Latest / Chef's PSA Podcast / Decoding Culinary Excellence: From Ingredients to Flavors Ep. 51

Transcript

Decoding Culinary Excellence: From Ingredients to Flavors Ep. 51 · Chef's PSA Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello chefs. Welcome to chefs.
• 0:01
  PS a podcast. I'm your host on Trina.
• 0:03
  Tara, on today's episode we're going to talk all about
• 0:05
  ingredients. Stay tuned.
• 0:19
  So before we get into it, here's a brief update on some things
• 0:22
  that I was up to last week. I did an event.
• 0:24
  It was called supper club. We did it.
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  Part of the Texas Food & Wine Alliance.
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  We were out on the field, everyone was cooking.
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  I was not one of the featured chefs but I kind of showed up
• 0:34
  anyway to hang out, some Chef friends who were the featured
• 0:38
  chefs and lend a hand in the kitchen.
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  Anyways good turnout yet chef Graham little Jacob Christian,
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  he's the chef of Garrison inside the Fairmont, Austin would
• 0:50
  birdie Richter from the emmer and regroup.
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  In this case, he was on the meat course.
• 0:56
  Michael photos a great chef here in Austin from Olam a restaurant
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  and Laura sawicki from oh say oh Karen, Austin was on dessert.
• 1:03
  Anyway, everyone got together was a great event part of the
• 1:06
  Texas Food & Wine, a, lion's wine and dine series.
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  It was a good event to kick off and these events are fun.
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  So I know I'd I've talked about this before that.
• 1:15
  You have an opportunity to go to events.
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  You should sometimes the price that you pay is that you got to
• 1:19
  clean up the mess. But nonetheless they're great
• 1:21
  events. We had some volunteer students
• 1:24
  from the escoffier culinary school here so I was working
• 1:26
  with some of them. I got to chat with them.
• 1:28
  I enjoyed it so maybe they're watching right now.
• 1:30
  I had fun good to meet you all. Anyway, we digress next weekend.
• 1:37
  I will be in Dallas at Jose restaurant cooking with several
• 1:41
  other chefs. And Associate Canon has is the
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  host at Jose restaurant. Rick Lopez from La condesa here
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  in Austin, Texas, Philip Speer from Commodore myself from
• 1:53
  ships, PSA retired. Getting together to do another
• 1:57
  Supper Club, go get tickets. If you happen to be in Dallas,
• 1:59
  reach out, if you want to do a cigar Sunday from Dallas, it'd
• 2:02
  be fun to meet up with some of the Dow Chef Community.
• 2:05
  While we're out there finally finished with all the books.
• 2:08
  So all the books are available in all formats, including audio
• 2:12
  book. Well, not exactly the audiobooks
• 2:14
  are done during the approval process so that should get
• 2:17
  approved any day. Now, typically it takes 10
• 2:18
  business days and one is actually taken Almost 20
• 2:24
  business days to get approved. It's the kitchen Art of War.
• 2:27
  The audiobook, I had to redo that.
• 2:28
  I think I explained that another episode.
• 2:31
  But the bad sooo good. Chef audiobook will also be
• 2:34
  available here in the next few days.
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  I'll make sure I announced it on Chefs PSA social channels.
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  The audio book is interesting so I know I've talked about this a
• 2:42
  little bit before. The audiobook is a conversation
• 2:45
  between two chefs, so it's a mentor and a mentee and it's
• 2:49
  basically to answer all the questions surrounding all the
• 2:52
  fears that a chef would have when they become a sous chef.
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  So, if you're moving from culinarian cook to Sushi, Chef,
• 3:01
  you probably have a lot of things going through your mind.
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  Like what are my friends going to think of me?
• 3:04
  How do I hold people accountable?
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  How do I become a great chef? All these little doubts are
• 3:11
  going to creep in your mind. And this book is a conversation
• 3:14
  between a mentor and a new Chef to teach them.
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  How to go from bad sous-chef to good sous-chef.
• 3:22
  Anyway that's that's the if you guys didn't get the title but
• 3:25
  that's the play on words there. But the interesting thing about
• 3:30
  the audiobook is, you know, the narrator had fun with the voice
• 3:34
  characters and it sounds like, like, Teenage Mutant Ninja
• 3:39
  Turtles like Master Splinter talking with, you know, young
• 3:41
  Ninja Turtle Apprentice. Anyway, it's fun.
