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

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

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

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

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

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

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This week on mountain three, we head into the second part of our mini series on global trade, where we talk about all things sweet from chocolate and sugarcane to the cultural festival that accompanied the growth of the date industry in the US. They're using this romance and fantasy to say deeds are exotic and you should consider them.

We like to think of the food that we eat as archaeological artifacts in part because the history of humanity is in the stands in your produce market.

It's not like other foods we have very like personal feelings about chocolate. Tune into meat in three hrs weekly food news roundup wherever you get your podcasts

Hello and welcome to cooking issues this is Dave Arnold your host of cooking you just coming to you alive on the heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from whenever to whenever you know whatever we're all over the all over the country here I got I'm in the Lower East Side of Manhattan we got Matt Are you back in Roberta's you back in Rhode Island now.

I'm in Rhode Island but I actually went to my parents house for this recording because I was so worried about my internet functioning so a different booth.

I see. I see. Nastasia the hammer Lopez still in California. How you doing?

Good. We have one more show from here next week. And Jack and Aaron want to join

the polecat Aaron the polecat?

Uh huh. But he says he wants you to talk about his Livewire what what he wants to talk about Livewire

okay, but like I'm most interested, what I'm most want to hear is I most want to get Jack and Aaron in an argument about datelines.

Yeah, yeah, we can probably say never talked about for the thing that you wanted to do. What? You never talked about what the thing you wanted to do with both of them?

Oh, me? Well, but they should we just let people know, since neither of them are listening. Can we just tell people what yeah,

we can't do it anyway, because of COVID. Well, yeah, I mean,

eventually, you know, this will pass. But so the concept was, and we refresh for those of you that, you know, weren't weren't around when this argument happened, but jackings Lee Jackie molecules, the original engineer for the cooking issues program. You know, we're still friends with him. Right? And he was saying he's out in California right now for the COVID. And he was saying that had he had an issue with the wine that was at this date? Is that was that accurate? It was a mirlo. And he hated Is this correct? It was a cheap bottle of Merlot. His date brought over Yeah. Yeah. And he was like, the hell is this basically right? Yeah. And Aaron was like you're an evil human being who cares what the what the wine was, etc, etc. Is that my, my, I think fairly accurate, like in this in this time of COVID the wine contains alcohol. I'm sure it's not so overtly flawed, that it's completely you know, undrinkable and will poison you. Right. For instance, it tastes better than some people's well water and just suck it up. And don't be a jerk. That was the gist. Right?

Keep your eyes on the prize. Yeah.

Now let's Yeah, I think we can all agree that that in the world of extreme rock bottom, low priced wines, perhaps. California extreme low price mirlo might be the worst. Yeah, you know, that's something that we maybe you don't dear listener, but we as a cooking issues collective. do agree. So anyway, so what we wanted to do what Anastasia and I really really, really wanted to do was to go buy like an ocean of crappy Merlot. Can you call the company? Do they ever get back to emails? No, they

never got back.

Who did we email? Do you remember? Yellowtail. Oh, yeah, yeah, the Stasi is a punching bag of choice. If you go to her house, if you really want to piss the Stasi off should you ever be invited to her house which is gonna go ahead and say it unlikely if you bring yellowtail that that is like that super trigger for her. Anyway. So she was going to try to buy how many gallons? You did the math days. I did the math. I don't remember the number. I don't remember. No. It's like something like 100 gallons or something right or 55 gallons. Yeah. And we were going to do a mirlo jello wrestling match for cherry between Aaron Pope Aaron Polsky, the polecat, you know, former Harvard stone and he now has his own cocktail company and Jackie molecules. And we were, since I couldn't be there, because you know, whatever I was going to, I was going to get a computer monitor and put it on the end of a stick. And we were going to have someone with my head screaming at them as like the let's get ready. Let's get ready to rumble. That guy, but like you can't actually say it like he does. Or you'll get sued. But like my head on the end of a stick, and then I would officiate and like the Stasi would be there, and they will be great. But they disagreed. They really

didn't want to do it. And they each separately texted me telling me to shut you up. Dave.

shut me up. You're the one that just brought it up?

