Cooking Issues Transcript

Episode 196: A Sushi Party for Kids?


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Hello, and welcome to cooking issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of cooking issues coming to you live from Roberta's pizzeria where in Bushwick. Hello, hey, joined as usual with Anastasia the hammer Lopez we got Jack and we got look at why it's here. Yeah, it's over there in the engineering booth. How you how you gentlefolk doing

speak for both of us were great.

Like, I'm not gonna let ya talk because what if he's not doing well then what then? What about you guys? I'm okay. Yeah, got good stuff going on. No. Sounds like the best I can hope for is to not have crap going on good stuff is like, you know, way to wait. So apparently tomorrow, Vice the vice the network slash never heard of it. Never, never never heard of that. You've heard of vice the actual, you know, like sin, right? Yeah, I've had I've heard and you've heard of the of the Black Crowes song virtue advice, right? It's got I've heard they have this bag, this network that's based on that on that principle. And they have a show called the munchies. And apparently they're going to air the Flog raw thing that I worked out with him a number of months ago based on the California ban on flog raw, but that's not what I want to talk about. What I want to talk about was I had to go do like some last minute voiceovers last week at their offices in Brooklyn. They're over in Williamsburg. Jack by the way,

Greenpoint, anything No,

no, no, you're still Williamsburg like the border Williams point. Anyway, this point is good. Yeah, I biked over there. And for the first time in like five years, my pant leg came on tuck from my sock without me knowing and rip the bottom half of my pants off was awesome. I looked like I don't know, I look like that guy. I remember from the Grateful Dead concert, you

probably looked like somebody who works at VICE. Well, there

you go. I've actually seen like very nice folks. But I was there in the in the voiceover booth. And I they had, you know, Snoop Dogg's reincarnation where he's now the Snoop Lion. And he's like, smokes a lot of pot in in Jamaica. Anyways, so they had a big poster that I was like, Oh, you guys did it. Like, yeah, Snoop Dogg did voiceovers in this room. I was like, Oh, I was doing some voiceovers in this and I told them. I was like, the only reason that we started Booker and now To the bar was in hopes of getting Snoop Dogg to come in and have some gin and juice and were unsuccessful. So maybe they're going to maybe they're going to work on that. Yeah. You think that was awesome, right?

That's also I have to show I'm just being a jerk. But Helen Holloman runs munchie. She's awesome. She used to have a show here called You look hungry. So

did you in fact, look hungry at that time?

I didn't. Maybe she did. No, I guess I did. I looked a little hungrier back then.

Like now it's just who cares anymore? Right? No longer hungry. Got another interesting story. By the way, should you have questions cooking related or otherwise? Why don't you write the call the man to send 184972128? That's 718497212871 What's the new Brooklyn exchange? By the way? Does anyone know? It's not just 718 anymore? Right?

I think there's a 646 Now that's,

that's everywhere. That's Oh, there's

a new Brooklyn?

I don't know. I'm asking because I have no idea like back in the day, right? You had your Manhattan which was your 212

which is I have a 212 cell phone somehow we know we

know. And then you had 718 Was everybody else? Yeah, I mean, and then you know, 917 came we had our cell phones but now it's just it's all over the freakin map even Jack a Brooklyn resident can get a T one two on his cell phone. The hell's that all about? What a joke? Yeah, yes, numbers don't mean anything anymore. You know, used to mean like, you know, you could tell something about someone by that by their telephone number. Not anymore. Now it's wasted. So this morning, by the way, are you familiar with wasabi oil does know Jack wasabi oil is like real wasabi? Well, it's not written Ah, that's the thing. It's like real wasabi and the way that truffle oil is real truffle is it's not, you know. So what it typically is, is some form of neutral oil carrier with mustard oil in it, the spicy stuff, not the spicy stuff, and then a couple of other flavorings that are added to make it approximate. Wasabi, right. And even though it's not real, I love it. I think it's good stuff. But, but it's mp3 there that time I had that like half hour or hour long argument with Dave Chang about wasabi mashed potatoes. Yeah, whatever. I don't get into it. But the he hates them. He thinks that you cannot make a good mashed potato with any flavoring of wasabi in it. And I disagree. I think that a potato, I'm not saying that it's not like used or spent or that like you know, I don't know maybe Applebee's had it on their menu at some time or whatever. Or I'm not saying it's not like ridiculously cross cultural and some sort of way, but there's nothing wrong. Like if you were to have if someone if you were having like mashed potatoes, and somebody dropped a little wasabi and from the sushi that they were eating and you tasted it and they were really creamy mashed potatoes. You wouldn't be like this sucks, right? You know what I mean? But I couldn't get that couldn't get the three No. Another thing. It's good. Miso cream, miso soup. Also good. Is it traditional now? Does it taste good? Yeah. Yeah, it tastes good. Anyway, well, I'm not gonna get into it. I happen to like wasabi oil for various applications. So I have some in my house. Now Saudi oil is Earth shatteringly pungent and the way horseradish is right to your nose and your eyes, right? So DAX wakes up this morning, and he goes to the pantry. And kids, right? He's 10 He just turned 10. Totally, they don't care where their body is. They knock stuff over there used to be like a good accident. I'm like, it's, I mean, it is an accident and the fact that you didn't intend to do it, but on the other hand, it's not an accident and that you didn't arrange your life such that you wouldn't happen. You know what I mean? Like that's, that's what I try to tell them all the time. You know, it's like, so anyways, so he reaches out and grabs something pulls out knocks over the freaking bottle of with Saudi oil. It does like a triple somersault opens and pours wasabi oil all over our, our Roomba, our robotic vacuum system. All over the floor all over DAX his hands on like, oh my god, Jen wakes up. She hears me saying oh my god, because it's like the worst thing that could ever happen. And then all of a sudden backs. I think he touched his face with his hands. And he says like, my eyes, my eyes and he's running around like flushing him and I literally in the pantry, which is closed. couldn't stay in there for longer than five seconds at a time while we were cleaning up all this wasabi oil. He's like, Daddy, you should not have that stuff in the house. And I'm like, No, you should not spill that stuff. That's

kind of true.

