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Hello, and welcome to cooking issues. This is Dave Ramsey, your host coming to you live on air Radio Network every Tuesday this time a little late. I don't know whatever but noonish to like late this is your normal time. No, but I feel like it's late cuz we have a guest today. That's true on Harry's Radio Network. Broadcasting from Roberta's pizzeria in Bushwick Brooklyn joined as usual with Anastasia the hammer Lopez it was good we got Jackie molecules in the booth How you doing?

Great just got back from Charleston.

I was it was good. Yeah, yeah,

I got there early and drove through the Lowcountry tell those weird little islands.

Well, let's talk about that in a second. We have a special guest in the studio. The maestro The Food Lab which sold how many billion copies

not quite a billion yet. We're working on it working on

it he Lopez all billion billion selling book New York Times bestsellers. All right. Yeah, for a little while. Yeah, I think there's something like a billion. In fact, we share a publisher. And so I met yet an editor. Yeah, I don't even I think of her as like the whole that kind of Gordon Shelley, you know, world renowned editor anyway, so like, you're the success of your book actually got her off my back for a while. Not wasn't for a while worried about my second book, because of the enormous success of a second book come in. Yet. Yes. It was awesome. No, no knock, no cocktails, no cocktails? No recipes, I think. Oh, okay. Yeah. Food rants. Yeah. adult coloring books. I'd have to have Mustachio do them and then steal her ideas because this dossier is the Anastasia is the line drawing queen. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I could get my wife to do it. But that'd be weird to be easier. Like we could just come out with a book together. And as I get to say, Do this and the Stasi would do the line drugs. One of the one of the lesser known Anastasia Lopez never would have guessed that. Yeah, no, it's true. The Stasi is a is a inveterate doodler, and you like working in pen right? Yeah, I do. Like not pencil pen pen pen. She's a pen worker like pens. Although you don't like fancy pens don't give a rat's ass about fancy rat's behind rather family show that you're like you know any old any old Bic and you'll pick will do. So Jack. So now that we know that we're all here, so tell us about the islands he went to which islands did you go?

Edisto Island and St. Helena Island? Yeah, yeah.

Is that where like all the Gulf stuffs happen? No, I got

some Frogmore stew.

Yeah, what's in Frogmore stew.

It's like just shrimp that you have to peel yourself and like, boiled potatoes and corn, that kind of thing.

Presumably it doesn't taste like the Cape Cod version of that, though.

Well, you know, I can't say that I've ever really spent much time in Cape Cod. Living. I know. It's weird, right?

What's your Cape Cod equivalent? What's your east coast? What's your North East Beach mentality?

Like I'm from Long Island, you

know? All right. So it's the same crap, I guess. So. It's all the same crap. We're on Long Island.

I'm from a place called West Babylon. So it's like South Shore border of Nassau, Suffolk and right in the middle.

So you're not really a beach. thing.

But you drive out to Montauk. Yeah, and hang out with Billy Joel or wow. Oh, yeah.

No, I've never been to mind I really don't like actually. You don't like whoa, what? Sorry. Oh,

stars here that air that sorry stars.

Stars huge Billy Joel fan. I actually like how stars from the west coast. So it's like it how can you come from Long Island and not like Billy Joel doesn't make any freaking sense.

Because I always hated Long Island even when I was a kid.

Well, I mean, you know, I came from I came from Jersey. You know, back in the day, it's where I went to elementary school. I still like Bon Jovi and Bruce Springsteen. I was gonna say and Bruce Yeah, well, I didn't like Bon Jovi at the time, but with age comes perspective on how kind of perfect Slippery When Wet is like almost like, you know, Moses came down it was like, slippery when wet. You know what I mean? It's like, when you think about the perfection and like the it's like, you know that childhood fans, it's awesome. You know what I mean? Like, I didn't like it at the time.

I'm over Springsteen's fan and Joe Bon Jovi, actually, yeah.

Are you from Jersey? No, I'm from New York. Oh, wow. Yeah, yeah. So you get to look down on us, folks. We're in New York originally.

I grew up in Harlem.

