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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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This episode is brought to you by Hearst ranch. grass fed beef raised on California's Central Coast now available online through larger meat company Learn more at Hearst ranch.com

Hello and welcome to cookies to cookies just coming to you alive in radio network every Tuesday whenever and also Happy New Year everyone Happy New Year joined actually one of the last times and Stassi is going to be joining us because from California because she's headed back to our coasts pretty soon right just as you know. I thought you were coming back

yeah, it extended because my well we can talk about it later. Nice well I mean why would I go back and

you know that my business partner like doesn't even tell me like you know on air I hear ya know, all right, whatever

it happened last night. Happy no here.

We got John and his Connecticut. Booth, right. That's right. Yeah. And Matt in in Rhode Island hidey hole. Hi, Don. Hello. Hello. Yeah, yeah. Our undisclosed locations. I'm the only one who say exactly where I am Lori side. Come down to Grand Street. We'll fight I'm kidding. We won't.

I'm sure Joel say where he is too. He

just joined Oh, hey, longtime longtime friend of the show. Joe Gargano in here from Chester Connecticut. How're you doing?

I'm doing great. I'm actually holding Clinton right now.

Oh, wait, I thought you were in deep river your house.

We moved we we bought a house in Clinton because you no kidding off?

Is it because when you were in deep river and you went to Chester all the Chester people were making fun of Deep River constantly and so you're like, I can't leave there. We can't do it.

A lot of a lot of my staff grew up in Deep River. So they they're pretty they have some strong feelings about that argument.

So for those of you that don't know and don't care, like on the left side of the Connecticut River, which is it's not actually the I don't know. I always thought it was most important river in Connecticut, but Connecticut's got like three or four main rivers anyway Connecticut is one of them. And on the left side of it there's these little towns like really nice little towns one of which was Chester where I used to have a place and we're jewels restaurant is Granollers a restaurant and then just south as deep river and this town had these two towns have kind of a rivalry in the Chester people. Even though Chester's like also like a nice guy. It's not like, ritzy. It's just nice. You know what I mean? Like, like, it's like, it's kind of ideal for someone like me. It's not like, it's not like the Upper East Side. It's like if you divided New York into zones, where do you think Chester would be in New York City?

Where we're just to be well, I mean, you

In the Murray Hill

I would say probably didn't Westville

West Village and then and then that would make deep deep river then would be like the Bowery or something

Alphabet City maybe?

Yeah All right back when alphabet sitting back when you could still get murdered in Alphabet City. So anyway also congratulations on the relatively new one in your family there Joel

Thank you her name is Juan and she's she's she's an absolute gem.

Oh beautiful awesome great well it's all joy now before I get a couple of questions that we had we had by the way, so Joel is an expert in making both his own pasta and also in grinding flour fresh grinding, we had a couple of questions in so rather than me speculating and kind of like you know weaseling my way through these two questions that we had we figured we'll just have Joe long last game and then they you get the you get the answer from someone with some experience. And secondly, we wanted to check in and see how, what the what the kind of current COVID environment of businesses up there in Connecticut?

Well I'll start with the business stuff. So way back when way back when last March, everyone was kind of in freakout mode. So it took a little while for us to figure out what we were going to be so once we figured out that we can do some family style takeout stuff you know that that eventually worked out pretty good until we were able to reopen and do a parking lot restaurant which actually was was pretty great. And Connecticut at least where we are in Connecticut people are pretty respectful so that was that was kind of nice to see that people did the masks and didn't didn't complain that much. We had once a while you get a few one offs. You just want to park a little bit the host but but other than that, it's been pretty good.

