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.

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Hello, and welcome to cooking nutrition. This is Dave Arnold, your host of cooking news coming to you live on the network from a Virtus pizzeria in Bushwick. Baba Baba Baba Berggren how're you doing folks calling your questions 271-849-7228 That's 718-497-2128 joined in the studio as usual with Nastasia Lopez How you doing stuff? Good Yeah, everything's good and and of course in the booth we got Jackie molecules. Hello, hello. Now Jack molecules that Jack is going to be sad times for cooking issues because good news for you. You're gonna go out on tour pretty soon, right?

I am. Yeah, there's a lot on the horizon for me right now.

But if you're on tour, that means that you're not going to be in Both

Well, you know, there'll be the ghost of Jackie molecules. I know I do hope to kind of call in from some of these cities I'll be in. Let's see, I'll be in London. I'll be in the East of England somewhere little town in Ipswich. Then I'll be in Paris and I think Barcelona and Iceland.

Oh, yeah. I'm gonna go to Iceland. Me too. Yeah,

I'm excited about that. When the most we're playing shows and like the weirdest places in Iceland, so that'll be fun. Yeah, yeah. If the listeners want to check out the music, it's Odetta Hartman, tu tu tu, which I think have shamelessly plugged on the show before. But that's the record that I produced. I play with her live. And we're hitting the road.

So what's up with the tu tu tu? What's the meaning of the tu tu tu?

Well, let's see her birthday is the 22nd if number is two, that's just where it starts. And then we had this thing where we would always send each other screenshots when it was 2:22pm on the phone back and forth just as a kind of like, whatever thing and then it turns out, she researched the number two to two and it's some weird like numerology. It's like an angel number of the meaning behind it is like a divine collaboration kind of thing or something. So I don't know if there are all these coincidences with with the TOS. So we're just gonna end and the record itself is 22 minutes and 22 seconds long by chance that

first of all, you're lying. Well, okay.

The final mix down. Listen, the final mix down was like 21 minutes and 40 seconds, and I was like, I'll be damned if this isn't 2222 It was close enough. You know? Yeah. This

is not by chance. Yeah.

Close enough by chance. It's not by chance. Right. Thanks. Yeah. It's wait. So how many twos are in the album? Only three. What have you got a fourth two there? Yeah, no,

it's just kind of hanging to hang to.

Well, anyway,

so yeah, my last show in the studio will be the week of the 24th so I don't know what day would that be? The 19th or something? June 19. That'll

be a sad day. Yeah, that'd

be pop champagne.

Oh, and me me me stars. Mostly

not for me.

Me Me. Me is in the back provided by Peter Kim, the director of the Museum of food and drink coming off of his I'm sure you went on some huge Bender because you just finished your the spring benefit.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, actually, no. I the next morning I was waters came and visited the museum. And then I had to do this shoot for CBS Sunday Morning. Eating Chinese takeout box.

You didn't look yourself up for the hours waters meeting? No. I think that was a yes. Yeah. That was a yes. That was a secret. Yes. Yeah, that's right. He was actually he wasn't using liquor he was chewing caught is caught actually illegal here. And it is highly illegal. So I know nothing of it. Yeah. You're a lawyer Day is coming back. Okay. highly illegal Dave. Alright, so we got some interesting stuff. We're going to do here on the program. We're going to call into Harold McGee. He's

he's on the line.

He's on the line gently waiting. Alright. Well, in Daniel grid, sir is going to come in later to help answer someone else's question on Nick's motivation. But Harold, how're you doing?

I'm doing well. Thanks. How about you guys?

Good. Good. Harold was the the 20 2016 recipient of what was the exact bofit

honoree? Yeah, 2016. honoree? Yeah, yeah.

You might know him as the person who knows everything about the science of deliciousness, or at least has taught us everything about the science of deliciousness, if you haven't already purchased on food and cooking, and he's a good cook and gone on Bookfinder and also purchased the Curious Cook off of someone else's used bookstore that do that now stop listening to us and go buy that right now. Are you ever gonna republish that on your website, the curious cookie, I know like you have excerpts out there?

Yeah, I should really do something about that.