Maybe it's

up high or something. You know what I can't apply? Or they can't Yeah, guess

what? Yeah, he climbs on top of chairs and whatever. I mean, I don't know. I don't know. Anyway, nightmare. Caller you gotta call her? I do. Alright. Caller caller you're on the air. Hi, can you hear me? Yeah, sure.

So I have a question about immersion. circulators and, and making stock last bra. I got a one of the the fanfare sticks for Christmas and I've been fooling around with it. And I was wondering if there's any eat any any reason that you would want to cook and water to make a perfectly cooked meat and make the broth and extract the liquid, I don't know if you know if this was gonna make a less flavored broth than you would if you just cook it at higher temperatures. But I sort of like the idea of having the meat usable, and having a broad flavor. And I guess in the end, I would like to see if there's a way to make it applicable, you know, meats, perfectly cooked with all the meats together. But that's sort of the long term name. Right?

I kind of understand you, me here, here's the issues, right. So when you're doing a low temp work with a stock, you're never going to get the kind of gelatin extraction that you would get to the temperatures aren't that's gonna take forever, and whatnot, but you are on to something. And I use this kind of technique a lot are used to, for a number of reasons. Okay, so what are they typically, when you're, when you're cooking a stock, you need a relatively large quantity of whatever you're going to flavor the stock with, to make. And you need a relatively large quantity of water, right. And so this can be an antithetical to the meat tasting good, and to how you're going to make your store you just simply might not have enough of your product around. So the classic one that we always did back at the Sei was squad, you know, you want to make a very strong tasting squad, like Rose bones squad stock. But you've you know, you don't have that many squat bones. So what do you do? So what we would do then is aren't taken already made stock pack a not that much not that high amount of it in into a bag and circulate it and then you can extract that flavor out of the relatively small quantity of meat and bones that you have and get a really squatty kind of stock, that will be difficult to do in a pot just because you don't have that many of them around. Right. So that's, that's one kind of an application. But the other thing is, is that you you have the ability to do full wet cooking, like you know, like a poach, but in a much smaller amount of liquid. So if you start with a cooking liquid, that is equal to or higher in flavor than the meat that you're using, then you will not leach you know, huge amounts of flavor out of your meat you might transfer like they might equalize in flavor somehow, but you're not going to leach a huge amount of flavor out. If you add a bunch of water to the to the meat, then obviously, you're going to be leaching some of the flavor out. But a lot of times, that's okay, because we kind of liked the flavor of like a mild poached thing when it's kind of in a stock or if you're doing like a pot of food or something like this, you're used to having the meat itself not be as flavorful because it's been leached out somewhat by the stock. But you can create a you know, because you're not using as much water, you can have it more intensely flavored, however, you're not going to have that much reduction. So you have to take into account the fact that there's no reduction and decrease proportionately the amount of liquid that you're going to put in. The other thing is, is that usually when you're in a bag at low temperature, I mean, you can go very high temperature, you could boil in which case that's not the case, but a lower temperature. Even though you're going to extract flavors out as you cook in a broth, you're never going to get that shredded consistency that you would get from the higher temperatures, because it just doesn't happen in the bag at those low temperatures. Now, you could just put the bag in and boil it, which is what we would do not boil but simmer it, which is what we do for swab stocks. Because really, we're trying to get maximum flavor extraction out we're not trying to keep the meat of that stock at a at a kind of a nice eating texture, right because it's hard to get it kind of both ways there. The other caveat I would add is any veg that you're going to put in you got to pre Cook, because unless you're going to do very high temps, like traditional temps, in which case it'll all taste traditional. But if you're not going to do traditional temps, you're not going to cook the veg at the same temperature you can cook the meat just being helpful at all or no.

Yeah, no, I think I think it's a matter of experimentation too. Because I don't really have that much experience with the back cooking period. Yeah, I think it's just figuring out what works and what doesn't. I mean, I think that I don't have a pressure cooker. But I'm often thinking that I should get one that combine the methods and make a really intense thought and then combine it with meat cooked and back and then sort of combine them at the end and maybe something you know, I imagine it could have more flavor both elements and then doing just boiling in the liquid if that makes sense.

Right? Sure. Well, there's mean what Okay, well, I'll break it down to there in terms of kind of how to think when you're running your experiments and once you start thinking in terms of what the bag does, versus what your normal cooking does. It's you know, it's it's pretty, pretty simple. You got to break the bag down into two different components you either a use the bag, the Well, there's your a USD bag, because you want to click low temperature, right, in which case now you're talking about temperature control phenomenon, right. And that's what you're aiming to work at, or to, you're using the bag, because you don't want to have to use a lot of liquid and the bag is going to keep your liquid in contact with your product. Right. So those are the two kinds of reasons you you would choose a third is you're not going to lose volatiles out of the bag, the way that you would lose when you're cooking. And that's good for certain kinds of flavors that tend to change a lot because they volatilize as you cook, but you have to add to that the fact that there is no reduction in the bag, I mean, that's the primary. That's the primary thing that people fail to wrap their heads around all other cooking techniques that aren't in the bag, even in some pressure cookers. Although pressure if you're used to pressure cookers, you'll notice that you get much less reduction in the pressure, but even eventing pressure cooker, non vented pressure cooker is almost like a bag and that you get almost no reduction. But that's very hard to kind of wrap your head around, because when you're doing traditional cooking, that's not sealed, right? You're used to at least getting even if it doesn't look like it's reducing that much. Remember, as a meat cooks, it gives off juices. And as it gives off juices, those dilute the juices that are in the in the bag or in the pressure cooker, which is why

do you think let's just say in for an experiment, what did you just fill up with water have a chicken in it? Okay, but now the bag isn't you're not going to get enough gelatin extraction to have the stock have a body. And you're also just cooking it to low temperature to get flavor into the water had to do even removing it from the back of the equation entirely curious if there's any value in that at all?

