The Mind of a Chef (2012) s01e16 Episode Script

In this episode, Chef David Chang travels the globe to cook with some of his friends.
In San Francisco Chef Daniel Patterson makes popcorn grits.
That's super cool.
The texture, right? It's grits.
No, it's grits.
Chef Claude Bosi makes breakfast.
Off the cuff cuisine, that's what they call it.
It's off the cuff, baby.
Let's do it.
And in Copenhagen, Chef Rene Redzepi makes a Danish ramen.
There's no noodles.
It's just vegetables.
It looks easy.
It ain't easy.
And Chef Sat Bains makes vegetables.
It's really important to think about the balance.
That was crazy.
That was two complete sentences in a row.
Enter The Mind of a Chef.
Meals with friends.
It's a magical time, you know? There are not many things in life that are a better, more satisfying way to spend your time.
What would we do without spinal tap? I don't know.
I think our conversations would be a lot shorter.
And it's a good life indeed if you happen to have friends who cook for you, like Dave Chang does around the world.
Maybe we can Google it, how to cook starfish.
Here's a taste.
For me, I think about grits, I think about corn.
So in terms of American food, everyone knows popcorn.
It's a cultural reference that's totally familiar.
So I'm using a lot of oil, a lot of oil, because the whole point about this dish is you want to capture that moment of popping.
Like, right at the moment it gets popped is what we want to get.
And so all of that flavor is in the fat.
You know what's amazing to me? How few cooks know how to make popcorn.
They cook it too low and What, you don't just put it in a microwave? See, this is what I'm talking about.
Popcorn, high heat.
Normally with cooking it's all about sight and smell.
And it is that to some degree.
So you've got to have enough popcorn in there so it creates steam.
It's not just frying frying plus steam.
So I'm going to get this out of here.
Here's the fun part.
So we've got popcorn, we've got a ton of butter.
And what we do is basically make an infusion, like a bouillon.
It's water, butter, popcorn.
This is going to be the beginning of one stock.
It's very fast.
Cook it for a minute or less, and then drain it off, put more in, drain it off, put more in.
And then keep tasting the whole time, more butter, more salt.
So it's coming up to a boil, and it's so stupid easy.
And you're going to say, like, "why hasn't someone else done this?" This stuff has, like, softened and become like really malleable.
I want you to try the stock.
Here.
It tastes like buttered popcorn.
That's buttered popcorn.
So then we've got this other stuff on top, which is the waste product.
But typically you make a stock and you discard bones, whatever.
There's just this very kind of broodish separation of the good stuff from the bad stuff.
And the good stuff that goes through, it's a very small percentage.
And I don't push it too hard.
What comes out in the bottom is the beginning of the grits.
That's rad, yeah.
So now at this point we've got this product, right, which has no moisture in it.
That can become like a popcorn pancake.
Oh, that's super cool.
So you can do anything with that.
But what we're going to make is, like, a really buttery bowl of grits style.
But the texture, right? It's grits.
No, it's grits.
This may be your finest culinary invention ever.
I'm dead serious.
And how do you stumble across it? Just, like, luck? Staring you right in your face.
Yeah.
But this is the first time I ever cooked with popcorn, and this is the first time I ever made that connection all of these cultures just kind of bedrock, underlying all these things, corn.
The dried corn.
So my goal is to kind of bury the techniques and make food that looks like any monkey can do it, you know? Food that's impossible to recreate that looks like no effort went into it, so I get no credit whatsoever.
Totally different when you say monkeys cooking.
I literally want monkeys to cook the food.
I just want it to look like they did.
You know, the focus is on the food and not the cook.
We got the grits stuff, but it's hard, you know? It's like, it's good if you want to use it in some kind of preparation where you're adding a bunch of other fat or a bunch of liquid like a pancake or something, or, like, you make a popcorn cake.
How about that? If you think about it, you're using dried corn that hasn't been pulverized.
When you're making polenta or grits you're just rehydrating dried corn anyway.
Yep.
And that's why the flavor's the same.
Reverse engineer.
Stroke of brilliance.
Luck.
Brilliance.
Luck.
All right, so we've got the bouillon.
You can see it's been kind of slightly thickened, a ton of butter.
We're going to whisk it all together.
This is cool, man.
