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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This episode is brought to you by a dozen cousins soulfully seasoned ready to eat beans. Learn more at a dozen cousins.com.

This week on mountain three. It's all about screens. We're diving into the world of TV, computers and even VR to figure out how food consumption is shifted by digital lives.

Every course talks about a different topic within the Asian American identity through a very personal ones. And the three courses that are paired with VR. In it you're seeing a brushstroke by brushstroke, the creation of the dish that you're about to eat,

most of us in the world live in urban areas. And so how much is the city already accidentally providing its residents and how much more could it provide if we just made a priority?

Tune into meat and three hrs weekly food news roundup wherever you listen to podcasts

Hello, and welcome to you live what you can get it doesn't matter what

I grabbed. I grabbed the wrong knob, but it doesn't matter. We recorded

every good. That's the intro baby. Kevin down I said man, we're coming to you live. Radio Network. I'm coming from the Lower East Side in New York City. We have the Stasi to hammer Lopez gonna dial back in in a minute she got caught in her car. She's about to be back inside we got we got our man John, your customer service representative extraordinaire. Live from Murray Hills accurate you Murray Hill right now. Yep. Correct. Okay. Got Matt and his Rhode Island booth. How you doing?

I mean, I couldn't make it five seconds into the show without screwing up. So we're doing great.

Yeah. All right. Well, you know, you remember that story I told you a long time ago about how I got real mad at Apple because their their website wasn't working for like reserving a product that was coming out. This was years ago. And we had just had our huge snafu with our with our Kickstarter launch on the seesaw. And I was like, You know what mistakes happen? I think the same thing here. Mistakes happen.

With the one time you're like, alright,

well, it's alright, is it it's like every once in a while you need to realize that I think everyone needs to realize that we all make mistakes. And so like while we hold ourselves to high standards, I hope like you can't get too bent over every little thing, especially if you can't fix it. Better to get bent over the stuff you can fix than the stuff that's already happened. No use getting bent over spilled milk or spilled blood for that matter. You know what I mean? Okay, and special guest friend on the show and also our friend in real life Ariel Johnson, how you doing?

Good, thanks. How are you? Yeah, and

where are you doing well. Where are you? Where are you coming in from here?

Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

Greenpoint. Is that where you live in Greenpoint?

I do live here. Yeah.

Are you one of those people that listen. So for those of you that don't hang out in New York, here's what happened. So Greenpoint is an area that's serviced only by the G train and back when, you know, I was young, in the, in the 90s. And you know, 80s 90s. Like, you could basically say to yourself, if I have to take the G Train, I've made a terrible life mistake. I've made a horrible life mistake if the G

terrible thing to say to her again. This is No, no. I know. When I first moved to New York, this isn't like 2005, like, the G train, or my perception of it having written it was that it was like very bad. But But now, I mean, if you're if you're willing to deal with the fact that it only comes every 10 minutes, it's actually, I think, the most reliable train in the system now.

So when it's good, it's good. It's getting computerized, right. And that will get computerized. It's like two cars on.

It's got four cars. Yeah, it's a little short trip. But like, for the past.

For the past eight years, it's been snowing where the hot hipsters go to meet other hot hipsters to write. I mean, it's a good like people on it. Are you Oh, people who live in that neighborhood, which, you know, are like people that I'm used to. And then there's like, you know, the, like the younger set. You know, I

definitely live and hang out more in the older not hot folks part than the hot hipster part. Yeah, yeah. So I'm like, I'm over. I'm over by the warehouses,

and that was 1997. I had a job working in a metal fabrication factory in Greenpoint. Yeah, I agree. I there's

two of those on my block.

