Cooking Issues Transcript

Sadness Fresh Every Day


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 Ben to table a monthly food subscription service for avid home cooks focused on delicious and sustainable pantry items. Learn more at Ben to table.com that's b e n t o ta B le.com. And when you use code HRM for a new subscription you get $20 off and we at HRM get 10 bucks.

Hrm is offering complimentary business memberships to 50 Black indigenous people of color owned food businesses this summer. The deadline to apply is July 31. Each business membership a $500 value is an advertising opportunity that will allow businesses disproportionately impacted by COVID-19. To connect with hrs listening community and promote their work to apply and review the terms and conditions go to heritage radio network.org/bi Z

Hello and welcome to cooking issues. This is Dave Arnold. coming to you on the heritage radio network, you know Tuesdays like known I'm in the Lower East Side of Manhattan we got Anastasia to hammer Lopez chillin on the Long Island Sound in Stamford, Connecticut, and we have a Connecticut person who is currently in Murray Hill. John Hello How you doing? Good well thanks and Matt in his Brooklyn booth lit right what kind of what kind what is your booth look like? Yeah, have you put up like uncomfortable foam in your area so that it feels like crappy?

No, when I want to do that kind of thing. I get into the closet. I the only modification I made is I turned off the fam which was pointed directly at me.

Yeah, okay, so I think we should all like chip in for Matt to get some of that like triangular foam crap. You guys know what I'm talking about? Like it's like it really it's like the same stuff is like a crate packing. But like really expensive. You guys know what I'm talking about? Yeah, yeah, we'll glue it all to the inside of his closet. And then we'll we'll put like a layer of foam on his door and just cut out a hole for the doorknob but make the hole just small enough that it's still hard to get to the doorknob and then we'll have like a hot incandescent light in there and and like no no ventilation at all and then he'll feel at home like a true engineer right?

Yeah, no, yeah. Would be better if it was actually that might be better because I'm currently in my booth slash living room slash you know where we eat slash the only comfortable place to sit. That's not my bed because there's a New York apartment and we only have one room. Does he

ever you ever you ever pine for those dank, moldy smelling like foam hot barracks rooms

you know, this is so much better than that.

are like sweat is dripping into the pots and sliders you know? Yeah, not loving they're not doing

it right if you haven't shorted a piece of electronics with your, with your sweat.

Now let me ask you a question cuz How old are you man?

I'm 33 Okay,

so have you ever had to use like the old school real like sliders and pots kind of boards or No?

I've never worked on a fully analog system. No.

Yeah. Because like people used to like, do you familiar with the old school? Like sound man mullet hair hair cut, like from the 70s and 80s. Yes, yes. Before I knew what a mullet was, where you know where I was from? We just called it the sound man because there in order to become a sound and it was always dudes, right. So in order to become a sound, man, you needed to have that haircut, no other haircut was allowed. Other than the soundman haircut. And if you bought that person a beer and asked them about sliders, and pots, like not pot, the drum pot, the potentiometer like they would go on for hours about how much they hated a particular like brand of slider because of the noise that would make when they were sliding up and down. You know what I mean? Yeah, I don't think I don't think that's something that's lost. In other words, I think that's something that can be chucked in the dustbin. I don't think that's one of those things where we were not learning more than we had to we had to buy $100 sliders so that the single wouldn't get mad that you have a crackling when I when I pushed the vocals up and down.

Yeah, totally. Although there are times when I'm given like a really fancy piece of digital equipment and the fact that you cannot tell what the hell is going on. Like you cannot trace a wire from place to place to find out what to do that does start to drive you nuts when you're trying to troubleshoot. It's just like, you just jam on the the one button that you have display, you know, it's just a complete black box. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So that that does get frustrating and I'm not even a child of the analog era. Really.

If I had infinite money and was still playing music, I would buy one of the nice old I am that bass guy that I love that those old bass amp sounds actually my favorite. I will This is his lat last of the non last of the sound engineer stuff. But are you familiar with? Are you familiar with Aguilar cabinets? No, they used to make a two bass amp cabinet that just sounded so rich and fat that I would just sit there I used to rent space. This is so sad New York used to have a bunch of districts so like I lived in the in an illegal loft in the garment district. And just below was where all the recording like a lot of the recording stuff for like, not like, I'm sure rich people recording stuff was there. But like right down there. And to the left of it. I used to practice for $20 An hour my band would play in in the room where Beastie Boys recording no communication, right? So like, all that stuff was like just there and you could rent it. And we used to go to this like, at the time we thought was super fancy place called ultrasound in the 30s that was it's now closed. And you could just for like, you know, not that much money an hour plug into like a $10,000 base CAD. And Aguilar made my favorite bass cast. And it was all analog. But now Aguilar I think is still in business. But they all do it with with digital sound processing now so I don't know, I don't know if anything's lost. But man, just plugging into that cab and hitting a bass string. Jeez, you know what I mean? I can still do it.

I do know because I play I play bass to

some of the people who like guitar, people don't understand what a bass player feels when they hit that string and get that tone. You know what I mean?

You think that's true. Anyway,

I do as a sound person. Okay. And last last thing. Do you know how like, set the sound person we just talked about their haircut, you know how they don't care about basis at all. So like, they'll sit there and like the guitar player, like they'll work with their effects. They'll like tune stuff up and down. They'll like do all this stuff and the bass player, they're like, put it through, okay, people who back in the day, there was people whose amps were actually amplified with microphones. So like guitarists, a lot of the times they would go direct. It's called direct, right? And then they would also have an amplifier with a mic that they would put on so that you could get the amplifier effects all the feedback and all that garbage. Right. And every sound person I had to deal with was just like put your bass into the direct box. I'm like, I don't want to put my bass into the freaking direct box. And then you get that crappy flat board sound because they don't care about your sound. You familiar with this man?

