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,

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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.

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Hello and welcome to cooking issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of cookies just coming to you live. Every Tuesday from roughly 12 to roughly 1245 or 1251 o'clock. Roberta's pizzeria in Bushwick Brooklyn. Happy New Year first show the new year not because the Stasi and I the our spirit was willing the heritage food. flesh was weak. Right, Anastasia? Yeah, they're back. How was your long hiatus there? Dave?

Not long enough. Oh.

saying

No, it's true. Because I went on vacation and got sick. So yeah, what

kind of sick did you get?

It's like a chest cold. And then, you know, going overboard at the mucin X every day.

So are you you got a cold? You know, it's been a it's been an interesting flu year because a lot of people have been getting the flu even if they got the flu shot

because it's only what like 30% effective this year

at something crazy like that. I haven't gotten the flu yet. Is there still time for me to get messed up? Anastasia got all messed up. I got the pee poo in the vomiting people. I love people who is a great is that like a we use here at Booker and DAX and cooking issues? The program? By the way, just so you know, cooking issues. The program is Mr. Garcia and Dave cooking issues the Instagram and what's the other thing? Twitter thing that's basically just me. So if you need to pester Anastasia, you want to pester at hammer PDX right. Yeah. And what's your Instagram? You already want to put your Instagram on blast? Yeah, it's just my name. And Stasio Lopez. So if it's if it's like spring, like rainbow death out of the eyes, then that's that's how you can tell it. So anyways. So we have two basic things we like to either we like to say that you got to pee poo. Or we like to say that, you know, we set your button spray. Those are the two just the you know, those are the two official book or index terms for it. So well. Welcome back to us. Can you give me your 23andme story? Wait for it. Oh, so first of all, I want you guys to call in your cooking related questions to 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128 What which float survey that they made you take? Oh, yeah, so my mom got us all 23 and me, you know, like spit swabs, right? So like, kids, you did it as well. Right? A long time ago. Yeah. So that I can find out what oh, I am as white as I look like, what's the what are the genetics gonna tell me? Oh, there's a smattering of some other northern European country in your blood that you didn't know that I'm gonna get the most boring results back. I think that it's kind of humanly possible. Like, if they're, you know, I mean, like, I can't imagine kind of anything of interest except for figuring out exactly what percentage Irish versus Scottish versus German if you don't, I mean, anyway, did you get good results when you did it? What do you what do you what do you what do you got? No, I don't remember. I have to look back. You don't remember what you are? No, a freaking lunatic. Alright, I can look at it right now. days. Have you done this thing? No, yeah, no. Give the story. So anyways, so because like, you know, I go through my life kind of hoping someone will steal my identity, so I don't have to use it anymore. Like I gave them all of my information filled out all the surveys and participating in everything you know, that they have. And so they're asking me series after series of random questions like, you know, how many times a week do you snore answer? I don't know. I'm asleep, you idiot. And then no question. No, it really is. I guess what they mean is, I mean, I know I snore because my wife wakes me up to tell me to shut up. But like, I can't tell that I'm snoring whatever. Anyway, that's not the point. The point is at one point, they there must be some sort of algorithm. Because they said maybe they just got it from my profession, because they said, Does this sound of people chewing throw you into a rage? A rage? And I said, yeah, yeah, the sound of chewing throws me into a rage, particularly the sound of snack food crunching when you're doing when you're cooking dinner. And the Stasi is the same way. But how did they know that about me? No. But then they said how often are you angry? And you were like, the minute I put in my Yeah, I mean, it's no it's no secret psychological profile. They were fueled on anger here. But like, you know, a good healthy I think, you know, a good you know, a good healthy anger. They like when the fire dies. So do so do you. You know what I mean? It's like the anger is what can you know? We're not you know, we're not really kind of, you know, not Namaste. Oh, my mouth noises. Was that real? Or did you find that on the internet? It was really bad mouth noises. Everyone's favorite punching bag. Peter. Yeah, the point isn't? Oh