• 3:44
  I enjoyed it. I think it's I think it's
• 3:46
  entertaining it's going to probably be one of the more
• 3:48
  entertaining. Any audio books that I've done?
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  Like I said this book is in the most different style from the
• 3:52
  other books in The Chef's PSA series, a lot of people have
• 3:57
  told me, they really enjoyed it. People have told me they've
• 3:59
  cried after completing this book.
• 4:02
  This is the only book that I've made people cry.
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  And so that's like the true test.
• 4:07
  If, if it pulled your heartstrings, and it made you
• 4:10
  cry, then I was a good book anyway.
• 4:11
  I don't want to give away the book.
• 4:12
  You should go get it. I've also I talked about this
• 4:15
  last week, my website went down and I had to rebuild it so
• 4:20
  chefs. PS a.com is redesigned
• 4:23
  brand-new, I organized it. So it's much more easy to
• 4:26
  navigate. There's the homepage, which kind
• 4:28
  of tells you everything that I do the podcast page, which
• 4:31
  obviously is about podcasting the about.
• 4:33
  There's a page just dedicated to the books that I've written,
• 4:36
  including the ebooks that are available for free on gumroad.
• 4:39
  You should go get those, they're free.
• 4:41
  Go get them. What, why wouldn't you and then
• 4:43
  a mentoring page for people? I keep asking me about the
• 4:45
  mentorship program, I am on a weight for people that are
• 4:48
  interested in mentoring. I've taken on a little bit too
• 4:51
  many mentees so there is a little bit of a waiting list,
• 4:53
  but for those of you that are interested in the mentorship
• 4:55
  program, you could email me on the website and you could get
• 4:59
  added to the waiting list if you are interested on to today's
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  subject ingredients now. I got to tell you when it comes
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  to ingredients. I've done a couple of chefs PSAs
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  on this, and I'm just kind of sticking my toe in the water,
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  but I'm not sure if it's really, making sense and resonating with
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  everyone. Now, for the most part on Chefs,
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  PSA, I usually cover the do's and don'ts good habits,
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  leadership best practices in the kitchen, but I don't often talk
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  about cooking specifically just because It's difficult to
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  articulate food thoughts for people to learn without actually
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  seeing it and quite honestly, I'm not really going to get into
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  cooking videos because it's a big upfront investment for what
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  like 400 people to watch it. I'm alright you all can watch
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  someone else teach you how to clean an artichoke.
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  But the point being is that there's a couple of PSAs that
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  I've done one, and that is, if you want to be a better, Chef
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  use better ingredients, you instantly transform your food.
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  And take it to the next level if you're using better ingredients.
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  Now, this is something that's highly misunderstood with a lot
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  of cooks because they think when you get the ingredients you have
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  to do more to them for them to shine.
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  And the reality is you probably need to do less to really good
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  ingredients and you need to do more to ingredients that are not
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  that good when a tomato is absolutely perfect in season,
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  right? You could probably just drizzle
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  it with a little bit of olive oil and some good salt and it's
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  going to be amazing when the tomato is out of season.
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  It's a little under ripe. You bought it in bulk.
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  You probably have to do a lot more to that tomato to make it
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  taste good, right? A lot of people say, all these
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  Tomatoes suck or maybe they don't like this specific dishes,
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  has usually to do with the ingredients.
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  Good ingredients. You don't have to do much to
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  another thing that I've talked about, is, if you want to
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  understand food, better, plant a garden now, I used to have a
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  garden and it was on the rooftop and we used to plant all sorts
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  of things for herbs. Strawberries Tomatoes squash has
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  cruciferous vegetables. I had a couple of trees out of
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  Bailey. Tread of fig tree.
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  I had mustard growing anyway. What you start to understand
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  when you grow food is that you understand when it's right?
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  When it's under right? When it's perfectly on, right?
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  You understand that things, sometimes have multiple Seasons,
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  so maybe they bloom once and then they go away and they
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  produce fruit and then they produce fruit again.
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  I learned that about a fig tree so I had figs in the spring and
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  then I had figs in the late summer and I thought that was
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  interesting. I didn't realize figs.
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  Did that twice when I grew watermelon?
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  For example, everyone thinks a watermelon as a summer fruit.