Oh, real New York. Yes. You were one of those city kids that I hated. Now, now now my kids are those city kids. But I think I think I've said this before. I think it's it's a lot different now. Because you can be cool and like live in the suburbs now because of the internet. Right? Right. Very cool. anywhere these days. Yeah. Whereas back in the day, you know, we felt like losers like us suburban kids. We felt like losers. What about you and Covina does loser loser. Although the internet was around when when you were in high school? It happened too late, though. For you? Yeah. Yeah. And the Internet didn't happen until basically I was done with college.

I got I got an email when I was in high school, but it was like internal email in the school.

I literally remember when, like, I saw the first email I've ever seen. And by the way, you know, the guy that invented email just died like two days ago. Really? Yeah. I forget his name. He died. Like he was like, 74 He died like two days ago. And, you know, he popularized the at symbol, the whole thing, like invented email. I remember in like, way before anyone had ever cared about email when there was like, you know, like, 100 people with email addresses. I was a junior in high school. This is in like, 8788, something like that. And this guy was like, have this thing called Email watch. And he like typed an email. I was like, this is worthless. I was like, who's ever gonna use this crap? This is garbage. Nonsense, man. Did

he send it to you from his Apple Newton. That was early 90s. We had to eat

we had to eat. We had it was an Apple TV. Which of course you know, I coveted because of the green screen so much better than my Radio Shack, trs 80 computer. And I just remember thinking this is not it's not gonna go anywhere.

No, no, this is worthless. It's like watching TV on the internet. Yeah,

I forget that dude's name, but I hope he's a billionaire. Yeah. Anyway, he deserves it. You know, being an early adopter of something like email. You should win something for that.

Yeah, you probably get a cooler email address. Yeah, he's gone. Oh, one instead of John 387. Yeah. Well,

this is you know, obviously, this is way pre. There was no www that time. Literally, you had to like know exactly where someone was and send them an email. You know what I mean? Okay. So you have anything you want to plug about the book? Anything specific? You want to talk about anything?

No, I mean, I don't know. Buy it if you want to don't if you don't

know Anyway, call your questions to Kenji at 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. All right. So let's, let's hit some stuff that we have here,

actually, like jumped the line because I have something that I'm interested in hearing both of you talk about Matt. Is that cool? So there's all these articles about baby leaves lately that I've been reading and kind of like challenging the notion that they actually do anything right in a big you know, start over I mean,

they tastes like bae. Yeah.

Have you seen this kanji?

Have you seen these? I have had people ask me. I actually wrote a I wrote an article like a couple of years ago. called What was it was a question I got from from a reader and question was, what's the point of bay leaves? Like? They do? Yeah, you can taste it. And of course, like, depending on where you get your Bailey's, whether it's like a Turkish bay leaf, which is what general what you generally find dried, versus like a California bayleaf. What you find fresh, like they have different flavors, but they Yeah, they they definitely add flavor. Delicious. You can you can tell the difference side by side, if you taste

they are merely the most popular of the aromatic leaves, which almost all of the all of this style of aromatic tree leave come from the Laurel family, right. So you have aromatic avocado leaves where some aren't which I believe are the same family as Bay. I think I don't know that they're all in the same family. But I know Laurie ice has, I'm pretty sure I gotta go look it up cuz I wouldn't expect him to talk about it. But like, there's a lot of aromatic leaves in that in that kind of family. I don't know whether like SassaFrass and spicebush are in the same general family. But like a lot of those, you know, that family has these kinds of aromatic leaves. And of course, they make a difference now the crappier the leaf is, let me give you an example. I have some crappy, you know, spice spice class. That's a brand of spice right here, spice class. So I have like crappy spice class Bailey's. And so I have to use like four or five times as many of those to get the same play get the same flavor. And they're a pain. So I tend to tie them up by the by the Yeah, and then throw them in, in like larger quantities. But perhaps you've heard of the spice Jack Old Bay, which is like has like a huge hit of ground up bein Bayes

to be clear, I can taste when Bailey's are used. I'm saying that there were a lot of articles posted. A lot of my friends were sharing. It was on the owl who wrote it. What's the owl? Yeah, well,

