The Mind of a Chef (2012) s03e02 Episode Script

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Chef Edward Lee has spent his entire career exploring, questioning and expanding the idea of traditional American cuisine.
There's some point about tradition you have to adhere to, and then you break away from it.
In a country comprised mostly of immigrants and their descendants, American culinary traditions are in constant flux.
Chef Andy Ricker cooks Thai food.
In Houston, chef Paul Qui prepares a ceviche.
Chef Chris Shepherd cooks snapper, and Ed finds out what happens when Vietnamese meets Cajun cooking.
It is getting you.
It's getting me bad.
Enter the mind of a chef.
All curious chefs are fascinated by their surroundings.
They don't teach you this in cooking school.
I think we're entering a new stage where people are understanding that American food is not hot dogs, hamburgers, and barbecue.
American food is anything that happens in this country by any chef who has ever asked himself the question or asked herself the question, "What am I cooking?" How do I make food with these ingredients that are here and my culture and my history? Guess what, you've just had this very American dilemma that you don't have in Sicily, or in Provence, or in Syria or Korea.
Because you don't have these issues, you just cook whatever your forefathers tell you, it's just a tradition.
And so that's the beauty of American food is that it is limitless.
Even the word fusion is impossible because everything is fusion in this country everything.
It is the most complex thing in the world in terms of a cuisine because we are an amalgam of hundreds if not thousands of different influences all just crammed up against each other.
And then, you know, shake the box and see what comes out.
Fei Long Shopping Center.
The square footage of fresh produce in a market like this, percentage wise is so much greater than if you were in an American market.
Much bigger.
All the fresh things; fresh seafood, is huge.
Look at how big this fresh meat counter is compared to the typical American market.
I'd like some pork belly, please.
I want a nice, meaty piece.
One that's not too fatty, lots of meat.
Yeah, that's great.
That's great.
I'm going to make a dish that I've actually this is the first time I've ever made it.
It's called jap chai, and its a Chinese-Thai, mostly Chinese dish.
It involves lots of stewed vegetables.
So the first thing I'm going to do is steam some pork belly.
Whack it in this steamer here.
I've had this one for years.
All right, so another really important part of this dish is cabbage.
I'm just going to carry this.
You're going to carry it around with you? But of course I'm going to need some Napa.
Oh man, look at this thing.
We're in the realm of the giant heads of cabbage.
Let's strap them in like they're our babies.
All right.
And what we're looking for is nice, big chunks.
About two-inch lumps because in the end, everything in this dish gets overcooked by Western standards.
There's nothing al dente about what's going on here.
Ah, and then the good old daikon.
I'm definitely getting some daikon.
And look at these carrots.
They are huge.
These look crazy.
LEE They're ridiculous.
I've never seen a carrot that big.
Unbelievable.
Well, let's get the three biggest.
Look at this guy, look at this guy.
Oh.
This is a Bugs Bunny wet dream right here.
This is unbelievable, yeah.
So how'd you get into Thai food? Yeah, that's the big question.
The stigma is the color of my skin.
Sure.
I find that a little bit silly considering the fact that I've spent 20 some odd years of my life thinking about, studying, cooking this food.
I still don't claim to be an expert by any means, but I feel like I'm qualified to at least cook the food.
What you do with your restaurant though is not just Thai food, but you're also sort of fighting the stigma of American Thai food in America.
Your menu is not doing the greatest hits, and that's also I think a huge statement about Thai food is actually broader than what most of us are experiencing in Thai restaurants.
What I care about, as kind of minor as it might seem, is I really care about trying to kind of change people's perception of Thai food.
And in a broader sense, change help be part of the conversation of helping people's change their perception of Asian food in general.
I think any time you deal with a country's cuisine and people use the word traditional all the time, people use the word authentic all the time.
And it's one of these catch phrases that we It's very easy to cling to.
But inherently it's meaningless.
Because what is a tradition if it's not just a set of rules that are created by people.
All right, and then by chance we happen to be right next to the yu choy, which is kind of like the basis of this dish that I'm doing.
Oh, no kidding, all right.
In Thailand we call this phak wang dung.
It's a mustard and it's kind of got a, you know, kind of a soft, watery stem.
And its actually really nice to eat raw.
And so with guys like Andy Ricker deal with it in a very direct way.