That's the crew from Newington, Berlin and Newington came in

Yeah, they just they roll right on over with particular hats on their heads and st Karen thanks to our staff so

so just so you guys know like coastal Connecticut is an extension of the line between no offense to coastal Connecticut but it's an extension of the line between New York and Boston. All right. So like like that's who when people are like complaining about US East Coast elite people like like they're part of that whether they're blue collar or whatever, they're part of the thing that the rest of the country hates. Right that's us. But then like literally literally 35 minutes to 45 minutes north just above what's the Middletown line if you're going up the Connecticut River from the from the Long Island Sound right? It completely changes coastal. Coastal Connecticut's gone, you know what I mean? It's like, am I right about this job? What do you think

you're exactly right. And I'll kind of leave I'll leave no comment on that. But yeah, there's definitely goes into a different zone. Just a few miles north of justice. That is That is absolutely correct. So so the bet my

favorite place in Connecticut is right where the line is a place called Portland Connecticut, which is a real rundown like well, I shouldn't say it but it's a community that has seen better economic days it's across the river from Middletown right in it is the My Favorite waterpark ever brownstone Have you gone to brownstone Joe

here's a waterpark up there had no idea.

Oh my God wants this COVID is over. You gotta go to brownstone it is a brownstone quarry where they quarry you could guess brownstone and at some point I think in the 20s or 30s of the last century the it flooded and couldn't be and flooded because they build quarries next to rivers a lot so it's right on the other side of the Connecticut River from where Middletown where that old bridges and it flooded and no one knew what to do with it so at one point someone was like a let's open a water park and it is it is amazing water park it's got like I don't know how but there's like an amazing group of people everyone's fun. It's like you know like all different kinds of people all different kinds of ages you and the only and it's not like action park if you've seen if you ever heard of action Park in Vernon in New Jersey or seeing the recent documentary on it the most dangerous waterpark of all time where I actually went when I was a child you know everyone wears the vest everyone's fairly respectful but it's still kind of crazy like you can still jump off of a cliff in a quarry into into water amazing go go when when the world reopens. But anyway,

Hey, John, we should grab our speedos and go next weekend.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I don't know. I don't know when they're going to open I was going to go this summer, but obviously not. You know what I mean? If any of you are from the area want to go the power move once people are allowed once people would ever be seen near water that someone else had been in the power move is to get a group together and rent one of the gazebo. There's gazebo is that like the entire place is decks and you walk out on these floating decks, and then you can kind of just do whatever you want you make a day of it right? And you can bring your own food. Don't bring liquor, I don't think but you think you can bring your own food and you rent this gazebo, and your crew then owns this gazebo for the day, you could just camp out. You spent a whole day there.

Wow, like the most bad suggestion I think I've ever heard you say,

hey, it's fantastic. Look, I don't know. It's just it's fun. For those of you that don't know, you're never gonna see me I wore a bathing suit to this place. I did still wear a shirt because, you know, I don't I don't show skin in public but like a they got me to wear a bathing and I was happy to be there. So for me to be happy to be at a place like this. I mean, that says a lot. And unlike Sesame Place, no offense, Philadelphia, this place does not smell like a poorly attended male gym locker. Right? You know, or like, you know, when you leave a towel and you wash the towel, and then you don't dry the towel. And then a week later you open the dryer and you're like, oh, that right Sesame Place. I'm not saying it smells like that. But it smells like that. You know what I'm saying? upsets me places a waterpark near Philadelphia. Anyway, I love Sesame Place. No offense. But

you know, that's not Yeah, that's not really coming across in that section.

What the lack of offense. The one negative thing I'll say about brownstone is this. That when you are approaching brownstone, you're like, Whoa, I don't think I'm gonna like this because because right next to it on the other side of the of the street, right on where the river is, are like a bunch of like, oil storage tanks. Because for those of you who've never been to Connecticut, much like New Jersey on the waterfront at some point in the 20th century, someone decided, hey, what if we took everything we had that was pure and beautiful, and surrounded it with petroleum? Right? And so like anywhere you go in Connecticut where there should be beautiful Well, except for where Anastasia is house. It's not that she's ever going to go back apparently, although I didn't know. But everywhere you go where they're

going back and clarify to everyone I'm going back it's just the idea of sitting in my house on the water by myself in the winter and then being out in the sun near my family is like, you know,

yeah, the choice seems pretty clear.