was Was it some like angry internet person just trying to make angry internet,

it was like part of humor, but also

it's blog. You know, you know, the one one thing about Bailey's, though, is that, and this is different from most other herbs is that, you know, well, similarly to most other observers, a big difference between dried and fresh but, but the difference in bay leaves is that the dried versions are almost always the Turkish bay leaves and the fresh versions are almost always California bay leaves and they have a very different flavor. Like the California bay leaves have a much stronger sort of eucalyptus. It's not the same plant, right? Yeah, it's not even the same plant. Yeah, they're both sold as Bailey so a lot of people will say, Oh, the fresh bay leaves are always better than the dry but but that's not always the case because it adds a flavor that's quite different from a standard Bay flavor. So I almost always use dry dry bay leaves that I store in the freezer.

Well fret, you know, is a huge misconception people have about everything in the world that fresh is better than the dry. Yeah, it's like it. They're almost always different. And so anything that is sometimes something is different and worse.

Sometimes it's just different sometimes it's a different like ginger, like fresh ginger versus dry. Ginger, different. Totally different.

dry basil, bad.

dried basil, bad dried parsley, dried chives, not good.

Having tried really dried, freeze dried chives of heavy loaded. You know what, like,

talking if you go and buy a bottle of spice class, countless dry styles.

You know, I got in big trouble with with my wife because I talk about this maybe because, you know, I've been saying we've been doing the 70 style potato bars recently, you know, where you just make a big s big, big potato

and oh, right, right, right. Yeah.

So it's like Taco Night, but it's like big potato night because I'm like, you know, whatever bringing it back. And so, my wife was cutting up the chives. And she did like the ultimate chive like horror show of chopping them long.

I kind of like that sometimes like in a soup or something.

I don't know flavor when you chop them long. The chives labor. Yeah, but then they stick in your teeth. I don't know. I'm not sure but you know what you shouldn't do? You shouldn't like you shouldn't look at the chives that your wife has shot and be like, What the hell is why? Look on a baked potato

better than crushing them at

least Yeah. Yeah, that was

the first like fancy restaurant job I had on my first day and on my first day of service, I was chopping chives with a line and I had no idea what I was doing then and the chef spark Barbara Lynch is number nine part of the chef like she walked by my station while I was talking to the tribes without even looking at me like just hearing the sound the tribes were making as I was traveling and she's like you're doing those wrong. Throw them out because you can hear the kinds of crap Yeah, the crushing noise the crushing years. Yeah, because I was crushing them instead of slicing them.

Yeah, well, I like I like even small discs like that like two little tiny you

want them to be sliced thinner than they are why

that's the best. Like although there are painted dos out like that because they tend to stick in clump if you do it ahead, but it's life big city, especially if you crush it if you slice crushed

if your knife is sharp and you slice well and they they stay nice and separate I think

now Matthew this so chives, would you ever use ice naturally so obviously like the application for blended chives is ranch dressing, right? So ranch dressing deal chairs and other stuff, but in general, is chive ever it's expensive. So is it worthwhile to ever blue ever blender we're using Different ally and for that, I wouldn't

I mean, you know, I've seen like chive oil right, and then you blend chives there, but I'm gonna

make it though. Given that stuff No,

I mean I did. I didn't like yeah like the early 2000s and restaurants chive oil color on the soup.

Yeah, but could you cheat on the chive oil and really use a different Allium and scallion tops?

Probably what's gonna mean Scotland's tastes

a little different in the oil?

I don't know. I don't know. Maybe they don't.

I think it's just one of those things that people used to do. Maybe Maybe

tribes are myth maybe? Maybe there's no point in charge.

No charge. They're good. I like shy sighs You try fan? Yeah, just as like such. But anyway, this thing about Bay? Who's the owl? Who's this blogger? Who's the owl? We know that?

No, we don't we don't know them. Let's see. Can we call them this is like Sally Kelly. Kinda boy.

