Welcome to Vic Glenn Radio's Eat, Drink, and Be Merry Show, where we love to talk about food, drink, recipes, and techniques, and where to shop, taste, and play. Let's go. Hey everybody, you know here on our Eat, Drink, and Be Merry Show. We love to have Chef Ivan Flowers on the show giving us insight. We always have fun with him, you know, because you know, we, we learn a whole bunch, but we're going to have fun along the way. But he's joining us again today to talk about plating of food. And it is National Culinary Arts Month. And as you know, Chef Ivan is a five star chef. He's also a culinary instructor at Temecula Valley High School in Southern California. His last episode with us was phenomenal, talking about what this school does, teaching high school students about cooking, about the actual hospitality and food culinary industry. So I hope you catch that. In fact, I'll link that in the episode notes if you if you missed it, because I think it's just so important to teach youth how to go to a job interview and everything. But I know part of what he does is also teaches them here's how to cook. But then here's how to put it on a plate that makes it exciting for the diner. So welcome back, Chef Ivan, how are you? I'm very well. It's good to be back. Yeah, and you're and you're out of school right now, like you're on summer vacation. Is it cool to have some downtime? Yes. It's nice. Yeah. Good. Good. Get some coastal breezes, go beach walking and stuff. You guys are out doing that, right? Yeah. Oh, nice. How nice. So it's Culinary Arts Month. So happy Culinary Arts Month to you. And I think today's topic really focuses on the art side of it, right? There's obviously the art of the cooking, but this brings in when we're talking about plating. I have so many questions about this, because I think the plating can be everything, right? But when you go to create a dish, you obviously want to focus on flavor. But do you ever look at the ingredients and go, well, I'm going to swap this ingredient out because of the color scheme or like, so you look at it, do you look at it flavor first? And then like, what ingredients should I use over the other ingredients to make it presentable on a plate? Well, you hit the nail on the head. When you, when you're plating food, when you're a chef, when you cook professionally, or even when you're just cooking for people, the only thing that goes through your mind, in other words, if you were given a blank canvas and somebody said, we want you to paint a picture, there has to be, for you to paint a picture that's going to evoke a, you know, emotion, reaction, whatever it is, you've got to connect artistry, passion, and creativity with it first. So you never, ever, ever, think about what a dish is going to look like. That comes all the minute in the moment you plate the dish. If you think whatever the ingredients may be and how you're cooking them, if you're thinking about, okay, it's asparagus as a component and I'm going to do a light steam with citrus, finish with garlic, a little bit on the grill, that's one component. Let's say you're doing another component, a baby potato. You bring it up in water that has black peppercorns, garlic, and a bay leaf, you know that you're putting flavor into the flesh of the potato. Let's say you're doing a beautiful piece of fish, let's say a deep water main black bass and you're going to crisp up the skin. So you know that the flavor is that every component is thought of with flavor for the person that you're cooking it for. The magic that happens, and it's really one of the main reasons I became a chef, is the plating. The plating happens in the moment. I never drew pictures, you don't make diagrams, it doesn't work that way. A lot of times you can plate the same dish, an infinite amount of times, differently. You change things around and asparagus might be split down the middle and then you intertwine it with other asparagus or you tie a knot on the top and you make it stand up like a flower. It just happens. If you're putting a sauce on a plate, the sauce is so refined it's called a mirror, and I most of the time use white plates. You want negative space as well, so you make it user friendly. So the person that's eating it, like if you go to chain restaurants they give you a plate and everything on the plate is covered with food. You don't want to do that. You want people to eat with the eye first, and then the image of the food has to be backed up with making it that delicious. I know so many chefs that do the opposite. I'm going to use this, I'm going to use that, and then they end up putting the kitchen sink on the plate, everything, and it's too much. It's a hard formula, it can be taught, it's done through practice, it's done through years of experience, but when a chef is plating food and you see it when you watch videos and cooking shows how they get into it, the shoulders come forward, the eyes go down, there's a bend at the shoulders, there's a bend at the hip, and they're creating something that is about to go to somebody who's going to see it and eat it. That's a big responsibility. I love that you brought up the negative space. I mean that's the same thing as what we talk about in magazine design, is white space. We call it white space. You have to have white space so that I can actually read the print. If you put so much text on a page, people are just going to be overwhelmed and like we need pictures. You have to have that picture component, you have to have that space, otherwise the eye doesn't know what to focus on. You have that even in a soup, if someone makes a soup or a stew, you need to have something with a bigger chunk of something than everything being the even. If you make a chili, you have all the beans and the meat or something, but then maybe the meat is a bigger chunk of, maybe it's steak cut up or something. Something has to differentiate from the beans in size and color for a folk party. Correct. Yes, absolutely. Yes, yes. You need that contrast. What about how you plate because people are interesting about how they eat? Let's go to Oreo cookies. Some people just eat the cookie, some people take the cookie and separate it and lick the icing off and scrape it off of that cookie. You know what I'm talking about? Everybody has these weird ways of eating. I really, sometimes you go to a restaurant and especially you get into the high end places and they're like, "This is how you must eat this." I kind of get pissy about that because I'm like, "Don't tell me about that." That's just me. Just kind of like, it's an adventure. Food and eating is an adventure and it's a conversation piece when you go to something like that. To me also, it's the design. Like you said, you've got to kind of wing it because it's art and it's temporary art and you've got to get it on the plate and not let it get cold and all of that stuff. You want to keep it cold and not get hot. Whatever it is, so there's this time that's ticking. This is this temporary art form and even public art has temporary public art. You could have a statue when you saw it in Santa Fe, New Mexico. They had this giant polar bear and then they took it away and they said, "Well, that was a thing about climate change." Yes, the polar bear starts to melt and that's it. It's gone and it's done. That's your temporary art piece with a huge impact for what they were showing. So food is the same way. It's temporary. However, when you, doesn't the plating also go by texture, not just by color and shape and size, there's got to be a texture on how you eat it and how you plate it so that we always talk about this with you on the show. It's like when you eat something, you don't want it all to be the same. You want to have that layered effect maybe or sometimes you want to like all the same and then the layered, it's like music. You need that dynamic. So when you plate, do you ever think about the texture