[Show Intro] Jala Hey, thanks for coming! I'm glad you're here. Come on in! Everyone's out on the patio right now. Looks like a couple of people are in the garden. I can't wait to introduce you! Can I get you anything? [turned away] Hey folks, our new guest is here! [Intro music] 00:00:01.92 Jala Hello world, and welcome to Jala-chan's Place. I'm your host, Jala Prendes (she/her), and today I am joined once more by my friend Mike (he/him) in the kitchen to talk about food and cooking and flavor. This is the promised second episode of the ongoing series about food and flavor. So, Hey Mike, how are you doing today? 00:00:28.49 Michael Prehn I'm doing pretty good, Jala. How about yourself? 00:00:31.57 Jala It's cold. 00:00:33.59 Michael Prehn Yeah, it got cold all of a sudden today. It was hot yesterday here. 00:00:39.92 Jala And then suddenly the temperature dropped. And then now it's I looked at the weather and it's supposed to freeze next week. And I'm like, OK, we were in summer about two days ago. 00:00:51.37 Michael Prehn And we will be in summer again. 00:00:51.45 Jala OK. 00:00:53.49 Michael Prehn We're actually pretty good with it because, uh, as you know, Mardi Gras is like a real big holiday for my family. 00:00:53.88 Jala Yes. 00:00:59.85 Michael Prehn And, uh, we deal with cold, probably a little bit better than heat because you're like jumping around and you're screaming for beads and all that stuff and drinking, of course. 00:01:06.57 Jala Yeah. 00:01:10.30 Michael Prehn So it's better when it's in the sixties than the nineties, uh, that works out for us. 00:01:14.91 Jala Oh, for sure. Yeah, yeah. So that's going to be fun for you for sure. 00:01:20.45 Michael Prehn Mm-hmm. 00:01:21.64 Jala So not for me, I'm not going to be partaking, but that's OK. Like I will live vicariously through you and your stories when you come back from it and maybe if you bring photos. 00:01:32.24 Michael Prehn Yeah, I mean, germane to this episode, really my only involvement in the Mardi Gras thing is actually just cooking food for everyone that shows up to the party. I don't even go to the parades anymore because I did it so much when I was a kid. 00:01:43.07 Jala but Right. 00:01:44.27 Michael Prehn I'm like perennially burnt out on it. So I'm basically going to get off of this podcast and then cook for a bunch of randos for like two weeks straight. 00:01:55.56 Jala Yeah, so that being the case, you're not going to get the next episode in this series coming up very soon. Let's just put it that way. 00:02:01.91 Michael Prehn Mm-mm. 00:02:02.57 Jala It'll be at least a month or two ah before we can reconvene on the next one in this. So ah the last time on this show, we were talking about the science of flavor, how flavor is made in the brain and in the body and all of that wonderful fun. 00:02:19.82 Jala So today we're talking about the art of flavor, primarily we're going to be going off of notes from the book by the same title, The Art of Flavor, by Daniel Patterson and Mandy Aftel. However, we're also going to go off grid into Mike's experiences whenever is pertinent and of course anything that I have to add. So there you go. 00:02:41.90 Jala We have a lot to cover. There's a lot of stuff here. 00:02:45.22 Michael Prehn hello 00:02:45.56 Jala So um I'm just going to say real quick, right now you don't have anything out there on the internet. I do not believe correct. Mike hasn't changed yet. 00:02:51.74 Michael Prehn Uh, that is correct. I'm in the process of, uh, actually opening my own business, uh, which is going to revolve around food in a lot of ways. So I'll have more news about that. Hopefully next time we talk, but as of right now, I, this still continues to be the leading source of bike brand content on the internet. 00:03:11.44 Jala Yahoo! And of course for us, you can find my show and Dave's show, Monster to your Monster on ko-fi.com slash fireheartmedia where we have bonus content. 00:03:24.69 Jala We've been doing a lot of reviews of movies and stuff recently for our cutting room floor episodes. And of course we are continuing to read our fiction allowed on a glass darkly so you can follow along with those there. 00:03:38.60 Jala So yeah, check those out. And if you want to kick us a few bucks, that would be fantastic. That helps us keep the lights on and provide for you the content that you crave. Okay, so let's get into it. 00:03:50.47 Michael Prehn Absolutely. 00:03:54.52 Jala So ah one of the first things that I pulled out of this book was a quote that I really enjoyed. It was, ah the art of cooking is an expression and reflection of a civilization itself. 00:04:07.26 Jala And if you really sit with that and you think about the different types of cuisines from around the world and how those locales and those cultures really um define and are defined by the food that they make. you know and and Of course, we talked about on the last episode how food is culturally so important to people. like When um immigrants come to a new country, they bring along their food, and it's important to them that they share that food with God and everybody. 00:04:37.89 Jala you know They want their kids to eat it, but they ah also want anybody who's interested to eat it. And you know that's where you get some really great um you know restaurants and things opened up by people who have unique flavors to share with other people. 00:04:56.95 Michael Prehn Right. And, you know, we discussed it in the previous episode as well, a lot of this is influenced by a particular culture's environment. Um, you know, there's long histories of the spice pallets that countries use and people's use that is affected by where they initially kind of evolved in the globe. Uh, so it very much tells a deep story about a people. 00:05:20.79 Jala Mm hmm. And so that's why like one of my favorite things to read when it comes to history is always something about like the spices or the foods and how that defined a time period or a culture and how those things especially if you go into spices and stuff how those traveled around the world, you know, and um 00:05:33.87 Michael Prehn Mm hmm. 00:05:40.51 Jala how they changed over time and in their applications altered over time as well. So um the book then goes into discussing the history of flavor. It talks about the presence of spices in the vast majority of surviving medieval recipes, even in Europe where people usually think, you know, um European peoples, especially up in like the UK and stuff, they don't they don't know what spice is or anything like that, right? But um no, when they got the spice road, They went gangbusters with it. And so most everything of the surviving medieval recipes do in fact have a bunch of spices in them. As a matter of fact, someplace that's really fun for folks to check out, if this is an interesting topic for you, is ah tasting history. 00:06:25.46 Jala That is a cookbook, but that's also like a web series by a guy. I forget his name. Um, I will put it in the show notes though. Um, anyway, like he basically takes a bunch of medieval recipes and then makes them now and then tries them and talks about them and shares with you. Like, even if it's something by the same name now, what the original version was like or what the medieval version anyway was like is totally different than what we know today. So, uh, 00:06:56.95 Michael Prehn Yeah. ah Tasting history. I've run across them once or twice. I think that's a Max Miller joint, if I remember correctly. 00:07:02.95 Jala Yeah, I think you're right. I think that's the guy's name. 00:07:05.94 Michael Prehn Yeah. And it's really interesting seeing how those recipes have changed over time, but ah still kind of have roots in today. Like ah the last one I saw talking about sugar plums, those around Christmas time and ah what exactly a sugar plum is. 00:07:19.66 Michael Prehn Cause we all know the phrase, but we don't actually know what makes them anymore. And it turns out it's because they're a huge pain in the butt to make. 00:07:26.77 Jala And I thought I did because I remember 00:07:30.55 Michael Prehn i think That's where I saw it, yeah. 00:07:32.28 Jala Yeah, I remember I shared that and I was like, yeah, this is this is cool to see all of these different things and learn about the ridiculousness of how all this stuff used to be made because, you know, I guess like back in the medieval day, you know, once they were done with their work day, they decided that they needed to spend I don't know how many hours making these candies and stuff. So anyway, moving right along. The thing about spices, though, is that eventually they became ubiquitous. Everybody has spices these days and you know they are a commodity that is a lot easier to obtain. So herbs and spices gave way eventually to what would be in our day and age of scientific discovery is the flavor industry, which we talked about that in depth on the science episode. 00:08:22.74 Michael Prehn Flavor industries, big money. you know ah I'm going to go back to my perennial punching bag, Frito-Lay, who has invested several countries, ah you know ah gross domestic and domestic product and making potato chips and how much thought and money they pour into that. 00:08:41.83 Jala Right. And so one of the very first versions of what we would think of as like the alchemical process of the flavor industry as we know it today is based in essential oils. So essential oils are where the flavors and fragrances that live in plants, the volatile aromatic compounds that make up the way we experience them when we smell and taste them, 00:09:05.60 Jala um Those elements were beginning to be used in cooking even way like back in D.C., so people were concentrating and using those as flavors in their food. for but Basically, we've been doing that for a very, very long time. I don't know. ah Forever is not the word here, but like it feels like forever. 00:09:26.91 Jala So there's even evidence that ancient Persians employed distillation, which is the process that you use to make essential oils. As far back as 3000 BC and around 1000 BC, the Arabs rediscovered that process. 00:09:40.97 Jala And from that point forward, we've been continually refining that process to where now that we've got these wild copper stills that do like 21 filtrations and distillations and stuff like that for some of the you know high quality alcohols and stuff you get these days. 00:09:51.26 Michael Prehn Mm hmm. 00:10:00.36 Jala Yeah, so ah the history of using essential oils for flavor is documented in European cookbooks up to three centuries old in recipes for bitters, cakes, puddings, cordial sauces, gum, cocktails, colas, ketchup, candies, cookies, and so much more. And there's also Arab and Mughal examples. 00:10:21.23 Jala from centuries even earlier than that. so Again, this is something that's been used for a good long while. and um Up to the 16th century, only a small group of essential oils were distilled and in use, cinnamon, frankincense, sage, rosemary, rose, cedarwood. But in the 17th century, once distillation got advanced enough to allow for it, a plethora of other essential oils joined the mix. Then you have stuff like cardamom, anise, thyme, lemon, coriander, 00:10:51.06 Jala I'm not going to give you the whole list, but there's a lot. 00:10:54.73 Michael Prehn Basically anything you can think of, people at some point in history have tried to use distillation to concentrate and preserve flavors. 00:11:02.79 Jala Absolutely. So how about you tell us about a little bit about the difference between that and the modern incarnation that we've got today, Mike? 00:11:11.85 Michael Prehn yeah So the ah modern flavor industry is kind of increasingly distant ah from actual food and food sources. The famous example that caused a lot of controversy on the first episode was me talking about breakfast cereals that are blueberry flavored but don't actually contain any blueberry. 00:11:30.06 Jala Right. 00:11:30.68 Michael Prehn Got a lot of comments on that one, um but ah the book says, beginning with Cumerin in 1868, chemists had started to figure out how to synthesize some of the specific aroma molecules that they had isolated using distillation. 00:11:46.06 Michael Prehn ah for use in both ah flavor and fragrance. And initially they were used as a supplement for the natural ingredients to add aroma and taste to beverages and candies, but pretty quickly they took the place of the actual essential oils ah for the same reason that most synthetic materials do. It's cheaper and more reliable. 00:12:06.42 Michael Prehn ah The famous example of this in my local areas past is chicory coffee, which is a big tradition in New Orleans. That was initially started because of a blockade on supplies. 00:12:22.17 Michael Prehn And they started adding chicory to their coffee because ah they couldn't get actual coffee, but then people grew to like the taste. So there is that kind of sliding window of ah replacing flavors with other ones that are similar enough. 00:12:39.62 Jala Right. And it's also true that say, for example, we talked about this on the last episode too, but cinnamon, you know, what we know is cinnamon that is in the store is not the same as actual cinnamon. So, you know, like there, and that's because again, like that flavor was swapped out, but then still called the same thing because it was close enough. 00:12:50.67 Michael Prehn Right. 00:13:02.40 Michael Prehn yeahp it's ah it happens a lot um in the modern kind of industry. A lot of the stuff that we know is not truly the same thing underneath the service. ah you know Wasabi ah being a popular example too. 00:13:16.94 Jala Right, right. So the problem with these synthetics taking the place of the essential oils is that, of course, they can't replicate the complexity of flavor as it occurs in nature. We talked about this again last time where we were mentioning all the different thousands of molecules, different types of scents and different ah properties that are in the natural ingredient. 00:13:39.35 Jala Whereas any given ah artificial one is going to have, depending upon the cost of the artificial flavor in use, anything from a small handful to you know maybe like a dozen or more. I don't know exactly the numbers, but like it's a limited number. It's nowhere near the thousands of compounds that you're going to find in a real thing. So like a lot of the subtleties of the true fruit or plant, you know whatever type of plant it is, you know if it's an herb or a spice or whatever, they get lost. 00:14:14.59 Michael Prehn Yeah, and that's part of the reason why ah dried herbs or otherwise preserved herbs don't have the same behavior as the original fresh stuff. um And it's not to say that they're not without their culinary uses, but it is a little bit different because you lose something during that processing. 00:14:32.47 Jala Right. So the thing about essential oils is that like you, when you're making an essential oil, you're making it off of like these ingredients at their peak freshness. So you have however many pounds and pounds to make like a bottle, a small bottle of oil that gets distilled down. And, um, also like I hear a lot of shuffling on your end. Is that like kitty or something? 00:14:54.83 Michael Prehn Yeah, astute listeners might hear me trying to keep ah Max from stepping on my keyboard over here. 00:15:00.94 Jala ah Okay. 00:15:24.67 Jala So for this emerging it's like, let me try that again. So for the emerging industry of using all these artificial flavors to produce some kind of a product, soda was a major focus in 1911. According to Darcy O'Neill's popular history, fix the pumps. The United States had more than a hundred thousand soda fountains that served more than eight billion drinks a year. 00:15:53.30 Jala now fewer than 100 remain of like real soda fountains anymore. So um that's an interesting thing. And yeah, like soda has been a big market basically since it was invented. ah People like the effervescence and the fizziness and the kind of fanciness that you... you know Originally it was fancy. Now it's all over the place. Everybody's got bubbly everything these days. You can bubble stuff at home. You can buy a carbonation kit. 00:16:21.63 Michael Prehn Yeah, Coca-Cola and Pepsi being some of the biggest food businesses in the world at this point. 00:16:27.58 Jala Oh yeah, absolutely. But you know, back in the day, it used to be a big fancy thing to go down there and go have a soda with your sweetheart. I mean, like everybody knows the little, ooh, we're having a float together and sharing with two straws and we're going to have our little float, you know, and like, that's a thing from a way by gone era. But like, that was a thing for a time. So. 00:16:48.54 Michael Prehn Yeah, and you had soda jerks that were actually like mixing flavors together and things like that. It used to be a lot less ah automated than it is nowadays, I guess. 00:16:58.62 Jala It's kind of like what we have still at the last few standing snow cone stands like or shaved ice places that have, you know, like the good shaved ice, and then they'll mix all of the different flavors together behind there for you. 00:17:12.29 Jala You know, they're essentially your sugar barista. 00:17:15.18 Michael Prehn Mm-hmm. Gotta love those. 00:17:17.53 Jala Yeah, so let's move into talking about flavor. So um ah the first part of this book is kind of trying to cover how we we use like the language that we use around flavor and cooking in general. And this is some important stuff to cover as a groundwork because it gets you thinking in terms of what these ingredients bring to the table. And this is important for crafting flavor because If you have language you can start to compose something with that language right um you can without the language as well but it's a little bit harder it's a little bit easier for people to focus on when they've got the words. So mike how about you tell us about character. 00:18:06.55 Michael Prehn Yeah, so this is a quote from the text here. It says, when you meet someone for the first time, usually take away an overall impression. It's the same for ingredients. They make a certain general impression shaped by their most dominant attributes. For example, the character of parsley can be described as green, fresh, or herbal. 00:18:24.72 Michael Prehn ah Character words tend to be adjectives and they tend to be broad capturing major attributes of tastes and aroma like acidic, acrid, aggressive, astringent, bitter, things like that. um So yeah, I mean, it can be, we talked about on the last episode, it can be pretty difficult to explain the character of a flavor ah because language is kind of inherently limited at that sort of thing. And especially the English language is pretty bad at it. 00:18:55.13 Michael Prehn So that's why a lot of the descriptors for herbs and spices and things like that tend to be very broad adjectives. 00:19:02.35 Jala Right. And usually when people are talking about the flavor of a thing, unless they do something like they they take a sommelier course or something like that, or they work in the food industry and they they have the words for this, they usually talk in terms of character about the thing that they're eating. you know ah So for example, I am currently drinking a beer. 00:19:24.72 Michael Prehn Mmhmm. 00:19:24.85 Jala this beer is of super fruity. It said it's a tart guava pineapple orange beer. And so I've never had this before and I tried it. And it was great because I happened to be on video at that time. So Mike could see me and Dave's faces when we we tried this and I was like, it's tart. And then Dave puckered up and and made the face that you make when you do like, you know, you eat a piece of lemon or something by itself. 00:19:50.17 Jala And so, um you know, that was my first word out of my mouth was that general overall impression was the tartness of this beer because it has all of this um upfront fruit and, you know, some of it kind of like just at the beginning of the ripeness kind of fruit. 00:20:08.52 Michael Prehn Yeah, warhead in a can. And um some of those words also remind me character and the way people specifically describe flavor tends to be um relational as well. 00:20:22.08 Michael Prehn Like very frequently people say this tastes like this ah because it is kind of difficult to put words to it sometimes. 00:20:30.72 Jala Well, and you did it just now. You were like, it's a warhead and a can. Yes. There you go. 00:20:35.35 Michael Prehn Yeah. 00:20:35.53 Jala Bam. We got our descriptor for that. 00:20:39.01 Michael Prehn Comparative and relational are very important for describing flavors because it's so complicated. We don't necessarily have words for it. 00:20:46.31 Jala Yeah, absolutely. So we'll move from here into shape. Now, this is the one that was the weirdest one to me when I first started thinking about it. But the longer you sit with this concept of the shape of the flavor, which I'll explain in just a second. 