I gotta people gotta listen over here, Dave. So the point is, it's more like, it's not that the crunching bothers me at the table. Because you know, I have two kids. And it's my job to stop them from eating with their mouth open because I have to send them out into the world. And then I will be judged based on their mouth noises. But that's only one thing. The thing is, is that when you're actively cooking dinner and someone goes into the pantry next to where you're cooking and trying to get everything, eating your knees, that's eating your knees. Oh my god, eating the meat, like just walking up to somebody's knees on plus and starting to crunch on it. You know what I mean? It's like, What the hell are you doing? What the hell are you doing? You know what I mean? And, and but like also just sitting there behind you eating like tortilla chips while you're trying to get dinner. And you know that every tortilla chip that they eat is one less bite of the food that you're trying to prepare now that they're going to eat at the meal, because I'm not that hungry anymore. Yeah, plus, you're not eating, you're cooking. You know what I mean? And like, like, they're, it's like, it just kills me just makes me It sends me into kind of an irrational rage. And I'm surprised that the 23andme people were like, you know, I bet you this is the kind of guy that you know, goes into an irrational rage when he hears people crunching on things, you know, but you're the same way. It's not just me, they didn't have that back then when I took it. They didn't have that survey, they must have gotten your genetic data. They're like,

whoa, we've never seen this profile

profile where they're like, You know what, when I sent mine in there, like there's one lady comparable kind of answers so far. So, you know, maybe, maybe that's the thing. So I want to give a quick shout out I went to so the whole break right just to go shows how like, you know, not often I get to go out I think I got to go to like two or three restaurants, including the fact that I flew to San Antonio is in San Antonio last week. But first, right before you go any good restaurants or anything over the break there. And you Dave

Yeah, I was in London this past week and had some amazing Indian food before you were sick.

Yeah, nice. So would you anything of note,

just like everything you'd expect it was a vegetarian place. Just just all the standard fare. The doll was amazing. Now The curry yeah it's really really good

show in what way better than what you get over here because because you were over there and having fun and when you're here you're depressed and you have to come back and talk to us.

I mean the yeah the travel may have had something to do with it just the excitement of being somewhere new but but it was it was definitely top quality. I mean, as good as anything I've heard anywhere.

Yeah, well, it's a definite feeling of mine that food tastes better when you're with people you like first food tastes much worse when you're with people you hate. Right? Don't you think so? Anastasia? It's very hard to judge food when you're eating with someone you hate like that time we went to California Oh my God am I ever gonna hear the frickin end of this anyway but the end then? Also like if you're having a good time food obviously tastes better That's why That's why I asked if so I went to a longtime friend of the show Joel Gargano has oh nice yeah, I went relatively new restaurant granola or so up in Chester Connecticut home of a formerly home he's dead now the sculptor artists I should say saw the wick you know and I go up there quite often it was really good. Had a really good place you guys should all go so he's you know doing the he gets his wheat from you know the you know that area and then he grinds it makes his own past I think he I think yeah, he I think he uses the article laying on the same kind of one that that the ideas and food guys have like Alex Mackay had and I thought it was really good. I thought he did a really good job and he who's he took so this restaurant right in in Chestertown. And Chester town is one of these kind of like, you know, cute. It's cute towns. It's like, that's not my thing. A cute town. Like I could care less about a cute town. Do you like a cute town and stuff? You love a cute town? Right? I'm in a cute town and I'm like, why am I here? You know what I mean? Like if I'm gonna cute as your what is your ideal town? look like? I don't really care. That's the thing. Like I like I like being like industrial like rundown industrial. Oh, I hate that. I like I like, What do I like? I like being like, in a forest. I like being like, like, you know, in a mountain. Like in the shade. Having a glass of wine. Like that's what I like. Like being in a town. I like a town for like a little while, like a new town that you throw me in some sort of town that I don't understand. It's new to me. Like some sort of new thrashing on the roof perhaps and I'm like, I like that roof. I'm grooving on it. I like it. You want to meet or like I'm in a new kind of building that I've never been in before. I'm like, You know what? I liked the way this feels that fireplace. Nice. I grew up on it. And then you know, but like, cute, cute New England town. I mean, how many times have you done that before in your life? Cute New England town. If you never went to another cute New England town would you be okay? No, really? Yeah. I like them. I like them. But I mean, that was like, you know, I'm just wherever I am. That's where I am. What about you Dave?

I guess I don't know. That kind of freaks me out sometimes being out in like, the middle of pastoral, New England or anywhere else like that. I wouldn't call it pastoral. It's a freakin town. Yeah, but you know what I'm talking about, like compared to living here in the city. It's just like it's too quiet. It's too dark.

Too dark. What do you grimace fairy tale?