Yeah, absolutely. That's that's what you do. Yeah, weasels.

So, John Stasi cook Anything interesting this week?

Food is fuel to me at this point.

Oh god, you see this I'm saying you're not like selling if you want to sell people on your new lifestyle you should be caring about like because isn't what you used to say is that that was the entire problem you had with a lot of these dietary regimens was is that they become food as fuel people and then did not enjoy what they're eating anymore Is it just because you need people

dietary regimen? It's because when you have to buy your own ingredients, cook your stuff, eat it alone, do the dishes and then do it all over again in six hours. You're like, Okay, this is I'm bored. This is awful.

I mean, I think if you're eating if the eating alone part

it's the it's the eating alone that definitely does this to you.

Because it's not the it's not the I mean the cooking I mean that's that's normal like having to cook all the time. It's just repetitive cooking for yourself that's got I'm sure that ways.

When I when I cook for myself, I don't give a crap. It's like pasta with basically almost nothing on it every time.

When I cook for myself. It's two poached eggs toast. That's it. Like if dinner for myself if it's gonna be dinner. And if I'm splurging a can of sardines, like 100% of the time, but mainly also because no one in my family wants to eat that. So when I'm eating alone, I mean, I'm sure after like a month, I'd be like, Okay, I'm done with the poached eggs for now. You know what I mean? Yep. You guys like poached eggs? Yeah. Yeah, like a lot.

Not as much as you

like them a lot. Like a lot, lot. I liked them. I liked them runny on toast.

Hey, John, do you still have a girlfriend? You're not eating alone, are you?

I mean, I have a girlfriend, but I see her twice a week. So that's still five other nights of the week where I'm here by myself miserable doing dishes and cooking and worrying about using up all the ingredients because you can't buy white amounts of food for one person.

Anastasia, can I can I do the your mom trolling or no?

No, I told you no. Okay,

okay. Well, but like, but I would just say for the listening crew that John is doing a variant of the Lopez family trolling technique.

Why do you only see her twice a week? What's the what's the

wow, I getting personal? I like it go.

Yeah, I don't know. I guess it's just kind of the way things have been go. I don't know. We've only been dating for like, well, I guess four months now.

Oh, just before the just under the wire? Yeah.

Just four months now. Yeah, I don't know. I'm sure more frequent visits will start happening soon. But I don't know. That's just like the routine that we've established so far.

How many people do you think had a first date in early March? And then were like on the fence and now are kicking themselves for not just taking that second date? Right then just so that they have? They have like, you know,

somewhere they are, they're kicking themselves

for having that. So you're away. So you think there's as many people who are like trapped in a COVID relationship, then then you buy it? Do you think it's equal amounts trapped in COVID relationship versus people who had the possibility of a relationship but didn't seal the deal before the COVID? Do you think it's equal? Or which one do you think? Well,

I have heard that people who are trapped that there are more people trapped in COVID relationships that want out very badly, and that divorce rates or divorce rates went up in China during the quarantine. And they are predicting the same and also like a bunch of divorces have been filed in these four months. So pretty cool.

Yeah, yeah.

I don't know. Like, I also have no idea what the current state of divorce law in the United States has it still state to state right. So you have to, like you have like some states. It used to be back in the day that you'd have to like, wait six months? Or you know, something like this anyway, for a no fault. You know what I'm saying? I'm sure this stuff has changed. All that crap is archaic, you know, but who knows? I don't know. How the hell do we get on this?

Oh, that's an amazing question. You're asking what we've been cooking recently. And Food is fuel.

You've been cooking. You've been cooking sadness and then eating the leftovers.

I don't eat leftovers. It's just me throwing the leftovers

away.

And cookie fresh add this every day because that seems like I want my sadness fresh. Can I have one thing? Can I just have my sadness be fresh every day? A speaking of sadness fresh every day, Anastasia Lopez, let's talk about Amazon. You go, No, you're the Amazon. It's Brooklyn.

They are out of stock and see resolves,

we are out of stock. What again again, and

two months ago when Fallon showed this year's all on the on his show, I was like, hey, FYI, you might see a surge. Also everyone is inside cooking. You might see a surge. They ignored me. And now they're out.

Did you ever tell the the listening crew how you engineered that one?

The Fallen? Yeah, I think I think we talked about it. I

just know. He would give a quick refresher,

everyone is quarantining, obviously. Well, I don't want to give away how I do it, because then everybody will do this with their product. But everyone has

been that's the good. That's the good part of the story. First of all, I don't want to alarm you guys. Anastasia can find out where you

live. Anyone can find out where anyone lives.

You will do it. Like even for the smallest. Like either thing that you want or infraction you will do it. You don't I mean? Also, Anastasia never pays for this information. She's not one of these people that signs up for your

easy to find her celebrity lives because they usually buy a gigantic house and then curbed or some other outlet will be like look, who bought the house in this neighborhood. And then they give you a tour of it with photos and then the address so easy.

You also searched out the address before they had to give it to us of some of our Kickstarter trolls. Be honest, you can find this information you are a finder of information. And

when we were like for most of the people that are being assholes, then we found out that they're missing Canada

for buttheads. But the the other thing is that and it goes back to Anastasia I first met the anti semitic no Jesus van driver, right was telling us that he could find anybody right so I was remember this? Yeah. Because why? What do they not give up? No one ever gives up their car. That's right. He's like people. He hasn't talked with these people. They give up their family. They give up their kids to give up their dog. They always keep their car. Always keep their car. So Anastasia found that away. She's like, first thing I get rid of is my car. Yeah, then the family first the car then the family. Yeah. We think he's right. I mean, he's probably right. Just because he's vicious anti Semite doesn't mean that he doesn't know how to find people based on them keeping their cars.

I think he's right. Because even though like I have this really crappy car right now, but I would still drive it to the ends of the earth before I set on a new one.