Because it doesn't even it's not like, it's not like republishing the old information from on food and cooking in the first edition, which I know you're like, I'd have to go revisit it. This is more about just experiments. You can write literally, like a two paragraph at the end and being like, this is no longer 100% What I think but this is how I went through the experiment at that time, it still be useful for people now.

Yeah, yeah, that's true.

Just my, just my personal feelings. Alright. So I met someone at Booker and DAX recently, and she had said that her I think was her mom had just had a virus, and it knocked out her olfaction. And the doctors, you know, said that it might come back 100% It might come back partially it might take weeks, it might take months. And I told her that I know someone you Harold, who had a similar, similar problem. And so I just thought I'd have you on to talk about kind of what that was like, especially for someone who you know is food is such a big part of their life and kind of how you made it through it and kind of what the whether there was any sort of thing you could do to help yourself out while it was going on?

Yeah, it was not fun. And I think you might remember it because it was a couple of years ago when we had just finished lecturing at Harvard. And I was coming down to New York City to participate in a country ham tasting, where the whole point is to taste and notice qualities. Like a week, or 10 days before I came out to Harvard, I just woke up one morning, made a cup of coffee and realized I couldn't taste my coffee, or I couldn't smell it. And that was scary, because I'm in the middle of writing a book about smell. So I have a friend who was at the time, the director of the Manal Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, you know, center that specializes in taste and smell. And I wrote him immediately and said, yeah, oh, what do I do about this, and he, he basically said, it's a very common problem, that lots and lots of people over the course of their lifetime do lose their sense of smell, for a period of time that it's happened to him. And that there's really nothing that specialists in the field can do to help or to comfort you, you know, there's just no predicting when it's going to come back and how. So he said, just relax, and try to enjoy the other qualities of foods. And so I did that. And what I found, I did find that my, my interest in eating really declined, you know, smell is such a big part of it, that I would just not see the point of working really hard to make something nice for dinner anymore. So what I did end up doing though, is just noticing that the, when, when you can't smell food, then the other qualities become that much more important. So I found that if a food was under salted, or if the meat was kind of, you know, tough and dry, and not very interesting that I just, it made that particular dish really unappealing, and I just didn't want to eat any more of it. So my, my feeling is that, you know, investing in the idea that it's going to come back at some point and you have to keep yourself healthy in the meantime, and eat reasonably than what you do if you're cooking for yourself or if you're cooking for someone else who has this problem is just to make the food as appealing in all its other aspects as possible. And so that means the seasoning it means I found myself using lemon juice, and lime juice a lot more than I would have in the past. I liked crunchy things and really smooth silky things. But stuff that kind of dried out my mouth, you know, just that didn't do it for me anymore.

So tannins you like laid off tannins, and a lot of tannic stuff. Yeah,

yeah. Well, one thing I remember doing that sounds a little well, it is kind of peculiar, but you know, I, I live in California, there's a lot of citrus around all the time. And so I was trying to you know, eat my oranges, get my vitamins. And I noticed one day when I peeled my orange and then it took me a few hours to get around to eating it I got distracted by something else. You know how the, the skin around, each segment dries out. And it turns out if it dries out enough, instead of being chewy, which was not something that I was interested in without any sense of smell it it becomes really crisp. Then you get this kind of burst of flavor when you bite into it that made eating oranges something as simple as eating oranges. Much more interesting to

me. This is on like a navel or like a Satsuma, like a more of a clementine kind of

actually was to begin I first found it in, in the smaller ones and tangerines, clementines, things like that, but it also works for navels. And then I discovered that MFK Fisher actually wrote about this, you know, decades and decades ago, she was living in France. She she wasn't getting she didn't have the money to eat spectacularly well, but she found that if she left, Amanda peeled Amanda and orange left it on her radiator, until it dried out. She got that wonderful release of flavor. Anyway, so little things like that I found could could make a really big difference. And then I also am a believer in the idea that you know, the more effort you make, the more you kind of make your olfactory system think that its expectations are high for it, that it will come back faster. So I would just really concentrate on trying to smell things even when I wasn't really getting anything. And I don't know if that makes a difference or not. But at least you you have the feeling that you're again, making an effort exercising the system, even if it's not responding the way you wanted to

get to be so people know at the beginning, this wasn't like oh, I have a stuffy nose. This is like nose clear knocked out though, right? Like knockout?

