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.

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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,

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This week on a special bonus episode of meeting three, we're celebrating Mardi Gras with an ode to the king cake, the most delicious custom of Carnival season.

This is kind of like terrible

comparison, but it's kind of like braided New Orleans vodka. If you really think about the actual technique.

You know why they put a baby in the cake yet? You better be careful where you get that cake because your friends and co workers in New Orleans are going to have an opinion about it.

Tune in to meet in three HR NS weekly food news roundup available wherever you listen to podcasts

Hello, this is Dave on the road to cooking He's just coming to you. From whenever whenever from rivers pizzeria in Bushwick. Brooklyn, we are joined with Anastasia but she is using the ladies room. got Matt though.

Hello. How you doing? I'm feeling great.

Yeah, yeah. Anything anything good happened in the past. I was not here last week. So it was a

there was a convergence of your at least internet presence and my real life. I saw that pie a cooker that you had put up on the gram. And I was at a wedding at San Francisco in San Francisco this weekend. And pie was the main dish and they had these enormous, you know, griddles that they did them on? And then I then I get on the Instagram and you're you're popping off about the pie. Yeah,

yeah. Well, maybe there's some sort of like, lay along with the Coronavirus. Maybe there's some sort of like Paya inducing bug that's going around. You know what I mean? Yeah.

What a delicious thing to get bitten by probably

should not joke about the Coronavirus.

Too late. That's we're on the record. Yeah.

So how was the pay at the event? Were you able to pick around the sausage bits?

And there were two there was a big one. It was fine. Although I was at the last table to be served and I gotta be honest, it was a little little cold by the time I got to it. Yeah, you know,

once and also like once rice like once it starts getting too cold. It's going to start kind of solving up on Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So then you're going to want to make the balls and refried it you know, I'm saying

so I'm thinking table ones. Paya was like, but table twelves pie was yeah, it was fine.

Yeah. So yeah, my mom like it's I was kind of shocked because it's not like usually what she does, I mean, she has a tandoor because she has my tandoor. Right. She has a big green acre. She has the big green bag I have. Yeah. But then she goes and buys has this like 8 billion BT you pay a cooker with this giant pan? I was like, well done Ma. Yeah, well done. Yeah. I mean, it's it's, it's what's nice is it's rather lightweight but it's it's big if you buy it's the Mabel brand, right? The one The one issue with it is that the you need to really regulate the flame way down. It's like when it comes from the thing I think that I don't know whether the regulator my mom had was mismatched. And she was because there's no there's too much. I don't know if you notice, there are two different kinds of propane regulators depending on two different kinds of like barbecue style propane regulators, one that delivers it at like, you know, a quarter of a psi or half psi something like this, and one that delivers it at like eight psi. And it was like the holes were made for like the quarter psi. And we felt like we had the, the like, you know, eight psi psi thing because when you jack the it's just the flames shot up off the ring and out and it's more of a gentle flame and let's say like a wok burner flame. So it's not like a it's more just like a like giant sheet of flame that you put the bagel panel on. But now,

you know you're cooking things efficiently when the flyer is just like fly flaring up around all sides to an extraordinary degree. Yeah,

well, you're gonna be just great. You don't I mean, the thing is, is that I always say this, I always say, you know, there's no such thing as having too much power. But it's the problem with too much power in gas appliances anyways, with electric, it's true, you really can't how you're gonna have too much, you know what I mean? But with, with gas implements, the problem with very high powered gas is that they often can't be throttled down low. Do you know what I mean? So in fact, when I'm working on the VA, one of the things I'm going to have to look at is, Is this too dang powerful? You know what I mean? Is it just too much power? Because I mean, I guess I could also just throttle it with different orifices and whatnot, this they, it's hard, like, you can change. Once you decide kind of the geometry and the flow. It's, it's hard to get something that's meant to have a big old flame, have a tiny little flame and have it not get blown out. You know what I mean? Because it's just not getting the same kind of flow of gas. If you want to have a small flame, you should design for a small flame, and then it's easy to keep it stable. But if it's designed to do you know, 40,000 BTUs, then it's hard to get it to do you know, five, you understand?

Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, yeah. We do. By the way, there was a caller who called in like, right before we even got started. Yeah. Was it? Who I know Alex Talbots? friend was not it was not Alex to I don't think it was Alex.

Alex is going to call it in a minute. Let's I'll take the caller caller. You're on the air. Hey, Dave.

It's Dave from California. How you doing? All right. How you doing? Good. Good. Yeah, I actually wrote into you about the few weeks ago about the series on the power intensity, right. Kind of a follow up to that. Maybe a tangent is deep frying. What? What do you think is kind of the bare minimum of power for doing good? Deep frying? Obviously, given a certain volume of oil, I guess.

Right. Well, well, it's okay. I mean, look, are you talking an electric fryer? A gas fryer?

I've got to go electric. In my case, indoor. I know they're indoor. Yes. Yeah.

So if you're, if you're not going to permanently, like if you're not going to permanently put it into the wall, or, you know, since you're in California, if you're not going to have a 220 plug, you're completely limited to about 1500 watts. Like that's it? Like, that's the maximum you're gonna get?

The most I can find, and yeah, it's four to 40 is 3000 watts.

Now, that's a much nicer number. Yeah. Like the issue with the issue with fryers. And I haven't researched them in a long time is assuming this is a drop in electric element, like how much of a cold zone does it have underneath? It's not just a power, right? So it's that it's the power versus the, the oil amount you have. So you know, a 40 pound it's been a while but a 40 pound fryer, ie it holds 40 pounds of oil is a 40 to 50 pound fryer. It's somewhere in the range of like, I think 60 to 80,000 BTUs. Somewhere in that range. I think it's been a while since I've looked at the numbers and they're not the top of my head. So I mean, that's kind of that's in BTUs. Though, I don't know how many watts I'd have to do a watt conversion. I don't have the conversions in my head. I have to go on an Excel spreadsheet and do it but you know, I would just do a test. If you're if your unit heats up in five to seven minutes, I'd say You probably have adequate power, right? But the the, there's, it's not just a power, right? The problem with you want to buy a fryer that has the biggest possible elements, right? So you want, so I could have something that's 3000 watts. And I mean, you would never build this and a quarter of an inch, you know, stick just a lot small stick, right? The problem is, is if I'm putting out that much wattage into a very small area, I don't have that much area to conduct the heat to the oil, and it's going to radically overheat the oil in that range. This is why tube fryers are so good, because the gas that's in them is a is a very large surface area in which to heat the oil. So it's not radically overheated at any one place. And good electric fryers mimic this by having by having either to like larger tubular elements or sometimes ribbon elements in them. So that you have a larger heating surface area metallic heating surface area than you would if you used let's say thinner coils that you might find in a toaster. Let's say it's something that looks like more of a toaster element. So not only raw power, I would look at kind of what the surface area of the heating element is. And then whether they've developed any like sort of trough underneath it to develop a relatively colder zone so that you the particles that are in it don't burn on to the bottom. So the worst are under fired fryers, because it actively scorches the stuff that's on the bottom of the pan. This is why this is why stovetop Frying is so problematic.

Yep. Yep, I know I've been stovetop frying for forever. So there aren't a lot of options. Obviously, in the residential units. There is a Gaggenau that's the 3000 Watt cellar, and it does have a cold zone, the heating element flips up and all that. And it's 3.7 quarts, so just shy of a gallon

of oil, or that's the volume of the unit. It holds that much oil. That's not bad. That's not terrible.

That thing just says capacity. So I I don't know how to read into that.

I mean, let's not terrible. So like, you know, imagine me I would look at the manual and see how much oil they say to add whether or not because I don't know how they rate capacity, you know what I'm saying? But like, if you imagine taking a whole gallon of oil and pouring it into a pot, you would rarely do that at home.

Yeah, that's that's a lot of oil for home use. Yeah, I'm not above doing that.

No more oil, the better. Always the more oil that your fryer takes the better off you are like, like, as long as there's adequate power, more oil equals better equals less oil in your food, the more oil you use, and the better your your heater is. And the better maintained the oil is, the less stuff you're going to get in your food. Right. So

I So there, there is a drain. So you can strain your oil and reuse it. And I even with my stovetop frying right now, I mean I'm no stranger to filtering my oil. That's, that's fine.

