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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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This episode is brought to you by 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. then and then and tbaytel the geek DD Hello. Welcome to Cooking issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of cooking issues coming to you live from my house in Manhattan. We're going to start to somewhere where the hell are you now?

I'm in Connecticut.

You're in Connecticut. Matt's in Rhode Island. John. You're in the urine in wherever the hell what does that Murray Hill and there's nobody in blah blah blah. Well, there is no one in Brooklyn. We are a Brooklyn free what?

Yeah, just zombies.

We are now we are now a Bushwick free show for the duration of the of the corona. Yeah,

I do feel cleaner than usual.

Wow. A lot of harshness on the on the phone. I guess. You know, Matt, what you're talking about? And by the way, we have this dassia Lopez as usual How you doing stars? Good. We got Matt in the booth. As someone pointed out, you're no longer in a booth unless you have a booth in Rhode Island.

I refer to them this place as a booth.

Where do you Where are you really though you please tell me

I'm in an attic but it's a nice it's not like the dingy attic that you're imagining? It's a finished attic.

Alright, and you and you put on pants for the show. I hope this is

I did my first two hours in my bathroom and pajamas. But I did put on pants and a shirt for the show right now. Still wearing slippers though,

right? We are a family friendly and also a Tony free show. So we are not recording. We treat the audience as though we respect them. We put on clothes to talk to them, right? I mean in general, I hope Yeah, stars can't can't cosign, so she must be fill in her. In her nighttime outfit, okay. And for the I think the first time on the show, we have the new Booker and DAX customer service representative. John, Hello, how you doing, John? How you doing?

I'm doing great. Thanks for having me.

So now if you have a problem with a book or index piece of equipment, like that's not his fault, but it's our fault, but he's going to solve it going forward. So you want to tell them a little something about your background there, John? Yeah.

I originally started out as a French major art history minor and undergrad went on to work in kitchens here in New York City. I've been doing that for about 11 years now. Now, during that time, I also went to grad school, or I got my master's degree in art history, and focused on food and art, the relationship between the two. And then worked at the University of Connecticut for a couple of years as a professor and curator of the museum there then worked at Mossad as the culinary Operations Manager and curator and unfortunately, things are

very lucrative.

Yeah. Loaded, filthy, filthy lucre. So speaking of food related art, it's being a food related art. So I went back when I was in art school, and just beforehand, we know when I was graduating from college, so I graduated college in 93, went to art school from 95 to 97. And this was kind of the sweet spot for kind of body image related art and also kind of nouveau relativism in you know, in the, in the kind of the New York art scene at the time. And so what do you what do you think about that era of food art, I was always I always kind of like, it was never my thing in the jig. So but as a specialist in the field, you know, like, what, what are your What are your thoughts? So like, what was

so? Yeah, my research was a little more intense than just looking at that it was a took a really intense philosophical perspective, looking a lot of Kant and Hume, because they back in the 18th century set up these notions of standards of taste when looking at art. And so I use that dual notion of taste to look at food as well, and show how certain types of cuisine or certain dishes could fit into the realm of what they call art that makes you think more than

Yeah, well, first, first of all, Kant is a word you want to pronounce very carefully when you're speaking on the radio.

