Wondering what is authentic Argentinian dining or traditional Asado cooking? Chef Ezequiel Farais AKA Chef Zek from Celebrity Chef Francis Mallman’s restaurant Los Fuegos at Faena Hotel has answers. Jacqueline Coleman talks South American wines with Amanda Barnes wines. Tune into Foodnewssandviews podcast all major sites.
Food, News & Views with Linda Gassenheimer
Food, News & Views, Ep 233: Argentinian Food and Wine, Chef Zek, Amanda Barnes, Jacqueline Coleman
(upbeat music) - Hi, I'm Linda Gassenheimer, and welcome to Food, Nose, and Views. Glad to have you joining us. Wondering what is authentic Argentinian dining? Or what is traditional asado cooking? Well, our guest today is an expert, he chef Ezekiel Farries, but he's also known as Chef Zeke, which is a lot easier, okay. And he's an expert in this field. He's the chef at Francis Melman's Restaurant Las Vegas. It's at the Farrruckian Hotel on Miami Beach. So welcome, Chef Zeke. - Hey, how you doing, everyone? - Cool. - Glad to have you with us, and thank you for joining us. So tell us a little bit about the concept of Las Vegas. - Well, Las Vegas is all about Argentinian style of grilling. It's really old school. Francis Melman, the head chef. It's how they call him is the Godfather of fires. He's being cooking since the '80s. - Well, what did you say? Can I just ask you first, what do you mean by old school? - Old school because he's the way they used to cook before. Right now, they don't cook a lot in ashes and they hang the chickens and things like that. So it's very old school, it's still cooked with fire, same as Argentinian style now. - Okay, well, thanks, so you're cooking on an open fire. - Yes, it's all about open fire. Francis Melman has seven different techniques to cook with fire. So we use those seven ways to cook differently. The vegetables, the proteins, everything that you can do with the fire. - All right, we're gonna talk about these different styles of cooking on the fire. But first, tell us a little bit about yourself. What is your background, especially in this style of cooking? - Yes, I'm Argentinian. I was born in Marleblata, Buenos Aires. I came to U.S. when I was 14. And I always liked to cook, you know? You grow up cooking asados with your grandpa, your father, your great-grandfather. So it's something that runs in the family and we use it as kind of like it's part of the culture for us every week and we get between family and we cook asados. When I came to U.S. Yeah, like we didn't want to lose that culture. So we still doing the same. I still do it with my kids. We try to get every weekend with my family and we still cooking asados. I start working on restaurants when I graduate high school. I started in the front of the house and then I wanted something more and I was always playing with the chefs and cooks in the kitchen. So I decided to go to the culinary school. Okay, so food is your language. - Yes. - Okay, yes. Wonderful. And we're gonna talk, well, this is something new for me. I never thought of Argentinian cooking as cooking over an open fire. But what are the flavors for Argentinian food? - It's the idea is to keep it simple. We don't use a lot of spices and things like that. We only use it to maturity once the stakes are done or anything. Sometimes we use the chimichurri to cook with it, but not much, we use sea salt. And that's it. The idea is to use-- - That's so interesting. Yeah, well, what is chimichurri? - Chimichurri is a mix of parsley, oil, garlic, and some people use vinegar and lemon, depending that there's different recipes. I always make it simple and light. So I use parsley, lemon, garlic, and blended oil. That's it. - Wow. - Just to give some freshness to the meats. - Okay, so that's very interesting that you just let the quality of the food and the type of fire do all your flavoring for you. Is that right? - Yes, yes. That's the kind of idea of cooking with fire. It's to make it simple. So you can taste the real flavors from the wood or charcoal, whatever you use. I always use wood and hardwood and I mix them up. So the idea is to get all the flavors from natural resources, you know? You can find really good flavors on it. - So you do this type of cooking at the restaurant? - Yes, I still working on the restaurant and I'm doing some events to cooking in different parties and weddings and things like that. - So let me understand this thing. You have a fire going, well, let's say that the fayana is on the beach. Anyway, it's on the water. - Yes, yes. - So then do you do the cooking outside that's served in the restaurant? - On Sunday, do you have a fire in the kitchen? - It's an open kitchen in Fina. You can see it when you walk by the hotel inside and we have something called Sunday Asado, which is for branches and we use a grill outside so people can see some of the techniques and the cooking style. And then we do kind of like, it's all you can eat. So it's a good buffet. - Yeah, all right. Now, I understand that you do different types of foods and hang them at different levels. Tell us about the hanging of the food and the different ones. - Yeah, what I use, it's called DOM. It's a type of grill that Francis Mama designed to cook. It's, you cook in different levels depending on the temperature you want. So you hang some vegetables, meats, chickens, everything that can handle the heat for a couple of hours. It has kind of like a background because it's the Argentines when they do Asado. It's kind of like