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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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,

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Hello, and welcome to cooking issues is just a host of cookies just coming to you live on the heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from roughly 12 to roughly 1245 from Inverness pizzeria in Bushwick. No, no, nothing on the face. Don't give me anything. That's fine. I like it.

I don't always okay,

we got Dave in the booth.

Thank you, everybody. How you doing? I'm good. How are you?

Right? Yeah, good week. Yeah.

Weekend,

by the way. Next week, no show. I mean, I'm in China. In China again,

we're on break too. So that's convenient. Oh, nice

working on the next the next book or index product, which I cannot tell you about because I cannot possibly kill all three people that are listening to this guy. Yeah, well, they'd have to go find them. Got Anastasia the hammer. Lopez. How you doing? Sounds good. How's your? How's your week been? Fine. Fine. Good. Tell

us about your flight.

In a minute, in a minute. If I feel we should actually have a lot of things to talk about today. So for those of you that don't know LaGuardia Airport is nice airport to fly into even though it's horrific and cramped and terrible. Because once you get in, you're close to being back into Manhattan. You're not like in the middle of nowhere. Problem is, as I've said many times, if someone even spits at the runway, in LaGuardia, they shut that thing down. So like I'm flying back from Chicago yesterday. And I was doing something for heaven Hill distilleries in Chicago. And I'm like, I'm gonna get on a 6am because it was raining. I'm gonna do the 6am flight the 6am flight. Because I know that if they let one plane in, they're gonna let the 6am plane in. So we take off and then we get over and all of a sudden, like around like eight right before we're about to land. A thunderstorm moves in over New York. Right. And so what are these Trump's do? They circle LaGuardia and by the way, air traffic controllers if I have anyone out there is an air traffic controller you are a sadistic lot. You are sadistic son of a guns out there. Have a circling in the cloud in the rainstorm just like Buddha. But what about what about like, like waiting because again, like, I remember Mike Pence like you know, the airplane like looks at the runway sideways and it skids off into the into the water. Right? So we're sitting there like what? Like an hour like going around getting some inquiries or not saying squat. Then they're like a well, they wouldn't let us divert to JFK. They wouldn't last divert. To new work. So we're going to Philadelphia go by five low through the clouds to Philadelphia, we're losing gas. We're losing. We're out of gas. Literally as we land, we're gonna die hard to situate as we land. My wife, by the way, I hate flying as we land. My wife tells me she's like, she's like good news. It's starting to clear up in New York and like to sit on the ground, and wait to refuel, and then we get delayed even more, obviously, because they shut LGA. So they had to reopen it later. And we had to get a new slot. So I thought I was gonna get a whole workday done on the bar yesterday. And instead, I spent it in the fabulous trash planes to we had to get off because they no longer knew who was on the airplane because they let some people off but didn't take down their information. So everyone had to leave the plane.

Sounds like standard TSA operating procedure. Yeah,

you'll have to leave the plane and then come back right back on. We're like, what they're like, yeah, yeah. Trust me. Yeah. So yeah, anyway,

do I also hate flying and I got my doctor to prescribe me Lorazepam. It's like, I think it's similar to like Xanax. Yeah,

I used to. I used to take that stuff. And then I somehow got myself off of it, but I'm thinking of doing is just because I'm flying to China on Monday. And the worst is like, if it's a one hour flight, although it can turn into a three hour flight if you're, you know, by mistake. But if it's like a one hour flight, or like a two hour flight, you're like, Hey, I'm gonna take it for the whole time. Because whatever, like, how bad can it be? I can, I can just sit there and have that awful fear sweat for like, a couple of hours. And I know it's gonna be over one way or the

other. It's gonna be grounded. That's a smaller plane. Probably, if it's only an hour or two hour flight. Yeah, but

but when you're in when you're flying to China, and you have conceivably another 14 hours, right? Your mind is like, this could last 14 hours. You know what I mean? Like it just being and also, you know, if you're in the middle of the damn plane, and you have no windows Massassi you hate being in the middle of the plane with no windows, because even just being able to see outside, you're like, Okay, I can see at least that we're on fire and we're going down. At least I know. You know what I mean? When you're sealed in that tube? It's like, yeah, anyway, we have on the show today special guest my segway Yes. Special guest. Talking about his new book we have what's not new ish new ish was newer when you're supposed to come on originally. Yeah. James brushy on I'm told that that's the way that he likes to pronounce although could be pronounced any one of eight different ways, his new book flavor matrix, and you're also at the Institute for Culinary Education. What's your title of it? Their

director of culinary research vector of

director, Mike in his direction? You go Hey, guys, how you doing, James? Excellent. All right, sir. Calling all of your flavor matrix flavor pairing questions to James at 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. And I want you to tell us a little bit about when it gives people like the 32nd pitch on the book here.