This is like saying, Oh, we have, you know, wine flavor. You're like, yeah, yeah, wine has a flavor. What are you talking about? bayleaf? Like, did this person have like a negative experience with Bally's? Do they think it's a scam? Are these like the kind of people that don't like modern art because they think the wool is being pulled over their eyes? It

could be someone who has your spice class bailiff. So use one one bayleaf in the soup and don't notice it because it's a shitty bayleaf. That's

true. I think that's the issue. I do think that's the issue. Yeah, then

fine use? The answer is used more. The good thing about Bay is that, yeah, most recipes tell you to use a Bailey for two. And that won't really do much with most of the Bailey's low quality baby leaves that people have. So I invariably triple the amount that the recipe calls for. And bayleaf is not the kind of thing that rides unless you go way over, it doesn't really ride over the top. But like, you can't like I never make a stock without Bay.

I very rarely make like a super stew or anything like that without rarely. Yeah,

I mean, it's, it's good. And like the whole point of it is it's an integrative space. So it's not supposed to. It's not like nostos his least favorite cumin, which is like supposed to hit you on the head. You know what I mean?

It boosts boosts other flavors, pretty well.

Stars. Why don't you like human? I don't know,

we've gone through before. I

don't want to and I know, I know. There was a comment in the chat room. They said how about getting Kenji to talk about his vegan month just for anastasius benefit? All right, but

before we do that, Jack, we had had a comment in on the on the Twitter from Geek Girl with a number which I forget the number anyway, she wants to know how to get on the chat rooms because apparently we're not making it like clear how to get into the chat rooms.

Oh, it's clear. Have you in the

chat? Well tell her how to get on the freakin chat rooms.

How do you feel this person emailed us and then said they could figure it out. So you go to the website, you click play. Okay, it's gonna pop up with a player. And then lay the chats did like pull up the live stream first. And then you just click on the heritage radio logo right there and it pulls up the chat room. You could also go to pixlr.com/heritage-radio-network if you want to go manual with it there

mixer mix learn that's the sounds like the sounds like a like a Flintstones character.

Kind of does I have a caller if you want to take the call. Alright. Caller you're on the air.

Hi, Dave. And Kenji. It's Alex from Santa Barbara. And I was wondering several debates for me about the liquid smoke Brian versus actually smoking because it's been coming up a lot that you can get pretty close to them with liquid smoking a little bit of nitrate in your grind for let's say 48 hours and then you low temp out for 36 on let's say, you know brisket. And it's basically the same and I don't believe it, but I've never done a side by side. And I want you guys to explain the math to me. Like ChefSteps and or close enough to be the same.

My friend I've said similar things not. I said similar things mostly been pork rib recipe I wrote a couple months ago. It's I mean it's not exactly the same and it's not exactly the same in the same way that like anything you cook su VT is not going to be exactly the same as something you cook via another method right like su V brisket is sui brisket. It doesn't it's not exactly the same as barbecue brisket. Not at all the same. Yeah, but that doesn't mean I don't think that means better or worse. But as far as the smoke flavor goes. I mean, you can get smoke flavor from a liquid smoke brine that that will I mean, that will make people think that it was smoked. Well, I mean, you don't get you don't get like bark development, right? Like things like that. But but it is it is it is literally the same stuff that is getting deposited on your meat while you're smoking it

minus some stuff minus some stuff. Usually.

Yeah, what's the minus stuff that will be sucks? I can taste the difference. I mean, I know you're gonna get different products, depending on how you cook it, but just the flavor of the smoke.

They get they get rid of a lot of the theoretically cancer causing like polycyclic hydrocarbon stuff. Right? Isn't that like? I think so. Yeah. And they they also, you know, the issue is usually you're in an oil phase or a water phase because most they're not So like, presumably, some is gonna, like some smoke compounds like we would gravitate towards the oil phase versus the water. So you're probably only getting the water phase stuff, right. But

when you're when you're, when you're smoking in a smoker, you're mostly getting only water phase stuff anyway, because the the smoke is being transported by the moist air, right?

