Hi everyone, welcome to pot luck food talks. Not what you expected is it? This week I'm
here with my buddy Eric. Eric, how have you been? Hey, how are you doing? Good, Mark.
Good. It feels awkward you doing the intro. You want me to do it or? Yeah, it felt awkward
for me too. Let's not do that again. So what are we talking about today? Man, I really
wanted to talk to you about the Amazon, not the evil multi billion trillion company with
that weird bald guy, but the river and the region around it and the jungle and the tribes
and you spent a lot of time there, you know, and I think it's a really interesting culinary
landscape. How was your experience there? Yeah, well, like I visited the Amazon many
times as a kid because Venezuela has also part of the Amazon and I have visited in different
countries, Bolivia, Brazil, Peru and Venezuela. I haven't been to Colombia. I know Colombia
is super interesting as well. But yeah, what can I say about the Amazon? Well, first of
all, like the whole rainforest was human created when humans arrived to South America, like
about 20,000 years ago, they created this islands of, you know, agriculture, like this
forest islands and the whole thing grew into the forest that we know today. And things
that I've seen that I feel are super interesting. For example, there is this flat bread in Venezuela
called cassava and this bread is made of yucca, manioc, but a specific one that is a poisonous
one. So there is this specific procedure to cook it, which is not that complicated. It's
like grating it and changing the water and then the second batch, you can actually use
it to cook without being poisonous. Today, there are new varieties that are not poisonous
anymore. So all the maniocs that you will find in the supermarkets in Latin America
are perfectly edible. The thing is I grew up with this flatbread called cassava, learning
that it was something super Venezuelan from the indigenous people and blah, blah, blah.
But of course we don't get so much history of the pre European civilizations and cultures
because basically the reigning culture is the one that exterminated them or dominated
them. So it makes sense that they don't care about them like structurally. I would say
nowadays the new generations are really interested in getting all that knowledge back. There
was a lot of knowledge lost just by losing the languages and the religions. You can imagine
how much, how many things got lost there. But my point was when I went to Bolivia, which
is pretty far away from Venezuela, they also had this flatbread called cassava and they
also say that there's something from them that they always had it. And for me, this
was like super crazy and it really changed my way of understanding the continent. Of
course you see in Europe and you will see countries that have variation of the word
bread or the word pan and different variations. But you can track it down. This comes from
from the Romans or the Germans. And that's, that's where the word comes from. Well, in
the case of cassava, the there were that there was a specific tribe that was a very dominant
one all over the region. It was called the Arawak. So there was a caribbean, the caribbean
family. Then you have the Arawak and there are of course many others, but this one that
I work again, this is something that I, when I went to school in Venezuela, you learn that
the Arawakos or Arawaks, it's an ethnic, an indigenous family that you have in the country.
But you like, or at least I didn't pay enough attention at school, but I didn't go to the,
this was all over South America. They get as far as to Bolivia, you know, and these
are the responsible of having this flatbread that you will find it also in the Caribbean.
And that they also, that this tribes could also navigate and that they were also spreaded in the Caribbean,
into the deep Amazonas with the same language and these kinds of things, like a specific
bread that is something that can survive, you know, colonization and trans-culturalization
and all these kinds of things. But the bread remains with the same word and across the
continent, you know, and I thought that was pretty interesting. But then other things
that, well, first of all, there are many, many things that come from the Amazonas that
we see daily, like chilies or what else, a pineapple, that there are lots of, you know,
the different fruits and things that have their origin there. Perhaps I said something
wrong. Perhaps somebody will say, no, pineapples are not from the rainforest, they're from
the mountain or something like that. But anyways, another thing that was really interesting,
similar to Casabe, was that I saw this ant chili sauce in Venezuela. And for me, this
was super interesting. All of my life, I thought that actually the ants gave the spiciness
to the sauce. So it was like, oh, wow, you have like a different source of spiciness
that is not capsicum, but it's like ants. And then I found out that, no, the ants are
not spicy. They add chili to the sauce and that's what makes it spicy. And the ants
are only for flavor, but they have like this really deep meaty flavor. And again, this
is also made like with a fermented yucca juice, manioc juice, that they use to also to give
more flavor to the sauce. And again, they have the same thing in Peru and in Bolivia
with different names. And for me, this was also super interesting, you know, because
these are these kind of things like, I don't know, hummus that you will find all over the
Mediterranean, but they're from completely different cultures or Middle East, better
said, you know, and then they have different variations. So you will find this fermented
yucca sauce with ants in different parts of the Amazonas with different variations. In
Brazil, they have like a variation called tucupi, which is like a liquid yellow sauce.
And you will find it in markets all over the Amazonas. And it's like a super sour sauce.
Like it is very sour. And this sauce was featured in some of the menus at El Bulli, like when
I was doing some research, like Ferran served. But when I see this and also in the last book
of Tapas of Albert Adrià, he also has like a tucupi featured somewhere. But when I see
that, it feels wrong to me somehow, because to make this sauce, these specific ones, you
do need the, how to say, this bitter poisonous yucca to do the original right thing, right?