Okay, KMT. And

secondly, secondly, like, Are you the other person on earth who's read Kant's critique of judgment? Because it's the weirdest view of art and aesthetics that you could possibly imagine. And anyone who says, I like Kant, I'm like, What about how crazy his views of aesthetics are? They're freakin nuts. My rant about this. I mean, for those of you that don't know, Kant was a weird dude. I believe he was the one that had a giant head. He was a weird looking dude and a weird dude. And he had he didn't travel more than I think three or four or five miles from his house, because he had all sorts of strange mentalist. Now, I've told like my cousin James, who is a firm believer in not looking outside of the text of a work to get information about the text he, he hates, whenever I do this, whenever I harp on someone's kind of personal, like mental attributes to discuss what's going on in their text, but especially for someone who is such a like, you know, a crazy, I mean, he's no Hegel. I mean, you can read Kant. Right. But I mean, Kant also, you know, let's just say he's not always the clearest with his writings. And so, you know, I am a big believer in saying, okay, yeah, let's take the text for what it is. But let's look at what an extreme nutjob the person was in real life as well, you know what I mean? And so Kant, right, who is never leaving, you know, more than a couple of hours or a couple of miles from his house, because, among other things that might make you late for appointments, right? Like me complete, complete. wingding lunatic has this idea of aesthetics, whereby beauty and aesthetics are pleasure that you can derive from something, it's like, completely removed from your personal interest in it, right? And so he has this notion of the beautiful and the sublime, which are frankly, nuts, right? So then, especially if you're going to try to tie that in with food, which is an inherently kind of personal need and personal enjoyment thing, like so I presume that you are kind of anti Kantian or were you did you somehow try to thread that needle

I took, I didn't really take a stance on his sanity or his positions of on things. I'm more just accepted that they were Givens in the art historical record. And that I chose though, to those whose philosophers specifically again because of notions of taste, but also because their writings have shaped art history a lot in terms of like establishing what is beautiful and aesthetically pleasing and all that kind of stuff. And so I just wanted to show that using their own arguments when they have said that food cannot be art, but using new cuisine, like specifically front Adria that his dishes could fit within their criteria for what is called Arts. Alright, so judgment on their stuff. It was more just trying to fit this stuff with in their body of work,

so just to be clear, you're basically backhand complementing Ferran Adria by saying that his work is best enjoyed with no personal attachment to whether you get something out of it or not. Wow, feigning craziest most crazy like over the top erudite backhanded compliment a fraud Adria that I've ever heard in my life. ever in my life. Great. Glad I make that. Mark. Alright, so now Okay, so

tonight at 530. So yeah,

so Jonathan said 530, right.

Yes. Tonight at 530 on the MO Feds Instagram counted, Dave will be joining in and making his Cliff old fashioned cocktail on there. He's going to be demoing it and speaking with Sarah, the public programs manager over at the museum. And yeah, just chatting with Dave and watching him put together a cocktail. While we're all under quarantine. It's technically called Low fat happy hour, but that Dave has been referring to it as the unhappy hour.

Yeah, I mean, come on. Let's be honest. Can we be honest?

Like everybody, it was Dave's birthday yesterday.

Happy birthday. 49. And other year closer to the box, listen.

Going back to

going back to the cliff old fashion. One last thing about Kant's critique of judgment. Please read the Cliff Notes. Don't bother, like unless you're a scholar, like trying to wade through that, especially if you're not like already, like well versed in like the Critique of Pure Reason, like the critique of judgment is not something you want to dive headlong into. I'd say what do you think there? John?

I'd agree. There is one professor at UC San Diego Mesa College, Dwight furrow who was really able to break it down in a very explainable way especially.

Yeah, I mean, all right. So like, tune into him and read that if you're interested in weird freak shows ideas of what is beautiful and sublime. So now back to the back to the museum thing. So what am I going to do? I'm going to get on Instagram Live and make a cocktail. And then I'm going to like drink it.

Yeah. And talk with Sara. And I think she's gonna have some questions for you and talk to you about the cocktail and why you do certain things the way you do. Why do you say? Okay, that'll be straightforward. It will be fun. Should be sure.

Yeah. All right. So we got some questions in there. By the way, you can't listen live, so you can't hear me. But if you listen, last week, you can put things in live to the chat room, and Matt can read them. Matt can read them on the air. So with this we have in dear Dave, this is from Monty in Jacksonville, I burned my slash. So I think what Monty means is, cuts down a bunch of stuff off of his property, put them in a pile and then burns it. So I burned my slashing and end up with a cone of coals two feet high, which is awesome, and five or six feet in diameter. So a good thing of coals here. I often throw root vegetables in a Dutch oven and roast them up. I haven't done that with meat, though, as it seems that the iron will get too hot and would burn the meat ideas for using this massive amount of heat without the work of turning a spit. Monty from Jacksonville. So I don't know. And what do you what do you think Johnny ever cooked with big coals?