Yeah, no, I that was The scary thing is that I had no other symptoms. If I'd had a head cold, then sure that kind of makes sense that my sense of smell is a little impaired. But I had had no other issues whatsoever. Just just realized one day I was drinking my coffee and I wasn't tasting coffee.

Was there any moment during this time when you found anything delicious?

Oh, well, the I know the kind of, you know, partial way. I mean, potato chips. Because of their, their salt and actually potato chips, Sea Salt and Vinegar Potato chips. Because they that was really hammering my taste buds. And the crispy crunchy piece of it was really wonderful too. That was sort of my my go to, you know, just to get calories, because I really wasn't interested in an eating. Did

you? Did you do any of the texture only kind of famous dishes like bird's nest or any of that stuff?

No, no. That's I should have done that. I should have

done hopefully you will not have the chance to do it again. Now the other thing is Did Did it come back slowly or or my memory serves it came back somewhat gradually over the course of like a week or something right.

Or even longer than that. I mean, it was several months before it came back. And then one day, as I say, you know, I would try to make an effort to smell things I would just kind of snort, trying to get the air rushing through my nasal passages harder. And one day, I just noticed that there seemed to be a little bit of a hint of flavor. I think it was again in my in my morning cup of coffee. And it would then just go away and I wouldn't get anything at all. And I was thinking well, maybe I hallucinate it. And over the course of several weeks, it slowly came back to the point where I didn't have to snort I would actually get it just by normal breathing.

So do you want to actually have a question that you probably have some answers? Do you want to stay on with me? Or do you have to scoot off it's up to you.

I could stay on for another 1015 minutes or so.

All right, here we go. Got a question in on anastasius favorite and she didn't actually punk you with this Peter. But Peter also likes

to jump in and we actually got a caller for you and Harold alright. Well,

we'll do that. We'll take the caller first. Cool. All right. Caller you are you are on the air.

How's it going? I was wondering if there's any way to make cream on turnable uncharitable are not turned into butter at all.

Oh, Harold, do you know of anything?

uninsurable? Well, no, I mean, starting with homogenized Cream helps. That makes it a lot harder. But I think it would still you know, if you if you went at it hard enough, it would still it would still turn.

I mean, like you could probably stabilize the ever loving crap out of it, right? I mean, if you were to dope it with I mean, it's got what it's 70 roughly 70% Water 6660 65 Six, somewhere between 60 and 70% water and the cream that you have. So you could probably boil that a little bit to extract out some of the water, take pure water hydrate, some sort of like some sort of thickener, and maybe that would help protect it in the way that in the way that starch prevents yolk from from curling when you when you cook it? I don't know, Harold, do you think anything like that could help, like sterically hinder the the fat agglomerating or no?

Yeah, no, I think I mean, the fat globules themselves are pretty stable to heat. So, yeah, just putting enough interfering material in there to get in the way of the globules touching each other. That's that that would probably be it.

Right? I mean, you could probably turn the entire thing into a fluid jail. Right? If you wanted to. And then if you did that, I wonder whether or not I wonder whether or not you could prevent it from I mean, the texture would be weird, it wouldn't be cream, but you might be able to stop it from having the ability. Because the individual, I think that the particles that you would have, you know how big the fat globules are, like, Herald like, like, like, roughly micrometers? I have no micrometer? I have no idea.

I think it's on the order of 10. On on homogenized.

Right, so if you homogenize it smaller, yeah. Okay. So the limits of your tongue are roughly 20, right? Which means that if your fluid gel particles are somewhere between the order of 10 and 20, right, you should be able to lock a number of fat globules inside of the particles in the fluid gel and maybe prevent them from agglomerating. Because they, they'll just be kind of trapped up in something that stays as a coherent unit. That's just this is a complete guess, right out of my right out of my behind. I have no idea but it says something to try. You know, what do you think, Harold, is this any this reasonable or no?