Yeah. And once you get a real fryer, just like you're gonna be like, did I really sit here and try to adjust the frickin temperature of this pot, and worry about boil over and blab that I'm Anil, Anil and all this time. So you're gonna say yourself gotta put it into the put it into the window.

Yeah, but like I like I said the, the residential units I don't want I don't I'm not Dave Arnold, I'm not gonna go hack something or get a commercial unit and put it in. I really want to stick with a residential electric. So that that limits me.

Well, if you think Gaggenau makes good stuff, I haven't tested it. So I can't recommend it. But Gaggenau in general makes good, pricey, but

Well, I mean, I mean, you you sort of answered me, I mean, three, if you think 3000 watts for a gallon of oil is pretty good, then

it's probably sufficient to do some calculate tweet at me and I'll try to when I'm offline and can look up the calculations. I'll try to do the calculations.

Okay, cool. Thanks a lot. Okay. Thanks.

As does Hey, how's you stolen? I brought you a present from Belgium. This is like never Tyronne tin virulent mustard. This is. This is the mustard that is unavailable anywhere so So, Johnny COVID Are the Belgian, our Belgian friend at the Museum of food and drink in a curatorial department there. He recommended a bunch of places to go but literally he was like you have to go he said it's unsurpassable not unsurpassed. Anastasia unsurpassable No, they're not able to surpass it. Mustard, you have to keep it refrigerated. They make it in the basement right? So you go into the shop. And by the way, we weren't even going to go to get like we weren't even we're like what's again what's again, not you know anything about get absolute Not once again, right? We're like, gotta get through that paper a little bit away from the microphone. We're like, Yo, get and the only reason we went to get was to get the mustard. It was the very first place we went. Once we arrived in get, and I was not surprised. What was not what's it called disappointed. I bought 100 euros worth of mustard filled my entire backpack with it. It's all I brought back was mustard and the kind of the clothes on my back through everything, but it's a spicy mustard. It's nice, right? So this lady, they've been making it since the 1700s. And that what happens is they they grind it in the basement, and they won't tell you anything about it. Like nothing. I was like, hey, where do you make it in the basement? You can't visit the basement? I'm like, Well, I haven't asked yet. But okay. Okay, lady. And then I guess they never met me. But if you had been there, you've been like, lady you right? He was gonna ask him visit the freaking monster downstairs. And then I'm like, I asked her about the grinder. And she goes, my dad built it. I don't talk about it. That was it. She did give me a little bit she said. Because I asked her I was like, Do you have like a stone grinder down there similar to like, like a wet grinder like from India for like Idli and dosa batter. Because, you know, we know people who make mustard by grace, but using those like it's a good technique to make mustard at home. And she's like, I don't talk about it. And I won't talk about it with you. There is stone involved. That's all she said. And then she has this giant like wooden this giant like, like human head size wouldn't let it gets in your nose. Right? That's good. It's really good. So she she has this giant wooden like head size ladle. And then they have all these empty jars. They sell other stuff to like, but what this is their one thing, they just hold shelves and empty jars. And then you take the scoop and you go and you scoop it into the jar of your of your choice. And then she warns you to refrigerate it because it's going to lose its spiciness. And she warns you not to keep metal utensils in it. Because it's going to cause it to separate. They don't ship it. But here's what there's a there's a there's a bootleg version where one of the words is the same. I can't remember whether it's Touren chan or Verlin. But it's like Fernando and then the other word. And that one they have in the in the airport. So you're like oh, I missed it. I could buy now bootleg? Oh, like not real. What else? Before I go into waffle craziness? Is that what you're gonna do?

Well, I was gonna say so Alex is has called in. Alright, 22nd Rivers add to play. We should just do it now. With the ad or the Alex ad and then and then Alex. Yeah.

My name is Brandon boy, co owner of blue bar does a super duper awesome place. The vertices of very, very, very, very proud sponsor of the Heritage radio network. We're also super awesome. Thank you heritage.

So that's their appetizing music. That's their Come eat with us. Music. Yeah. Monster Monster Monster Trucks. It's like It's like off the regular show or something. Or or, you know? Wow. It's like, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Nothing says calm haven't enjoyed. Can you play that again? Just a little bit. Little bit of the music. Just give me a little bit of the music.

