The Mind of a Chef (2012) s05e11 Episode Script

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Arteries beware.
It's like the perfect food to go.
I don't care if you're doing high-end food, or a fast food shop.
The fried bits just inevitably go in your mouth.
Mmm! Really nice and crispy.
That is delicious.
That's the good stuff.
Frying time.
It's coming alive, it's alive, it's alive.
Oh, I didn't know we were cooking health food here.
Man, that's good.
- Pretty sexy.
- It's almost like cheating.
- Look at that.
- I love that sound.
The whole snake head.
It cures any hangover, any time.
Whoo! If you are a connoisseur of good food, then by definition you must also love fried chicken.
When I met my wife, it was like, you know, there were a ton of people in the room, and we locked eyes, and I was like, "That's it, I know.
" It's the same thing when you lock eyes with a fried chicken joint.
You smell her, and you see her, and you're like, "I know you, baby, I'm coming to get you.
" It's a very sensual experience for me.
Like, I go to a fried chicken place, and most of the time I want to eat by myself.
And if there are too many people around, it kind of disturbs the whole thing.
So you take it to go.
And you got to open up that top because it'll steam the chicken.
And then you drive to, like, the nearest shady tree that you can find.
And you sit under the tree, you roll down the window, and you eat the fried chicken just like that.
Hopefully it's a nice sunny day.
And that's the best way to eat fried chicken.
It's like having a date with a chicken.
For me, there's essential problems to fried chicken.
You have to fry a piece of chicken so that it cooks all the way through, but you have to have a crust that is not soggy, but not too burnt.
It's one of the most challenging recipes that you will ever combat.
I'll probably tinker with it till the day I die.
Everyone thinks they have the best fried chicken around.
But this really is the best fried chicken around.
My solution to it was to precook the meat.
Which to many people is sacrilege, I mean, like, to actually prepoach meat before you deep-fry it is almost like cheating.
But, again, I don't follow rules, so.
In Filipino cuisine, there's something called "adobo.
" It's basically chicken that's been braised in vinegar, and then the vinegar actually adds flavor, but also tenderizes the chicken.
It makes the meat incredibly delicate.
Basically it's water, vinegar and this is soy sauce.
Black pepper, chili flakes, couple of bay leaves, and just a little bit of salt and a little bit of sugar.
And that's kind of the brine part.
Garlic, which is really essential to this 'cause that's going to flavor the broth.
The liquid should be warm enough that it's going to poach the chicken, but actually you should be able to put your hand in it and not burn yourself.
It's almost like a spa.
It's like a warm bath for the chicken.
The broth is really vinegary.
People think, "Oh, my God, you're making sour chicken.
" But what's fascinating is after you dredge and deep-fry it, you don't taste vinegar anymore.
It just tastes like really flavored chicken.
Hopefully, with this recipe, the meat and the fried skin are equals.
In that broth, there's little flecks of fat that have been drained out of the chicken so it's not going to be as greasy when we deep-fry it later.
So this is just paprika, a little black pepper.
And I actually do not salt this.
Because we poached it in soy sauce there's a good amount of sodium in the chicken.
I learned this from my friend's mom here in Kentucky.
When you leave it out on the drying rack, you have to wait about 20 minutes 'cause you want that buttermilk and the flour to react.
I actually I proposed to my wife with a bowl of fried chicken.
I had this whole thing planned.
So we ate a bucket of fried chicken, and I was going to be like, "Hey, I made a special dessert for you," and I had the ring inside the dessert napkin, you know.
And but we ended up eating so much fried chicken that she was like, "I'm full, I don't want dessert.
" And I go, "No, you really want dessert.
" She goes, "No, no, no, no, I don't want dessert.
" And I got so mad at her, I was like, "Damn it, I'm trying to propose to you, like eat the damn dessert.
" So, I'm going to start with the thigh 'cause it's going to take the longest.
Then the drumstick.
And then the wing.
So I have a dish we call "chicken and waffles.
" I don't know why soul food restaurants do chicken and waffles.
I've asked a million people, no one knows.
It seems somewhat a little bit too unrefined to take this fried chicken that I've labored so much over and just put it over a big piece of waffle.
So I'll kind of slice it, and almost make croutons out of it, waffle croutons.
It's beautiful.
