Olive Oil, Saffron Gelato & The Great Ginkgo Takeover — w/ Nick Coleman & Ariel Johnson
Cooking Issues with Dave ArnoldShow Notes
Dave is back with a packed studio and longtime friend of the show Nick Coleman — olive oil educator, sensory expert, and musician behind HGH — fresh off a trip to Greece teaching at the International Olive Oil Network. They go deep on how to detect defects in olive oil by smell alone, why fruité noir works when done intentionally, olive fly maggots, pruning for quality fruit, and why every producing country swears theirs is the best.
Noma scientist and author Ariel Johnson joins mid-show, jumping straight into flavor chemistry: why plum frozen yogurt tastes like strawberries, how to reverse-engineer hogo for non-alcoholic tiki drinks, sulfur compounds in durian, chlorophyll behavior in green herb oils, and more. Saffron custard gelato, carotenoids, pressure-cooking aromatics, British potatoes — nothing is safe.
The crew also spirals into glorious tangents:
• DIY Danish pork roast & the perfect crackling sandwich • Street food logic — what should be eaten on the move • The underrated beauty (and stink) of ginkgo trees • Why wrapping potatoes in foil ruins them • Delivery fries, baguette sandwiches, and sidewalk etiquette rage • VR garbage, museum exhibits, waiting for Godot w/ Keanu & Alex Winter
Plus olive oil tasting in-studio, Patreon callers, and a preview of upcoming episodes — including Kevin from Noma returning soon. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
More from Cooking Issues with Dave Arnold
Dave gets into Ashmead’s Kernel apples, acidity, and why terroir makes fruit data unreliable before laying out plans for his ultimate outdoor cooking setup: tandoor, Roman-style hearth, masonry oven, commercial deep fryer, wok burner, and a whole lot of propane. Plus: the return of paper-bag cooking, dairy-free mashed potatoes, what to do with a country ham bone, male vs. female rabbit, getting pu-erh tea flavor into baked goods, browning breakfast sausage, low-temperature pasteurization, blood bread, cucumber cocktails, and the pursuit of better home seltzer. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Author Brian Hoefling joins Dave and the crew to explore Dryads: Spirits of the Trees, his deep dive into distilled spirits made from tree sap and other tree-derived sugars. They get into Sri Lankan arrack, Filipino lambanog, maple spirits, wild fermentation, palm sugar, garum, Roman cooking, and the surprising range of things humans have figured out how to ferment and distill.
It’s an All-Tangent Tuesday as Dave and the crew debate the unwritten rules of restaurants: bringing your own crushed red pepper, sneaking food into movie theaters, why some places refuse perfectly reasonable off-menu requests, and whether chimichurri disqualifies steak frites from being steak frites.
Dave Arnold is joined by Nastassia and Jack for an old-school Cooking Issues episode covering the etiquette of dining alone, phone calls at restaurants, and what guests should—or absolutely should not—bring to a dinner party. The crew gets into garlic fermented in honey and food-safety concerns, the right way to cool and store leftovers, fresh versus dried yeast, and Dave’s plans for an elaborate Peruvian-style rotisserie. Plus: cocktail texture, LA’s chaotic hillside architecture, Majordomo, upcoming travels to Houston and Paris, and the only universally acceptable answer to “What can I bring?”: wine. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Dave Arnold is back at Rockefeller Center with the crew, and Nastassia kicks things off with a beer can chicken experiment that went spectacularly wrong: green chicken, burning skin, emergency Popeyes, and a last-minute rescue by Daniel Patterson. Dave also reports back from Lima, with thoughts on Peruvian chicken, ceviche, pisco sours, ancient adobe cities, cocktail bars, and the city’s formidable traffic. Then it’s on to listener questions: getting Flavacol to stick to air-popped popcorn, the limits of long low-temperature brisket cooks, red versus white clam pizza, and more. Plus: undercooked eggplant, broken glass disasters, mushroom versus butterfly popcorn, New Haven clam pies, and the deep-fried-self art project that thankfully never happened. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.