I haven't had something but I'd really like to do more of those. So yeah, don't feel. I don't know, maybe just like, Yeah, go for it.

The thing is, is that, you know, you, you you might just want to wait for the coals to kind of burn down you know what I'm saying? Like, like, it's almost like if you could prepare this stuff ahead of time, you would burn it in a pit kind of move it aside, put it in and bury it and use the retain heat from the fact that you heated the hell out of the ground. You know what I mean? Like that's how like a lot of like the large scale, like animal things work is they they basically treat the entire Earth as a retain heat masonry oven, right? And you you just burn the heck out of it, and then sweep the stuff aside and then bury it and let the carryover do it. Right. So like all of your initial high heat Browning stuff happening at the beginning. And then it kind of goes through but I've never actually done it myself. You know, I don't know whether you'd have to like bury thermocouples in it or to test or whatnot or whether you just just don't care whether or not it gets a little overcooked. But what do you think, John? You think something like that would work?

Yeah, I think I've worked too. And frankly, I would also just try putting the coals right on like underneath a Dutch oven and on top of them like separate from the rest of the fire. So it's a little bit more controlled and tempered. But I know you know, I've seen online videos of people cooking hunks of meat and things like that. I know one of the Modernist Cuisine photographs is a Dutch oven cut in half with like Pork rack in there and they've got the coals on the top and coals on the bottom as well. Some information out there

most people's dutch ovens nowadays modern dutch ovens are not the dutch ovens of old, right? So if you look at like an old school, like camp oven, right, that, specifically it's the lid, it's first of all, like they're all enameled. Now they're all fancy, right? They're fancy fide. But as opposed to the old straight cast iron ones that are just cast iron in and out no enamel, but also the old style. So if you look at the, you know, the krusei, right, the lid on those things, if you were to pour liquid on the top of those, they would just stream off, right. But an old school camp oven has lit a lip on the lid that goes around. And the purpose of that lip is to hold coal, right? So that you can actually adjust the upper heat and the bottom heat. And there's a, there's a book out of Australia, whose main thing is cooking, I forget the name of it. It's something like dampers, which is an Australian, like camp biscuit. And anyway, something like that. And it's about cooking. In the out back in camp ovens, I forget the name, I have it somewhere, I'll try to locate it, maybe put it on, you know, send it to Matt. So we can put it up on the on the thing here. But there's a whole bunch of recipes in there on how to cook with a camp oven. But by and large. And and if you read and I have the all these books as well, if you read the kind of late 19th century, very early 20th century American Camp literature, right, which was all based around, basically based around rich white city men, right? Hiring large amounts of often brown people to take them into the quote unquote, Woods had down giant amounts of trees and like build crazy camps in the in the forest, like three or four or five hours outside of where they lived. Right. So now it seems gross. But the technical literature is great on like building building camps, like large scale camps like this is that they would build massive fires, but then most of the cooking was done on a smaller scale fire that they pull off. And the same is true in the Australian camp book. So a lot of that Dutch oven cooking, you would pull stuff off of your fire and then use it on the Dutch oven all the way around. And meat cooking works great in that as well. I just don't have a lot of experience with it personally.

I would also say to look at some restaurants, you know, that do a lot of woodfire cooking. And then also while I don't like him too much, Francis Mallmann you know, he does a lot of work with that stuff as well.

And if you don't want to turn a spit, right, but you have a really high tripod, you could do the you could do the tripod, rotating string action and have it kind of self rotate, but the top of it will always be under so you'd have to flip it halfway between but you can get that kind of rotation action or get it on the side. You know, I'm talking about guys, the tripod with a string Yeah. Or, you know, you could do what they used to do back in the old days, which is get a dog and have a dog running in a wheel. You know the spit dog and then you know the dog just sits there running like a hamster in a wheel turning the turning the end I've been on the sites Anastasia poke fun at me for a pilot that I did once remember this Anastasia Time Machine? Yeah. And one of the things that they were testing was spit dogs and I believe my memory serves me they actually had a dog in a large hamster wheel. Turning a spit. I think they actually did it but I can't I can't remember if anyone has an experience taking I guess you What would you use? Like a sled dog kind of a dog? I mean, you wouldn't want something some fairy because it's near a fire. But you'd need something that wants to sit there and run. What do you like a terrier where you hold a piece of meat in front of the we'll have a keep trying to get the meat. What do you do? No one No one to get

as good as mine.