I guess I'm thinking about it night where it's like to quiet. The lampposts

and I really warm. What, I don't know what you kind of tell you. Anyway, I liked Chester post. I like Chester. I love Chester. Essex is a nice town. Although, you know, all of these towns were built up. They had like a lot of streams. And so there's a lot of early millwork in these areas, because they had a lot of early industrialization. So Connecticut and all of kind of New England when you know America was was building up agriculturally, they'd already been somewhat spent, right, the land there had already been somewhat played out. So it wasn't so good. At that point. You know, there was still agriculture. Already a lot of the agriculture was moving out of that area. And it got built up as industrial and a lot of like the, you know, the local streams and whatnot that we have a lot of up there were converted to provide power for early industrial mills. And so every area had its own thing so like Connecticut and Massachusetts and whatnot, we built a lot of guns, right guns was a big business. We made a lot of tools right? You know, including like famous famous towns like Bridgeport was like the machining capital anyway. So and you know, a lot of this started pre electricity and so they needed power from things like water so do you know what kind of Chester that whole area Chester Essex Chester, not so much but Essex and deep river, I returned, you know what? They were known for? necessery. Yeah, and piano keys, so they made like the majority of the ivory piano keys and piano actions and so there's things like piano keyboard so like, it's strange connection. And every story is incredibly horrific, like horrible, like, really bad, like such like animal exploitation, human exploitation. So you have this cute little New England towns that are literally founded on misery like found like specifically founded on on misery, you know what I mean, human and animal misery and, and in fact, like, the ivory was still being handled by slaves in you know, off of the The east coast of Africa being shipped out of like places like Zanzibar and up way past you know what we would normally think of as being the slavery so slavery so continued that human misery and animal misery long past what you would think is reasonable. Yeah. Anyway, so cute New England town. That's what's underneath your cute New England town. But I do like it there anyway, Joe's restaurant in Trento, arceau is a great restaurant. So there was a vegan restaurant, it was an all vegan restaurant. And the chef who was there, they spent like a zillion dollars on the build out of this place. Right? This is still the same, same place. So they a couple years ago, it got built out as a vegan restaurant. And it was kind of the only vegan restaurant in the whole area. But they spent like a boat ton on the on the buildout. And so the chef who was there, she's like, You know what, I don't really want to live here, I want to go back to California where I can get all the vegetables I want all the time. So she left and they're left with this huge build out. And you know, they couldn't find an equivalent quality of chef to come in and keep running it into the place shut down. So Joel got to go in and get this place. Man. I didn't ask him how much he paid, because that's rude. But, you know, so he got this. I think he didn't have to do as much as you would normally have to do maybe. I mean, I'm sure he did a crap ton of work to open it up. But I'm saying he took over that space. And so I'm glad to see that space is going and going well. I had a had a great meal should go. I went there without the kids, which is nice. Yeah, anyway. And the second place I got to go to was interesting. I was in San Antonio a couple of days ago at the San Antonio cocktail conference. you've ever been to San Antonio Anastasio. So I went to the went to the Alamo. And everyone says the Alamo is not as big as I thought, but they're just being jerks. Because the Alamo is gone. It's just the churches left. So the picture that everyone takes in front of the Alamo is just like a little chapel the rest of the Alamo has been kind of is is wiped out is all of the people who were there you know, as as you know, Crockett and Bowie were, you know, Travis and all those guys. So anyways, so I went to the Alamo, which I guess you have to kind of do but I went to this restaurant called a restaurant, Gwendolyn and the chef there, Michael, I'm going to butcher his last name. So hockey, right. And so this guy has his restaurant, right. And I had a good I was there for lunch, I'd like to go back for dinner some time. But he's, he has an actual manifesto. He owns a ramen restaurant that just like pumps humans in and out. Like, it's got like, you know, whatever. It's called people out the door. But he's got this manifesto, which he gave me a printed copy of. He also does things that like I don't want, you know, hitch hitch stick, right is no ingredients that were available. Or no agreements that weren't available in San Antonio, prior to when Texas became a state. So I 18 like 46, or whatever. So like that, like any ingredients that you'd have to use has to be available within that San Antonio area era prior to 18 like 48 theme, and anybody wants it like almost anything and no electrical tools used in preparation at all. Everything has to be cut by hand where he uses gas because you have to when he has refrigerators, because you have to stop me out. I need it. So I love you. Anyway, so the point is like he has like all of these things. But the interesting thing and he has this like crazy manifesto, I think more chefs need to have crazy manifestos, like some like kind of thing to work in. But then what's interesting is, is that he's not trying to run it. What you'd think he would do then is he's like, Okay, well, I'm only doing recipes that would be, you know, work at that time and saying, No, you have to choose something that has an historical, historic, or cultural or seasonal basis. But it can be any, any culture any season. And not anything, it has to be currencies in any culture, any basis. Any era, as long as you can make it with the ingredients that were available in San Antonio prior to 18 Whatever. And assuming you can do it without you know, electrified kitchen equipment and that is not an interesting like, choosing what the constraints are. Then he's like he's also like, also, I don't tell why cooks what to make, they have to come up with the dish, but then I just come and if it doesn't meet my standards, it gets it gets nuked. So he's got this cool, kind of like, interesting idea. Anyway, so you know, a shout out. Shout out to a restaurant Gwendolyn and a shout out to manifestos What do you think about manifestos? I don't know. Like, why not have a manifesto? Yeah. I mean, I don't know that I couldn't function under someone's manifesto. No, I would function for the manifesto for your index. I mean, for your newborn. Yeah. Oh, yeah, definitely certain I mean, they gotta they gotta first of all, they gotta read liquid intelligence. And I think Don and I are going to write you know, certain kinds of things like we like the well known certain people's you know, quote unquote, manifestos or documents have become legendary in the service industry. Right. So Sasha is milk and honey bar manual was widely kind of circulated and you know, thing. So yeah, I'm sure we'll come up with some stuff. I'm interested In trying to get people to choose music properly, that's hard. Super hard. I think I really am very, very anti. You know, automatic. First of all the worst is shuffle. The worst is shuffle. The worst thing you can do on Earth is just hit shuffle on on your phone. Like it's just a That's a joke. What do you think Dave? Yes, shoving shuffle.