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  When I grew watermelon, late September, it was absolutely
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  perfect. But it was short-lived Those
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  only for like 30 days at the watermelon was good and then
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  after that it wasn't so good. Seen herbs, when they go to
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  bloom and knowing that you got a manicure them and take care of
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  them. There's a certain way to cut
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  your herbs, understanding, when several groups of fruit and
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  vegetables come in season together that you probably want
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  to group those together. You could learn a lot about just
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  paying attention to Nature and I could really geek out on this
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  and get into it like I used to have thoughts like okay you
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  should pair things together with how they grow together.
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  So, If all things grow on vines and they probably taste good and
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  then you can look at like inverse color.
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  So something red might pair well with something green.
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  So, classic example is basil and tomatoes, right?
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  Both of them are extremely beautiful in the summer.
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  Hence white, it is a classic pairing.
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  You look at something like sushi.
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  Fish are underwater typically, they're the third stage of
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  sunlight, same thing with the seaweed the Nori that goes with
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  it third. Stage of sunlight.
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  You pair that with Wasabi a rhizome grows in the dark
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  underground. Third stage of sunlight, you
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  pair those together, you have a classic combination.
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  So, when you start to pay attention, how people put
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  together food and flavors that work together, you start to see
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  the combinations and your mind really starts to run with them
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  your creativity. You'll understand as they say,
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  when it grows together goes together, things that are in
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  season go together, Etc, but a lot of chefs discount the fact
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  that having good This is like a superpower.
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  When I was in California. One of my very first trips, I
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  was in San Francisco and we were at the farmers market.
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  I'll know I'll never forget this because I was coming from Texas,
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  moving to California and we're walking down the farmers market.
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  And there's this farmer selling grapes and one of my chef
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  friends that I was with went and tried the grape at the person
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  was like do you want to try? Grapes was like I'm alright I've
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  had grapes before. So my friend tried the grape,
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  you know, to placate them whatever.
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  And my friend was like, you need to try this great and I'm like,
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  I'm okay, I've had a great before and he's like, no, you
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  really need to try this great. I was like, man.
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  I'm alright because like just try the great fine.
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  So I tried the grape and I was like, oh shit, that's a really
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  good great. And I'll never forget, because
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  it was like a grape times 10. It was like, it was almost like
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  great bubble gum. I couldn't explain.
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  It was like, it was a grape that tasted like what you imagined a
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  great should taste like, but not what?
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  Grapes. Usually tastes like and it
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  piqued my interest. So then I started really trying
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  the food and and they're at the farmers market.
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  And what you discovered was that what they were selling Had a
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  completely different flavor profile than what I was used to.
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  So then, when I became a chef in California, I remember we were
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  getting produce deliveries and I was talking to my sous chef at
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  the time and he was really upset at the quality of yellow squash
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  that we had received. And he was like, oh, these are
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  crap. I'm going to send him back.
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  And I remember looking at the squash I was like, these might
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  be the most beautiful I've ever seen.
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  He's like, no, these are shit. These are like number 2's over
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  here. Now, what was the number two
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  would have been like a number 1 + + where I was coming from and
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  I'd it was like one of these moments.
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  Like you really saw how the quality of ingredients made such
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  a big difference, and this was like a pivotal learning point,
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  like every now and again people talk about growth spurts that
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  they have and their career. This was a growth spurt that I
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  had in my career to really appreciate ingredients and
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  understand, there's levels to this game when it comes to good
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  quality ingredients and farmers and Artisans that can create
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  exceptional product, really? You can't compete with So, an
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  argument could be made by a chef that says I can reduce my labor
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  cost by having better ingredients because it requires
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  less manipulation to get to the end product.
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  All these things are very important when it comes to
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  creating delicious food. What I would think about growth
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  spurts that I've had as a chef, I could think about different
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  ingredients that Have given me challenges or have challenged me
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  as a chef you know early on when you're first learning how to
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  cook in your in culinary school. Or you get your first couple of
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  restaurant jobs, it's a lot of the same repetition.
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  It's potatoes, it's tomatoes, onions, garlic shallots, and you
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  get really good at working with these vegetables and fruits then
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  all of a sudden you get introduced like I said you kind
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  of level up and you get introduced to new things so
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  maybe these are mushrooms. And when I first started working
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  with shiitake mushrooms, I'd never worked with shiitake
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  mushrooms. Before I was a green Cooks out,
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  cook them and I ate one. I was like, this is fucking
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  disgusting. I didn't like it.
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  I was like so chewy and Woody and dense.
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  And then someone came up to me, like you got to remove the stem.