Oh, yeah. I mean, look, a lot depends, if you like I used to do before I had the like, Jack Papan had a book that came out in the 80s. It was kind of his two volumes set of how to cook the color one not too black and white one that was great. And he had a recipe for chicken salad. That was Danny Kay's original recipe, you know, the composer and actor and, and conductor. Actually, I don't know if he's a composer, conductor, an actor. And his old recipe for cooking to check in, was to load it into a pot just barely covered with water, bring it up to a simmer, then cover it and let it ride the same way that you know a lot of people do with the fact that way I do it with boiled eggs, when you're doing a lot of hard boiled eggs, you know, bring it up to a simmer and let it ride. Because it's not going to overcook that much as it cools down. But you're in that window of cooking temperature long as that. Yeah. And I used to do that all the time. And I would always you know, even if I was gonna take out the breasts, hack them up and pack them down. As long as your water to meat ratio is relatively low. The broth tastes pretty dang good. It does not going to have the gelatin extraction, it's never going to have the body that a fully cooked stock was but it tastes quite delicious.

Yeah. So just just to finish up with, if you're doing it going back to the bag with a minimum amount of liquid, you want the liquid? What do you want to do with seasoning beforehand, you want the liquid fully seasoned beforehand? And then salt the meat? Or is that? Is it different with with a lot of liquid versus a minimal amount of liquid is a game you have to experiment to figure out what tastes right.

I mean, you have to do some experimenting, but just know that that when you put raw meat into a bag with a liquid, the quantity of liquid is going to increase drastically when you cook, right. And so in general, if I kind of have to over reduce, it doesn't necessarily mean over spice, but it just means kind of over reduce. And in general, like it's hard to say with a specific recipe you're going to use. In general, when you're putting something into a bag vacuum sealing it in a bag. A rule of thumb is if the seasoning in question has an aroma, right? Then you decrease it the amount that's going in. And if you have something as no aroma, which really what we're talking about here is salt right? Then you keep the level the same because the bag tends to intensify flavors that are very high and aromatics think Rosemary thinks sage. And also like those herbs can if they're in direct contact with meat in a bag, actually imprint themselves make a little kind of like green spot and kind of like a weird funky flavor right at that point of contact if there's a hard vacuum stuffed against an herb without any sort of liquid in there. So it as a general rule of thumb, I would solve everything as per normal if the meat has the right amount of salt on it. And even your hyper reduced stock has the right right amount of salt in it as it's reduced and when they all come together they should be okay. Um, and other things, you know, you decrease in order, like, I don't decrease pepper on the outside of my steak when I'm going to put it in the bag. But I do decrease things like rosemary. You know,

I think that's just super helpful. So I think, at the, at fewer variables before moving up to the Toledo Mesa when they're gonna be about 10 variables.

Yeah, well, again, it's like another thing is remember, if you what I typically what you what I'll do when I'm doing work in the bag is there certain things that I know I'm not going to eat that are only for like a stock, right? And they're not going to be for the final service. And so those things are pressure cook and make a pre pressure cook stock that's like done. And then that one, you'll add, you'll reduce and add in as a base in your bag. And then you can get that nice, kind of like poached flavor out with a much more intense flavor in the bag without overcooking the meat. Does that make sense?

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Because that's it, you know, some of these, you know, some of turkey wings and dill bones and stuff like that, that you're not gonna serve. Anyway, as a meat.

Yeah, roast them and pressure cook them, you know, hack them up, roast them, pressure cook them. Remember, when your pressure cooking, you have to one of two, one of two problems will happen. You either need to add a lot more alliums, like things like onion or garlic. Because the flavors of those things are very highly muted. So you need to add a bunch of it, the flip side of that is all of a sudden your stock becomes a lot sweeter. You know what I mean? Or you can freshen it with a little bit of like sauteed, whatever you like, you know, leeks, shallots, onions, whatever you like, you know what I mean? But you can freshen it up after the pressure cook with that or I mean, I've come to really like that kind of muted, sweet flavor, but I just like easily double or triple the amount of volume that I would add to a normal stock when I'm doing it, but it does come out a bit sweeter is one caveat. I'll have to give you.

Okay, well, looks like I have to invest in the pressure cooker. Oh, definitely. All right, this is just super helpful.

All right. Thanks for calling in. Alright, so break you're gonna take a break and come back with some more cooking issues.

All right. And we Dave How do you how do you pronounce for?

I'm terrible. Dad. I know that it was a good one

there. Yeah, I forgot how you said it. But it was an inherited quite like that.

Well, that didn't even mentioned Vietnamese. I don't know. I think now I was probably saying something else me Oh no. Padfoot

ah French. Oh, pat that we'll be right back. Special break song today by a band called MAMARAZZI. This is cooking issues on heritage Radio Network.

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Okay, Jack, when did you change the background to that to like, porn Caribbean music?

Did that just for you today? Yeah.

Nice. I like that. It's like, you know, he used to have like the, you know, does he know that his

like, Well, no, it's an ad. His ad is without music. So whatever the break song is, that's what we play underneath his ad. So you know, it's you never know what you're gonna get. Wow.