I mean, sometimes the shuffle can be better than the human controlling it, though.

Yeah, but in other words, like assuming, like even also, Dave, that you're a professional at this kind of stuff. I think that choosing music, you look, people are going to be more or less talented, right? But you can also train somewhat people to be able to do it better than they do it now. Yeah, sure.

You know what I mean, you have to fit the vibe of the players

fit the vibe of the place. volumes, but that's a big one. But I think the vibe also to, like, people always choose the music they want to listen to, rather than the music that's going to get people to buy the most drink. Right? That's a bad DJ, though. Right? That's what I'm saying. But I think that can be taught like, in other words, like, I like to listen to death metal, well, guess what people don't like to sit and have a cocktail or pizza. Listening to death metal, you know what I mean? Like, it's a good, it's a good thing to do. If you're trying to get people to leave, if you want them to order the food and get the f out. You know what I mean? Then, by all means, like, you know, crank, whatever, skinny puppy voivod you know, choose whatever, you know, whatever you want. Get them out, you know, some sort of like finish or Norwegian craziness. Sure. But like people also people don't understand, like, shuffle doesn't understand that, oh, it's late night. Don't play that like, you know, slow, sappy crap now, because people are going to fall asleep. You need them to, you know, you need some need to keep them up. You know what I mean? So anyway, so there's stuff like that, I think we'll write a little, you know, probably write a little manifesto on how to choose music. Yeah.

And it would help if more people like you, please value on this. Because as it stands, you know, a restaurant owner or bar owner might be happy to just throw on the Spotify shuffle, because, hey, that's free. You know, I don't have to pay anybody. Yeah,