00:20:55.55 Michael Prehn Yeah. 00:21:01.98 Jala the more that it makes sense to you. And the more that you employ this when you're actually having something and thinking about the flavor and trying to put words to it, the more it'll make sense in context of how you compose a flavor with this ingredient. So um this is another broad way of characterizing the nature of an ingredient. And um it has nothing to do with the physical shape or texture. It has to do with the impression of what you're tasting. 00:21:30.64 Jala So um a lot of this book also talks about the relational aspects of perfumery to cooking, because in the olden days, like way back in the day, perfumers and cooks, you know chefs were the same thing. And they were also the medicine people. 00:21:50.68 Jala They were the doctor, the chef, they were the perfumer. 00:21:51.88 Michael Prehn Right. 00:21:54.20 Jala All of these things are one guy. So perfumers learn to smell in shapes and cooks learn to taste in shapes. 00:22:05.19 Jala So saffron is a flat taste. Cinnamon is pointy. Adding shapes to the character helps you to think imaginatively and architecturally um about how you're going to use this together with other ingredients. So some shape descriptors would be balanced or deep, flat, full-bodied, hollow, pointy, round, sharp, soft, thin. 00:22:32.94 Jala So some of these are easier for people to have instances of in their heads than others. like If you have a really rich dark chocolate, deep is a really good way of describing that. 00:22:43.54 Michael Prehn Mm hmm. 00:22:46.29 Jala Pointy, they already gave us one. Something that is, like say, super tart would also be a pointy thing. um Something like cinnamon that has like you know that punch of flavor in your mouth, that's a pointy thing. 00:22:57.88 Jala Saffron is kind of like of ah you know like an even keel kind of thing, kind of spice when you're using it. And so it's flat and everything. So when you're making something, for example, 00:23:12.08 Jala You don't want to have a bunch of ingredients that translate to you as being pointy because then God help you, you're going to have a dish that's exploding, you know, more or less. 00:23:20.47 Michael Prehn Mm hmm. 00:23:21.63 Jala So like ah the way that these things interact with one another, all these different elements that you put together um will eventually make more sense and again, be like kind of the architecture of your dish, if you will. 00:23:36.40 Michael Prehn Yeah, and part of that comes back to taste being, again, a synthetic sense that's a combination of a lot of our senses, all of them really. ah So there is that kind of crossover where people imagine things that don't have a physical presence as being a shape or having a certain structure. 00:23:55.26 Michael Prehn People will describe fatty foods very frequently as around flavor because it's ah firing all of those satiety neurons in your brain or they might talk about something being. 00:24:07.08 Michael Prehn ah You know fiery if it's spicy when there isn't any actual heat involved with that but that's just how we can describe it because it relates to other experiences we've had. 00:24:20.05 Jala Right, right. And say if you have a soup and the soup is like barely or not even spiced, a broth, a broth can be a thin, thin broth that doesn't really have a lot of flavor to it. It's like the bearish, it's like the La Croix of flavor in your broth. You know, that's your thin taste, you know, that's your hollowness, right? So, so yeah, ah how about you tell us about the texture? 00:24:46.92 Michael Prehn Yeah, so our book here says texture is about an ingredient's physical presence the way that it feels in your mouth when you eat it ah It's not the same thing as flavor, obviously, but it has a big impact on how we perceive flavor. The taste of a thin liquid will usually be evanescent, whereas that of a thick, viscous liquid will have more staying power. Consomme will feel light and fresh, quickly disappearing on the palate, whereas a a puree lingers on the tongue, delivering flavor for a longer period of time. 00:25:18.88 Michael Prehn Crunchy granola releases the flavor of the oats and other ingredients in little intense explosions, while creamy oatmeal delivers a comforting warm blanket of melded flavors as well as texture. ah Putting words to the texture of an ingredient helps you begin to imagine how to cook with it. a Fresh country crunchy celery might be best used raw, while older celery would serve better in a soup. 00:25:44.69 Michael Prehn And some of the texture descriptors they use here are chewy, coarse, creamy, crunchy, hard, leathery, oily, pulpy, silky, smooth, soft, thick, thin, or velvety. 00:25:44.82 Jala Right. 00:25:57.67 Michael Prehn I'm going to do a quick shout out here for one of the better cookbooks I've bought in recent days. And I'm going to need to find the name of the author. He's a big YouTube personality. 00:26:08.88 Michael Prehn but This cookbook that i read is called ah texture before taste and it's very interestingly structured because i actually have the chapters of the book ah based on the texture of the dishes rather than. What kind of protein it is or what it tastes like or where it comes from things like that. 00:26:26.22 Michael Prehn So a really good book overall, but very interestingly structured as well. And texture is, according to my ah experience with tastings and focus groups, the most important differentiator for whether or not someone likes a food. um This is a big part of the reason why like people don't like oysters or ah things like that. It's really the texture. 00:26:51.51 Jala Max has thoughts. 00:26:53.89 Michael Prehn I know he does. 00:26:54.91 Jala I love it. 00:26:57.01 Jala I love it. We heard Max furiously typing, and then he was he was like, I am impatient, Mike. I need to tell them about the crunchiness. 00:27:06.80 Michael Prehn you know The problem is, you know what the problem is, I think is that I'm not sure, but I don't think Brittany is home from work yet. 00:27:13.60 Michael Prehn So usually she's the distraction. 00:27:13.82 Jala Oh, yeah. Uh-huh. 00:27:16.33 Michael Prehn So right now he can hear me talking and having a good time. And he's like, why am I not involved? What's going on here? 00:27:23.20 Michael Prehn I was hearing him running around. I'm like, God, I hope that's not showing up on the mic, but apparently it is. So good. 00:27:28.37 Jala But that's okay. 00:27:28.65 Michael Prehn Cool. 00:27:29.88 Jala We love pod pets. So um yeah, the thing about this too is that definitely I love the idea of a cookbook that is based around the texture because so many times when I am like trying to compose my snack box, which I've been recently posting my snack box on blue sky. 00:27:47.13 Jala I don't know how long this is going to last, but I post it every day and it's got fresh fruits and veggies and other stuff in there. Usually I try to stick a protein, whatever, some stuff in there in this box. And I try to make sure that I always have crunchy things in there, but then I also have like different textures in there as well, because you get texture fatigue to where even if you like the thing, you've had too much mushy stuff and you want something that has a crunch to it or vice versa, that kind of a thing. So um ah considering the texture of the thing that you have in front of you is really important. And for me, just like a pro tip for it comes to cooking, if you have wilty veggies that are about to go bad, but they're not bad yet, freeze them and use them in a broth. Like I make veg broth by whatever scraps I've got leftover. And that includes, you know, like tops of things like celery tops that I'm not going to use for anything else or, you you know, whatever. If I have any leftovers and I'm not going to use those in another recipe, I freeze it and throw it into a soup stock. 00:28:51.63 Michael Prehn Yeah, saving scraps from meats and vegetables is always a really good way to add flavor to just about anything. And it's all stuff that you're probably going to throw in the trash anyway. So um you could recycle it into something useful culinarily. 00:29:05.42 Jala And there's actually a cookbook that does, like it's all about using scraps for cooking. It's a little hard to navigate through because you have to like already be aware of the recipes in the book ah to be able to use, you know, to be like, oh yes, I have celery scraps. What can I do with this? It's not organized by the ingredient, unfortunately. ah But there's also a website version. It's by PlantYou and that's Y-O-U. 00:29:31.34 Jala And it's called Scrappy Cooking. There's a cookbook. There's also on the PlantYou website. There is a whole scrapping cookie scrap i can talk Scrappy Cooking section where there's recipes just using leftover stuff. 00:29:46.64 Jala So um that's something to consider ah but to like again you like on the website to be easier for you to just search and figure out where the thing is that you're looking for or if you have an e-book version of the cookbook then you can probably just search the ingredient that you've got and see what you can do with that. 00:30:06.09 Michael Prehn I love that as an idea um a lot because I do find that there is, you know, there's a lot of food waste in American food culture. And yeah if I have to eat something, I'm going to try and utilize a hundred percent of it if I can, not just for like being a responsible steward of the environment or whatever, but also just because like I'm broke. 00:30:27.40 Jala Right, right. 00:30:27.69 Michael Prehn and So anything I can use is going to be helpful for me. 00:30:32.16 Jala Absolutely. So, shuffling right along, we've got intensity. So, ingredients vary enormously in their flavoring power. Even spices, and you know which are the highest intensity category of ingredients, have a range. Cinnamon is a lot more intense than ginger. 00:30:51.02 Jala And intensity varies with the specific ingredient and how it's grown, storen stored, and processed. Some of the character descriptors lifted en listed above, intense, powerful, and delicate, are about the strength of flavor. But to really home in on intensity, it helps to think on a continuum. So on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 to 2 would be what we think of as filler ingredients, bland flavors like rice and potatoes. 00:31:18.92 Jala and some vegetables. The three to four range would include most other vegetables. Herbs and citrus tend to fall in five to seven range. Spices crowd the highest levels of the scale from seven to ten. Fermentation like fish sauce and soy sauce and highly spicy ingredients like chilies are at the top of the scale also. 00:31:39.50 Jala So intensity is key to thinking about how to structure a dish. It affects the relative proportions of the ingredients. In terms of real estate on the plate, intense ingredients are too powerful to be featured as a main ingredient, but they have an outsized impact on the flavor. So in that sense, they are the stars. The intensity also merits restraint. So for example, 00:32:05.05 Jala If you have a dish and you're making it real spicy and you have habanero, you do not want to just put a bunch of sliced habaneros in the middle, like the half of your plate on that you're composing here, obviously. 00:32:16.65 Michael Prehn No. 00:32:17.43 Jala That is a punchy, punchy flavor. And you know um of of course, it also agrees on it depends on the tolerance that you have for spicy things. If you, you know, are somebody who can just sit there and munch on a habanero like I can, or if you're somebody who's like, I've never eaten a habanero before. And I also don't eat spicy chilies ever. So, um, you know, like your, your intensities are also going to be tailored to whoever you're cooking for, uh, as well. So something to keep in mind. 00:32:48.51 Michael Prehn Yeah, it matters a lot whenever you're cooking for a crowd or for the general public. Those very intense flavors also tend to be the ones that are most divisive. You think about things like rosemary, cilantro, those really hot peppers, things of that nature, fermented flavors too. I mean, pretty much everyone likes cheese, but fish sauce can be very off-putting to a lot of people. So it's, um, 00:33:14.25 Michael Prehn what is referred to in the corner world as a ah star flavor and a lot of cases ah where it's not necessarily the biggest thing by volume on your plate but it is the thing that people notice the most um and intensity is something that you have to think about a lot whenever you're cooking. 00:33:30.73 Jala Yeah, absolutely. And that's something too that you have to kind of tailor over time. My recommendation personally, and I know that you'll echo this, Mike, is ah you can't take things out. 00:33:41.98 Jala So ah be cautious when you are first experimenting with an intense flavor um and 00:33:44.72 Michael Prehn Mm hmm. 00:33:48.81 Jala Put a little bit in and be, you know, exercise that restraint, taste while you're cooking, and also be aware that some flavors such as those for mentioned habaneros, if they the longer they sit in the dish and the longer they simmer in there, the more is going to come out of them. 00:33:55.23 Michael Prehn Yeah. 00:34:04.68 Jala so Also, something to keep in mind as you're cooking as well, just because it doesn't taste too hot right now. If it's a hot ingredient, that that spice level is going to kick up a notch as it sits. Everybody knows about, like oh, well, if you cook beans and then you leave them in the fridge overnight and then like the next day they're more flavorful or whatever from all the different stuff you put in there, like chili or or whatever. 00:34:27.39 Michael Prehn Yeah flavor made out of any in organic ingredient and not just like the buzzword organic but anything that grows in or on the earth is a moving target anytime you cook with it so it's not going to be the same moment to moment and you have to be aware of the passage of time whenever you're cooking with things like that. 00:34:46.33 Jala And I have a fun, fun example myself. So I have a version of a purple sweet potato that is in my garden, and I got it from the local farmer's market. We have confirmed it's not ube, but it's some kind of a purple sweet potato. I don't know which one. 00:35:01.65 Jala But you know there's a likely culprit, but we don't know for a fact that it's that one. Anyway, I have this mystery potato. i have I grow it. I took some, and I was trying to mimic these purple sweet potato buns that I get from the Hong Kong market. 00:35:17.09 Jala And so um I was like, OK, I'm going to take, you know, just because they're slightly sweetened buns because the purple sweet potato ah has a sweet flavor. 00:35:17.76 Michael Prehn Mm hmm. 00:35:26.87 Jala So instead of putting like the things that they put in there, which is like evaporated milk and butter and some other stuff, I took a can of coconut condensed milk and I just used like a bit of it to pre proportional to the amount of potato that I had boiled and mashed. 00:35:43.92 Jala And I dumped that in there. And then when I ate it right at first, I was like, oh, this is pretty good. But then as it sat there mixed together with just the condensed coconut, condensed milk, and then was in the fridge the next time I made it, and then like every day after that for several days until I ate it all, it started to taste like cinnamon out of nowhere. 00:36:03.85 Jala And I'm like, where is the cinnamon coming from? 00:36:06.17 Jala It is so cool. I don't know what happened. These are the best potatoes, Mike. I need to send you one of these potatoes. 00:36:12.61 Michael Prehn Yeah, I was going to say the pictures you posted looked delicious, so I certainly wouldn't be opposed to it being a taste tester on that. 00:36:19.55 Jala Yeah. Yeah. Well, if I give you a seed potato, you can grow some somewhere. They actually do really well in a grow bag and um and like you just stick them in a grow bag and ignore them and just water them and leave them alone and they will just do their thing. And then like, you know, in several months you'll have a bunch of like size of your forearm potatoes in there. So it's great. 00:36:40.39 Michael Prehn Potatoes, wondrous vegetable, they grow anywhere and they are not very picky about their environment at all. 00:36:45.57 Jala No, they're not. and like these potatoes are now taking over my yard. They've gotten into the actual ground out of the containers, and so now they're just like growing in the ground. and We have like frogs that live in a certain patch of the potatoes, so we can't harvest those. 00:37:01.28 Michael Prehn That's funny. 00:37:01.42 Jala but Yeah, so anyway, that's a very long aside. But this is just an example of how flavor can change. And like, I don't know how it comes up with this cinnamon flavor, but somehow the medley of flavors came out with a whole interesting different thing that happens when it's sitting in the fridge. So um this is just ah the joy of cooking is is learning these different aspects of these ingredients that you've got available to you. So 00:37:26.56 Michael Prehn My guess would probably be that it was some kind of micro fermentation happening that like one of the compounds in the potatoes was interacting with the coconut milk as time passed, but I i don't know. I'm not super familiar with purple potatoes. 00:37:41.41 Jala Yeah, I don't know, could be, 100% possible. So yeah, so why are we bothering with language though, Mike? 00:37:45.06 Michael Prehn Yeah. 00:37:51.47 Michael Prehn Well, um the ah book here says, appreciating an ingredient in all of its individuality, noticing and naming its facets as best we can, begins to suggest how we might work with it as we set about creating flavor. 00:38:05.94 Michael Prehn For example, this happy sweetness of a fig might remind you of a syrup, which could lead you to think that a sauce made with figs would go great on pancakes, and it does. Language helps show us where to go. Again, kind of talking about the relational or comparative nature of describing flavors. ah It's kind of difficult to explain what mushrooms taste like, but you could compare them to meat or something else that has an earthier flavor. 00:38:33.59 Michael Prehn ah The text goes on to say, the words that capture facets tend to be adjectives or nouns that function as metaphors, referencing other kinds of food or experiences to remind us how they color the dominant character of an ingredient, ah such as airplane glue, amber, anisic, apple, apple peel, baked pear, spalsalmic, et cetera, et cetera. 00:38:56.20 Jala Yeah, there's like a whole paragraph of different things, you could you know, of different things you could possibly... 00:38:58.76 Michael Prehn Yeah, there's 50 or 60 in here. 00:39:01.51 Jala Yeah, I know. there's There's tons and tons of things. Musky, musty, nut, you know, oaky, ocean, whatever. Like, there's a lot of different flavor things that you can attribute to anything depending upon, you know, its various states. 00:39:14.75 Jala So, yeah. Something that you should always try to do is perform this sniff test. So when you smell ingredients, it's the most accessible way to assess their taste and the easiest place to begin developing a nuanced appreciation of them because aroma is already so much a part about the way that we experience food in the first place. And again, referring back to that science episode, we go into it about why and how that works. 00:39:46.14 Jala retro nasal olfaction. 00:39:46.34 Michael Prehn Mm hmm. 00:39:49.27 Jala Yay. there is that There's a word for your dinner table conversation. So yeah, we smell when the cookies are done baking or when the milk has started to turn bad. Smells tell a story not just about the static state of an ingredient, but also about where it's been and what's going on with it. 00:40:05.42 Jala So ah something to note is, say, for example, if you're in the grocery store and you're trying to figure out whether or not a certain type of produce is good or not, like, is it going to taste good or not? Say, for example, cilantro is very, you can tell very easily by smelling cilantro if it's good or not, if it's going to taste good or not. 00:40:23.52 Jala Same thing with strawberries. 00:40:24.30 Michael Prehn right 00:40:24.60 Jala This doesn't happen with every single kind of thing that you have in the grocery store. So you can't just stick your snooter up to everything, but um it is a very useful tool for you. 00:40:36.11 Michael Prehn Yeah, I mean, we evolved to have very strong senses of smell as a defense mechanism against food that was, you know, going to be harmful to us. Uh, but it's useful in determining whether or not something's going to taste good too, because that's your organic ingredients trying to tell you like, Hey, come eat me because I want you to spread our seeds around or whatever the case may be. 00:40:58.13 Jala Yeah, absolutely. So the book also tells about garlic. So fresh garlic is sweet and bright. The aroma tells you it could be used raw, but older garlic smells accurate or even moldy, sometimes with notes of rot and decay. And that's something that it'll still give you that garlic taste, but it probably needs to be cooked. You don't want that fresh on something because it's not is already not fresh. 