So been studying the science of flavor for a really long time, the whole project began back at ICE when we were working with IBM on the Chef Watson project. And we started to get into flavor pairing theory. Thomas Watson is in case they don't. So if anyone missed Jeff Watson, it is we worked with IBM, their Watson computing system to study chemical compounds in foods and find matches between ingredients based on the chemical compounds that create flavor in foods. So kind of a new way to look at putting ingredients together.

Massive question, why'd they give it a dude's name?

I was told actually, the Watson was a woman

that they like, I'm sorry, there are some gender neutral names. They couldn't they could have gone, Pat. It could have been Pat. It's Pat. It's Pat. And then like, what is Pat? I don't know. I mean, that would have been amazing. Right? And then he could include that Pat face on the voices that Watson uses when he's being a prick to those people in the airplane hangar. Is it dudes voice? Yeah, it's very 2001 Space Odyssey kind of a thing. So I'm on Jeopardy. Yeah. And, and when he's talking crap about the coffeemaker in that other thing. He's using a dude's voice and making like it, I think he was, I think he was a little saucy with the coffeemaker and that's why she's not talking to him. But my point is why to do that seems like you know, we're going to work on that next time you're with them. They should just, you know, I know. It's actually just a computer and not not a human being so they could just, you know, rename it or come out that the next gen should definitely be a woman.

I never I never spoke it was we walked in and open up a laptop and we're like, okay, there's Watson. I mean, there was no fancy UI. There was no conversations with Watson. It was a laptop,

IBM if you're out there, next gen woman or at least gender neutral. I'm okay with gender neutral. Taylor. Taylor. Oh, yeah. Although to everyone now Taylor's Taylor Swift right. Yeah, exactly. Oh, I never saw I never seen the show. Good show. I have a really good story about the show that I'm not allowed to tell you. I did we tell them there? I don't think we told them. What is it? Well, I can't tell you what's the

story. All of this started with I'm not allowed to tell you in the knees. is launching straight into it from there I just

put it this way so conflict like it got part of that no I won't say anything about it but like one of the episodes had like a me too moment where they had to get like a Christopher Plummer style reshoot on it. And because they had to, they had to remove one of the characters and add somebody else in. And I really think that what they should do, first of all, I think in a show about, like billionaires, they should just admit, if you're watching a show about people who are rancid power, you know, hungry, like billionaires, why should you get pissed off when the people who are actually in it are rough, too? I mean, that's what you kind of want out of it? No, but they did the reshoot. I think in general, they should just not reshoot and just take Christopher Plummer's face, and then no matter who it is just paste his face over it as like as a thing. What do you think? Yeah. Christopher Plummer. Alright. So 32nd pitch on the book 32nd pitch on the book. We're back to Watson. Sorry, sorry. Yeah. So Watson is a is an a, an AI program that takes a big data crunches and then makes predictions in your case about food, but it could be about whether or not you need to replace an engine, or how much water you need to add to your crops in XYZ field, or yada, yada, or make the make yada, yada,

yada, and yada. So that got me kind of into this subject. But the book was written without any use of Watson, we'd spent all of our time in the volatile, volatile compounds and food database, the VCF database that lists every aromatic compound in the majority of ingredients on Earth. And those are all of the chemicals that are responsible for flavor and food. Who owns that? It is I mean, it's it's a paid subscription database

class, like lots. Yeah.

But, you know, we got into I mean, you know, how much money there is in book writing, right? So yeah, so spent about two years in the VCF, creating spreadsheets, finding the matches, they do actually have a nice little compare and search tool. And we, we basically adapted the, you know, the wine or beer or coffee flavor wheel, like tasting wheel, and adapted it to food. And then we created data points for every aroma in 58 of the most common ingredients, or 58 ingredient categories, which cover about 110 Total ingredients. And then we also listed out for the people who really wanted dig into the science and get nerdy that top three aroma compounds and each ingredient, the flavors they present. So it's hopefully for you know, people who start digging into it, it's a new way to think about flavor and combining ingredients.