The name of it was NSFW metals, which literally stood for so effing what metals that was what it was excellent. And we were making like I was making the project our members I made a stainless steel medicine cabinet for an incredibly rich Upper East Side person, just sitting there sanding all day sanding metal dust into my face. Anyways. So at the time I lived right by Columbia, and so for those you that don't understand how New York City works, that's a long commute. It's a long commute, even though it's like literally like as the crow flies five miles, it's like an hour and was like an hour and a half, especially back in the 90s. And man, I was like, man, Greenpoint. What the hell I mean, like, unless you're an old school, like, like Polish, you wanted that old school like feeling that for that it was great. But also, you know, much like Bushwick where we used to record this thing. It would be like, here's a family. Oh, look, right next door. Here's someone dumping oil and car paint into the ground. Like, what you're like, I was like, I was like, the amount of like, the entire area used to be like a Superfund site, because you'd have hardcore industrial people old school style, like not like new green industry. Like I mean, like literally, like dumping oil into the earth. You know what I mean? Yeah, so that's my, that's my memory, but now. It's like so fancy, like Greenpoint, so fancy that most of the people I know who live in Greenpoint. Like they have no reason to leave it. It's become its own mini Brooklyn. You know what I mean?

Yeah, I mean, it is literally Brooklyn. But well, kind of. I mean, I order I also literally don't leave it.

Usually now. But I mean, even pre even pre Oh, no, totally, totally. Um, you can get your tattoos. You can get your artisanal breads. You can get a good kielbasa. What else do you need? Really?

Yeah, it's like, it's like, you know, when I when I lived in the East Village years and years ago, and you could just like walk around and get everything you needed and never leave?

Yeah, it's like that. Yeah, and this is a yet another episode for those that don't hang out in New York City, that people from people from New York City, we all believe that we're somehow really worldly, and that everyone else is provincial. And most of us don't leave five blocks from our house, which is a five minute walk radius. If you plan a compass, maybe 10 you plant a compass and you draw a 10 minute walk in a circle 95% of us stay in that circle all the time, unless we're going to work anyway.

Yeah. And then in our spare time, rather than high culture and all of the all of the worldly things that we are supposedly involved in, we compare micro gradations of neighborhood neighborhood quality from block to block.

Yeah. We do. So originally, you were talking to Anastasia and you were gonna come on to promote your what was supposed to be book coming out very soon, but instead, you're pushing the book off for a couple of months. But you want to talk with the book is

are you Oh, yeah, well, my book Yes, it is. I've been working on it for a while so I may have actually plugged it here before. Flavor Rama, the unbridled science of flavor and how to get it to work for you. It is it is a handbook to the science of flavor with with a lot of friendly diagrams and explanations of how molecules and plants have volatiles and the brain apps and cooking work and also with some recipes to help you understand those things and incorporate them into your cooking to become more intuitive and creative.

First of all, can I tell you what a fantastic title that is? Yo Thank you, Matt. Matt, do you have a Do you have any reverb effects there?

Sadly, sadly, not now. Reverb

flavours be on like severe reverb and we could do it we could do it in post. Yeah, add some reverb. I'll do it one time I'll do without the reverb and then what's the slug underneath? What's the slug line?

Oh, the subtitle Yeah. Oh, the unbridled science of flavor and how to get it to work for you.

What if it was like the hardcore like flavor on but like sunday sunday sunday flavor and then it's like nearly unbridled like he was like you go to like real? You go real droopy dog for the rest of it. Yeah. Anyway, yeah. I love the title. care what the book has this? Yeah, I'm wondering what does

it mean? I guess marketing is more important than content. So hell yeah.

What's the cover look like on that thing? Oh,

we're working on that now. So it's probably going to have a molecule and maybe a cool drawing or doing all the drawings. Oh, yeah, like watercolor stuff. It's really

you crazy area.

I know crazy. I love to make things extremely difficult for myself. Now many drawings you have total and how many water? How many of those are watercolors? I think I think right. Now drawings I probably need to do like 100 more.

And out of how many

though there's going to be about 200

halfway done with the drawings. Yeah.

And probably like 15% or watercolor they're all so like my I drew I do everything I sketch with pencil then I like to ink with either like for super fine lines I use like a like a stapler or a one of those like secara fine liners but the pen I really like is a like German graffiti pen called a molotov I think it has like car paint or something in it. But it gives you like a really nice like India ink thick line but with like find him control and then the Germans Yeah, exactly to over engineer the most perfect the most perfect material for any task whether that's wonderful gardening tools or wool clothing or graffiti pens and then some some stuff on coloring in Photoshop and then that's more for like concepts and then for like real things like a piece of fruit I do watercolors.