00:41:23.05 Jala Why would you want to put that on top of something right now? you know like ah You can put it into a composition of flavor where it's not standing out quite so much. you know Again, going back to like the the broth thing that I was mentioning earlier, things like that. 00:41:39.17 Michael Prehn Yeah, unless you're one of those people that uses black garlic and your recipes in which case you take it way beyond the pale. 00:41:46.53 Jala Right, right. Black garlic is good though, if you know what to do with it. 00:41:49.74 Michael Prehn Yeah, it is definitely but it's you know, that's a good example of how fermentation can really change the characteristics of something for the better. 00:41:57.67 Jala Absolutely. So yeah. And then also, as mentioned before, you need to try to think about all the different parts of your food. I already mentioned plant use, uh, scrappy cooking website and cookbook, but also think about other stuff. So I'm vegan, so I don't think about meat at all, but meat consists of bones and fat and muscle, several different types of muscle, uh, even the parts that are often thrown away like chicken backs or necks or shank bones. 00:42:25.03 Jala can be used in stocks and stews. so And of course, you already know lots of things are our bone broths and things like that. Those exist out there in the world and that's using scraps. That's stuff that people aren't eating. So, I mean, yes, there are people that'll crack the bone and suck the marrow out, but you know you can also use that if you're not one of those people who do that, you can throw it into some of these other things and ah cook something else with it. 00:42:51.66 Jala And there's also more to plants than the most obvious parts. So if you go to the farmer's market or if you get your stuff organic or whatever in the grocery store and it has the tops on it, beetroot tops are a lot like Swiss chard for example, and carrot tops are useful to make a pesto with actually. So ah there's a bunch of different ways that you can use scraps to do stuff. And again, like there's various sources that'll tell you about this. um Say, for example, too, broccoli, a lot of people just throw the stems away. They only eat the tops you know with the the little crowns on there, ah the florets. But um the stems itself stems themselves can be sliced up real thin and then put into something and also still be used. And they are um 00:43:44.00 Jala you know ah Young and tender broccoli tends to be better for for the stocks, so so definitely ah take that with with little consideration, but um you know they're also useful. don't Don't just discard them necessarily. 00:43:58.83 Michael Prehn Yeah. One of my favorite pasta sauces that I make is actually made by boiling the stems of broccoli and ah kind of blending it up with the seasonings and stuff. It makes a really nice like velvety green sauce. That's really nutrient rich and delicious. 00:44:15.12 Jala Awesome. Awesome. Yeah. And as you already mentioned, and this is so important right now, uh, using more of the vegetable makes your, or, or meat or whatever, uh, makes your shopping dollars go further. 00:44:26.52 Jala And that makes your cooking tastier too. When you add all of these things in and, you know, if you're using a homemade veg broth rather than, uh, bought in a container or broth, it's going to taste a lot better to you as well. 00:44:41.14 Jala So, so yeah. 00:44:42.81 Michael Prehn Yeah, I mean, the markup on store bought stocks and, and sauces and any of that stuff is just ludicrous. Like if you actually sit there and do the math on how much it costs you to make it, it's basically nothing because again, it's made with stuff that you're probably going to throw away anyway. Right. Uh, so why pay for it? 00:45:02.60 Jala Yeah, absolutely. And I know that like this can be a trick depending upon how much freezer state, freezer real estate you've got and things like that. 00:45:11.31 Michael Prehn Yeah. 00:45:12.49 Jala Like say, for example, we have a tiny freezer. We're thinking um like we would like to eventually get like a um a freezer that we can throw out into our garage and have out there just to have extra space to put some stuff because like imagine what we as vegans could do if we could make a bunch of different roasts and broths and things like that and have a bunch of you know vegan meat that we made that's you know in there waiting for us in the broths and having a bunch of you know freezer veggies and stuff like that available to us to use whenever we want. 00:45:34.19 Michael Prehn Mmhmm. 00:45:47.77 Jala That would be great. you know As it is, we have to do like a fairly regular clean out of everything. and We're in the middle of one of those purges right now where we're like, okay, what's in there? Let's pull it all out and look at it. you know so 00:46:01.32 Michael Prehn Yeah, extra freezer space can be a real beautiful thing. 00:46:04.43 Jala Oh, yes. Oh, yes. And imagine how many awesome freezy pops I'd make it to make homemade freezy pops out of, you know, like um the fruits and stuff that are about to go bad, but they're not quite bad yet like because you have too much fruit and you didn't eat at all. Throw that in a smoothie. And if you're not going to drink that smoothie, turn it into icy pops. Such an easy thing to do. And it's a great tasty thing for later. 00:46:28.60 Michael Prehn Yeah, and fruit tends to be its sweetest kind of right before it turns south. So it'd be great for that kind of thing. 00:46:34.68 Jala Mm-hmm. Absolutely. So yeah, Mike, let's get into the composition of flavor. 00:46:41.68 Michael Prehn Sure. So the book says herbs and spices generally function as top notes, striking the palate first and defining your initial impression of a dish. Spices usually sit in the middle, ah but other ingredients play different roles depending on how they're treated and what else they're combined with. 00:46:58.48 Michael Prehn Poached chicken is light, more towards the middle register, but roasted or grilled chicken takes on a deeper and fuller flavor. Roasted vegetables can play base too, especially in a meatless dish. Most vegetable salads take place entirely in the middle to high register. 00:47:14.47 Michael Prehn And it goes on to say because food is so closely linked to what we feel and remember it's easy to confuse what is familiar with what is good. And that's a very common thing you hear people talk about comfort food you know i ate this a lot when i was growing up and that's why i love it even though sometimes it's not objectively create. 00:47:35.08 Jala Right. Right. And, you know, that's that's because you have so many memories attached to this particular flavor, this mouthfeel, this everything. You know, when you're partaking of that dish, you're not just partaking of the flavors that you have in front of you. You are also partaking of all of the memories attached to that flavor. 00:47:55.20 Jala you know and It's kind of the same thing with smells. like This is a cute thing. I realized when Dave and I went out of town and I needed to get some lotion because I ran out, I bought a little sample and all they had was Jergens. 00:48:06.50 Michael Prehn Mm hmm. 00:48:08.95 Jala I got this Jergens lotion as soon as I opened it up. I was like, this smells like my mom because my mom uses Jergens lotion. and I'm like 00:48:16.65 Michael Prehn That's funny. 00:48:16.71 Jala you know Forever, Jergens is going to just be my mom. Whenever I open that up, it's going to smell like my mom. It's kind of like my dad uses Old Spice. So like when Dave first moved in and everything, he was using Old Spice. 00:48:30.00 Jala And I'm like, um, Dave, you smell like my dad. 00:48:30.80 Michael Prehn Yeah. 00:48:33.27 Jala And that had to go. So he had to find a new smell. 00:48:36.79 Michael Prehn we yeah We got to change this up that's causing some crossed wires. 00:48:37.54 Jala So that's being real weird right now. And I'm not here for that. 00:48:45.05 Michael Prehn Yep, I shared the story in the previous episode, but I forever have an association ah between black coffee and relaxation, which is kind of the opposite of what coffee does for most people. But it's because back when I was getting my kind of formative career, I was working behind the bar. And so my meal break would always be accompanied with a cup of coffee. So I could get that last caffeinated burst of energy to close down the place. 00:49:12.17 Michael Prehn So I find drinking coffee very relaxing and it tends to make me think of food as well. 00:49:18.34 Jala Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And, um you know, the there are, especially for me, there's definitely memories of certain things. Like I remember back when I was first trying to drink coffee, the way that I got into coffee, because I didn't like coffee for a long time, the way that I finally got into coffee was because I was so sleep deprived when I was in college working full time and going to school full time, that I eventually tried those little bottled Frappuccino things. 00:49:44.28 Michael Prehn Mm hmm. 00:49:47.93 Jala And, you know, that was like before I was vegan. 00:49:48.24 Michael Prehn Oh, yeah. 00:49:51.25 Jala And so like I used to drink those and that's how I could stomach coffee. And then eventually that switched over to like, then I got into eventually to the point where I was making a bunch of espresso at home and stuff like that and having so much coffee. 00:50:06.52 Michael Prehn Yeah, same. 00:50:07.04 Jala yeah These days, i like I do want to have an espresso machine again at some point in the future. I do not currently um because I'm trying to cut down on my overall caffeine consumption and I take pre-workout when I go to the gym. That already has caffeine. 00:50:22.97 Michael Prehn Right. 00:50:23.41 Jala Lots of caffeine. So I try to do tea after that or maybe like a cold brew drip coffee, you know, kind of thing, not like um espresso punch you in the face with too much, too much caffeine going on there. But um yeah, so ah the bottled espresso will forever be related to so much of my college career for me. So, you know, again, it's the memories and stuff that that come up. 00:50:50.95 Jala And those associations will change how you interact with those foods. So yeah. 00:50:56.90 Michael Prehn Yeah, absolutely. 00:50:58.50 Jala So let's move into what the book calls the four basic rules of flavor. So similar ingredients need a contrasting flavor. Similar ingredients tend to be what we eat as comfort food, something like mac and cheese, rice and beans, stuff that has kind of a milder flavor. Like comfort food is not usually like a super spicy punch you in the face with this flavor you know kind of dish. It's usually something that's milder and mellower that you can just kind of have. It's usually high in in salt and fat. 00:51:31.57 Jala you know, or sweet and fat, something like that. um But anyway. 00:51:36.01 Michael Prehn Yeah, comfort for food tends to be very rich and kind of decadent because obviously we're wired to enjoy that kind of thing. 00:51:38.84 Jala Yes. 00:51:43.24 Jala Yeah, absolutely. But again, it also has that subtler milder flavor where you can just kind of like eat it no matter what your current constitution is, you know, like you don't have to like prepare your body for it or anything, you know. 00:51:58.35 Michael Prehn Yeah, when you're being challenged by other stuff, you don't want to be challenged by your food. 00:52:02.20 Jala Right. Right. So but yeah, ah food yeah just like in life tends to be to the point where like too much harmony breeds boredom. You can get bored if all you have is mac and cheese and there's no spices or anything in there. It's just mac and cheese. And that's all you're eating every single day. So to avoid a pile up of blandness, some counterpoint is needed, something to punctuate the dish and give it shape. And the book, I didn't put this in the notes, but um the book about that said mac and cheese was like, 00:52:32.19 Jala You can put some you know cayenne into your mac and cheese or something like that i would even say I think I've done something kinda weird like pickle juice or something like a little bit not a whole lot just to give it some kind of like a perkiness to it and that actually ended up working pretty well too. At one point. 00:52:51.92 Michael Prehn Yeah, I find that a little bit of acid with basically any kind of fatty food is really good. And obviously you and I are very like a foodie oriented, so we want to experiment with things. 00:53:05.98 Jala Oh yeah, yeah, you tell anybody else, yeah, I put this stuff in there and then they'll look at you like, well, you did what now? 00:53:11.42 Michael Prehn What? Yeah. 00:53:12.56 Jala Don't ask what's in it, just eat it. yeah 00:53:15.77 Michael Prehn It's good, I promise. 00:53:17.05 Jala Right. Right. So ah the book does give some examples, though, like potatoes, which are this this kind of comfort type of food with leeks, which they're not punch you in the face kind of on you know like full on onion flavor, but they are in the onion family. And those two things go very well together. And they're still kind of on the mild side, but they pair well. 00:53:37.24 Jala ah And then also, I gave a bunch of sweet and salty examples like salted dark chocolate, salted caramel, salted watermelon, any of those things. You're adding ah something else that's a counterpoint. So instead of that sweet, you've got the salt. And then that you know helps to balance it, round it out a little bit more. 00:53:57.87 Michael Prehn Right, yeah. 00:54:00.18 Jala So yeah, let's talk about divergent flavor, adding a divergent flavor, Mike. 00:54:06.42 Michael Prehn Sure. So um acidity suggests a direction, a salad likely with an acidic vinaigrette. But acidity is not a flavor per se. um How would we compose that vinaigrette? ah Cured black olives back in. Those are salty, dark, fruity, and complex. 00:54:24.47 Michael Prehn ah So might some oily or fishy cured anchovies and a pungent green capers and brine. These intense flavors have the capacity to stand up to each other and have facets that link together seamlessly. They also need to be used in restrained amounts or buried as we'll discuss later. ah Treated in this manner they will bind together and make a bold seasoning for a salad. 00:54:48.94 Michael Prehn ah Chopped parsley will add a fresh grassy note, lemon juice for acidity and subtle flavor, and zest ah to add a bright element to lift the deeper flavors. Champagne vinegar for neutral flavored acidity, and fruity olive oil to balance the acidity and bring together both textures and flavors. Complete and easy but powerful vinaigrette. Contrast can be introduced into base ingredients as well. 00:55:15.90 Michael Prehn a hearty lettuce like radicchio can provide not only a textural counterpoint to the softness of the potatoes and leeks, but also a pleasingly bitter foil to their sweetness. So this is something that I talk about a lot with my cooking, which is um oppositional flavors. you know I just brought up my favorite example of it, which is whenever you're cooking with a very fatty dish, acidity tends to ah cut through it and provide a counterpoint that's a nice point of relief for your palate. A classic example of this being, of course, ah fried seafood and lemon juice go really well together. 00:55:58.92 Jala Yeah, absolutely. And so that's something that's really important to talk about so much so that that's a whole nother section that we're about to lean into. But something I wanted to add about this very specific example about this vinaigrette. 00:56:14.04 Jala This Art of Flavor book has tons of recipes in it. So like and at the end of each of these little sections, they have recipes that will go into detail and you can read the recipe over and then you can try it for yourself and see what the hell they're talking about. So like it's a whole flavor adventure if you really want to go into it. So if this sounds interesting and cool to you, I definitely recommend picking up the book because there are places for you to go with the flavor in your actual kitchen. 00:56:43.36 Jala they give you know recipes to work with based on all of these things. 00:56:46.79 Michael Prehn Yeah, it's both kind of a cookbook and an informational text. 00:56:51.58 Michael Prehn And they're doing that classic scientific thing of providing examples of the thing that they're describing. 00:56:57.95 Jala Right, and then your kitchen becomes the lab. So yeah, the next section about composing flavor is contrasting ingredients need a unifying flavor. So beginning with juxtaposing two contrasting ingredients automatically creates more dynamic and interesting possibilities in the imagination. It generates excitement, aliveness, yin and yang. 00:57:18.73 Jala The tension between the ingredients translates to a liveliness in the mouth. Sometimes divergent flavors can fuse together to create a new flavor, the phenomenon of locking, which we'll talk about in a little bit. 00:57:31.07 Jala But almost always, contrasting flavors need additional ingredients to bridge the distance between them. Cooking method will make a difference here as well. Are you barbecuing, roasting, boiling? 00:57:43.01 Jala We'll get into cooking methods as well, so put a pin in that. 00:57:47.26 Michael Prehn Yeah, we're going to dive deep on cooking methods at some point. 00:57:51.06 Jala Yeah, we're going to have cooking methods in here, just like the though here's some introductions about what the cooking methods you know might be. you And then we will get into cooking proper with Cooking 101 and Nutrition 101 on the next time that we do an episode. so um But hang tight. For now, let's talk about the flavor shape. 00:58:10.45 Jala The flavor shape of an ingredient says a lot about whether or not it will make a good bridge. Strong flavors are usually pointy. Think of spikes or being stuck with a pin, which produces an intense, immediate sensation. Bridges are usually flat and wide, creating a calm, comforting feeling. That could mean bland like potatoes or sweet like dates. 00:58:32.35 Jala If blue cheese is sharp and has a shape that rise rises like a mountain top, dates are low, flat, accommodating, plain, on which different flavors like blue cheese and bacon can come together. So just thinking about those things and in can you know combination there, blue cheese, bacon, and dates. 00:58:52.85 Jala when when i think about that like i don't even eat two of those three things but i eat dates voraciously but anyway i can i can think about those things and go yeah those things would go together and then of course they have a recipe ah corresponding to this in the book. 00:59:08.58 Michael Prehn but a What recipe is that supposed to be describing? Because I'm drawing a blank right now. 00:59:14.45 Jala I have to go in there and go look at it. You can go ahead and start talking about heavy flavors while I look for that information, Mike. 00:59:23.46 Michael Prehn Sorry to blindside you there. But ah heavy flavors. 00:59:24.92 Jala No problem. 00:59:26.92 Michael Prehn you know The book describes them as base notes in food that are played by the heaviest, densest flavors in a dish, the ones that linger in the mouth. 00:59:37.97 Michael Prehn They're often given the biggest role in the dish in terms of real estate, but not necessarily those that make it most distinctive or memorable. Think of the actor with the most lines versus the supporting players who steal the show, or more precisely, whose scenes with the principles are what make the ensemble a smash hit. 00:59:56.38 Michael Prehn Most of what we think of as comfort foods, pot roast, and pudding, for example, are heavy on base notes. Although these flavors are soothing, they're not very exciting. As with similar ingredients, heavy flavors need a lift, a parsley, lemon, gremolata for that pot roast, a pinch of citrus sess for the pudding, things like that. Bases and middle notes need a top note to complete the chord. 01:00:22.31 Michael Prehn And the example that I always go with thinking about this is the classic ah roasted potatoes which are usually seasoned with rosemary because roasted potatoes are tasty but they're just kind of a neutral note. So you need rosemary that is like herby and kind of sharp ah to give it something to play with. 01:00:44.50 Jala Right. And so I like to do roasted potatoes mixed with Brussels sprouts like roasting those, but also putting fresh rosemary on them and drizzling them with some maple syrup. That comes out really well. 01:00:59.97 Michael Prehn Yeah, Brussels sprouts because they're so bitter. Again, a oppositional flavor or something that ah you know serves to compliment it is like very spicy stuff or a sweet stuff rather. 