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  You don't eat the stem of the shiitake mushrooms.
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  I didn't know that all of a sudden understanding that you
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  can't treat a shiitake mushroom. Like every other mushroom.
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  I needed to remove the stem because it didn't taste I could
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  have had another use for it, but not How we were serving at that
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  time. When I first worked with fava
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  beans fresh fava beans, I had never worked with fava beans
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  before, and I remember at peeled them, the first year out of the,
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  under the husk. And the person next to me, kind
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  of cracked a joke because I didn't know what I was doing,
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  fava beans, I didn't realize you had to peel them a second time
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  because I thought they were good to go.
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  And again, like I said, you're leveling up in complexity when
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  you start introducing different ingredients to your skill set,
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  knowing how to work with fava beans.
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  All you got to, you got to shock them once and then you have to
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  shuck them again. Now a lot of people will tell
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  you there's a lot of different ways.
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  Maybe you blanch them prior maybe you don't blanch them,
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  prior doesn't matter? That's your choice, individual.
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  Kitchens are going to have different opinions on it, but in
• 13:51
  my case where I was the chef, we would blanch them and then shuck
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  them the second time. And then it's, it's these things
• 13:59
  that are important. Like when you're creating, if
• 14:02
  you're doing big pot, blanching as they say, the water needs to
• 14:05
  be salty, and it should taste like the ocean.
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  Well, how do you know that we you taste the water, right?
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  You taste the water and you make sure it tastes like the ocean.
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  A lot of people would say to me. Well, how do you know when the
• 14:16
  water is salty enough as it will?
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  Did you? Did you taste your pasta water?
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  Did you taste your blanching water?
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  No, I didn't. Well then how do you know if
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  it's salty enough? It's part of a chef's
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  understanding of things to taste everything.
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  When you go down the line, you taste everything, but that
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  includes the pasta water when you're setting it up for cooking
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  pasta. Blanching green vegetables.
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  Whatever the case may be I'll never forget when I first was
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  introduced to artichokes. There's this video right now.
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  Going around Instagram for this guy is like with a knife
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  cleaning an artichoke like I don't know like in 20 seconds or
• 14:48
  whatever and then he gets a spoon and then he carves out the
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  choke and like how fucking sharp is that spoon.
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  He just he just pulls it out like butter or how soft is the
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  artichoke one way or the other. Anyway, he just does like a
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  pristine job with the artichoke and artichokes is one.
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  Of those ingredients that trips a lot of chefs up because you
• 15:07
  don't work with it. You go through your career and
• 15:09
  you may have only worked with artichokes out of a can.
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  And then all of a sudden someone gives you a fresh artichoke
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  here. Like what the hell is this
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  thing? It's so large and it's thorny
• 15:18
  and then you start clean as like what's going on here.
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  There's a lot of different ways to do it than it starts
• 15:22
  oxidizing. When I used to do cooking
• 15:24
  interviews for executive chefs or any position really in the
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  kitchen. I always give them an artichoke
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  so I'd give them a couple of different things.
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  A whole chicken, a whole lobster.
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  A whole fish, and a whole artichoke and say you do
• 15:35
  whatever you want. I just want to see you,
• 15:37
  fabricate, these and then use them in a dish.
• 15:40
  And the artichoke was usually the one that would throw
• 15:43
  everyone off and I'm talking about like executive chefs shut
• 15:46
  the Cuisines. Did it matter what position you
• 15:48
  were in the artichoke was always the Achilles heel for most
• 15:51
  chefs. I've had chefs be like, oh,
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  sometimes I would give them like a Comey Helper and they would
• 15:58
  like, give their artichoke to the Comey like, hey, can you do
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  this? Because I'm really busy, right?
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  It's like it's not that they're busy.
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  I just they don't know how to clean an artichoke.
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  I had one Chef one time. Executive.
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  Chef tasting candidate won't say who Honestly, I don't remember
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  the guys name, so I guess it doesn't matter, but he was
• 16:16
  interviewing for an executive chef position, and I was hiring
• 16:18
  him and I gave him the artichoke.
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  And as he cleaned it, when he was done with his dish inside
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  the artichoke is what they call the choke.
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  And they're very thorny thistles.
• 16:29
  And he garnished his dish with the choke.
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  And I just remember asking him like have you ever eaten that
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  and he's like no I just thought it looked pretty.
