Belated Birthday Tangents

Belated Birthday Tangents

From Cooking Issues with Dave Arnold by Cooking Issues

April 7, 2026 · 1h 1m

About this episode

Dave and the crew discuss various topics including geography, language, food preparation, and listener questions.

Dave and the crew cover a lot of ground this week, starting with geography confusion, regional slander etiquette, Jack’s post-New York cough, and a surprisingly heated discussion about whether former residents still have the right to talk trash about New Jersey. From there, the show dives into language drift, emoji fatigue, Bananagrams rage, and the ongoing battle between “less” and “fewer,” before pivoting into ramen noodles, heirloom wheat, kansui levels, nixtamalization, and the question of how alkaline is too alkaline. Later, Dave gives a birthday recap defined less by celebration than by windshield replacement, flour sifting, and side-by-side extraction tests for bread baking. Nastassia reports back from an Elizabeth Falkner pop-up at Mozza, Jack checks in after taking Dr. Jessica Harris to Mŏkbar, and John gears up for Easter with spiral ham, biscuits, mac and cheese, and Eggs Benedict, prompting a full breakdown of ham reheating strategy, biscuit technique, and poached egg logistics. In the listener questions, the team gets into frozen drink machine formulation, including ABV, sugar, acid, xanthan, methylcellulose, and polydextrose; preserving strawberry color during…

People in this episode

Host: Dave Arnold

Topics covered

  • geography confusion
  • language drift
  • ramen noodles
  • baking techniques
  • listener questions
  • food preparation

Keywords

  • New Jersey
  • ramen noodles
  • baking
  • frozen drinks
  • pasta dough
  • pistachio sorbet

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Mozza

Places: New Jersey, Mŏkbar

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