The faster you can circulate air around it, the nicer it's going to have that crunch.
I got some fennel and chervil here.
Sometimes I'll throw some dill on it, some parsley.
This goes on right at the last minute.
Lots of peppers.
There you go, fried chicken, with some waffles.
I like fried oysters, I can eat them all day.
It's one of my favorite things.
Fried seafood town, New Orleans is king.
- Right, King Mayer? - Absolutely.
We were talking about frying oysters, we diverged a bit on how we would approach it.
We politely disagree.
I'm going to try something I have only heard about, but it sounds really interesting, only with whites of the eggs.
Flat surface, right? It's not a hard edge.
Instead of cracking an egg going back and forth, you crack all the eggs in a bowl, you go in, and you pull out the yolks.
Now the dry mix.
You always bread in cornmeal, it's white cornmeal.
A little bit of flour, so you can get close to your prepackaged mix that you buy.
I use flour, but sparingly.
As am I.
- The controversial ingredient.
- Panko.
Dried Japanese white bread.
That you've grown down to a very fine texture.
That I ground down to a very fine texture.
But I like that part of it.
I like it because it gets very, very crispy, and very dry.
- It's more like a flour.
- Yeah.
Now I'm just going to season it.
Dried garlic powder, which I never see anywhere except in New Orleans.
Really? Onion powder.
- Onion powder.
- Smells good.
- Cayenne.
- I definitely use a lot of cayenne in mine as well.
- Is that a lot? - You could add more.
- Really? - Yeah.
Okay, I'll add a little more.
There we go.
- White pepper.
- Delicious.
And celery seed, which you showed an interest in.
Right, that's a smart idea.
Well, we'll taste and see.
I'm only doing this for the oyster.
And the last thing, fine salt.
- Just go light.
- Why would I go light? Because you can always add salt after it's fried.
It's what I like.
- Oysters are also - Salty.
And what is the predominant ingredient in onion and garlic powder? Salt.
How'd I do? - Very good, B-minus.
- B-minus? I got them all right, I get a B-minus.
That's kind of it.
It looks heavy on the cayenne, - but we'll see.
- No, it's not.
So there's the spice mix.
All right, so great New Orleans French bread.
The right French bread for a po'boy has the perfect amount of crunch on top, but also has a lot of give.
These things are getting squished as you eat it, which means they're You should be able to hold it with one hand, and not have it disintegrate.
Soft enough to hold everything, but crunchy because it's a very textural thing that you get that crunch on top.
Oh, it's so good.
So I'm going to bread the oysters.
Louisiana oysters grow in brackish water in the estuary of the Mississippi River where all this amazing fresh water coming out meets the salt water, and that's where the fattest oysters grow.
They're richer.
Thicker-shelled, sweet, sometimes coppery.
Yup, I love the coppery.
Though when you fry these oysters, they just seem to be a little bit more delicious for a po'boy.
I would agree.
So we have about two dozen oysters ready to roll.
Generous po'boy, yeah.
So we going to fry these things? No, we're going to toast the bread.
Get them toasty.
Lettuce and cabbage, tomatoes.
We're ready to fry oysters and make some sandwiches.
You want to see if the temperature is Do you want to stick your finger, - just tip of your finger in? - Mm-hmm, sure.
And you are going to cook 'em till they're golden brown, yet perfectly cooked and moist and tender in the very center of the oyster.
Absolutely.
Okay, ready, go.
Have our oil, yup.
That's a great sound.
I know people who go on diets where they don't eat any fried food.
I don't get that.
I'm serious, I don't get that.
How are they looking? Pretty good.
Ooh, yeah.
Adheres pretty nicely.
So what do you think about that breading now? They're certainly crunchy.
They are crunchy.
I don't know about panko though, man.
It seems like it's cheating.
A little hot sauce? That's another liquid that gets absorbed in the bread.
Hope the bread's not toasted too much.
Hope the panko doesn't ruin it.
It could use some pickles.
It's a good looking po'boy.
- Can we eat these? - Yeah.
Mm-hmm, good, crunchy.
- Too crunchy? - Mm-mmm.
You ought to do this for a living.
Mmm! That's sexy right there.
Mm-hmm.
Hmm Right? It's good.
Guys, you have to eat these po'boys, they are so these are so good.