So what is the front like are you gonna like cash in on that like kind of like 5060s Oh Rama thing and like pastel triangles on the front like those long like Chevron he like like like two sided triangle BS as you know I'm talking about

oh to make make it look like a mid century like physics textbook.

Yeah, within with like, you know, with like, like a crazy molecule with the with the fake satellites spinning.

Oh, yeah. That'd be really fun. I'll have to I'll have to like mock that up and

even if I know you you're gonna be like little lectrons

real like you're using you're using the Bohr model.

Yeah. Come on, man. Let me see spill space feel like it's a space filling model with the space filling model doesn't fit the O Rama erielle It doesn't fit the O Rama have it all

yeah, there's there's there's something about a probability distribution of an electron wave that is very accurate but maybe doesn't have as much visual

paths. So Oh, Rama. Rama where the wind comes out. We get into like, slavery is such a great that's not the key of Oklahoma. But that will be like, that's such a great title flavor Rama.

Thank you. Thank you.

I want to know anyone out there that won't sign up to buy a book called flavor Rama because it also it makes it sound like it's going to be fun. Is it going to be fun?

I am trying to make it fun. Yeah, no, it's gonna be fun.

That's 200 drawings in a day. Of course. It's fun.

You go by Justice, a picture book for the kids. That's how fun is going to be and by the way, you and I I and all of us and Booker and DAX teams still have to work on that secret project. I've done some research.

Yeah, no, I keep I keep, like doing a bit of research, then having to like put out a fire and then being like, I should really send this to Dave.

Like a literal fire or like writing a book fire,

right or no writing a book fire, which are usually of my own creation. But, or, like, I know, and I'm also still having a lot of fun working on good eats, which also sometimes has, you know, got a got a okay, this model or or diagram for the Blackboard because we're filming it tomorrow.

But yeah, so Oh, you're filming? Are you filming with mask? How's it working? No.

Not when I say we actually since they filmed in Atlanta, and I'm here in New York, but I believe they are all wearing masks. Maybe Elton is not wearing a mask when he films. We'll see because the new season premieres very shortly.

For those of you that don't remember, Ariel is the first science officer which sounds like a Star Trek title, but is in fact a title on the show good eats, right?

I am the Spock of good eats.

This is true. Yeah. Yeah, well, don't do that Spock thing where you go into the radiation and get yourself zapped because unlike, you know, we can't mind meld into the other doctor and like, come back later.

I don't have that superior Vulcan physiology. Yeah.

You know, whatever. So I have a question for you. Actually. Why don't we hit that one? First? This one's on the Twitter from Chef Joanna. I'd love to hear Ariel speak about how cooking should be included in by the way. What do you think Ariel about STEAM versus stem as an acronym? Let me finish the question first. In STEAM education, it's thermodynamics slash organic chemistry slash biology. I'm trying to get schools to adopt cooking science into their curriculum, and it's a struggle that's surprisingly difficult to overcome. Well, I mean, I don't know whether what she's talking about is the fact that it's hard to put it into one department because usually, classes are broken up by department. And as she says, cooking is so multidisciplinary from a science perspective, it's

true. And, and so many, so many fields, like, whether it's in the humanities, or in the sciences, like kind of looked down on their colleagues who do the food version of that thing. Yeah, it's just like an institutional one. But I mean, I mean, how

would you do it though? Like, if like, it's got to be under a department, right? I guess not in a high school, but in a college, it has to be under a department? Isn't that part of the problem?