Yeah, like that. Yeah, spices it up, you know? Yeah, definitely. Definitely. We, by the way, we have a question that you're going to have to answer later that came in that hopefully, hopefully, we get to cool. Here's an update from Bryce JD on his rum Tov, you remember what we were talking about keeping fruits firm as they're soaking in liquor over many months. So we have our several months later that day. I wanted to inform Dave of my results on dosing Rumped off with Novo shape Novo shape is the enzyme it's a pectin, methyl esterase enzyme that helps fruits stay firm, or man anything with pectin and really stay firm like he could use it with cucumbers and you're doing pickles. But you know, you could do things like soak it, soak your calcium with it, but you can soak like raspberries with it. boiled the hell out of him and nothing happens to him anyway. The fruit firmed up nicely. I started my batch in June and added to fruit and rum throughout the summer. I was unable to use the fruit though as it took on a nasty brown color. Looking at stars Oh yeah, she, I saw her lips just went nasty brown color lip because in her mind, I think it's associated with fungus and spoons and we all know how she feels about that. I strained out the salads and was left with a clear pinkish Lecouvreur. The the core is quite nice, floral fruity and not overly sweet. I was wondering if they may know why the fruit turned brown, it would have been nice to have the fruit for a shortbread or ice cream topping could have baked it into something or you could have blended that stuff up right and made some right even if it's maybe could have color cover up the color somehow. Right. It's gone now to deliver now, fruits gone now. It would have been nice to have had the fruit for a shortbread and ice cream topping also was the liquid clear because de novo shape allowed the fruit to maintain its structure. And that not transfer solids into the liquor. Respectfully Sent from my iPhone, Bryce. JD. Well, I guess that's probably a good point. I hadn't thought about that before. But that's probably true, it didn't break down. So the liquor remained clear. Right, that makes sense. But as for the Browning, what you're dealing with here is a, a kind of long, long term Browning effect, you need to add some antioxidants to that sucker, right. So when you're doing it, you're going to either have to add some quarterback acid to it, right? Although remember, that's going to lose its antioxidant potential over time. But I prefer it, you know, like, I don't like the sodium metal by sulfates and all those things, but you're going to need to add some form of anti oxidant to it. And that should inhibit the Browning most likely what you're looking at there is some form of oxidative Browning that takes course over a long period of time, even under the influence of heavy alcohol, whether its enzymatic in nature, even though that those enzymes are mostly denatured or destroyed by the by the booze or whether you're dealing with the fact that, you know, the enzyme is just catalyzing some catalyzing sign that would take place over a long period of time anyway. So you just need to prevent the oxidation from happening anyway, you know how high booze one way and antioxidants another way. And so I would definitely add some antioxidants to it next time and see whether that helps, but anyone that has experience with that I encourage them to write in, let us know. Okay. All right. Joshua writes antibody equipment greetings from Switzerland. Esther has had her happy face on she likes a Swiss she well, she doesn't like the Swiss. She likes the country, Switzerland and she appreciates their fondue and their cheese. Ice. It's

a fun new thing.

She loves fondue. That was less fun. Did I know I was thinking of doing a fondue party next year for the kids. What do you think that's good. I think we might get Yeah, I did see chocolate traveling but I wanted to do also the boiling oil school. But Jen was like mad, boiled and kids and maybe, I don't know. Remember my 10 year old just threw wasabi oil all over the house today. So you know, that was a knock back and that and that direct this year was sushi. An expensive party to throw the sushi parties this I bought the super fancy rice to everything and phones. And man those kids don't know how to roll. It's pretty hard though. And then they want me to cut it right away. So like you know I'm having to wait my knife in between each cut because the grains are sticking to it. And so the kids just start eating it like it's a freaking tumor like it's fruit. In fact, he said it's a burrito and I told that so I was like tax Who the hell taught you to make a burrito like this? It's like if you made a burrito in this fashion I would be I mean I said that I would I would become violently angry if you didn't fold the edges in I mean it's not a burrito it's like a to Quito its way and it's a Keto is fried. You know what I mean? I'll say so like so pretzels by that whole thing. And then like, you know, you have to dip your hand in the vinegar and water, but they're dipping their hand in the vinegar water and then touching the nori. I'm like you know what I mean? Like it's like ruining the crunchiness on the nori. And so why spend all the money on the good nori. I'm getting the nicest, darkest Genesis conscious nori flaming it with a series all the crisp it up.

It's what happens when you throw sushi party for kids.

Well, they specifically asked for it. But I'll tell you what, Booker, like Jen likes

a fine, fair sushi.

Oh, God. Well, first of all, I'm not talking about that on air. By the way, if any of you ever meet DAX don't mention that I'm talking about the wasabi will because he's embarrassed by it. But Jen, my wife, Jen, and I used to laugh at fine fairs our local supermarket. And we're like, that's talking about Sunday already. I probably shouldn't let me get in trouble. Thanks does, but now I have to tell people that it is no but if someone's gonna who knows you never know. Anyway, so we're all like a fight for sushi who's gonna eat five fish sushi. That's ridiculous. You know what I mean? And lo and behold, one day she wasn't thinking she buys the freakin fine for sushi and And wow, I had to go pick her up like she was like on the curb she was on the curb couldn't move anymore and call me and I had to go Go get her because she just got debilitated by the by the sweet sweet, sweet fine fair sushi. Don't order don't order sushi from like, don't buy the sitting out sushi at the at the supermarket. Don't do that Jack, do you do that? No. But listen, my wife is like a very not just educated, talented but educated food wise. You know what I mean? So she knows it was crazy. So I don't want to hear anyone telling the I don't want to hear this story game back there that you brought this up on the air because it's not anyway, not her proudest moment? It's right up there with me licking live by mistake. Yeah, you remember that one? Anyway? How the hell did we get on that? Oh, Switzerland, sushi sushi sushi part, not Switzerland. Because next year, I was saying we could do a fondue party. Because fondue is a good product and the kids would enjoy that it's not really make your own in the same way that pizza and sushi is though. Maybe it is whatever. Okay, my question. This is Joshua from Switzerland. My question relates to kitchen equipment. I'm a proud owner of an immersion circulator and an even prouder owner of a poly science 300 chamber vacuum sealer, which currently doesn't work. But that's another story. I would like to know what else I should get to experiment my kitchen. I would like something that is versatile. I can't read what you actually wrote. Because it's a lot of little boxes and squares and doodles. Like you know how that happens sometimes, like this, it seems like all the boxes are squiggles like like Linus when he talks like Linus from Peanuts. You know, they're having a new peanuts movie coming out. And they're changing or whatever, I'm withholding judgment. I would like to have something that is versatile in which I can use to experiment with various foodstuffs. My first thought was a centrifuge. Okay, so listen, if your first thought is a centrifuge, I'm gonna assume that you have like, you know, a decent Watson with your Swiss you have a cool recon pressure cooker, right? Because don't think

Swiss German though, and I'm sure this guy's German, there's no Italian Swiss person.