Do I have to have all the suggestions you guys can't give me anything.

I can't believe that in this in this trail or pilot for this episode. They would have actually tried that that that sounds

went on. They shot the whole they shot the whole first episode. They shot the whole first episode and

how did you have to come out if

I forget? I don't even read Oh no, I didn't come out of the fridge. The Chef's came out of it. There was a fridge, there was a refrigerator a time machine. And it had like the electric effects like like you get from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, which by the way, is a great movie. Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure is a great movie. I'm gonna go ahead and say that it ranks right so I've always I'm not one of these like, you know, like can oh come lately fans like I've been a fan of Keanu Reeves for like a long time. Alright, and I'm gonna say it's right up there with speed and the John Wick series. I'm gonna go ahead and say and You know what you're saying a lot. Are you guys all Kenobi his fans are no, no, no,

I, I enjoyed the hell out of the John Wick movies. They're stupid and they're great for just you know, mindless violence. I love it.

What about what about Bill and Ted's gonna test is great. All right. All right. Yeah,

no, I mean also like the matrix that was that was the movie. Oh, yeah,

I forgot about matrix. I forgot about the matrix. Anyway, Bill. Whatever happened to the other guy? What he ended up doing I know what happened because Arlen he died. Right. Anyway, a whole generation my generation learn history from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. Anyway. John's not weighing in John, not a fan of Bill and Ted. I mean,

I haven't seen it I think, you know, not too familiar with Keanu Reeves. His body of work. I can say the matrix but other than that.

Yeah, well about Point Break. Haven't seen. Like the stars. Yeah. How could you not be a fan?

I just don't like him. I don't mind

you had coffee with the guy and you were like, This guy's in a hole. And that was it.

I feel like you have to either like him or Nicolas Cage. And

I love Nicholas. I love Nicolas Cage. Now listen.

No know in his late 40s So of course you like both?

Well, you just said you can't like both. The rest you just you your words. I'm not supposed to like both not my words, your words and your life? Course you like both.

You're not supposed to like oh,

how am I not? Why would you not see? How like so like On what planet? First of all, if Nicholas Cain had never done another movie after Raising Arizona he'd still be great because Raising Arizona is like one of the all time classic movies Holly Hunter. And freaking John Goodman and Nicolas Cage and and Randall Tex Cobb, the ex boxer as the Lone Rider of the apocalypse. I mean, doesn't get much better in like an early. You're not going to credit the baby by name. I don't know the baby's name. Do you