Well, it's actual particulate matter as well. Right. Right. Right. There's some you know, and so like, like, I noticed, like, you know, when the chef's used to use the smoking gun to the US anymore, I think some people do. Yeah, you had noticed that, like, the particulate matter would settle out after a couple minutes. But in Smoke aroma would stay in the thing, because there is like a heavy kind of a particular thing. But I mean, the truth of the matter is, is that smoking does a number of things besides imparting flavor, right? So you're being exposed to a particular particular atmosphere, you're being exposed to a particular temperature at a particular humidity. And so you know, like he was saying, like, you get the box with different things happen from a technical standpoint that are a lot of times difficult to separate from, from just the flavor, just a flavor. And especially, especially with things like crust development, it's virtually impossible to separate the, like, the textural difference, and that the cooking difference from the flavor. It's just not not possible, right? Right. And the other thing to be aware of is that liquid smoke is produced at a very specific temperature for a very specifically so you smoking something for real might be different. If your temperatures are higher, lower, you're using different you're gonna generate different kinds of compounds because pyrolysis very, very complicated stuff is happening. The other thing is that I find that like smoke applications more maybe with powder than with the liquids, it's super easy to overdose on it. And it goes like bitter.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And people I think people do often overdose and so but I think people often also overdose on smoke when they're when they're actually smoking things too. Right? Because I always think I mean, the smoke should be it should be seasoning like like, like cumin or bayleaf, or whatever, you know, it should be seasoning. It shouldn't be the only thing to taste in there. But But I will tell you that you know, in the testing I've done for you know, getting smoke flavor in to meet through methods that aren't smoking that brining and then Brian with liquid smoke, I think is the most effective way to keep it subtle. And to get good penetration without you know, it's very different to do that than to say like add liquid smoke straight to like a barbecue sauce. What you just paint on the surface, right? Right like grinding it overnight in a in a in a brian with liquid smoke gives you a much more sort of natural tasting smoke penetration. I'm

gonna get my behind kick. I don't really like barbecue sauce. Well, we're kind of like Kansas City. Like, I just don't I don't like goofy. Yeah, I don't like goofy.

Yeah, I'm more of like a like a vintage like vinegar sauce.

Yeah, yeah. I don't even consider like, I know that they do. I consider that like, red pepper and vinegar. Like I don't consider that but I'm gonna grow a little a little sugar. Maybe. But yeah, I don't consider that. Like when someone says barbecue sauce. You're thinking Kansas

City style. Ketchup in molasses? Yeah. So I'm not I'm not a huge fan of that.

I like it on French fries. Okay, you know what I mean? Like, I think it's okay. As like, you know, kind of a secondary catch up. Yeah, but it's not.

I'm with you on that too. Yeah.

People love it. I'm gonna get my I'm happy that you like it. Whoever you are. I'm not against it. In theory. It's just not my it's not my cup of tea on on. on me.

I have another caller. Caller you're on the air.

Dan, Seattle. Couple of pressure canner questions? Okay. The first one I got a very big new all aluminum pressure Canada for Christmas.

Me by American Canada Corp. Yep. Yep.

So my first question is, can I make the stock in it before I put it in jars? I mean, the bare aluminum really matter matter for stock?

Depends on what you believe. Like, if you believe that aluminum is bad to cook in, then it matters. If you don't as I don't, then you know, you won't bother

flavor wise I don't think you're gonna taste aluminum and you're not in stock

a ton of lemon juice or vinegar or whatever.

The hard part about even like small amounts of like, you know, in some classic stocks will be like a couple tomatoes. But does this not going to do anything? You know what I mean? But the the I wouldn't use I guess you can't fit it in the dishwasher anyway, because it's so big. I was gonna say like, like where you don't want to do on that is like, harsh detergents on it because it's, I believe it's cast and so it'll get poorest and pitted after a while at the bottom and I cook it

wouldn't it wouldn't fit anyway. I mean, it's a monstrously huge thing.