That is part of the Bureau? No, it's super, it's like really difficult to Yeah, to find a place where you can really like explore all of it. Because, you know, if you're, if you're focusing, or if you like, find a home and a chemistry department, then you're gonna like, shortchange the like biology. If you're in a physics department, you might not get all the like, really important cultural and evolutionary stuff. And then if you're like, you know, Humanities department, then you can miss out on the science aspects. Even if you've covered like the anthropology really well. So that's difficult. I mean, I guess it's like the, at the pre college level, you tend to have just like a science department, not a, like, not just like chemistry. So that should be a bit easier. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. Like, it's there's a lot of really strong test cases that show that food and cooking are like really good for teaching science and getting young people engaged in flying. I mean, Dave, you've been doing a Harvard course for like, 10 years or more. Yeah. So if it's good enough for Harvard, it should be good enough for for various other administrators. I think

I don't know about that. And so for those of you that don't aren't involved in education, or haven't been for a long time, STEM is I forget what the acronym stands for. But it's like something's

science, technology, engineering and mathematics. All right. So that

was stem and then sometime when my kids were like, in elementary school, they changed it from stem to steam. Yeah. And for

adding the how was that? But then, okay, so we've acknowledged that S T, E and M are all important, although there's a well okay by giving it an acronym, it's kind of like NASA if you give it an acronym it becomes important. So often seen the argument and tend to agree with it that when people say stem, they mean t. So like, in terms of like, putting putting young people into it in to a job track that pays well, and that is actually gets invested in. That's really psychedelic science and mathematics like still really get the short shrift.

Well, the math people don't have all those hedge fund weasels paying for it not that you guys are weasels. I'm just saying,

this is true. This is true. But then, I mean, that when math becomes that applied, isn't that like kind of a form of tech rather than pure mathematics?

Strong, strong argument. Ariella. I appreciate it.

Joanna China, and she was focusing on grade school to high school. And I think in response to the arts, she was saying it's looked at like home Mac not like science, right.

Rare? Totally. I mean, which is interesting. I mean, like, if you look at, like the history of homak, and food science, like actually, a lot of, you know, technical and scientific work happened in the in the purview of home economics departments. But, you know, back it back in like the, through the 60s, it was like, well, if women are doing it's doing it, it's homak. So there's this interesting historical reasoning behind why we like right off the the sort of exploration that happens in in what we call home economics, that has historically not just been about like homemaking. But that's a question more for a historian than for a scientist who fakes being knowing things about history. Yeah, right.

Like that. Like you didn't have to deal with that in your gret in your doctoral thesis on dinners and whatnot. But like, it's interesting, like, I'm sure you've read, and the cracklings were superb, and like,

oh, yeah, I have a I have a Yeah, first edition copy of that, actually.

And the first, like, however, many paragraphs of anything he writes, is apologizing for writing about food. Right. Right. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's kind of funny.

It is funny. That like apologia of it, but so okay. But like, going into practicalities? I would I mean, I would say if you're trying to incorporate food into a, excuse me, take out and post into a more like, technically scientific focused curriculum. I mean, you know, school districts, school districts have like, different things that are like fashionable that they're trying to emphasize whether that's like ecology or like, you know, green eel type stuff. And I think fortunately, the thing about food is that it touches so many things that it's kind of easy to look into either the like stated or unstated agenda of of a school board or have a school's like mission, and like, find a food lesson that can fit those topics. Cool. So I would that's what if I had to do that, that's what I would try to do is, I mean, like, I'm getting to the point where I'm old enough that like, I, you know, know how to make an impassioned defense of things and people will tend that doesn't always make stuff get done. So So finding the most practical and easy for other people way to incorporate some ideas is often I find the key to actually getting something to happen. Now.

I'm going to choose some of these questions here from our listeners that I think you might have something to say about Okay. All right. So by the way, if you're on our chat room, Matt, how do they get into the chat room if they're actually listened to? I guess if they're listening to us they can get on the chatroom because it means they're on the website already.

Yes, I let me I'll find like give me two seconds.