Well, my name is Brandon Boyd, co owner of Blue BARDA

come down for an enjoyable meal.

I think it's a reasonably accurate representation

of what it's like here. Yeah, that's funny.

It's an assault on the senses.

Oh, yeah, I get it. Yeah. All right. So at the way we got Alex are no buy in here. Can you hear me? I can't How you doing? This is Alex Talbott? Ideas and food by the way people friend of the show been on a couple of times. So I had a question that it just wasn't really my place to answer so I will read you the question. This is from Daniel. I don't know whether it's it's shark shark gel or Shardul Anastasia? Shardul is regarding gluten free baking. Alright, are you ready? Now you want to plug your you want to plug your book so your your gluten free books so that they can know where they can go for more information.

gluten free flour power. Alright, is the book where all books are sold. Easiest is the Overlord Amazon.

Now? Yeah, you know what? I have to say, the Stasi and I are gonna go visit the Amazon. Pretty soon. If you don't want to commit. I don't want to commit because I don't want to go you're gonna force me to go and have to go We've decided 2020 You don't want to do something not gonna do it. Who's decided that I've done that. But that's a stupid thing to say. Because I tell this to my kids all the time. Like 99.9% of the stuff I have to do in life is stuff I don't want to do. You do all of that. But then you're not going to do anything. I'm never going to shave again. Like I'm going to have like a leather Man, he wanted the leather man and he wore like an 80 pound suit. Let's just do that.

You already sort of inhabit a Leatherman like cave from noon to one on Tuesdays.

It's true. That's true. All right. Sorry, Alex. All right. All right.

We'll also represent my donut shop. Right curiosity, Don. Oh, yeah.

How's it going?

It's good. We have we have three, three locations now.

Okay, wait, so you had you had a location and then you switched into a different place? I don't know. Tell people that I've heard I haven't been but I hear good things. Why don't you tell people about where the locations are?

So the donut shop. It started off in the Stockton Farmers Market four and a half years ago. That's in Stockton, New Jersey.

We then I think California people not Stockton, California.

Not in Cali know yet. So then we actually opened up inside the Whole Foods Market in springhouse, Pennsylvania. So that's our was our first shop or our second shop, I guess. And then we're in Whole Foods in Princeton, New Jersey, as well on Saturdays and Sundays.

I've never been been in Harris Nice.

prints. It's nice. And then you know who came visited me there was Nathan. Really Myhrvold. Yep. You popped in with the modernist pizza team. Oh, yeah. Crush is just crushing doughnuts, which was great to see. It

was awesome to go in the crew. They were they were they were taking but

but but but Johnny Johnny was there. And then we opened up a third shop in Tyson's Corner, Virginia. Where's that? Tyson's Corner Virginia is right outside DC. Okay.

And right across the river? Do you do a gluten free doughnut or? No?

We don't We at Stockton we did for a little while. But there's so much flour and other ability for cross contamination.

Oh, see, you're like like, it's like you can't control it enough to make yourself feel comfortable doing it? It's not that you can't make the doughnut you just don't feel comfortable in your controls.

Correct? Because like in gluten free flour power we got it. We have a great gluten free doughnut phenomenon. But in the space that we have it's not it's not you know? We can't we can't we can't do it. Well, alright,

give me a couple of seconds explain this because you know you guys are doing the you guys are doing the fancy doughnuts. My brother in law Wiley doing the fancy donut. There's what is with the donut explosion in the past eight years. What is what is it? Because like, you know, 15 1516 years ago you had a couple of kind of non non non commercial What do you like kind of craft donut wherever you want to call it? Shops? Right?

tapped on it? Yeah.

So like, you know you had in New York you know you had donut plant who used to be exclusively a yeast house. Now there are mixed cake and yeast house. And you know, a couple others. And then over the past eight years, it's like or five even really? Maybe even three? Right? It's been like, boom, what is it? Why?