Yeah. I mean, the hard part about that pressure canners But if you're using them to do anything other than straight canning is they are a huge ship to steer. So, you know, on a level of difficulty of getting the right heat input, I'd say it's like twice as difficult as like with a regular pressure cooker to get the heat input. Correct. Just because of its volume. Yeah, yeah. Just because it's so hard to read the right, right, right slope, right, you know, whereas like, a normal pressure cooker responds within a minute or two, like this guy could have, like, you know, four or five minutes ride up and down, right. So it takes a while to kind of dial it in. So like, what I would do is the first couple times you use it, I would kind of keep track of where your settings are based on how much you have in it, because that's pretty much you know, assuming that you use relatively constant loads. Yeah. Also things as paint you ever use one of the things kanji, they're paying to close all of those screws may look Oh, yeah, I've seen there's nothing else can do what they can do. They're huge volume. Right. But you know, pressure cooker Cahners. But do you have the regular canner lid or do you have the sterilization lid for it? The what, do you have the regular canning lid for under the sterilization lid with the tube? The regular? Yeah, the sterilization lid is it's creepy. So how does that work? So there if you're going to use it as a sterilizer, which I guess some people do in places, I don't know where who don't have sterilizers. They, they're worried that there'll be pockets of gas in it that that will cause it to not go through the sterilization procedure at the same way. So they have a they have a tube that extends down that you have to like vent out the tube to get rid of entrained non steam gases before you crank the stuff. But remember the nightmare that was done? Yep. And we crushed it tube and we were yelling at each other and screaming nightmare. Nightmare.

I use like pretty much exclusively electric pressure cookers. No, really. Yeah, you know, one. Right now, I'm using the Breville Pro, which, which has like full manual. I mean, it only goes up to 12 psi, which most electric cookers do but you can get anywhere from anywhere from 1.5 to 12 and a half psi increments and that

get like the Gleeson art,

I don't know I will drive. But it also has like, like automatic altitude adjustment and like an automatic pressure release and stuff, which is pretty nice.

Automatic altitude adjustment, so it'll go so that's that's not worth it. I was gonna say you could put it into another container jacket, like two, three psi and then hit go. That's not it's not worth it. But so it's it's actually working on pressure not on temperature.

So it has it has a pressure gauge. And it also has to temperature gauges like it has a temperature probe at the bottom and at the end at the top.

But the pressure gauge is a release or the pressure gauge is a measurement.

I'm not sure actually. I'm not sure. I don't know. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah, I'm not sure the altitude

is much more specific questions. I want to make Bucha, native Pibil in a canning jar. Can I just put the banana leaf and the port to me, whatever, like the toughest piece of pork I can get and the God in there? And is there some overwhelmingly obvious reason that wouldn't work?

I don't know. What do you think?

I think it would work.

I mean, what happens? leaves in a pressure cooker

to probably break down. I don't know, I've never tried that specifically. But I've I've stuck. I mean, I've stuck meats and like onions and things like you can make like, you know, you caramelized onions inside sealed jars and a pressure canner right

but they obviously onions obviously lose a lot of their onion potency, they get a lot more neutral and a lot sweeter in a pressure right than they would in any sort of other normal kosher. But or like, you know, if you're going to do like acid canning where it's just a boil out versus pressure, but I don't remember it's I don't know whether banana leaves are going to have a different flavor and extraction or anything around the because you know, there's that layer around the banana leaf that has that particular flavor and a leafy flavor. Yeah. which I like but I don't know what happens at pressure cooker.

I don't know if I can find out

yet do it. But there's nothing on the surface of it. It seems to think that it won't work.

I will just give that a shot. Next time I get around to it. I wound up with way too many banana leaves. Last time I made. I made this regularly. Yeah, I need to get them out of my freezer.

All right. Well let us know what happens. Thanks. Thanks.

I got a question from the chat room if you want to take it. Yes. Okay. Go to Kenji or Dave can you Romanized fresh pasta also, instead of doing the baking soda technique? Can I just use kansui? I don't know if that's yes,

yes. And yes. Okay. There you go. But I don't know that you'd want me depends on what you like, why you're doing it.

He said to use the Modernist Cuisine recipe for ramen and broke a pasta machine. dryer. Now no.

Oh, well, wait, listen. So physically the question is, is is it going to go through his pasta machine?