This ASEAN not now but tell me when we can tell the story of the of the windows.

Anyway, you can tell it. Yeah. And that's the other part of it. You can

Alright, well, let's finish this every single beautiful place in Connecticut. At some point someone has tried to ruin it with it with either a raised highway where they take 95 and like cut through all this beautiful stuff, or they put some sort of giant gasoline storage there. So you can kind of see when the wind changes direction at the brownstone, but once you're in the quarry, you don't smell it, but like when you're up top, you're like me. I mean, anyway, so business, you're saying they're being respectful but like what's happening now that attorney wintertime,

so Okay, so obviously, we had to close on our big parking lot, restaurant. So we put a few tables out front and most people don't want to sit outside we get a few people that don't mind do we have our little propane heater? You ever see these ones you can get them at Home Depot, they look like like Johnny Five from short circuit and have basically it's like two big eyes. And then this is a propane and just lights up, we just wheel them over to the table, right? And they can get their personal heater. They're like 50 bucks apiece,

but they're not the overhead, they're not the overhead umbrella infrareds

that that kind of money man.

Plus, those things are like twice the cost of what they used to you know what they're doing in New York City. Now, I don't even know how these are legal because they've New York City has converted outdoor dining back to indoor dining. So that the coolest setup I saw someone bought a bunch of those portable greenhouses and just stacked them one next to each other. Yeah, to keep the heat in. And so here's the thing, like, all of those people are indoor. And then the poor server has to show up and deal with a bunch of hopefully for the you know, bank accounts of everyone involved. Extremely liquored up. You know what I mean? Like people like spewing crap into the server's face, I still feel bad for the, for the servers. But that's

definitely something that has shown a lot of our industry and a couple of ways what we're capable of doing, obviously, we you're we're made to think on our feet. But on the other side of things financially, that you get a little more thrifty than then you think you can be, you know, I didn't think that we'd be offering the food that we're doing out in a parking lot on picnic tables, and people who will be throwing down upwards of, you know, $100 a person before, you know, service charge or gratuity or whatever. And they're happy to do it sitting on a picnic table, which is amazing to me. So that's the kind of community that we do have. We have the plus side and I know there's a lot of other restaurants in the state and great country that are doing a lot worse than we are so it's such great people to come support us through all this stuff. chemist but now that it's cold out, we have people inside. It's not the most popular thing, to be honest, you know, but our staff is really good and they take the utmost precautions. And if anyone gives any sassed, we give it right back into or kick them out. Funny story, we had a guy show up the other day, right before service started and wearing a body camera attached to a lanyard and started picking a fight with the hostess. And she's 16 years old, by the way, like a grown ass man picking a fight with a six year old hostess about putting a mask on. So we're like, okay, so this

body camera is just we can prove to all of his friends what a douchebag he is,

I'm pretty sure on it. This was like he was trying to collect content for his Facebook page or something. So it was our manager, Haley came over and squashed you pretty quick. And I just turned the corner as this was happening. And the funniest part about this was we had someone picking up a takeout order. While this was happening, and the bottom of the bag was wet, there was two quarts of marinara sauce in that bag that just hit the floor exploded all over the hook area while this guy is harassing our young hostess. So if you can imagine this moment of like, what was going on with you? It was but those those those things that happen are so few and far between that you know, when they do we're just kind of like, You're crazy. Just Just get out. So when we when that goes out, and we just we kick him out. So it's gonna be

a lot of fun cleaning up marinara sauce. And yeah, hopefully it was in a court not in glass. Yeah. Well, let me ask you a quick, why can't like you ever notice with core containers. And for those of you that, that

you notice they gotten worse? Yeah,

they are more brittle than they used to be used to be support containers. Like where we come from over here. Everyone uses core containers and they're not environmentally unfriendly because you use them 8 million times. And by the way, for any of you that order soup from people or whatever, and someone hands you a quart container, don't throw that away at home. You can use that thing forever. Right? The one caveat is that if you freezing them, they are extremely brittle. But recently the core container batches I've been getting have all been brittle even at room temperature.