Yeah. So you know, chat your questions and and Matt can read them to Ariel while we're going but here we go. Solomons writing in from San Antonio haven't been back to San Antonio in a long time. Creating a syrup that works for lattes and sipping chocolate from craft untempered. single origin Ecuadorian craft small batch chocolate that's a mouthful, is it not? Yeah. So the first method is one pound of chocolate one liter of almond milk with sugars binder. Never made sipping chocolate before a crack chocolate. What are some things that tried to experiment with so like, Have you ever had an experiment using the kind of untempered kind of gritty I mean, I just I've never used it other than buying the you know the abuela like Mexican chocolate blanks and making hot chocolate with those Right? Right. You have any experience with this any anything to

um, I mean, I have I have had and picked up some like Meyer Domo drinking chocolate from Wahaca that's kind of like that although that tends to have like almonds in it, too is there like an issue that he's having? Or is it just a creative

just like a creative what are some things to experiment question? Yeah.

Um, soy almond milk is interesting is the I guess the idea maybe that it's trying to be vegan?

Well it would be vegan since there's nothing in here that is not V that

would be vegan. I just wonder if you might need some like protein to help. I mean don't really like milk protein would help like bind it together and keep it emulsified?

Well, they the the numbers the native proteins in the almond milk don't have any any of the effects of casein would you need to add some garbage to it to get it to?

I mean, almond milk doesn't have a lot of protein in it. It's mostly fat.

So how do they stabilize it? What do they add to it?

Well a lot of places add like guar gum or Carageenan.

Remember if you add guar make sure to get the flavor free guar from gums flavor for anti 1000 flavor. Dude, have you if you've ever taken I have don't and just started tasting your hydrocolloid powders to see what what you're kind of adding to your product. Yo, regular guar tastes like a pile of beans. I mean, it's a great name, but it is not a good tasting hydrocolloid. And it's normal. Because think about this, everyone's like, Oh, it's made in a lab. No. Guar is ground up seeds. Yeah, you know what I mean? And so like, you know, the ones that aren't like kind of purified well, it tastes like Roundup seeds, and you do not want the whole wheat version of guar.

Sometimes Sometimes more processing is better. Oh, hell yeah.

You just want the thickness on it. You don't want it to get all nasty. But Carageenan I guess it's a non acidic environment. Almost everyone from an industrial standpoint ever since gel and patent ran out from CP Kelco. They're moving away from the Caribbeans in there. Stabilized milk stuff.

intuitional lawns.

Yeah,

those are like microbial, right.

Or? Yes. I don't remember what I don't remember what is the choice but yeah, it's, yeah, it's microbial and CP Kelco is patent ran out, I think a couple of years ago, because it used to be like so for those of you that don't know, CP, Coco is the giant European based pectin concern. But they also have a bunch of patents for instance, on jellen, which, so gelatin is kind of cool, because there's two main kinds of gelatin and they can be mixed back and forth. And the low Aysel gel and this is confusing the low so Jalen is brittle. And in short, and the and the Hazel. Joanne is real stretchy, like a rubber band. So you can get these kinds of gelatin style textures by mixing the two kinds of gelatin. And they have other cool properties like the low isoforms a very good fluid gel, which we can talk about if anyone cares. And it's also heat stable so you can light it on fire, it doesn't melt out. So a lot of times when people were making what's called Water deserts or water gels for hot climates, they would use Aguilar, right. But the other great thing about gelatin is it's very low in use percentages, so much, much less than you'd use for most other hydrocolloids. Carageenan had a very low in use ratio for dairy because it reacted extremely synergistically with dairy. So with gelatin, they were charging a lot more. They weren't trying to replace karagin. And they were trying to replace other hydrocolloids and they were charging a boat ton more for it, but they were like what is in use cost is so low. And typically, like the lower the amount of a hydrocolloid, you can use for a given textural effect, the less flavor masking there was, so one of jellybeans big things was, you would get really, really good flavor release, you know, at the same in use cost, but now that their patent is run out, everyone's like crap on Carageenan because a bunch of health people are worried about these. You don't know what they're called the degraded Carageenan there's a word for the degraded care again, and thanks for all of your saccharides maybe not but there yeah, there's some kind of like, especially kappa there's some kind of degraded Carageenan that people say causes some kind of gut issue and so like a vast majority of people have moved away from using Carageenan in things like chocolate milk or things like yogurts or cream stabilization and have moved on to Joanne but whatever. I digress. Yeah. So you could use some jellen Solomon, but But did they mean like flavor stuff? I mean, like the classic like, like, I mean, the classic drinking chocolate would have been non dairy anyway, I don't know what the nut of choice would have been in Mexico at the time because almonds came from over here, but it's true.

