in order to get kind of the flavor level where you want. And then that the the hard part is is that to sell snacks to people, because people are irrational about this you have to have them be MSG free, so then you have to go back and you have to punch that umami the same amount without using MSG. So typically, if you don't want it to taste like combo kombu or Dashi, you you add things like yeast extracts or you know other broken down protein products. Anyways. So there you have it, Mike, my non rant version of MSG, but I'm sure that Jack can find when I went off on it before

Yeah, that was like the unplugged

way me because I was so loud you had last time you were really getting in? Yeah, well, you know, so you can't can't do the same thing. This is what I want to go off on. Someone has to explain this to me. Are you guys shoppers at Subway the store that sells submarine sandwiches? But that bread with that is really bad? Yeah. What do you go my kids and I haven't been in a year. I told you my kids love it. Right? Because they get to customize their sandwich. I told you that. They tell you their new their new craziness. The new thing? Oh, Serato Oh, they have Serato? No, I didn't know that. I mean, everyone's got Serato. And you know, there's a Serato there's a Siracha documentary, but I haven't seen it yet, because you have to buy it. So I have to buy it. And look, it's like half inch documentary Serato. And they interview the guy and he's like, everybody loves my product. I can't help it. If people stop loving my product. Maybe I'll stop making it. But everybody loves it. He doesn't have that accent. Great story. Yeah, it is. It's good story, right? And one of the PAs gets his eyes spray with Siracha and in the outtakes, which is hilarious. Anyway, no, not so Raja. So here's what happens. I guarantee you because I know how ideation stuff happens in these corporations because you know, we've done it a couple times for people. So they're like, they're like, Listen, guys, this is like this is the subway, the boardroom or whatever. They're sitting around the ideation room. They're like, hey, hey, guys, listen. We want to sell pizza, but really we're a sandwich company, right? So we don't really have the you know, we don't really have the wherewithal to sell pizza to people, right? Because we're sandwich shop. Yeah. So we have to like show we have to demonstrate. Something's wrong with a regular pizza or some point of difference so that people will buy our subway style pizzas, instead of a real pizza. They could get across the street. Right? Right. Okay, so guys, come on. What's wrong with pizzas? What do you got? Eight. Larry, what do you got? I don't know man. too greasy. Yeah, that's a good one too greasy. too greasy. A ha ha. What do you got pizzas? A two three dimensional boss there to three dimensional. That's it. We're gonna make a flat pizza. So I swear to swear to God, subway has a new product called flat pizza. Because they perceived that the problem with pizzas is that they're two three dimensional and need to be flattened out. What kind of dope are those dudes smoking when they came up with that idea? Who thinks that a problem with pizza is that it's too freakin flat. And by the way, the image that they have on their freakin advertisements is like a deep dish free content. It's the least flat pizza. You know, they have no mechanism to actually make a flat pizza. They can't make like a cracker crust. They can't do it. Yeah,

I like fire bake style.

But what does that even mean? What does it mean? It has no meaning for me flat pizza, and it doesn't trip off the tongue. It's the worst word for a product and people there millions of dollars involved in this decision. Like, like many dozens hundreds of people had to had what kind of ogre He runs that company such that no one underneath was like, boss. This idea sucks the royal root this makes no freakin sense boss. No one check them on.

It's Helios, though. Basically,

I don't even know what what's an alien? You

don't know what that is the frozen flat pizzas.

What would it mean flat pizzas are by their nature flat. There's like it was like, I'm gonna like oh, oh, you know what I'm so sick of these kind of like three dimensional globe shaped puzzle pizzas that I've been getting recently at the local pizzeria. It's not makes no mistake about flat pizza is that it's the same amount of syllables as flat pizza.

It doesn't save you any time. The name

is bad. You know what they're like, Hey, boss, we can't trademark flat pizza. Because it's just the word flat and the word pizza and everybody already knows pizza is flat. Well, we can trademark flat pizza. This is genius. The more I think about it, but you know what, how is it that people make millions of dollars doing this? Like how is this how is this like? How is this possible? I don't I don't understand it. Someone explained to me an actual valid marketing scheme behind this. Like I like as was it with Barnum said that no one. No one lost money under estimating the stupidity of the American public because that was at Barnum. I don't agree with that. I agree that we're a good natured people and that we can be reasoned with to prove him wrong. Don't buy a flat pizza. Maybe Maybe it tastes delicious. In which case, I don't know. But Jack doesn't think it's because Jack doesn't like their products. He doesn't think it tastes

delicious. I like their cookies. Oh, you like their cookies about it? Why the cookies? I don't

know. The you have the option to get like chips or a cookie with your sandwich and I've enjoyed those cookies. Yeah, they're kind of like, gooey.