They say, "I'm a white guy that's going to make Thai food.
" Whoa.
All these latent opinions all of a sudden erupt.
They come to the forefront.
But it pushes the issue.
Especially in northern Thailand, which is close to the Chinese border they use a lot of Chinese vegetables.
They do, okay.
So here's some long beans.
And you can see there's two different varieties.
The Chinese cooks tend to use those a lot.
But in Southeast Asia the Thai cooks use these.
I love these, these are beautiful.
It's something new that's forming.
And it's a controversial topic because it gets at the heart of all the things we think of as "authentic," "traditional.
" But all these things that we have used these terms for so long, connected it emotionally to something that we think exists back in Mexico, or Thailand, or in Queens or L.
A.
, but really are, to me, all different vocabularies that describe American food.
All right, so here we are at the dried fish.
So I'm looking for, right now, I'm looking for dried shrimp.
I'm looking for dried squid.
It's funny, to me texturally it tastes exactly like beef jerky.
So now are you going to flavor a broth or something with this? Yeah, exactly.
So this is like a stewed vegetable dish.
To this I'm just going to add all the pork belly.
I'm going to add some of this dried squid.
Very umami and salty.
Also a handful of dried shrimp.
And then the other seasoning I'm going to add to this is some fermented soy beans.
The vegetables are going to be sweet, but just to kind of pump that a little bit, it's pretty common to use rock candy.
Next, soy sauce.
And then also fish sauce.
You know, as you can see, I'm building up the umami flavor here.
We've got a lot of vegetables to cook, so want to make sure that we have plenty of flavor going on.
The final ingredient is fish maw.
Is that fish intestine? Yeah, essentially.
I mean it looks like chicharron.
Yeah, it's puffed.
It's looks gross.
Kind of, unless you like chicharrons, then it looks really good.
So throw these in there.
Really, this dish just kind of like sits there and simmers away.
If Thai food is already an amalgam of all of its surrounding neighborhoods and all of its cultures, then American Thai food is just a natural evolution of that, too.
Exactly.
And so, you know, by doing this you're creating a new tradition.
This is great, man.
I could eat this whole thing.
It looks like, tastes like soul food.
Yeah, it really does.
The minute you call something tradition, you're declaring it dead.
Because you're saying that it's a static thing.
That there is one definition that only exists.
Houston is an interesting city, and it kind of gets clumped into Texas, right? So we're talking brisket barbecue, we're talking chili.
You don't think about there's this total subculture of immigrant food that's influencing the greater culture at large in Houston.
You've got Vietnamese culture, you've got Cajun culture, you've got all these different things all sort of colliding in this one massive cauldron of a city.
Whatever it is that's happening there, there's fireworks going on.
Only in Houston could you get this incredible, weird Cajun/Vietnamese culinary experience.
I've never heard of Vietnamese crawfish.
Oh no, that's the only crawfish I've ever known, actually.
The thing is a lot of the fishermen that work like Port Arthur, Shreveport, Galveston.
A lot of them are Vietnamese.
And I feel like most immigrants cultures, when they first land in the U.
S.
, the thing they always bring with them is the food.
You know, and the amazing part about a lot of these restaurants that are like hole in the walls, their food is just as good tastes just as good as any fine dining establishment you could find anywhere, you know.
It's about the experience.
How many sauces do you want on the crawfish? And how spicy? I'm not eating that fire, dude.
He can go on that, I got to have like I can do whatever.
All right.
How hot can you go? I can.
You can go hot? I can go hot.
They want really hot.
How many pounds, boys? Not asshole burning hot, medium hot.
So we have suicide and then the next level is cray-cray, it goes up to cray-cray.
There's a sauce called cray-cray? So what's one below cray-cray? Suicide.
It's going to be suicide.
Oh, yeah.
Let's do suicide.
Okay.
I'll be honest with you, I don't go to your restaurant, your restaurant or any other fancy restaurant and find inspiration.
I go there because it's creatively challenging, and I want to see what you're doing.
But what I do is I go to places like this.
Absolutely.
And I go, "Man, I can steal this idea, "I can steal this dish, manipulate it and then make it my own.
" And you do it a lot in your restaurant.
You take immigrant dishes, and then you recreate it and re-envision it for the public.
So we're just going to panfry this.