know how much of a superfan then

I'm gonna say it was a superfan I just said it was a great movie. I'm not you know, I nobody's super fan, Matt. Anyway. Alright, so we answered Monty's question from Jacksonville Issei Alexander man on the chat room last time was like a hey guys want to revisit my question for Dave or anyone else that might know I've got barrel aged tallow washed bourbon. So here's the thing. So you tallow wash the bourbon and then Ribeiro aged. That's what I'm getting out of this right that I'm making and using for burnt and bourbon cocktails. I'd like to use a hot poker for the for those hot caramelized flavors. I'm currently using the pan method, but it doesn't work as quickly and I'd like to make smaller batches. Any direction for where I can get a hot poker for home use. No. Like, listen, listen. Okay, so if there's no acid in it, you can do it the old school way which is go on mcmaster carr look for a soldering copper right and get a big one one that's I don't remember the size but ours were at least like an inch and a half around they're big right long heavy. Keep those suckers on the fire for a long long long time like on a very hot fire for a long time. And then use those now anything with acid in it you're gonna get a little bit of kind of that sucking on a penny taste but in a non acidic and especially if you season it by using it a bunch first for a while it works and that's what we that's what I used to use before I started building the hot pokers but if you're going to build a hot poker like unless you get the exact one which you know are the what are they forage 500 Watt Watlow cartridge heaters weld them onto the end of a stainless steel stick. I mean it's kind of hard to get it right in a way that's going to constantly light it on fire but if you if you don't think you need to light it on fire you can try with a soldering copper. I would not use I've tested slugs and stainless steel, they're no good. I've tested slugs of iron, they tasted terrible. I've tested a bunch of stuff. I've also used spiral heaters, they work the problem with making a red hot poker is an electric one is that if especially if you want something to catch on fire, it's a very fine balancing act because with the repeated in and out and the fact that you need it to heat up relatively quickly. It's hard to do To accurate temperature control at those very high temperatures and at those very high temperatures that you need for spontaneous ignition. If you overshoot by 100 degrees, you burn out your elements very quickly and so that's the that's the kind of issue that you run into. So you try to get a heating element that can just barely heat up to the right temperature in free air. Right and then you use that but it's a it's a it's a balancing act. It took me a while to get it right so they love it and don't and remember personal health danger yada yada eccentric cetera.

We did have one other person from the chat weigh in. It's really just more of a response than a question. While he said thanks for thinking about my steam oven steam quest. I use a silicone hose from the Instant Pot pressure weight nipple to a stainless steel drinking straw inside the oven, may drill a hole in the side of the oven to mount the straw as the hose is crushed by the oven door seal. Great crust and a bit more spring worth the effort.

Cool. Nice. And speaking of speaking of steaming and oven spring, that that is the kind of the crux of Jim Lee he's dutch oven. Bread, no need bread thing. It's like there's two things there's the one is that you don't need to need it, if you're going to let it rise for a long, long, long time. Right, which he does for like 24 hours. And the second aspect of that is he cooks it in the in the Dutch oven are in a heavy pot. So you're trapping the steam next to the bread for the initial part of the cook. So I didn't mention that during the steam conversion. But that's you know, there's really two magical parts to Leahy's bread recipe. Are we going to get him back on against as

you're thinking about doing? Instagram live with him? The next Instagram Live.

Okay, but then can we get can we get three people on Instagram with

boyfriends? Um, but we are trying to find another system to include him. Or you and him can go at it. I don't know.

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. All right.

So let's take a break real quick here and then come back.

All right, we'll be right back with cooking issues. 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. Today we're going to talk about the essentials box. Ben sent me one here. It says ding dong. It's been it's got a picture of half of his face on it. All right. We got community greens past it. Now I've heard good things about community grains. But I've never actually tried it myself here we have a hard white winter wheat. Anyway, it looks good. I'm anxious to try it. Rancho Gordo. By the way, a bunch of Rancho Gordo beans, we got some. We got some scarlet runner beans. And then the one that I'm frankly most excited about is the Geechie boy mill stuff out of Charleston, South Carolina. They have some Jimmy read grits that Jimmy read is a variety of corn delicious the grits from this are and I've made these because I bought it when I was in Charleston brought it home with me cooked it gave it to my wife who grew up most of the time young in the south. And she was like then those grits and it's all kind of nice, easy to use, you know not something that you're gonna have to make crazy recipes to get to use all just very high quality products that are in the realm of what you would use in staples for a pantry. Start your monthly subscription at Benda table.com That's B e n t o t a ble.com use the discount code Hrn to get $20 off a new subscription and bend to table will donate $10 to support cooking issues and all of HRMS programming. I'm in academia wrote in and said hello, I'm studying philosophy in Istanbul but recently I spent most of time trying to develop a simple and delicious drink for kids. And for the millions of diabetics in my country. I am working on a sugar free lemonade, which is sweetened with stevia with stevia leaves instead of stevia extract, or any other natural artificial sweetener. But the stevia stevia is a tricky plant that contains a sweetness that comes along with a heavy licorice taste, I would say poisoned taste when brewed until now we have achieved the best taste when simply cold brew with lemon peels and approximately two grams per liter of Paraguay and stevia leaves for about seven eight hours in the fridge with a splash of lemon juice. During my research, I came across liquid intelligence. And I'm wondering if you have any ideas on how to improve the taste and preserve the drink without sacrificing taste. All right. So one of the issues on preserving lemon and this is something that I'm going to talk about the lemon first like I personally don't like stevia. I think it tastes poisonous. Yeah. Yeah. John, what do you think about stevia?