And so just so people, people who haven't seen the book, the format is an introduction of like, you know, how you got into this stuff. And then just here are these ingredients, the wheels for those ingredients, and then a recipe that has the main ingredient, and then with other adjuncts that are pulled off of the wheel, and then at the end, kind of a little more here, you know, a little more in depth on some of the actual things, right? So it's like, just what you need to know, to figure out why I'm doing this, this stuff, and then some more explanation at the end. That's the basic layout.

Yeah, exactly. So if you want to just hit it up for some ideas about hey, I got a boatload of zucchini and my CSA and I want to do something different with zucchini. I want to start changing up some recipes. For the purpose of the zucchini pairing we'll you'll see which flavors pair best with zucchini. Start picking out ingredients

zucchini pairs best with the garbage can. zucchini, zucchini is a garbage product. Here's the thing, zucchini is good. Here's what zucchini is good for, if you call it and therefore take out all of that like moisture inducing nonsense and stuff it with meat that tastes good. If you take zucchini and you press the press the hell out of it so it doesn't turn into a greasy sopping mess of nightmare. And then somehow quickly cooking fine. It's not even a good vehicle for dip because it's too freakin spongy. You'd always always rather have a cucumber than a frickin zucchini stick in a dip situation. 100% of the time.

What Yeah, why would it ever be in a dip situation? People

do it. People do it. Right. And then like, the reason zucchinis exist as a product at all is zucchini bread is delicious. Where it's really just, it's just a filler.

Yeah, as far as it is from like, from a flavor perspective. It's extraordinarily low on the list.

And the other reason it exists is squash blossoms. Because Florida calabasa let's face it is awesome. Absolutely. And for those of you that don't know, and I'm sure that a lot of people is that if you just take so the group of the group of things that includes pumpkin squash, cucumbers, zucchini, is the cucurbits right? And they all have these kind of big showy papery flowers that look like squash blossoms, but they have very different tastes so like some, like pumpkin blossoms for instance, I thought that I could use these as squash blossoms because you want to get rid of A lot of the extra blossoms because you don't want you don't want too many pumpkins on your vine anyways. They taste terrible like you need to get like good ones like the varietals important Anastasia is a Kanye shinty, of squash blossoms as well. Yeah, it's true story. It is true story. So anyway, so go ahead zucchini, you were saying?

Just as an example of something, you're gonna have a boatload of your CSA because today's garden grows like crazy, right? Exactly. But so you can just flip over flip up, and you can look at the graphic and go, Oh, here are the best things that go with zucchini. Or if you want to really dig into him, like I got to figure out a way to use this and go back look up the compounds that create a little bit of flavor there is actually in zucchini, and then you know, start attacking it that way to try to find the best matches or try to get creative with it. You know, books been out for just over a month. Now, I'm hearing from a ton of mixologist, people who are really kind of you know, digging in and using it to get creative with cocktails, which is which has been really cool.

Yes, we're the we're the worst group of people in the world. Now. I'm kidding. I love I love people who sling drinks anyway. So the obviously we're opening a new bar. By the way, I can now say, yeah, it didn't come out. But people have leaked it. If you want to know what we're doing, it was leaked for some reason to punch so you can look it up. Anyways. It was a goal. Well, one thing so we'll take we'll take a call, we'll take a call. But what uh, here's, here's the I have a couple of minor bones. That not bones to pick, but we're gonna we're gonna hash some stuff out you and James. And then after that we have a more general hash out that I think is going to be kind of like fun for our crew. The caller will take the caller first caller, you're on the air.

Oh, yeah. Hello. Yeah. I'm actually calling in again.

Hey, how you doing from Vancouver Island?

Yeah, yeah, I'm doing good. I came up with a question. I actually had a quick answer your previous question I thought our calling. So what would you like for the question or the answer?

I will take question first and then answer.

My question was, I think I'm gonna definitely get this book. But I'm curious. Has there been any official study, or analyzing the complexity of different ingredient groups? Like, obviously, there's been compound, but I'd love to settle a bet between me and my brother, which is more complex wine or tea?

Oh, this is an excellent question. And I'm gonna let James go, and then I'm going to argue with him go.