side versus the same color? It's all integral. As you're preparing the food, as you're preparing the dish, like for example, when you talk about texture and flavor and mouthfeel, big one, I'm not going to serve a butter sauce with salmon. It's a fatty fish. So I'm not going to take a rich oily fish and do it with butter. I'm going to do a base that's a little different that might have a little bit of vinegar in it, a little bit of citrus and herb that's going to cut through that fat. Then when the fat is in the fish, I'm thinking, okay, I left the skin on. So I have a crispy element. So the first thing, I mean even the fork is important. Okay, the silverware, the way it feels in your hand, they hit the fish and they get a crispiness. Then they go into that beautiful, beautiful moist flesh. Then maybe they want to take a vegetable with that. Well, what kind of vegetable do you want to serve with that fish? Maybe I grilled a leek with a little bit of smoked lemon. Now I have a smokiness, and now I have maybe a touch of vinegar running through a citrus whipped sauce. Then maybe I have a creamy potato. Well, now what are we thinking? Crisp, creamy, acidic. It's all working together, because if you want somebody that's into food the way they eat and they take the time to put a little bit of everything on the fork to get that full bite, that's an amazing thing to see. Most people don't do that. They just kind of eat it very quickly and what have you. But when you plate, you're bearing your soul as a chef. You're putting it on the plate. You take it further and then you say you have to train your cooks how to plate it the same way that you need it, plate it. You just don't do that by saying, "Hey, listen, this is how I need it." You train them to think the same way you're thinking and they get it and then you allow them to start doing some of their own dishes as well. That's a healthy kitchen. That's a kitchen. That's where you're learning. That's a kitchen of adventure, excitement. That's how you do it. Yeah, and because they could come up with something really killer. If you don't allow you to go to the flow, it's the same thing as a band. When we had our band, somebody would come up with some great lyrics. If you didn't open it up to the band, like the guitarist may come in and say, "Hey, I got this lick." That is killer. The band has to remember the structure when they get out and perform. They have to have that signature style. One of the best ways to learn is to be a cover band for a while because you cannot try and play. If you do free bird from then it's skinnered and you screw up that guitar solo, you suck, period. You need to have these specific licks. There's just what is expected. That happens like in a restaurant when you have signature dishes and it keeps changing, then it's not a signature dish anymore if it keeps changing. You can always have a new special like, "This is in season." If something is in season, then it's like, "Hey, that's what we got." If a chef in the kitchen, a sous chef caught it, "Hey, why not? It's cool." It's exciting and it challenges people to come up with something new. Just in the whole texture and everything that we're talking about, there was a bed and breakfast and they've retired since in Three Rivers, California. It was outside Sequoia National Park. The wife, Leah, she would make these just healthy breakfast. She always had a health spin on everything and we were delicious. But her husband, Peter, has a very international background and grew up outside this country but knew how to do fruit. I don't even get how he did it without. It was just like he was raised doing it. He's got a Malaysian background and then India and all these different backgrounds but they would get whatever was local fruit and where they are is one of the breadbasket of the world. You could go down the street and get peaches, plums, anything you want from the farmer. Whatever was there, he would take it. He would wake up in the morning and he would have a fruit plate that looked like a piece of art. He would make little flowers. I looked at it. It's like, it was a whole other experience and if you don't eat fruit, there's this moment of like I don't want to ruin this. This is like a piece of art and you eat it and then you better eat it all. Like you're not going to waste your fruit because but he just did it like a second nature. There was no anything. It was just like, oh look, this looks like this. Well then we build on it and it was just these. We went like for the fruit plates and Leah can cook and I've did cooking videos and everything with her but we were always what's going to happen because every day was different with the fruit. Every day because of whatever was in season and so he just took it, sliced it, had excellent knife skills, I suppose, to be able to do that. You know, that's a good thing. That's carmaje. Yeah, that's the art of carmaje is being able to make food look like that, especially when it's like in the pantry and it's fruit and it's vegetables and you're carving them. I knew a chef once that on a large white button mushroom with the back of a paring knife sketch a trout jumping out of a river and when he browned the mushroom, the entire stencil came out on the mushroom. It was mind blowing. That's amazing. That's what I'm going to get your coffee left, your latte thing, the foam and all of that. That's pretty amazing. That makes it go wow, that's a whole other level and it's temporary art again. But the flavor has to back it up if you have the art and you don't have the flavor, that sucks. Flavor is everything. Flavor dictates the plating. I've said this for almost 35 years. Flavor dictates the plating and I've used it in when I was in the industry, I'd use it in school. Flavor dictates the plating. Okay, so what about its grilling season right now? So people are outside doing hotdogs, hamburgers, chicken and fish, olive, bobs, right? Now, the bobs, that is a great start, right? But don't you think there's something about grill marks that make us salivate? What is it? That's like a thing for flavor, but at the same time you have a grill mark. So you can already taste it before you taste it by just having that char, that grill mark. The char, the grill mark, the knowing that it was cooked outside. I mean, when you pass the steak house and when you pass the burger restaurant and you smell mostly protein's grilling, it does affect the salivatory glands. You start to go, it's like you crave it, you get crazy for it. That's an extension of it, that symbol. But keep in mind, you know, a lot of people are like, it's got to be protein, you can grill macarons, you can grill peaches, you can grill romaine for an incredible season salad. There's so many other things that you can put on a grill, you know, besides protein. You can grill lemons and make smoking lemonade, you know, I mean, and on and on and on. Oh, now I want to smokey margarita. Yes, that's talking. I know, right now. Okay. So now that we're talking about that, does smell dictate the plate. It has a lot to do with it. It has a lot to do with it. Think about it. If you drink or taste something and you touch your nose and you squeeze your nostrils together, you don't taste anything. So olfactory is huge. My wife always tells me I cook more with my nose than I do with my with my palate. Smell has everything to do with it. You know, smell will bring back memories, certain smell that all of a sudden you smell, you go, Oh my God, this reminds me of my childhood. What's going on here? All of it works together. All of it works together. Now, what about color? Okay. So color, like some colors don't go that great together. And so it gets interesting. So you may get like, you know, those little small potatoes, the baby potatoes. And I've done those little baskets where they're all like different kinds, like they've got the red, the yellow, and the purple. Well, the