Well, I'll say like when you're born maybe in Switzerland, they give you a clean recon pressure cooker the same way that when you're born in Sweden, they give you a copy of the Abba album, so that it can still be like a hugely selling album, right? Anyway, my first thought was a centrifuge. Would you agree on that? Or would you look into something else? And if you agree, or the centrifuge, what do you think about the Beckman Coulter Allegra series. Thanks for your help. Cheers, Joshua. Well, I think a centrifuge is fantastic. I love it. But I mean, all depends on how much cash you have the Allegra costs. The if you're going to spend six 6000 bucks or 6000 euros on the next piece of kitchen equipment and you're not blinking. When you do that, then I think a centrifuge is a great thing to buy, right? Because it's extremely versatile. You can do a lot of different things with it. I looked briefly at the Beckman Coulter Allegra ones. They're spinning bucket rotors look like they only get up to about there's a bunch of different series you have to look at what you get. There swinging bucket ones look like they can do three liters, but they look like they only get to roughly 3700 G's somewhere in there, which is like on the verge of what I think is kind of good for that price range. Most of the people that I know who get new centrifuges for the restaurant or bar get hettich, which is also available and I think it's German. And it's also available in Europe widely to friend uses a head edge. And Tony conigliaro in London uses a headache and I think he also might have won in Paris as Barbara I'm not sure. So I would look at the head itches. They have pretty good numbers, and they work well. But I looked at the leg, right? It should work. If you can get one that are swinging bucket that'll do 4000 G's, then you know all the better but it's a good question. Like if you're going to spend eight grand is a lot of stuff you could buy for a grand right, like a couple extra circulators, which I would definitely buy, or what else mean a pacojet? I would love to have a pacojet. What do you buy first? What do you think I would get first PocketJet or centrifuge? centrifuge, probably for me, though, but I do a lot of bar work. I mean, I think a lot of chefs would prefer pacojet. If you look around more, there's more pocket jets and there are centrifuges around. Good coffee setup is another thing, but it's not necessarily versatile. You know, I mean, me if you could do a lot of bugs, you're not gonna do a lot of bar work. I don't know that you're going to spend like that much time with you with your centrifuge. It's good question though. Anyway, Derek writes in regarding ice. Hi, Dave, I follow the procedure for making clear ice in the freezer from liquid intelligence that's the book by pouring hot water into a cooler I left it outside. So this is approximately outside outside 35 Fahrenheit so you live in the Northeast somewhere north somewhere for a few hours to cool down, then put it in the freezer. The next morning I opened it to add some stock cubes to an existing stash and there were ice crystals all over the lid and walls in the freezer. If I were to fasten a piece of plastic wrap over the cooler the next time would that prevent crystal formation in my freezer, or would it end or would it mess up the ice block formation thanks Eric, well, it might mess up the ice block formation, what I would say is put the plastic wrap over it, that will definitely stop some of the, you know, steam and crap from coming up, and then just remove it right as the ice is starting to form. I wouldn't don't leave it on, you're not you definitely want to get rid of any insulating layer between the ice formation and the ice formation front and the freezer as it's freezing. But I don't think it's going to hurt the ice block formation to have plastic wrap over it in the initial couple of hours as it's cooling down. And that should greatly reduce the amount of crystallization you get all over the inside of your freezer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. I mean, what I typically do is I throw I throw ice I use hot water put it right and throw ice cubes in and get it down to basically below room temperature and as the ice cubes are melting out, and I just don't stir it and I put it in which is another thing but you have to have cute clear smaller ice cubes. Sitting around for seeds, which is what what I what I do not really seeds. Don't think we're gonna seed so not seeds. Take that take back the word I said seeds. Okay, because here what who's here, Johnny, Johnny Hasini. Now from Johnny Hunter. Really? Nice. Hi. We are joined in the studio now unexpectedly. Hi, Johnny hunter from the from the underground food collective in Madison, Wisconsin. How're you doing? I'm doing pretty well. Oh, yeah. I just heard recently that you did a pop up in the Brooklyn.

Yeah, we we did two days at Fitzcarraldo. So how was it? It was great. I have to say we've done pop ups in Manhattan, and the kitchen sizes a little bit better. In Brooklyn. We found out

Yeah, yeah, I would say that. That's true.

The benefits were really nice. So yeah, it was super fun. Friend runs the restaurant. So we just, I was like, I had to come out here anyway. So we always tried to like line it up between doing events. And also other things we have to come out for so.

So what do you what do you make anything? It was mostly

an exploration of like fermented turnips. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. It's like for us winter is like Wisconsin, so much of our food. So I think it's our it's, we we really try to go big time with like, fresh flavors with winter vegetables. That was the whole thing. And then we had a bunch of beef that was we call it old beef. So we aged it out for about six months. And then we just serve that raw. What we do,

but how frozen up is that time right now?

Is it's actually really nice. 35 it was there was like two weeks there where it was like negative 20.

But if people are skating on the lakes yet or No, yep. That's the best

part. The if you can be active, your life is much better there.

Yeah, no, I mean, like, Well, maybe it's probably not smart to visit in the wintertime for a non person from there, right.

I think the first two weeks of January generally have these days that are just like people just don't know how to deal with it. It's like, you know, you get in and it's like, really cold and there are things you really need to be recognizing of like, you know, layering and just like having hats and good gloves and and making sure that you're not you know, you don't have your kids out in like the the harsh elements but the thing is, is like people are just really industrious about it and like, it's just a reality.

Yeah, man. Wow. Yeah. You know, us whiskies here from New York. You know, we look down on the people from the South who can't handle their job, but we're like, you know, we're nothing we're we're Jack wads. Do you guys, I'm glad you're here actually, because I have a coffee. And I call the centrifuge. Another centrifuge question. And I would like to talk about your story. centrifuge story, if possible. Okay, so we got a question in last week from Steven hoppy from Chicago. And he says eye contact, he wants to know whether or not he should buy the centrifuge. And I said, Man, Marin, I think that's what I said, roughly, man

was, was it because of the brand or because of whether or not he should get it?