You can't you know, when you got some kind of solid, you got to you got to squeeze gotta get a little squeezed to get it out. Yeah, you can't do the squeeze anymore. You get you get a little squeeze the whole thing shatters gameau Yeah, yeah. And

they separate in it. Like there's a disk line separation around the bottom that I've been cracking all the core containers, I don't get it. They're polypropylene they've nothing should happen to them, right? Like that, like, polypropylene is a great plastic for this. For this because a its lack lack of, you know, plasticizers the fact that it doesn't Leach. The fact that it can handle high temperature relatively high temperatures like like way past boiling, without degrading, like all of that, but they are in but suddenly they've these, I've just been so disappointed. I just recently

found we found one brand from from our one of our vendors trademark that you have to like, talk you have to like call call our sales rep and say give me this specific one. Or else they'll just pick whatever and send it right because they got a bunch of different brands, right, but no one seems to be of of the old style. So I can give it a solid squeeze. And it doesn't shatter.

I'll get that. I like that. I'll give you an example of this just happened to me last week. So DAX who's 15? Like, of course, we kind of like me actually fidgets constantly, right fidgets constantly. So we're at the dinner table. And he's taking I had a, you know, we so you don't just buy quartz, you buy quartz, you buy pints, and you buy some eight ounces, right? So that you can efficiently store things with different quantities. So I think I had an eight or a 16, you know, and I had this Greek yogurt in it. And that's kept on spinning the yogurt around on the table. And like DAX, nothing good can happen from spinning this. The only things that can happen are bad things right spillage, whatever. So he kept on doing it. And so finally I went whack and I hid the container down onto the table to stop it from spinning and shattered yogurt everywhere. Everywhere. Yeah, classic, classic restore as like I told you nothing good could happen. And so what happened is you piss your dad off. He hit the yogurt container down under the table. Now there's yogurt everywhere. See? See? So I was I was I have to look forward to Yeah, yeah. Well, you know. Okay, so these are the cooking questions, although a quart containers was relatively quick. Cooking related, cooking, tangential cooking adjacent. So I feel like we've gotten some cooking stuff in. Anastasia, remind us we'll talk windows at the end. Trevor, I have two questions for you. Trevor Driscoll wrote in and I was wondering about the virtues of fresh milling flowers for pastas. Have you experimented with milling your own grain? is for pasta dose? And does it generally have a similar impact as it does when you're baking bread chairs, Trevor and PS, we gave him some advice that the rice cooker was in fact, not a, what's it called just a superfluous luxury and that they would use it more and more. And he says, PS, the rice cooker has become a crowd favorite. And that purchase is no longer contentious. Well, I'm glad you're never going to read it. I've never met anyone who's like, I wish I didn't have this rice cook. I never use it crazy. Anyway. So you gotta you got an answer for me.

Sure. So, Trevor, well, we've we've done a bunch of different stuff. Restaurant grown ourselves with freshly milling grain was part of how we open it as part of the concept of the restaurant. So we went through a few different iterations. I think the the two camps that you're gonna fall into, and I'm assuming he's, he's the home cook, he's probably going to be making cheated or rolled pasta, not extruded, machined extruded pasta. So I'll go into the extruded stuff first just has a point of reference. But the problem you get into and it's not impossible. The problem you get into if you did 100%. freshly milled flour through an extruded Pasta Machine is that if it's not milled, finally enough, they'll get caught in the dies, and then you're having a big, big problem. So what we do is we actually sift out the brand and germ after the mill. And we just have a tabletop mill to Kumo tabletop mill, and we set it to as fine as possible, and pass it through and then sift out the the junkies and then we use that flour. To make our pasta dough. The hydrations do change, typically, you just touch more water, even if you're sifting. So you got the poacher ratios a little bit. But anyway, it is possible. The only problem you run into with using freshly milled flour is that your product if it sits as we call in the restaurant on amusing glass, if it sits for too long, it will start to oxidize the changes. In fact, we've noticed that gets gummy. So I would suggest if you are extruding

is that you think that's due to enzymatic action.