purple cook different than the others. The purple can almost go mushy if you're not careful. So I've had to learn, don't mess with the purple, keep it whole, the others be cut, right? Or you know what I mean? So and then I'm going, okay, then there's a side of me that wants to pull all the purples out and do something cool with the purple. And you know, I don't know in the fall, it's cool to do those colors as well. You know, but you've got to watch what you're doing with your colors. And I think for kids, and I don't know if that happens with the teenagers and the high school students, does color intrigue them for plating when you're teaching them? Does that seem to be kind of a catalyst of inspiration to maybe eat this tomato? If the tomato doesn't have that white look, you know, that white half, I hate that tomato look. It's like it's not a real tomato. But if it's red and juicy, then you're like, oh, or if it's an heirloom tomato or an heirloom beat, all the heirlooms to me just kind of goes, wow, let nature do its trick and just don't overpopulate the plate with it. You know, let it just be fun and fanciful and just don't do too much on one dish, you know, and maybe everybody will like it because it's different colors. So you could look at purples, purples is purples weird to work with. Like those potatoes, with the red, it may go with a carrot or a sweet potato, right? More than a, you know what I mean? Yeah, people are not fond of purple food. So if you did a Peruvian potato puree and it was very purple, it doesn't work that well on a plate. There's some colors that people don't react to, like brown food when it's seared and it's charred is delicious, but you've got to balance it with some white colors. Here's a perfect example. If you're doing baby vegetables on the side and maybe baby potatoes with them, you're doing carrots, you're doing hawakai turnips, you're doing golden beets, and you're doing some fingerling potatoes, you cook them all separately. When you cook the vegetables, you actually do it risotto style with some of the pureed juice of the vegetable itself as you cook it. That adds incredible flavor to the vegetable. It's time consuming, but the finished product is a thousand times better. It's a burst of flavor. Before you played it, before you played it, you either take a little demiglass and I mean like by the tip of your finger or touch of butter and you saute it all together quickly. Salt, pepper, and fresh herbs and you get a shine that when it hits that plate, not only does it have the shine, but the color becomes almost like jewelry where it's like, oh my god, and then you taste it and it's got the coating of the actual juice of the vegetable itself with the butter and the herbs and the salt and it happens. Everything is a balance and the more you do it, the more you learn this technique, the more it becomes natural. When it becomes natural like that, you can plate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich like, oh my god, why does this look so good? I don't know, why does it look so good? Because I do a lot of food photography and I look, so how things are plated is like, I could do a rant. It's in a way because like how a sandwich is done, like people just put the sandwich closed on a plate, like it's cut in an angle like the diagonal thing and then they keep it closed. Now if it's open, you see the jelly come out and the peanut butter's thick and you have that kind of like, it's like a donut that was just bitten into, that's a photo, right? And you can see it in it's open and maybe piled on, you know, one half on the other half and just how you do it. But I always think like if people plated as though it was going to be photographed, right, up close, then maybe they would get it a little bit more and you have to look at it from a distance too. How many times in a restaurant do you see someone order what somebody just ordered next to them because of what they said? All the time. The smoke was rising, it's still sizzling like fajitas, it's got action, you know, it's smoking, it's doing stuff still happening, you know. People are like, oh, what is that? I want that, even if it's nothing they've ever eaten before. They're like, I want that. Like Harry Met Sally, I'll have what she's having. I have to go there, sorry. But yeah, I think it is about, you know, peanut butter and jelly sandwich, you can make so fun and fabulous. And I love that you talk about a white dish because a lot of people have this like intense design on a plate and then what they plate on the plate goes against the design on the plate and the colors don't match. But simple white, you can do anything. Then some people will get those really dark plates, which can look actually dirty in a way. So like the hospitality industry, they do white sheets to prove the bed is clean. They have white towels to prove the towels are clean, you know. So it's kind of that kind of clinical thing. But when you get a white plate that is clean and nice with the, I don't know, the dark plates are weird sometimes to do. That's kind of hard to show off. Like if you have a dark sauce that doesn't, you don't see what's going on. It's not transparent. Well, keep in mind to the plate itself can, a chef can look at a plate and a kid bring them to what they're going to play. Here's a perfect example. I used to do oysters on a plate differently every single night for two and a half years and they would go on a rock salt with purnell and rosemary and they would let. And as it went through the dining room, you could see the flame as the server was carrying it. So I'm going to use a rectangular long white plate. I'm not going to go into a circular. I'm not going to go to a square because I know that oval shape of that oyster will contrast the rectangular lens of the plate itself. So a lot of times when I do casing menus, all the plates are different. Pasta, I like to serve in a bowl. That's very shallow, very shallow. It's almost like a plate bowl because then I will nest it and I'll have the pasta high. And it's just user, it's user friendly. Yeah, it's easy with your fork. Yeah, different glasses. All of it, I used to do crazy for bread. I had a long square plate and had four squares in it that were deep. And I would put out balsamic oil. I would put out like a pesto and then Hawaiian rock salt. That was my bread and butter service. Oh, and butter. There was a fifth one to it. That was my bread and butter service. And that was laid in the table. And people were like, that's great. So the ticket times went a little longer. They were happy to dip bread. They had five different choices in front of them. And the plates that they had nowadays are like, oh my god. Well, but I think that you're making a case also for how opposites attract, right? So it's like, don't try to make everything the same color. I look at a plate kind of like landscaping your yard because that's got a texture to it too. So you have a water feature that may be your sauce. And then you don't want everything to look the same. Otherwise, there's no excitement. There's no enticement. You can have a gradient, right? Does that make sense? Like from light to dark of the same kind of color and then have something that really pops with it. That's good. But I look at it like your yard. You could have fountain grass and then you have like something round in front of it, like a Lantana. And it could all be colors that kind of go together, but like the Lantana, like the fountain grass could be that brown purplish color, right? And it has a little hints of green. You have a Lantana in front of it, but it's the Lantana that's the orange and the yellow flower. And that goes together. They're not 100% opposite in that they detract, but they're within the same school of color in the browns. It's the same thing as makeup. So ladies, we have summer, winter, fall, and spring in our makeup of skin