Yeah, no, that sounds reasonable. Sounds like a good experiment. Yeah. Appreciate it.

But going into proxy factory, so I don't know if the temperature or the constant movement is going to affect those like fluid of the of the fat and at all, and that was my only concern,

Xena fat, if it's an effect, a pure you could just use some sort of Stearic inhibition or something. stabilizer, but you'd have to worry about, you'd have to worry about whether it's still going to flow fluidly or not fluid Joe will flow fluidly if it's a low enough fluid, Joe, but I think the the lower the concentration on the fluid gel, the more it's a regular liquid with some particles in it that are stabilizing it versus particles with some liquid around them, you know, but again, this is you're stretching way back on my memory banks for how to dork with things. Yeah, well, I appreciate that. All right. Let us know the tweet on and let us know what happens. Look, and we're joined we have just like a full house here. We got Daniel grits are in the question later. So Harold, so Daniel, how are you? Daniel, have a seat. There's a question. Thank you. What what happened? What happened? Oh, you got married. Oh, yeah. How's that? How do you like being married? I like it.

It's good. Yeah, it sounds good. All right.

I know what else do what? It's episode 250 today.

Yeah. Nice. Nice. Nice. Even numbers deputy here. Yeah.

Not a good way to celebrate 250 It is a great man McGee, man. It's good. Yeah.

Peter cam. Okay, this guy over here. So, speaking of the Curious Cook and the fact that you should republish it, Harold, we have a question on and it's written this way, Jerusalem for artichokes. Johnson for artichokes. I will read the question. This is from David in Ottawa. We've been making coffee jokes at the restaurant jokes. Rather not a joke. It's a great rap name or song. Yeah, J jokes. And the Stasi Of course, listeners will remember that Anastasia wants gastro intestinal. He poisoned her friends by feeding them quarts of mildly cooked Jerusalem artichokes in like a salad format at a picnic thing. Literally,

she knew bathroom around anywhere. Literally.

She knew that this was like, you know, fermentation like extravaganza going to happen in their guts in the email within the next couple of hours. The reason she knew is because she had done it to herself. Anyway right now. Yeah, she just said you know what, I deal with people anyway. Basically, we just post the jokes and clarified butter when we cook them a sticky white scum floats to the surface. That's my next band, sticky whites gum. As the line cooks are wanting to do, we ate some. It's sticky, sweet, sticky and delicious. Here's the question, do you think this gum could just be purified? These are in cold sterile, small chain from the sand and starch like insulin. That muggy a disc describes politely as causing abdominal discomfort, discomfort when we ate it. There was no noticeable effect. But also we're the kinds of people who eat the scum raft from the top of a pod of poaching jokes that perhaps we don't make the best control route any thoughts? I guess I could Munch down on a full glob of this stuff and see what happens but I'd rather have an educated guess before risking dinner service ruminations regards David in Ottawa. Okay, well it's interesting that they're putting it in butter I know insulin is really soluble in water and that's why you know you say boil them in a big pot of water after you let them age for a while but you guys got any thought you got any thoughts on this Harold Mr. inulin man

Well, I mean the scum rising to the top that sounds to me like it's it's going to be probably as rich in stuff other than inulin I mean proteins and you know, surface active materials. So, you know, my my sense is it's not going to be especially enriched in stuff that's going to cause trouble

me as well Yeah, except for Jerusalem workshops themselves. I looked it up because I had the benefit of knowing that I was going to be asked this question like, you know, an hour or two ago, but they're like 20% annual in or something crazy like that, right? They're like yeah, if they're high in insulin and insulin itself forms can in certain circumstances form a gel I didn't read it carefully. I didn't realize it was in butter so that's a different that they're doing it in butter so I mean, obviously the scum flow into the top is probably water soluble stuff expelled from the chokes, right. Everything is is like like everyone can tolerate a certain amount of this garbage not gonna you know what I'm saying in their system right it's it's a soluble fiber that's the that's the daily deal with soluble fiber. So you can't digest it or the definition of fiber I think basically is that you can't digest it right that's really doesn't have to be fiber. It doesn't have to be a fiber as long as it's oh my god, I just in my mind now I'm thinking of The Sandlot because whenever I say fiber fiber, it really is, you know that, you know, sandlot they don't know I'm missing the roof or ever. You never seen this movie, Jack. Anyone sees his course forever? Yes, for in there anyway. So the point being that it goes into your gut and then the microbes in your gut. They can digest this stuff just fine. They produce a whole boatload of gas and there you have it, right. But the more you eat of it, probably the more accustomed you get to it, the less of a big dose that your gut microflora get and the more you can handle it, wouldn't you say? That's true, Harold?