Yeah. Yeah. You never had it. You never had a subway cookie. You ever had somebody sandwich? Yeah. I had one literally the other day cuz my kids were like, we're gonna go to Subway dad, Mike. Great. Okay, Timothy Hellmuth writes in, regarding apricot. Hello, Dave, Miss Dasha at all. I've been trying a lot of delicious sun dried apricots lately, the really sour ones. So presumably the blends right because the ones you get they're sour, and got to thinking they'd make a great flavor for a soda, they probably would any tips on how to extract the flavor of the apricots, ideally, without using alcohol. I hope to share the finished product with some teetotallers. I'd love to hear your thoughts practical or otherwise. Thanks, Timothy. Okay, listen. So the main question, obviously, is do you have a centrifuge, right, so let's just assume you don't have a centrifuge, you're gonna want to go to modernist pantry.com monitored its pantry.com and get yourself some pectin X Ultra SPL, if you don't already have it. And because what we're going to do is we're going to break down the pectin in the apricot. If you don't, it's going to be like a nightmare. Also, apricots take a long time to rehydrate. Think you remember, there was a caller who called him before because they were doing prunes and apricots in a bag and the apricots wouldn't hydrate in the prunes would takes a while. And my experience has been making alcoholic products with apricots in a centrifuge that I literally have to blend it, spin it, and then blend it again and spin it again to get like the full flavor of the apricot out just because it's so resistant sometimes to rehydration. So what I would do is how it mix the apricots like like maybe start with like four to one in water. So like 100 to 400 might have to go a little more you might have to go 100 Apricots 500 water, get warm water, right can even be it can be make it warm. Take that back, make it warm, you know like body tamper, they're about add some enzyme add like more than I would normally add add like four grams per liter of picknix Ultra SPL and blend the hell out of it. So what you're doing here is that the PEC annex is going to start breaking down the internal you know the actual structure of the apricot and allow you to extract more of the flavor. It's also going to break down some of the soluble Peck don't want to cook it beforehand because then it makes it more resistant My feeling is I don't have improved it but I think it makes it more resistant to the pecs annex. So you're going to be breaking down the products then you're going to want to strain that right through through like a like a fine strainer don't go sheen don't go what's what's what was going on, look for your coffee filter on it yet because just gonna be frustrated. Then we blend the pulp that's left with pectin x again, and and some more water and let it sit for a while to really break down and blend it again. Let it break down, strain it out, then put that sucker through a coffee filter. And it should you should be able to get a product that's clear enough to make a soda out of if not, you could probably let it settle overnight. Once you've added the pectin X and straighten it out. You should be able to settle overnight and then rack the stuff off the top. But I mean I know I've done it with centrifuges and it's delicious but it's just your yields. aren't very high on those apricots, unless you unless you do that second rewedding So which which I call Remo Yash, after the French stock technique of rewetting that the boons Yeah, we went in the bones if we take a break, take a commercial break, come right back cooking of us

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.

Hey, guys, we are Yeah. Hey, guys, what's Steve Jenkins? He sounds like some voiceover actor.

That's because he was a voiceover actor. Come on. I'm serious. For real for real. He spent some time doing voiceover work. Maybe I don't know how to look up his like his credits. Maybe you heard him somewhere?

Or maybe it's just like that voice is like, you know, the man's got a golden voice golden. Does he do a cheese show for you guys.

We profiled him on revolutionaries, which is that really awesome thing we do where we do like radio documentaries on people's lives and tell their stories. He was episode number one. So I recommend that there's a lot of his voice. And he says some pretty cool stuff talking about like, you know, he used to import illegal cheeses. And the people didn't know any better at the airports because they couldn't read French. And it was all like raw legal cheese.

I remember that time. And in fact, he used to get really, really angry, really angry. Whenever someone in the media would point out that New York City mean like, very violently angry when people in the media would point out that cheese mongers in New York are bringing in illegal cheeses, because he didn't want the tap to stop flowing. You know what I mean? So he was nervous about it. And he was like, can't, can't you just shut up? And like, let me bring in the cheese. You know what I'm saying? That was in the old days. So he doesn't do that anymore. He's too. Too Big Ben to to outed or what? I

can't speak to that.