So there is a lot and I mean complexity, you can kind of look at that a couple of different ways. But I mean, the the simplest way would just be to quantify the number of different aromatic compounds that make up each ingredient that's in the VCF. That's exactly what you're going to get you, you get a full list of the compounds that have been identified through most of the data in the VCF comes from academic papers. So it's, you know, there's been a gas chromatography study done on kind of general tea or general wine, there's not a lot on one because it changes year to year to year. So it's hard to it's really hard to kind of collect that data, and

not have been privatized, a lot of proprietary people have that like in house like everyone has their own

and you can get some kind of generals on variety, like we did a thing for Food and Wine Magazine on their wine issue about building recipes based off of compounds in specific wines. And you can get sort of the generals of the varietals,

like what the cat pee aroma is, etc. Yeah,

exactly. Um, but to I would have to, I'd have to check the numbers. I don't know off the top of my head, I believe that tea is higher than wine in the number of compounds,

I here's where yeah, here's where I think this is problematic, right? Everyone, everyone wants to say that whatever product they're Hawking at the time is the most complicated or like, it goes back to the weed or like the people who say we have the most vitamin C, we have the most number of compounds the most, the most poly phenols, we have the most you know, and the thing is, is that, at the end of the day, complexity doesn't boil down to how many different compounds are in suddenly because to be honest, a lot of things can be there in minute quantities that don't have a huge flavor impact. And also, you know, most compounds have on the order of less than 10 things in them that provide the majority of the aroma impact, the volatile impact that something is going to have. So, you know, to me, I think rather than looking at the chemical signature or something to see how complicated it is, look at how people have treated it over the years. So like people tend to focus on simple ingredients with wide ranges of flavor things like tea, with you know, one ingredient to with water, you know coffee, coffee, wine, why? Because they are complicated, right and they repay study and so like actual local complexity in terms of what your mind in tongue see, has as much to do with the scholarship behind it and how much people pay attention to it. 50 years ago, there was not nearly the vocabulary on coffee, even among professionals that there is now. And the reason is, is that kind of the human beings hadn't built up the kind of scholarship. So we sense complexity in coffee, that the average, even professional, I think, wouldn't have sensed 50 years ago. And it's because we've developed a language to be able to do it. So complexity is somewhat in the eye of the taster, I think,

yeah, absolutely nothing, you know, you go to a professional, you know, or taste the wine with a professional. You take a sip and then view you might send certain things and then they tell you Oh, hey, you know, cucumber, BlackBerry, these things, you know, black pepper, these things are here and you take initiative, you're like, oh, yeah, okay. Now, you know, once once you're aware to start searching for these your particular aromas or flavors, and something, then they absolutely become, you know, easier to find. Yeah.

And I think what's what's really interesting, what is fun is when you, not you, but one as kind of a taster, like tastes something, and then you later read something that back that backs you up. That is kind of nice, you know, even when you're like, yes, there is this compound. You're like, I knew I knew I was right. I knew it. All right. So what's your now what's your answer, Gwen?

Oh, well, I remember a few weeks ago, someone called in about making a base, customer sheet. Yes. And I was thinking, I think a good way to do that. It seemed like they were skewing more toward a three application or cocktail, right? Instead of doing a protein based gel. What if you combined Europe

last year was a competitor to

Apple, Apple, right? And then maybe reinforced with a little red flower, and then even stick all that into like even a synthetic sausage casing where it doesn't just fall apart? And then permit that

the Stasi has referred to me as a synthetic sausage casing on many occasions. Yeah, no, try it. I mean, like, also, family show. Also, I will say that someone else mentioned which I have also noticed is that people inoculate dried fruits, not hyper dried fruits, but like par dried or semi dry fruits, specifically things like Japanese persimmon or Korean persimmon, inoculate them with mold. And they do when you once you trim off the mold have a different flavor. I've actually noticed this by accident because I let some persimmons go moldy and I was like, I'm not going to waste them. So I trimmed them off and and had them so I think if we can maybe try that Quinn, or I think some of these mold inoculations on larger format dried fruits, not like thinner ones, but larger format dried fruits, like blended persimmons or whatnot to inoculate them with mold, you can get some, you know, my reaction to the color was, as you said, I think he wanted more what you could ever say. I think he wanted more sweet stuff. And so like on the savory side, that's all about protein breakdown products. It's 100% of our protein breakdown products. And, but But

yeah, your man breaks down starches, and that's crazy sugars, like in the case of mirroring,