Yeah, not great. Matt.

never intentionally consumed stevia. What?

Haven't you drinks All right.

What? What drinks like what? Why? Stevia?

Matt in the booth is secretly a liar. I want everyone to know this that Matt in the booth lies constantly just

what that would have stevia.

I don't know how do you walk around for like your whole life and never have had stevia and the stats to back me up on this

true? Are you saying? So? Okay, my experience of stevia is that I would choose in a coffee shop to put it in things. You're telling me that it's in like packaged goods that I might buy off to

someone at some point in your life, someone's handed you something, you tasted it? What is that? They're like that stevia?

Well, okay, that I didn't know that that was the horrible, but I do remember spending that drink out it was really bad.

Okay, so anyway, listen, the trick when you're working with any sort, so, so sugar, sucrose, table sugar, right, has a number of different functions. So one of them obviously, is sweetness. And the thing about Sucrose is, is that of all of the sweetness, things that you can do get us it is the cleanest clean, right? Almost every other sweetener, either like a natural or artificial has some form of bitterness, you need some or some form of alternate flavor. It's not kind of pure, clean sweetness. So there's there's that you're almost always dealing with, like, like flavors that go along with it. So you either use those flavors to your advantage or not right. And when something has what is in general considered to be an off putting taste. So you know, stevia, I mean, you're being very kind to it by saying licorice, it's got like kind of, to me kind of like kind of bitter metallic notes in it that I find unpleasant. And by the way, you should test that with other people. Because not everyone has the same way, especially to things that have bitterness in them. Bitterness has a much wider range, not just of perception in terms of strength, like so with sugar, people are like yatch tea sweet, or that tea dried, the same person could think that one thing is too sweet. And another person could think it's not sweet enough. But they both kind of agree on what sweetness is with bitterness. It's not just a level of bitterness. But like some people like for instance, I am don't have a strong reaction to prop the bitter thing that they do. And they test to see if you're a super taster or not right? Where someone else sees that as intensely bitter, right? I think that broccoli Rob is bitter, but not intensely bitter. And there's other bitter compounds that maybe I perceive more than let's say you do. So whenever you're dealing with something that has bitter notes, you want to make sure that you test it with a wide range of people, right? So so you have that. So any alternative sweetener is going to have these off notes. Now, something similar to what people do when they're kind of compounding gluten free flours is instead of just using one thing to replace wheat flour, they use a range of things. And they hope that by averaging this range of things that you're not going to notice the extreme beany taste of let's say, you know, black eyed pea flour or or whatever, right, because you're you're not going to notice kind of like the textural hit you take if you use pure rice. So they average a lot of things together by using these blends. And that's one of the reasons you see kind of these blends in gluten free flours. And the same is true for sweeteners, right. So you might want to look into other diabetic friendly sweeteners, non caloric sweeteners, like for instance monkfruit. Now I happen to like the sweetness of monkfruit It comes with other flavors, but to me, those other flavors aren't gross. They're tea like right so if you have any sort of affinity for like Chinese herbal teas, right, then you will like Monk, monk fruit or there's a bunch of different you know, more Martica what is it I forget the actual title, the actual name of it, but so if you look at that, you'll see that like that has sweetness and some other flavors. So maybe a combination of stevia and monk fruit can help tamp down some of those notes that when you use stevia only for the sweetness now and the second problem with preservation. So this is some experiments that I would really like to run for various reasons right? But when you're when you want to do a lemon juice and you want to keep for a long time, I think the best thing to do is to make a cordial with it right so you clarify it and yes, I think you should buy a spins or to clarify it or you know, whatever centrifuge you're going to use but whatever you don't have to you can you can do freeze thaw you could do quick ag Are you could do any of these things, because it's not going to be fresh, right. But now then when you make a cordial, you save the peels, you boil the peels with the, with the, the juice, the clarify juice and sugar right now, and then it becomes stable. So the sugar makes it stable because you know, it's now at a simple syrup level. And it's not going to kind of spoil, especially with the sugar and the acidity. The problem is, is and the taste stays relatively stable for a long time long time, like months. The problem is, and it tastes good, is I don't know if the sugar is necessary to the process. So it's pretty simple test. It's just I haven't had the time to run it, of just boiling. Just boiling the clarify juice on its own without the sugar, right, and see whether or not I get the state same stability, whether the reactions are the same that give that same stability. If it's just the heat that's necessary. Well then you could just use boiled clarified lemon juice as your lemon in it. And it's not going to taste like fresh lemon. Right? But especially with the peel, it'll have the notes of a good cordial, which are delicious, but not the same as fresh. What do you guys think? Does this make sense? Yep. All right. All right. Hey, Mr. Garcia, Dave and Matt in the booth. If in fact, you were still in a booth. We already addressed this. Right. This person accuses you, Mike and Minnesota. Matt accuses you of being Matt on the couch