No, no, the day you do came up with this idea.

But like, I mean, I don't know, like, I don't know, like, I understand what they're getting at. Like somehow they feel like their personal like life brand, not like money brand, but like their life brand. Right? Like their dating app, let's say their their profile will be damaged by this. But do you really think so?

I'm not a guy. I don't know

whether you guys know. But your their target. Not you specifically but you they're both interested in women. So I'm saying is that it would this is would this be a negative in there? If you found out that they had done this? Would you be like no way? Yeah. So they're right. It's

just add the words for charity. Where those words are included?

I included the button that Oh, you did? Okay. The Stasi is saying that doesn't affect her decision. All right. Well, it's hard to

separate the person from the you know, I don't want to date either of them. Well, regardless say, you know,

so let's say that there is someone that you don't know. And they're on the margins of,

and they're on the dating app, and they have photos of them jello wrestling. No, no,

no one said that. What I'm saying is, is that then like, Okay, I'll give you an example.

In this place of conversation. It comes out. They're like, Oh, yeah, by the way, this is a thing that I have done. Yeah.

I'll give you an example. So in college, I think I said this on the air before in college. So when I was young, I wanted to chop trees down. I didn't want to necessarily be a professional lumberjack. But I wanted to be able to go out into the woods and chop trees down. And, you know, because when I was splitting wood for you know, spare, you know, money. You know, when I was a kid, a piece of a piece of the mall, which is the thing that you split the wood with, like, came off and shot into my leg and I had to go and get it surgically removed. It was a pain in the butt anyway, from there on out. Like I wasn't allowed to talk about owning an axe. I wasn't allowed to talk about chopping trees. is down, it was like, I couldn't talk about it and Haskell wasn't allowed to do it. So like, honestly, like within the first like, month of going to college, I bought an X. And I was like, you know, I'm on my own. Now I can have what I want. I've always wanted to own an x. So now I have an x. And it turns out that other people in your dorm think you're crazy for having an axe as it as it happens. And so I found out much later, like, when I was a junior, and I started going out with my now wife, Jen, she told me that people were going around telling women to not go out with me, because I was gonna take and I had an axe. I mean, I had other issues, but like, you know, that was, you know, one of them, right? And so, what I'm saying is, is this like that, so someone's like, That ad was in a jello wrestling match. So like, if your friend told you that, would that like ruin it for you stuff? That's what I'm trying to find out? No.

All right. The rest of their lives would bummed me

out. wasn't supposed to be a referendum on Jackie molecule. The question is, is is this a relative net? A relative minus a relative plus a relative minus or relative neutral in their life? Think neutral, neutral, neutral. All right. This is a long way to go to find that simple answer. Oh, my goodness.

Oh, before we get going, we had a weird question. Come back into the chat. So ed ed and camera claims in the last episode for three Peter Flanagan wrote in for a toaster oven recommendation, but the tale of his sad slash scary microwave provided just enough tangential distraction. That ended up being a discussion of microwave detection cooktop ventilation and microwave recommendations. As someone who was recently looking at toaster ovens I too was curious to hear Dave thoughts any chance of revisiting the toaster oven recommendation? Well,

what was it what were the parameters? Everything is about parameters. Right? So like you know, you know, what do you are you literally interested in just a slice of toast you know that you can buy this the Japanese toaster maker that costs three toast maker that cost $300 I think it makes only two slices of toast and cooks nothing else. I've never had the toast out of that machine. So I can't tell you whether it's any good. I know some people were trying to buy the Cuisinart combi oven toaster to try to mimic that. Like I had bad luck with that unit because I thought the controls were bad and the grate was terrible. It was unbelievable. It's like the lines between the great on that were so Farley space so far spaced apart, that your bread would literally sagged down nightmare. I mean, I use the Breville I like it. But I forget was this person did they want like a stand up toaster? Did they want like a toaster oven? Like is the size important? I don't remember what the parameters were. You see what I'm saying?