I couldn't see on the inside there was a lot of like issues and it didn't get to a high enough it. There's a lot of issues. Anyway, I contacted the seller and he said they don't have a rotor for the unit at night. Don't ever buy us centrifuge without a rotor unless you have another one say next to it with a rotor read its parts for you. You know, yeah,

I mean, maybe I'll just explain our experience with centrifuges. Because we have the University of Wisconsin there. Yeah. Right. And so they, we get about we have like 15 Now

business selling these sectors.

And so it's been this thing where, you know, I've learned a lot about how to take apart and use them and stuff, because it's just like, it's like, if something's not working, I was like, well just grab it out of that. Why do we haven't even plugged them all in yet? So, you know, it's hard when I see people looking on eBay and asking them questions. It's like, well, I Gotta go and inspect them and look at him and stuff and so you do you know, and I should say I do like getting new rotors because we had that experience where the rotor broke

that's what I want you to kind of talk about Johnny's the only flight cook I know of that's had a real freakin failure like a real freaking rotor failure. You want to describe this? Yeah,

so we have what's the brand now it's they had the square buckets, though. I can't remember but it's not the jewelry or

what? Not this one I think wasn't it like didn't Beckman Coulter. Yep. Yeah. Yeah.

So we we had a Beckman and it had a glass

top, which was awesome. I've used those four. They're awesome. Yeah.

And we, you know, we went through and we, you know, visually inspected everything. But we didn't there's a there's a centrifuge company in town that will, you know, pressure tests. Oh, and stuff like that. Yeah. So we did that. We do that now. Anyway, so we had a bucket, we had a bucket that that broke, because it had a hairline fracture that we didn't know about. And it threw the bucket into the wall of the centrifuge, which then move the centrifuge three feet. Like, shook the building, which is just like a concrete floor, and everyone was just like, someone was standing, you know, near and it wouldn't, it wouldn't have hurt anyone. bad.

Not bad. I mean, like, you know, like, you know, broken leg maybe. But

it also happened, like within the first week that we had it and so like, the centrifuge was definitely a scared thing around the kitchen. So we've taken a lot more precautions. Now. I'm

glad he soldiered on, he's like it wouldn't hurt any worse and stepping in a bear trap that happens like every, every other day anyway. So the building's not like some sort of puny, flimsy building that you should be able to hear minor things through. It's

like it's an old busstation. Yeah. Well,

here's the good news, though. The good news is, and I've been worried for a long time, because it's the same class of centrifuges that you know, a lot of us have, which is a three liter benchtop, fuge. And they all roughly do about they all Mali hold roughly three liters, and they roughly do about 4000 G's. And I had never seen one fail. So it always been my impression that no one would die. And they went Johnny was like, hey, it happens. I was like, Hey, did anybody die? He's like, no, like, sweet.

You know what I mean? Yeah, it was that mark, the spark was the person sitting next to

classic, classic. Alright, so we had a more of a comment on last week. Remember, we're talking about my new coffee grinder thing that was working on orphan espresso. And I'm not talking about those guys. You know, those guys were from espresso. Yeah. Do you know them? Personally?

No, I just seen their products. Yeah, I really want

one of the Pharisees but the guy they just don't care. They make them when they come in. They sell out in like two seconds. All right. Yeah. The Lido to you can get. But anyway, so then, who was a Joel Esposito, who has a really good grinder wrote wrote in in this comment, which I thought was interesting. I'm a coffee espresso coffee slash espresso. So pourover slash espresso enthusiast and just wanted to comment on the hand grinders mentioned in the last show, at the office, I grind my morning cup in about Koenigsegg, EK 43, with 98 millimeter burrs, one three quarter horsepower motor motor and photos attached. So that happens to be a very large but a flat burr grinder, and it's super popular over the past couple of years, it was not designed necessarily to be a coffee grinder. But since I think about like, 2013 are selling, there's been like a cadre of people that have been using it for coffee. And the interesting thing about it is, you know, for those you that don't know, or think about grinders, right? So every grinder, a lot of people like they split it into what is it flat or as a conical, but you know, really, even within those within those categories, every grinder has its own kind of grind profile, right. And so like the people who really care about this, what they do is they take the grinds out of a coffee grinder, or any kind of grinder, and then they plot particle size, they frequency, the distribution of particle sizes, and for most good espresso grinders, you get what's called a bimodal plot where you get some, you know, a large peak that centered in the kind of general range where you want your coffee particles to be and then you get another peak lower in what's called the fines and you get these kind of fine particles. And so there's a lot of debate as to what the kind of ultimate grind profile is. But truth also is, is that any grinder the more you tune it down to be finer, right, the more bimodal the plot becomes, because you get more finds out of something when you need to get down. So then there's a lot of questions and you can just go on the internet and look up particle distributions for different coffees and you can see it but this the AK 43 is renowned for making of like a good kind of grind ratio that can work with a lot of different kinds of coffee, or even isn't it that's what that's They say there's fewer particles there fewer fines, I think I gotta go back and look at this. But you got to remember also, I mean, think about what a fine is doing. So the fines are doing two separate things, right? A fine is a gun extract faster because it's fine, right? And be in things like espresso. Fines migrate to the bottom of the puck and like cause higher hydraulic pressures. So that you know, you need to, you'd need a coarser overall thing to make up for the fact you have these fines, because the fines are packing in between in the closet, or in a filter, they can clog up filters, right, and so they can stick and change your flow rate, as well as infused differently. So I mean, they're multi multi modal, what's going on, again, multi modal with what's going on with anyway, so that's just a little, little preamble to Joel's comment here. So here's what he said, which I think is really interesting. Let me get to it. Okay, at the office, I grind my morning cup, and I'm not gonna II K 43. At home, I grind in a small Haribo hand grinder, very small bursts. That's the little little, which, by the way, I have it but I just hate grinding because it just takes so damn long. I know

it. This is how I time like heating up my water. He's like, I tried to beat it with the grinder. I have a burr grinder now, but Oh, yeah.