So what's happening when we're frying a piece of food? Why do we bother with all the trouble of frying? And the answer essentially comes down to drying out, desiccation, making crunchy.
That's the whole point of frying is to cook a piece of food through, but end up with a wonderfully crunchy crust that contrasts with the texture of the inside.
And the reason that oil is such a good medium in which to do this is that we can heat oil to temperatures way above the boiling point of water.
To 400 degrees or more.
So imagine that you're frying a piece of meat.
You drop it into the oil, the water in the surface of that food very quickly gets heated up to the boiling point, and then it turns into water vapor.
It begins to come out of the food.
Little bubbles begin to form off the sides, and disperse into the oil.
And then as the food gets hotter and hotter, more and more bubbles come out.
The fact that the food is bubbling actively means that it's got lots of moisture left, we need to keep cooking it.
And then by the time you're finished, there should be little or no bubbling left.
That means that the crust has been dried out completely, it's nice and crunchy, and there's no more cooking left.
Pork is a very significant product to many parts of the world, but especially to Scandinavia.
In the old days, you know, salt pork was a very large part of the protein intake that people had during the dark winter months.
And this dish kind of ties into that because we're using a part of the pig that is quite overlooked in many ways, which is the head.
What we do is we take like the whole head and braise it for a really long time until the skin and the meat becomes really tender.
Then we peel it all off the bone, and mix it with pig pieces of meat into sort of a very succulent meat batter.
So this is Michael, who is responsible for this dish during service and also during the prep in the restaurant.
And we're going to yeah, we're going to make it as if it was service, basically.
So we're going to start with deep-frying them.
So after I have dredged the pig head in corn flour, I want to tap it a little bit on the dish so that there's no excess starch on the outside while I batter it.
When I go into the batter, I'm going to give it a little stir because I don't want any bubbles on the pig's head.
And then I kind of give it a little roll like that before coming back down and dipping it straight into the oil.
It's very important to coat the stick like Michael did here.
Because when you fry this, this very sort of succulent meat batter in there, it melts and becomes almost liquid.
And if you don't have that piece of batter going up on the stem of the stick, it will just sort of wobble off the stick when you pick it up.
So it's like a handle.
I'm gonna keep that down in the oil until it's got a nice golden brown color.
And then usually I can do more than one at a time, so I'll do another one.
Then during service we do 16 of these at a time.
And you like hold them between all your fingers, and dunk them down into the deep fryer.
It's not easy.
So these are pickled gooseberries.
We take them when they're unripe and they're green, and we just dry salt them and put them in jars, and leave them to ferment in the cellar, in the root cellar.
And this produces something that tastes like a pickled unripe plum, almost.
Very kind of savory, but also like acidic and fruity at the same time.
So I'm just going to cut two thin slices of that, and place one on each piece of pig's head.
Like that.
So place the first pig's head here, this box of hot stones.
How are you doing on the second one? I'm about there actually.
Into the box.
Season with that.
And then I have this very fragrant spruce salt.
It kind of smells like forest, you know, like walking in the forest.
And it's good to have this, it brightens up the whole dish.
So you're going to cook us what? Okay, I'm not a big proponent of foie gras.
I just think this has a I don't dislike foie gras, but I'm just like, what more, you know? But let's just say, like in Quebec and Montreal, there's a lot of foie gras.
I love French food, right? We do cÃte de bÅ"uuf with red wine sauce, a little bit of marrow, mushroom, you know.
But then I put it on the board, and there's a few people that get it.
When you see them, they're like, "Yeah, that was really, really good.
" But most people, like most young people, bloggers, you know, people with cool shoes, they come in and they eat it, and they're like, "Uh-huh, not bad.
" What the is worse than "not bad," you know? "You like your wife?" "Not bad.
" So I was thinking about that, and I was like, of course, those people grew up with Big Macs and Gatorade, X-Factor, so they need that much taste, you know.
So this thing is like engineered just like to be the perfect thing for those people.
Just two pieces there.
So we took some buttermilk-soaked foie, rolling it in your flour.
Again, it's the Big Mac theory, right? It's just a good aim to like make taste like that intense.
And again, I can't spend the rest of my life making cÃte de bÅ"uuf.
You know, I want a little bit of happy people out there, you know? This is smoked cheddar.