Yes, I do see what you're saying?

Because like what I would tell someone to but for instance, is it? Is it important for you to look cool. If it's important for you to look cool. The dualit looks nice. And the toast is fine. You know what I mean? Are you guys fans of the dualit? I don't know. It's the one that looks a little bit like an Airstream. It's British. I mean, real fancy. Anyway, for what it's

worth, Jim in the chat weighs in and says if I were buying a new toaster oven today, I buy the ANOVA since you get what amounts to a residential combi oven experience.

Well, that's that is interesting, because we're talking to them about trying to get one to test out and then having having them come on. And we'll talk about home combi ovens that's in the works. Is it not John? It is

yes. And it's it doesn't sound like an F it sounds like this is going to happen and you will be testing it out. So we'll have an update for everyone soon.

But the point is, is that I can't talk about it because I haven't tried it. Exactly. Yeah, you know what I mean? I mean, I can talk about it, but it'll be useless to you because I can't I will not recommend something that I have not tried, you know, unless it comes extremely highly recommended from a friend and then I have to give all the caveats, etc, etc. Okay. I've never even touched one in the real life.

But can I go for it? No, I thought you were gonna move to a different question. I have a follow up from Matt at Kitchener and some letter.

Oh, I moved to a different question because we'll talk more about wet bulb dry bulb dew point, humidity ovens, the difficulty measuring there in the fact that I just had to cancel a $250 order on the phone, because nothing measures humidity the way I want. And we'll move on, we'll move back to this question that we got. So John, go for it.

Yeah. So last week, we answered a question from Alex Edwards, who was wondering about the administrative books about the administrative side of being a chef and we asked Matt sartwell At Kitchen arts and letters, and here is his answer. There's a book called Work clean by Dan charnas. Which applies chef lessons to the larger idea of managing your life and earache repairs on the line was an inside look at how their burner den was organized, though it is unfortunately out of print. But when it comes to a hard look at staffing, cost control, purchasing, etc. The market fragments into very specific books which are developed for use in large scale restaurant and hotel schools and concerned with running very large operations. They're dry nuts and bolts titles that are not about imagination. To be honest, we've not been going deep in these areas because the books have become expensive in the way of textbooks these days, often well over $125. And they frequently, bafflingly start with incredibly rudimentary discussions, such as the difference between front and back of the house. And that's what he's got.

And let me just put this out there anytime you want to know. Is there a good book on X, Y and Z? And is it really good or not? A good thing to do is to call or email kitchen arts and letters. And they will no but I will say that I feel that you're a little bit then morally obligated to buy it from them. Would you not agree?

Probably yeah.

Yeah. The out of print one the repair a got you. You know, I think that's fair game. Just go on ABC. I don't think that one cost too much. I think it was on a tour for that book. When he told I was I went to some talk he gave and he told me the magical or Bernard and tasting trick. Remember this one guy's? Yeah. Yeah, the standard cheese, standard cheese life changer. I have not figured out what my standard cheese is. But at Liberty den for those of you that didn't hear me say it before Eric repair had a standard crappy you know, available supermarket completely uniform cheese, I believe it was craft Swiss. And they would eat a block of it. Like everyone would eat a block of it every day before service before they went around and tasted all their meals on plus, so they could figure out oh, my nose isn't working so well. Today. My palates messed up today, etc, etc. Anyway. Oh, and I have a question out there if anyone can help me out. So I had someone asked me on Twitter. You know, they're cooking for someone who has, you know, had just had the COVID and had anosmia, you know, hopefully temporary and asthma, which is where you can't really smell so it ruins your sense of taste, and was wondering what dishes are good for them? I asked my wife because she had she had some anosmia after you know, she had COVID. And, and I was like So is there anything that kind of makes it through? That's good when you can't smell it? She's like, No, it all sucks. It sucks. It's ruined everything foods ruin, no. So like she didn't give me anything good. So if anyone out there has had any good experiences, trying to make things for people that can't smell, let me know. Alright, actually, real quick. I

have a personal plug, too. If anybody any listeners out there know anything about tapping maple trees? Please let me know.