color, right? No matter what our skin color is, it's about the tone of our skin. It's really about are you a summer of or a winter or winter is more of like a blue with a blue. It's about having a blue undertone, summer is about having this yellow undertone. So if you take a piece of cloth on your skin, like blue, and then there's blues that have a yellow undertone, it's a little different, right? So you have to pick the right blue that goes with your skin tone, not skin color as such, the skin tone. And so that's kind of the same to me about food is, you know, you could have a carrot that's almost on the red side that will actually work well with the tomato because it's on that same, it crossed over to the red zone, which is more of the blue zone versus the yellow zone. Does that make sense? You know, of course. Also, when you talk about, when you talk about garnish, okay, some chefs, Michael Greens, and you know, they're pricey and they're beautiful. And when you use them, you use a very small amount just to pop the plate. When I used to expedite on the line before the dishes went out, I had these square, deep muffin pans, and there was 20 to each pan. So I put two of them out. Every night, they were filled with different garnishes that you could finish a dish with. Some might be roasted confit tomatoes, confit garlic, microgreens, guanciale, pancetta, that was candied and finished with a little, you know, a little spice. All these different things that you just would hit the plate with. That was edible. It's not a rosemary stick sticking out of a plate that you put to the side. It's something that finishes the plate, makes it beautiful, and is edible as well and adds to the dish. And every single night, we will change it. Every night, we did different ones. What about this, too, about the person cooking? And you know, these spices go well with this dish, right? Like, I'm going to go back to chili. I love to make chili. However, I'm kind of weird. Like, I know what spices work. And I tend to pick, like, I know, like, you, you want this flavor profile, right? But as I'm looking, I'm actually matching the spice colors. I know that's weird, because once they're all cooked together, that really doesn't make a difference. But I cook it that way. Like turmeric, oh my gosh, turmeric is such a vibrant color. It is beautiful, right? And then you have this cumin that actually is kind of an opposite in a weird way, depending on what cumin you're getting, right? And it's so you get into, and then I'll look at the chilies and the curry, I put curry and turmeric together. That's actually the thing. It is like, I put curry powder in my chili, I'm that way, because I grew up eating that kind of food in african. But even the chili powders, I would look at the chilies and pick the chili color. Like, it would, if you put the spices on the plate that you're going to put in the pot, and you looked at them, it's almost like you want them to be friends, even though they're kind of opposite. Again, those undertones, does that make sense? Or am I just really weird? Like, I want to play with my food to make a good dish, but I'm already playing with colors that people aren't going to really see, you know? It's weird. No, no, no, I don't think it. Yeah, well, green is always very important, you know, we've made pops of color and pops of green, and you know, it's what works. And playing with food is really what being a chef is, you do it your entire career. You know, you try this, you try that, you know, you can take a black plate and in a blender, you can take turmeric, and powdered yellow mustard, and you blend it together, and you put it through a coffee filter. When it hits the black plate, it looks like day glow. Oh, it looks like it actually glows on the plate. I went to bed and breakfast once, and the cook there, he's like a amateur chef, but I mean, he did amazing. He made smiley faces with eggs. Like, he did a deviled eggs that look like eyeballs, but he made a little smiley face with okra and everything, and it was really good. It was so cute. It was like, and how could you, you know, you can't be crabby when you have a smiley face on your food, in a bed and breakfast, but it was done with in high class, you know? And then there's, yeah, there's also plating that isn't all sophisticated. Like, you know, you've got some great pictures and everyone you see that in the podcast art, and that are fanciful, right? Like little fans, like, you know, so it looks like coral and, you know, nice things, right? Yeah, yeah. It's like almost making a cake, but then there's stuff that is just absolutely messy, and you want it to be messy in your plating. Like, it is just, it's like an apple crumble. Are you going to, how fanciful can you make it? Do you want it to have a crumble, but have the ice cream be the perfect scoop, you know? Right, yes. Yeah, you don't want it to be like a geometric perfection. You want it to be where it hits the plate. It's natural. Some of those crumbles should fall off. A little bit of that ice cream might melt down the side, just a little bit to make it look enticing. You know, you're not putting it into a frame. The plate is the frame. The food is the picture. It's different. Now, I always ate my vegetables. Like, I'm a good vegetable person. There's a few things that get wonky, but I'm learning. Here's what we used to do in South Africa. And I don't know if it was just a craze in the 80s or whatever year it was, but 80s, 90s, we would take, like, we'd have these big barbecues called brides. All right. And so, and I think back to now, what everybody would, you know, be like a pot, like almost. Everybody always brought stuff. And there was always a poiky coals, which is a pot, food, coals as food. Poiky is a pot, like a Dutch oven. So go underground or on coals, and it would be like beans and weiners and it would just, or chicken. And it's like a gumbo, right? Whatever people had, they would empty their fridge into it. But it was slow cooked all day long in this ground, in the ground, and in this pot. And it came out really good. But you know, you can't fancy that up, but we'd have pop, which is a maze, like it looks like polenta almost, and depending on what African country you're in, depends, and what maze you're using, depends on the consistency of it. So some is like, pop and it's soft, and people, I can't do it. But if it's kind of like dough, which is like in Kenya, we call it oogali, you'd have yellow and white, and you could actually pull it off and dunk it into gravies. And they did a lot of greens, like, but it went with this gravy and stews, and I'm actually, I'm homesick a little bit when I talk about this. But then, there's this other, and they would do butovores in South Africa, like, and they would soak, they cooked sausage, and it's a very fatty sausage. So you think a lot of brought first or something like that, very fat. Like, it's almost like Sudan from Southwest Louisiana, because I think some of them even put a little rice, but it's fatty, fatty, fatty. And then they would drive it into like a jerky, a gray vorce, it was very good. And then the pop and vorce, they would have the pop, which is a mealy meal stuff, like the polenta, and we'd have what was called train smash, we had this tomato stew, which is why I figured out why I have this love for salsa here. It's the closest I can get to it. And it was this, so you had all these colors, but it was like comfort food, but the salad, so you have salads, but back in the day, there was this trend, and I got into it, goes back to the fresh fruit thing that our friend Peter would make. You take like a cookie tray and put tin foil and covered in tin foil, you know, you just had to have a base background, you don't want to plant like a pan, right? Don't forget we were in Africa this time, so nothing was fancy. And we would take whatever vegetables we had and create a design. So it wasn't