I guess so. Can you read Dominos fresh pasta. Oh,

yes. You. Yes. I mean, obviously this is it makes sense. Yeah. So

is he asking can you take like, can you make fresh Italian style pasta and cook it in? In baking soda water? And will it taste like possibly?

Can you do yellow yellow Alkalyn noodles through a regular pasta machine? I mean, I would assume you can Yeah, well, yeah. The question is is like if you're gonna make an Italian shaped me like look fundamentally yellow Alkalyn noodles are a is like a fairly normal pasta dough with constantly Yeah, right. Yeah, so like, typically a

little bit drier than like an Italian style dough. But yeah, but it'd be harder to push through the pasta machine but

rather you could up the water, you could still get the yellow, some of the bounce and the constantly flavor. But it'll taste like that. So you're basically just making ramen in a different shapes.

Yeah, there's, you know, like ug, ug ramen. He does. He does like a bunch of different pasta shapes with ramen dough. So he makes like, ramen, ramen flavor, or Katha and stuff like that, right?

The key thing, the real baller move is to do forget, forget making freakin noodles. Make a lasagna, so that it retains its texture when it's being cooked. I mean, that's the baller thing to do,

and then slice it afterwards or just yeah,

like in other words, instead of using like Italian style pasta for although you know who makes you don't really want to use fresh frozen anyway, unless it's a very specific thing. Not sure you would want like a dried Romanized but not like fried and pre cooked Romanized unless you're gonna do the thing but like, what's an application for pasta where you really want that the texture the bounce? Right wherever pasta tends to disintegrate ramen, but that'd be that's the reason to Romanized something

Yeah, for chicken chicken noodle soup that you're gonna put in a can. Yeah,

he specifies is what I'm asked. What I'm asking is to make fresh Italian noodles then. Romanized.

So oh, so cook. So using that hack where you cook it in water, like with baking soda or constantly and it gets a little bit of ramen like that ramen flavor.

You can get that. So does that flavor. I don't think you're going to get the texture.

Well with dry pasta. You do get that you do get the texture is different. We had a family. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. But I've never tried it with fresh pasta, but I don't see why it wouldn't work with fresh pots. Let

me put it this way. I would bet it would be more likely to work if you did the pre soak and then bring up from cold than if you did it. Because once the proteins cooked.

It's cooked. Yeah, I mean, maybe yeah, maybe with fresh pasta the problem would be that it doesn't spend enough time in there because it cooks so quickly. And it's not absorbing much of the liquid.

So how much like how close to ramen do you get if you boiling it in water with

if you do like a thin pasta like like spaghetti or Capitolina or something and cook it and water with baking soda like it gets it gets pretty close?

Yeah, yeah. In flavor or in texture. Both? Both? Really? Yeah.

Yeah. It's actually it's a good trick for if you're making like if you want to make like a pasta salad that where the pasta doesn't get mushy, you know, because pasta when you make I mean, I don't know why people make pasta salad anyway, but if you make bottling salad, but it gets it gets mushy as it sits in the dressing. If you cook it in like alkalized water, is that the right word? What? alkalis alkalized water? Yeah. The process is a lot bouncier, even after you after you cool it and dress it.

Let me tell you something about angel hair and all those small passes. They're supposed to be creamy. They're supposed to be creamy.

Yeah, but if you want to if you want it to be ramen, and you can't get ramen where you are. So

what am I? When do I like those things dry? I guess they're anchovy sauces for Christmas Eve where I like those pastas dry. How do you like how do you like you're very fine pastas. I

don't like fine bass. Yeah, for real. Me neither. Why? Because it's bad.

So I hate about people. It's not bad. It's just different. It's not your authentic stuff. It's just a different product. Yeah. I mean, Gosh, darn.

Yeah. I also know a good way to find out if you can do this, by the way.

Yes. The good old test it and see what happens. On the one oh caller you're on the air.

Hey, this is a scooter Montana. Ted, you you may have just answered a question I asked a couple of weeks ago about canning noodles. So I called and asked about getting noodles that are like the you know, the canned chicken noodle. Yeah. Do you think if you add some Alkalyn to your homemade noodles and put them into Canada, they'll hold together?