Yeah, for those of you that for those of you that are he's in Connecticut, right. So you're talking about maple trees in Connecticut. I know. We have a listener who wrote in a couple of times about vacuum dehydration on Maple. So if you're still a listener, John wants to do it. And then he's going to be you're going to be like our roving like correspondent on tapping maples, you're going to give like a week by week blow by blow, right?

That is the plan as long as the timing works up for when I can tap them because it's a week where I can't be here.

And you're not interested necessarily in making eight boatloads of this stuff. You just you just want like, you know, somewhere between a quarter to half gallon of stuff, right?

Yeah. I'm fairly certain that Harry Rosenbloom of Feaster years has done that in Rhode Island, so I could definitely put you in touch with him.

Yeah, actually, no, Harry, so I can I'll shoot him a message. Yeah, thanks for that. Oh,

yeah. All right. Now, listen, what's the question that Anastasia said I had to get to today about something about the sun or shall we answer a food question first and answer food question.

Yeah, good question.

Let's do a food question and then you find it all right. Brian Garrick wrote in Hey there I recently read about two different techniques to preserve the tomato harvest. One preserving an ash right. So this is where someone I believe in, in Burundi who has who grows tomatoes. says that if you pack the tomatoes in boxes full of ash like the stuff left over from fires, ash that they last, so says he for months now I wasn't able to buy last. I mean, not supposedly dehydrated, like they last like you can eat them. Now John and I looked at an excruciatingly long video this morning of someone in Canada who attempted to recreate this preserving tomato in ash kind of a situation. And what happened was that they didn't spoil probably because the ash is a desiccating. So it's, you know, it's stopping it from getting too moist on the outside, and probably the pH of the ash prevents mold growth and whatnot on the outside of the tomatoes. So they don't, they don't spoil in the way that a standard tomato would spoil. Now, he didn't show pictures of it when it was a couple of months in, but he said that they felt kind of like water balloons now that the downside is that because he was in Canada, and he started over the winter, it was like stupid, cold and very low humidity, so they completely desiccated and turned into small little discs. My guess is, is that in Burundi, with a much higher humidity, that you get much less evaporation, and the closer you are to saturated in the in your humidity, the less chance you are, have it. Have it desiccating and so then you're in a situation where it's not quote unquote, spoiling, right? Because it's not molding, but it's also not desiccating right now, is that going to taste good? That I can't tell you but I was gonna say that the guy in Canada had no luck. The second one you said was hanging and you're pointing out a picture of some people hanging tomatoes and I think the one that you sent me was it was Italy or Spain or something. And I was wonder if you have any thoughts on doing this ie hanging tomatoes or packing in Monash at home next season? This way I can have winter tomatoes that are actually delicious. Why don't they rot? Is it a technique or varietals? Will this work for other fruits and veggies? What about temperature? Is that an issue? I recall you and a cooking issues guests perhaps Daniel grits or did a refrigerated tomato test and thought that cold storage destroyed the flavor. Ellison Do you think that tastes would be compromised with either of these techniques? I mean, for sure taste is going to be compromised and texture but Daniel and I had a big disagreement let's go back. I have my whole life because this is the way I was taught since I was a small person that putting tomatoes in the fridge is an enemy it makes me an enemy of quality because the texture turns melee Daniel grips are because he's a contrarian, right right stars means Yeah, Fairy and fellow he's a contrary I like him but he's a contrarian. He's one of those guys. He always has a smile on his face, but he'll always tell you that like whatever you thought was wrong Pretty much yeah. Yeah. Not in a mean way. So anyway, so he was like, actually, I read here he ran a bunch of tests right? And so he says that you know, if you're some sort of monocle wearing, you know, wine fridge owner, which I am I was given once I have like a wine cooler, you can keep them in that and that's good, but keeping them on the shelf. They respire too quickly and they actually lose some of their good flavor and aroma versus putting it in a fridge which will eventually make the texture worse but all in all the ones he tested. He was better off keeping them in the fridge now. It's too long to go into here but that's what that's what we had Daniel grits Ron now the one that you're talking about the ash I'm going to go ahead and say that I haven't met or seen anyone that's tasted the actual one from this dude in Burundi after the six months, but the one the guy in Canada washed off the dehydrated one and said it tasted