yeah, that's true. But you know, here's my feeling on that, right. I think like, on the Spotify stuff, you know, what I think that's for maybe see whether you agree as a person and you know, more in that field than I am. I think those kind of services where you choose a channel are like, if you're by yourself, or you're in a small group, I think they're fantastic to learn new songs, you don't otherwise discovery, discovery, fantastic discovery tool. Terrible, like terrible for a bar, I think you want. If you can't come up with like a roster, a personal roster of let's say, 1000 songs, right? From which you can call decent lists over the course of like, maybe two or 3000 songs, you can call a decent list over the course of let's say, you know, a week, then what the hell, you know what I mean? Like, you don't need all of songs everywhere to make a list that's interesting to your to your customers, right? You might not be interested, because maybe you've heard these songs a lot. But you know, they're coming to your place for the first time, maybe your second time, or whatever, you see what I'm saying? Do you see where I'm going with this? Yeah. And so I think it's a mistake to put into your playlist, a song you don't know, right? You know, I think it's also a mistake to put in songs that you that you hate, because if you put in a song, if your staff is not happy with the music that's playing, they don't seem as happy. And if they don't seem as happy, it rubs a bad vibe off on your customers. But at the same time, you have to also play stuff that's, you know, comfortable for your customers, there's a there's a maximum anger level in the music that I think is allowable. And it it's very context dependent. So you know, at you don't you don't at 8pm, right at 8pm, when people are still about to go out to dinner, you don't play sound to the police. Right? Right. You just don't do it, right. But at like, you know, midnight, if you've just gone through, you know, a bunch of hip hop, and you decide that it's time to jump into some like, you know, old school, East Coast stuff, sound of the police can keep the room bumping, and it's not too angry at that time, if you've kind of built up to it with a bunch of other songs, get my drift day. And so I think people people need to start to think about this. You know, the real sad thing is, is that it's the, by far the best way to do music is to have someone live picking music based on what's going on in the room at that time. But it's just not feasible. It really is not feasible in a regular bar. So you have to you know, you have to think about arcs. But you know, maybe there's some way David we could talk about at some point of figuring out ways to gently shift playlists in certain directions without having to sit there and queue up each song based on what the room is doing. You know what I mean?

You know, there must be some kind of like intelligent music service that does something similar if

you want to service I want you to I want like, I think the house should have certain things like so for instance, like, also like everything depends on the size place you have. So a lot of the energy of a bar comes from the bartenders and the customers that are at the bar and radiate out to the tables, right? So let's say you like someone comes in and you get a group of people that are from a particular area, right? Like someone comes in from a why No, no, they come in from from Jersey Well, I mean look like it depends on what time of day it is whether I'm going to go you know, I mean, Jersey songs are easy, right? Just the jersey people are easy to please just throw on the Bon Jovi or you throw on freakin Springsteen or on the wedding playlist. Yeah, you know what I mean? And like, you know, you throw on one song and they're happy but you know, for God's sakes, don't put on highway patrolman, or everyone's going to be weeping into their into their beers and leave your leave your place depressed but like, you know, but I'm saying choose a couple songs. I mean, I think when you're gonna go something like Bon Jovi or Springsteen, I think that the trick there is to pick a song that bumps hard enough to keep the place going, but isn't the same one that everyone's heard all the time. That's the challenge with that, but like, you know, you should you should store like a song from every area so that someone if someone comes up, you can get them something, you know what I mean? You know, I'm saying, like, you don't you don't believe in that. I think people really like it. Like when you when someone from San Francisco comes, and you play and you know, I got five on it comes on, right? People are like, oh, yeah, you don't I mean, and then like they feel a little more comfortable that someone played something for them are, you know what I mean? You know, believing that Dave?

No, here you're saying,

anyways, whatever. How do we tell him to get on this? And how do we get on this? And you asked me about manifestos. That's all I said, is you're gonna have one. Yeah, we're gonna have like a music manifesto. No, we're gonna think we're gonna use it TVs all. First of all, there may or may not be TVs in the bar that may or may not exist that we have not announced yet. But they're not going to be any TVs. There's not going to be any TV signals. I will not have a bar with TV signals in it. There will not like you will not be able to come watch the game at the bar. But that's not going to happen. So Natasha will never come to the bar because she she's only two things associate three things just as he likes to do drink sparkling. Rose a wine, preferably champagne, but any sparkling rose a will do in large glasses. In copious amounts. So one thing Yeah, that's that's still one that's that's one that's a unitary, that's a multifaceted unitary thing that she likes to do. Bananagrams Yeah, banana gram number two, and then, like watching some kind of crappy sports thing on the television, ball football. Yeah, that's what she likes to do at a bar. I only like to play Bananagrams with real players like you. It'd be people who have some integrity. Yeah.

And let's take a quick break. We have not

answered a question. Okay, we'll come back. We'll go through some serious question answering on cooking issues.

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Did you get someone who actually speaks that way? Or did you imitate somebody else's accent

that is a former Heritage Foods employee who is from the south but that's not really his natural way of speaking.