Because you're cheap as hell like me. No, no,

I'm not. I just you don't have the

car. You hate the car. I hate the car. The Stasi is sideview mirror is duct taped on.

Now I cut it because I thought I found the part and I was like great. I couldn't get rid of it because the part just arrived today part doesn't fit so awesome.

So you duct tape the new part on and you send it back and get a different new part.

I don't know if I can ever find the part where whatever is boring. But the the issue

is is that in the Stasi can't get her car freaking inspected because it doesn't have a sideview mirror?

No, that's not the thing. It's something to do with the check engine light that somebody told me I can disconnect if I go to this place in Queens, but I haven't been because then COVID started

an illegal place in Queens, where they just disconnect.

Hey, did you see what went on last night? The fireworks in every single borough. I could see the ones from Coney Island.

There are also illegal ones that like oh,

yeah, huge surprise shows every night and a different borough not letting people know where they are. So they don't get crowds. But then people were like, hey, what about people with PTSD that are like, Oh my God, you know, like, they're not letting you know when it's popping up? What time where?

The thing is, are they doing it in conjunction with all the illegal ones because like there's been a there's been a surprise firework show every hour on the hour from like 8pm till two in the morning. Every night in my neighborhood.

I thought it was the police doing it according to some of your or

I have heard that. But I don't know why the police would do that. I just don't understand what the thing is. Nobody's afraid of it. Maybe someone who has specific fears, but like, no one is like, oh my god, somebody's getting shot. It's like there's the fireworks again. You don't I mean, so like, I don't understand what you would get out of it.

It's also happening here too, which is really weird. Like even at like 1am 2am.

What I heard was is that normal sales of fireworks was extremely low this year because of COVID. And so the big fireworks places like phantom have just like slash their prices. And so people have gone in with pickup trucks and just picked up pickup truck full of this stuff and they've come in and like second wave black market sold them in cities where you can't normally get them that's what I heard happened. Huh cool anyway, I mean I love fireworks but like you know, the Stasio wanted to get some illegal fireworks but at this point everyone's got illegal fireworks so I think we should wait till next year when it's going to be cool again

I disagree with you about whatever

but I thought you hated things that other people liked and had I don't

experience what you're experienced here like I'm like it's not the same but whatever

the best consumer fireworks show I've ever saw for the Fourth of July and I guess by the way, is this our Fourth of July episode? Yeah, we don't have any Fourth of July related related like grilling questions but the best Fourth of July ever for me. I didn't see any real firework shows. But we went to Cocoa Beach to take the kids to Cape Canaveral to see the space center and we were on the beach on Fourth of July and the entire coastline all the way up and down was a constant barrage of consumer grade fireworks and people just hanging out so it's pretty cool. That was not the best fireworks there was no Gucci style smiling faces exploding or whatever you'd like to smiley face explosions. Yeah, yeah, you like the picture fireworks? What's your favorite? What's your favorite firework

think that raining down the white the white like weeping willow type things?

I agree. You know what I you know what I liked, though, I liked the one where you get the poem. And then like a second later, it starts from a little bit out from the center. You get the flu shot with the rain of white, sparkly. Those are great. What about you, too? What do you think?

That sounds great. My best fireworks display was very similar to yours. I actually was in ocean shores, Washington and people just went it was like a war zone on the beach with consumer grade fireworks just like up and down for God knows how long and people just firing them off in every direction and the wind was whipping in off the ocean so they weren't going in the directions intended. It was nuts.

I had you ever when you were a kid you have bottle rocket fights.

I did not. But that's my brother would have been doing that kind of thing. Yeah.

So a friend of mine, you know who has a house in I think it's Raza in Naples. Like I forget what the celebration is. But it's like they have a thing where they're fighting. They're firing at each other, like across the street and across the like splotches like large fireworks at each other. That would be fun. Yeah. And then Andy Ricker told me that there is a festival in North of Thailand. Also, I believe, once a year I forget where it is where people make their own rockets, but get this. They all try to vie for like the biggest kind of rocket. And if you look at it online, these rockets are not like what you and I would consider to be like a normal rocket. They're like, they're like 10 feet long. And like, and like 10 inches across, and on giant steaks. And every year somebody dies. Yeah. Huge. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And you see him laid off, and like they light it right. And they're lighting it like they're just lighting it. It's not like they're like behind some glass shield. You know what I mean? With their lighting it right. And then like, Ooh, a fin snapped off. And then you'll see this like giant homemade rocket corkscrew. And if you've ever made a homemade rocket and had a launch go bad, you know what I'm talking about now, multiply the kinetic energy by like a factor of like, like 100 or 200. Crazy. I would love to see that.

These are kind of like the rings that people who want to like project themselves into space to see that it's a flat earth would ring up. I

know, a guy just died recently doing that. Yeah, yeah. I'm not gonna say okay, but okay, you know what I mean? You know,

I mean, it's dark. It's Darwin to work territory for sure.

Yeah, you know, look, if you look, I just whatever, I don't think it was a was not a cause worth dying for. Okay, from Oh, food related. I went to cherry picking for the first time ever, and had an obviously since I've, you know, quote, unquote, kicked my allergy this weekend for sour cherries, and they had the they weren't technically supposed to pick because they're a couple days away from being at peak ripeness. But I picked a bunch of monomer NC sour cherries, and they're the I don't know if that's how you pronounce it, but they're like a lighter red, very small, sour cherry. And they are de Licious. The entire time I was there though. Jen. And I didn't even know I was going to go I was dropping my younger son DAX off upstate. And I was like, let's see if we're near a place. I went the entire time. Jamie was like, stop eating the chair because you know, she's the one that had to take me to the hospital whenever I had a problem. At the cherries, she's like, Okay, you're done. You're done. You're done. So I really, I kind of did her wrong. I kind of made her feel very nervous for eating all the cherries. But then I came home and pitted, like six pounds of cherries frozen down, ready to make some pie some pie. What do you what kind of cherry pie? Do you guys like if you like cherry pie? No thoughts? No.