nasty like it must be like like super nasty now could work in Burundi. I don't know I haven't wasn't able to find any scientific articles on it. The hanging tomatoes is in fact a variety. So the famous Iberian Peninsula like you know you I guess I think of it mayonnaise, Catalonian like tomato with bread. They've, they've over the years developed special varieties of tomato that can be hung. Right, and they maybe desiccate a little bit but in their designed in the atmosphere in which they grow to last for months and months, just hanging upside down either tied onto a string like tomato by tomato, and then they're meant to be cut in half and rubbed into toasted bread to make the you know bread with tomato, the famous bread with tomato dish that they have there. It will not work with standard ones. So if you go to the a good review of this is the an article that the EU put out called the valorization of hanging tomatoes in Spain. And it talks it's an interesting article about how there's congruent or I should say, co breeding so it's not just one variety people all in in that area all so selected for varieties that would last longer when hung and just ate the ones that go bad and then planted the ones that lasted long. You year after year. So there's a number of different varieties of these hanging tomatoes. But they're not standard tomato, in the same way that apples that are meant to be kept for a long time aren't the standard apple. So you'd have to get a hold of this variety you can buy this variety in, in the United States, the seed in the United States, I've never tried it. It also requires that you do not irrigate, they need to be a relatively low moisture tomato for it to work. Was that a good enough answer, guys? Yeah. From hydration via Instagram. Hey, Dave, you've been featured in a lot of articles talking about non alcoholic cocktails that have come across. I'm trying to create my own non alcoholic spirit, using distillation at home aiming for something similar to see lip Connect. Can we just we mentioned this? Why would you name your wife? I know I've met them but like seedlip sounds not pleasant, right? What's wrong with that guy? He's got a seedlip doesn't sound good, right? Got it. Now saying the name I mean, like in other words, like the way that you hate the word Spore? I think seedlip Sounds like something's wrong. Yeah, let's do that. Yeah. And ritual zero proof. Any advice on this process, where to look or who to talk to about creating something like this? I also just want to recognize how rough this past year has been on your industry. It was unfortunate to read about the clothes and existing conditions. Yeah, it's even more unfortunate to live it. Thank you. I hope things will be looking up again soon. Thanks, Donovan. So here's my here's my question to you. Donovan, is when you say it's spirit look, most people who are making non alcoholic spirits, right, or whatever you want to call them zero spirits, they're looking to sell you something that you can then mix into, into cocktails, one to one for a spirit or like a spirit. And that's not really kind of what I'm, that's not really what I'm an I would say an expert in or what I've been working on. Right. So for that you could distill a bunch of flavors. The trick is is trying to you know, you have to add, people sometimes try to add a little something cooling or something to provide some stuff for your trigeminal, your trigeminal nerve, so you get some of that bit of cooling, but they also need to add body so like, if you're smart, you're going to add some glycerin, you need to add probably something that has a little bit of poly phenols, some tannins to give it a little bit of complexity, and usually some kind of an herb base, right, that's and that's typically what people are doing. But, but those things, I find it's much easier to make really good non alcoholic drinks, if instead of focusing on a non alcoholic spirit, you focus on a, you focus on non alcoholic cocktails and then constructing the whole flavor from the ground up because it gives you much more volume to work with. When you're making a non alcoholic spirit, the entire volume of that non alcoholic spirit, the water portion of it right is now accounted for and gives you less room to work with in your non alcoholic cocktail. Does that make sense? So in general, I focus on cocktails rather than trying to you know, make spirits. But if you're going to distill, you can distill things that have nice a lot of things to still well, they don't necessarily distill well into water, just because there'll be relatively fugitive. So when you're doing waterbase distillations like hydrosols, you're going to want to use them very, very quickly. Glycerin, vegetable glycerin is going to be your friend. And in general, like I say, try to include some plant based materials that will give some sort of either skin contact, kind of a feeling or some sort of astringency, or some sort of polyphenols like you might get from wood and add a little something that's going to get some herbal complexities like non tea, like teas, like to xanes are typically good as our herbal things. So does that make any sense? Guys? Does that make sense? Yes, yeah.