I don't really know. It could be I'm thinking it's like partially fermenting even maybe I don't really know. Because we're not at the restaurant, we're not freezing extruded pasta. So it just sits in the cooler until we use it. So you imagine you know, with your prep schedules, let's say you have enough positive for two days or three days sometimes, and you or you want to carry the weekend and see how it is on Tuesday. It has completely changed color and it gets dark brown. And it's really not that appetizing. So what we've done at the restaurant is actually much lower the amount of whole grain fresh into flour we put into and use mostly semolina. And we've adjusted this since we opened just because of that because the product was degrading so quickly. But

like when you did cook it though, right away Did you like so like, fresh milled wheat in bread just tastes different? I'm not saying it's better. I like it a lot. That's what I use now but it's just tastes different from AP flour in makes whole wheat flour that you buy seem like like some sort of like terrible bad joke that people are playing on you. Right? Like do you get any taste effects like that? And

definitely, it definitely tastes again, you know, like, I guess it depends, you know, what kind of flavor profile you're looking for pure semolina, just regular General Mills semolina has has almost nostalgic flavor to most people. It's delicious on its own right. And it's and it's kind of neutral to whatever preparation you're doing. Versus if you're going to freshly milled grain you know you're going to want that to be a predominant flavor and not just fill it with you know your your marinara sauce, or we're a like a like a basil pesto or something and you would make it home normal. So I would I would probably do different preparations if you are going to do that to highlight flavor the green now that's just extruded stuff but with freshly roll. Sorry she cheated pasta or roll pasta. Typically you're making a deal with eggs in it that you can get away with with whole grain without sifting the flour. But you are going to have just a little bit less playability I think with the Dell, definitely you have to up the hydration or the amount of egg you're putting in at the restaurant

and you don't regrind the brand even at a fine setting the brand is pretty big. If you're going fine on your rollers. It's going to cause tear out sometimes, right?

Correct. Yeah, and we've done that we just think because we actually at the restaurant we have another purpose for the brand and the germs so we we find other things to do with it we actually reloaded back into our bread. So let's say we're making a pasta dough, and we doubt the brand and the germ will take we call it the the fair one my my bigger cause if you think was scrapped or something, she had the trim of it and he takes it in and throws it back into the bread so it's it's had a purpose. but for the role pasta, that's a better bet for the freshly milled flour, I would suggest that but if you're not going to use it right away, put in the freezer. So we actually do this as practice at the restaurant. It does not degrade the quality in my opinion of ravioli and all that kind of stuff, because we're going through it in a day or two anyway, all it does is set the dose though it doesn't, you know, the moisture doesn't leak out of the filling, and yada yada. So actually, using fresh ammo flour helps the structure of the ravioli. So it actually for the dishes that we do actually helps. And we do this with right, so we add up to 10% of freshly milled random

Oh, that's crazy, right? So sticky. You don't have problems with it. Not at all. It actually

firms up the dough. So but again really isn't 10% and the rest of it is double zero. So that amount actually firms go up enough. You have to up the hydration again just just a tad. And we get a fantastic product out of that and you make great garganelli you know tackle a telly, fettuccine. yatta yatta all that stuff.

Now Nastasia you're not against fresh egg pastas and fresh ravioli. Right. Right. Yeah. Okay. But you know, you sure Joe knows by now that you're in general, you are a commercially produced dry pasta lover and have taken a stance against most fresh pastas. True,

right. Really? Yeah. Wow. I just really don't like them. And it feels like if you're gonna have a shape, other than like fettuccine with hollandaise sauce or something, it should be dry. Because when I eat shapes, it's just like a big mound of dough in your stomach. And I spent a lot of time in Italy and going back and forth. And it's like, I love dried pasta. I prefer

fortunately and brought up you know, you got new, you know, stuff.