I don't like pie.

Oh, wait a minute. You don't like cherry pie? I don't.

I mean, I just I will eat some, but I don't make it and I don't seek it out.

Okay, I never I've always loved cherries, like until I was 30 when I had to stop eating them. But I never liked cooked cherry products. So I'm hoping that by picking my own sour cherries, and I know exactly the flavor profile that they have because I chose the specific tree that had the flavor profile I wanted, right because people fruit is different tree to tree that I can make a cherry pie that I actually loved. Now I would I would be super happy if I could do that and have a cherry pie that I loved. But whatever. I'm thinking of doing a like a almost like a chiffon like a cherry whip as well as a more standard cherry pie. What do you think about that with a graham cracker crust? Like a cherry chiffon pie with a Grand Prairie? Except for human Stassi because you don't like pie? What do you think?

It sounds good? Yeah, sounds good. If only you had a pie cookbook, you know to help you out with wrestling.

I know. If I talk more about my favorite book time marches on people will say that I'm Per separating, so I won't stop. Is there no kind of pie that you like?

I like hot fruit.

It's not hot. You serve it. You let it cool down. Otherwise it's too runny. Yeah. So

it was at one point hot. Yep.

lemon meringue pie. No. Key Lime Pie. never cooked.

No, I know. I've had it all. I don't like it.

So my mother, my stepmother also said that she doesn't like cooked fruit. But it's more than that. You don't want fruit as a dessert.

No, I like fruit as cooked fruit is it's cooked fruit I guess and if it's hot, I really don't like it but cook food don't really like

what about fruit? It's an ice cream. No. Huh? What about sorbets? Sure. Okay, speaking of citrus and surveys and lemon meringue pie, Scott wrote in via email, and this is going to be for Anastasia to answer. Dave hammer Matt and John, love the show have a citrus question. My wife and I have three old kumquat trees here in Santa Monica. We decided to make a limoncello variant like Anastasia did. Our kids pick the fruit and my wife and I mash about 60 kumquats into a liter of vodka. That's a lot well, I guess I'm not sure that way. I guess it depends. It's been sitting for five weeks any tips on what to do next? Hope you guys are staying safe out there Scott. What do you got says

we're supposed to taste this stuff my dad said but you're never coming out here so we should just I should just taste it.

Want your you can send us some

white. Okay, sure. That makes sense. Booker's been there Yeah. Why don't you guys ever come here?

I don't go anywhere. What are you talking about this venturi? Whatever. I had to drop Dak somewhere DAX went somewhere. Dax has a social life anyway. And he he he quarantined himself for like this immense amount of time so that he could enter a new pod of people who have self quarantined out of New York City. People who are from New York City who have left for the quarantine are petrified of people who are in New York because we're still seen as like this like weird contagion. You know what I mean? But anyway, so are you going to help Scott out here or not?

No, I think we messed up this our stuff. Like if I were him, I would put another liter of vodka in it.

Well, the Miss main mistake that you made, I think was instead of using sugar, you use simple syrup. Yeah. Right. And you should have

like ABB What did you say it was like 21?

No lower because you added a lot of simple. Here's, first of all, okay, if you know, look, I would weigh I would weigh the amount of product you're putting in and then you can guesstimate how much water is going to be at the end of how long it's been sitting. What do you do? Do you heat? Did you mash your stuff? Are you a slice? What did you do with your stuff? So

we put the peel I peel them all but the peels in the vodka and then squeeze the juice and put the juice in

it okay, I would weigh that the pills aren't going to change the ABV that much they will absorb the stuff but I don't think they're gonna change the ABV and tantamount to just squeeze them afterwards. The appeals Yeah, yeah, nothing is gonna change the intense amount, obviously the juice is going to change it and intense amount. And if you assume that you're shooting for eliminate style of sweetness, acidity balance, lemons are going to balance at roughly a one to one sugar to lemon juice. Not one to one sugar, one to one sugar and simple syrup, which would be able to do the calculations. So it'd be 50% of that weight on sugar. I would just do it in you have to add the sugar later. Is that necessary? Or why does that one have you add the sugar later? Is that for flavor reasons or what?

Yeah, I don't maybe I don't know. Because the easiest thing

to do would be to put the sugar into the juice so that you know it's dissolved and you get the sweetness and tartness right based on the juice basis. And then added that to the blues. That seems to me to be easiest, but everyone and I mean everyone masquerades their liquor stores first and sugars at the end, everyone does it. So there has to be a reason right other than just history. Maybe someone in the chat room can shed light on it, but I would not use simple syrup because that's going to reduce the ABV too much. I would use sugar but that's me. Right and in the future way everything this way you can easily calculate how much like what your result ABV is because it starts you're saying that her ABV was down like something like down at Wine level right? It was like 12 13% By the time you were done with all the stuff you added you haven't traded at all it freezes card so you know that it's like a low ABV

Yeah. Yeah. All right.

Alexandra Saunders right at wrote in I completely forgot how to send in show questions. Well, you made it anyway. My my 10 year old wants to have a miracle berry tasting any must try foods that I may not have thought of. I mean, I was talking to John about this this morning. Start united and talk about it but we we've only ever done it for work right and so when I was doing it for work, we always chose specific things that we knew were going to kind of highlight the effect right and I have a mental issue. So I remember once starts were you with me for this one was one of the McGee classes did you ever run the McGee class or did you come after we ran?

Are you kidding me?

