The Mind of a Chef (2012) s02e08 Episode Script

1 In this episode of Mind of a Chef, Sean Brock travels to Senegal in search of ingredients These are all the things that I've been searching for, you know.
These are the things that really are the backbone of this cuisine.
Techniques By smoking it, that's a way of preserving it, so that can sit in the sun.
And traditions Her mother taught her.
Grandmother.
Oh wow.
That connect West Africa to the cuisine of the South Carolina low country.
It's a catfish! This is a fish market.
Not many people get to see this, I feel very lucky.
This is the real deal, this is what I wanted to see.
I want to eat like this every day.
How do you like it? I love it.
Enter the mind of a chef.
Coming to West Africa for a Southern chef is extremely intense.
It's overstimulation because you kind of dream up what this is going to be like.
By studying low country food and reading so much about the West African connection, you kind of paint this sort of romantic picture in your head.
And more often than not that's usually not the picture that you find.
All of our agricultural techniques that we use in the low country were taught by the West Africans.
I wanted to come here because this is where it all started and this is where it came from.
It's not just about food, you know.
It's like food is just what brings us all together.
For me, this is really more about kind of understanding why things are the way they are.
In order to do that, you've really got to be very patient and be very observant.
It's our job to become more educated about food and why it is what it is and does what it does.
And trips like this are essential for that.
Welcome to the Sandaga Market, where you can find all kind of products.
Everything.
From fabrics to food to CDs, belts, shoes.
Underwear.
Underwear.
Everything basically that you need.
In order to understand the cuisine and culture, you have to really visit the market.
That's where the cuisine comes from.
I'm searching for that link between low country cooking and West African cooking.
And so it's really important for me to understand the West African pantry and West African cuisine, because that's the biggest cultural influence on low country cooking.
He has Carolina rice.
It's pretty cool.
This rice came into the low country in 1685 and became one of Charleston's major cash crops.
It was indigo, cotton, and rice and so there were 150 years probably where we were exporting this all over the world.
So I'm sure there's traces of it being grown all over the world, but it's the same DNA, it's the same Carolina rice.
And so, it's so fascinating to see it here.
My grandma's name is Carolina so as a child I thought that rice was named after her.
Fatima Ly is this really amazing person that on my first trip there I connected to immediately.
She was the first person that I met, the first person that I cooked with.
We spoke about food the same way.
We got excited about food the same way.
The more we began to talk, the more I discovered all these things that I now use in my cuisine that I didn't see coming.
So now, we've reached the fermented This is my favorite part.
That's your favorite part.
This is what really blew me away the most the last time I was here.
Because it makes the dishes here, so similar to the taste of our dishes because of the use of pork, that same depth and flavor that you get and that sensation that you get.
So these are little clams.
These are called pane shells, pan.
And this is fermented, dried oyster.
No smoking? No smoking.
So they boil it and get rid of the shell, and then dry it.
The more it shrinks, kind of shrinks, the more you get the flavor concentrated.
So this would give you like the same flavor as like adding country ham to something.
It's the same part of your tongue that's activated, and it's kind of the same process.
And what in the world is this? That's dried fish.
It's a catfish.
Yeah, it's a catfish.
She's just saying that it's very good.
That's the big one, the big catfish.
That's still catfish? Yeah.
So this isn't smoked, this is just dried.
Salted and dried.
Salted, right.
I'm going to do that.
This is like a sea clam, right? Yes, a big one.
A sea snail.
These are all the things I've been searching for.
These are the things that really are the backbone of this cuisine and what makes it so unique.
You really don't see that in Southern cooking: preserved fish, preserved seafood, preserved shellfish.
But there it's just everywhere and it's in every dish and it gives all those dishes a very unique flavor and soul.
And my first thought was why aren't we doing this? It makes so much sense.
We preserve a pig leg, but we won't preserve an oyster.
That's fantastic shrimp flavor.