Ah, I don't know. I I mean, I think I think a couple of things. One is I think as cooks right we we like slightly simpler things or the idea of simpler things and so there's been Estelle just side of it. And then as chefs we become we find a need to make things more complicated or really I find a way to make things more complicated. I mean, our our donut shop, we make 11 different styles of dough. Oh, yeah. So, so not just donuts, but DOS, we have 11 different styles of dough.

What is like one of them? Like do? Do you have a problem doing a high fat and rich yeast like a brioche style? Do they bleed out too much? Or do you like what they like

they don't I mean, so that's our original donut base is the vanilla yeasted that was it's modeled after the recipe from maximum flavor which was a no need double enriched butter brioche style donut

and it doesn't leak out too much it doesn't get all crazy on you

know but the process is insane. I mean it's it's a again we doubled the butter in the in the donut and we came across that idea that Cisco was was playing around with our No need brioche recipe from our first book and he doubled the butter in it and serve it to us at a an event and we're like this is insane. He's like yeah, it's called kings brioche double the butter. So we tried that and I modified a little bit more to turn it into a donut. Well, we put that in as I wonder

whether you could double the butter in the liege waffle recipe.

Sure. What's the one thing that I find most dos can take take way more fat than then that's actually in it. So like we we have the we have a chocolate chocolate yeast in vanilla yeast and we have our angel donut which is modeled after an angel biscuit, an angel biscuit leavened with baking powder, baking soda and yeast

what's an angel biscuit?

So it introduces a old school southern biscuit and they would live in it with with all three things it would be yeast leavened, and also have chemical leaveners in it and there's supposed to be a show so lighting up but you get you get the fermentation from the yeast and you get the extra lightning from the baking powder and baking soda

Hmm, whether using a soured milk though, did you need the soda just for pH correction?

Ah, I think it was just, they were just throwing everything in there. But I don't know the specific origin of all three because my

standard pancake batter is and even my chicken stuff is a soda is a soda powder mix, but the soda is there for some primary shabam. But also really just to shift the acid down, you know what I mean? Okay, otherwise it doesn't brown. If you're using people, if you use buttermilk, or any sort of acidic ingredient in your baked goods, and you don't adjust the pH somehow you're going to have sallow a sallow looking crust. Or it

could be the a genius, or you know, like lots of lovely white pancakes.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's not me. It's not me, but I understand what you're saying. Alright, let me get to this question. I have a question about making gluten free flour mix for bread. Now, here's the problem. This is here comes the problem. Ideally, we'd like to create a mix that worked well in holla. And sandwich bread. Although I like I like sandwich. I like California sandwich. I don't see why. You know, why wouldn't you call the

talking about I mean, they're slightly different, though. I mean, the hall is just a slightly richer sandwich is going to be a lighter guy.

Yeah. But I'm saying Why can't you use like, in other words, except for the shape of a traditional shape of a holla? That dough works. A Yes, it's richer, but it works fine as a sandwich bread. No, it's not your clay. It's not a Pullman. But whatever. Anyway, our cooking issue is that one of our children can't eat rice or oats. And those are very common ingredients in gluten free flour. Is there an ingredient? That would be the silly thing is there's this question I think you're gonna take issue with because there's never an ingredient with gluten free flours. There's always multiples. But is there an ingredient that would be a good sub for rice flour and most recipes? What structural features is rice flour contribute to a bread recipe?

Rice flour doesn't do anything. Rice flour is a filler.

Right. So what would you fill it with? It's new as neutral as rice.

I mean, anything works. I mean, why not use keen wildflower or

does not have a taste though? Kima flowers taste?

Yeah, I mean, they all have some sort of taste.

I mean, I guess rice neutral of them, right? I mean, that's the whole deal.

Right is a sort of a blank slate. Yeah. I mean, but but there's it's not out of structure. Very or not much.

Right. But what would you what, like what's the most like, if you if you could never use rice flour again, as the as the filler, right? What would you use? That is lowest in in flavor transfer. lewison weirdness, I don't want I don't want it to get beanie on me. I don't want it to get all you know. Like,

I mean, that's, that's why you're using all the different varieties, right? And you just you're gonna keep you're gonna keep adding a mixture that makes it a darn thing. So you have a little bit of this a little bit of that. I mean, let me go to my book, because we have three flower blends, which I don't have completely memorized anymore.