01:01:12.54 Jala Max has opinions about that. And that's a good note. Thank you, Max. I have found the recipe. It's literally Majul dates baked with bacon and gorgonzola dolce. So ah the little preamble before they give you the recipe, which is literally ah bacon, Majul dates, gorgonzola, dolce and honey for drizzling optional. 01:01:36.60 Jala ah dates can be eaten raw but they are usually sold dry they have a high proportion of sugar and no saltiness or acidity which makes them a good link between two intense flavors here they hold bacon and blue cheese in balance it can work with any dates and any blue cheese but the best marriage depends on considering the particular facets of each. 01:01:55.54 Jala Medjool dates have a caramel-like flavor with tones of honey and a soft, creamy texture. Their relatively large size makes them ideal for stuffing, especially when the pit is removed. Gorgonzola dolce is one of the mildest and creamiest of blue cheeses, with the kind of rich, honeyed sweetness associated with mascarpone. The sweetness accommodates the bacon, but the cheese has enough umami from its fermentation not to be overwhelmed by its smokiness. 01:02:25.20 Jala And then it gives you like a whole, yep, yep, yep. 01:02:25.72 Michael Prehn That does sound pretty good. 01:02:29.17 Jala So it's pretty exciting. So yeah, ah there's that. Then the last little section here is light flavors will need to be grounded. So light, bright flavors can be potent and forward in an appealing way, but they need a platform upon which to dance. Again, registers are relative. A vegetable or even a spice can provide the grounding that's necessary for a delicate combination. Conversely, a vegetable or grain can seem insubstantial or unsatisfying without a deeper note. 01:02:58.97 Jala Balance, of course, is relative, dependent on the unique character of your ingredients, so it can't be precisely measured or codified, but instead depends on your judgments and adjustments in the moment. So again, that goes back to the thing you're cooking. 01:03:14.29 Jala see how it's going, adjust as necessary before you finish out the cooking process. Generally, though, the use of fat, earthy flavors in the addition of fermented or umami-rich ingredients are a good way to deepen flavors in order to create a balanced combination. Also, light flavors can be concentrated through reduction, which removes water, or through long cooking, or the brief application of heat, which can make them more profound. 01:03:43.00 Michael Prehn And, you know, my perennial crusade is that I think soups are quite a lot better than a lot of Americans give them credit for, but it's because they don't have those deepening ingredients in them more often than not. like I will put fish sauce in just about everything that I cook ah because I think it does add a certain like kind of almost intangible thing, but something that makes the food more round, harkening back to that shape descriptor. 01:04:14.40 Jala Right. And since I'm vegan, a lot of times if I'm composing a soup, it's going to be more like, you know, like for proteins, it'll be more like lentils or beans or something like that thrown in there, um, that kind of a thing. So, uh, like I, it's not like I don't use not meats in my stuff. Um, you know, like I will do like a sausage and lentil stew, for example, that's one of my favorite things to make that super high protein, but 01:04:38.61 Michael Prehn yeah 01:04:38.96 Jala and When it comes to soup stock, though, every time I make one of my vegetable broths, for example, I always put some miso in there, some white miso paste, and then I also put some mushroom powder. It's very umami. It gives it that umami ah depth of flavor along with a little bit of fermentation from that miso. So ah regardless of what I'm making with it, 01:05:02.80 Jala It'll have a little bit of that character and have ah a fuller flavor than a thin watery broth that you get in a carton from the store. 01:05:11.98 Michael Prehn Yeah, absolutely. Mushrooms make a really good ah background flavor to a wide variety of savory dishes, even if you're not necessarily using them in the final product because people have textural oppositions to it. But I also use mushrooms in any kind of stock or broth that I make. 01:10:55.19 Jala So let's move on to talking about the flavor compass, AKA the four directions of flavor. So spices come from seeds, roots, and bark. They are the richest and most intense family of flavors on the compass, vivifying neighboring ingredients and not only introducing new flavors to the mix, but also highlighting those that are already present. They offer the greatest potential for creating contrast. 01:11:20.42 Jala Herbs are aromatic leaves and with some exceptions, their volatile compounds diminish quickly after picking so they don't dry flavorfully. Therefore, they are usually best when fresh and their availability in that form sometimes depends on what is grown nearby. Their flavor is softer and lighter than that of spices. So um I definitely like if there's any way I can find at any local market the fresh herb when it I need a fresh herb for something. 01:11:50.00 Jala I will go and hunt it down even if I have dried on the shelf because that dried does not taste the same. but 01:11:56.39 Michael Prehn No, it does not. And you know, my personal take on it is that I think dried herbs have their place. I don't think that they're better or I don't want to say that they're better than fresh herbs. That's not true. But it's like, there are certain times when you want to use a dried herb because you don't want as much herby punch with it. Again, rosemary being a really great example because fresh rosemary is so punchy. 01:12:22.97 Michael Prehn Sometimes it's actually beneficial to use the dried one. So it's it's just a different tool in the arsenal to use. 01:12:28.80 Jala right and that's because I have I have a big rosemary plant outside in my york ah yard so um yeah rosemary is very sappy so that's part of why it has such a strong taste to it when you use it fresh so um even though like my plant is a monster compared to the type of stuff you get in the grocery store 01:12:37.49 Michael Prehn Yeah. 01:12:47.59 Jala ah But even the stuff in the grocery store is sappy. So, um you know, like the the properties of the plant itself come in to bear there with, you know, different types of herbs and what you might prefer personally when you're using it for your cooking. 01:13:04.08 Jala So yeah, ah citruses are fragrant in all their parts, the flowers, the rind and the juice, even as with makrut limes, popular in Thai cooking, in their leaves. 01:13:05.19 Michael Prehn Yeah. 01:13:16.74 Jala But the heaviest concentration of their essential oils is found in small ductless glands in the outer portion of the peel. Given the difference in intensity, we employ the juice and peel in different ways. And the flowers are also used The juice is used and um once I started doing ah more Thai cooking and like Thai cooking as in from legitimate Thai sources, not just like books that are for white people that happen to have some Thai recipes and know that these white people aren't going to have lime leaves. 01:13:46.08 Michael Prehn Yeah. 01:13:49.08 Jala um I have a lime tree in my yard, so I started pulling off those leaves, and they're not the same as the McCroot limes, but they do have lime flavor, and you can use that to have kind of like a mellower version of the flavor ah rather than using the peel or the juice or the pulp or whatever. 01:14:08.24 Michael Prehn Right. Yeah. It's got similar properties, but it's not exactly the same thing. 01:14:12.72 Jala Yep, yep. And of course, flowers are used in cooking by many cultures from around the world in many different forms, fresh, dried, or distilled as essences to add unique flavors to food, like rose water or orange blossom water. Both of those are useful in a bunch of different types of sweets, for example. ah Since medieval times, they have been added to jams and syrups. I have a very wonderful nasturtium syrup that was made by a friend, Leanne, 01:14:42.02 Jala Shout out Leanne and Adam, you're wonderful. um So Leanne made a nasturtium syrup from nasturtiums that she has in her garden and sent that to me. So ah we have that and we use that mostly in alcoholic beverages to add a little bit of a kick, but you can throw it into a bunch of different types of things, but we're just kind of savoring it and using it for just special, special things, you know. 01:15:06.04 Jala But um yeah, and then also capers are a type of flower bud. 01:15:06.29 Michael Prehn Yeah, of course. 01:15:10.19 Jala So like capers, that's like an ingredient that most people have had, even if they don't know what a caper is. 01:15:18.26 Jala And that's a type of flower bud that's very common in a lot of cooking, particularly Mediterranean cooking. So. 01:15:25.31 Michael Prehn Yeah, ah kind of famously saffron is actually a flower very distantly. It's specifically the stamen, I think, of yeah of the ah s saffron thing. 01:15:32.30 Jala Yeah, it's a statement. and 01:15:35.64 Michael Prehn And that's been hugely and influential in a lot of cuisines and is one of the most expensive ah flavorings on the planet if not the most expensive. ah Right now there is a big ascendancy for sweet pea flowers because they have this really crazy purple color when they're added to liquid so they've been a big hit with alcoholic beverages and coffee shops lately. 01:15:51.65 Jala Yeah. 01:16:01.10 Jala And fun fact, if you have sweet pea flower stuff and it's blue and then you add lemon to it, it makes it pink. 01:16:01.24 Michael Prehn It's very trendy. 01:16:10.54 Michael Prehn Yeah, so you can do some really kind of crazy showy theatrical things with it and the food service industry has latched onto to it this year. 01:16:19.78 Jala Yep, yep, yep. so And then too, if you happen to go to some kind of a fancy restaurant or if you go to um a farmer's market and you see that they have some fancy salads there, you might see like violets. Violets are very popular to put on salads um just as like decoration and part of the salad that you can also eat. 01:16:42.46 Michael Prehn Yeah, early 2000s microgreens and edible flowers were like all the rage and garnishes, which is less about their flavor, but they're useful flavor wise as well. 01:16:55.35 Jala Absolutely. And the book actually gives like a whole diagram of different types of flavor stuff in the flavor compass. Like it actually gives the four points of flavor and the whole flavor compass with like a wheel. So um these kinds of flavor wheels I find to be really useful. Say for example, I have a a flavor wheel for wine and it's just like a little laminated cardboard thing. 01:17:19.47 Jala And I pull that out every time Dave and I have a wine and we sit there and we try to put our finger on it and then we'll look at the wheel and sometimes that helps like jog your memory to go, okay, that's the kind of thing that I'm going for here or whatever. So like having a kind of guideline like this, especially when you're first messing with something, like first messing with spices and citrus and herbs and flowers and trying to figure out what to do with them. If you're not directly following a recipe or even if you are and you're just trying to learn from the recipe, 01:17:48.76 Jala what it's doing, you can look at something like this and start to learn, okay, so I understand why the turmeric is earthy you know or whatever. And then well I understand that I don't want to put this earthy thing with a bunch of other earthy things. 01:18:05.18 Jala I want to put it with something else. 01:18:06.49 Michael Prehn Right. 01:18:07.35 Jala Let me see. it And you can look at this this thing and it can start to inform like where you go with the recipe. Again, using those words to get you where you're going. so 01:18:17.13 Michael Prehn Yeah, it's a visual aid and that's very useful because recipes by their nature are more about results than process. Like they just tell you, put these things together, it's going to taste good. But if you're less experienced with the individual flavors, you might not know why it tastes good or anything. And most people are interested in knowing so they can make their own. Um, 01:18:38.09 Michael Prehn In culinary school, they focused almost entirely on methodology of ingredients versus individual recipes for this reason, because the world of spices and herbs and citrus and all this stuff. I mean, there's tens of thousands, if not millions of ingredients out there, and you'll never ever in a thousand years know even a tiny slice of them before you die. So like, 01:19:04.48 Michael Prehn When you go to school, they teach you about techniques. 01:19:05.78 Jala Right. 01:19:08.57 Michael Prehn They're not actually that concerned with recipes because you're never going to know at all. 01:19:14.63 Jala Right, right. And that's also why some of those um cooking competition shows, as much as they're actually terrible um and like from people that I know um who have participated in those and then like how how those pan out and everything and how stressful that is, like it's not a good scene. 01:19:22.99 Michael Prehn Yeah. 01:19:32.23 Jala But like the reason why that's fun to watch, though, to watch chefs doing their thing is because like they're on a time limit and they have these ingredients that don't go to... Amazingly, they have their... 01:19:43.17 Jala they're given random and then they have to MacGyver it into something that tastes good. And, you know, like that is a process where it's real fun to see how these people ah get creative with these different things. And you'll always notice that they'll sit there and they'll smell it and they'll touch it and they'll, they'll taste a little bit of it or something because, you know, like they're trying to get the idea in their head by, by taking these parts and then working them together in this alchemy that we call cooking. 01:20:12.82 Michael Prehn Yeah. Taste, uh, taste the food early and often so you can learn new stuff. 01:20:13.96 Jala So, yeah, how about you tell us about locking flavor, Mike? 01:20:18.93 Michael Prehn Yep. Sure thing. So locking is a concept that Mandy, the author of the book, came up with to describe what happens when ingredients combine with an impact that seems to be more than the sum of their individual characters. Usually this is because the facets of the individual ingredients are bonding to create aromatic qualities that none of them had to begin with or to heighten inherent similarities. 01:23:56.66 Michael Prehn If you add jasmine and rose to a perfume, for example, ingredients that share some floral aromatics but are quite dissimilar, the characters of each flower merge so that you can no longer disc design discern either individually, yet together they contribute to a single floral bouquet that is neither rose nor jasmine. 01:24:16.19 Jala Yeah, and in in the perfume world, like when you get that, like you if you know much about perfume, which I don't know if you know anything about perfume, ah Mike, but like if you go out in your shopping for perfumes, you will often see jasmine rose is a thing that's out there, jasmine rose as its own scent because that is very popularly combined in perfume. 01:24:43.58 Michael Prehn yeah so They go on to say, no, it's all right. ah They go on to say, similarly, in food, we can ascribe to locking ah that wonderful sense of beyond that we experience when we put something truly delicious in our mouths. And it it truly is beyond an effective unity and transcendence that's greater than the sum of its parts, or more precisely, the sum of its facets, which knit together to create unique new flavor in which it is no longer possible to cleanly discern the individual elements. 01:25:13.78 Michael Prehn So one of my favorite examples of this and it seems like an unlikely duo but it's definitely worth trying listeners but good quality parmesan and specifically dried pineapple together. 01:25:28.00 Michael Prehn don't taste like either of those two things separately. And it's actually quite good, but it's one of those things where you put them together and you go, Oh, these do have something in common with each other. And yet when they're tasted together, it becomes a different thing entirely. It becomes this synthesis. 01:25:48.53 Jala Right, right. And so um just playing with the different ways that the tastes combine can really make like a lot of interesting things. The book goes into a very common concept that a lot of people will be able to grasp onto when it comes to locking flavor here. 01:26:08.81 Jala Um, they talk about when you put coffee and milk together, even if it's like a cappuccino, you're not creating a lock by putting coffee and milk together. You can still taste the coffee and the milk separately. But when you put chocolate in there, you've made something else entirely. You've made a mocha and mocha has its own, like it's a flavor lock, but it is a flavor lock that we like so much that it has its own name. 01:26:38.48 Michael Prehn Mm hmm. 01:26:38.78 Jala Because that is a different flavor that is not cleanly discernible you know you can't pull out the milk and the chocolate and the coffee individually now of course different mocha flavors will vary and so some of them are more leaning towards the chocolate than others you know some of them are more balanced so. 01:27:00.42 Jala That's you know like a personal preference kind of thing. um But Mocha in general, if you just imagine a Mocha in your mind, your mind's eye, your taste buds, whatever, um you know you can understand that concept a little bit better, I think. 01:27:16.60 Michael Prehn Right. Definitely. Um, you know, the perennial example of this, uh, locking to me is, uh, vinaigrette's because they're functionally just made out of a fatty ingredient and, um, something that can surround it and emulsify it. Uh, which you a lemon vinaigrette doesn't really taste like. Lemon or olive oil, uh, do separately, but when you put them together, it's, it's kind of a different thing entirely. 01:27:43.90 Jala Yeah, it is. And then also other examples that people can easily latch onto, curry or mole, any of those things are also gonna be you know like ah a synthesis of flavors where yes, curries are different. you know Different types of curry have different flavors, but they are a synthesis of flavors that produces a specific result. And there is such a thing as like a curry leaf, 01:28:08.50 Jala That is a different thing. That's a spice. that's not That's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about curry as a synthesis of ingredients and spices to make um this thing that you can no longer discern the individual parts out. This isn't a stew. This is something where you can't taste the individual parts anymore. 01:28:28.40 Michael Prehn Right. 01:28:30.19 Jala Yeah, and flavor itself is dynamic, shifting with the addition of ingredients in the process of combining and cooking them. And the combination and the cooking both do different stuff, and we're we're still getting up. but We haven't gotten to the cooking part yet, but we will. 01:28:46.82 Jala So ah what creates the magic sense of transcendence that we call locking isn't just the right combination of ingredients. It's also the right proportions of the right combinations of ingredients. So again, like um you can have something that they call a mocha. It's called this. You can understand it to be a mocha because you can still taste the elements there, but it's not necessarily locked. 01:29:12.98 Jala because they're putting too much chocolate in there, as mentioned previously. And then that that's no longer a locked flavor where you can't discern where one where the coffee ends and where the chocolate begins. you know This is now um definitely chocolate with coffee. you know 01:29:30.30 Michael Prehn Right. Yeah, it it requires a certain balance because otherwise one comes up too much in the forefront and it it once again becomes an individual. 01:29:39.88 Jala Right. Right. And again, as we were talking about earlier, that powerful ingredient can then become overbearing where that's all you taste when you're having the thing. Now, granted, if you really like chocolate and that's what you really you just want something that's not quite hot chocolate and you want that chocolatey taste, but you also want more caffeine than a chocolate hot chocolate is going to give you, I guess, than more power to you. But that's that's not the you know apples to apples to what we're talking about here. 01:30:09.47 Jala So, why do we care about locking as a principle though? 01:30:10.54 Michael Prehn Right. 01:30:15.76 Michael Prehn Yeah, so it's a useful conceptual tool. And it's useful in scenarios where you're trying to imagine a dish or a flavor. ah When you're thinking about a dish and why it's so good, you can think about how those ingredients lock together to predict why what might happen if you combine them in different scenarios. 