He's a good way of saying porkchop to free pork pork chop pork chop, love to free pork chops, brother, although I hope that you know, gotta dejenne gotta de gender that Dave. Anyway, we have a caller caller you're on the air.

Hey, Dave, this ad from Virginia first time caller longtime listener I got a quick question about a chocolate film.

Okay, we're in Virginia.

Shenandoah Valley.

Oh, beautiful over there, huh?

Yeah, well cold right now. So it's for ice cream plates. I'm trying to stay away from the dairy. So I'm just doing a one to one simple syrup with some Fresno chili and coriander than hitting it with So cocoa powder for the chocolate. And I hit it with some bursts of whip. And it didn't, it didn't fluff up. Now I also use Metacell it also didn't fluff up. I was wondering, give me some pointers,

what's the final texture you want?

I'm just like, you know, something light and light and airy.

Right? So, like the forget, I'm gonna forget who did this first. But you know, there was a time and see whether this is kind of what you're thinking about. Like there was a time. Oh, five, six years ago, when everyone was doing not everyone. Like, it was a thing. aerated chocolate was a thing. So it was, I think, you know, people had looked at the arrow bar ever eaten an arrow bar, the arrow bar. It's interesting, like I'm more of a crunch guy. So it's not my normal kind of thing. But I had one the other day and actually enjoyable, enjoyable, but not normal anyways. So aerated chocolate was the thing and literally what they would do is just melt their mixture out and put it into a vacuum pan like a FoodSaver Vacuum pan and suck a vacuum on it and then throw it in the fridge to set it real real quick with a vacuum still on it. And people are getting these amazingly tall aerated chocolates. I think Heston Blumenthal did some work with that I think Johnny has he needed some work with that while they do free and I think did some work with that. But you know, that's that's one technique. A really interesting technique similar to that is Alex Tupac did the same thing with ice cream bass. And those ice cream bass is when they're puffed up almost tasted like ain't like texture like Angel Food Cake It was like Do you ever have that stuff? It's pretty it's pretty I thought was pretty interesting and then Wiley of course also did aerated flaws that way like flaws flog raw, you know, preparations I forget what hydrocolloid he used for it but that had that kind of like cakey kind of texture. So I don't know is it like was that the kind of thing you were looking for a more like a standard most

of a sudden something that I can pipe onto the plate that um give me a little height also

but you want to do non dairy right you said Yeah, I mean I would just I would just do like a normal been non dairy no no egg either. I would just try to do you know, like I haven't looked at it a long time but like you know the the texture of the egg. I would just work from cream Yeah, I would just do a standard I would just do a standard then. Like chocolate mousse bass and swap out coconut for the dairy or or almond for the dairy but like I happen to think coconut and chocolate go really really well together. And I say as I've said before in the air because my mind really got blown by a a coconut based chocolate sorbet. Back in the in the day they said it's like Sharon sorbet years and years ago, I was doing a lot of like chocolate sorbet that I thought was like very, I thought at the time, I think the recipe is changed by the time I thought very very well done. And I'm pretty sure that they used coconut so whenever I am doing non dairy things that would otherwise be dairy my go to isn't isn't maybe it shouldn't be I just haven't done the experimentation, almond or anything like that. It's coconut 100% of the time. And I'm I've always been real happy with the combination of coconut milk and or cream. With with chocolate.

All right, I'll mess around with it. All right.

Let me know how it works and hope it warms up for you down there. I know I haven't been in the Shenandoah Valley since I was a kid. Isn't that where your gristmills I don't know where that was Herndon, I don't know where Herndon is. That's where, you know, we that grist mill that was for sale. And we kept on looking at it. And finally someone sold it. I was like, I'm gonna get rid of onions gonna get rid of everything in my leg. So for my kids, and my wife would not have gone with me and then my life would have been over. But like we remember every couple of days, I would go on that website and look at that grist mill like working grist mill and had rights to the stream so that you they couldn't stop you from using the water it had some sort of crazy deeded rights to the water use based on like the early 1800s when it when it was built. And I was like, I want it I want that for Israel. I want that super cheap is so cheap, so much less so much grist mill, and like so what so it was about the slide off of its foundations into the water. I could fix that. Like, like, you know, if you have nothing else to do like fixed foundations mean you know, you know, whatever. Anyway, that was, oh, dreams. You wanna take another call? Yeah, sure. Caller you're on the air.

Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my call. My name is Mike. I'm in Philadelphia. I have a question regarding Moscow Mule keg. I've been doing a candidate ginger to be appropriately clear and still be boldly ginger flavored and wondered if you had any suggestions.

Sure. What are you doing right now? Well, first of all, I'll say I say this if you're going to carbonate, right. Typically what i do is i i You know, peel the ginger. I slice it a paper thin and then I I just make a standard syrup that way because I actually like the flavor of kind of cooked ginger. If you don't like it cooked you can vac and fuse a bunch of times or pressure and fuse. But if you pressure and fuse or vac and fuse, you'll tend to throw off more starch and that makes the carbonation a lot more difficult when you start throwing off cloudy stuff. If you just do like a light hot, steep with very finely sliced ginger, you can get a very strong ginger profile and keep it very clear. But so what are you doing right now?

So I started doing a really strong ginger tea and felt like it wasn't quite spicy enough. So then I was trying to clarify a ginger juice in a centrifuge and hit that with syrup after the fact. And by the time that was clear, it had lost so much flavor that it was not worth doing all that effort.

I agree. And it's hard to clarify ginger. It's hard to clarify. I would. I would say first of all, like little secret on on ginger like whenever I do ginger, I always add chili to it. Oh wait,

we're doing jalapeno in the drink recipe to kind of bump up the ginger already.

Right? So like to be different. So, so yeah, so like you could try to combine them as if you're gonna have jalapenos separately. You don't need to add I guess to the ginger itself, but like I always use I use a red. I always hit it with a red heat. Right. So like something like just something that's red because I think the fruitiness of the red capsicums I think helps balance ginger out really, really well. And it was integrates better like greens, spicy things like I love red jalapenos, but most people don't don't get them but I love red jalapenos like I eat jar after jar. There's little cans have the red jalapenos in tomato sauce. They just eat the hell out of those. But the green ones well, I love the flavor of green ones as well. Like I think green won't won't marry as it what not that not that won't taste as good. But it won't seem as integral to the ginger. Like if you want yeah,

I get what you're saying. Makes sense. We're just trying to do something slightly different to make it our sort of house mule and have it not be just a straight up mule. So to do jalapeno,

yeah, have you tried just a little more vegetable Have you tried super old school just like really slicing it thin and doing the boil up with the sugar in the syrup and then straining it out.

I had been cooking down ginger for a while making a really strong tea covered and letting it steep for a while and then straining all of that on to sugar and getting into a syrup.

I would try it with the sugar from the get go. And I don't know whether the key is going like as long as just like slicing it really thin and actually not having not having it break down. Right. So like the more you cook ginger, the more the flavor is going to change. Right. So like you know, the way you know the way I always do it as I bring it up and then I you know, basically bring it up to heat and then turn it off. And then just keep I just keep a finger tasting it. You know what it's like, is it there? Is it there. And I've done that with both with the sugar in the ginger and without. So when I'm making sodas, and I'm using ginger, I usually do ginger without sugar and add sugar separately. But I've done it both ways. And the results are slightly different both ways. So I would do it but the ginger is extremely susceptible to the amount of time that you that you cook it. And I was trying to

get a more raw syrup and see if I could get the flavor that way. But there's just so much sediment coming out of it. Yeah, I would have any benefit of doing fine slice ginger and just infusing that into the vodka first. Syrup.

No, that would probably work. I'm trying to remember whether I've done it. I'm sure that would I'm sure that would do something I would play a play around that one question I have is like let's say you were to do isI right. The question is so for instance, I made flash pickled like sushi style vinegar, Ginger rather last week because I hate the stuff in jars. And so I always just slice i get a younger ginger that has less fiber in it right? I slice it super thin and then I just throw it into you know what amounts to a one to one sugar, rice vinegar and then with some salt, right? And because I don't care if the crap is pink or not. And then I you know I basically pressure vacuum infuses the syrup into the ginger so that it's ready within you know, 30 minutes or something like this. So and I'm trying to think back that did not throw off any starch, but I don't think I used a vacuum. I think I use a centrifuge to do the infusion. I think I did centrifugal infusion instead of vacuum infusion. I'm just wondering whether if you pull a vacuum on it, or if you pressure and let it blast out whether it's going to throw off a lot of sediment because that sediment is really going to make the carbonation touchy, you know what I mean?