Yeah, I'm not sure what do you think? Like filberts perhaps there were in the Americas? I'm not sure what the nuts situation was. I should look it up though. Yeah. But do you wonder if you're making if you're making a surplus chocolate? It sounds like he's using like a like a chocolate bar. Yeah. Or is it like a cocoa powder?

bar because there's no such thing as there's no such thing as, like, if you're doing like a minimally processed, they're not even tempering at the like, they're probably just grinding it on, you know, like a grinder to like, you ever talked to Rick Bayless about his chocolate grinder. I have not had the pleasure. So you know, he was saying he he I don't know what it's what it's called. But like the rotary style grinder like like we use like the Santa or the wet grinder that we all buy, like the the Idli and dosa grinders like the two stones that we all get from India. He had a similar one, you know, specifically for chocolate like a maylands or for chocolate. But he was saying that, you know, everyone who thinks from a European standpoint, they over process it because they want that texture. Yeah. Which he doesn't care about. But also they actually want those volatiles to go away. Whereas he says, in his opinion, like, you know, part of the awesome thing about some of these kind of drinking chocolates, are those volatiles that other people try to get to go away?

Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, you get like, much more like botanical and microbial flavors, and maybe a little bit less on the like, like heat and processing derived ones. Yeah. So you could actually get more terroir from grinding it less. Yeah, I mean, an interesting mix is something I something actually I've actually been writing about recently is is making all different types of things into all different types of like plant material into like milks. So like almond milk, other green milks, sort of making that into orange.so. I wonder if maybe instead of approaching this as like making a syrup with the like minimally ground minimally processed, and ground chocolate, almond milk, why not make a milk out of the chocolate and some almonds. So like, grind together, like with water and do some like high blending and then straining. So then rather, rather than rather than nibs? Yeah, start with start with I mean, start with nibs, or start with like the partially ground chocolate. Don't add almond milk, but like blend, blend everything together as if you were making cacao milk, and then kind of take it into a syrup from there.

Sounds cool. And by the way, for serums for that I would definitely look into a gum arabic slash, like small amount of xanthan thick and stabilizing systems such as take Lloyd 210, particularly three Xs available from otter century.com Or you can I think we talked about it a couple of weeks ago what the thing was, oh area on the Twitter. I got another question for you.

Oh, we just got one in the chat too. Oh,

we went first.

Well go for it. All right chats in. Oh, by the way it is mixer.com/heritage Radio Network. Really go to any of the show notes and the link is in the show notes. So digital audio tape asks for fermenting produce eg sauerkraut, pickles peppers for hot sauce is sanitation slash sterilization of jars slash lids airlocks actually important or is it just busywork? My feeling is that lacto fermentation with enough salt and acid production should be fine enough to make things safe and successful. Our ancestors just had clay pots and they did fine.

Or that we just had one so a lot of people use pits in the ground for for good and safe fermentation. So I personally don't sanitize things when I'm lacto fermenting but I do give them like a good wash in hot water with soap. But like a star Sam as you would use for brewing

beer, so not like an SLS based detergent.

Yeah, yeah, I just I mean sometimes it'll just like run it through the dishwasher. You know on hot and just use it right out of the dishwasher.

Wow. So that's an actual good because everyone used to make fun of dishwasher cooking I remember when that was

no I don't run the cabinets of the dishwasher but they were in the jars to the dishwasher.

Wait, what was dishwasher cooking? It was a thing.

Imagine imagine cvwd But inside the dishwasher because it's hot.