01:30:37.18 Michael Prehn It's also useful whenever you're cooking the dish because locking will help you measure your progress again talking about those flavors that are kind of a moving target as Liquid spoil and things cook it will allow you to assess what's happened in a dish so that you can kind of adjust it to get the end impact that you want and ah Obviously it helps with tasting the finished dish as well ah locking allows you to kind of figure out what works and how you might be able to replicate it in the future. So it's useful just like our sense of taste is made up of a lot of different senses. Uh, ingredients in a dish are also really an individual one doesn't have as much impact on the final product as the combinations that we use. So thinking about locking as a concept is very useful whenever you're trying to craft flavors. 01:31:31.94 Jala Yeah, and I'm going to actually go back to my earlier example when I was talking about those purple sweet potatoes that I have out there and how I use the coconut condensed milk. So that's sugar and coconut milk and these sweet potatoes, which I boiled and mashed and then just mix this stuff in there. When I first made it, it hadn't locked yet. But when I left it in the fridge, 01:31:55.33 Jala That's when it settled together and it really just like blended in in, you know, the flavors seeped into each other. And then the next day those flavors had locked and I couldn't taste the coconut milk separate from the potato or anything like that. It became one thing. 01:32:11.73 Jala So, um, in that way it locked, but it didn't lock immediately. So, um, and I feel like so a lot of stews and soups and things like that benefit from having that rest time because that like allows all of the flavors to kind of just like merge into each other a little bit better to where you don't taste all the disparate parts as much. You have like a ah better overall composition to it. 01:32:39.02 Michael Prehn Yeah, um liquids such as water or stock and fats tend to be the most effective mediums for flavor compounds to kind of move around and combine in different ways. So things that are more liquidy like a sauce or a soup tend to have more flavor drift over time than something that's more solid. 01:32:59.25 Jala Yeah. Yeah. So in that case with the potato and the coconut milk, though, it was like a little bit of coconut milk to a bunch of potato. And so like the potato isn't overly fat, but the coconut milk is in the coconut milk is also liquid. So maybe that counted enough to make that change the flavor over time in my fridge. But Either way, it's fun. 01:33:22.45 Jala It's fun to see these differences and see how they change over time. I understand now that if I want to make these sweet potato buns again, which I do, obviously, I'm waiting for more potatoes to grow. 01:33:36.49 Jala I'm going to be out there with my little shovel thing trying to wait until the potatoes are ready. 01:33:37.35 Michael Prehn Mm hmm. 01:33:43.53 Jala But I'm looking forward to that, but I know now that it's better for me to make it the day before and let it sit overnight in the fridge because the next day that's when those flavors are going to meld in the way that I want. That time in the fridge is kind of considered part of the cooking process to get that luck to finish out. 01:34:09.17 Michael Prehn Yeah, exactly. It's always a moving target even after you're done taking it off of the stove or out of the oven. 01:34:15.49 Jala Yep, yep. So let's move on to burying flavor. So when strong ingredients are buried, sometimes different facets of them are revealed, as with resinous and floral notes of sage, which, when its intensity is properly buried, rise to the surface. 01:34:33.59 Jala Burying can also be a way to remedy flavors that have developed in an unpleasant way. Maybe you've accidentally scorched the bottom of your stew a little bit. Adding a little more water or broth or some neutral grains can dilute the flavor and help bury the acrid taste, as can a squeeze of lemon juice. Introducing a bit more fat in the form of a pat of butter might help round out the bitter edges. 01:34:58.71 Jala Bearing is a way not only to accent the flavors you want, but also to push down flavors you didn't want or expect. Both locking and burying depend on the mastery of proportion. Proportion is how much of you of the ingredients that you're using in relation to one another. Recognizing trace elements of one ingredient in another can also suggest that they might go well together. But just because they are traces don't mean that they aren't strong. In fact, strength is what gives them the power to be transformative. 01:35:32.08 Jala So when you make those connections between facets, tailor the proportions accordingly. For example, if you taste basil with an open mind, you will find cinnamon notes. That's because both cinnamon and basil contain eugenol, which allows basil to lock with cinnamon. When they are combined, however, as in a dish that I'll have to look up now and scramble to go find that, 01:35:57.46 Jala um The cinnamon needs to be buried or it will block out the basil, it which is fresh and bright and meant to sit on top, a cheerful aroma to greet the diner before their first bite. 01:36:09.46 Jala I'm going to go look for this recipe. Mike, talk a little bit about bearing flavor while I get that. 01:36:16.47 Michael Prehn Yeah, so, you know, this is kind of a different form of contrasting or oppositional flavors, but there are some things that when they're used in conjunction with each other, ah it kind of mutes certain elements of one ingredient, which allows the more desirable ones to come to the surface. 01:36:37.09 Michael Prehn Classic example of this is with grapefruit which is a very bitter fruit obviously so when you combine it with ah sugar and like a pinch of salt those bitter elements of the grapefruit get buried. 01:36:52.06 Michael Prehn And then what you're tasting after that is kind of the bright citrusy, slightly herby kind of flavors that you actually want out of a grapefruit. ah Similarly, you know, the seafood comparison with citrus is ah very common because the fishy taste of seafood ironically tends to be the part that people don't necessarily like as much. 01:37:14.75 Jala Mm hmm. 01:37:15.27 Michael Prehn ah So the citrus kind of mutes that flavor and aroma more so that the ah kind of meaty and savory aspects of the fish come forward. And um you know another example that I think about a lot is how when you combine mint with like a fatty liquid of some kind, like you do in any number of desserts or whatever, it takes the spiciness out of mint because mint is a very spicy herb by itself. 01:37:44.99 Michael Prehn But it's also ah can be very, um for lack of a better word, clean tasting, which brings a lot of levity to like dessert items, especially if they're very rich. 01:37:56.06 Jala So yeah, I will say I am not a mint chocolate lover. I can sometimes take a little bit of mint in my chocolate, but I'm i'm not a fan of that combination. 01:38:01.38 Michael Prehn Yeah. 01:38:06.89 Jala However, that's a very popular one. Mint chocolate, and you know, mint chocolate chip ice cream or, you know, chocolate mints or something. um That's a thing that a lot of people love. 01:38:18.13 Michael Prehn Yeah, because the fat takes the punch out of the mint and then conversely the mint kind of lightens up the richness of the chocolate. 01:38:25.13 Michael Prehn So that's why it ended up being a classic combo. 01:38:28.15 Jala Yeah, yeah, for sure. So um I did find that recipe. So the recipe that ah where they had basil and cinnamon together. 01:38:36.68 Jala Duck breasts with endive, honey, cinnamon, and basil. So duck breasts, salt, and freshly ground pepper. honey, champagne, vinegar, cinnamon, fresh ground, if possible, ah vegetable oil, one head of endive and a handful of fresh basil leaves chopped or using a spray of an essential oil. 01:38:59.34 Jala So it has a lot of text about this one, so I don't want to read all of that. But ah yeah, so it's talking about duck breasts with endive, honey, cinnamon and basil. um Yeah, like even just 01:39:11.30 Michael Prehn There's a lot going on in that recipe. 01:39:12.69 Jala There's a lot going on in this recipe, but I bet you that it's actually a really good recipe though, because like when I think about those items in you know in individually, and then I think about how you might be able to make those proportions go together to make something that's flavorful and good, 01:39:30.63 Jala you know like ah If I were a meat-eaten type of person, I might definitely try that recipe. so ah Maybe I can use a vegan mock duck and see if it comes out similar. The problem with trying to adjust a meat-eater recipe to a vegan recipe is that the actual like vegan versions of the thing don't taste like the actual items, even if they come somewhere close. Because again, it's like that um you're putting in something that is not, you're putting in a synthetic more or less, even though it it might be whole foods, it's synthetic version of the real thing. So it doesn't have all the nuance of flavor of the original meat. So when you switch something from omnivore to vegan, it doesn't always work so well. 01:40:14.12 Michael Prehn Yeah. An important mindset that I've heard repeated by a lot of vegans is that, um, you're never going to a hundred percent match the meat eating experience. 01:40:22.51 Jala Nope. 01:40:23.04 Michael Prehn It's not vegan food is not worse. It's just different. 01:40:27.01 Jala Yep. 01:40:27.55 Michael Prehn So when you get it in your head, that it's not going to be exactly the same as a grilled chicken breast, but it might be a different and ah many times better thing. Then you'll have a lot better experience with vegan food in general. 01:40:39.51 Jala Well, yeah. And not only that, but when you're cooking, you won't get frustrated because the problem that a lot of people have is that like they want to use omnivorous recipes and make the same things that they were making before, but then just take the meat out and switch it in for not meats, which that doesn't work. 01:40:43.82 Michael Prehn Right. 01:41:00.29 Jala Um, it's never going to taste like the actual meat stew, you know, even if it, it gets pretty close, it's not going to taste the same and like designing recipes, using recipes that are designed around the flavor of something that you're not using. That's not a ah winning proposition there. You're better off getting recipes that are vegan. They were made vegan. 01:41:22.56 Jala you know They started out that way and that's where they're going. 01:41:24.01 Michael Prehn Mm hmm. 01:41:25.16 Jala you know you're not You're not trying to shoehorn it in. That's not to say that you can't make like your recipes that you had that you had growing up and everything like that as a vegan food. 01:41:38.52 Jala It just means that you might have to experiment a little bit more to see how you can adjust everything because it might need more tweaking than um you know just a cut and paste. 01:41:50.58 Jala so 01:41:51.56 Michael Prehn Yeah, it's an independent and separate discipline. 01:41:55.22 Jala Absolutely. So let's go ahead and get into cooking. Woo. We finally got here. Mike, take it away. 01:42:04.79 Michael Prehn Yeah, so cooking method and flavor. ah Cooking is the transformation of edible things from one state to another. Very broad definition by the text here, but that's because it means a lot of different things. 01:42:16.81 Michael Prehn um Peeling is a preparation it is cooking so is cutting ah and cutting is the act of consciously changing the shape of an ingredient allows the cook to control proportion cooking time presentation texture and the way that ingredients integrate. 01:42:32.64 Michael Prehn how ingredients are cut makes a big difference in how they taste garlic is really famous for this one minced garlic and sliced garlic have different tastes and it sounds strange to say because they're the same ingredient but they do in fact uh have different properties because of the change to the surface area and how much trauma you cause to the garlic bulb which causes it to release flavors and all that jazz um the book goes on to say when we chop an herb In fact, what we're really doing is proportioning the essential oil by controlling the shape of the ingredient in which it is contained. Different ingredients require different treatments, depending on their texture, and different treatments of the same ingredient result in subtle or sometimes dramatic differences in flavor. 01:43:17.30 Michael Prehn Using a sharp knife to cut, slice, or chop is essential when you want to preserve the integrity of an ingredient as much as possible. When you want, for example, to have small cubes of an ingredient whose crisp, clean, and distinct flavors release with intense little bursts in the mouth rather than being smoothly melded before they reach it as in, say, an Israeli salad with diced onions, cucumbers, and tomatoes. 01:43:42.61 Michael Prehn That was a heck of a run-on sentence, author. 01:43:44.46 Jala I know. ah Take a breath, Mike. 01:43:48.75 Michael Prehn Ooh, they go on to say, a sharp blade will cleanly cut through cell walls while a dull one will smash a wider swath of an ingredient, releasing its flavor prematurely. There is a use for crossing crushing through cell walls. It can create a more intense and more merged flavor, as in a riotia, in which cucumber is created into yogurt, creating a medium in which spices, herbs, and yogurt can readily mingle. But you want that choice to be deliberate. 01:44:18.01 Michael Prehn so Yeah, it makes a difference how you cut your vegetables because the amount of trauma that you inflict on them as you're preparing them will affect how, when, and why they release their flavor compounds. 01:44:33.31 Michael Prehn It's part of the reason why smashing garlic is a popular preparation method for that, because any smashing method is going to cause a lot of those cell walls to break down. 01:44:40.28 Jala Mm hmm. 01:44:45.23 Michael Prehn And so you release quite a lot of flavor um right at that moment, which can be beneficial if you don't want a really sharp garlic taste, but you want it to be more ah kind of smoothed out throughout the dish. 01:44:58.52 Jala Yep. Yep. Absolutely. So, uh, and this is something too, where, um, I had just finished writing these notes and I was thinking to myself, I'm like this very last weekend. I was like, this knife needs to be sharp because I'm not going to use this knife. 01:45:13.35 Jala It is too dull. It needs to be sharpened. It is not really like super dull, but like it's dull enough where I'm like, no, I, I'm not using that one. I'm using this other one. That's very, very sharp because it's not going to give me the thing that I want. 01:45:24.33 Michael Prehn Yeah, I'm a primadonna. 01:45:26.04 Jala Yeah. 01:45:28.60 Michael Prehn When it comes to my knives, it's just a byproduct of my profession, I think, but I sharpen them. Gosh, probably once a week, something like that. Not all of them, but the you know main chef knife that I use, uh, because it, I mean, it really does make a difference in the flavor of the stuff that you're cooking. 01:45:43.66 Jala Yeah. 01:45:46.17 Jala Yeah, it absolutely does. And I know, like, I spend a lot of time in my kitchen making my food. I know you spend a lot of time in everybody's kitchen making a lot of food. might but like ah So, like, I want my end product of all this effort that I'm putting in to be fucking tasty. 01:45:56.65 Michael Prehn Mm hmm. Absolutely. 01:46:03.71 Jala So how am I going to do that? I'm going to do that by making sure all these details are in line and that this damn knife is sharp. 01:46:12.61 Michael Prehn Yeah, I'm not spending four hours on something to have it come out poorly. 01:46:16.04 Jala Yeah, absolutely. 01:46:16.24 Michael Prehn Come on. 01:46:18.05 Jala And it's not to say like, oh, a dull knife is going to ruin your meal, but like, you'll notice the difference over time if you sharpen a blade and make that thing versus if you use a dull knife and, you know, cut that ingredient with that, you know, so. 01:46:32.68 Michael Prehn Well, it's all a part of the whole, right? Like it may be only 2% of how it affects the flavor of the final dish, but it all adds up one way or another. 01:46:40.65 Jala um Absolutely. So moving right along, salting onions draws out their bitter, sulfurous notes, making them more palatable. other it ah It softens watery vegetables ah like radishes or cucumbers, giving them a texture neither raw nor cooked. You can also salt stuff like ah eggplant and things like that to pull out the water that's in them. If you put salt on them and leave them in a colander, 01:47:09.05 Jala And then that way, that'll keep it from being so mushy. So that way, like say, for example, if you're making eggplant parmesan or your vegan equivalent thereof or something like that, and you want those pieces of eggplant to not totally fall apart into mush, then salting your eggplant before you go about that process is really important. 01:47:17.95 Michael Prehn Mm hmm. 01:47:27.02 Jala So ah that also works with like yellow squash, and zucchini, stuff like that as well. You can salt those and then it'll draw out that moisture and it'll sweat them out. um Sweating is a different method, so don't don't think that I'm saying so i'm saying salting here. ah Salting it will make them um have all the water draw out, so that way it's it's not so mush when you're cooking it. 01:47:51.09 Michael Prehn Yeah, I'm going to talk about this in a in the later cooking methodology and technique episode. um But I think that a lot of cooking is fundamentally about either ah maintaining, increasing, or decreasing the moisture of an ingredient to a desired level. 01:48:04.62 Jala Yes. 01:48:06.42 Michael Prehn So salting things is a really useful way to do that without actually applying heat to something. 01:48:11.14 Jala Mm hmm. Absolutely. There's also a few ways to pickle foods. One is to simply salt an ingredient, ah usually cut and allowing it to ferment. So if we left those eggplant slices out there and then let them ferment, then um that would then pickle it. 01:48:28.27 Jala That process creates a strong flavor marked by a sourness that comes from the fermentation process itself, rather than the clean, sharp flavor of vinegar. It's one of the most ancient ways to preserve vegetables like cabbage, as with sauerkraut and kimchi. 01:48:44.31 Jala This process can take days or months. Masquerading an ingredient with vinegar and salt is an easier method. This is sometimes referred to as a quick pickle because the cook is using the fermentation of the vinegar to accelerate the pickling process. The vinegar is usually diluted in water and often balanced with sugar, depending on the level of intensity desired. 01:49:05.20 Jala The vinegar mixture can be added cold to other ingredients or heated to cook and soften them slightly and bring out a sweeter, milder taste. This is the version of pickling that we use most often in my house. 01:49:16.78 Jala I really want to get more into pickling, more like different types of ways and fermenting and things like that. 01:49:18.09 Michael Prehn Yeah. 01:49:24.53 Jala But it's a time and space thing. 01:49:28.50 Michael Prehn Yeah. 01:49:29.09 Jala You know, so. 01:49:30.11 Michael Prehn Yeah. I mean, you got so many people in your house. It's like you're, you're cohabitating. Maybe when you get that freezer out on the garage, huh? 01:49:36.21 Jala Right. 01:49:36.56 Michael Prehn Uh, yeah, I, I love pickles. I think that this is one of my general cooking tips for people who are getting into it is that like try pickling, uh, specifically quick pickles, cause that's easier to do for most people, but try pickling anything like carrots, green beans, ah but potatoes, like onions, all kinds of stuff. It is a really great, uh, sharp element to add to basically anything you want. 01:50:05.91 Michael Prehn Um, I eat those, uh, spicy pickled green beans by like the fistful on a daily basis. Cause I have an obsession. Yes. My blood pressure is high. Why do you ask? They're loaded with sodium, but, um, you know, what I'll do is I'll buy fresh green beans and add them back to the brine, uh, that the, ah the store bought variety came in, uh, cause it's all the same stuff. It's going to turn the same product and I'll have to buy it a second time, which is great. 01:50:35.11 Jala Yeah, yeah. And so ah this is the point where I say, I'm not a real big fan of dill pickles specifically. I don't like i don't like pickles made with cucumbers very much. 01:50:46.72 Jala ah They're okay if they're in something, like they're slices of pickle in a sandwich or something, but they're not all in one mobbed location. Like I can't stand it when you get like a burger and there's like five pickles in there, one stack in the middle of the burger. 01:51:00.43 Michael Prehn Yeah. 01:51:00.56 Jala I cannot. I cannot. Like I like the taste of the pickled juice mixed in with other ingredients and the texture is okay, but I don't want to mow down on a dill pickle. 