Ah, I don't know.

But apparently, everything was fake back before him that even when there were some things they called kind of bearer or whatever, it wasn't actually that some,

right, well, you know, look that we it's hard for, it's hard for people to remember unless they unless they you know, think back to it. So I first started shopping for with, you know, at fairway for his cheese stuff in or I don't know, like the early 90s or mid night mid 90s I guess when they moved the fairway when they first created the Uptown fairway over in Harlem, where my studio was at the time. And yeah, it was like a revelation because I know you've been shopping in places that you thought like had decent cheeses for years, like say bars and you know those kinds of joints and then they really they really upped the game. You know, it's like people again, people forget it was kind of a groundbreaking place to buy cheese. I didn't live down near you know, the downtown cheese shop. So my Expo my early exposure to that that kind of level of cheese stuff was uptown at the at the fairway. So yeah, kudos. It but he's not like the voice is not quite it's not Casey Qassem. It's like it's a mix. Where is it? It's like in the voice over world again to figure out where it is. Anyway. And you're gonna look up his his credits.

Y'all see if I can find I can dig it. We'll see. Yeah. All right.

Paul writes in regarding benzoate and so we're on preservatives and, and other stuff today, right? sodium benzoate. It's a good word, isn't it? I would like to hear Alec Baldwin, say Benjamin, but he'd be awesome at it. Hi, all. I've just been listening to Episode 149. Yes, I'm a few weeks behind you were answering a question about stabilizing fruit juices. And I think I understood that Piper uses benzoate Piper. I think the Piper uses benzoate to prevent microbial growth. I don't recommend doing this because a few years ago, it was shown that benzoate can convert to benzene over time benzene nasty by the way, in case you guys don't remember your chemistry convert to benzene over time, especially in acidic environments. And especially in the presence of vitamin C. I think Piper was aware of that I don't know how much bandwidth he uses. But I know this because I was working at the time at a company that produces food supplements, including a berry extract, and due to regulatory changes, we had to change the preservative that we were using. I was researching alternatives and came across this issue. If my memory serves me correctly, I'm sure does the major soft drink manufacturers removed benefit from their products when this problem was identified? I did some accelerated tests incubating at warm temperatures and found that Benzi did in fact form when we added benzoate to the product the very product that we're making. In the end we chose sorbate which chose sorbet which also avoided the problem that a small proportion of people can taste benzo it I recommend that Ben's would not be used in fruit juice applications or if it is used that you send samples away for testing so you can determine if benzene does form over the duration that you keep your products Keep up the great work, Paul, thanks I love that kind of follow up. So that's good information. People can take you know that's good stuff. We got a SAM right saying hey, stars, he says hey, the starship because that's what you say. Thanks for answering my questions on the radio show. I now have request Dave is an undoubted ninja of kitchen ergonomics. I don't know about that. And layout. Could you see if he will post an in depth photo tour of his home kitchen. Thanks. Sam's not quite done yet. Sam. When I actually get my when I get my oven customized. Maybe when I get my oven customized. You like my new kitchen better? Yeah. Really clean? Yeah, but it's like it's galley. Yeah, but all my equipments new. That's why you won't be new for long. Sure, I'll ruin it. Alright, so Sam, once I get it done, I'll do that we're getting still still changing it. Not quite. It's not quite photo ready yet. Brian writes in from San Diego about Koji, which has been a topic that I've been missing. Getting information on we've had a lot about to take cooking issues crew, longtime listener, I don't have a question but was listening to your show. And also wondering about how to make Aspergillus, I can never pronounce it. Or is it to the right the right base when there's one that they use for koji Aspergillus spores to make koji in case, Mama. Whoa, really, I can't say mama fuku. Now, in case the Momofuku people don't get back to you, Dave have found a couple of resources on the web, which you may or may not already know about, it seems publicly available information on this topic is scarce. One is tailor tailor made ak.org growing koji for homebrewing. Soc A. And the other one is, of course, well known the Nordic food lab.org their blog and their thing koji history and process, the Nordic food lab for all you don't know, is a great resource. Like, you know, they, they do a great job. They document everything they do. And they're very open source but information. They don't hide information. They do a lot of work with koji and they publish it. So I actually went to the tab you sent me and it's, it's, it's good. And of course, shortleaf, who as we, anyone who's heard me say knows that I learned, you know, most of what I know about tofu from shortleaf, even though he you know, basically call me a jerk for asking whether I could use edamame to make tofu. He was like, why would you do that? Are you You're evil, he thinks I'm an evil. Well, in the one phone conversation having me he basically he intimated that he wouldn't want to have dinner with me and that he thought it was a bad human being. I mean, he didn't come out and say it like that. But that's just the vibe I got over the phone. You know what I mean? He's like, why is this eastern sun of whatever he doesn't say he doesn't talk that he's like all peace and love and whatever. But anyway, his website, www dot saw infocenter.com books forward slash 154 history of koji is there. But I looked up an interesting article. Because the issue is this look, everyone knows you can make koji you can buy the you can buy the, you know, this code, you can have the seeds for it and do it. The question we had a while back was how do you know if it's safe? And the problem is, is that some strains of Aspergillus, right? Like flavors and whatnot can produce aflatoxin and aflatoxin you know, for those of you that you know, pay attention to sort of thing you want to stay away from because even minute quantities is one of those no known safe kind of exposure things because minute quantities can be like viciously carcinogenic. And so this is why we screened things like peanuts, which can grow aflatoxin for, you know, for the growth of it and whatnot. So the question is, why don't people get poisoned all the time from things that are done made with koji? Because they're all done with different Aspergillus strains and how is it that you can select for the safe ones? In a non in a, in a either home wild or pre, you know, industrial setting? How would you choose to make sure that you only get the ones that don't produce aflatoxin? So there's a and a lot of people have taken done studies and shown that the that aflatoxin is not present in products commercially that are produced with koji molds, right? So then you know, sois, miso and things like that, and then a couple of ones have shown that miso miso itself is not hospitable for the production of aflatoxin, but it's age for a long time. So the question you want to know is how can I guarantee that the mold that I'm growing right now on my koji is safe to use right now not necessarily in an age product? Not in a necessarily in secondary, probably, but how do I guarantee that it's safe in all points of its existence? It's an interesting problem. And as of 2001, which is the last article that I have on it, that really 100% solved it. But the most interesting article I saw on it was called aflatoxin genes and the AF la toxin A genic. Potential. That's a good word right? Athlete can't say I could try that twice. After the toxic jet wherever have koji molds by oh my god, I can't read my writing on what the person's name was. It broke. It was with the last name br Oh no. Vander broke Vanderburg P Vanderburg. 2001. And it was interesting. So what they said was as look, they analyzed a bunch of strains of Aspergillus, that they found in various products that had been produced some kind of artisanal wild fermentation types and some commercial types. They found in that in that they found some strains of normal aspirin, Aspergillus oaks that can't pronounce that account and awake, it's got a mental block on I can't do it. That actually had the genes encoded in them to some of the genes encoded in them to the to produce aflatoxin but did not in fact, produce aflatoxin which is difficult if you want to make a rapid assay to make sure that there's no aflatoxin in it right. They also found certain Aspergillus flavus