Right. Which you won't find, you won't even find like, like the yuccas you see in South
America and Europe. You will find like a different one, which is the African one. And it's not
the same thing. And you won't get the same effect. These are the things with, you know,
cooking recipes from other countries and trying to replicate them with local ingredients.
And it's not going to be ever the same. But yeah, I would say those two things were kind
of like, were impressive to me to see that there are like this parallelism or this recipes
or dishes that you find in different regions of the Amazonas. It's also important to mention
that the, remember the episode of taboo foods where I mentioned that mushrooms are not eating
them in the Amazonas? Well, that's incorrect. Of course, ancient tribes did everything with
mushrooms even as, you know, like hunting amulets with magic properties or also as drugs
or medicines or food or all kinds of things. But all that knowledge, as I was mentioning,
got lost. Like you see this new generations and, and it's, they're not necessarily linked
to this tribes. For example, my friend Kenzo, he's, I don't know how many generations he
has, but, but he has like Japanese heritage. But, but he's from the Amazonas. You see that
like, there are like these settlers that come from, from different places that, that, that
got installed there and, and, and made their villages and communities, but they, they have
no link to shamanism or, you know, like, like this old knowledge from old cultures in most
cases. And again, all over the Amazonas, it doesn't matter where it's completely Christian.
You won't see any religion that is not Christianism in the Amazonas. Well, except of course, remote
tribes that haven't got, you know, like colonized or trans-culturalized. There's also this huge
fish called pirarucu or paiche. It's like, like a huge monster. Like it can-
It's like prehistoric sort of dinosaur fish, right? Yeah.
Yeah, exactly. It can be-
Don't they make, don't they make leather out of the skin also?
Yeah, leather. And, and it's also processes similar to cut fish, you know, salted, especially
in Brazil. It's an invasive species, so it's good to hunt it. You have to hunt it. You
don't fish the thing. You need like a specific procedure to get it. And these are like, you
know, like a big one can be as big as two or three cars in line, you know, like that,
that large. And of course you have all these types of fruits. A very famous one is acai
that it has become very trendy in this, you know, smoothie, healthy domain. It's considered
a super food, but like this acai that is a fruit from a palm tree, there are millions
of different ones and also millions of different palm hearts that you can eat. But I mean,
I could talk on and on and on of different ingredients and things, but yeah, basically
that's it. There are many chefs that have worked with specific producers from the Amazonas.
Probably one of the most famous one is Alex Atala. Of course, in Peru you have Pedro
Schiaffino in Venezuela, you have Nelson Mendez in Colombia, you have Eduardo Martinez. There
is also in Belen in Brazil is another chef called Tiago Castaño. And these are chefs
that, you know, they work mostly with Amazonian produce and working with Amazonian produce,
one of the keys is to have a connection with the communities and the producers and building
fruitful relationships. Yeah, that's nice. Do you have any questions, Phil, on the Amazon?
So I mean, it's like to me from as somebody who's never been there, right? And like looking
at it from the outside, you know, like it's super, this whole area is so interesting because
like you say, you know, kind of grew from like little agriculture sort of plots. So
like I feel like loads of people imagine it as this like really hostile environment, you
know. But I think it is. Yeah, it is. Sure. But like at the same time, it feels really
plentiful. Like there's so much stuff there, you know, like it's very giving. Also, how
would you like if you had to sum it up, how would you describe the like the flora? Yeah,
I mean, it does feel hostile in terms of, you know, you see millions of different mosquitoes
from millions of different sizes around you and you want to get them, you want to get
rid of them that for once. And if you talk about the flora, so like if you put the whole
Amazon together, it could be as big as Europe, probably like Central Europe. So it's super
diverse. But even in specific regions, what I've been like, it feels like like you don't
see a repeated plant. It feels like like every plant is a different one, you know. And if
you're walking through the forest, you will see like this crazy micro environments where
suddenly everything is full of blue mushrooms, you know, like this, just this space that
is suddenly you enter the domain of this specific color or thing or plant, you know, while you
walk. That sounds really trippy. Yeah, you will see, you know, like crocodiles or tigers
or snakes and for sure, you know. Yeah, nice. And like food wise, you know, I mean, like
if you were talking about the culinary, like the produce landscape, how would you summarize
it? I remember we went like mushroom hunting with with Pedro Scefino and Jacob Olander,
who really know the forest and where to find mushrooms and these kind of things. They really
could identify the mushrooms that we could eat. And they were these mushrooms that they
look exactly like, like seps, like porcini mushrooms. Yeah. It's probably like, you know,
like a variation, like an Amazonian variation or something like that. But that was quite
amazing. Vanilla, wild vanilla, probably the best vanilla that I've tried in my life was
a piece of I actually had never seen fresh vanilla that looks kind of like like a pea
or a green plantain. I've never seen fresh vanilla. Yeah, because it's like a green thing
that you then you fermented, you know, until it becomes black. Yeah. Yeah, that was really
impressive. But again, doing this foraging session with Scefino, this is a guy that he
would take any plant and eat it. You know, that there is a like a vast potential of things
that can be found in London. And this is the work that chefs like again and NUEMA in Ecuador
also like the chefs are trying to take advantage of this since you're already in a country
that has access to the Amazonas to put this kind of products into the restaurants, which
is super interesting. That's really cool.