Arielle Johnson, bitters enthusiast and flavor chemical collector, joins Dave Arnold and Nastassia Lopez in the studio for this week's episode of Cooking Issues. Listen in to hear Dave talk about his mashed potato nightmares, and why a swinging bucket centrifuge is the ideal centrifuge for a home kitchen. Want to cook a burger in seconds? Try ohmic heating! Later, hear answers to questions about the food safety considerations of re-using soda bottles for carbonation. Dave, Arielle, and Nastassia give some tips on making vermouth at home, and what can be done to enhance the apertif's flavor and color. Want to make better rice noodles? Finally, learn some wheat science on this week's Cooking Issues! This program has been brought to you by Fairway Market.

"Another way to cook things is to strap electrodes to the food and use the food itself as a resistor. That's the principle behind ohmic heating." [26:35]

"Whenever you're bringing liquid nitrogen into the bar, you need to have a lot of safety training." [53:15]

-- Dave Arnold on Cooking Issues

This week's episode of Cooking Issues starts off with a slightly off-topic discussion: food aesthetics. Tune in to hear Dave Arnold and Nastassia Lopez talk about the the importance of the appearance of a dish or cocktail versus its taste. What role does food presentation have in defining the quality of a meal? Later, Dave tackles a question about centrifuges and clarifying agents, as well as some methods to re-bottle vermouth. Dave offers some equipment suggestions to a caller, and follows up about picky-eating children. Check out this listener's suggestions for children's foods here. What is involved with making a maraschino cherry? All this and more on this episode of Cooking Issues! This program has been sponsored by White Oak Pastures.

"We're in an era now where a lot of food work is done on the Internet, in books, on television programs, and demonstrations. There's a lot of work that's done where you can tell that it's done for the look, and not necessarily the taste."

"When you're doing a demo or dish or a cocktail it's important to have it look appetizing. The way a dish looks can be enchanting and captivating and make an already good tasting thing taste better, but nothing is worse than something that's taken forever to make look great but doesn't even taste good."

-- Dave Arnold on Cooking Issues

This week on Cooking Issues Dave and Nastassia spoke about the scientific wonders of Miracle Fruit, buying a Dutch Oven, cooking pasta as if it were risotto, fixing (and cleaning!) a refrigerated centrifuge from Ebay via a blood bank, plus a fascinating and brief history of the Tichborne Dole. This episode was sponsored by Fairway: like no other market.

Photo 1: Mircale Fruit, Photo 2: The Tichborne Dole