a ritual. At least you're cooking for six, seven hours to hang out with friends. So the idea of Asado, it's always been cooking for hours. So Francis Mama designed the DOM to cook during hours at different levels to use different temperatures. So that's what I do. It's, we hang, for example, the riba is at different heights until you get color and then you put it up and it slowly cooks, smokes, and you get all the flavors from other things that they're hanging there like pineapples and things like that. - Oh, so, so let's say you have a, you have something hanging over the fire so that you can raise and lower the-- - Yes, I play with the wires. So everything is hang with wires. So I twist the wires. It's like metal wires, so I twist them and I play with different heights depending on what time I'm doing the dinner or lunch. - And what I understood you just say was that if you're cooking a ribeye, that's it. You said you had a pineapple near it. It would gather the flavor together. - Yes, you put the pineapples, you know, everything starts slowly cooking, it starts sweating. - I want people to know, since this is audio and not visual, that I'm talking with him and he's raising his hands up and down. So you start with his hands, he's starting with his hands way up in the air. So you start just, you don't sear the food, you just start it up high and then you slowly lower it or do you stir it first and then bring it up? - I start with the ribeyes on the bottom always to get across. - Okay, so you sear it on the bottom. - Yes, and then they start going up and they're cooked there for six, seven hours. - So it's a very, so you sear it first and then it's a very, very slow cooking. And that gives us a chance to absorb all the flavors from the woodtop. - All the flavors, yes. That's why I like to use a curry and skit which here in the US is super easy to find and they're not too invasive on the flavors like cherry and other foods that you can use. I try to use those type of flavors 'cause they're more dedicated and you can flavor more than meats and it's not too invasive with smoke. - Well, you're making me very, very hungry for some of that smoked meat and smoked pineapple and all the other vegetables that you do. So let me ask you a question then. If some people would like to try this type of cooking at home, are there any tips to give us? - Well, it's simple, it's easy. It's just using the right temperatures on the fire, try to use wood and natural hardwood that you can find in the supermarket. I don't like to use the ones that they turn on easy because they have a different type of chemicals and flavors that you will taste in the meat. - That's a good point when you're looking for, 'cause I've been looking for mesquite or some hickory wood and you have to be careful not to get a quick burning one because they have chemicals in it. - Yes, yes. At Home Depot, you find the hardwood, always look for hardwood. If you don't find regular wood, you can find hardwood and use hardwood and no chemicals. I use paper and corn oil to turn the fire on. I make kind of like a bowl of paper. I put oil and turn it on and the oil is going to keep the paper for a while on. It permits not to dissolve the paper so fast when you put oil on the paper. - Well, that's a very good point. - So you get no different flavors. It will be all natural. - That's wonderful. So if we're going to do this at home, what kind of container would we put the fire in? - You can do a regular charcoal grill. It will be easy like the ones you find in Home Depot. I got one at home and they're awesome. - Well, that sounds wonderful. - So now that you've made us all so hungry, I'm this Argentinian asado cooking. Tell us then, where can we find out more about what you're doing? - Well, you can visit my Instagram at seekfaria.z as in zoo, EK, F-A-R-I-A-S. That's my Instagram and you can visit the website @finahotels and find those photos in the website. Make a reservation and come visit me too. - All right, well, that sounds wonderful. And I had no idea that Argentinian cooking was so involved with fire, live fire. And actually, I understand live fire cooking has become very popular in the United States now. - Yes, it's true. Now that you say it, it's true. On the past, I think, what, 10 years, it's been growing like crazy before. It was kind of like barbecue and barbecue Reese and things like that. But now everybody's trying to use the fire to cook the way they cook our ancestors. 'Cause honestly, I think it was around the world that they use the fire before, so. And now we're bringing it back. - And I love the idea that it's slowly cooked and can absorb all those wonderful flavors. - Oh, yeah, it's only not only about the flavors, and not only about the food, it's about the experience that you can have either if you do it with the guests, friends, family, and it's really nice to be hanging there, drinking and eating appetizers and things like that and talking about life and then cooking it. It's the best mixture. - Sounds good to me. Thank you so much, Chef Si. - No, probably then. - Okay, well, I'm Linda Gassenheimer, and this is Food News and Views. - Jacqueline Coleman is the Vino Communist for the Biscayne Times. She's joining us now with her wine news. - I'm here today with Amanda Barnes, award-winning author of the South America Wine Guide. So thanks for joining me, Amanda. - Thank you, it's a pleasure to be here. - So South America, clearly you're not originally