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  I was like well you know there's a reason it's called an
• 16:43
  artichoke, right? He didn't know, you'd never
• 16:47
  worked with an artichoke. So it's one of those things you
• 16:48
  have to expose yourself to any ingredients.
• 16:50
  You can learn these little lessons and little Nuance that
• 16:53
  goes with cooking different ingredients.
• 16:57
  We're talking about mushrooms and I did a chef PSA on this on
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  a two days ago. About cleaning the grit out of
• 17:04
  your morel mushrooms. Now, when I first worked with
• 17:08
  morels, I'd never worked. Then we got the dried kind, so
• 17:10
  we had to rehydrate them in warm water and then we strain the
• 17:14
  water and turn that into like a mushroom stock or something like
• 17:16
  that. But then, eventually you
• 17:18
  graduate to the fresh morals and you don't know.
• 17:20
  Like there's sometimes, there's little creatures living in those
• 17:23
  things. And you gotta soak them to pull
• 17:25
  them out. So the way I would do it, as I
• 17:27
  would soak my morals in a couple of changes of clean water and
• 17:30
  you lift them out gently. So all all the grit and sand
• 17:33
  kind of stays on the bottom. Until the water is clean, after
• 17:38
  about three changes, then I would lay them out on a, on a
• 17:41
  small tray with like a, either Serbia at or some towels.
• 17:45
  So, they dry and then we'd use them there.
• 17:47
  Someone commented on Chefs, PSA. So I apologize.
• 17:51
  I remember who commented so this for you, they said to put a
• 17:54
  couple of drops of vinegar in the water when you're soaking
• 17:57
  were also want more. My thoughts on that, except I've
• 17:59
  never done it. So I don't know what would
• 18:01
  happen? It sounds like in theory that
• 18:04
  would help with the cleaning. The morels, but I really don't
• 18:07
  know. But understanding when you're
• 18:09
  working with different ingredients.
• 18:10
  So like morels or like truffles like People that don't know this
• 18:15
  if you don't work with truffles, what's the number one rule?
• 18:17
  When the Truffle person comes in You way the fucking truffles if
• 18:23
  you bought a pound of truffles, when the Truffle guy shows up,
• 18:26
  you pull out a scale and you weigh, you make sure that you
• 18:28
  have a pound of truffles. Like that is truffle 101 and
• 18:32
  then you check them, you make sure that they're not slimy.
• 18:34
  I've had, I've had vendors come in and try and Pawn off, slimy
• 18:37
  truffles. But if you don't know what
• 18:41
  you're looking for, you're going to end up with a bad product.
• 18:44
  So understanding, and having experience with a variety of
• 18:48
  ingredients is very important. Like they say when you slice the
• 18:52
  Truffle and half it should almost look like wag you write
• 18:55
  with all the striations of white throughout the Truffle.
• 18:59
  That's that's usually the indicator of a good truffle or
• 19:03
  like matsutake mushrooms. Anyway, we could get into the
• 19:05
  creatures that are living in matsutakes or tuna or whatever
• 19:08
  but understanding How to inspect food when it comes in as
• 19:11
  important. And sometimes it's just the
• 19:14
  littlest thing. A big mistake that I think is
• 19:17
  pretty common that. I notice it a lot of new cooks
• 19:20
  is just they don't know, right? Maybe because they haven't eaten
• 19:23
  the item. Or they just haven't worked a
• 19:26
  lot with an item but like the little adductor muscle that's
• 19:29
  attached to the scalp knowing that you should remove that
• 19:32
  before you cooked the scallop. A lot of people don't do that.
• 19:36
  Usually because they don't know, prosciutto is another one to
• 19:40
  remove the hard skin before you slice it or salami and you got
• 19:43
  to peel it sometimes. A lot of people just serve that
• 19:47
  prosciutto with the exterior skin on.
• 19:49
  It's like you can't eat that someone's going to choke.
• 19:52
  But again, these are things that when you're in experience with
• 19:55
  food until you start exposing yourself to a multitude of
• 19:58
  ingredients, you just may not know in addition to transforming
• 20:03
  the ingredient to refine them, to a level where they become
• 20:08
  more beautiful. That's really, what is a big
• 20:10
  secret of fine dining? It's that they refined something
• 20:13
  to the point of perfection. Ian and Excellence or at least
• 20:17
  close to it right to the idea of perfection.