Yes, that's that's certainly the fact when it comes to beans that's been studied in bean flatulence. Not Not to my knowledge with inulin flatulence. The other thing to know about the particular bugs that you're feeding is that it's the benefit of bacteria that are especially fond of inulin and fruit to sands and things like that. And they're of all the bugs in our gut apparently the ones that are doing us the most good most of the time. So I actually think that you know, throwing a few slices of Jerusalem artichoke and to your daily your daily diet is probably a really good idea.

And that's the those are the bacteria that they dope into Jamie the Kersey Jamie Lee Curtis is feminine poop yogurt, right?

I don't know about that.

Octavia right. Is Am I wrong? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I think that's what they do. I think it's what they put in the I don't know why. It's only for women like why can't can't men also benefit from this is is there some sort of a gender No, from the bacteria doped yogurt to make your poo? Is there is there an actual difference between the genders in the what the yogurt does to your body? Clearly, we've not studied this Yeah, this needs to be literally nobody knows Stasi to know anything about this. Have you seen the Kirsten wig imitation of Jamie Lee Curtis pooping herself on Saturday Night Live were worth a watch. Okay, so the other thing is is that a lot of this is in small amounts obviously this isn't going to do much is if you gorge on this stuff and you're not used to it is when you're really going to have the hammer come down on you right.

Exactly. Yeah. And the the raw or the the more likely that is

so Peter Kim is using was using chicory root which also is extremely high in insulin and for making tablets for the museum of food and drink and originally we were worried about the dose level of soluble fiber that these me Lindsey's folks are beginning. So Peter graciously ate about 15 times as many pills as the average guests could hope to consume and what happened to you I

got myself a stack of magazine candles myself nice little Angelyn piece now it's fine, man. Yeah, I'm basically we, we did some calculations on what typical tolerance levels are for insulin and figured that even if a small child ate 100 of the Use it probably still be okay. So, and I indeed was alright so yeah, but yeah, yeah.

Nice. Oh here's a question I have for anyone that's ever thought about this. So where else do we deal with insulin a lot? Anyone? Anyone any first of all insulin insulin, basically long chain fructose okay long chain fructose. Let's just get that out of the way. So, agave inulin, agave, and artichokes, right. Regular artichokes, I don't know. I don't know chicory root, Jerusalem artichokes, agave, but my point is, has anyone made a a distilled spirit with Jerusalem artichokes? Like a super long bake like you do for Agave for Agave bean? Yes. And then make them into a liqueur. We ever heard of anything like that, Harold? Anyone? Oh,

that sounds like a great idea. Right?

I think I was gonna do it too. Well, I

don't know. Do you ever like they grow in rather northern climes? Right. It's not a southern vegetable, isn't it? Like, isn't it? Can I grow it here? Yeah,

yeah, sure can.

So you know, like, I don't have a ready access to maybe I'll try it this year. I'll try to mash them out and do some distillation. But anyone out there? I'm sure someone in the cooking issues. World is just a kind of lunatic who's tried it? And so like, you know, let me know. But I think we could have a new distilled spirit on our hands. Well, would you? Would you call that? JJ chokes a Farka J. Oh, well, you remember you got to default it because you're going to you're going to be cooking the you're going to be cooking the EverLiving snot out of it. Anyways, I

don't know, sudden, sudden liquor or sun moves. Why did he grow from flour?

Oh, they're related to sunflowers? Yeah.

It's an it's an eight. if I'm remembering correctly, it's a native of one of the few food items that come from North America.