We he was there a lot but we had a McGee class that we only did three days? No, I did it at least once with Monday so I can't remember whether or not I don't remember what years we did it anyway because it was early on. So anyway, we did a miracle berry tasting is one of the muggy classes as well as gymnemic acid I highly recommend that you guys your 10 year old is not going to like it but gymnemic acid is like the anti miracle berry. So miracle berry makes acid tastes sweet. It doesn't remove the acidity it just also makes the acid taste sweet gymnemic acid erases your sense of sweet and it's hard gross. So we would always do on separate days we would do a miracle berry tasting on one day and then gymnemic acid tasting on the other so you can really get an idea of what things are like with zero sugar like fruit was zero sugar is crazy. Chocolate was zero sugar is crazy. And you know you we would eat an unsweetened chocolate and then sweetened chocolate where we couldn't taste the sweet you know marshmallows. Sugar tastes like sand. It's really interesting. Anyway, so with miracle berry, I'll never forget it. And I can't remember whether this is the one you're with me on says but we had a whole bowl of of slice limes. And the idea was, yeah, okay, good. So you remember, the idea was we were passing limes out to people so that they could have you ever been making like unsweet lemonade on sweetened Limeade and just eating on lemons when they were they were doing their miracle berry. And I just sat there while other people were talking like lime, lime, lime, lime, lime, lime, lime, lime lime, and I must have eaten like half that dang bowl of lives. And you know I don't get acid stomach aches but holy who still you know, I had a serious acid stomach stomach ache actually, I remember that one. Oh my god. Do you remember the time when I came to teach when I had food poisoning, right God yes. So like it was was it also I think it was also McGee class right? Yes. Yeah. It was not the same one I don't think but I got food poisoned like hard food poisoned. And like come in. I would go in for so the way we used to work because the our classes were in this amphitheater. And so we have a little side room. And so I would run on do the talking like do some cooking with negate then run out like throw up like like five, six times. As they come back and do it oh my god, I was so walking wounded that day. And Jesus anyway. So what do you guys suggest they eat with the miracle berry? Like what's what's going to be fun? What's sour? I hear? Oh, you know, he used to do this all the time is his Cliff Cliff Endo.

I think the genomic acid is cooler or angenehmen. Yeah, right. With the honey.

Yeah, because it's slightly. It's what's weird about that is it's slightly sweet. Even though you know, you can't taste sweetness, which is crazy. Remember how gross Coca Cola is without the sugar in it? Oh my god. Anyway, I'm sorry that I don't have any better suggestions, but anything with a moderate amount.

Go back to the old blog. It tells you what to do with miracle berry.

The odd thing is like make sure you get a good quality one because remember, we were buying different brands stores and some of them were really good and some of them really sucked. And I'll retell this one story that is not my story, but it's a story that I was told by Katsuya who at the time was a working with Jose Andres at Cafe Atlanta go and minibar and he was at Madrid fusion This is in 2004 I guess 2005 2004 And they were doing a demo and they had mentioned miracle berry and so I went up to talk to Katsuya afterwards and he told me this story which I may have said on the on the air I don't know where he had done a miracle very demo for someone and then was just going back to do normal work and he was get this people acid correcting a soup. So I hope all of you when you make soups, you cook the soup and then at the end you acid correct right? You understand? I'm saying guys with me? Yeah, yeah. So because I think a lot of soups that could be good. The first mistake right? People don't put pet like salt in it right? That's the first mistake. They under salt the soup. That's a sad soup. And then I think the second most common mistake is not acid correcting. What do you guys think?

Yeah, yeah, probably. I think for me too. I like nice, like silky smoothie, kind of soups, not too chunky. So for me to texture is also an important thing.

So you think people that like on a creamy soup of under blended? That's a huge problem. Yeah. Speaking of here's a mistake that I have seen more than 60 students make. If you are going to make a soup where you have pureed the vegetable, I will just say whatever pumpkin cauliflower, whatever. Please cook the hell out of it. Why are you cooking that stuff? Al Dante, you are going to blend it. So as long as you aren't overcooking it, to the extent that you have changed the flavor into something garbage. And by the way, are any there's anyone in this in this group that we're talking with here? Fans of the hyper overcooked broccoli on purpose that on purpose overcooked broccoli?

No, like in your contract?

Yeah, there's a whole there's a whole kind of like subculture that I think was really popularized by I think Lidia Bastianich, and then I heard about it from her through Stein garden years ago, of this whole kind of like subgroup of people that overcook broccoli on purpose till it gets that overcooked broccoli flavor, and then they highlight that overcooked broccoli flavor, and I also enjoy it. But for a soup, there's a big difference, you know, between now look, if, if you're doing a green soup, right, like broccoli, then sure, cook it fast and hard. And salt and water till it's cooked through, have the pieces small enough, so they cook fast, right, that's another key if you're going to do something green, and then shock the hell out of them in in ice water so that you maintain the color right and then and then puree them or what Mills used to do because it was real fast, is cut them small so they cook real fast, drain them, puree them instantly and then throw them into a hotel pan over ice and cool it instantly to keep the color. But the one caveat about over cooking is some things take on with Vicious long cooking, kind of sulphurs flavors like the type of cauliflower hand with broccoli and if you're worried about maintaining green color, but other than that, please don't undercook the stuff that you're going to puree Gianni with me on this.

Agreed. I'd also like to add on the green soups, add your acid at the end. Don't just let it settle thrown off.