That flavor that you get from preserved fish and shellfish in West Africa fits perfectly in our cuisine.
I think it has its place in Southern cuisine and I think it's an enormous missing element in our palate.
It's like shrimp jerky.
This would go over very well in the South.
Goats everywhere here.
Everywhere you look, there's a goat.
It should be like that in America.
Goats all over New York City.
If you look back at the very beginning of low country cuisine, it's important to understand who was cooking the food and it was West Africans.
So you're getting traces of not only the cooking techniques, but the flavor profiles with that depth of flavor that they're getting from all the smoked fish and dried shellfish and fermented seafood.
Like if a dish were a song, that base flavor is really the foundation of that song, it's the tempo.
You get that same thing when you eat most of the dishes in Southern cooking.
You'll find that they have that particular depth.
So you can kind of see that connection.
It's not the same ingredients and that's what fascinates me.
It's kind of a way of thinking and a particular palate.
It's like the missing link.
One of the neat things about traveling is you see how people utilize their geography to get by, to survive.
This is insane.
When you go to these coastal towns and you see people living off the water, that's what fascinates me, that's what's so cool.
You see an enormous body of water and it's full of fish, but it takes skill to catch that fish and to set up those programs and those systems where it's all used properly, it's just fascinating.
And that just happens over time.
That's just being smart.
So seeing people live off the ocean was just amazing.
Like, this is a fish market.
When you see like the different stations everywhere, like people scaling fish, gutting fish, selling fish, and you really smell it too.
What's crazy is to think this goes on every day.
And these people are using every single part of the fish.
Nothing goes to waste not even the guts.
That's fertilizer.
And they're not doing this because they think being sustainable is a trend.
You know, this is a way of life.
This is just smart living.
You could learn a lot here.
Just fresh.
If you go to any legit barbecue place in the South, you're going to find this exact, to the T, design.
I'm sure this design has been here forever and ever and ever and that got translated into American barbecue.
So again, like the missing link.
Are they smoking with sugar cane or sorghum? So the farmers are taking something that would normally decompose in the field and not be used for anything, and bringing it here as a smoke source.
So the farmer will come back and use this as compost.
The stack.
So this is the salting area where they salt it? So, how long does this get salted? How many days? That's it.
And then how long in the sun? So like, they take all the scrap that's not sellable, and instead of throwing it away or using it as fertilizer or whatever, they actually mix it with the salt, which adds a more intense flavor, and that's what they're layering it with.
So that would be like me taking my country ham scraps, grinding it through a meat grinder, mixing it with the salt and then curing a ham in that, so it's the idea of wrapping a flavor around itself.
I'm going to steal that idea for sure.
The difference between this and smoked fish in America is the fermentation process, the week that it spends in the sun.
In America, we'll salt it, pull the moisture out, and then smoke it for flavor.
Here they're smoking for preservation, but it also adds flavor.
And then they're getting that intense depth of flavor, that umami from the fermentation that occurs while it's sitting in the sun, which is what makes such a great stock, it's almost like a concentrate.
Like a stock cube, let's say poultry concentrate, but it's the natural way to do it.
It's basically a fish bouillon cube.
So what's neat about it is they're doing the reverse of how we cure.
They're smoking it first, then they're salting it and as it's sitting here, it ferments.
We do the opposite.
We salt it, pull the moisture out, hang it, let it ferment and then smoke it.
So I'm just guessing one of the reasons they do it the opposite way, is because fish is so perishable that by smoking it, that's a way of preserving it so that it can sit in the sun.
I think if you were just to take the fresh fish and salt it, it would go bad.
So that first step ensures that it can sit and ripen in the sun and the longer it sits in the sun, the better it is, just like the longer a country ham ages, the better it is.
If I hadn't come here and seen this, I would have just taken the mentality of the way we cure salt, ferment, smoke and then I would've failed.
So this is very cool.
It's this incredible symbiotic relationship between the fishermen, the artisans and the farmers.