• 20:19
  It's peeling Tomatoes, The Little cherry tomatoes, making
• 20:23
  sure that they're the perfect tomato, and then removing the
• 20:25
  Skins, to make sure that they're easier to chew through or easier
• 20:29
  to digest. That's a level of refinement
• 20:31
  that you see. In high-end restaurants, it adds
• 20:34
  a different texture to a tomato dish if they're peeled versus
• 20:37
  unpeeled. And then you have to question,
• 20:40
  how are you going to peel them? Are you going to blanch them
• 20:43
  first? Concourse a style or do you peel
• 20:47
  them from raw, much more difficult?
• 20:51
  But leads to a better texture. So food, for thought things that
• 20:56
  you have to consider when you're creating dishes, more
• 20:58
  labor-intensive, better end product.
• 21:01
  Then there's the considerations of extending shelf life so you
• 21:05
  could compress things. So I used to compress
• 21:07
  microgreens often so in ice water so they could hold longer.
• 21:10
  A lot of people just put micro greens or garnishing, herbs, and
• 21:14
  Ice Waters with a crisp up, great tactic.
• 21:16
  You could also, if you have a cryovac machine, you could
• 21:18
  compress those so they last longer But then you could even
• 21:22
  go further, maybe you could compress lettuces, maybe you're
• 21:26
  doing garnishes with hearts of Romaine.
• 21:29
  You could compress your cucumbers in ice water and it
• 21:31
  completely changes the look of them.
• 21:34
  There's also compression without Ice water and maybe your
• 21:40
  infusing flavors. So maybe you're adding a little
• 21:42
  bit of a brine or a marinade or something to something that
• 21:46
  might not be as good. Sometimes your peaches aren't so
• 21:48
  great so you might need to infuse a little simple syrup and
• 21:51
  compress them to make them better.
• 21:52
  Peaches are one of those like it could be peach season in the
• 21:55
  peaches are shit. Especially in Texas.
• 21:59
  Speaking of peaches, you know, again I was I was talking with
• 22:03
  some of the other day. It's like they had no idea that
• 22:05
  the stone inside, the peach, you crack that open.
• 22:06
  There's like a little almond to I don't know what it's
• 22:09
  technically called, which is like a little almond inside the
• 22:11
  peach pit and that is like the that's like the cyanide, the
• 22:16
  B-17 amygdalin flavor, what they usually have for almond extract
• 22:21
  flavor that usually comes from peaches.
• 22:23
  So but it's like, it looks just like an almond careful.
• 22:27
  Don't go out and eat that because it is poisonous.
• 22:29
  So, It's my warning, do not eat that, but it's again just
• 22:32
  exploring food to its fullest potential.
• 22:35
  And after you've worked with different types of ingredients
• 22:38
  and you understand produce is, you could learn so much from
• 22:42
  produce and you have your cooking methods and you have a
• 22:46
  firm understanding of different ingredients and how to
• 22:49
  manipulate those ingredients, that's really where high-level
• 22:53
  cooking comes in. It's not always about just
• 22:55
  adding everything to a pan with some oil and tossing it and put
• 22:58
  it on a plate. Times there's a level of
• 23:01
  refinement that comes into preparation.
• 23:03
  Anyway, this was a food episode. Hopefully, you could take away
• 23:06
  some good tips or at least maybe I'd piqued your interest in
• 23:10
  exploring food and different ingredients to learn from.
• 23:14
  Maybe haven't worked with an artichoke.
• 23:16
  Go work with artichokes, it's on the culinary decathlon.
• 23:20
  Anyway, that's it for today. If you want to support the show,
• 23:22
  if you're watching on YouTube, make sure you leave a thumbs up.
• 23:25
  Subscribe to my YouTube page. Someone asked me to put up a
• 23:28
  video. On my morning routine so that is
• 23:31
  now live only on YouTube. I'm not going to do a podcast on
• 23:34
  it, it has really nothing to do with Chef stuff but for those of
• 23:37
  you curious, I did put that up on my YouTube page.
• 23:39
  Go follow on, all social accounts Tick, Tock Twitter
• 23:43
  Instagram. Make sure you leave five stars
• 23:46
  and if you want some of the books go to chefs PS a.com newly
• 23:50
  revamped looks good. I like I built the site Myself
• 23:54
  by the way. I mean people's like might want
• 23:56
  to hire me to be their web designer pretty soon.
• 24:00
  Anyway, thank you very much. See you next week, hit the porno
• 24:02
  music.