Three things that are basically using hands, a pot, some water, a little bit of butter, a whisk.
It's a mentality.
It doesn't have anything to do with what you put in things.
You do, you don't, it doesn't matter.
It's like, how can you do things better? How can you do them more interesting? How can you make something that tastes great? Let's boil it.
You need 30 seconds of boil.
Thicken a little bit.
Maybe just a little bit more flavor.
Oh, man, I think that's it.
Seriously, man, that's the coolest dish you've ever created.
And you've created some cool , but that's super cool.
Then you've got to do that.
So here's what I like about this because it's labor intensive, but the way it's done, it captures that kind of just popped buttered popcorn flavor.
So it's everything you know, which is grits, but, like, this other overlay of cultural reference.
That's beautiful, man.
Thank you.
Daniel Patterson is letting us borrow his restaurant for a little bit.
And we have with us one of my dearest friends in the whole world, Claude Bosi.
The guy behind me is Sat Bains.
Where is he? One of the things I learned and I love about these two guys is off the cuff cuisine.
That's what they call it.
It's off the cuff, baby.
Let's do it.
You take ingredients, and literally, it's like improvisational jazz.
You just go and you follow your gut.
These are two of the best off the cuffers that I've ever met.
Don't put me in the same line that him, come on.
Sat? You're right.
I'm sorry about that.
Anyway He went there.
So off the cuff is literally this we rolled into the kitchen and Claude was like, "I want this, I want this, I want this," and I have no idea what you're going to do.
So what are you making? Making breakfast.
I ate here last night.
We find some gave us a dish with potatoes.
Was fantastic.
And I find them in the fridge.
We just cook them very simply.
Some mushroom.
Some lemon verbena to start it now.
A bit of cep, some sprout shoots, and fried eggs on it.
That's all.
Sat grew up in Lyon, and that is a culinary capitol.
Yeah.
And he has a great respect for food.
And the guy can cook, so he's added some dashi to some Mushroom dashi.
Mushroom dashi.
Mushroom dashi.
Ooh.
I'm just going to be cooking a bit.
I'm just going to get it back to a proper heat to get a bit of caramelization.
Fry eggs in it and just finish with the lemon verbena.
Fantastic.
We will just finish with some of his expensive oils.
You hear that? They're not cooked yet.
They will be cooked in a bit.
Look at that beautiful color.
I think it's a movement, off the cuff cuisine.
It's freshness, that's all.
That is off the cuff, man.
He doesn't even know what he's doing.
I'm just doing a little bit.
Smell that.
And we're going to throw that in the pan.
Get me a plate.
Yeah.
This is what we call on the cuff.
Wait.
So you're done.
Yep.
Boom.
That is ceps, porcini mushrooms, baby Yukon gold potatoes, broccoli rabe, lemon verbena.
Finish with a little mushroom dashi.
Beautiful.
That's good.
This is Claude's off the cuff morning for you.
Yeah, that's my breakfast.
Ideally, for me, it's really important to think about the balance of what you're eating, and to get yourself something that can be quite fresh, but also something that's quite common.
So you look at it, it's cabbage, it's turnip, it's hang on, hang on.
How the hell did you get that flavor or that texture or that temperature? You're trying to incorporate lots of individual dishes.
The idea is not to have that one dish as a star, but so the whole menu is balanced.
Woah.
I've never heard you so serious before in my entire life.
I don't even know what to do right now.
He's shocked and I'm shocked.
I didn't know you got that language in you.
Yeah, that was crazy.
That was two complete sentences in a row.
There was no cue cards, no nothing.
So what we've got is some cabbage.
What we've done is salted it, just draws out a little bit of the bitterness, and then the idea is we need mayonnaise.
You're whisking away.
And what happens is the mayonnaise is made with smoked oil, because what I'm trying to do is give you the fat content on something that's every clean.
So what's in there? It looks like you put a vanilla bean in there.
No, ash.
The ash we've got is onion ash.
You've burned the Out of it.
And then let it dry out.
Dehydrated and blitzing.
And what you end up with is something that's quite smoky, but also looks smoky.
So as your eating it, from a visual, you're thinking, "I know that's going to be aggressive, because it's black," and that's the point.
So I happen to have some brassicas.
Brassicas is a family of vegetables from the mustard family.