And I sit there and like, you know how you get angry when you're turning that knob. And if you push it too hard, and the beans fly

out of the hive, and the knob comes off, and then the threads get stripped? Yeah,

I'm familiar with all of those things. It's nice. It works. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, so they the hand grinder very small bursts. The former is a beast powering through a cups worth of coffee before I can hit the off button. That must be nice. The particle size distribution is incredibly even and the first cup I grounded it had practically no fines. I think he's talking about the economy. Okay. However, after breaking in the Melkonian, I've noticed a marked increase in fines production, which seems to not only create money flavors in the cup, but somehow simultaneously masks the wonderful volatiles that I paid hard earned money for in single origin coffees at the local indie shop. It's not a huge issue for single cup pour overs, that when you're brewing two to four cups, six ounces each the pesky fines impede the flow of water and slow the extraction rate. Makes sense, right? I've done side by sides, actually back to back scenes, I can only prepare one cup at a time of the heart to unsaved versus Oh, and then he didn't mention this but he he bought a a humble which is a manufacturer of 500 micron sieve. And so he's sitting there and somehow this got confused in the in the in the Edo thing. But what he did was is he took his heart is his hand grinder and put it through a sieve to get rid of the fines. Yeah,

so there's that guy in Madison, who does that professionally. Well, he like he works at shops and stuff and he'll like sieve the coffee. What a bitch.

Anyway, I mean, I love it. I appreciate it anyway, so. So he did he did side by side of the Hario unsaved versus passed through the 500 micron saves to eliminate the fines. Not only does the flow rate improve, which you would expect, but he gets the same quality that he gets out of the 98 millimeter flat burrs on the Melkonian he says it's an equal quality

$3,000 grinder. Yeah, somewhere in there. So there's for like 100 and 100 bucks or, I mean the Sid was be like 15 bucks a crate.

Yeah, like 30. Maybe Yeah, like if you buy a premade Yeah, like 30 bucks. Yeah. So this is what he's saying. Oh, by the way, he says he doesn't waste the fines, he simply adds them instead. Actually, he says it's as good as the Falcone was before like when it was brand new before it started creating the fires. Yeah, it goes back to where we're back to where it once belonged. So he said he hasn't wasted finds it simply add them back to the rest of my coffee during the final phase of extraction, or running through magaji classic, which surprisingly produced a drinkable shot of espresso. This method steals a wider range of particle sizes, but all that matters to me is the perceived end result knowing that I mail because remember, there's larger ones in there that you wouldn't get in the mail clinic like bigger ones. So therefore he says knowing that I may have failed to extract a few parts per million of solids from a couple of larger coffee chunks doesn't bother me. The bottom line is that $35 Hario plus a sand produce a cup comparable to a 2k plus grinder.

We we used to use the hereos to grind pepper for our salami company and we would take drills take the top off and just like grind the pepper through it was great.

Yeah, I don't know whether you've seen a lot of drill mods, you know, as someone asked my worldly pop for my roaster I put a moto mod on it someone asked me to post I'm gonna probably go to Home barista, and I'll post it on something like that because I have like a, you know, an STL file to you, but do a lot of people put drills onto the hereos or No,

I've never I was just like grinding pepper one day. Like,

I have the Lido Leto to grind. I mean, it's slower than you know my you know rancilio But It's a lot faster than the hurry.

Yeah, yeah. We we also use the drill for cavatelli. Makers.

Yeah. Oh BookBook Yeah, you

know the drill on the back. Just

another note on the hurry. Oh, by the way is that so there's a big, there's a big thing I'm gonna do, right and they're gonna kick us out and say there's a big thing I'm gonna do with whether or not your birth should be suspended on both, like anchored on both sides, right when you're doing a burn a grinder. And so a lot of the people that have done kind of mods do one sidemount only the guys had orphan espresso. They're a believer in firmly mounting the burrs. Yeah. Right. And that's, I guess one of the reasons they say that they get like good distribution

on there. I think it moves. I noticed that

moves up and down. Yeah, but not left and right. Yeah. Right. Oh, the heart. Do you mean yeah, the heart moves around. Yeah,

if you mount it on the bottom, that would be

great. Well, he sells. So that's what the orphan espresso sells for 14 bucks, a plate that you can bolt into the bottom of your heart to that mount pins it on both sides, that you then adjust, attack it down for 14 bucks. And he's what he says in the in the thing in his explanation of it is that well, if you do this, it will no longer be good for espresso, but it's good for coarser coffee,

I want to go back to this sieve. Why can't you just create a wider sieve to let the grinds go through that you want? And then a thinner one. And so then their middle packet you get you know, completely consistent?

I totally could.

I mean, it seems like

you totally could, you could choose exactly the range you want to pass. You mean if you're a real, like not worried about it, you could just have it like you could get small one and put it in one of those little by little. And then like just grind into the middle and just pull the middle guy out. Like put a little you know,

and then you can make like another extraction with the finds of the large and you know, compare it but I don't know the people say that some difference and grind size is good for flavor. It gets a little too flat at the same extraction. I don't know.

Yeah, I mean, look, they're gonna extract difficulty with brute with brewing kinetics, right? It's all about the kinetics of it's gonna get a change, but I guarantee you, you could sell someone if you had like Mega corpse, and then like the fines and then like The Inbetweeners, you could definitely like, especially if you did different brewing styles for each one of those three things. You could be like, well,

we should just do this as an attachment to the series all

over Yeah, but I need to become an expert in kind of pour overs because I don't know any you know, I'm not so well we that we interesting thing, right? Like, like, take the same exact being grind grind them at the same time produce three entirely different cups of coffee with them.

Yeah, with a $40 hand grinder. Yeah.