from South America. (laughs) - You told me my accent. So how did you get to Argentina, to Mendoza, and what was the inspiration for writing your wonderful book on all of the regions in that continent? - Well, that's an interesting question because I think they actually come hand in hand. When I moved to South America in 2009, I didn't really feel like there was a guide that was giving me all the information I wanted on the wine regions. And, you know, started working as a journalist there, focused on writing about wine, and it was really kind of putting together information from lots of different articles, but mainly from winemakers and agronomists, and learning about the region of Argentina, and then later Chile, which I started working there on a monthly basis, and traveling there, and really kind of putting together my own guide in my mind, and then decided to make that a book, which hopefully would help other people when they first come to the continent and discover it. And the book I really wanted to kind of write it as the sort of wine book that I would like to read and have. So it is quite a personal book in many ways, and, you know, includes lots of different aspects of travel, as well as wine and culture. And there's lots of contributions and opinions of, you know, my amigos, my friends, who've really kind of helped me throughout my wine journey and experience of the continent, but also giving their opinion and thoughts about some of these regions really, really indifferent. - So that's so interesting. So this guide didn't exist, and so you decided to create it. - Yeah. - But it's not an easy feat to create a guide from scratch, like if no one's ever done it before. So where did you start? You obviously started living in Argentina, was that kind of the starting point for the wine regions? - I mean, there are, you know, to be very fair, there are predecessors to this book, so there is Evan Goldstein's book and Christopher Fielding wrote a book on South America, and Monty wrote a book as well, which I've never been able to find in fact. So there were some kind of more general guys, but I didn't feel that anything really dived in enough depth to kind of really explore the incredible diversity that there is in South America. And I think that was kind of through living there, spending a lot of time there with, you know, with winemakers and really, you know, kind of off the beaten path, kind of, there was no red carpets in my experience when I was there, there was no kind of press trips. It was really, you know, spending that time, you know, with the winemakers and getting up super early and like getting into the vineyards with them for sunrise and checking out the soil and things like that. So I had this really amazing experience, and I just wanted to be able to kind of share some of that information in the best way that I could, but yeah, writing the book, putting it together, deciding it, that was all a very big learning curve. - Oh, I'm sure. - And the maps were one of the most challenging things because many, Argentina actually has some quite decent maps, especially under the hand of Guillermo Corona, who's a geologist there, but outside of that, they really aren't detailed maps. So many of these-- - Argentina's very rural too. There aren't maps in general, just of one region. - Yeah, but like putting together a map of the wine regions of Bolivia, like that was, you know, it was all a learning experience and it was great. And I'm so lucky that I have, you know, that so many people were willing to help because when we started putting it together with a cartographer, basically we would create the outline of the map and I would send it to our makers and ask them to put an X on their vineyards. So we could kind of color it in as a vineyard and it was very artisanal in that sense. But I spoke to Hugh Johnson who obviously did the great Atlas of wine. And when he was doing his first edition, he said, yeah, I mean, I did the same, but we would send the maps by post and it would take like four or five months to get a response. So at least with WhatsApp and email, you know, I got a response within, you know, sometimes within a day and sometimes within a month. (laughs) But at least the technology existed to get it faster. Yeah, I think it's interesting because, you know, it seems like compared to other wine regions, say, you know, from an American standpoint, Napa Valley, these South American wine regions are not very well developed in terms of it's not like going and having Michelin star dinners. And so what is it like finding these places? How do you find them? - Well, now you can just read this out. - Exactly, exactly, okay. Now we can read your book, but how did you find them? - Well, I mean, you know, within Argentina, within Chile, like there is, you know, obviously when you're there and immersed in the wine scene, everyone, you know, you just go by word of mouth who recommends where you go and onward. And that, you know, I think when I first kind of got there, I really thought everything was a lot smaller than it actually is. I mean, the countries are very, very big, but I didn't realize the kind of the depth of the wine regions and how remote some of these places are. And it is, there are still places that I want to kind of get to know much better and return and go further and see these kind of vineyards that have, you know, that I'm hearing about later. So there's no end to discovery and there's still