right, but like Miran also has a savory hit to it. They don't actually know where it comes from. But Miran has a savory savory hit to it, but when I think katsuobushi I'm thinking 100% Like broke protein breakdown, right? When I think of cheat for instance cheat whenever I'm tasting something old ish. I'm always tasting for it's all breakdown product situation. So when you taste the cheese, right, like certain cheeses I can taste and know their full fat because like fat breakdown like like like lipid lipid oxidation products make my tongue like explode like like if you ever had your tastebuds like pop out it looks like a little mushroom cloud on the on the tip of your tongues ever haven't used Anastasia it's painful Have you James and then no yeah, anyway so like full fat full fat aged cheese's like i love them i eat them but like they cause this immense pain on my tongue my taste buds will like pop I'm like semi sensitive to them when your taste buds like literally blowing them out blow them out but like point being that like wow, you're but you're looking for breakdown products and when I think katsuobushi the main breakdown products that we're getting from them our protein products now break down on sugar things typically sugar breakdown products are let's face it simple in flavor, unless they then go through low temp long age mired which they do you know and you get like you know non enzymatic Browning, which is you know long term Meyer reactions and they can be somewhat complex but not on that savory umami hit like you get out of protein breakdown products because we look at All the main savory fermented stuff that we eat soy, fish sauce, miso. You pick Parmesan cheese, parmesan cheese. You know, any any one of these things, wishes, your sauce, whatever, you know what I mean protein breakdown, it's all protein breakdown.

And the other issue with the fruit is your water content is so I mean, there's just there's not going to be much like persimmon was my first thought on that too. But, yeah,

water water, and it's because but once they bled it out, it turns meaty, because it's big enough, but very few fruits do that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like, you know, you know, I've had some dry melons that are interesting.

That that was that was second thought there was potentially in some dry melons, and you've already got like a little bit that natural funk, you know, especially in cantaloupe, you've got kind of like stinky. So, you know, you know, there might there might be something there as well. But I think again, like even with a cantaloupe, you know, your water content is just so high that you're not gonna have much left, right,

you need to do a Part D Hi, first. Di is French for dehydration. But it's not really but. But like, you gotta like, you gotta get rid of some of that water first because otherwise it just goes straight to spoil time instead of

if you want to Mommy, I mean, we need some amino acids from somewhere.

You need it. There's no other way. There's no other way. Literally, your tastebuds are there so that you are like, Oh, I am receiving protein. You know what I mean? And that's part of the bone I have to pick with you. All right, here we go. You put savory down first of all, okay. You have this sip. Okay. It is 100% true. People confuse what happens in their nose. When I say nose. I mean, the whole McGill, all your olfactory senses, right? On the tongue. And then the various trigeminal senses that you have. Right? And so the main break is between flavor and taste, right. So taste is. You know, taste is anastasius Bad taste and watching The Bachelor constantly know, it's like stuff that happens on your tongue. It's like, yeah, terrible. She loves that stuff. Natasha

sucked in a little bit.

Now. See, that's a lie. I could see you getting

into winter get the rose or the loser get the rose?

Does it matter? Well, it's all about the journey. It matters. It matters to

the lungs. We're there for the right reasons.

Yeah. the Right Reasons are what? The Stasi like I

don't I don't like it. Oh,

I don't like it. I just watch it throws people. I just you know, a Jerry Springer is just on for the for the milieu that it creates in my apartment. I mean, it's like anyway, so where were we were talking about? Oh, so flavor and taste. So like, like, to me that here's where I think we're a little bit different, or where I don't know, you tell me where we are. So to me, taste is the crap that's on your tongue. Right? Six, six senses, basically. Well, we can argue about that. You know, what about co2 co2 is mediated environment. I mean,

I think there's Yeah, so I mean, there, but that's that's not a tastebud reaction. That's, that's a nerve, right?

No, no, no, no, no, no, it's

like if ice is not no tasty, but

enzyme, it's enzyme mediated through your sour receptor. So I think it's, at least that's what that's what Zucker said. I mean, maybe they've done more research, but I'm saying it's complicated. I think like,

I think I think we're gonna see the number of recognized tastes double in the next 10 To 10 to 15 years, right.