Well, you look at that sorghum, sorghum or work. Sorghum though, absorbs a lot of liquid. And it's dark in color. Do they make a lighter sorghum flour? Not that I know. Right? It's like, well, in other words, doesn't isn't it more moisture absorbing than rice or no? are about the same? I haven't seen I haven't seen it. But I mean, I've done sorghum pancakes, right? And I've subbed I've subbed up to half of the, of the flour base, right? I'm talking not gluten free, but half of the regular South flour base was sorghum. And then in that sorghum anyway, that I was using a had some residual sugar, which is I think, where the where the extra moisture holding crap probably comes from, I don't know, you know what I mean? And it was just kind of, it had a definite, like color cast. And then it was like, a little bit intensified and a little bit moist. You know, I'm saying,

Yeah, I mean, let's think about I mean, you got white rice, without corn flour. That is that illegal?

Now corn flour sounds like a good. That sounds like is there really any difference between corn starch and corn flowers are just milled differently?

Well, one is the whole the whole thing and the one is just a starch.

So corn flour is just a finely grilled finely milled corn meal. Yeah, yeah. All right. I like that. Everyone likes corn. Some people won't admit it. They'll say it's the devil but is anyone like I hate corn?

Yeah, I mean, you got us you're gonna have allergies there. But ya know, we used to use tapioca starch, sorghum, arrow root.

Era roots expensive but nice. Now, here's the thing. It's like, if they mentioned that they can't have rice or oats, I'm pretty sure they would have mentioned they can't have corn.

I would hope but I mean otherwise becomes a little bit You know, we can mill anything these days. I mean, you see coconut flour, but that's just a filler to.

Yeah, that's not bad stuff. Not bad though.

But it doesn't. But it doesn't absorb any liquid.

Almond flour is a good filler too.

But again, it absorbs no liquid.

Right? It's also expensive. Correct, anyway. Yeah, I mean, that's the problem, like our cookies and stuff. Almond works great, especially if you're going to use egg whites and whatnot. I mean, hell whole cookie recipes are basically sugar, almond flour and egg whites. You know what I mean? What but it's like, yeah, it's not going to help you much when you actually need structure in a bread, you know?

Yeah. I mean, that's, that's that's the issue. But again, you know, then you're then you're looking at you know, corn starch and tapioca starch to give you your, your, your elasticity and your gelling.

All right. Well, thank you so much for talking doughnuts and flour with us. Alex, come on. Come to New York some time to see us bring some doughnuts. We'll talk.

Absolutely you should make a field trip when you go see the old Amazon there near Tyson's Corner, my friends.

Now we're going to Amazon in Seattle. Oh, geez. Big Amazon

like, you're going to you're going to go into the Mecca.

Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Do Starbucks Amazon and Microsoft. And just you know

it well. Yeah. The thing and Amazon I'm hoping that I don't know, because I've never been but I'm hoping that that that the front door is shaped like a giant mouth. And that they make you leave through a door on the other side that shaped like a butt. So it's like Amazon just chews you up and poops you out? You know what I mean? Better yet, they turn you into a liquid and then and then like shoot you through a small pipe. You know what I mean? Like that's what I'm hoping happens when I go there. But you know, you think you leave?

You leave in a box. It's they ship you home

with a little smile thing and the tape over the top? Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's what's gonna happen. I hope I get the new drone delivery at least that way. I'll be in an unpressurized Arena in a you know, in a space with enough oxygen. Anyway. All right. Talk to you soon, brother.

We'll talk to you soon. Have a great day. I do.