We dredge it in a little bit of rice flour.
We just want something to lightly coat the skin and just to cover it.
Is this kind of a Chinese-inspired thing? Yeah, because I mean it was you go down to Chinatown a lot and you always see whole fish.
This idea of Houston as being a part of the Southern dialogue is very interesting to me.
So how long are you frying this for? Just probably go about 14 minutes.
It's coming alive.
It's alive, it's alive.
He's trying to That's awesome.
He's trying to fly out of the pan, look at that.
And chefs like Chris Shepherd are sort of redefining Houston as a Southern city, culinary wise.
That looks good.
I want to start eating that.
Nowhere else in the South do you have this incredible convergence of immigrants, and different ethnicities and all clumped together the way you do in Houston.
That's very fascinating to me because it's very not unlike what I'm kind of doing in my own little way.
So what seafood do you see in Kentucky? So, you know, it's funny is we don't serve a lot of seafood I'm landlocked.
But we have to serve something.
Proximity-wise, I'm exactly as close to the Atlantic Ocean as I am to the Gulf.
Like literally straight shot.
So it's like we were serving Atlantic, we do, but there's a certain point where like I'm tired of serving cod, I'm tired of serving halibut.
I mean for us, the different styles of fish that come in all the time is probably the most exciting.
Just the knowledge that you can gain from it and knowing that we're not just going after those targeted species.
For me to be able to tell a story with my menu.
I started gravitating more towards the Gulf Coast.
Is the story more important than the quality? What's more important to you? They're both.
I think they're equally important.
Because I think if you're a good chef or a creative chef, you can take a lesser great quality product and still create something beautiful out of it.
And if you can do that and still tell a story, then why not? Tell me about this idea of Houston being a Creole city, which I know is a little bit controversial.
It is.
You came out and said it, so I'm going to ask you.
I did.
You had to open your big mouth.
I did.
You know, you talk about what Creole actually means and it's cultures combining in one area.
And now it's become Houston.
Where you're starting to see the Vietnamese, the Chinese, the Indian, the Malaysians where all these cultures are combining into one area.
And it really is this melting pot, and translates into Creole, if you will.
That's kind of the belief is that that has become this city.
In my eyes.
It's gorgeous, huh? Awesome looking.
Brown sugar.
A little brown sugar.
A little fish sauce.
It's so funny.
Three ingredients: fish sauce, sugar.
Lime juice, cilantro, call it a day.
That's like the holy trinity for me, right? You don't need much more.
Top some of those green strawberries.
I love green strawberries.
Yeah, it's actually pretty hard to get one of my growers to grow these.
And we're coming out of strawberry season right now.
He's I'm like, "Can you get me some green strawberries?" And he's like, "Well, why?" Why? Yeah, that's what I get.
Because I want them.
And then that's pretty much it.
Beautiful.
That's what I call dinner.
Natural and perfect.
To me this is Houston.
There's some point about tradition you have to adhere to.
And then there's some point where you break away from it.
I feel you use it as a guide.
For myself, it's sticking to, like the food that we put out, if it's going to be Vietnamese-inspired, or Thai-inspired or Korean-inspired.
I want it to be if that culture were to come in and try it they understand.
And they go, "I see this, and I understand it and it's right.
" For me, it always starts with recreating the original.
And then going from there.
Because that's where I get that inspiration to try to change what I think can be changed, but still for it to keep its own identity.
I'm making a kinilaw, which is a Filipino ceviche.
It's kind of becoming the sort of trendy dish that Filipino cuisine is getting known for here.
I feel like it's easy to relate to.
And like a lot of people are like, "Oh, it's like a ceviche," when they look at the recipe.
So I got some red snapper from the Gulf.
What I'm going to do is I'm going to blanch the skin.
The technique is called yubiki.
You do it for different kinds of fish if you want to try to eat the skin and still serve it raw.
Is that a Japanese technique? Yeah.
That's something you did at when you were a sushi chef? Yeah.
You know, I mean obviously, Paul's a good friend.
But he's not someone you would immediately think of when you think of a Texas chef.
You know, Texas chefs are big, they cook with lots of meat and they make, you know He's sort of countering that whole perception.
And to say that, you know, you can have an incredibly refined menu that consists at least half of his menu is based on fish.