All right, if you're gonna do professionally, right, that's when they try to make ones that you can buy one unit and then mix them into various cocktails, right? Because it's a different problem. And then they're trying to mimic certain flavors like mimic the flavor of rum, but I don't think that's what you're trying to do. Okay. From Josh wetland via Instagram. I hope you in the BND slash HR and crew are doing well. I can't find any concrete answers on this. So I thought probably pay to ask you. I want to make a classic burger bun. But no matter what I try, I cannot get the storebought style squishiness where the bun has more of a paper thin skin instead of a crust and a soft, pillowy crumb that bounces back post squish. All online recipes result in a bun that doesn't squish. What's the secret to achieving this? I don't own a steam function of it. So I've tried to Dutch oven techniques still with no joy any advice would be greatly appreciated all the best. Josh from Somerset, UK man I wish I could go back to Somerset cider. There is so good cider so good. All right. Listen. The question is this. So there's a continuum between Like white like white bread like you know, like crusty white bread, right and brioche and in between that continuum somewhere right in between like a crusty dinner roll and a brioche roll lies, I think the hamburger bun that you want. So if you think about brioche, right, brioche is squishy and has a thin crust, right? Because the stuff they wash on the outside of the brioche makes it thin crust, so you're going to want to go somewhere in between those. Now, you might want to go all the way to brioche because I don't know if you know this, but hamburgers on brioche buns. What do they taste Guys? Guys? Real grinder brioche bun tastes what? Not good. Tastes great. You don't like brioche buns does.

Yes they do.

So why do you say not great?

I was thinking of something else but no, yeah, you're you're right.

I believe we're so boring that we can't even keep the attention of the people on the show. For five minutes while I'm asking a question I

was responding I was responding to a listener about me being boring. So that was like us full circle

I like a full circle event. Yeah, the circle of Circle of Death. Why do they call it the circle of life it really it never ends with life it ends with you being dead. Circle starts with you being dead and ends with you being dead. Anyway, so most hamburger buns are not as rich as a brioche so I'll just tell you what my hamburger bun recipe is. That is not very crusty, it's relatively thin. It's also relatively squishy and close your ears and stuff here because I do use whole wheat flour. But anyway, so but it's very light whole wheat because I sifted and in fact I think I have a recipe I have a recipe here. I have a recipe here that doesn't use whole wheat flour. Alright, so I'll give you both the one that doesn't use one and the one that I actually use the whole wheat so 239 grams of flour 60 grams of butter 56 grams of eggs which is one large hole in the US 125 grams of milk 3.5 grams of SAF Red yeast SAF red as accept no substitutes. five grams of salt and 11 grams of white sugar mix the flour and yeast in a bowl with a paddle melt the butter whisk together salt sugar milk egg butter add to flour beetle comes away from the bowl and is cohesive turn and mess with every 30 minutes for two hours. Let it rise by half refrigerate for a couple of hours punch down form it wait 10 minutes and then form it again and bake it at let it double up and bake at 375 with the wash and seeds of your choice. But the one that I actually use for my burger buns are 197 grams of whole wheat flour so I use typically Redeemer we put through a 60 mesh sieve 51 Butter 56 eggs which is again is 198 of milk, three of SAF Red yeast 4.25 of salt and 9.35 of sugar and six grams of vital wheat gluten. Then, you know that makes for bonds. And then you That's it. That's how it works. Right? Was that good? That that an answer? Try that. See if you like it. If you don't get back to me, but just think about it as the brioche continuum. One day you'll find it the brioche connection the lovers, the dreamers and me. Are you familiar? Do you like the rainbow connection? Are you Muppets fans by the way? Yeah.