molds in there that that were aflatoxin producing strains, but they didn't find any aflatoxin. Now, the Nordic food lab has a couple of points on this where they say look at, you know, the the aflatoxin when it's produced those strains that produce that tend to inhibit yeast growth. And so people that are doing things like brewing sock A, where we have a lot of alcohol involved. Over time, the only Aspergillus strains that don't produce aflatoxin are selected out. So that's how the safety goes. But we're not talking about that because we're not talking about maintaining a culture for you know, generations. We're talking about a wild thing and how to prove it safe. So here's what's interesting. These guys said, Look, we we we made a bunch of koji and it didn't produce aflatoxin, right? So they said, Okay, I'm going to take a strain of Aspergillus, that's known to produce aflatoxin like one that we bought, specifically to produce aflatoxin. And they because their thing was, well, maybe this was like koji fermentation and solid state fermentation under very particular circumstances for fairly short periods of time. So they said, Okay, look, we're going to put the we're going to we're going to put this known aflatoxin generator into typical koji production. And lo and behold, it produced like zero, almost like hyper trace amounts of aflatoxin. So they're like, Hey, that's pretty safe. So they're like, Well, maybe it's something about the, the actual substrate that they were growing it on, that's stopping it producer instead of running it for 24 hours, they ran it for like a week or something like this. And after a week of incubation, or week and a half, then there were measurable and meaningful amounts of aflatoxin present. So their conclusion, which I think interesting is that the strains that can produce aflatoxin take longer to start producing the aflatoxin in the solid state fermentation that we do in koji take longer to produce the aflatoxin then typically, they would have to produce it when you're making the koji. So if you're going to use a wild fermentation, Koji, that I wouldn't let that aspect of the fermentation go on longer than, you know, like, you know, the day or so it takes to do it. And I would read that article because it made for interesting reading, but that's the closest I could get for an answer on how can you guarantee without having, you know, a microbiology lab present? How can you guarantee the safety of any given wild koji that you're making? I think it's a good final answer on that. That's great. You know, whatever.