like your typical salad, like you could have your bowl of greens, you put it down. And I think it was the way the parents were getting us kids to eat vegetables, but you would make a palm tree, and you would have like leaves that were just pieces of like chives and green onions, and you would make like a painting out of the vegetables. And I don't know, I got so into making them as a kid too. It was like, what are we going to do? This is what we have, and you're creating a design. And I see people do that with focaccia bread now. It's kind of going through on this trend I always see on social media. So what do you think about doing that kind of stuff? Does that still appeal to people? I mean, how do we go through trends and like, oh, this is in now for plating? Well, yes. You know, you always go through trends, and trends are good to look at. I think when you look at a trend, you like anything else as a chef or a cook, you look at it, and then you put your spin on it. I wouldn't follow anything exactly. But there are some things that are quite remarkable. You know, again, it's what you come up with. It's an individual thing. I'll give you a good example. A lot of people like calamari with marinara sauce. Well, back in the day, we used to take Thai calamari steaks, which are big, thick slices of calamari, and we would cut them into ribbons, and we would knit them like a potholder. So it looked like a knitted potholder. We would then take that and we would put it in cornstarch with flour, and we would fry it very quickly, and it would kind of turn and bend a little bit and get golden brown. And we would put that onto a copper, a small copper pot that was filled with fresh marinara, and thread that on. So it looked like the poth stick. What did you call it? Like when you pick up pots, oven net. So it looked like, you know, the oven net was right there, and you would break it, and you would dip it, you know? So it's not a trend. It's something I came up with. Do I always look at trends? Sure. I'm always aware. But again, it's, you know, it's like anything else. When you look at something, you never copy. You get ideas. It's not sure imagination. It's really exciting, like, if you really think about what you have on hand, like, you know, we used to take an avocado, we had those big avocados in Africa, like, you know, monster ones. Everybody had them in their backyard. You cut it in half, right? And so you'd have the whole, like, the center. But because these were really meaty, right? So you could create a salad, like an avocado salad, and then you put it back in the avocado skin, and you're eating that inside the avocado skin. So you know, it's like, it's fresh. You, you've made it into, like, some kind of whatever guacamole, but would you do things like that, actually use the casing of things of what it has in. So, like, you know, stuffed potato can be done like that, too, where you fill the potato. Oh, absolutely. Oh, yeah. It's just absolutely, you know? Use what you have. You know, a lot of people like, yes, like, for example, shrimp heads, sex shrimp heads, or, or, or Langostino, or scompy, right? If it's a certain kind of shrimp, the head itself, if you deep fry it, you can eat it like a potato chip. Well, we were doing parties, we were doing dinners, we were taking prawn heads, and then we were finishing them with a stuffed lobster salad, you know, doing a light tempura, very quickly, almost like a frico miso, putting it back in the head, and then serving the prawn, the tail with it. So you're getting this, you know, like, oh, I am now I get crispy, now I get creamy, now I get the prawn. But, you know, when you look at what you're serving, a lot of things that people throw away is actually, you might want to take a look at that, because you can do stuff with that. Well, it's the same thing, like, um, you know, in, in, I don't know why I'm stuck in Africa today, but Kenya, Nancy would get like, they would out on the beach in Melindie, and, uh, my, uh, my, uh, my, my, my, my, my, my busset, excuse me, he's coastal resorts, right? And, you know, white sand beaches, you know, you go swimming in the waters and it's in the 70s. It's just, yeah, little trap, tropical paradise, right? But what they would do is pineapples grew everywhere in Africa, just like, you know, they are not a native fruit to Hawaii. I'm just saying, but anyway, they're not just there, but like, they're everywhere. I think they might be, actually, now they think of, we had a pineapple, uh, we, one of the houses we had on the coast had, a pineapple field, like miniature pineapples, and there were these multi it was cool. But in, of anyway, they would make cocktails within the pineapple itself. They would take the same. Oh, yeah. And then they would make a straw hole, and then they would fill it up with brandy or rum and pineapple juice. And then so, and so then, you know, they do with coconuts too, because you have the shell and the cocktail is inside the fruit itself, whether it's a coconut or the pineapple, they say, put the lime in the coconut, but, you know, Nancy would be out on the beach. And then the waiter would come running down with another replacement coconut or replace my apple. Oh, I can say she had a good time. Um, I was a little young for that, but mommy, look at you, you're drinking pineapple juice. She's like, yes, girl, you should try some pineapple juice too, but mommy is having, but, you know, but to me, it becomes this big fanciful thing. But all you're doing is using the container. The vessel that came in, you know, yes, which is very important. Yeah. Well, it shows freshness. It shows the product from start to finish. Hey, this isn't out of a can. Speaking of that, we were in Louisiana a few years ago, and went to a Mexican restaurant there. And so it's a really interesting connection to Mexico. Um, so this portion of Louisiana is known as No Man's Land. It's where, um, you know, the Louisiana purchase happened and, and the battle of 1812 and all these wars happened, but there was this three year period in history where there was no law and order because no one told them who owned what French, the French owned it one time. The Italians had one part Texas owned part of Louisiana. It was a mess, right? But the food was great. And you also had all the cateau Indians and the Native American culture. And so there's this area. It's in the Western portion. If you look at the state of Louisiana, the Western strip from the top to the bottom from Shreveport down is this Western neutral strip, right? And historically, the food is fantastic and people don't yell at me, but go to the gas stations for food. Okay. You will get like, I know it's fried food and it's not healthy for you, but they are very creative about what they fry and basically they will fry anything and it's good and it's naughty, but they have a gas station food trail. You can go on a gas station trail trail. I'm serious, but, but it's convenience, right? They have Boudin, right here and meat pies that come from Northwest Louisiana and a town called Nakadish. This meat pies like an empanada, but it passed down through all these different cultures. So Native American, then you got the Spanish, you got the French, you got the African, the Creole, everybody shaped this meat pie and wherever you go, like you can go and like, you know, someone will have a selling them in a trailer in the woods kind of thing and you go get them and it's going to be different than around the corner. They have tamales in a town called Zwali and they have a Zwali tamale fest and everyone was like, what do you do when with Mexican food? Well, they actually, they have a lot of Mexican influence because at one point, depending on the Louisiana purchase time, there are a lot of Mexican families in Spanish there. So that's this, oh my god, I know this has nothing to do with plating. I don't know why I went down this role but