Just going to put some vinaigrette.
You see that shake? Sorry I just Spiderman'd it.
Have you ever done a Spiderman? As you can see, working with these guys is sometimes extraordinarily difficult.
It's kitchen love.
Kitchen love.
So here's the cabbage.
All we do is make it into a mayonnaise.
Smoked oil and some onion ash.
And you smoked the oil by how? I want to be honest.
I found it.
Found it down here.
Every chef I know wants to do egg dishes.
Why do chefs love eggs so much? And sexy.
That is sexy, Chef.
You heated that egg yolk in the The egg in oil, in olive oil.
What temperature? Normally you can cook this around 65 plus, takes around 45 minutes.
We have here some turnips, which are cooked in dashi.
That's that Japanese influence where once we were shown dashi and how to prepare it, and the benefits it has, it was something that we've done now in some incredible parts of our cuisine here.
And you want some fresh, rich, seasoned broccoli, so we're just going to add some vinaigrette.
That's delicate, man.
That's women's food done by an ogre.
Let me just translate.
That's like women's food done by an ogre.
And we have here again, I found this.
I don't know what it is, but it smells nice.
It's smoked adding a little bit of texture.
And continuing the theme of smokiness throughout.
Yeah, because for me, the brassicas can take the smoke.
The brassicas.
So it should be a very light salad.
Then the richness comes from a hidden egg yolk, so when you break into it, you're almost like, "where did that come from?" And then you've got the relish to finish.
We don't season this.
We just leave it nice and fresh.
The idea is it should be very exciting to eat.
You want it to be something that's very fresh, and then when you break into it, it's very rich.
That's my dish.
It's the brassicas with a poached eggs.
Thank you, sir.
Chef, I'm going to take some of your miso plus nordic miso The nordic miso.
Nordic miso, spoonful of that.
I'm going to add clam stock.
I'm going to make a type of miso soup, hopefully.
A vegetable dish.
There is a bit of clam juice in it, but tons of vegetables, all the different onions.
This is really a wide spectrum of the alium family.
I love it.
And also this one is interesting.
We saw this white flower where I showed you the Berry on top.
This is one of my favorite things that you introduced me to.
Actually, I have a flower here.
The ramp, you can see here.
You see, this flower is just about to lose the petals.
When the petal drops, which it will in a couple of weeks, then what you have left is this Berry, that is not fully grown.
Take that Berry, and turn it into this.
That's a lot of work, Chef.
It takes forever to clean them.
And then salt them for three months, and then to vinegar and then it's like this.
And you have a caper that's just super tasty, strong, so full of flavor.
It's amazing.
Don't you think that'd be good with the miso? Absolutely.
It's good on anything.
Like bacon.
Okay, we're going to boil these different types of onions.
You know, I want the sweetness in this case, because we're going to have a lot of full bodied flavor from the miso soup.
That is this.
From red onions.
Just like that.
We have At least a dozen types.
At least a dozen.
And also what I'm thinking a little bit is a type of ramen, you know? I see where you're going.
There's no noodles.
It's just vegetables.
We have young garlics, young leeks, different types of shallots, just everything money can buy in terms of onions.
Some pickled onions here.
Exactly, two different types, both of them shallots.
One of them is called ailsa onion, which is the name of an island.
And it's a variety of onion that only exists there.
It's a study of onion.
In the old days we would have called it a symphony.
We're going to add a few of these leaves of ramson, which is, I guess, like our ramp from north Europe.
The only different is we can only eat the leaves.
We don't eat the onions of them.
Then a few of these berries.
Like our ramp from north, a few of these type of onion flower.
Then I'm going to add a pheasant egg, poached pheasant egg, or a cooked pheasant egg you can say, which I will just gently open.
It's a good looking dish, man.
And then finally I just pour on this kind of a broth of dashi, pork stock.
Pork stock.
That is beautiful my friend, seriously beautiful.
That would be delicious.
If you like onion.
If you like onion.
We're at Momofuku Co.
We're with Chef Laurent Gras.
And he's been cooking here the past couple of days.
We've been very honored to have what I feel is one of the best chefs the world's ever known.
When Jack Nickelson said this about Stanley Kubrick, he said "everyone agrees that he's the man, and I still feel that highly underrates him.
" That's how I feel about you.