There you go. It's our you know, it's the North. It's the north part of North America. Because remember, Mexico is North America people. north part of Northern America is native. It's like our Agave only, you know, you don't have to wait so long to harvest it. And I wonder where they wonder whether there'll be a lot of big flavor differences between different to Anna someone, someone's someone's done it and they're going to be like days. The reason no one makes us It tastes like garbage. It takes you want I mean riprap probably have like a, someone who's done a lot of the stealing of raw materials, do it first so that we you know, get rid of the control of this person just doesn't know what the hell they're dealing with distillation. You know, I mean, anyway, but I think it'd be much more interesting to do it the old school way actually cook it until it until you get sugar and then ferment it rather than because you can just hit it with enzymes. And then that's the only mean also, like insulin breakdown I was looking up today really, really rapid at low pH, right? But the fact of the matter is, you have to get below about pH four before the hydrolysis of inulin to fructose is very rapid at normal cooking temperatures, and who wants their Jerusalem artichokes to be you know, more tart than a tomato? I mean, doesn't sound right to me to say Would you want that mean? Like, hey, you could speed it up by adding acid but on the other hand, now all your juice and also tastes like acid. You know what I mean?

I usually fry mine in Alaska, myself.

Don't be going off against the lessor. Oh, have we had this conversation on the air already? Are you making me redo a conversation we've already had on the air. Yes, seriously? Have we? Jack? Do you remember me ever talking about Olestra? You do because you've heard you work with me in the real life. And we talked about it on air. Jack stepped away, but I don't remember. Yeah, well, we probably have there's nothing wrong. But there are many things wrong with Alaska, like they bind fat soluble vitamins. So you have to dope yourself with them. Because otherwise you poop out all the fat soluble vitamins. But as long as you're using a solid Olestra it's not going to run out of your behind without your knowing.

Elliott, remember that's a really

I tell you like again, like briefly that the reason people didn't like the Olestra potato chips was because they were made with hydrogenated fat, and they tasted greasy. In fact, they and I've said this before on air, they had to develop a hot air curtain to blow the outside layer of fat off of the potato chips to reduce the grease and it's because you're not supposed to fry potato chips and hydrogenated fat not for health reasons. For taste reasons. It just doesn't taste right. For the same reason that you're not supposed to fry a doughnut in a liquid fat because it doesn't taste right it tastes greasy. Do you like a greasy doughnut Daniel?

Well, no I don't I don't love greasy donut Harold greasy.

You like a greasy doughnut? No, no. Didn't think so. Hey, actually, I don't know whether you've done it. If you have time. We have another question that you might have done some work on it. Okay, this is from halfwords from I got a bread baking question. In particular, it's about the TangZhong rule that is used to mix into a bread recipe to make fluffy bread. Now what we're talking about here is like the water rule where you pre make a roux and then you mix it into the bread you know about this Daniel? I don't I don't, I don't bake much. So this is new to me. It's been getting a lot of its started out in in, I guess, the early 2000s. But it's been getting more and more play. You know, the Asian style bread that is really fluffy. And lasts a long time. Harold, you you you've been following this or No, no, I have not. Yeah. All right. Well, so then we'll just go on. Okay. So just so you know what the basic premise here is, while I'll read the question first. Let me see. Well, I understand that it produces a fluffier and softer final bread product. Could you explain the science of why the roux would have this effect on the bread? In the past? I've played with adding some milk into the bread and make it softer as well. How does this rule affect the bread versus just using milk in a recipe? And preliminary research on the web's shows stuff about Super hydration? Thanks for such a good podcast. Nice. And by the way, oh, this is from don don vo in Berkeley, California. He actually calls you out Peter. He says hello to David Anastasia not stars. The star sia Lopez, Jackie molecules and Peter sandwich aficionado Kim. So Peter, you get this shout out in this as well. So basically, what the the Oh, and also says got the BT x cube and he thinks it's fantastic has made an improved Clover Club for him. Okay, so here's the here's the deal you take and before you take a portion of water, typically it's about five to one, so about five parts water, one part flour. And it's usually a real, you know, not that large amount of the water but the water and you cook it like you're making a roux. However, the traditional, traditional the way that it's written in recipes, originally, everyone's like, Oh, keep it to exactly 65 degrees Celsius, right. And so I made I haven't made didn't have chance to make bread, but I made one that I took the 65 on the dot, and one that I boil just to see the difference. So what happens is, is you're partially when you take it to 65, you're partially pasting, partially swelling the starch, but you haven't completely gotten all the starch, you know, fully, you know, swell with water and paste it out yet, right. And so what you're really doing is just adding a boat ton more water to the bread than you can do any other way the same. Because if you had added that much water to it, without pre cooking it, you'd lack structure the water by pre swelling, the starch gives you enough structure to form the bread and allow it to cook properly. Without it. That's it, that's basically what it's doing. Wouldn't you guys agree just from the description I've given, that's what's happening.