Very globally influenced.
But it can be just as much identifiable with Texas.
So I'm going to take a little bit of coconut milk.
And here's some raw coconut vinegar.
What's coconut vinegar? It's basically fermented coconut juice.
Basically let it sour, you know.
Oh, it's really good.
Next I'm going to clean some ginger.
You know, I call you the "OCD chef.
" The "OCD chef"? I can't help it, man, especially if it's not my kitchen.
All the best chefs are OCD though.
Can you pass me a paper towels? You already started? It's not even hot.
No, no, I know.
That's a good move.
Just got to have my mise en place ready, chef.
This is going to get ugly.
Put some black pepper, like a heavy dose.
That's a lot of pepper.
It's a heavy dose of pepper.
Are you trying to bring in Filipino stuff to your kitchen now? Um starting to, slowly.
Yeah, definitely.
I feel like some of the dishes I've been like, you know, cooked lately have been more Filipino and like pulling from my roots, yeah.
I feel like Filipino cuisine is so good and like it should be the next big thing.
And people always kind of say it is.
I feel like Filipino food's still trying to find its bearing.
And I'm still trying to learn more of it, you know.
Now there's not a large Filipino population here, right? Yeah, it's not huge, but there's a good number.
There's a good number.
There's a good enough number.
You brought some Filipino food to me one day and it was just like what the hell, this is awesome.
Yeah, that was from my dad's it was like my dad's friend.
It was great.
It's funny a lot of those immigrant cuisines will actually get better when they come to the U.
S.
I feel like I totally agree with that.
So because you've got all this crudo stuff on your menu which by the way is fabulous how do you balance that with trying to use Gulf Coast fish? I have to adjust the recipe a little bit.
Like the marination's not going to be the same amount of time and I'm probably going to slice the fish differently.
I noticed too and I like how you cut your fish a little bit thicker.
Yeah, I feel like sashimi is very much about texture.
It's how you cut it, you know.
How you cut it makes a difference in how you eat it.
And I think for kinilaw, especially since it's a very high acidic marinade, you kind of want it to be a little bit thicker.
It's so simple, but it's so pretty.
Here are your crawfish.
Oh yeah.
Suicide with a corn, potato and sausage.
What? Suicide.
Oh, my God.
It smells so Spicy.
My nose just got hit.
Whose stupid idea was this? Yeah, suicide.
Wow.
That's pretty damn good.
It's really good.
Ooh, that's hot.
LEE "Oh, that's hot.
" I don't think I can have more than five of these.
Too spicy? It is getting you.
Oh, it's getting me bad.
Just the amount of garlic on there.
You can taste garlic? Not only is it delicious, but it's really saying something that a Vietnamese population can come in and sort of adopt the Cajun spices and then start riffing on that.
I've never seen anything like this before.
I've never had anything like this.
Uh-uh.
But I think it speaks a lot to the power of immigrants and their sort of flexibility.
Let's get some of that juice though.
There's some plastic containers.
Whoa! Oh.
Oh, that is intense.
That is so intense.
That hits you in the back.
Oh, my God.
If you pass out, I'm probably not going to do it.
You're like three times my size, you can handle it.
I'll do it then.
It hits you in the back.
Wait, wait.
What I am most curious about Houston is you're talking about the city that lives on the fringe.
It's not in the heart of any one culture, it kind of you know, it's a border town.
It's a fringe city.
And any time you have a city that rests at the edge of two or three different cultures that kind of meet and collide there, I think very interesting things happen.
That's freaking good though.
That is really good.
I might pay for this later, but yeah.
You're going to pay for it later, there's no question about that.
The wind of change is blowing The word fusion is wrong.
The word fusion doesn't apply.
Got to keep going Through this wind of change The word fusion was a trend.
It was something that was great when it happened, but the misinterpretations of it that happened after have muddied the word.
Fusion was high-low culture.
It had nothing to do with I'm going to take, you know, Thai food and put it together with Caribbean food and fuse it together.
We're not fusing anything together.
It happens organically and happens immersed through culture, through sort of this reverence of culture.
And at the end of the day, all food that we make any chef in this country that is doing anything other than mimicry of food is cooking in this way.
It's technical cooking, emotional cooking and find where those things can overlap.
And when they do, it's beautiful.
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org/themindofachef.