Sergio writes in regarding Manet's hello David, Anastasia, Sarah, Sarah, Sarah J search search from Melbourne, Australia. Anastasia, you should give Australia ago. We have fun people great food and produce and mostly good weather but not in Melbourne. I don't like your accents. So. No, okay. All right. Okay, so I'm surrounded by Australia haters here like I was gonna not mention. Well, because you already got you already are already persona non grata in Australia. Yeah,

but those guys are just apparently not aware. So can we not talk about that stairs

did not mention the excellent quality of kangaroo hide for whips world's best. Anyway. My question is regarding the man a series steak seared steak technique that keeps coming up in my conversations with a friend was wondering if there's an actual benefit in it. And what is it that makes it better? What's the science behind it? All? My friends swears that side by side the mayo steaks cook faster. I don't know if it's faster. Anyway. I don't believe it. Any idea what's going on? Yeah, so look at this. First of all, what do you what is mayo? Mayo is he's a little bit acid, but it's oil, water and an emulsion. Right. Then there's egg yolk, which is like proteins and phospholipids and other stuff. And the phosphor lipids are emulsifiers I'm gonna get back to this in a second. And some sugar typically in mayonnaise, right. So are sugars, but typically, they also just add some sugar to it. Alright, so first of all, it mayonnaise is thicker than oil. So when you're wiping mayonnaise on to your steak, you are giving a better kind of a more a gel like heat transfer mechanism between your pan and the steak. So right there, you're winning over just brushing it with oil, right? Secondly, the phosphor lipids first of all the water is going to conduct heat much faster. So the oil is going to get up to I mean, that stuff has to boil off obviously for you to get up to the high you know, searing temperatures, but it's going to accelerate getting in there because it's going to transfer the heat faster like going through That's it right the also the egg yolk is going to cause the oil the phospholipid in the egg yolk is going to cause the oil to adhere better because it's got its you know, got its amphiphilic as they say it here better to the steak and you're gonna get a better heat transfer there as well because you're not just going to have an oil water interface, you're going to have a you know, one with a has some sort of a, you know, surface active properties, which is why used oil in general is better than brand new oil, right? Because it's it's not just pure oil. It's got some fatty acids in it. So this is phospholipid. So that's when also the sugar is going to combine with the proteins and create its own sort of my yard stuff and going across stuff on the outside of the steak. So I'm saying all three of those things are going to be a win right now. Carry it with you get to Karen in a second Christian wrote in regarding gin soda. I currently live on a dry college campus and I'm also still only 20 years old, so I cannot buy some of the ingredients I would like to make mocktails or cocktails. If you're only 20 You can buy any ingredient you want. Don't use the word mocktail. By the way, Christian, just call them non alcoholic. Don't mock people. Just drink anyway. I don't like the word mocktail. Anyway, I'm not gonna get into it's gonna take too long. 20 years also, I cannot buy some of the ingredients I would like, I just heard something about a gin simple syrup made by infusing gin botanicals. And I was wondering if you had heard of this, and would know how to make it and use something like this, I'd be curious to hear how you might make a usable replacement for gin. Thanks, Christian. So I wouldn't make a syrup. I mean, you could make a syrup. But the way we used to do it is we made a tea. And the reason is, is then you can sweeten it separately depending on what you're going to use it for. So you make a rather concentrated tea. And then you can add water and or sugar to and or acids to your taste. So we used to do, we used to make a lemon syrup. So we did basically quinine to make it like a gin and tonic you don't you can ignore the quinine, but we made a quinine solution at zero point. Well, I hesitate to give the actual things that we did a juniper tincture was just juniper berries, salt, or as root tincture. lemon peel. I think we did orange peel a little bit of fennel Greek, right. And then we made teas out of them, and then combine them together. And then we added clarify, we added like clarified either lemon depending or lime to it like cordial to sweeten it. And then that becomes kind of like like a gin and tonic. But you know, we didn't use a million of the different botanicals, we basically just did. Juniper, we did quite a bit for bitterness, Oris and then citrus peels, you could go kind of more in depth, but just make solutions, like for instance, you could do anyway, I could try to post the recipe later because this is in I forgot that I left it in kind of our workplace numbers, which don't make sense. But that's that's the basis of it. Okay, see, I did the gluten free. I see. Zack C wrote in about plums and pasta. For the past few years, I've been doing a very, I've been doing a yearly plum harvest with some friends. We ferment it into wine and then distill it into brandy. I know that stone fruit tend to contain stone fruit, you know, fermented stone fruit, I think you mean contains more methanol than other fruits. But I don't really know how much do you know of any labs where I can get this accurately tested? Well, I put a call into erielle Johnson our science. She's not just good eats science person. She's also our kind of go to science person. And I asked her what she thought because I called there's an interesting thing, by the way for any of you food people interested. Cornell has something called the Cornell food venture center. And they'll do lab analysis of pH, water activity, bricks, process nutritional analysis and stuff for very reasonable fees. I called them this morning, but they don't do. They don't do. What's the word they don't do alcohol stuff. So I asked Ariel, who she thought we should use and she said, at UC Davis, we'd sometimes use ETS, and that's ETS labs.com for routine things we weren't set up for so give ETS labs a call. And they could probably test your decision. This live for methanol. Now, there's an old tried and true test for methanol versus ethanol. And that is you light it on fire. Now it's got to be like, for instance, if it burns, yellow, it's got methanol in it, right? Be methanol burns, yellow, and ethanol burns blue clear. Now, this doesn't work on things with sugar because sugar doesn't burn blue. So this is only in NS sugared spirits, you can run this test. But if it burns, yellow, there's clearly enough methanol for it to be dangerous. If it burns blue, you have a better shot. But as Ariel said, when I asked her about the efficacy of this test, yellow burning will definitely tell you that it's unsafe. This is her speaking, but I'm not sure what the lower limit is like there could be amount of methanol where the flame test is ambiguous, but the methanol is still harmful. So take that for whatever it is. Then you asked me You said a second question. I've got the what are those called those those those Begley makers that torch the torch? You know I mean those rotary pasta makers, the presses the pasta press, like a Toshi. It says here, Toshio, but isn't it like torsina or something like that? Anyway, the rotary pasta thing, the way that you press it looks like a big screw press. It's like it's like a like a King Kong, kind of a cookie press. You know what I'm saying? With a screw in it with a die on the end. Anyway, I've always wanted one but I'm never bought one thank God because if I have a second I'll talk about the thing that I did buy Oh my god. Yes you have two minutes hand crank manual brass extruder it's very cool looking but it's a pain in the behind to use for any real quantity. I really want an article an Arca Molina who doesn't a x five home mixer you know, you know Alex Talbot has one the one who just spoke to on the phone. But $1,900 is a lot of money. I recently saw a $200 Philips pasta extruder is is that is that cheap thing? complete garbage? Yes. That's it. Yeah, great movie. So they don't work, they don't work. And go get like use Johnny hunters technique and see if you can like repurpose a small bit heavy duty meat grinder. There are meat grinders and Johnny Hunter you know, you can text him on on the on the Twitter he will respond or on the What's it called? Instagram. And he can tell you what dyes fit what meat grinders and those things apparently do a bang up job because that's what he used. Devin the dude I think said something similar that there's modern groups on this is from the chat room. He but also asked it was unclear from a couple of weeks ago was my robot vacuum a total loss? No, I was able to resurrect the robot vacuum from the depths of the dog poop.