of this thing, but I wanted to talk about this pineapple and the plating of this, but anyway, so there's Zwali tamales and they're thin. They're almost like a churro, right? And it was actually the Native American culture because they were using venison and pig because they have a lot of pigs and hogs, whatever hogs out there. So it's just not what you think of like in Baja, right, where you are, Baja California style, not Sonoran. This is Zwali tamales and there's nothing like them anywhere in the world. There are these very thin tamales and it's a different flavor. In fact, it's almost, you put the hot sauce on it according to your hot sauce so they don't over flavor the tamales. It goes like the meat is, it's completely different. It's, yeah, it's, it's just a hundred percent different. It has the, the masa, right? It's the masa that's inside there. So it's not overly flavored, but you put whatever hot sauce you want according to what you get and you get them from all gas stations included. It's a staple. Anyway, in the same vicinity of this is a town called Mani and it's a river town and they created this lake at Toledo Bend and like trout fishing is huge bass and trout and bass is the big one, I think. Anyway, this Mexican restaurant, you know, it's just so down home, easy. They had like a Mexican band playing there, we felt at home, you know, and they had pineapple fajita and I was like, what the hell is this, right? I'm ordering different. They took a pineapple, took the center out, they grilled the pineapple upside down. So the core part, the center where you took, you know, they have it. So it went from the green tuft at the top and they get the green tuft all the way down, open it up, scoop the inside out, grilled it. Oh my god. Seriously. And I had chicken and so, and there was, it was like the meat was marinated with the pineapple and spice. Oh my god. Seriously, but it was in a pineapple and it was like, yeah, it worked. It was delicious. Well, the natural sugar from the pineapple, remember sugar is a tenderizer. So the natural sugar from the pineapple tenderizes the meat and then you caramelize the pineapple, which is, has that wonderful sugar in it. And there you go. You're on your way. See, isn't that cool? And they used what it came in. So you knew and it was sizzling and smoking it. Everybody was looking at it. Someone like, it's mine. You can't have it. It's mine. You know, and it was one of those dishes that everybody in the restaurant goes, I want that. You could smell it. It was like, wow. And Nancy and I were looking at each other. I think she had an entourage. And then she's like, well, I don't know. I kind of want that. But you know, yeah, we always want each other's food. It's terrible. So we always order it different because we call care. Yes. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing. So I feel like sometimes just look at like the food that you're cooking and how you played it should also just be of what you're cooking. Don't try and be don't try and take fajitas and be fancy with it. It's not going to work. Right. So you have to kind of look at what what the dish is. Right. So that's what I want to do. Yeah. What is the dish? Yeah. Can you use to show tribute to the ingredient? Because I feel like we should other ingredients because some people don't know what a pineapple looks like. They should buy that. Right. Well, you know, less is more. Less is more. You know, an example is when I was in the industry and we were doing really beautiful sea scallops. We not only had the purveyor come in. We had the people that were catching them and diving for them and the ones that were fishing for them. So Cooks understood not only with that, but you know, ranchers, farmers, what they wrote what they were cooking and what it took for it to get to them to the restaurant because people forget. It's an, you know, here it is. I'm going to cook it. Well, there's a story that's connected to all of this, how this came, how it was planted, how it was raised, how it was harvested, all of it. When you have respect for the product, when you have respect for the food, you have respect for the entire industry. And when it starts to the people involved in it, it's like sideways. When she's talking about wine and she talks about, you know, how the people harvested it and how probably a lot of them have passed on and what went into the wine and how it changes is not only every day, but every couple of minutes as it sits in the glass. That's how you look at food. That's kind of how you look at life. A lot of people don't put some people do. Speaking of wine. Okay. So what about you're making this dish look beautiful and people when they go to a restaurant, typically order what they want to drink, whether it's a rum and cook or a cocktail, whatever. But if you look at the full experience, like if you go for a special kind of dinner, and sometimes there's shots involved with a meal, there's like a shot of it could be just a juice, it could be alcoholic, infused, whatever. But sometimes it's just like a soup shot. Like it's interesting, like that kind of thing. But if you're going to a dinner that is curated, like a wine pairing dinner with a winery, do you look at the food? Of course, you want it to pair with the wine. But you also, not just in the taste, look at the color of the wine and the food, and pair it to the color of the drink. Or does it matter? No, it doesn't. No, no, it's really the wine and it's really the wine and the food. I think if you went in that direction, it would take you off course. It's not a consideration. Yeah, it's not a consideration. Okay, that's it, because that's the level of like, when Nancy, like, you know, she's an artist, she paints wildlife and she'll paint. She does these amazing collages and all of that. And so when she paints, like she says, there's always this level of you need to just stop. Because you start over, you start picking it apart. And in a restaurant scene, you don't have time to pick it apart. Like, you know, you've got the head chef that good, but you can start picking things apart. The food's going to get cold. You're losing the, your time is not on your side. And as an artist, those taking their time, maybe drinking wine, you need to actually back the hell off. Because when you start getting into that critical zone, which you still have to have a critical zone. So you can improve and do better and fix mistakes. But then there's the zone above the critical zone that is true criticism and true improvement and not now demolishing what you just created. You know what I mean? Yeah, sometimes it's cold going too far. Yeah, it's the kitchen sink. Oh, okay, there it is. Okay, now I have to ask you, I think we did good on this topic. I love this topic. I could, I just want to play with food. Now I'm going to go create something. I think I'll, yeah, I like to, I like the whimsical things too. I think it's fun. And I think people should have fun with food. But you know, it depends on the setting and the vibe, you know. But have you watched the bear? I have not. We don't have, we don't have Hulu. We don't stream. But we're going to try to order it. I've watched some clips on the computer. My students watch it quite a bit. And I understand it's absolutely phenomenal. It is. Because as soon as you, when you were talking about the plating and how a chef bends down looks at it, that's what you see. And from when I heard with all my restaurant friends, it's like, that's the real, and I've been in the industry. It's like, it is like that. And people do swear at you. And you talked about the last podcast, like, yeah, you go Gordon Ramsay on the students once, you know, once in the every few weeks just to remind them that when they get in the workforce, you cannot burst into tears every five minutes when someone, you know, gives you a hard time, you know. So yeah, yeah, you keep it. Keep in