Yeah, I think well hold together better. But I would cook the noodles separately in alkalized water and then add them to the soup before you can it? I wouldn't. I wouldn't add I wouldn't add baking soda to chicken noodle soup. But I would put the noodles separately. Or if you're if you're making if you're making homemade noodles. Yeah, you can you could add conceal your baking soda or something to him. Right. Thank you.

All right. Yeah. Cool. Now, Jack was the other question you had off of the

two chat room requests. I'm gonna let you choose your own adventure here. They either want a conversation In vegan month, comparing vegan month notes or revisiting the conversation about weighing cocktail ingredients.

Okay, well, could you either

hit it on the vegan let's just talk about vegan month.

Okay, wait comparing notes as in what I've only ever done. I

don't I did raw vegan for a week raw vegan. Okay, I know that you did you did, what do you do?

Every year? Every year for a month?

Are you in the middle of that month?

Right in the middle of it right now? Yeah.

So kind of what's up with that?

Well, okay, so I started it mainly, well, I've always been interested in being like, as far as diets go, it's one of the ones that makes sense to me, just sort of from a ethical and environmental standpoint, it's made sense to me. And so, you know, maybe the first time I did it, I was sort of skeptical. And I did it mainly because I wanted to challenge myself and see what would happen and, and then it turned out that I actually had a really great month because it made me you know, made me think about recipes in a different way. Think about new ingredients and new techniques. You know, I think from a recipe development standpoint, it's been great because it just it means like, for a month of the year, I think about a completely different set of things than I normally do. But, you know, but these days, you know, when I'm when I'm not, when I'm not testing recipes or eating for work, I'd maintain mostly vegetarian, some fish, but like, I don't, I don't really go out for meat anymore. So, you know, in that sense, it's sort of changed the way I eat.

So what's your favorite thing? You discovered this vegan month?

I've been working a lot on hummus. And you know, I was actually going to be publishing the recipe a recipe next week. But then last night, I went to John Fraser's new place. Nick's Have you been there? No, it's It's awesome. Awesome. It opened on Monday. It's a vegetarian restaurant, but jonjo John Fraser. He has dovetail in our system. Neither one of them vegetarian restaurants. He's like, Great Chef, Michelin star guy and two good man too. Yeah. But and he opened a vegetarian restaurant that is amazing. And they have this awesome hummus and I was talking to him about it. And he uses a completely different technique than I used to now maybe I'm gonna hold off on the recipe and do some more what do you do? So okay, so so, you know, the testing I was doing was mainly about about getting the the texture right and so you know, so doing things like trying to peel whether peeling pick chickpeas really matters. My you know, the my technique now is basically just like cook the crap out of the chickpeas, and then and then puree it all. But what he does is he cooks the crap out of the chickpeas, but then completely reduces the liquid, and purees all the Nearpod like basically everything that was in the pot, all the liquid, all the miracle everything that was in there with the chickpeas purees it all together. And it and purees it importantly periods it while it's hot in a blender, as opposed to letting it cool and then doing it a food processor because when it's when it's hot, it's like the texture of like a milkshake. You know, it's like easily done in a blender. And then by the time it cools down to serving temperatures, the texture of hummus so you can get it a lot smoother and a blender than you can in a food processor. The setback?

Yeah, yeah. Wait, are you an advocate and is he an advocate of the appeal after soak, rub the things off?

No. So I mean, okay, so where I'm coming down and again, this might change if I do some more testing but where I was coming down and and up until I had his last night was that you know, when I when I served it side by side to people, people mostly pick the one where they were they were appealed. But the other one was also way better than the one where you just cook them to crap was way better than than anything else as well. So it's like you can get you can get like 90% Good hummus without peeling the chickpeas if you want that extra 10% You know what though? Peeling chickpeas is not that it's not that hard. It's not that hard. Yeah, you do like the the gold panning method, right?

Yeah, also, I just like put my hands and I'm like, Ah,

yeah soaks

and then yeah, and then

yeah, you put them in water, rub them around with your hands and and then kind of skim off the skins. Absolutely