You know, you know,

that you need that feedback.

And you don't know what you got. You know what you guys don't get you don't get the look on sizes face. It's like, it's like, as someday I'll be able to describe it. She's like, Yeah, great.

I know. Feedback.

Cow cleaver. I like that name. Kleberg Kleber because I like Stan Freeburg Have you ever heard of Stan Freebird? No comedian no from the 50s he was an advertising guy like kind of I guess premier maybe pre Mad Men Yeah, pre Mad Men era advertising guy who he did a bunch of radio shows. And when for those of you who are history of advertising buffs and like 50s Comedian Stan Freeburg is the man anyway. Carl cleaver it says hey there I've got a question for the cooking issues. Our restaurant recently acquired 100 pounds 100 pounds of high quality spot prawns and it just so Spot Project spot on. Its west coast, but northern you never hang out up there, right? Like BC and all that stuff. They're supposedly good like, you know, we don't get them Do you know like at least I don't get in here of high quality spot problems and it just so happens about two thirds of them were carrying eggs. While discussing a plan. My chef, in his infinite wisdom took a knife pan full of row and tossed it into the Vita prep with a healthy dose of neutral oil to make triple oil. As you can imagine, we ended up with about six cups of shrimp aoli Yes, because it has eggs, they will emulsify the hell out of stuff anyways. So I came to you guys with questions hoping you can help me write this first. Would the eggs of prawns be called row or coral? And secondly, is there a way to purposely break this emotion? Break this emotion and I have a song going to take these broken wings and learn to fly again. Yeah, that learn to live so free. Let's that's the song Blackbird. Now that learn to fly and learn Listen, really? No, no, it's different. It's different jackal no jacket, Joe no anyway. And second, is there a way to purposely break this emotion and turn it back to an oil of some sort while maintaining the flavor of the raw eggs? If this is a lost cause, I still think I still have some reserves to make the compound butter which I hope will be a better plan. However, if I've learned a thing for listening to cooking issues, if the things are not always as simple as they seem, Thanks, Kyle Kleberg the police in what's idea wandered Washington I understand. Maybe I don't know really like on the border? I don't know. Okay, so listen, first of all, when you say carrying eggs, I'm presuming you meeting on the outside on their swimmer, Rhett's? So here's the deal. So Decapod crustaceans, the way that they the way that they do their way that they do their business first of all interesting spot prawns that if you want a little thing about spot prawns, and I got some of this information from it, www dot organic ocean.com Sprott GPA. I can't remember because it's been a long, long time since I've done my I went through a kick where I read a lot of lobster biology stuff because I was thinking about writing an article for The New York Times and they wanted me to prove that whether or not lobsters could feel pain, I was like, I can't I can't do that. That's not possible anyway. So I can't remember where the lobsters do this. But spa prawns are cool because they're big and delicious, apparently, but they they change sex, then they become females, then they do their eggs. And this when they're changing their sex are called trainees. How awesome is that? That's what it says according to the website anyway. So anyway, Decapod crustaceans, when the females are going to lay the eggs, typically when you have a lobster, and you have what's called the coral, you like that the red stuff when it's cooked out? Yeah. When you have the coral, as opposed to the tamale, which is kind of the guts you'd like to tamale, but you like to quarrel, okay. Good to know. So I don't really okay, I'll lay it down. I'm not a huge fan of the tamale. Like I can eat a little bit of it, but I don't want to pound that stuff. And I mean, you know, anyways, so the coral is the eggs on the inside of the lobster, right? No one at least not on this coast eats the when I when you said the shrimps are carrying eggs, I think you mean on the outside of the shrimp, right? So what happens is, is the lobster in this case the shrimp passes the egg from the inside of its body to the outside and as it gets passed to the outside, that's when it gets fertilized, and then it glues it to the underside of its body. So when you get a lobster out a female lobster out of the out of the water you look at the bottom again a lobster stay females they stay freakin females they don't do this weird trendy stuff anyways, what am I thinking so that you turn it over and they're called buried right? They're not like buried like in the ground like not like gravid locks lobster but like buried like Knott's Berry Farm and because they put the eggs on the underside of their body now lobster folk when they get buried lobsters are supposed to throw them back