Yeah, and then everyone all at once was like this doesn't work. You know what I mean? And if amazing not alright, so

I once I once I recently like had a wooden handled spatula fall down on the heating element of my A dishwasher and all the all the stuff came out slightly smoked so maybe that's a new

in a delicious way was water smell of wood was it like an olive wood spoon or just like just

regular wood so it just smelled like you know, vaguely pleasant burning, but

no one's ever called My aroma vaguely pleasant

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Okay, so while is Ali writes in front of the show, hey, to you, Ariel. I've been dabbling with lacto ferments and always get pretty good results. But I'm wondering if there's a way to boost the acidity, I find that even after a long ferment the pickles just aren't quite tangy enough. Should I cheat with lactic acid?

I mean, you can, um, other things you could do are. Okay, so lactic acid comes directly from sugar and fermentation. So then what you'd want to make where lactic acid is to have the like starting concentration of sugar be higher. I suppose you could add some sugar, maybe a little like grape must or apple juice, which I've tried kinda difficulty for this. For this thing I was it was for making more flavored brines, and it can work if you add too much sugar, you run the risk of it getting quite yeasty. I mean, the other thing is if you if you slightly wilt some of your vegetables before you before you use them, some of the water evaporates away and that'll concentrate the sugars. So that's actually like an important part of making taekwon pickles. Those are the daikon and rice bran, Japanese pickles that you'll often often get the first step is to sort of hang up a bunch of dye cones and let them partially built up before salting and adding the rice brand to them to Brian and ferment. So that like makes them make slightly less brine and also concentrates the natural sugars which makes it more sour.

Speaking of rice bran, I have a whole bunch of wheat bran in my freezer that I'm saving up to do wheat bran pickles with

Oh to do like a Nico.

Yeah, but the thing is, is that like, I mean, come on, man. I mean, like we live in the real world here. Like everyone is like if you don't aerate it

all the time, but let's never surrender it every day.

I know. Come on, man. Like there's got to be some way to like, put it in the fridge and hold it for a week and just do it once a week. There's got to be my sourdough. I do that probably works great. I mean, my sourdough is works great. And I you know, don't follow any of those, whatever. I don't know, what do you think if you had an experience with that stuff, we have not like of trying to make a low maintenance one of those? Well,

I mean, this is the thing is, I mean, I love Nuka pickles. I am also not the most organized person, so I've had more of them just kind of die on me than I've had be successful. I did not think of putting them in the fridge. But that is a I mean, that's a great idea. And there's there are actually a lot of a lot of fermentations that now like people when they're experimenting will tend to do them at room temperature or even heat them up. But like a lot of a lot of kimchi cheese and things like that really benefit from like starting at room temperature and then basically fermenting entirely in the fridge. I was in I was in Seoul in December, and there's a restaurant slash culinary studio called on GM, where they do a lot of like, private well, like primary and secondary research on like, regional recipes for like cuisine of the nobility anyway, so it's like stuff that large households would be making. Yeah, and some of some of the fermentations they you know, they'll have like an oyster kimchi that's been in the fridge for two years. And it's like, amazing. I bet I would like to do you could actually get some improvement of flavor from the slow cold fermentation.

That's the thing. Well, I'll run a test. The problem is, is that I don't have that much rice brand pickling. I mean, I did it once at the FCI you know, and then somebody pitched it because it was in us. That's the problem with the FCI students like what is this Israel's weird why you know what I mean?

Well and and and you In a lot of restaurants, you have the classic thing of like one one cook will start it out and then it doesn't get it at all that is like a trail of like, dead Nuka pickles.

Yeah. Yeah. And then also, like no one really talks about like, exactly like how to know how much to add back in whatever. It's a complicated I'll work on it. Staying on the fermentation train for a minute. A piece of chocolate wrote in to you and just mentioned that they're doing a deep dive into cacao fermentation this week. Awesome. And they're gonna tune into what you're saying. So why don't you say something? Give wise words.

Well, are they making or they're researching cacao?

Well, probably both.