Like I said stuff. Pasta is fine.

Yeah. It's not against things that she thinks are intended to be fresh, right? Yeah.

That is intended to be fresh. You can't do it any other way.

I see what you're saying.

Also, Anastasia, the way that I have received what you said, not just about this argument, but all arguments are like sometimes big companies do a great job. Let them do it. Yeah,

that's a good point. That's a really good point. And actually, they are gonna make a plug. We're opening up a drive off the company this year. So that's, that's a big, that's a big thing. We purchased the equipment, we have this gigantic pasta extruder from pasta does that we have gotten a drying cabinet. So that's, that's the real deal way to do it. Like as a possible desert grid. So it helped us kind of source all this stuff out,

I anxiously anticipate trying some of your wares. And if you can, I would love to hear because you mean associate won't give any proprietary information out obviously. But like, you know, if you talk to some of these old school, Italians, they're like the drying rate, the drying rate, but then they won't tell you what exactly the effect is or what they do, because everyone has their secrets, and they won't tell you. So I'm hoping that you know, maybe if you do some experiments on drying rate on these passes, that you can, you know, maybe tell us what's actually going on with this stuff. Maybe

it's I've never dried pasta commercially before we've done you know, sit by the window sill kind of thing. And that usually does not yield great results. So especially with extruded pasta and the low hydration, it's actually really difficult to do it. So the drying cabinets are pretty dialed in, there's cycles that goes through and it's like super hot, you know, it goes up to 130 degrees or something. I'll know once once I get the damn thing plugged in and figured out but it's sitting in a crate right now. Anyway, so that's kind of where we're going. And it's a good opportunity for us to try to transfer the style of pasta video with the restaurant and really see if it works with drying you know, and particularly using rice because we love using Ryan or pasta, it's in our bread, it's all the stuff. It's one of our favorite grains to do because when we when we do our toast on it the ground or so kind of flour instead of burning, you know, quote unquote burning the flour, we toast the whole grain and a cast iron pan until it's smells like you put Cheerios in the toaster oven. You know, I mean like it kind of does burn od kind of smell. We chill it and then pass it through the mill and you get a really fantastic flavorful product. So we're going to try to see how that translates into drying. It might not work. We don't know.

We'll find out well I again, I anxiously anticipate Now there's one more question for you. And before that, I'm going to like insert here looks like there's a lot of confusion. I think even people who know a lot about exactly what semolina is and doram and why you would use it so the Stasi expert on this from the you know all the pasta business As I draw you up, I'm going to insert something and then you can argue about what I say. So semolina, right is a grind, right? So it's a grind. And what it is, is it's got very few finds in it. In other words, like it's not supposed to have any dust or very little dust as possible, because you don't want to have a lot of dusty damaged starch because that stuff absorbs water like a mother, right? And so it's going to like make you have to have a higher hydration dough to make it machinable. Right. And so then, the other thing about Durham is, is that durum wheat, which is a wheat now not a grind, so you can have Durham flour, right, you don't have to just only get semolina out of it, you can make durum flour, right. But typically people are buying the semolina from Durham, Durham is a extremely hard wheat, right, but the gluten in it right is not such that it's going to stretch back as much as a could, you could also wit mill semolina from a regular like spring or winter hard wheat. But if you do that, you're going to get so much like shrink back on your stuff that you're not going to be able to kind of extrude properly you need you need it to hold together have enough protein to have good bite, but you don't want it to be snapping back, you don't want the the you know, the snapback that you would get in something where the where the gluten system was extremely stretchy, right. So this so that's why you want an extremely hard wheat. And by the way, the hardness of wheat. People associate it with high protein not true, it is a different protein, it's not the gluten protein that makes the grains hard. And they've done the research over the past 15 years, it's a different set of proteins that cause the, the wheat to be hard, but you want to be very hard, so that it shatters into these kind of large chunks. And then the or the not large, but these little semolina chunks which can then be formed into a relatively low hydration and also not you know, you can stretch it out but it doesn't snap back dough. And that is why Durham semolina is the Sinequan non of pasta flowers, would you both of you say that's relatively accurate,

accurate.