David writes in I've recently started going through etc etc wrote of app seem to be very delicate pieces of machinery and often made from glass always made from glass is our facility does not allow glass to be in the kitchen. Are there any other pieces of equipment that can be modified or have a similar effect. One of the ideas I had to use was to use a vacuum tumbler and somehow put some sort of collecting device between the tumble chamber and the vacuum pump. This would allow us to do a large amount at a time. Fortunately, I've never worked with a rotor that before some hope you could tell me if there's anything I'd be missing in this contraption. We have completely replaced the is David Spotify playlist. So thanks for the content. So me yes and no, the very first road of app I ever had was a vacuum tumbler that I modified. It's fairly easy to buy a rotary vacuum fitting off McMaster car that will allow you to take and you know, basically have a drum on a rotating thing with a vacuum coming out of it and then branch off of it. And I'm sure your vacuum tumbler the one I had didn't have a takeoff on it, you just sucked a vacuum and then spun it, it didn't have a continuous vacuum. But if that one does, that's that's good. But I highly highly, it never worked great. And I really, really recommend that you find someone with a road map or somehow get a road map and get experience on a regular road of that first, so that you kind of get a feel for how the process works. And then try to build something out of a vacuum tumbler but yes, it is possible. The issue is you need to get good heat transfer into the vacuum tumbler, right. And you also need to get a good Shilling and eat a relatively large pipe for the vapors to go through. But assuming you can do all that. Yes should work.