mind, though. Also, that could get carried a little too far. I don't know if you remember the famous chef Charlie Trotter. Oh, yes. Yes. Yeah. I mean, Charlie Trotter was groundbreaking. He, well, we did the interview on his documentary. It's he's up on our side. Yeah. Watch the documentary interview at bottom. And he was a badass. Did I'm allowed to say that? Yeah. Yeah. But he drove himself insane. He drove himself to the grave. I mean, he made the, he was, I mean, it gets to a point where if you carry that too far, you know, you can go into an environment that it's just, you know, everything gets lost, you know, and you, you, you've got to have parameters, you know, we're, we're not cooking for starving people, you know, we're, we're doing food. The best way we can as, you know, with the creativity and the imagination, but he got so carried away. Dude, he was, I'm going to link that in the show notes, everyone, because that documentary people should watch, because it, I mean, even Anthony Bourdain said even the, the, the chef community used him, learned through him. And he is the one who started making things more Michelin star, right? He, he, he obsessed to, he went beyond obsession. Almost, I would say paranoia, paranoia and insanity. Have you seen the movie, the menu? Yeah. Have you watched the menu? No, I'm good. Is that the same thing as we have on our side? I think, okay, I'm going to go watch the movie, the menu, you have to watch the menu. And it's just, oh, and just hold on. Just, when you sit on the couch, hold on. Have a pillow and just, just hold on. Well, the, the documentary we recorded, and everyone, I'll put that in the link is love Charlie, the rise and fall of chef Charlie Trotter. That documentary was, and it was all the chefs that he trained, and when they went out and started competing against him, and he trained them. So he got pissed about it. He's like, listen, Anthony Bourdain went and just trashed, like the magazines that were being rude to him. And he, when he fell, he fell, like he had heart attacks. He was, I mean, it's true. You can't, you can't get, that's where you go too far, right? The kitchen sink, you can't go too far. You have to know when to call an uncle, you know, and say, Hey, this is enough. And that's the thing I see people do that with, oh my God, people doing their own websites. And all of a sudden, every few paragraphs is a different color. No, stop it. Stop it in design. Every less is more. It is. Yes, yes. And if it's a messy food, allow it to be messy and make it like unique, put the fajita stuff in the pineapple, you know, because something fun like that, because it gives a destruction, give the messiness a little structure and it goes far. It's the same as music, art, design. And when people look at photographing on their cell phones and taking selfies, look at how you're doing your design, your composition. It's the same thing, right? And how you compose a photograph is the same thing on a plate, except for you got texture and taste and really deal with. Yeah. All right. So what are you going to do with watermelon? Before we go, I want to go, I'm going to say to you, it's watermelon season. So you get this shipment of watermelon. What are you going to do with it? And how are you going to plate it so it is appetizing to folks who may never want watermelon and don't know that they want this? Well, I think one of the pictures I sent you, regular watermelon, if I was in my 20s, I put a bottle of vodka in it and start dancing on tables. But besides that, a little bit of lemon and salt, but what I did was when in season, coming out of the Chesapeake Bay out of Maryland, I took Soxel crabs to the light tempura and stuck them with lobster, put them on top of a beautiful piece of squared off watermelon and made a spicy watermelon broth. So you had the crispy hot crab with the creamy lobster borsong, which is the French garlic herb cheese, the cold watermelon, and then the spicy broth made from the watermelon juice. That's what I do, especially this time of year. This is the season. Spice and any kind of, I put black pepper on cantaloupe. I know we talked about that before. It's good for you, it's an antioxidant. Are you kidding me? Yeah, let me give you a tip, let me give you a tip, grind it fresh, but when you get pepper, get whole peppercorns and roast them in the oven. The oils come to the top, let them cool, put them in your pepper grinder, and your pepper will taste very different. It's so much better, it's so much better. Oh, that is, you know what, because I'm into this thing now where I want to make my own, I've seen this thing where people are making their own crackers out of the pizzas and sunflower seeds and things like that, and I'm allergic to tree nuts. So granola and trail mix, it's hard to find something decent. So I feel like I'll go to our friends, you know, the peanut patch will always do this on our show, right, with them. I'll go get peanuts, get the papitas, the sunflower seeds, the raisins, or whatever, and I want to make my own, and I feel like the spice, if you're going to do this and you bake it in the oven, right, into like kind of a cracker, kind of, you're making peanut brittle basically, but it's not peanut brittle. I want it savory, and you can have a little sweet because of the raisins and maybe some major dates in there, and put some spice, like you're taught. So I wonder about that now, if I do the pepper like that, oh, oh, yeah, you can take, you can take food anywhere you want it. What I always say to the students is don't let the food control you, you control the food, you can take it anywhere you want it, and it's infinite, infinite, where you take it. I mean, that's the beauty of culinary arts, that's the beauty of cooking, that's the beauty of it. That's why I teach, that's why I went into it. When I was a little kid, my dad had the rendezvous in New York, and he would do a club sandwich instead of three, he'd do four layers and turn them around, so it was like four triangle. Yeah, that was sitting in the middle of a plate, and the size came up in the middle like flowers, and the bread was toasted, the perfection, and the meats, and the tomato, and you know, all of it, and all you wanted to do was eat this sandwich. That did it. From that point on, I was done. Well, when looking out the outback steakhouse and the blooming onion, everybody wanted the blooming onion because it was the presentation of it, and it was terrible. You know what I mean? They wanted the blooming onion. That brings back a very bad memory, because my first wife would eat the entire blooming onion the whole thing by herself, and then order the biggest prime rib, and then drink the jus, and I said it's not real jus, it's like salt through the root. So when I hear blooming onion, I get tight. But you know what I mean about the bloom, though. Everybody wants the bloom just to see what the onion looks like. It's like they did it, they made that. Okay, they made it. That's the thing. Okay, now one more left. I got, I know we got to go, but all right, I know that you worked in the airlines as a chef too. So how do you make airplane food appetizing? Is that a reality? Is it ever a reality? Like how do you? In the old, in the olden days, when they would even serve food, okay, it was very different because they had a big budget. So they would use very, very good product. I mean, if you're going to fly the Emirates, if you're going to fly Air France first class, okay, they're going to use top of the line stuff. They kind of cater it out. They cry a vacuette. They have the ovens on the plane, all of that. But for the most part, airplane food now is the bottom of the barrel as cheap as you can make it. If they even offer it at all, you're lucky to get a pack of nuts. It's changed a lot. Nothing really is what it used to be. On the cruise lines, people used to go just for the food, for the