01:51:11.26 Jala I'm never going to be that person who's just going to eat a pickle. You put one on my plate, I'm not going to eat it. 01:51:16.76 Jala But like pickled vegetables. Wonderful. I just don't like cucumbers pickled. That's it. yeah I don't like pickled pickles. 01:51:28.80 Michael Prehn Yeah, I think that dill pickles are kind of the lowest form of pickle. Ironically, even though especially here in America, it's kind of the one that we know most nearly and dearly because they put it on so much, so many sandwiches and burgers and stuff like that. But I do think it's, it's kind of the worst version of that, which is very funny. 01:51:48.26 Jala Yeah. And so like, um, I also, just for the record, like I will eat other types of, of relatives of cucumbers, like yellow squash and zucchini and whatever, and, and butternut squash and things like that, that are all relatives. I am not a big fan of cucumber unless you take the skin off of it. And even then, like if it's in a salad and it's too big of a chunk, I just don't want to eat it. 01:52:11.30 Jala But like it if it's too much, if it's too much cucumber, I'm not a fan either. So I just don't like that particular vegetable over much. It's not like a ah deal breaker where I won't eat it, but it's not my favorite ever. 01:52:23.14 Jala um But lots of other pickled vegetables, I love them. And we pickle peppers all the time in this house because I have perpetually lots of hot, spicy pickle plants or not pickle plants. 01:52:27.16 Michael Prehn Mm-hmm. 01:52:35.42 Jala That's making things up now. 01:52:37.26 Michael Prehn Ha ha ha ha. 01:52:38.47 Jala ah Pepper plants out in ah my yard at all times, like every year. So this last year I had habaneros and it turned into a bush, a bush. 01:52:44.88 Michael Prehn Mm hmm. 01:52:48.07 Jala And so like I had so many habaneros and I was, you know, I actually ended up not being able to pickle any of those because I ate them all. I made hot sauce out of them and it's I still have some, but like i'm I'm almost out because I eat that hot sauce all the time. 01:53:05.97 Michael Prehn Yeah, we're we have a long and storied history with the ah habanero faux tortoise sauce. 01:53:12.48 Jala Yes, everybody's heard about that at some point or another. I'm one of one or several of my podcast episodes. 01:53:19.43 Michael Prehn Mm hmm. 01:53:19.93 Jala So, um but yeah, but then also ah the one of the ingredients in this, um what was it? the It was the the chicken chicken chowder thing that we made recently over at our house. um There was ah a chicken of a vegan chicken chowder thing, and um part of the recipe included using the juice from a jar of pickled jalapenos in it. 01:53:46.92 Michael Prehn and Okay. 01:53:47.34 Jala And that worked really well in that recipe. I need to send you that recipe so you can look at it, but um it was a really interesting recipe and we loved it. We loved it. Unfortunately, that not chicken that we made, it tastes great in that one recipe. I don't like that not chicken in other recipes. Like I made something else. I made a Ros con Foyo with it. 01:54:06.73 Michael Prehn Yeah. 01:54:07.15 Jala And it does not hold up in that. So it needs some tweaking on its own if it's not in that recipe. So I need to use another recipe for vegan chicken is what I'm saying. 01:54:19.86 Michael Prehn That is a good example of the concept known as locking flavors discussed in this episode. 01:54:24.25 Jala Mm hmm. 01:54:27.20 Michael Prehn Yeah, no ah pickle brine from jalapenos or ah or It just pickles by themselves or anything else that a store bought is a really good substitute for a just a regular bottled vinegar because it is primarily vinegar, but it also tends to have a lot more complex flavor because it's mixed with whatever the product was that was in there and they tend to have spices and stuff in there as well. 01:54:50.29 Michael Prehn So that's a useful tip also is like, uh, adding a little bit of that to a dish whenever you need some more acid in it, or it needs to be brightened up a bit. 01:54:58.99 Jala Yep, yep, absolutely. So tell us about fermenting. 01:55:05.46 Michael Prehn Yeah, so fermenting is probably not something most people will do at home, all those although for those who are interested, there are some very good books, like Sander Katz, The Art of Fermentation. And classes and workshops are increasingly available. You can buy many useful ingredients that are already fermented, however. ah Some examples of this are soy sauce, sauerkraut, vinegar, wine, beer. 01:55:31.02 Michael Prehn And pickles, those are all examples of fermentations that are commonly used in cooking. And this is something I was kind of thinking about earlier today, because we were talking about on one of the discords, not jalas, how to kind of bring that like meatier or rounder flavor to vegan dishes. And a lot of the time, fermented ingredients are really useful for that. ah So you you have things like tempeh, which is basically mung beans, I believe it is, ah that they ferment and it kind of gives it the complexity of flavor that you might get from an animal protein or something like that. 01:56:08.52 Jala Fun fact, the bitterness of a tempeh will start to dissipate if you steam it for like 10 minutes. 01:56:15.81 Michael Prehn Interesting, I didn't know that actually. 01:56:18.07 Jala Yeah. Yeah. I more recently found that out when I was digging around in all of my very, very many vegan cookbooks and it happened to say that and it we did it and it was like, Oh yeah, it did. It actually took some of that, that kind of bitterness that you get with that tempeh out like, you know, from the prepackaged stuff. Yeah. I also have a book about making homemade vinegar. That's another one of my, uh, I really want to do that sometime things. It hasn't happened yet, but that's a thing that I would like to do at some juncture. 01:56:49.72 Michael Prehn Well, if you just don't drink some wine, it'll kind of get there on its own, you know? 01:56:52.39 Jala yeah Oh, no, no, that's a travesty. Me as a wine lover, I don't I don't know if I could I could handle it would break my heart. So yeah, so now we kind of move into like overview of cooking processes. And the book starts out by talking about different types of heat based cooking processes. They all fall under two different broad categories, soft cooking processes in which the ingredients don't brown. 01:57:22.33 Jala and hard cooking processes in which they do. Soft cooking is a good choice when the ingredients are special and distinctive in their original state and you want to preserve their flavor as much as possible. 01:57:35.93 Jala Soft cooking can also be a step in a multiple step cooking process. For example, you might poach a piece of meat or a vegetable until just tender, then quickly sear it to add another layer of flavor. You might want to cook onions slowly until tender to sweat them to bring out their sweetness as the base for a soup before you add liquid. 01:57:58.16 Jala Hard cooking techniques are good for adding depth and richness. They can help bring out the complexity of flavor dense foods like meats, or they can add browning flavors to ingredients in need of a boost. For example, by roasting those turnips at high heat, if they happen to be not young and crisp, but past their prime. 01:58:18.31 Jala and Generally, hard cooking processes add flavors not present in the ingredients themselves. So that's important to note. Like if a soft cooking process example, easy one would be boiling. 01:58:31.90 Jala So you, if you boil something, it's going to taste pretty much like itself, you know, like that, that's all it's going to taste like, uh, a cooked version of it. 01:58:33.10 Michael Prehn Right. 01:58:41.33 Jala Right. But still itself. and um you know But a hard cooking process, you roast it, you barbecue it, you sear it. ah Once it browns, and we'll talk more about that in a little bit here, ah then that starts to change how it tastes entirely. 01:58:59.35 Michael Prehn Yeah, and the way that they discuss this in my culinary education, they referred to it as wet cooking methods and dry cooking methods. 01:59:07.67 Michael Prehn So you will sometimes hear me refer to them as such. And that kind of goes back to my idea of either removing moisture from an ingredient or trying to maintain or add it. 01:59:18.56 Michael Prehn ah So in this case, soft cooking is something where you would probably Be better at maintaining the liquid level in something or reducing it minimally and then hard cooking techniques will remove moisture from it, which can sometimes be desirable. Like you think about something like grilled asparagus, there's a lot of water locked up in asparagus. So if you remove some of that, it intensifies and develops a flavor in a way that's really great. 01:59:45.92 Jala Absolutely. And the very next point, in fact, is about controlling water content, Mike. Kick it off. 01:59:53.06 Michael Prehn and Well, obviously, I've been talking about this a lot. ah So yeah, the book says, along with mastering seasoning, controlling water content is one of the most important things a cook can learn. Adding or subtracting liquids changes both the texture and the flavor of the food that you are making. 02:00:11.12 Michael Prehn And we all have examples of this that we've used. Uh, obviously a grilled chicken breast, uh, is going to taste very different than a, uh, chicken breasts that's been poached. And a lot of that has to do with the water content that's in the chicken breast. Or, uh, another example is like roast tomatoes. Uh, tomatoes have a lot of water in them naturally. 02:00:35.82 Michael Prehn Part of what changes their flavor when you roast them is that you're subtracting a lot of it. So the mild tomato taste gets intensified a lot just because it has a lot less water, uh, contending with it. Um, the book goes on to say, uh, serving temperature has a big impact on how flavor is released to the mouth and nose. Hot food is generally more aromatic than cold food because heat volatilizes the aroma molecules more rapidly. 02:01:04.59 Michael Prehn Sometimes the muting effect of a lower temperature is just what we want, though. A pickle is best enjoyed cold because heat would make the acidity overpowering and unpleasant. A chicken broth, on the other hand, wants to be warm because cold, it'll be sticky gelatinous and dull flavored. 02:01:21.34 Jala Yeah, there's certain things where like, once it goes cold, it's like, no, I can't eat this anymore. I can't i cannot eat it that past this temperature. 02:01:32.18 Michael Prehn That's a very common thing, especially in my neck of the woods. And it is instinctual. Like we do want to have food that's hot because it, it tells us that this is fresh and it's been prepared with care and all that good stuff. But also ah it's a textural thing as well. Uh, the texture of things is very different one. It's hot versus it being cold. And some things are just, I mean, if you ever had to eat cold gravy, 02:01:59.05 Michael Prehn It's not a pleasant experience at all. And I love gravy. 02:02:01.97 Jala Let's talk about some of those things that we eat very commonly that we eat both hot and cold and we like it both ways. Perhaps not everybody does like hot pizza tastes wonderful the way it does. But then when you have cold pizza, you taste different things in it than you do when it's hot. 02:02:19.84 Jala So it's actually kind of an interesting thing when you eat the hot pizza versus the cold pizza, it tastes different to you. And that's partially because of like the aroma of the hot food versus the cold muted aroma. And what that does to your tastes, like once the nose isn't doing as much work, 02:02:39.98 Jala then you get the taste of the actual ingredients themselves a little bit differently in your mouth and you're relying more on that ah tongue to you know pick up all the the different flavor receptors, you know get doing their work and everything to get those tastes. 02:02:56.15 Jala And it's also like some people like cold chicken out of the fridge you know versus hot chicken when you eat it fresh or whatever. 02:02:57.16 Michael Prehn Thank you. 02:03:02.75 Jala And those things taste very different as well. So ah for me, something that I'll eat hot or cold would be like roasted chickpeas. I like them hot. I like them like from the fridge after i I store them in there. 02:03:15.71 Jala And I'll eat them that way too. 02:03:16.72 Michael Prehn Yeah, that's a good example of that. And I find, in general, vegetables are kind of more desirable across the temperature spectrum. um like I love roasted potatoes fresh out of the oven, of course, but I also kind of like them as a snack when they're just cold. 02:03:34.62 Michael Prehn Um, French fries. I know this is not a popular opinion and I can't explain where I get it from, but I actually really like cold French fries. It's a weird thing with me, but, uh, it might be harkening back to some kind of childhood experience that I have fond memories of, but can't quite recall. 02:03:50.96 Jala Right, right, well the texture of that fry is totally different when it's cold. 02:03:56.14 Michael Prehn Yes, it definitely is. And for some reason it's appealing to me. So. You know, part of cooking is recognizing what's the ideal serving temperature for something. you On the flip side, an example we used in the previous episode was ice cream, ah which will taste better whenever it's not quite frozen, when it's in the process of melting. 02:04:18.25 Michael Prehn And part of that is chemical, because it has it's partially melted, so it makes better contact with your taste buds as it turns into a liquid, things like that. But some of it is textural, too. 02:04:28.40 Michael Prehn um you know The texture of completely frozen ice cream can come across as a little icy or grainy. 02:04:34.44 Jala Mm hmm. 02:04:35.07 Michael Prehn ah And what you really want is for it to be smooth, or at least ah most people, that's what they desire. So recognizing the best serving temperature makes a big difference. 02:04:46.20 Jala Oh, yeah. And then, too, talking about that, um a lot of reasons why the ice creams tend to be like if you if you get a default ice cream from a place, it's probably going to be super high fat content is because that high fat content keeps it from being icy because like are that fat, you know, stays. 02:05:07.27 Jala and Like retains it's like shape or whatever when it's in the freezer versus if you have something that has more water content rather than like fat molecules like when it's a thinner. Product that is then being frozen into this ice cream ah like a low fat ice cream a low fat ice cream is a much more. 02:05:27.43 Jala um much harder and you know much icier than a full fat ice cream would be. So that's something to keep in mind too. like If you are trying to like ah watch your calorie intake or your fat intake or whatever and you have a low fat, low calorie ice cream, 02:05:46.96 Jala That one will benefit from a little bit more time out of the freezer before you eat it. A full fat ice cream um will be like a little bit less icy, so it won't need as much time out to start getting those benefits of the melting process. 02:06:04.57 Michael Prehn Yep. And it comes down again to that kind of moving target of flavors. fat is generally less volatile to its environment than ah water or stock or something like that. So that's why those higher fat items tend to freeze a lot better. That's why we have a bevy of, uh, you know, pizza rolls and frozen egg rolls and all this stuff. It's a lot of high fat foods, partially because fat is tasty. And so it's easier to make a good product out of that, but also because it protects them from the effects of the changing environment. 02:06:37.92 Jala Absolutely. So moving right along. Sautéing refers to the process of cooking ingredients, cooking ingredients quickly at high heat with a little bit of fat in a low wide pan that allows released liquids to evaporate quickly. Sautéing is a low moisture cooking process that often leads to browning. 02:06:59.84 Michael Prehn This is my favorite cooking method of all time. ah If I am making something at the house, there's probably an 80% chance that at least part of it is sauteed. I'm going to have to disagree with ah Mandy a little bit on this because, ah at least in terms of my education, 02:07:17.42 Michael Prehn They taught us that salting and other forms of frying are actually kind of a low moisture and a high moisture ah cooking method and that's because fat have properties that are similar to both liquids and solids chemically so you think about like frying a chicken breast. 02:07:35.25 Michael Prehn Well, that's removing moisture from the outside of the thing, so you get the nice crispy breading, but it's also protecting the moisture on the inside because it forms a barrier whenever the flour and the fat synthesize together and cook ah that keeps the moisture from escaping. So fat's kind of a weird one where it's sort of both, depending on how you use it, but that's part of the reason why sauteing's really great. 02:08:01.41 Michael Prehn Because oil can get much hotter than water. Water gets to 212 Fahrenheit, turns into steam. There's nothing you can do. Oil, you can get it to basically any temperature as long as it doesn't smoke or catch fire. ah So that leads to a lot of interesting flavor opportunities. 02:08:18.25 Jala Right. And the thing is, is that there are a lot of um folks out there that do oil free cooking. um And if they're if you're not using oil and you're trying to saute things, then like you have to adjust your temperatures and you have to constantly be adding water because it is evaporating constantly. 02:08:38.20 Jala And of course, like, you know, have have the right ah cookware for that, you know, because you obviously don't want something where it's going to stick to the pan, you know, 02:08:39.00 Michael Prehn Right. 02:08:47.65 Jala um So, you know, you have to consider all of these things if you are doing an oil-free cooking and the way that the thing is gonna cook in oil is very different than the way that it's going to cook with no oil at all. I know a lot of people also do spray oil, but honestly, if I'm going to use oil in something, like if I'm cooking something and I want it to have some oil, I will put up a little bit of oil. It doesn't have to necessarily be quite as much as a recipe demands in my case. We tend to cut back on the oil, but we don't take out the oil entirely. 02:09:20.54 Michael Prehn Yeah, you don't need a ton for salting. 02:09:22.63 Jala Yeah. 02:09:22.78 Michael Prehn You know, that's an important thing for those of those of y'all that haven't done a lot of cooking in the past. You don't need a ton. 02:09:29.54 Michael Prehn Uh, recipes often overestimate it because again, fat's tasty. They're concerned about the end result, but a little bit goes a long way, especially if you have your pan at the correct kind of heat. 02:09:40.00 Jala Yeah, absolutely. So at our house, we do a lot of steaming and we do a lot of air frying and then we do a lot of sauteing. So those are the primary methods that we use. 02:09:54.11 Jala So ah moving right along, sweating is the soft cooking cousin of sauteing. It involves cooking an ingredient in a small amount of fat, but at low heat, usually covered or partly covered to bring out its juices. An onion cooked this way has a simple sweetness. 02:10:11.05 Jala Onions that are sweated before being added to soup have a different taste. They're softer and sweeter from onions that are dropped in raw. So um for all the different folks out there who might have like a crock pot cookbook you know or a one one pot or whatever cookbook or things like that, um I don't know about one pot, ah but in crock pot recipe books, there's always like, here, cook these things on the stove first before you put them in the crock pot. 02:10:38.53 Jala And, you know, for a while, you know, but like before I started turning into like a major foodie, when I was only a minor foodie and just getting into the foodie world, I was like, why did they do that? 02:10:49.81 Jala And then, you know, the reason reason is because like that changes the flavors and everything. And especially if you are browning ingredients and doing other things like that in the pan before those go into the crock pot, your crock pot is not going to be able to brown those things unless you're burning the crap at the bottom. 02:11:05.28 Jala You know that's a different thing entirely you're not going to get the same result, as you are if you're going to put those ingredients in a pan and then put them in there so. 02:11:07.43 Michael Prehn right 02:11:14.93 Michael Prehn Yeah, um nonstick cookware such as the vessels for crock pots or pressure cookers in some cases, and even Teflon pans are famously not very good at browning foods. And um that's because browning almost always requires a certain amount of sticking, maybe not enough for an ingredient to actually stick to the pan, but you do need to fuse a little bit. 02:11:40.46 Michael Prehn because what you're doing there is really your kind of like browning the sugars in the ingredient if they don't stick they don't make enough contact at a molecular level so you tend to get food that ah you have difficulty browning or won't brown at all. 02:11:55.11 Jala Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So how about you tell us about boiling? 