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Sydney Soloff wrote in via Instagram greetings need help on a non alcoholic beverage another non non alcoholic beverage project that includes preparing different fruits, herbs, citrus and sugar. Wanting to understand which direction to go for best shelf life preservation eight months or longer to open thing kept refrigerated. We use common acid preservatives and understanding my PH balance how much is needed to add into a mixture. Okay, listen, all that stuff is like very well regulated. And you know, it's best. I'd rather not give you the advice for it like but those numbers for Shell stable. You're going to want to pasteurize the stuff. And so then the question is, is that for a particular pH, you're going to need to get up to a certain temperature pasteurizing just make sure that you're versus when you're using citrus. I recommend using citrus that has been cooked like cordial style citrus so that the temperature is not going to be a problem, so you're gonna need to pasteurize it to kill yeast, otherwise, you're gonna have to preserve the ever loving crap out of it. And the other thing is if you have the money and you want to go fresh, then UV pasteurization is also interesting and it has combinations of UV pasteurizing. With lower temperature, Flash pasteurization can get pretty good results that last a long time. Is that a decent answer guys, or no? Yes, yeah. Okay. Chad wrote in. I'm currently listening to all of your old episodes, I'm on 110. So that's what out of 8 million though, right? We've had 8 million episodes,

or 100 and something right now. Yes. forthright and,

and listening to your newer ones each week as well. I would actually like to ask about the pizza oven you simulated in your home oven? What are these heated pizza stones? Did you break something up? Yes. Could you share the info on how you set up your oven. I've been working on pizza for years, but haven't able to get higher than 550 to 600 of my oven. I want to build a woodfired oven outside but haven't ever followed through any pointers will be appreciated. Next time. I'll ask about something interesting, like Panko, I promise Chatlin. And from Georgetown, Kentucky. So I mean, like, look, what I did was the pizza was good. But it was a complete nightmare. First of all, I ripped out the thermostat in my oven and adjust put a solenoid control valve into it with a PID and monitor it. And so the oven was able the oven internal temperature was able to get up to ridiculous numbers like completely unsafe numbers like you shouldn't do it. And then I bought refractory cement and I bought, you can buy on mcmaster carr bendable, like heating elements. So they look just they look similar to the heating element you'd have in a deep fryer or in the top of your oven, but you bend it yourself. And I bent those and then cast them into refractory and then put them in, you know, put the baking stones on top of that. And then drilled holes, again, not a good idea in the side of my oven and put the super high temperature things out of it. And those had their own temperature control and their own thermocouples. And then I also put a heater in the in the top so that you can independently control while semi independently because the oven was gas fired from the bottom. So a lot of heat came from the bottom, but I could crank that sucker and I easily got over 900 degrees. But I can't tell you what a problem that brought to my domestic living situation. And not only that, but I failed to put into it a normal like a normal person button. So whenever you're effing with your oven, just realize that you're doing something unsafe. So leave that there, leave it where it is. And I'm gonna I'm learning a lot more about oven modification. Now actually, while I'm writing the books, I'll probably have a lot better ways to do things safely in let's say six months, but what you want to do is you want to make it so that anyone who comes into your house can use your oven, because I can't you will get so sick of people being like, I can't turn on your oven. Why can't your oven be normal? What's wrong with your oven? You know what I mean? Like, oh, oh, ah, irritating. So what you want like, ideally, is a switch and I actually in I did modify my current oven I unmodified it because we had a problem there was a gas, a gas leak in my building, some idiots literally shoved a drill bit or something through our main gas line. And all of the gas in our building was shut down for months. But as a result of that, they came up and inspected actually all of our equipment. And so I had to kind of de Hot Rod my oven. But the way I did it with the oven metal hot, rotted here was I had the regular thermostat and the regular everything and then I just had a knob on it. You know how like people, when they have cars, they'll have a knob that like bypasses their muffler and their catalytic converter so they can pretend to be hot rodders on the road. Yeah, so I basically did that where it's like, once I flipped this knob, the oven was a normal person oven. And then when I did it the other way it was in crazy mode. So I would, I would recommend doing something like that so that people can use your oven and also make sure that the electronics that you use to control this, your oven aren't anywhere near the heat source because there's nothing more irritating than in the middle of a bunch of pizza cooking like right when the people come over and you're about to put the pizzas in your PID controller goes over tamp over tamp over tamp and shuts down. Real embarrassing makes you feel real stupid because the other person who came beforehand had just insulted you for having an oven that no one can use and now you can't use it either. And the house is filling with smoke. It's a lot it's a lot of losing to deal with all at once.