buffets, for the dinners. I know people that went on top of the line cruisers, where they took pictures of the food, and I went, "Oh my God, they're serving this." You know, it's just, food costs a lot of money. Cost of goods with food is expensive. Labor is expensive. And you have chain restaurants putting out deals for $12.99. They're not using top of line product anymore. What they're doing is putting a bunch of stuff on a plate covering the plate and hoping that you come back. When they make money on the soda, it's different. It's just not the same. But I want to say this too, like for a family on a budget and food prices have not been great. It's been hard. But you can, I think creativity will help you through low budget times, be creative. And the plating is fun about it. It's like, sometimes Nancy and I go, "It's an interesting meal coming." And she's like, "Okay, what's happening?" And so sometimes my vision of plating worked and a lot of times it's like, "Oopsie." So then we look at it and look, "Okay, well, because you do." And if I even say, so sometimes in plating, it means shut your mouth too, because I already ruined it by going, "Uh-oh, I screwed up," right? So sometimes to shut up, don't even say it, because you've already ruined it for the person you're feeding. Like, I have to learn that. I need to learn to shut up. But honestly, and don't add that in the comment everybody on YouTube, right? So, don't you dare. Now, but honestly, it is, it's interesting because you can make things fun. Like, you can. And it's like, if you're making deviled eggs, you know, add a little paprika. Simple as that. Just that little sprinkle does something. It makes a deviled egg that just has the, you could use a, what do you call it, the icing thing, so it has a little swirly whirl, and then put the paprika on, and that's cheap, and that's not going to, it's a little more effort. But if you're low on the budget, heighten the creativity, I say, for yourselves and for your family. Even if you're cooking for yourself, enjoy that. Because, you know, a chicken laid that egg, you know, people went through sacrifice for whatever you're eating, and yours put your energy and see, Miles, we'll just do that extra step. You know, sometimes I don't at all, a lot of times, but when you do, it does actually feel good, you know, to plate it and go, let's just do these extra things, you know. And sometimes, I hate to say it, but sometimes canned peaches work better than fresh. I hate to say that. Oh yeah. Yeah. No, hey, it depends on the dish. I love canned peaches. And plus what you're going to do with the syrup, the sauce you're going to make, the reductions, the glaze that you can make from it on and on. I like this. We always use things, right? Use everything that you can from one ingredient. Use the pineapple as a boat. Use the avocado as a boat. You know, I love this. I think we should boat everything. I'll open a restaurant called Boat Inn. So like, we'll have deviled in. That's a boat, deviled avocados. That's a boat. I'm going to bring everything. Potato. I remember once making pokey, you know, really good ahi pokey and serving in a tuna fish camp. As a play on tuna. Surely. Now, would you do that? Would you do that with spam? Oh, you could you could do a lot with spam. You know, people are nuts for spam, you know. Oh my goodness. That was everywhere in South Africa. Spam. And you had to twirl the thing on the sides. You remember that with a little, like that little key there and you twirl at the top? I remember. I remember they have spam in California. Like when, you know, when you buy razors and they're in the plastic sink, you have to bring them to the register to unlock them. They have spam now in plastic, where you have to bring it to the register to pay for it, where they take it out of the container. No, because so many people are putting it in their pocket. Yes. Oh my gosh. That happens in I for I drops in some states. You go get my drops and it's I do we're in a weird world. But listen, keep making boats. That's all I have to say. Thank you so much. It has been so much fun. My pleasure. Kat, but that's like this is one of the most fun topics because you can go anywhere. Oh, good. And a creative mistake is fine. You're allowed to make. Oh, yeah. That's how you learn. Yeah, that's how you learn. Don't be a Charlie Trotter unless you, you know, we want you alive. No, I believe me. I was there for a number of years at one point in my career. And you know, who brought me out of that was my wife. Oh, my wife. You know, I mean, I remember if somebody put a server, put a fingerprint on a plate, I'd be like goodbye. You know, I mean, I was crazy. Because but in and at the same time, you know, it's it's a hard thing because I think we all get that way in our industries over like perfection and drive. It's drive and passion, but it can go off that extra rail, which we all I think anybody who's driven has done it. And you just go like, I know it from us. I mean, our industry of magazine publishing, publishing back in our day when we started dentists and publishers had the highest suicide rate. And because of the deadlines and the costs involved. And I'll tell you, I mean, when you first came on a show, we Tracy, you know, when you guys were out in Arizona and stuff, I mean, that was, I don't know how many years, it's almost like 20 years ago now thinking about it. Yeah. And we were going through all that. The stress of it is massive. And the stress is stress of a chef. And that's why let them have their tattoos and their cocktails afterwards, damn it, and their cigarettes. People go off and let them shut up and let them be. Let them have their cigarettes outside. Because if they don't, they're going to put something on your plate, like, you know, just there's times, you know, plating can get interesting in that too. You could just go, oh, yeah, I remember in Kenya, we had a friend that came over and didn't understand the African way, right? American tourist brain, horrible, the ugly American, the epitome of the ugly American didn't get a cold beer, sent it back. Like Nancy and I are horrified and I was a little kid. I don't know much more, but I knew this is not how you treat these people. And not to needless to say we're not friends with this person anymore. Anyway, kept demanding the eyes cold, right? And if you don't, because he was an accountant, I'm going to do the books of your hotel and turn you in. Katie doesn't give a damn. Are you kidding me? What are you? What? Okay. So anyway, he keeps carrying on. So he brought him a beer in the bottle and went into the freezer and took an icicle and stuck it in the bottle and sent it to him. Here's your cold beer, you dumb American. I thought that was pretty funny. He's like, I'm going to send you to the tax people in Kenya. That's funny. That's hysterical. So really, like, if you don't just leave chefs alone, leave the wait staff alone. It's hard work. Be nice. Leave the publishers alone. Let them do their thing. Yeah, don't mess with me. Yeah, I remember what she went through and still goes through. Yeah. That's a thankful job. It is all of it. You know, so I just think we should be a little nicer. And when someone played something nice for you in your house, they cook for you. And maybe it's a little sloppy who cares. Like love on love on a plate. You can't beat. That is just it is caring. And you know, and mistakes happen. And I say embrace it and use the word interesting. It's our favorite word when it comes to my cooking. And sometimes it really works. And sometimes we go, well, don't do that again. And we don't. Yeah. Yeah. There you go. All right. Take care, chef. I've been thanks so much and talk to you soon. Okay. Okay. Bye bye. Bye. Thanks for joining us here on Big Blend Radio's Eat, Drink, and Be Merry show. Keep up with our podcasts at bigblendradio.com and our magazines at bigblendmagazines.com.