Now, it is true that shifting things towards acid will cause the chloroform to denature quicker and go and go all dread. Now, everyone always used to say not to cover the lid because trapping the volatile acids they thought would make the stuff go green. Sorry, all of faster. I don't know that I believe that. I cover my stuff. So it comes back to the boil quickly, and then uncover it so that it doesn't overflow. But that's me. How the heck do we get on? Oh, yeah, so Katsuya is making a soup. And he's going to acid correct the soup. I got one more thing on soup and acid and a man remind me, he's going to actually correct the soup. And he doesn't realize that he still, his mouth is still on miracle berry. And so she's adding vinegar to the soup. And it's just getting sweeter and sweeter. And he can't figure out why he can't correct this soup. And then someone comes up and tastes and he's like, and like what the hell did you do? This is just vinegar soup now and he's like, miracle berry. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So the interesting thing about miracle berry is that it tends to One to One it so in other words, the sugars can actually balance the amount of acid there which is I guess, kind of cool. But to me, it's not a straight to me. It's not a pure sugar flavor, right says there's something slightly chemically about the sweetness, right? It's not Do you find it as pure as as, as table sugar? No, me? No, me neither. But it's fun. It's good to do. But I think the Stasi is right. If you care more about learning and less about hedonism gets you some gymnemic acid, right says, yeah, yeah. Acid and soup. So just as you might have to earmark because I'm going to talk about something related to bread. Okay. Oh, good. I'm hearing about what for real? Yes. For real, right. Wow. It's like DAX. Dax has this thing where like, in the middle of doing something, he says, I need to go to the bathroom. I'm like, and I'm going I'm not going to tell him about this. What just happened? Because what I tell him is, adults don't stop what they're doing and go to the bathroom. What do you guys think about that? Is that true or not in general? I mean, I noticed Stasi here specifically avoiding like listening to the bread thing, which is why I'm drawing this out until she comes back. But yes.

Anyway, I mean, I don't know this is a dicey subject right now because New York City is the land where you like can't go to the bathroom anywhere. Nothing is open to go to the back. So now you have to think real hard about it before you leave the house.

Plan you can't go into the Starbucks and use the bathroom now.

I don't think so. Most of those places will not let you

I'm not going to call it out in case it's not allowed. But I know someone that went to a restaurant and this restaurant is a friend of ours in Brooklyn and what they do if you need to go back is they they hand you hand sanitizer and tell you to like sanitize everything when you go in you come out so as a kind of courtesy but I don't know whether that's actually cool to do or just what they do so I'm not going to call them out

this episode is brought to you by vendor table a monthly food subscription service for avid home cooks focused on delicious and sustainable pantry items. For the past few months, Anastasia and I have been trying out vendor tables subscription boxes when we started out we didn't know just how much they would come in handy. Thanks for the pandemic I spent a lot more time at home cooking with my family. Some of my favorite things that I got from Ben to table boxes were the beans from Rancho Gordo, especially the castle a beans and the Christmas lima beans. Which were delicious. I've been cooking them in the rice cooker. I also really enjoyed the Geechie boy grits those are the some of the most delicious grits I've ever had in my whole life. Now's the time to try out a bento table subscription you will get new high quality pantry ingredients shipped right to your door every month like Rancho Gordo beans, Geechie boy stone milled grits and burlap and barrel spices. You probably notice that these are ingredients that are sold out in many places. But with bending tables subscription you'll get you'll keep your pantry well stocked and discover new ingredients with each delivery. Just try just try to buy red five flour anywhere but bend the table go to bend to table.com to start your monthly subscription, use the discount code HR n to get $20 off a new subscription and bend to table will donate $10 to support cooking issues and all of Hrn which stands for Heritage radio network's programming. So anyway, so uh, one if you're trying to do a sourdough or Lavon or whatever you want to call it, like one of the problems is is you have a boat time have spent sourdough leftover because you never use all of it right? So what to do. So you've made crackers or whatnot that I talked about this count.

No, you and I spoke about it but you haven't spoken about on there.

Alright, so one of my, you know, one a Polish soup that I like is called Zurich. And it's made with fermented rye basically old spent right sourdough starter fundamentally, that I think they might make it with bread, they might ferment bread the way FOSS has done, but you could do it with a starter, right? And so I was like, I wonder if I can take my old HyperX sour spent starter and use it as the acidifier slash thickener in a in a stew. So I did like I did like, like a chicken onion, mustard stew, kind of like a mash up of all of that kind of stuff. And then and then hit it with hit it with a bunch of my really old spent sourdough starter and it was terrific. Of course I'm using whole wheat sourdough starter so it like wasn't didn't have that it was had some kind of nuance to it other than just acidity. It wasn't just like straight white flour, but it was great. So if you have spent sourdough starter, and it's not preposterously hot right now where you are, try using it, like look up a Jurek recipe with a Z or anything similar to that and then instead of using the fermented rice paste, try using some of your spin starter. Just what do you think? Is that a good tip, John? Great tip. Interesting. People might not have tried, and if you've never tried this sour rye soup at all, or even in that realm, you should try it. It's delicious. All right.

You got we had somebody weigh in the chat on the miracle berries. Antoine de fev says sour cream and graham cracker make a good mock cheesecake on miracle berries.

Okay. Okay. Do you know what makes a delicious cheesecake texture? If you take fresh peaches, and you blend in, take the stones out, you blend them in a Vita prep that you then add packed in x and you spin it in a centrifuge. You take the juice and you make a cocktail with it. And when it stops he gets back. Maybe she can remind her what cocktail that we make with that juice that time that peach juice remember when we had long make the bourbon? Yeah, something with bourbon. It was like clarified peach bourbon. Do we do the tea with that one or no? Anyway, so we had one of the greatest in terms of all time, his name was long. He's now in Taiwan. I think he went to French Laundry. What a great guy, right? He was the guy that came over and we were hand grinding tortillas with a Corona mill which is a friggin nightmare. We're doing it for like 20 people. We were using that hand grinder to grind fresh masa for like 20 people. And he just sat there grinding and grinding and grinding for hours. Remember that? And it wasn't even for work. He was just doing it. He was just sitting there like a machine grinding and grinding. Anyway, I hear he's killing it in Taiwan. So every time I have Oh yeah. So we gave long the the peach pulp that was on the outside of the inside the bucket. So when you hit Choose with SPL and you blend it, they the breakdown product the puck is intensely smooth and very just very heavy and dense is that a good description sounds like heavy and dense. And then he added a little bit of sugar to it and then he like whipped frozen with liquid nitrogen and put it on a graham cracker crust. And that was on point. Am I right says so good. It was like cheesecake texture, but almost entirely made out of peaches. That was good. I wouldn't mind eating that again. That was a pie you liked okay. Yeah, that

was great. It was like a cheesecake II type thing.