02:12:01.33 Michael Prehn Sure, ah boiling is cooking ingredients immersed in a very hot bubbling liquid. Its close relative simmering occurs just a temperature step down with the liquid barely bubbling, usually after it's reached a full boil first. Simmering or boiling ingredients in salted water or flavorful liquid can be the start of a dish that uses both the liquid and the ingredients that get added to it. The ingredients both absorb the flavor in the liquid and alter it. 02:12:30.03 Michael Prehn It's a good technique for creating composite layered flavors like a curried squash soup that uses chicken stock and coconut milk. Boiling ingredients in salted water is also a good way to focus the flavor of an ingredient, making it taste only of itself. So whereas sauteing was my favorite ah cooking method, boiling is probably my least favorite um because it tends to be too harsh for most ingredients in my experience. 02:13:01.56 Michael Prehn There are exceptions, of course, but I find that I don't use boiling very often outside of making like, uh, you know, reheating dried pasta or something along those lines. 02:13:11.77 Jala Mm hmm. 02:13:12.81 Michael Prehn It also has some nutritional drawbacks, which we're not going to get into in today's episode, but we'll talk about it a future date. 02:13:19.57 Jala Yep. Yep. Absolutely. I know I was thinking about it too. Cause when I was making offer mentioned purple sweet potato thing, uh, you know, like I, I was boiling the the potatoes for that, um, just because like our steamer doesn't have enough room to fit all of those chunks of potato that I had to to do. 02:13:27.97 Michael Prehn Yeah. 02:13:40.00 Jala So I had to boil them and I was like, I don't boil things. Like. Except pasta, I don't boil anything like ever. 02:13:45.08 Michael Prehn Yeah. 02:13:47.53 Jala I don't boil stuff, you know? Huh, you know. 02:13:50.81 Michael Prehn it just It just tends to beat ingredients up too much in my experience. 02:13:54.85 Jala Yeah. 02:13:55.39 Michael Prehn And there are some ingredients like potatoes that you do need to beat up. 02:13:58.34 Jala yeah 02:13:59.08 Michael Prehn Potatoes are a very starchy, very dense ingredient. You have to soften it somehow. And boiling with its high heat and high contact with the ingredient is great for breaking down stuff like that. 02:14:11.11 Michael Prehn It's just that you wouldn't necessarily like boil a filet or something along those lines because it's just it's too delicate and it can't handle that kind of abuse. 02:14:20.93 Jala Yep, absolutely. So steaming is cooking ingredients over, not in boiling water, in a contained environment. It allows fish, meat, and vegetables to cook in a moist environment without being immersed in water, which can dilute flavor and degrade texture, especially of delicate ingredients. Steaming at low temperatures can be a gentle cooking process, especially good for applying heat to fish and greens. 02:14:47.77 Jala so um Steaming is most often what you'll get when you're when it's something like ah blah blah blah and kale or something like that. 02:14:57.67 Michael Prehn Right. 02:14:57.79 Jala like You're going to steam steam that kale a little bit just and start until it starts to wilt a little bit. and Then you're going to pull it off that heat like pretty quick because you don't want it to turn into mush. 02:15:08.32 Jala You want it to still have some of its properties left you know for the textures and everything. 02:15:15.20 Michael Prehn Yeah, it's a really good cooking um apparatus for things that you need to cook just a little bit. 02:15:20.93 Jala Yeah. 02:15:21.55 Michael Prehn You know, steaming is very good for that. And, you know, here's a ah industry kind of secret, but you can, um you can steam stuff and things that aren't water and it does actually make a difference. 02:15:31.08 Jala Yep. 02:15:32.48 Michael Prehn Like if you use stock, or some form of alcohol, ah you know white wine, very famous in French cuisines for making a steamer basket. It really does make a big difference. 02:15:43.31 Michael Prehn So if you have a favorite steaming recipe, try ah switching out the water for something else. You might get a different result. Also, dang near essential for hand-drilling flour tortillas in any capacity. 02:15:57.29 Michael Prehn If you're like me and you have a really hard time making a neat roll on a burrito or something like that, steam the tortilla a little bit. It makes it so much more pliable because it cooks the flour just a little bit and gives it that flexibility and actually strengthens it a little bit. 02:16:14.25 Michael Prehn So it's good for a light touch. That's what steaming's great for. 02:16:17.68 Jala And that's why tortilla warmers are cool because you can have like a hot tortilla, you put it in there and then it actually still kind of like so keeps the steam in there and keeps it like it, it not only keeps it warm, it also keeps it like moist to keep it from drying out. 02:16:33.07 Jala It also keeps it kind of cooking a little bit still. 02:16:34.17 Michael Prehn Yeah. 02:16:37.38 Michael Prehn Yeah, it's essentially steaming the tortilla in the water that's present in the tortilla, which is ah really clever. 02:16:42.07 Jala Yep. Mm hmm. So. 02:16:46.37 Michael Prehn Yeah. So, um, poaching, uh, is our next cooking method and it's a cooking whenever something's immersed in a liquid at a lower temperature than boiling or simmering. 02:16:57.34 Michael Prehn Uh, it's a technique that's usually used for meat and fish, uh, when a moist and tender result is desired as opposed to steaming. However, poaching does add flavor from the cooking liquid. 02:17:08.56 Michael Prehn Again, disagree with you Mandy, but it's okay. 02:17:09.84 Jala Yeah. 02:17:10.99 Michael Prehn I respect you. It adds more flavor. I will say that much. 02:17:14.75 Jala Mm hmm. 02:17:15.36 Michael Prehn ah And the poached ingredient can flavor the poaching liquid in turn. you know Very popular with animal proteins, ah but it is good for a wide variety of things. 02:17:26.70 Michael Prehn Famously poached eggs, very difficult to pull off ah for a lot of people, but they're so good when they're done properly. But it's also good for any kind of ingredient that is like physically not very strong, which is why it's popular with fish and things like that. 02:17:44.67 Michael Prehn Poaching is really good for tofu. you know that's I prepare it that way a lot of the time here at the house. It's just a really good way of delivering a lot of flavor without like pulverizing your ingredient too much. 02:17:56.17 Jala Well, and if you have ah so, so there's a lot of different things I can say about different ways to adjust tofu when you're cooking it and everything. So one of my favorite things to do with tofu, for one, um always freeze your tofu. yeah Well, I say always. ah You can freeze your tofu if you have like a firm tofu and you want to have like ah a a stronger texture to it. And you also want to get more of the water out so that you can marinate the tofu or poach it in a liquid that has you know, ah but that is basically a marinade that it has all the spices and stuff in it already. And then you want it to um have that flavor imbued in it. um If you freeze it, if and then you pull it out of the freezer, let it thaw and then you press all the water out of it. More water will come out of it after you've frozen it. And so that allows it to then take up more moisture when you put it into a sauce or something and then poach it or whatever you're going to do with it from there. 02:18:55.31 Michael Prehn Yeah, you think about something that um is dehydrated and how it tends to kind of suck up all the water around it. ah You know, tofu can act like that way if it's frozen and pressed as well. 02:19:07.35 Michael Prehn And again, it's about moisture manipulation. Like that's a really useful tool and it gets the tofu to have a ah more like animal protein texture and also be able to soak up the flavors like Jala said. 02:19:16.94 Jala Mm hmm. 02:19:20.24 Jala Yep, yep. And I've seen there's a lot of different methods. And I've seen people talk about double freezing and stuff like that. And that that's like a step. 02:19:27.93 Michael Prehn Yeah. 02:19:28.75 Jala There's a lot you can do with tofu. And um when people say that they don't like it, it's usually because they don't have it prepared well, you know. So. 02:19:37.01 Michael Prehn Yeah. I'm still learning a lot about vegan cuisine. It's relatively new to me. They didn't teach it in school at all. And there is zero demand for it anywhere in South Louisiana. 02:19:48.15 Michael Prehn Uh, so I've never had to really use it professionally, but I'm trying to learn more. And one of the similarities that I recognized is that tofu is a very high moisture ingredient. So I started thinking about it, like, how do I cook like a piece of fish? 02:20:02.63 Michael Prehn You know, and it employs a lot of the similar techniques because you do want to get some of that water out of it so you can replace it with something more flavorful. 02:20:10.95 Jala Yeah. So let's move on to the next one. We've got smoking. It's an ancient method of flavoring. 02:20:16.08 Michael Prehn Yeah. 02:20:17.13 Jala This is one of my favorites. I don't smoke anything at home, um but if I had a smoker, I would use the shit out of it. A hot smoker in particular. 02:20:25.96 Michael Prehn Yeah. 02:20:26.30 Jala so um Anyway, it's an ancient method of flavoring and preserving foods, especially meats. Even more than grilling, it gives food a primal and deeply satisfying flavor. Smoke adds umami and intensity, locking with the flavor of the ingredients and amplifying it. 02:20:45.79 Jala There's two kinds of smoking. In hot smoking, for instance, barbecued ribs, the heat is high enough to cook the ingredients. In cold smoking, for instance, bacon or smoked salmon, the temperature is low and the ingredients are not cooked, just infused with smoke. 02:21:03.06 Jala Smoking doesn't require fancy equipment. You can buy smokers specifically designed for hot and cold smoking. You can also build your own. For hot smoking, all you really need are a metal container with a lid, some wood, charcoal, or propane for heat, and some smoldering wood chips in an outdoor or at least heavily ventilated space. You can hot smoke on a regular gas or charcoal grill, or even on a purchased or improvised stovetop smoker. 02:21:29.09 Jala Cold smokers are designed to allow ingredients to be held in a separate chamber from the burning wood or coal. The smoke they generate is pumped through to flavor the food without heating it. 02:21:40.23 Jala And I will also add cold smoking is super popular when making fancy cocktails and mocktails and coffee drinks. If you want a fancy ass coffee drink, 02:21:48.69 Michael Prehn Yeah. 02:21:50.59 Jala Yeah do like you know ah like a pre smoked glass where you put like you know an urban citrus or something that you you do first before you. 02:22:01.37 Jala um and do and this is easy like you you basically you just like the a little bit of the ingredient on fire more or less on the a special little you know non flammable tray that you can get ah ah or or anything that's non flammable that you can set it on and then you put the cup over the top of it and the smoke goes in the glass. 02:22:21.07 Jala ah You can also do it where you smoke the stuff on the top. 02:22:22.01 Michael Prehn Mm hmm. 02:22:24.37 Jala I mean, there's a lot of different methods, but um this does something totally different and it makes, you know, it elevates any kind of a drink that you want to do that to. And of course ah you can do this to your food and have like a full on smoked meat or, you know, smoked almonds or tofu or whatever kind of other thing you want to do um as well. 02:22:47.46 Jala So. 02:22:49.04 Michael Prehn Yeah, smoking is um a really interesting cooking method because it only lightly cooks the thing that is being treated with. um but it chemically changes it pretty drastically, um which is why it intensifies the flavors, complements them sometimes in wildly unpredictable ways. So it can be kind of a tricky cooking method to get a hold of, um but once you've got a taste for it and you can do it well, it's like nothing else. It really produces food that's like, 02:23:22.81 Michael Prehn incredibly different from anything salted or baked or anything like that. And to your point about the cocktail, that will never not be a successful party trick, by the way, if you're ever having guests over to your house and you want to like, ooh, and awe them like a smoke cocktail, even if no flavor comes through from it, it's just such a cool presentation that it it's always a hit with people. 02:23:34.88 Jala Right. 02:23:43.87 Jala Mm hmm. 02:23:47.46 Michael Prehn So it's very fun. 02:23:48.17 Jala Absolutely. How about you tell us about Browning? 02:23:53.62 Michael Prehn Yeah. So I think that this is really kind of the heart and soul of cooking in a lot of ways. And it touches on basically every cooking method in some way or another, but ah the, my art reaction. 02:24:06.24 Michael Prehn commonly called browning, is a chemical reaction between amino acids and sugars that happens in situations with high heat and low moisture. This reaction creates hundreds of flavor compounds which keep evolving as the process continues. They contribute an incredible array of savory umami flavors to food, which is why grilled and roasted foods are so delicious. 02:24:27.45 Michael Prehn They also create a host of aromatic compounds that make brown food smell mouthwatering even before you taste it. And this is the secret to so many ah cooking methods and why they're great. 02:24:39.25 Michael Prehn Sauteing, grilling, roasting, anything that turns a food golden brown and delicious, that's a myard reaction. And it really is super complex chemically, which is why it produces food that's just plain great. 02:24:45.96 Jala Mm hmm. 02:24:53.65 Michael Prehn That's all there is to it. 02:24:54.86 Jala Oh, yeah. And then I don't know if chemically this makes any sense, but like if, if for example, I have browned something because I have dry roasted it versus having it browned in a pan with some kind of um liquid involved, like it tastes different to me. And that's because of the complexity of the the interaction of that browning process with all of the other elements that that are present there, either dry or wet cooking methods. 02:25:22.50 Jala So, um you know, like, just think about that for a minute and then you can start to see where, yeah, the cooking methods really do make a big difference, even if this similar thing is happening, you know. 02:25:34.63 Michael Prehn Yeah, and there's a lot of interplay in between my art reactions and water activity level in foods. 02:25:40.73 Jala Mm hmm. 02:25:41.85 Michael Prehn um So depending on which cooking method you select and temperature and all these different variables, you can get drastically different results. for newer cooks out there. 02:25:53.96 Michael Prehn If a recipe is pretty close to good but not quite excellent, try doing a different cooking method that's similar. um If it calls for roasting in an oven, try sauteing it if you can. 02:26:05.53 Michael Prehn It might come out very different and sometimes a lot better. 02:26:09.11 Jala Yeah, absolutely. And I will say too, a lot of recipe books, even even vegan recipe books that use tofu, they almost always are like, bake the tofu. And I'm like, why would you would you want to turn it into just dry little husks? 02:26:23.71 Jala Like, what is this? 02:26:25.03 Michael Prehn Yeah. 02:26:25.25 Jala Like, why are you doing this? You know, like, hmm. So like, I almost never do it that way when they say it that way. Like, I very rarely do. I change it and and I will most often end up poaching it. 02:26:38.82 Jala um And if I wanted a little drier, I might do like air fryer or something like that instead because I want it to, you know, ah have a little bit different of a ah taste than what the the just solid baking is going to do. 02:26:52.91 Michael Prehn Yeah, baking doesn't feel like it would treat tofu well because there's so much water in it that, ah like you say, it probably just changes the texture in a bad way. 02:27:01.71 Jala Yeah. Yeah. Like I'm not a fan of that particular way of preparing tofu. Um, I'm sure there's use cases for that, but like, you know, so far I haven't found a recipe that says bake the tofu. 02:27:14.53 Jala We're doing it a different way. Hasn't been beneficial. so Yeah. 02:27:19.44 Michael Prehn Yeah, for sure. 02:27:21.54 Jala So pan frying is cooking food over high heat and partially immersed in fat. deep frying is the same as pan frying except that the ingredient is fully submerged. Frying is a good technique for burning off all an ingredient surface moisture while ah you have a crisp exterior but you have a soft interior. so ah or if it's a thin enough material like a chip, like a potato chip, you can fry and then have a potato chip or if it has a little bit of soft on the inside still, you know fries where there's some soft in there. 02:27:57.15 Jala so 02:27:57.96 Michael Prehn It's arguably the most intense cooking method, uh, that is here because being submerged in a fat, again, fat can get hotter than water can, and it has complete contact with the food because it's submerged. So it is a very intense cooking method. Uh, you couldn't take something that was battered and put it in like an oven and have the result be the same. Everyone's tried it. You know, if the fries are just, they, they ate the same in an oven. 02:28:25.75 Michael Prehn air fryers are close, but that's part of the reason ah part of the reason for that is because they move air around so rapidly. It has kind of a similar um drying out effect that deep fat frying does. 02:28:40.08 Jala Right. Right. So I mean, like, think about, for example, there was one time Dave and I were trying to make corn dogs, but we couldn't deep fry them. So we tried to pan fry them and that worked all right. 02:28:52.03 Jala It wasn't ideal because, you know, like the coating didn't stay evenly. 02:28:54.32 Michael Prehn hu ah 02:28:58.42 Jala Like it was it was ah wider, you know, like the gravity came and did its thing. 02:29:01.98 Michael Prehn yeah 02:29:02.50 Jala so like i mean It was still all the way around the the little hot dog thing in the middle, but like you know it was definitely um more of a flat than a round. 02:29:12.50 Michael Prehn Yeah. 02:29:14.32 Jala Of course, like it wouldn't taste as good that way pan frying it when you need to deep fry it. so um ah Could you imagine 02:29:21.02 Michael Prehn Yeah, it's such a dense food. 02:29:22.60 Jala yeah could you imagine 02:29:23.55 Michael Prehn It really needs contact. 02:29:25.17 Jala Yeah, just imagine trying to take a corn dog. try to Imagine a corn dog that you try to bake. that doesn't No, especially if you're making it from home and it's not like a frozen one that's already like you know composed and and solid. 02:29:36.63 Michael Prehn Yeah, it wouldn't be very good. No. 02:29:43.39 Jala you know If you have a battery, like there's no way. You can't you can't make that work. so 02:29:49.08 Michael Prehn No, just turn into a hot dog on top of a pancake, basically. 02:29:52.26 Jala yeah right for sure no no 02:29:55.67 Michael Prehn Not very good. So, uh, searing food is a process by which you brown it quickly in a moderate amount of fat over very high heat. ah This method is sometimes used for foods that must brown quickly without allowing the insides to overcook. um This has gotten trendy in the last decade or so. ah Ultimately, the only real difference in process for searing something and sauteing something is temperature. 02:30:24.35 Michael Prehn um you know ah This is like the text mentions, something that's good for like cooking steaks, tuna, things like that where you might actually want the inside to stay less cooked or raw. 02:30:37.06 Jala Yep, yep. Grilling is cooking over an open flame which generates umami flavors. A combination of smoke, herbs, and spices can also be enchanting, creating flavors that layer with the umami tastes of deep browning and take grilling a long way past steak. 02:30:54.54 Jala I love grilled things. One thing that I've wanted to do and I've never done it because I've just been i've been curious but i haven't I haven't been curious enough to do it is some grilling watermelon. 02:31:05.21 Jala I tried putting watermelon in a dehydrator once. 02:31:06.61 Michael Prehn Yeah. 02:31:10.96 Michael Prehn That comes out worse than you expect, right? 