And a little wagon. Well, you know, I modify modifying my Leto to which is your friend espresso hand small hand grinder to be stationary. Oh, that's nice. Yeah. So because I hate unscrewing the glass because every time I unscrew the glass jar from it, so it's got a glass jar, just like a Haribo does, but it's very easy to screw up your grind. The unscrew it, so I always break the jars. Really? I'm not gonna use a jar anymore. Yeah, jar, we're getting rid of it. It's all plastic now in your cup. That's what I that's what I'm doing. Okay, so there are there's we're not gonna we don't have time, but I got some good comments back, especially like a liquid liquid intelligence. The book was someone who's got a method to fake the Thai basil daiquiri if you don't have access to Thai basil, which is kind of cool. But we'll have to get to that.

Who doesn't have like, do they not have like an Asian grocery store?

Yeah, they went to somebody's house or something like this. Yeah. Okay. This has come up before for me before. But, but actually, I wanted to mention these two amas. I have two favorite Amazon reviews. It just came on. I got a three star and a one star right. Recently.

One star I think is the three star thing is worse than the one star there.

They're both pretty bad. But

why do you why do you read a one star is a great book for a chemist for the layman mixologist it is too much useless information.

But that's one star. That's one star

requires cam degree.

Which is not true. Dude. Let me tell you what one star is I given you incorrect information. This useless person could just open up to the one like four page section where I just put like 50 classic cocktails in with like how to make them in their specs and easy to look at format, rip it out and throw the rest of the book away and it's worth more than one freaking star

but also why? Why is that a criticism? Like why would you buy this book? You know if you want like just easy cocktails, like you know like It's like this book is for a specific audience. You know if you were to just to do oh, here's 50 Classics. Who cares? Yeah, that books been written.

Yeah, yeah. Anyways, that's it that's that that person they need they need to get crushed. You know what I mean? But here's the

three star was, this was a gift. I think it was liked, but I can't read it since it was not for me. It was a gift.

Three stars. If you can't read it, you can't read it.

Don't read it was the person giving it as a gift. Yeah,

they gave it as a gift to someone else that they reviewed it negatively. They only gave it three stars. Like I don't really know whether it was good or bad. I think the person they gave it to liked it, but I can't really read it. So I'll just read it in the middle because I don't know. It could be you know, like, like was a woman. What does that have to do with it? A one star review should be that the author is like either grossly inaccurate, or the book is horribly written, or they suggest something abhorrent. Like chumming babies. You know what I mean? And like anything else, you're just a jerk. You know what I mean? People People, I flag we

sold a lot of your books at our butcher shop, because people just buy stuff during the holidays. Oh, nice. So I was a little worried people are just like, we're just gonna buy what's ever here. We have like two books there. And like, they're like, Okay, well, let's be good. So a lot of people are like, hopefully there's a lot of people out there searching for their own home centrifuge systems. Now,

remember, like in the book, I say, like, I don't expect you to buy this crap. You know what I mean? But I'll give you ways around it. But why not tell you how we do it. Why not tell you how we do it. All right. So we're not going to get to Alex and Toronto's question nor we're going to get to Louie Frederick Mischel. Hope I got your name right. He said good luck with pronouncing that one. But, but the thing is, I would do an American style to be like Louis Frederick Michonne. Right. That's how you do it. American mutual probably is how it's supposed to be pronounced. But on the way out, Jack, you're gonna have to chime in on this one. And Johnny you chime into Dave Anastasia and Jack's favorite bands and Johnny's favorite bands and PS can we get day to do with Sir Mix A Lot style. I like big bursts and I cannot lie. And I won't I won't.

My No. You won't do that big well, or you won't lie.

Oh, well those other brothers can't do it. You've done it come on. I've done I've never done because ever yes when I

like I love big bursts really? Do it.

Now if I've already done it. We have to search they think so. What do you got? Jack? What's your current favorite? What are you listen to? I answered

him this was my list. You can make fun of me if you'd like so it was Radiohead Bjork? OutKast, a FX twin The Flaming Lips. Well, yeah, that's my list. Last I

saw Bjork at a party. And you know, it says comment was dirty tennis shoes. Yeah, she said the lady is so rich. What'd she do with dirty tennis shoes? I don't like dirty

tennis shoes.

I'm wearing the dirtiest tennis shoes right now. You're not sure you're gonna get on the train today. And I saw someone's white shoes and and these are like three weeks old and they're white. And now they're gray. And I was like, oh my goodness, like the

phenomenon of people that were only white and they get filthy white that's a cream Rashid, the famous designers got the filthy white going, which is kind of sweet. At least it used to Okay, what do you got Johnny? What you got for us?

Ah, Sonic Youth?

Yeah, like old school Sonic old school. I liked that nice. All right, stars. What do you got?

I don't know.

Let's name some crappy like, who you hate the most who you love to hate? Is hate list. I

know when I was working out yesterday I was listening to the Croce

Oh, Jim Croce. He sounds like any anyone who crashes an airplane in the South. Imagine Is that true? No.

Little girl in Kentucky here whatever.

Oh, man. You want to crawl there? That was crazy. We've talked about on the show for some reason. Anyway. What do I like? This does does like the Croce so for those you that don't know like stars and I have a couple of like internal running jokes that we do that we don't do on the air. So Jim Croce was a well known one of his famous songs was operator right? And he's like talking to this operator. And he's like, like, chewing his freaking operators ear off so stars and I are joking about like the hell's wrong with you the operators and give a crap you know what I mean? No. And then like he at the end is like you can keep the dime of course she freaking can. Phone companies. Well, yeah, why don't write nine hertz and the other one that we always do is via What's that song call it notes? Oh, I just had to say I love you to song where it's like, calls up this lady. And he's like, I know it's kind of late. I hope I didn't wake him he keeps on freaking talking and talking. It's like 3am in the frickin morning. He said talking and talking and stars and I are like the phone rings at 3am and he's like I new leads can lead anytime like he called us up like a lie all he got anyway, talking about my favorite bands next time. What I like so many different kinds of bands even one Yeah, yeah. For country I like Merle Haggard. Perfect. All right cooking issues.

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