Undoubtedly, so it's like a super hydrated recipe.

So you so you can take something and have the workability of like a 70, or 80% Hydration dough, but you could be hydrating it kind of much higher. Now, I don't know what the difference is, um, passes Herald you can't do it. This is boiled after it's cooled. And this is basically so this is boiled. And this is the same ratio, it's pretty much turned to a gel after it's gone back. So that might be a hindrance to the dough. And then this here is the 65 degree and that's still more like putting or runny, they are different, they're very different. And so my feeling is folks is that don't bother, what you're doing here is you're just allowing yourself to add more water to the dome. I mean, that's basically what you're doing and maintaining the same workability that's, that's what's happening here. There might be some other like Fancy Dance stuff that's happening when it's not fancy to undergrads but you know, fancy dance the as its as it's coming up, but that's basically what's happening as for the temperature, I don't think you have to be too anal because a the wheat starch is just going to start swelling and pasting when it hits about 6065 C. So if you just take it off as soon as it goes super, like thick, but like as soon as it starts to thicken up on you, you're going to be good cuz you know, I really wouldn't worry that much about you know, and also if you're going to cool it for a long time I don't know whether or not you're working on the fact that it's retrograding to get the extra structure or you're getting what's called starch setback to add extra structure in which case maybe it would make a difference if you heated it longer or not. These are all interesting subjects but I'd have to actually bake some bread figure that out and I didn't have time to do that. This morning. I'm

just as curious about the use of the word roux here I think of a rule is cooking flour in the fat but yeah, this is essentially is is any rule like a slur of flour slurry that is then cooked whether it's in a water or

not that I know of Harold you know of the why they use this category. Any guesses on this terminology?

Or? Or I think Daniel was right that Ru is flour cooked in fat. Yeah, not not in water

and then added to and then liquid added to it too. And then presumably cooking in fat, right is to prevent clumping when you add the liquid mean the only purpose of the fat right just to prevent clumping, it's all it's doing right? Is there any other reason for it other than it allows you to evenly heat the flour up to a higher stage of cooking?

Oh, I bet it makes a difference for the flavor. You know, even a neutral oil, you're gonna get reactions to take place. That wouldn't happen if it was just dry heat

in. Yeah, okay. Fair. So different flavor from adding the oil afterwards. Yep, yep. Fair enough. No, anyway. And this also, obviously, you could do this with non wheat starches and all sorts of other things as other people have done. It's an interesting thing. So it's worth it's worth some experimentation. Now, I don't know Harold, if you have to if you have to go if you can stay. But we got a question. Daniel wrote a article on Nick civilization for this seriously, it's correct. What's your current title there anyway?

Oh, culinary director, culinary director

Okay. And you wrote an article on Nick's motivation very kindly actually gave a shout out to an article I had written Oh yeah,

cuz I used I used it heavily for

information. So for those of you that don't know Nixon was ation is the process by which you cook you can do it with other grants actually, but you park you park cook corn in in an alkaline environment. It could park in an alkaline environment, it dissolves the coat on the outside of the corn partially dissolves it, you partially then rub that off, it changes the taste it changes the reality. rheology of it originally was designed to allow you to be able to grind corn easily by hand on a stone thing called a metallic day. But it is the reason that cornmeal doesn't taste like a tortilla and that a tortilla tastes like a tortilla is the process of externalization is also the changes that the corn goes through in terms of partial cooking of the starches going back to what we're talking about with this with this route, whatever you want to call it bread technique, and the change of the outside of the seed coat into some form of weird hydrocolloid, plus the addition of the fat from the germ because it's a whole corn kind of situation. All of that together makes masa which is what makes an awesome tortilla. Normally it is a pain in the butt to make. Daniel you posted a recipe where you used a food processor and what was your secret? I know what it is I'm so asking you to ask is Is your