So you like cheesecake? Yeah. Do you like cheesecake with the crust up the side? Or do you prefer just on the bottom and that weird kind of gravelly outside?

Either,

but you clearly don't like the BS fruit garbage on top?

No. What's the name of that guy that manages Dan the Automator. Brad, Brad. Thank

you. Um, now I don't know why that is on air. But okay, the What about a chocolate cheesecake?

Um, I haven't had enough to I don't know.

And that my thing I prefer plain. What about Italian style ricotta cheese cakes. Yeah, good. Really? You liked the Granier? You liked that? What about you? What about you Matt and John

like all cheesecakes

you like like the pizza Dolce? Like the ricotta like the wreath like the really grainy watery weepy ones.

Yeah, it's got its own its own thing. I like the you know Basque style burnt cheesecake. New York style cheesecake. It's all delicious to me.

You know, I hated cheesecake growing up. I hate it. I didn't like it until my probably early 30s. I love it now, but I absolutely hated cheesecake growing up. I also hated Kreme Doughnuts. I tell this story. Told them along different paths. I

tell people What Booker wants to make? We mean, non fried donuts and cupcakes.

Oh my god. Yeah booboo comes to me, it's like, I want it. Well, you know, people know that Booker now has decided he wants to be a professional baker. I gotta get him hooked up with Angela to talk to him about the ins and outs of taking that on as a career but, and I hear Angela Gorbach. His book is doing well, the golden ride pastries. But anyway. Yeah, so he comes up and he's trolling me in the way that anastasius family is trolling him. He's like, I want to do non fried donuts, and cupcakes. And if there's two things on earth that I want is I want my donut fried the way God intended. And I don't like cupcakes. We had this discussion with Angela when she was on the air. She likes cupcakes. I think most people do. I'm probably in the minority on the not liking cupcakes. Yeah. But I prefer cake to icing. And I prefer my cake to not be dry. So if I really want the cake to be dry, what I will do is I will increase the amount of surface area it has per unit volume. And the best way to do that other than making it in tiny thin sheets is to make a cupcake which has a very high surface area to volume ratio. And then classically, people put gobs and gobs of icing on the top of that thing. So I can't even get my face onto the cake without having to deal with the icing. So my in general move is I just fist the icing and just rip it off like a cap of poison and then eat the cupcake that's underneath. And if I had been blessed with luck, like they have kept the cupcake wrapped so that it hasn't dried out and desiccated into a little hockey puck. By the time I've gotten it. That's just my feeling. That's just how I feel. But

the people who are selling you the cupcake love to watch you do that.

Don't Don't goop the hell out of it. I mean, look, some people and I think Booker's like this, like they could just like they could just go to town on a bowl of icing with a spoon. I'm just not that guy. You know what I mean? And even like, you know, you'd think that based on other things that I like that like like, like a hard butter buttercream icing, like with lots of butter that I would like that. No, I like cream cheese frosting on a carrot cake. So I'm not you know what Anastasia wants an extra book or people she wants the German chocolate cake with with the with the crunchy coconut ice and on top. What are your What are your I noticed as your legs because she asked for what are your other thoughts?

That's delicious. Yeah, that sounds delicious.

Yeah. So we're going to try to get Booker to make that but the problem is that Booker doesn't like coconut, so I don't know if he will bake with them or not.

You might, it might come up in a baking career that you might need to use ingredients you don't personally.

Well, everyone who listens to the show knows that Booker sold pasta for Anastasia and hates pasta. He had to we had to do many, many hours of role playing of having a Yeah, right. Not insulting the product he was selling. So like we would walk up and be like, okay, hey, I'm gonna get some lunch. What do you you know, what do you recommend? I don't eat pasta. It's disgusting. We're like, no, no, you can't say that. And then we were like worrying worrying about right remember that says,

Hey, John, did you see that spins all repair question right now.

No, you gotta remember other people don't have access to our email to discuss it. I want to discuss it.

Someone is embarrassed? Because even after reading the man and watching the video, he inadvertently opened the lid while walked out. Yeah, now she was broken after spin up with all red lights blinking. Yeah. Oh, near by trade.

Oh my God. Listen, listen. The good news is, is that John is going to spend a lot of face time with that person trying to get the unit back in order. Hey, listen, though, I have made a video is super long and boring. Where I completely disassemble the spins all so if the sucker is already out of warranty, and you want to get an idea of how to repair something that John's not willing to help you repair, you can watch that video right now I'm going to

help people repair anything and everything. Anyone out there listening, if anything goes wrong with your spins all stop trying to fix it, just leave it and send me an email and it'll be a lot easier and quicker to fix that way than if you try and do something to it. And you'll probably have to spend money to get a new part if you do it that way.

I will say this on top of this because here's what happens. John fixes a lot of this stuff and it's stuff that he's not sure about, like we'll discuss with each other. So we take this very seriously. Am I right John? Yeah. Very quickly,

yeah FaceTime with people every day of the week until something gets sick.

But yeah, in all of life and the Stasi, and I and John, we can get into a small argument here, when something breaks, right? If you trust that the person is going to do their best to try to make your life right, be honest with them about exactly what happened and be clear about what you're saying to them. Because if the person on the other side of the line is a smart person, which John is right, then they will be trying to figure out what is wrong based on the stuff that you say. So if you hold information back, or if you don't say exactly like this happened, and this happened, or I dropped it, everyone's afraid to say that they dropped something. Right? So it's like, then it's gonna be hard for us to troubleshoot what happened, right?