or not on the couch is a dirty lie. All right. In a regular chair. I'm sorry. It's not a impressive place to be.

Well, again, for all we know we know you're a liar. So you may be on a couch. You may be on a couch in your chonies because you're well known liar. You lied to us about the media,

everything I'm sipping on my stevia drink, right. I know it is. gurgling stevia love it.

I know. It's just gonna Wow, so weird. Anyway, hope you're doing well and staying safe in these crazy times. Dave, you recently addressed someone's question regarding culturing cream to make butter and said that one should use buttermilk and not yogurt. Why is that I know buttermilk is traditional slash standard. But there are other options. I've used yogurt quite successfully myself and more expense experimentally. Koji, by the way we got to have rich on soon because his book is probably going to be coming out. And it's a good time for people to be experimenting with koji at home since everyone's home. Just curious as to why you so firmly recommend buttermilk. Thanks for continuing to put on the show. Mike in Minnesota. Well, Micah, you're right. I mean, like, I just recommend it because it's traditional. And I'm a huge believer in experimenting. So experiment with whatever you want. Your minute, you're totally right, I think but if you want more of a traditional cultured butter flavor. And by the way, John, for those of you that don't know, John was the source of all my recommendations in Belgium. So because of his recommendations of where to go, is why I own the HVD a 57. We as waffle maker, it's why I have a stockpile of the world's greatest mustard from Ghent in my fridge right now. So John Wright has some opinions on it. Yeah, yeah. And the stuff you love that mustard too, right? Yeah, but

I don't know what to put it on now that I'm not eating meat.

Cheese. Really? Yeah. It's also it's great on cheese. So this mustard by the way, is made only with this mustard is made only with mustard seed, brown mustard seed, water, vinegar and salt. And that's it. That's it, right. So it's all about the kind of purity of the thing. And so I got back from the museum. We'll talk more about the museum and COVID in a second. But I got back from the museum, my wet grinder. And so as soon as John and I are allowed to hang out in the same room together, we're going to take on for cooking issues, listeners. The task of recreating the Gantt mustard.

It's like, because you can't go get it. Yeah, but like, Okay,

what do we Why would I Why? Why would you try to make something that you love? Why would you try to make it? Why would you try to make something that you really want to have to get?

I feel that this is surprising. I will

be like Nastasia if you said why are you learning to make Twinkies, I'd say you're right. I can just go to the store and buy Twinkies.

But I'm saying like, it's almost insulting because these people like it's their life's work, and you're like, I'm just gonna do it. And hopefully I get it right. And, you know,

is that what I said? I'm just gonna do it and hope rather than currently researching the technology of mustard,

just go to Belgium every year and get it that would be like the amount of time which is money that you're gonna spend trying to recreate it's probably about the same as a flight to Belgium.