We get beautiful cheese in Quebec, right? And we buy this cheddar and we put it in vacuum bag with maple syrup and a bit of bourbon, and we put a little bit of petrel, and then we smoke it in the smoker until it starts melting, then we put it in the freezer again, and it's really good.
What kind of wood? Maple, strictly maple.
I put the bacon in there.
Usually I don't do that, it's just because my griddle is not on, right.
- And you're lazy.
- Of course, man.
Once you enter the world of Joe Beef, different logic, different set of rules.
All right.
So do you know that it's nice in the center? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, three minutes.
Do you ever see that? Gas, it's the best, man, look.
I'm sure you can carry that on the plane, along with your other gift.
I put bacon because bacon makes everything good, man.
You know what? This is the one item that gets people a little bit like, "Whoo!" Did I get the sound right? Whoo - Add the double down mayo.
- What's in that? It's mayonnaise, sriracha, and reduced glace de poulet.
Which is? Like bouillon, but we make everything in-house.
Man, but that's really good.
Look at that.
Okay, you know what I wrote for the forward in the book for that? "Dear world, I'm sorry that food has come to that.
" Like Richard Pryor more or less said, the double down is God's way to tell you you have too much money.
Nashville hot chicken is Nashville hot chicken.
You can really only get it there.
But Prince's being the first, they put it on the map.
Not going to lie to you, man, I'm a little nervous.
The hot, extra hot, that's what's making you nervous? I have to, I think.
I can stand hot food.
I've always loved habaneros, and I've always loved spicy things.
But I was terrified walking into Prince's.
Completely terrified.
I like how there's a body waxing place beside it.
So if you didn't torture yourself enough eating the hot chicken, you can go get the Brazilian.
Go get your hair ripped off? Oh, here we go.
Okay, may I take your order, please? Am I crazy if I get the extra hot? - That's suicidal chicken.
- Really? I got to do it, but I'm nervous.
- Hot? - Extra hot.
Extra hot.
Okay.
I'm going to do the same thing, but leg and thigh.
- Oh, wow.
- I would like a couple pickles as well.
Couple pickles.
And three gallons of milk.
- You okay? - I'm so nervous.
Just thinking about it, my goodness.
Like what's the worst that could happen? Just don't let it happen in here, okay? Fair enough, fair enough.
You would never ever ask them how they make it or what the secret is.
I mean you can't even look into the kitchen, they have it guarded off.
Those secrets are so closely guarded, that not for any amount of money or any amount of fame will they allow a camera into those kitchens.
- Good luck.
- Thank you.
All right.
And I'm here to be a witness.
Are you going to watch us the whole time? Of course.
- My goodness.
- Oh, boy.
Start out slow.
Don't even touch your skin.
- It looks so delicious.
- Say your prayers.
"Say your prayers.
" That's hot.
- It tastes so good though.
- Mm-hmm.
How many extra hots do you sell in a day? It's not that many.
I'm actually doing all right so far.
This has ruined fried chicken for me, though.
Like, I can't eat regular fried chicken anymore.
- It's too boring.
- I can't either.
This is not a boring chicken.
It's a passionate food.
I'm the opposite of bored.
Don't force yourself now.
This is painful.
I think I'm hallucinating.
I love it.
Now that chicken is going to get a little hotter hotter I'm in physical pain right now.
I'm jarred.
I don't know what to do now.
I don't know what to do.
There's a lady of the evening, and she would always bring her suitors by here before the final act.
Really? She always, always got it hot hot And one night, she just couldn't wait.
She went out, right there in front of that window, - down on the hood of the car.
- Come on.
No way, really? That's not going to happen when we leave here.
She don't wait, going in.
Yeah, this is incredible.
You know, it's not just like eating something, it's like an experience, you know.
It's like you bring someone here for like a memory.
It's not just like, "Hey, I'm hungry, let's go eat some hot chicken.
" It's like, this is like going to a movie or something.
You know, it's like a full experience.
It's entertainment.
You remember it, especially the next morning.
I told someone today that I was coming here to get the extra hot, they said, "Go ahead and put the toilet paper in the freezer right now.
" You're not eating hot chicken because you're starving to death, you're eating it to push the bounds of reality.
Sometimes you need to stick your hand in the fire to remind yourself that it's hot, you know?