Alright, so the second question, pasta related question. And before I get to this, I had another question. Someone wants to start grinding more meat. I have the question here somewhere. Well, you have a Do you have any, any recommendations for you know, relatively inexpensive, like, you know, next level up from the KitchenAid meat grinder? That you know, maybe I don't know if like the Hobart is what everyone gets the fact that you know, the you know, the the Hobart that's about the size of a small ice cream machine. But is there one that's cheaper that works that you've tested, are

we there we go traditional hope are in fact, I think the cast iron thing that attaches to my 20 quart mixer is probably 30 years old, but it works great. Although I will I don't have a recommendation. But I will put in a formal complaint to KitchenAid that the food grinder attachment the blade and that thing is like basically a paperclip that they've melted down and to make it look like some sort of like knife that you're supposed to put in this thing is completely garbage. But you know what's really good for is that if you're going to make an emulsified style sausage, it actually does a good job at mashing the meat and the fat together. Because it's such a smear machine that does the opposite of what it's supposed to do. But if you're making emulsified sausage actually does actually do Okay,

nice. All right, Zack see put this chat room question in before mid pandemic, I was somehow able to convince my partner that an Arca Bellino AE x five now that people is like, if you live in a house or want a small pasta machine in a line on in a restaurant, right doesn't have a lot of output. But I've been jonesing for one of these things for years it mixes and then extrudes and you can get all kinds of cool dyes it is, as the British would say an awesome piece of kit anyway. A I was able to get the A x five as a critical tool to survive sheltering in place. It's been amazing. One thing I find challenging is that the only real recipes for extruded pasta are aimed at commercial slash industrial scale, where the main goal is to end up with dried pasta. So this is going back to our dried pasta question. Do you know and this since you have not yet been a dryer drill, you will know this? Do you know of any resources that have a recipe guidance for extruded fresh pastas? I want to better understand how things like different flowers, eggs, moisture, etc impact final product. And then a bonus question. I'll probably handle this one unless you're when you guys are welders. I have a tag of welding Oregon at my apartment because sometimes a man's got to take my roommate and I hypothesized that we could displace the air in an open bottle of wine with the Oregon to prevent oxidation. It didn't work. Should this theoretically work? Yes, it should. You're just not delivering it right. All right. Now back to the pasta question.

Oh, wow, sometimes the man's got a tick, I like that.

First, like when you run a TIG, there's a certain amount of air in the line. So if you have the argon thing, if you're actually using the torch, the TIG tip, right, you gotta run it for a little while, don't you, you want to make sure that you're not going to build a pressure on the bottle. Some of those early Oregon things cause the bottle to shatter. So you're going to want to run it for a while before you even do the injection and then you're going to want an in and an out and you want the out to be outside of the bottle and the end to be in the bottle so that it's trans transferring all this stuff up anyway, go ahead.

So yeah, so this is this is a been sort of only call an argument but something inside my head that knocks around a lot. Why extrude pasta that's supposed to be dried, and but then just go around and turn it fresh, because a texture change? Absolutely, I think it just completely different products. So when people come into our restaurant, they're like, Hey, this guy makes all of his own pasta, how cool. You know, they, they probably don't connect the two dots that if I if I purchase dried pasta, made with American semolina flour, it probably went through the exact same machine that I use probably just a bigger scale, but the process is exactly the same. So really, all it comes down to is the type of fires and the texture that you desire.

But the pressure on the big machines is a lot higher though, right? Like the screw pressures a lot higher.