a lot more to discover. But hopefully the book is like at least a kind of guide to help people get started on their own journey. - So is every country in South America featured in the book? - Every country with vines, yeah. - Okay. - I mean, there's the smaller kind of plantations in Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, for example, where, you know, they don't have much in terms of quantity and also a bit kind of more behind on quality for now. So those are much kind of smaller in their future. They're, you know, a few paragraphs. But in great detail is the main six, which is Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, Bolivia, and Peru. - Wow. Yeah, I've had a little bit of Bolivian wine. I don't think I've ever had Brazilian or Peruvian wine though. - Is there, what do they specialize in in Brazil and Peru? - So Peru is very interesting 'cause it's the first, it was the first kind of major wine country of South America. And so they, you know, they have a lot of history in old wines, but they had their wine production prohibited by the Spanish when it was, you know, under Spanish rule. And so that's when they turned to Pisco. And so they still have these amazing old wines which are used for Pisco. But now there's this renaissance in wine production. So they're returning to making wine from these wines. - So cool. - And typically the Pisco varieties, or we can also call them the Creole varieties. And there's a really interesting kind of artisanal natural wine movement happening in Peru too. You know, very kind of low key, small production wines. And that's really quite fun to watch develop. And then Brazil is, you know, a world onto its own really, and growing quite rapidly. So one, definitely to keep your eye on. It was originally, you know, mainly in the south, Rio Grande de Assoul, the most southern state, obviously because it's a bit kind of cooler there, less tropical, where we've got the historical wine productions. But we're really seeing it grow altitude as well. So Santa Catarina has some interesting plantings. And then the area that I'm really interested in, I want to kind of keep my eye on and keep revisiting is Cerro de Mantaquera, which is another mountain range. And they're doing interesting wine productions at altitude and also doing this very cool thing, which is the Coleta de Umberno. They're in like winter harvest. And they're switching the season. So they're pruning during the summer and then harvesting in winter, where you've got those kind of sunny days, all nights. - Yeah, that is, I mean, that's different than anywhere in the world. - Yeah, absolutely. They pioneered that technique. And it's actually being taken on by some of those tropical climates elsewhere. - Cool. Well, what would you say is maybe kind of one of the overall top trends happening now in South America? Is there a top trend or maybe, you know, by country or something like that? - Yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of things that I was shared, but then each kind of, more so than each country, each region has its own kind of unique trends as well. But overall, I think what I'm really excited about is this return to the heritage of South America. So looking back at the really old varieties that they have there, I'm a big fan of the Creole varieties, these like native varieties, and these incredible old vines of Pais, of Creole, Grande, of, you know, all these interesting kind of old vines like in Bolivia, Vista Pina, very interesting. And with that, taking those more artisanal methods of wine production that they used previously, like aging in the tinacas, which are their kind of Chilean and fora, for example, or using the native rowly barrels. And so things like that I think are really interesting because they make, you know, your coming, their wine makers are coming back to those with the experience of the last kind of few decades of modernisation of the wine industry and bringing that intel and that kind of special touch, but also making these wines that are very unique to the continent and you can't find anywhere else. - Yeah, that's really cool. Bringing the experience kind of back to the ancestral roots and making quality wine, but with a native touch. - Absolutely, and I think that's, you know, I think that's also what we're seeing a lot in general is this great connection with their own place, their own tower and knowing like this ambition to kind of present it in the best way that they can, but with all their experience, their international experience in the last three decades. - Yeah, I think we need to pay attention to what's going on in South America because, so often we just get the, you know, the exports and a lot of people don't really know much beyond Mendoza and Malbec or Carmen Yar, maybe from Chile, but there's so much more to all of the countries there that are making wine. - Absolutely, there's a lot to untap. - Okay, I guess we'll have to read your book. - A lot to uncork as well. (laughing) - The South America Wine Guide, where can we find your book? - So we are distributed by the Academy Divan Library and you can also find all the links on my website, thesouthamericowindguide.com. - Okay, great. Well, thanks for joining me, Amanda. - Thank you, it's a pleasure, cheers. - Always great news from Jacqueline Coleman. I'm Linda Gassenheimer. Thanks for tuning in. Join us next time for more food news and news. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)