Well listen listen I mean like in between getting my monocle repaired like going to my you know cigar shop I will I will plan my yearly trip again that I can pick up a jar of mustard I'll have the plane land in Ghana I'll have my driver go get the mustard while I wait and tea sandwiches in my Learjet

anyway yeah, one of those suggestions is reasonable we got about 10 minutes to go.

This is what I hold on. This is Prashant from Florida I have a question on how to store fresh made pasta. I thought you'd enjoy this Anastasia. We hate fresh made pasta. Hey, but one of them's gnocchi. That was the one you said maybe it was different potato. Currently I make the pasta and freeze it overnight and then throw the throw them frozen into the boiling water but the two times I did this with both fettuccine and yucky the pasta ends up sticking and becoming a massive clump while cooking. The fettuccine got stuck because of the way I put it in the freezer. They did he did the nests. I think it's eat Prashant. Yeah, he did the nests right. But I was more careful within yaki and spaced them out to make sure they did not stick. I had similar results both times. So what's the best way to store pasta to prevent it from sticking? Also, can I freeze leftover pasta dough for later you mean it's low moisture? Probably. I also have some breadmaking questions. So please let me know when Leahy is going to be on the air. I didn't want to get the questions mixed up. Okay, so I don't have a lot of experience freezing fresh pasta.

But I was and then that's it and then make it again and then make it again. Why do you have to freeze it?

Because it's easier to make more than you need for one night and freeze it.

Right whatever.

Oh says the lady who had a whole business built around freezing pasta

was dry pasta fresh pasta is not supposed to be free.

It wasn't but yours was a completely different from that you weren't you're you're part cooking and freezing and I qf right. So

we had one fresh pasta that was frozen. And again, a technique that took decades to get down. And that's the secret and I don't know how they did it. But

what kind of fresh pasta was

it? It was the fettuccine.

Did you have any problems with a sticking? No,

but again, because these people worked for decades on how to do it right and they are not telling anybody?

Okay, okay, fine. Listen, I'll tell you like the way that smaller companies like for instance, do Poloz when they freeze their when they freeze their pasta, they either use like a dusting of very coarse semolina, or they use a or cornmeal depending on on which one they're doing. On for instance, their their ravioli, they dust that stuff with that, so that when it's in the freezer, and it's single layer, right, so it's single layer, and it's like, coated with that stuff so that it won't stick to each other. The theory I guess being that as long as it's frozen fast enough, and you're not getting a lot of moisture migration out those little things act like BBs or ball bearings and get it but that's not going to help you with fettuccine that might help you with the with the yaki but you're really mean the problem. And yaki too is that, I mean, I don't know about you, but you're freezing it before you boil it, or you're going to par boil it and then reboil it when you're done. I mean, there's going to be a lot of issues with moisture migration. So if you keep everything completely separate on a tray, give it a little bit of some ball bearings to roll around with and then hard freeze it I'm what I'm thinking is is that when you're repackaging them into servings, you're letting them what's the word I'm looking for, you're letting them kind of thaw a little bit. And if there's any sort of thaw, you're gonna get moisture migration, they're going to stick together unless you've got the little babies to separate them. Babies meaning stuff like cornmeal or semolina, but then on a Fettuccine, that's going to ruin the texture of it. If you have these kinds. Of course garbage is sticking around I think was Asya. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know how you're going to do it with the, you know, here's the here's what you do. I think also you're putting your fettuccine in way too wet. So like you want to lay your fettuccine out on a one of those, like drying things like you know, and then wait until it's just at the point where if you were going to bend it, it would snap like just before then when the outsides real kind of hard, not hard, but like really, you know, almost semi dry, then you can nest it and freeze it. I don't think the fettuccine is going to Stick together but I think you're you're not waiting long enough before you do it. What do you think says you don't care? You don't want to give any advice because you're like, you should spend your whole life working on it.