02:31:13.05 Jala It's worse than you thought, like I just wanted to know if it was going to dissipate into nothingness and the answer is no, but then like what you get left is worse, somehow worse than anything you could ever imagine. 02:31:26.31 Jala It's terrible, but I hear it still. 02:31:27.44 Michael Prehn Yeah, it's one of those ideas that sounds good on paper, but an execution. It's awful. 02:31:33.71 Michael Prehn Like folks don't dehydrate watermelon. It's bad. The problem with it is that a watermelon being a watermelon is primarily water. So when you dehydrate it the couple of other flavor notes that are in a watermelon get way too intense Because you've removed 98% of the mass of the thing so you get this horrible bitter tasting thing it's not good like and this is part of the reason why artificial watermelon flavor is so hard to get right in a lab setting is because generally speaking if you're making a artificial flavor or a flavor additive You're like distilling and dehydrating things which watermelon does not take too very well So that's why most watermelon candy is like not that great by most people's estimation. 02:32:25.18 Michael Prehn It's really tricky to get right I 02:32:26.73 Jala You said dehydrating watermelon sounds good on paper. No, it doesn't Mike. No, I never thought it was a good idea. I just wanted to satisfy my curiosity. So I dehydrated it. And then I found out that it was a terrible idea. 02:32:45.21 Michael Prehn That's like, I tried it once cause I was like, I wonder if this is going to make like a nice like sour kind of fruit roll up sort of thing. And the answer is no, not even remotely. 02:32:52.58 Jala No, not at all. But as a result of that experiment, I have never gotten brave enough to then take a piece of watermelon and grill it. 02:33:02.83 Jala I hear tell it's good though, if you grill it just a little bit. 02:33:05.82 Michael Prehn it is It is because it cooks it so fast on the outside that it doesn't really dry it out exactly. 02:33:09.90 Jala Yeah. 02:33:12.24 Michael Prehn And you know there's a fair amount of sugar and watermelon, so it gets nice grill marks. And it's a little sweet and savory combo. it's pretty good. Here's my hot take about grilling. 02:33:23.39 Michael Prehn I think grilling is actually a really bad way to cook animal protein in most cases. ah but like I know that's not a popular opinion, but in my experience, 02:33:35.31 Michael Prehn especially with leaner meats like chicken, it just dries it out way too much. 02:33:38.33 Jala yes it driveies it out 02:33:40.88 Michael Prehn Yeah, I'm a much bigger fan of like cooking those things in a pan or another cooking method, something like that. 02:33:47.26 Michael Prehn Now for sausages, hamburgers, things that are very high fat content, so they retain their their quality better when they're being dried. Great, perfect. Grilled hamburger, delicious, classic, all that stuff. 02:33:58.82 Michael Prehn But I think steak and chicken actually doesn't really take well to grilling personally. 02:34:03.11 Jala I like smoked everything. like That's why I said earlier, or if I could have a smoker now, the thing where they're like, oh, you can just do these things and you can do a smoker yourself. 02:34:11.81 Jala I would not recommend that just because I work in insurance as a day job. 02:34:13.31 Michael Prehn Yeah. 02:34:16.23 Jala You don't want anybody losing their house trying to make an improvised smoker. don't don't Please don't if you don't know what you're doing. um Be safe. Same goes with deep frying. 02:34:27.26 Michael Prehn And if you would like to. 02:34:28.28 Jala Please with deep frying. You need a much much much larger container than you think you 02:34:35.06 Michael Prehn yep, at least twice as large as the combined volume of the oil and the ah the thing that you're frying. And if you would like to contribute to Jala owning a smoker, you can go to Ko-fi.com slash, no with you smoking's really good. 02:34:53.00 Jala Yeah, yeah. The fund up there on the Ko-Fi right now is to have Dave and I do a chronological run through of all of Arnold Schwarzenegger's movies and we're getting up there. 02:35:04.61 Jala We're at like something at 70% or something like that funded for that. So ah once we hit that goal, yeah, we'll be going through every one of them chronologically. 02:35:10.21 Michael Prehn That's going to be fascinating. 02:35:14.46 Jala It's going to be a blast. 02:35:18.45 Michael Prehn Does that count, footage of him being a governor on television? 02:35:21.99 Jala Oh, I don't even know. I think it means like anything that we can buy on DVD or Blu-ray. And I don't think that's available at this time on a thing. 02:35:35.25 Michael Prehn Roger that. 02:35:35.71 Jala yeah baking and roasting are basically the same process. Cooking foods with dry heat in an oven. Typically, baking refers to bait breads and pastries, roasting to meat and vegetables. um Not always, but I mean, like, okay, whatever. Anyway, sorry, sorry, Mandy, I gotta disagree with you there. Anyway, roasting also tends to be used to refer to deeply browned foods, even though the Maillard reaction is a key component in the complex flavors of bread and many kinds of pastries. Whatever we call them, baking and roasting can happen either at lower temperatures, which create less browning, or higher temperatures, which create more. 02:36:20.78 Michael Prehn Yep. These two terms are more or less synonymously with each other. I would agree with the definition that roasting is typically a higher temperature. I've also seen it refer to baking with a high air convection running on it, similar to like an air fryer. 02:36:34.31 Jala Hmm. Yeah. 02:36:37.19 Michael Prehn I've seen that definition as well, but they are kind of interchangeable. It's basically a variable of heat and air movement and which one's appropriate for the dish. 02:36:46.59 Jala Right. Right. 02:36:48.81 Michael Prehn Yeah, so braising and stewing are also two cooking methods that are more or less the same thing. ah So these are methods where you cook either meat or vegetables over low heat in a moist environment until they are tender. 02:37:04.15 Michael Prehn Typically, stewing refers to this process as it happens on the stovetop, and braising ah is the oven-pound version of it, which, again, they're interchangeable. 02:37:14.62 Michael Prehn I've seen people disagree with that definition as well. 02:37:17.14 Jala Mm hmm. 02:37:18.04 Michael Prehn um While in this sense, they are essentially soft cooking processes, they tend to begin with hard cooking processes like sauteing and searing to introduce deep roasted flavors that will incorporate themselves into the liquid as the dish cooks. Braising and stewing require ingredients that can stand up to long cooking, a ah mature hen or an old rooster, ah wild mushrooms, things of that nature. And ah very popular with like large cuts of meat. 02:37:47.46 Michael Prehn ah Like a like a lamb or something like that because it's the one thing these two cooking methods have in common is that they take place over a long period of time. 02:37:56.32 Jala So um would it work better like for a game of your meat? Not like I eat meat, but I'm just a random question that popped in my head. 02:38:07.93 Michael Prehn Yeah, typically because you know the thing that influences tenderness and animal proteins is how much they use a particular muscle. ah Tender cuts of meat tend to be ah parts of the animal that aren't worked out that much. ah Game meats by their nature because these are animals that are not in captivity and they're running around all the time, they're fighting off predators. 02:38:28.59 Michael Prehn They tend to be tougher cuts like ah you know venison lamb things like that they tend to be tougher than farm raised animals so something like this that is a low and slow high moisture cooking method is really good for this kind of thing. 02:38:43.58 Jala Rock on. So we are shifting now into the seven dials of flavor. This book likes numbers. but I mean, that's called the seven dials, the four directions. It's just okay, cool. um But this is ah kind of a fun part, and this is just kind of ah wrapping up the rest of this episode here. So with food, there's basically seven different types of adjustments you can make to balance what you have created. 02:39:11.19 Jala Salt, sweet, sour, bitter, umami, fat, and heat. We call them the seven dials. They do not create flavor, but they fine tune it in a magical way. 02:39:22.62 Jala So this is where we get to go through each of these things and talk about what they do. And this is fun because like, this feels like I am, I'm doing the weapons triangle in, in fire emblem or something, or, you know, like the, the, the element triangle and in Pokemon or whatever. 02:39:32.54 Michael Prehn Mm hmm. 02:39:37.11 Jala It's not even a triangle. It's like, You know, I don't even know how many elements there are anymore in, in Pokemon types. 02:39:42.38 Michael Prehn It's like the ah the collection of. 02:39:43.00 Jala There's like 70 types. ah shit 02:39:46.03 Michael Prehn It's the collection of villains that you see on the like anime intro that you're going to have to fight all of them. 02:39:51.39 Michael Prehn yeah It's that kind of thing. 02:39:53.28 Michael Prehn So salt, ah you know well known to everybody. ah Salt vivifies and draws out flavor, balances sweetness and acidity, and increases aroma. 02:40:05.04 Michael Prehn With the right amount of salt, the true flavor of a dish will, sorry, without the right amount of salt, the true flavor of a dish will not reveal itself. ah Salt does not work in a vacuum. It can be measured only in relation to the elements around it and in its specific context. Fatty meats need more salt. Lean ones need less. Fat fixes flavors, but it also covers them, which means that fatty foods generally require more seasoning to balance the flavors. Vegetables that are low in sodium or otherwise bland like potatoes will need more salt. All those that are naturally high in sodium like celery need less. 02:40:43.85 Michael Prehn rules that pertain to salt. Salt tends to push down on sweet, like ah salted caramel. Most people have experienced that. Salt tends to pull up sour, so adding salt makes things more sour, and then salt tends to suppress bitterness, like I talked about earlier with my ah grapefruit example. 02:41:03.31 Michael Prehn A little bit of salt makes it less bitter there. 02:41:05.56 Jala Mm-hmm. And in cooking, sweetness is a foil for salty, sour, and bitter, and useful for tempering them. But sweetness also carries a heaviness, so balancing foods with too much sugar can often make them dense and unpleasant. 02:41:23.70 Jala Sweetness can create perceptual richness as in a vegetable stock or tomato soup. So for sweet rules, you've got sweet pushes down salt, sour, and bitter. Sweet is heavy. Sweet acts like seasoning in a dessert. 02:41:43.44 Michael Prehn Yep, and that's because chemically sugar and salt have very similar kind of effects on taste buds. So ah they kind of fulfill the role that salt does in savory dishes. 02:41:54.66 Michael Prehn Moving on to the next style. Sour is anything with acidity. Acidity balances all kinds of combinations. It cleans up murky or fatty flavors, brightens vegetables and soups, ah relieves richness, and generally energizes. Acidity is dynamic and creates depth and complexity in otherwise flat flavors. 02:42:17.23 Michael Prehn Vinegar is the strongest, most direct kind of sour with piercing acidity. Red wine is the strongest vinegar, followed by sherry, white wine, or champagne, and cider. 02:42:28.45 Michael Prehn Rice wine vinegar has the softest acidity, and balsamic has a sweetness and a thick texture that balances the acidity and makes it more like a sauce. Hence why it works really well in a reduction. 02:42:40.01 Jala Mmhmm. 02:42:40.98 Michael Prehn ah Some rules regarding sour is tense energize ah sour ingredients can work together i think your lemon lime so doesn't like and then sour pulls down on all of the other dials which is true you make something too salty add a little bit of lime juice can sell but i love it. 02:43:01.96 Jala Bitterness is most commonly found in vegetables, endive, for example, and less occasionally fruits and spices. Of course, bitter, we talked about like grapefruit having bitterness and things like that. ah Many bitter foods remain unpalatable for us and for good reason. Their bitterness is often a marker of badly grown or old produce. For example, bolted lettuce or parched cucumbers. 02:43:26.05 Jala But a slight deliberately introduced bitterness is a welcome and even necessary element in flavor. We enjoy it in beer, tea, coffee, and grapefruit. Bitterness gives complexity and dimension to foods that might otherwise be too plain. A little bitterness goes a long way toward balancing sweet flavors or energizing bland ones. Bitterness rules include that bitterness balances sweet and bitterness is tamed by sour, salt, and fat. 02:43:57.77 Michael Prehn That's part of the reason why caramel is so magical is because it's actually quite bitter in addition to being sweet as is chocolate. 02:44:06.46 Michael Prehn Umami is our next style here and the text defines it as a savoriness quality that intensifies flavors and some rules with using umami flavors. 02:44:17.77 Michael Prehn It tends to intensify just everything. Salt amplifies umami and sour acidity ah diminishes it. 02:44:26.98 Jala Mm hmm. Yeah, yeah. And umami, i I love me some MSG. We talked about MSG and how, yes, it is safe. 02:44:33.80 Michael Prehn Mmhmm. 02:44:35.29 Jala Please use it. It is great ah in in the last episode. So um moving right along, humans can indeed taste fat. The function of fat within a dish is to carry and disperse flavor. 02:44:47.65 Jala It modifies texture and mouthfeel and therefore the release of flavor. It also balances acidity as in a vinaigrette. So for fat, the rules you need to know are that fat fixes flavor and fat pushes down sour, salt, bitter, and heat. 02:45:06.98 Michael Prehn Yeah, and finally here we have heat, ah which can invigorate bland foods, alleviate richness, bring a segment to otherwise homogenous combinations. It intensifies ah intensify sharp spices as if they themselves are generating the heat. Adding heat along with other flavor ingredients, such as cayenne, along with cardamom and cinnamon, can create a lock that renders the cardamom or cinnamon more intense. 02:45:35.08 Michael Prehn Some rules for using hot ingredients. Heat tends to create dynamic, complex flavors. It alleviates richness. It intensifies spices. And it tends to work well with every other dial. 02:45:48.56 Jala Oh yeah, like one of the um chocos that I've most recently been a fan of is just like any of the the spicy chocos where they've got, you know, like chocolates where they have, you know, like, cause Dave and I, um, so, so dark chocolate, it's not always vegan, but it can be vegan depending upon whether or not they throw milk in it. 02:45:57.59 Michael Prehn Oh, yeah. 02:46:07.65 Jala And um so we ah eat a lot of dark chocolate, but that's also our favorite type of dark chocolate anyway. We like that bitterness. um But we also have, you know, we get the little gourmet chocolate bar and then we like split it and we eat little bites of it like for three or four days in a row and just split the bar over a period of time. 02:46:26.96 Jala And so like we'll get these fancy bars with a bunch of different gourmet flavors and stuff. And then you know when we got to the spicy one, we're like, oh, yes, yes, this one. Another one that I like a lot is like an orange, like ah an orange chocolate. 02:46:41.17 Michael Prehn Yeah. 02:46:41.62 Jala yeah Oh, yeah. 02:46:42.08 Michael Prehn Yeah, that's very good. um Green hatch chilies have gotten real popular paired with chocolate lately because they happen to have a lot of flavors in common with each other. 02:46:51.11 Jala Mm-hmm. 02:46:52.15 Michael Prehn So somewhere along the line, someone discovered that they are natural allies. 02:46:56.06 Jala Yeah, yeah. So that wraps up the Art of Flavor book. It's ah a really cool book. And like I said, it has a bunch of recipes in the book proper. So if all of this sounds very cool and interesting to you, definitely check that book out. There's also lots and lots of other books out there and references that you can use to learn more about this topic. This just happens to be one that ah particularly spoke to me just in terms of just having a lot of information to give you a starting place to really think about what you're eating and how to compose your own dishes so you're not always necessarily relying on recipes and cookbooks. 02:47:38.93 Michael Prehn Right. Yeah. It's, everyone eats, you know, it's the common human condition. It's one of the things that everyone on the planet does, but The actual mechanics of what happens in there is arcane, uh, to a lot of people just because it's so natural that you don't really have to think about it. 02:47:56.42 Michael Prehn But some people like me and Jala do like to think about it. So if you find yourself in that same, uh, camp, uh, this can be a really great resource. I mean, Hey, we've recorded six hours of audio on it so far, you know, that should be an endorsement enough in and of itself, right? 02:48:07.25 Jala really Yeah, yeah yep 02:48:12.90 Jala yeah absolutely. So the first episode in this series, the science of flavor, is talking about what happens when we eat food or when we're thinking about food or when we're, ah you know, looking at it or preparing to eat the food and things like that. So that was, you know, our interactions with the food which has already been prepared. 02:48:34.14 Jala And so this episode is just talking about, well, how do you make those things that you eat and then interact with in these interesting and cool ways? And the next episode that we're going to do, I've already mentioned this before, but it's going to be a cooking 101 slash nutrition 101. I feel those things are important to pair together just ah to continue the overall wellness aspect of my show. 02:48:57.63 Jala um and We're going to talk about the different ways of cooking, different methods of cooking proper now that we've got, okay, well, these are how the flavors go and this is how this stuff goes. 02:48:58.70 Michael Prehn Mm hmm. 02:49:08.01 Jala and You're thinking about all the things that happen when you you present the food and you're trying to eat the food. you know Well, let's actually get into the kitchen and do the thing. and That's going to be coming up next. 02:49:18.59 Jala so As always, Mike, it has been a pleasure to talk to you about food. I am so hungry now. 02:49:26.38 Michael Prehn You and me both. And I ate right before this. 02:49:29.71 Jala I did it. I had a protein shake and I'm so ready to eat my dinner now. So yeah. Thank you very much. I look forward to the next time that we are talking about stuff on here. 02:49:41.73 Jala Do you have any mic drop mics you want to say? 02:49:47.21 Michael Prehn Sorry, I didn't come prepared with anything cool. 02:49:47.34 Jala You're like, no. 02:49:51.62 Jala Well, maybe if we get Max back in the room, Max will have something to say. 02:49:56.65 Michael Prehn Okay, here here's my mic drop, is Cook with MSG, please. 02:50:00.88 Jala Yes, yes. Okay, so ah where in the world can people find you on the internet if you are to be found anywhere, Mike? 02:50:10.15 Michael Prehn Um, the main place where you can find me on the public facing internet is blue sky. That's michaelprehn.bsky.social. Um, I have taken a miniature social media hiatus, but I'm trying to get back into it for various reasons, but you can see me. 02:50:29.27 Michael Prehn I talk about workers rights and talk about food that I've prepared and you can see pictures of that orange A-hole that was interrupting our recording earlier in case you want to see the face behind the crimes He is I wouldn't I wouldn't tolerate his bs if he wasn't so gosh darn cute 02:50:44.33 Jala That orange a-hole is adorable, and orange is the best color. anyway 02:50:52.83 Jala easy And as for me, you can find me anywhere that I might be found @jalachan, including jalachan.place, where you found this episode and all of the others. So until next time, remember to smile and eat that MSG. [Show Outro] Jala Jala-chan's Place is brought to you by Fireheart Media. If you enjoyed the show, please share this and all of our episodes with friends and remember to rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice. Word of mouth is the only way we grow. If you like, you can also kick us a few bucks to help us keep the lights on at ko-fi.com/fireheartmedia. Check out our other show Monster Dear Monster: A Monster Exploration Podcast at monsterdear.monster. Music composed and produced by Jake Lionhart with additional guitars and mixed by Spencer Smith. Follow along with my adventures via jalachan.place or find me at jalachan in places on the net! [Outro Music]