Yeah, and the damage is already done. And if it's out of warranty, we're not gonna pay to fix it anyway. So just be honest, and tell us what happens.

And we like there's no one so far that we haven't been able to make it right. I have three units in my house right now that are taking up precious coin T there's

your new title. What's your new title?

Do you remember? I don't remember what was it? It was selling cell repair specialists or something like Yeah, something like that. It was great. Another video that John's gonna get up, hopefully, pretty soon I recorded and put out there. And I did this, believe it or not, for Anastasia I did how to set up a home carbonation system with a carbonator. And when I say I did this video, I give the part numbers I give the places to buy them. I give websites I even tell you who to speak to at the place where you're supposed to call it I give you current 20 May 2020 pricing on the stuff that you need to buy. It is pretty much everything you need to know John, am I right about this?

That is right. Yeah. And great content. And it's up if you check the book or index Instagram, you'll see posted about it this morning. And there's a link to it in our profile.

Right. And we're not we're not pushing it on social because we're not doing any social pushes right now.

But you've made this video the way that you made bread for Jen's anniversary. And you're like you've made this video for me. It's like the same thing.

Well, no, because now you get to say this. No more carbonate. No more how to set up a

five minute but definitely not true day because you will get a combination question and then you'll be like go to the video. But and then tangent.

I can't win. I can't ever win. No, that's true, right? There's no winning,

but boy does it has truth.

There's no winning people. Dr. Kubler Ross AUSkey wrote in i Hey, would you mind telling me which peristaltic pump you're using for your roadmap, we have a road map for our students that are now trying to make it more gastronomical. It's a course for chemistry students actually, we're teaching laboratory skills through cooking. Awesome, I just use a you know it, Cole Parmer, rebrands, whatever their you know, I forget the name of it, but it's a 60. It's a 60 rpm, and it takes roughly quarter inch tubing. The problem with it is is that you have to get an I could try to look it up, it's on actually that I believe the actual tubing numbers are on the blog post, you can go look at it, which you know, on the primer on the roadmap primer. And the problem is the tubing has collapsed over time. And if you notice bubbles streaming up to the tubing, it means that the tubing is not sealing anymore. And if it does that, then it wreaks havoc with your with your system. So I would invest in a vacuum check valve, and I would put the check valve on the atmospheric pressure side of the pump not on the vacuum side of the pump. And if you have more questions, ask more questions or hit up. Hit up John, hit up ask us like you're asking a warranty question for whatever because if I if I go too into the weeds on road of apps and Stassi will murder me. Speaking of we had a question from Raj montage via Instagram. Who wants to talk you Highball spec? I'll give that in a minute if I have time, but they said am I familiar with the Giro Vapp, which is a online it's online a kind of supposedly chef driven Rotovac machine. And Raj wants to know if that's kind of the way I was going to make my own road about the answer is no, it's not. But if I get into it, it seems like it's a lot of money. And there's not enough videos online and they're not posting enough information for me to make a clear judgement. But I didn't have time to do it this morning. But they're using ice as their as their main thing but it takes kilos and kilos of ice to adequately chill something to re condense. I can do the math, but this condensation of steam versus the is something like 80 kilocalories per, you know per gram or at Cal He's program and the ice is like a quarter of that. So you need a lot of ice to re condense, you know, a smaller amount of product. But anyway, I can go more into it later if again, hit up, John, separately, the Toki app and not going to have time. Marty, do I have time to answer anything else or my toast?

Oh, man, you can pretty much toast.

Alright, so I will get to, I will get to the possibles. The ears, I'll do something quickly. Not sure if you take us on Instagram. This is from Jonathan Cain. There seems to be quite a bit of conflicting information on the web about cooking, specifically smoking with western red cedar. I was under the assumption this was safe, but others have indicated possible toxicity. I can't seem to find much research on the matter, some sites, least general toxicity in Cedar from large doses of flu. Joan, is that a concern and smoking? Thanks. Now I can't Jonathan answer. Not a safety expert or an occupational person. But I mean, I have an occupation. But that's not what I mean. The danger western red cedar is the highest of the of the Thuja like group of things, not necessarily food junk, but it's something called Plekanec acid, which is a non volatile acid that is a respiratory irritant, and can cause like, it can cause a specific allergy. And so that is and it's particularly high and western red cedar. So people who cut western red cedar and work with it and slice it, they are at risk for developing a specific kind of asthma, that really only people who use these kinds of woods get. Now it's non volatile. However, when you're smoking, you're, you know, you're not a clean burn. So I don't know whether or not it's launching any of that stuff into the air, but that's what I would look at. I wouldn't worry about the food zone, I worry about the pathetic acid. Alright, so I will answer Monty, I'll answer your question about your ChefSteps Control Freak next week. John, I'll make sure that I do and can talk I'll give you the Toki lowball spec next week, Raj, and I'll leave you guys with this. audios wrote in via Instagram. Hey, Dave, enjoying the quarantine podcast question is cereal soup from Audi Golder answer? No. Okay, cooking issues. Cooking issues is powered by simple caste. Thanks for listening to heritage Radio Network food radio supported by you for our freshest content, subscribe to our newsletter. Enter your email at the bottom of our website heritage Radio network.org. Connect with us on Instagram and Twitter at Heritage underscore radio. You can also find us at facebook.com/heritage Radio Network. Heritage Radio Network is a nonprofit organization driving conversations to make the world a better fairer, more delicious place and we couldn't do it without support from listeners like you want to be a part of the food world's most innovative community. Subscribe to this shows you like tell your friends and please join the HRM family by becoming a member. Just click on the beating heart at the top right of our homepage. Thanks for listening