Yeah. Yeah, I'm being it's like, I've looked into this some too. It's like a super while most like most uninoculated fermentations is a super crazy thing. You get like a lot of like really, really interesting wild yeasts a lot of like acetic bacteria doing stuff at the same time as like lactic acid bacteria. I mean, almost think of it like a sourdough but on but on fruit. Although having said that, I think you could if you're fermenting cacao fruits at home if you have access to fresh cacao fruits I'm very jealous. That's very cool. But yeah, if you're getting into like the beginnings of the plantation, it could be really cool. Would be experimenting with like a mix of wild fermented and like inoculated a cacao something that might work quite well. If you can get your hands on it would be a Pichia yeast that's like p i ch i A those tend to be very good at I believe. I know they make very fruity flavors. I believe it is releasing volatile sulfur compounds although someone might correct me that might be incorrect. But you get tend to get like quite tropical aromas and things that that use those yeasts.

Cool. You want you up for another fermentation question? Oh, sure.

We also have another one in the chat. That's like an anti fermentation.

Oh for sin. Pablo Pawlowski wrote in for you can I make a Garm like sauce by mixing chunks of meat with kiwi papaya and pineapple man is going to beat that stuff up. Yeah, pineapple in the fridge for a long time with that work. I want to proteases to destroy the meat into his sauce, but I don't want to die or kill other people.

Um, I mean, you should definitely try that experiment. But I can't give you any guarantee that it would either taste good or be safe.

Well, how do those enzymes How does like how do those particular enzymes work at the high salt content you need to prevent? Well,

that's the Yeah, that's what I'm thinking about? Because he didn't mention salt. So I'm not sure if he's going to be including

pabo the answer obviously, is salt. You can't do that stuff without salt no matter what anyone else tells you.

Yeah, it's a

he actually had written and it was the same question in the chat. But he said Should I add salt to prevent the fermentation of the fruits in this one?

Well, I mean, the salt will prevent some of the fermentation of the fruits the salt is also more so that like very dangerous bacteria don't take over the fermentation and possibly kill you. You know, it's the most I think most caroms and actually do have a little bit of fermentation that happens mostly from like very salt tolerant yeasts. So that would be of course now I'm blanking on the actual name of that yeast. Oh, tetra Gina. caucus.

That's can you say that again? I love that.

Tetra Gina caucus. lawfulness? I think

that sounds like like a noun someone had in Brooklyn in the 70s. Remember when we went out with petrol in the car?

Oh my god. Yeah. So you do have you do have some very salt tolerant yeasts and some bacteria that will actually do some fermenting, although, I mean, now, I mean, what if you pre fermented the fruit so there was some acidity and then added it to the meat with salt that could do some interesting stuff?

Yeah, you know what? lacto fermented pineapple is delicious. Kiwi. I don't know. Papaya. Wolf. The idea of a fermented papaya makes me want to jump off of a bridge.

Banana is really good. Ooh,

have I had I've had fermented banana sauces. Oh, where was that from? Is it Filipino? I forget what I've heard from into banana sauces, but very nice. But from it straight up like fermented pineapple chunks. I've done it by mistake. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, sometimes it's real bad. And sometimes it's real good. You know what I mean? So inoculate that, inoculate that sucker and see what's going on. All right, a non fermenting question that I will say what I think and then you guys say what you think Casey writes in, I want to make a quote pretzel crew time. Is it safe to cut any regular bread, dip it in a lie bath one to 20. And then bake. I asked because this means eating, eating more ly directly than traditional pretzel, looking at sliced bread on slicer, then cutting circles as a garnish. Thanks, love the show, Mr. Blog, I don't look, the light of my take on this is that the lie is on a surface, right? You're gonna get like instant deep penetration stuff into the thing. And it's going to be entirely that soapy thing. So like, I would say that it's going to be a it's going to be unpleasant. And be it's going to be too much. And also remember that when you're doing a live dip in a pretzel, there's still moisture in the product. You're slicing the bread, you've already flashed off a lot of the moisture. And so it's going to go from brown to black real fast. Once you add all that extra Alkalyn stuff, but what do you what do you think Ariel?