So what are you going to show us? We're not going to cook anything today.
All right.
I'm just going to slice, put some dressing, and then try the fish.
Here we have a piece of kubri, which is a sea bream.
This one, I slice it lengthwise.
And because being so soft, it allowed me to do a different preparation.
We cut on those loin into fine strips next to each other.
Sea bream is a very soft meat, and I think that fish, you know especially raw fish, you don't want to do too much to it.
So we just season with a touch of salt.
These are lemon, Mayan lemon skin, which has been cured into salt and cut into a fine brunoise.
A few shiso leaves.
Any other type of preparation, you can do it.
And that's pretty much it.
And then what we do, we just roll the fish on itself.
Beautiful.
And then we have bites.
And it's well measured, it's well seasoned, and it's filling.
When you eat it you don't feel you need something else.
And I think that the most important thing is not to forget to remove the plastic film.
So this is perfect for summer.
It's really a summer dish.
I think that the beauty of the dish is really the bouillon, which I call a white ponzu sauce, which is in fact a dashi.
And then over the dashi I soak more kombu into it to bring more viscosity, more bonito, white soy sauce, and a little bit of brown rice vinegar.
Trying to infuse as much flavor and umami in it as possible.
Yeah, the first bite is really acidity, spiciness, saltiness.
You don't want to have anything else.
So we have a little bit of basil oil to compliment just your Greens.
I think presentation is always, you know, important and you can say even if you don't need sometimes a few components, if you want to add just a little touch for for the visual effect which is also, you know, an important part of the experience.
What you want to achieve, you know, how much focus and energy you're going to put into your food, how much time you're going to invest to achieve a result you're proud of, and then you feel like the customer is going to enjoy the most.
You're really the first person I've met that I think has pulled it off where modern technique matched with old school classic, classic.
It's really interesting for me to see that something like this which looks very simple, the techniques that go into it, or a dish that you make now, it's a lifetime of work.
And the older you get, the simpler you present your food, because you get confidence, you know? When you're confident, then you can do something very simple.
When you're confident, then you can generate a product which is exceptional and doesn't need anything else.
And now, a conversation about giving credit where credit is due over a bread bowl of clam chowder.
Mmm, taste that San Francisco sourdough.
That is delicious.
Cheers.
Cheers, Daniel, to your hospitality.
Cheers.
Cheers.
So we were talking about chefs copying.
Everyone copies.
Yes.
The world is very small now due to the Internet.
If you're going to take something, just say where it came from and be honest.
Yeah, I think that's it.
If you're honest you will always walk away with integrity.
I feel very strongly that chefs need to know where their techniques are coming from.
And it's something that I even ask.
You can talk until you're blue in the face about copying, but it's not about copying.
It's about voice.
Writing, cooking, same thing.
When you get to a top level, you want something that's honest and something that's unique to someone.
So when you guys were cooking, when we're cooking all together, you look at each dish and you can see that is sat, that is Claude, you know? And I like that.
It's not about influence.
It's about, at the end product is people expressing themselves in a way that's theirs? Different, but at the same time Inspired.
Inspired.
When you get to a certain point, which we are now, there's so many things that have been done.
Nothing new.
There's very few people that invent new techniques.
I always say this.
It's like what Stanley Kubrick says everything's already been done.
It's our job to do it just a little bit better.
Get in your kitchen, cook, talk to your friends, share what you're doing, that's it.
And have a good time.
But at the end, it's we are lucky enough to have people coming to our restaurant giving us money to do the job we love doing.
Yeah.
That's it.
And I think if you can do that it's fantastic.
Best job in the world.
Yeah.
Cooking at the highest level requires many things.
Respect.
This may be your finest culinary invention ever.
Dedication to the craft.
When you start to get complicated for yourself and for the customer, then I think you lose really the momentum of the beauty of the product.
Creativity.
There's ingredients to do 1,000 dishes if you see the possibilities.
And stamina.
Hello.
Morning, everybody.
But you've also got to be willing to share.
Bitter? It's bitter.
Okay, well, thank you for testing it out.
To borrow, and be inspired by the works of others.
No one really talks about it, what it is to be a chef now.
It's an interesting time.
What's the next step? Is it expansion? Do you do TV? What do you do? Time is the only answer, because we don't have the answers.