Yeah, but that will also changes the temperature of the dough for which it extrudes and that changes the product. So for for what's this gentleman's name again, Zack see that are exact. So here's your master hydration to start with 31% So start with 31% water by weight of of your course or whatever of your sorry, of your semolina flour don't go down to the Durham road. So General General Mills, okay, classic standard for for for semolina in America does a great job, it's very consistent. Start with 31%. If you want to start to add in some, some imagine grains, or spelt or whatever, start with 5% Climb up to 10%, you got this little machine so you can have fun. So you can drive it, it does make a different texture. If you don't try it just cook cook it right away. So even if it's sat in the fridge for you know, two days, it'll generally keep around the same hydration, the cook time won't change that much. If you leave it out with with no cover, obviously, it'll dry out and then it'll change the cook time. But if you do decide to dry it, you can do that by the window sill method, you can put a small box fan on it, just you have to rotate the shapes around because if it's sitting or put on a rack, but you still have to shake them around, because whatever contact point it has, it's going to it's it's not going to it's going to stay wetter in that area. So the drying won't be even. But I would I would encourage them to experiment with both and see which one you like better, because you might like your dried, you know spaghetti or bucatini product that you're extruding but you might hate your rigatoni because the wall thickness is different or something like that. And that's something we run into the restaurant all the time is you know, how fast can we cook this? You know, because we're restaurant it's got to, we got to get the food out. So sometimes I choose shapes that have thinner wall thicknesses and pair them with with more popular editions. And if I don't like the texture of the completed dish, great start throw it out start over. But some pasta shapes do take a lot longer like okay, sorry, a is sometimes an eight minute Cook, even if you just extruded it fresh and didn't dry it. So I guess it really depends where where Mr. Zack wants to land with with what he likes. But I would encourage them the tribal,

what do you think about what do you think about anastasius comment on the Dominus of a lot of people's attempt at fresh passage? Otherwise, do you think it's just because they don't have a machine that can achieve a low enough hydration on extrusion? Because the user on flowers?

Oh, yeah, definitely. Yeah. So you know, back to your saying about the sort of elasticity plasticity of like semolina dose, you know, it just creates a different bite. And that's why I encourage people if you're going to extrude pasta, you can add non semolina flowers to it, but it will inherently make the dough more gummy, maybe sometimes softer. And some people like that they don't mind I think really, it's like shape dependent. I mean, there's so many shapes or dyes you can buy for your extruder but if you don't like the Dominus of it, perhaps maybe dry it a little bit. I don't like adding eggs at all to my extruded dose. I know there's people that do that. They'll kind of dose their semolina dose with egg yolk. I feel like they just do it just for for color. But I don't I don't prefer the texture that it kind of contributes to that. So I just I'm assembling real

real Ask the heads though. Hate soft pasta, right?

What do you mean salt? We wouldn't be doing this

task. Do you hate a soft pasta? Right? Right? But it's like,

going off of like Mark Ladner is training, you know, and he's pretty good at pasta.

But remember what I'm saying is is that you hate a pasta that doesn't have a texture when you bite into it. That's what I mean by kind of soft, right? I mean,

like the olden day.

You're just not happy except that you're not going to get that. That's all.

Yeah, well in the end, but the problem is right that when you go harder when you when you try to go lower hydration with your technique is that doesn't match up to it. It's you. I guess you can make it harder, but then the outside gets, like almost boiled dumpling looking, right? Yeah,

yeah. Well, again, I think if you're using let's say for example, you want to make a sheet of dough. It's got eggs in it, and you do that. You know, you pull out the measuring company get you know, crappy all purpose flour, throw in three eggs and mix it around and then you pass it. I think that makes terrible pasta dough. It just it's not the right flour. The if there's too much egg white in it, I think and it makes it makes it to like a wrong type of firmness. That almost like souffles a little bit when you cook it.

Yeah. puffs. Well, this this, like the damage, like the damage starch and the fines and all that are going to inflate. And you're going to get like that. You know?