They all work together, they all help each other out, and in the end you get this beautiful product.
So it's this beautiful circle that's just connected with these three groups of people that are all doing their own thing and all supporting each other.
We're going to cook a really cool dish that I had here the first time I came that includes two of my favorite things: this beautiful broken rice, and these amazing cowpeas.
And this dish is very similar to a dish that we cook, we call it Hopping John, you know, it could be this and then anything else, but this one is very unique because it has some very unique ingredients.
My mom was telling me when she started cooking, at the age of nine, thiebou yapp was one of the dishes that they were cooking in the menu, the family menu basically.
Her mother taught this to her? Grandmother.
Oh wow.
So it's a dish that I fancy and I think the one with the fermented seafood is even better.
Walk me through all these ingredients because there's some crazy stuff here.
Well, we have the broken rice, the fermented fish, that we will add to give flavor, and you have the vegetables, onions, chili, carrots, cassava, and bitter aubergines, eggplants.
These are so cool.
I loved these so much when I came that I planted these this year.
That noise, when you hear it in a house, means that something is going on.
Something good is going on.
One thing that's really cool when vegetables are included in dishes, they're often left whole or in very large pieces because it's a one-pot dish and that keeps them from breaking up and sort of disintegrating into the dish.
Absolutely.
Yes, we don't cut it because we boil a dish actually for like long hours so we put the vegetables in like one piece.
And what's neat is when that eggplant goes in whole like that, it sits in the pot, it acts like a sponge and soaks up all that broth, all that stock.
Absolutely.
What do you think, Sean? Yeah, I think I almost got the peas done.
Everything is ready the vegetables, the peas, the onions, the meat, so we can start cooking.
Great.
Great, let's do it.
This is lamb we're using.
Is it like the shank? Yes.
It's very important that it is a long cooking process because you'll get all the flavor reduced.
Now I'm going to add the seafood, the fermented snail.
A bit of gejj, our national component, ingredient that you would find basically in any dish in Senegal.
I love a combination of fish and meat.
But not just fish, it's this fermented deeply flavored, intense preparation that just like, when you smell it and it hits the pan it just seems so natural with the lamb, like it's so perfect.
So, meat's getting close, broth is like crazy delicious.
So this is what we call nokos.
That we're adding once the broth is reduced.
It adds more flavor.
Holy cow, that smells good.
Too cool.
She's telling me that eating was a way of educating kids.
The mom, for example, would just cut the meat and give each piece to everyone.
Portion it.
Staying on your spot is very important.
I shouldn't be doing, for example, this and do that.
That's very impolite.
It teaches you how to share, it teaches you how to be polite.
It teaches you so many important lessons.
It's a way of educating.
And if you drop one piece of like some grains on the floor, rice grains, you need to pick it up and eat it.
Not spoiling.
Respect.
She's showing you how to do the ball.
It's like sushi.
So how is your thiebou yapp? It's delicious it's very spicy.
That is so good it's worth the pain.
I really appreciate you doing this.
This is so cool, like, I want to eat like this every day.
I think coming here can teach you so many things, not just about food, about being thankful and being grateful for what you have and making the best of it and not worrying about what you don't have, being thankful for what you do have.
You don't waste anything.
You go to the place where we saw fish smoking and you see this perfect circle between all these different groups of people that are working together, not wasting a single thing, not even a fish scale.
You go to the fish market and everything is used.
It changes the way you break an animal down.
It changes the way you write a menu.
It changes the way you put a plate together.
It changes the way you eat.
A grain of rice falls on the floor, you pick it up and eat it.
You know, it's kind of interesting that I came here sort of looking for a connection to our cuisine and even more so looking for missing links.
And I certainly found some of those for sure.
Bu the overall lesson learned was much greater than ingredients in a pot.
And that's what's so cool about traveling.
That's why you have to travel.
You have to get outside of your element and experience these things or else you'll never grow.
Thank you very much.