right so I mean the big challenge for people at home is is grinding the corn properly. And a lot you know you can try a food processor but that comes with its own challenges mainly that in order to get everything in the food processor to to spin sufficiently enough to grind it to a point where you can form tortillas you have to add too much water to the mix. And then you have then you have a masa that's that's far too wet and almost bordering on a batter type consistency actually more like a hummus think of like a calmness. You can't really make tortillas from that so then basically adding adding some Messiah Edina masa harina back in which is which is the storebought convenience product of of of masa that what do they do they they dry it somehow and turn it into a flower they

Yeah, they have a large production line where they have like continuous basically next embolization goes through a soap tank then they then they I think I don't know I think they dry it and grind it I don't think that they Harold Do you know I don't think that they went I don't think they wet grind it and then and then dry it I think they dry it and then grind it

Yeah, I'm not sure. So maybe like grown postal or something like that

II sort of like dried he but not hasn't already been hasn't been re boiled up to the yes. But yes, the I think that's how they do it. I don't know I used to know but you know it's been a long time. I mean Motlow as you point out in your article like just buying my sector you look it's my Serena Maseca is like the brand name it you know that everyone gets Quaker also makes one. There's a there's a bunch of people that make them and it is a large step above a large step above buying pre made tortillas. Yeah, like once you eat a tortilla and let it cool down again. And then put it in your fridge. You have lost you've lost Yeah, they're horrible. They're good for frying.

You can frame yes right

they're good for frying. They're good yeah, you know fry them make sure lucky let's do something like this but like for like actually eating no freaking went off right now they do masa harina is, you know are Maseca is a very is good. It's much better than a pre made tortilla which most of the pre made tortillas that you are getting our first first insult is they're made with Maseca. And the second one is that they have cooked them like a week ago and added a bunch of stuff so that it can sit basically at room temperature fundamentally, molding in its own, like plastic container. Yeah, you ever noticed that? Sometimes they smell like ammonia. Yeah, because they they're all doped up with stuff to stop them from going off on you. But that's, you know, all of those smells go away when you fry him. That's why that those are the only chips I use for frying. There's no excuse to buy tortilla chips and pre fried tortilla chips. They're not as good. And they're really freaking expensive.

Right? Unless you need to a lot. I could see an argument if you were doing a party, you just fill a huge chip bowl for your Glock with you know,

but that's when I start frying is when I do that. Because like, think about it this way you're buying a 20 ounce bag of like medium quality tortilla chips is going to run you like for something dollars, I think at a store, right? And you could buy one of those like well over, I forget how much the stacks of tortillas are but they're over 20 weigh over 20 ounces. Right? And they're thicker, better. And they're like $1 And it's so fast to fry them I most of my home frying now, Connecticut I have my deep fryer but you know at home home, I do most of my frying and walk. A reason is is oil expansion is a lot less dangerous in a walk, because it's constantly increasing its diameter as it goes up. So people as long as you don't overfill your walk you have a lot of safety room on oil expansion when you're working. And tortillas are the most forgiving thing on earth to fry. Because all you're trying to do is expel the water and get them crunchy. So you oil and wok everything I've said this before today, take the tortillas out do the back break snack snacks, break them individually separated condiments steak fry. I'm done. Like I could crank out in under 20 minutes I could have, you know, big shopping bag 30. You know by shopping bags full of tortilla chips. It's the way I really like it's one of the few things at home that I would recommend. Frying at home is much easier than doing any other way. But anyway, the point is, is that if someone asked me should I try this recipe that you wrote? And my answer is yes. It's like, is it worth making? Like making your own nixtamal? The nixtamal parts? Not hard to the grinding? That's a pain in the butt?