So let's, let's not even say how many tastes there are, let's not get into whether or not like how fat works. It's not even getting to that. Let's just divide this crap into crap. It's on your tongue. It's in your nose cabinets in your nose and crap. That's just an irritant like trigeminal or crap, that's mainly a sensation of like, like, you know, I see that you believe and I don't really know what's current. So I don't have a belief on like how astringency works, whether it's just, you know, an actual, like tactile sensation or what, let's not even go there. Right? Crap. It's on your tongue a crap it's in your nose. So most of the time, what you're seeing to go is you seem to take the flavor as the crap in your nose. And taste is the crap in your tone. And crapping your tongue. Nasty. But then, like I've always thought my view has always been taste is the crap on your tongue flavor is the combination of olfaction and the crap on your tongue. Like it's the whole Megillah but you don't ascribe to that. But you put savory as part of flavor. Even though that crap is crap on your tongue. It is

it is the I had to make some tough decisions and categorizing all of it. And it was, I mean, this was incredibly hard to try to categorize all of this. And that is you. You zeroed in on under one category that's really not aroma driven, and it is that's exactly right. You know, where we put savory on the wheel. We kind of lumped in basically the umami ingredients all together. umami is not an aroma driven response. It's an it's a tongue driven response. And it's kind of it's the one part of the flavor wheel in the matrix that is not fully aroma driven right and

you shade there also in sour, right. So, when you say pungent, what you mean Are these like, like, sulfur is or like muscle mustard. Right? So but on the sour stuff, like to me volatile, sour is acetic. Right? Straight up only acetic the other acids to me are almost completely non volatile. But I don't know like you like you. Like I think you see that as like kind of like also a bridge at least in the book. It

was like illicit every time we went through Reddits something would come back and I'd be like you separating herbaceous and menthol. Yeah, it was brutal for me every time I was like, I was like, no Basil is menthol. No Basil is herbaceous, and you know, back and forth and back and forth. Because eventually I just had to like, Okay, this is where they're gonna go, and we're leaving them there. And I'm not moving them anymore. There's, that was one of the hardest ones. That was a very hard one for me separating what was menthol because you could make an argument for Paragon in there you can make an argument for basil more

than more than more than an argument in Paragon, but you can

make the same argument for them in herbaceous as well because you've got so many of the strong green aromas. So you know when

but menthol also does meant this menthol, do you I know they're different, but does that shade into kind of those usually kind of flavors to you like to me, like,

because then but then they start to straddle like the woody aromas, too. Yeah,

that's I'm saying, like, to make categories. It was extraordinarily

hard to make categories and they're not perfect. I don't think you'd ever unless, you know, we, unless we started separating by compound, you know, just to too much for people to absorb too much. Right. It's hard. So we try to do our best I mean, to just kind of find a good category to fit them in. And there's some there's some that I really struggled with and you like you nailed those right off the

bat because they're tough love toughest tough the world around.

It is what it is.

Yeah. Yeah. It is what it said that once someone was a king bird came back and was like, hey, hey, we had another one for you. You remember, you said menthol. Do you remember, like 1011 12 years ago when everyone was using frickin menthol crystals? Yes. Dang. Like, here's the one thing like, it's like, it's like, around the same time everyone was using Sichuan buttons. And I'm like, I'm that guy. And it's like, it was a big learning thing for me, because I am extremely sensitive, like the menthol crystals, um, like they just blow my palate out for like, a long time, but I'm sure that it doesn't have that effects on the chefs that are using it. So when you're I think one of the interesting things about bringing new ingredients or special on buttons like now my tongue tastes like like I'm leaking batteries and tin foil for like, you know, like 20 minutes

it's very annoying I I don't enjoy the experience of assess one button

I don't I don't at all i i have learned to enjoy higher quantities of Sichuan peppercorns at all. I was gonna ask if they were the same thing. No such one buttons are these flowers that like if Sichuan peppercorns are like a jalapeno Sichuan buttons are like a Carolina Reaper.

After you eat one you feel like you just came from the dentist and you're drilling out of the corner of your mouth and you're slapping yourself on the cheek

can't taste the damn thing for like literally for like 1520 minutes your shot in terms of like your discrimination you don't I mean I'm sure if you're accustomed to it that's not the case the same way that like I can take a whole lot of Capsicum heat and you know relatively quickly be in good tasting water it

gets your why you want to become accustomed to

like session but no but like session on peppercorn I have become you know used to go through like people like Danny bow and like that yeah become accustomed to higher levels of it but still Sichuan buttons are a nightmare but menthol Yeah, it was I think people were just like sprinkling menthol crystals all over everything. And I think that's because probably some people are more you know, those of those of us that smoke cools are more like in your to the effect of menthol on the palate than talking to you Alex do pack like I remember he used to like the menthol, but I think Sam Mason Aussies did he like the mental a lot of people like menthol. But what do you like? Do you find that problem in new ingredients is that with old ingredients? cooks in general have a long track record of knowing what other people will think about them right? Then I learned this a lot when I was teaching at the French culinary and I'm sure you see a teaching at ISE Is that is that when you're teaching large groups of people or when you have a restaurant and you have a large group of people coming in if you're willing to listen and take the feedback you can learn Learn that your palette isn't necessarily everyone's palette but with new ingredients. It's hard because there's not a large enough, as we say, n there's not a large enough end to know how people are going to respond to it.