Did you have to insulate like around that to keep things safe? Where's the oven like that? Well the

floor got real hot. I mean like the ovens not gonna pregame like nothing's gonna happen to the oven. Think about it, like they go on self cleaning, they go high. The issue is

the cabinetry around it, etc. You

can't have cabinetry around it. Okay, right. Yeah. Yeah. Look, I'm not saying it's a good idea. Yes. You know, and you know, an event eventually, you know, especially once you've already done it, right. And you've had it for years, then the next time you're like, is it? Is it worth it? Or is it okay that I was able to do it? And then you say to yourself, it's okay that I was able to do it and you're fine living without it? Yeah. Right. From Steinberg via Instagram, I've had it with shoe recipes. shoe with like cabbage like you know, shoe pastry, not shoe like the shoe on your no one has recipes for the shoes on your feet? I mean, if someone does, but I don't. I'm exhausted from having to guess when the pinata is done on the stove, then having to guess again, how much egg the dough will take. I want to eliminate this guesswork besides taking the weight of ingredients before and after on the stovetop and the temperature of the pinata at the moment of removing it from the stovetop. Is there anything else I can measure and try to lock down? In any case, please keep up the excellent work. So let's, I used to make this stuff rather regularly, regularly. But that was like 10 years ago, I haven't made it in a long time. I mean, so I mean, other than I would start if you want to do it yourself, just as you say I would lock down the weights. Before and after. It's helpful for me when I do recipe testing because I have a scale that will do 30 kilograms by the 10th grams. So I weigh things in the pots, even big roasting pans, and it's not a problem. But John, do you have any recommendations for this year? You're an old school Francophile?

Yeah, not really, I've only used to make it once. And that was at the very first restaurant I started working out back in 2008. So yeah, don't listen, anyone

out there who has a in the chat, or whatever, who's hearing this right, US and some suggestions, and we'll send it to send it to Steinberg, to you know, help them out, right. Ben Moe Casey wrote in via Twitter. I don't know if my previous question was rejected. Or if you just can't stop talking about Silent Film Stars long enough to answer the questions.

Ouch. Ooh, sorry.

But could you provide a primer on how to use MSG? Is it one to one to salt know how much to start with? Stir fry, roast stew, chili. And you know what I didn't forgot to look it up. There are standard things. But it does not require very much MSG. And it's definitely not one to one, I don't definitely don't use it one to one with salt. John, maybe you can Google around and see you kind of what standard Max is. But the thing about MSG is that you get MSG up real quick. And so it's it's a problem when you're cooking. The main issue. Again, I don't use MSG, I don't have an MSG, I don't have a bowl of MSG sitting next to my stove the way I have salt, right, I probably should because I have nothing against MSG is anyone who listens to me knows. But I tend to use other you know, MSG laden things rather than the straight stuff. But I will say that if you add some MSG, right, and then you add a little more, it's very easy to add too much. And then not noticed you've added too much until you haven't had MSG for a couple of minutes, and then go back and taste it again. And I would say it's easier to do that with MSG than it is with salt. The same thing can happen with salt you can you can over solve something by tasting salting, tasting, salting, tasting salting, because your palate gets a little bit blunted to the salt as you're doing that, and then you over salt. Right. But That definitely happens with MSG. And so I would add a little bit and wait, and then add a little bit more. Was that a decent answer or no?