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