Yeah. And I think you know, people, it's something new, it's something different people get excited, and they just want to, like start throwing it everywhere. And I mean, I don't want my cell to taste like icebreakers gone, you know, that's just not cool in any way. But I think yeah,

let's see got a hot date. Oh, you know, I think it's like, yeah, that's the thing is like, you know, I'm I knew I knew I was my mouth was freaking fresh after those mental.

But I think you know, it's a you know, I mean, I think it's something you know, we've seen for a while now, it's like, every new technique comes along every new little trick every new little ingredient. You know, there are I mean, you know, I thought foam is the best example. It's like, that's a great thing when you use it the right way, but it doesn't belong everywhere. And just because you can doesn't mean you should. Yeah,

well, my favorite foam lip cream. Gotta love the cream. I will put cream on almost anything. I eat whipped cream off spoons, I will just tuck into a bowl of whipped cream. I like whipped cream. I think like if God were to choose one food I think we're cream maybe because it's very ethereal. You know what I mean? Bread bread is my favorite bread is SCOTUS I love Michael How's Michael doing he's good he's good chocolate it up. Chocolate it up? Yeah Michael Scott is good guy still ahead of pastry there at the

yeah and you know we've got bean to bar chocolate facility now over at ICE so he that's kind of his his land and he's he's doing all kinds of cool things out of the chocolate

lab again remember don't stop at the bar go all the way to toilet the toilet. Farm to toilet that's the that's the thing. All right, now my other larger bone to pick with you. So the way the flavor matrix starts out for those of you that aren't and we're gonna get into we're gonna get into some like we're gonna get into it here right? It starts out with your meeting literally starts like the first paragraph it starts with your well I want to say meeting because it is a computer Watson interaction with Chef interaction with Watson. Right? And

although and if you don't call it chess

strat strong scene, the Stasi is sitting there you think she's shopping for shoes on Xapo then she comes out with a give me a little

well, you know, we know she's multitasking.

There's no such thing people. It when you say you're multitasking that means you're doing everything poorly. Right? The multitasking is French for ISOC

you know then in that spirit, I think we should take a quick break before we finish out the show. All

right, we'll take a break come back back more cooking issues.

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And we're back. All right. Dave, you say we got some callers. We do have a caller Alright, so like we're gonna take the callers and we're gonna we're gonna James You and I are gonna get back into flavor pairing theory because jamming out, we're gonna have a big ol fist fight over this. So caller you're on the air. Caller caller. Hey, all right. Cool. You see we had to we have another we lose both. Do we lose both? Right. Yeah,

I think we lost them this week. All right. So here we go. So

So you start with meeting watching and then you and then you say rather cavalierly that you got into this thing called flavor pairing theory. Now. I got first of all, we're not even gonna get into the whole we're not We're gonna get into the whole air of 80s thing because I don't have

all that, oh, well, I've had I've had this fight with survey myself. What's the

point of having a fight with a guy who doesn't like the word food and says things like, proteins don't exist. There's no point in fighting with. I'm not going to say on air. The air of ATS is a huckster. I will leave it

at that just by fight. I mean, he gave me his opinion strongly. And I said, Cool. Nice to meet you.

You gotta you gotta be gay. Like, look, I've said this many times before, you're either a tease person, or a muggy person. I'm a gay person. 100% 100%, like Elvis and Beatles people know, because I like both Elvis and the Beatles. So you can like both of these people know? Why not? You can't like them both. If you know a lot about either of them. That's what it is. You know what I mean? Like Elvis and the Beatles are fundamentally unrelated. You know what I mean? Like, like, maybe at a particular point in time, you were the kind of person who listened to Elvis. And those people didn't hang out with Beatles people. But there's nothing inherently that says you can't listen to bossa nova baby, which, by the way, it was written by Edwards, wife, ex wife before that. They're all dead now. Great song