like notch the tail and throw them back because they know that's a producing female, right? And you want to leave the producing females in the water so that they make more lobsters because that's your bread and butter. Right? You know, so in the you never get buried, you get females but you never get ones that are buried because they throw them back. So it's anyways so I would I would not call it coral because as far as I know, coral is only when it's on the inside of the animals since these have made it to the outside and are fertilized right presumably they I don't know whether the fertilization makes them change flavor or texture or what I have no idea because you know I don't have any experience with it. But interesting. These guys that organic ocean said don't they say uh some spot prawns are brought in from the United States, where they are caught sooner smaller and often buried ie before spawning and with eggs attached. One Asian grocer to selling live a British Columbia spot prawns which would have to have been for United States the BC season opens later When the prions have grown to full size and are about to die naturally so Buyer beware. So organic Goshen believes that you that you know they I guess they lay eggs and then and then and then they croak right because it says they say that a while BC spot Prime's are hermaphroditic born as males, the female sex organs on their tails become more pronounced at about two years of age, at which point they are referred to as transitioning prawns or trainees with the final two years of their four year lifespan sent as females so they do their spawning, and then they're ready to ready to die. So you should take it afterwards. So that's just on whether to call it coral or whether to call it row I would call it row or eggs. Now on the breaking of it, if you have very few people who want to break this kind of egg of emotion, and I wasn't able to find anything offhand, that would break it the only easy thing that I thought you could you could do two things. One, you can add so much oil to it, that it that it breaks, right because that's one way to break a man is is to is to do is to stop adding water, and to just add enough oil like you know, 95% so that you actually start breaking the emulsion and you get oil coalescence, that should work. But the problem with that is, is you will be adding so much oil to it that you probably won't have the flavor transfer. The other thing, and you might have already tried this is you might it because you said I don't know whether I read it. But you know, you intimated that you didn't want to heat it because he didn't want to change the flavor. Right? Did he say that? He said yeah. I would freeze it, I would freeze it. And then thought and then freeze it and then thought and then freeze it and you thought and each time you freeze thought you should be destabilizing that emotion. And hopefully after one or two freeze thaw cycles, because you haven't added any stabilizers other than the stabilizers naturally present in the prawn eggs. Hopefully, it'll break and then you'll be able to get you know, if you have a centrifuge obviously, I would freeze thaw and then try the centrifuge. But that that should work and and you know, I would stop it from I would not let it get exposed to oxygen while you're doing all that freestyling. But you know, so like put it in a VAC bag or in a Zippy and then freeze thaw it a couple times and see whether it works. But if you try it, please send me the answer because I want to know whether whether it worked right. Okay, Kurt writes in Hello, everybody. I've just recently become Head bartender of a restaurant in Cambridge, Massachusetts, right next to the MIT campus, the building complex that we are in hosted Cambridge Science Festival every year. But yeah, that's pretty good science festival. Yeah. Yeah. And has asked if we would like to be a part of it. I've been using a handful of modern techniques behind the bar pectin X slash ag or clarification, carbonation EC infusions, and like I added the at the lake wasn't in there. So the chef decided I'd be the best candidate for the job. I made an off the cuff comment about how cool it would be to have a roll of AP and center views to play around with for this presentation. And a day later, I got an email asking exactly what I needed for equipment. These guys have a lot of lab connections I've attached to email I've received with some questions about equipment also. Also, I'll be giving a presentation to 75 to 100 people, which I've not done before and was wondering if you might have any general advice on giving demos to an audience like that. I clearly plan on ignoring that Gemma advice at Thomas Keller gave you last week where he called me an idiot. Thanks, Kurt. Okay. And the attached questions are regarding the centrifuges and roadmap. I have a few ideas on who to ask but a few questions for you. What size centrifuge? Do you need tubes? What size roadmap I assume you to vacuum for the roadmap? And what about the cleanliness of a roadmap?