You're listening to Heritage Radio Network. Hi,
everyone. Welcome to Pot Luck Food Talks. I'm
here with Filippi Nigiri -san. No? And we're
going to talk about fats. The controversial world
of fats. yeah yeah it is kind of controversial
isn't it i mean lots of people think fats are
really bad no yeah do you think um can you imagine
of a cuisine without fat is that even possible
no i don't think so it's not possible it's um
no honestly not i mean no fats at all no well
i i first of all In the evolution of humans,
fats played a key role in the development of
the brain. So if you were thinking you should
avoid all fats all the time, well, that's just
not good for your body, basically. That's fucking
stupid. And you're an idiot if you think that.
Yeah, no, I mean, like, obviously fats, there
has to be a healthy and conscious approach to
fats. But many fats are really, really crucial
and really good for you. You know, I mean, cold
pressed extra virgin olive oil is proven to decrease
depression. Have you heard about that? No. Apparently
a tablespoon of, it has to be cold pressed, extra
virgin, high quality olive. Olive oil, there's
such a huge range of quality and there's some
olive oils that you might as well be consuming
petroleum. Olive oil, when it's good, it's really
fucking good. And it's really good for you also.
And as you said, when it's bad, it's not good
at all. I see people trying to be greedy and
they buy the cheapest olive oil in the supermarket
here in Spain, which is not even extra virgin.
And actually, sunflower oil is better than that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. I heard the other
day, I don't know who from, but they keep finding
a large amount of traces of gasoline in olive
oil because a lot of the pumps that they use
for cheap olive oil are gasoline -fueled. So
they have an engine that they fuel with gasoline
that make it like... run the press and the fumes
of that they get absorbed by the olive oil because
obviously oil absorbs things very very easily
and so you're basically consuming gasoline fumes
and that's which also happens if you consume
cocaine is one of the main ingredients of cocaine
now you know that children you just mentioned
something very crucial is that oils and fats
are flavor and aroma carriers, conductors, and
that's what makes them so interesting in cooking
for marinades, but also just spread spices or
herbs and some elaboration. It's also a heat
conductor, and that's why you use it for both
functionalities when you're basting. You're basically...
Put in your buttery, aromatized flavors all over
your steak or whatever you're basting. And yeah,
I think that's why I can't imagine a cuisine
without fats, because it has that function, you
know? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, like if I had
to stretch my imagination a lot and I'd imagine
a cuisine. that is entirely broth and steam -based
and stuff like that. There's still intrinsic
essential oils to so many ingredients that I
would say I can't imagine a cuisine without fats.
And yeah, you know, like butter, obviously. We
can't talk about fats without talking about butter.
Butter in Western cooking is king. I mean, apart
from olive oil butter in all of our butter countries
and all of our countries. But just as olive oil,
people give butter a really bad rep. But butter,
again, there's such a huge range of quality from
poorly made butter to very, very nutrient -rich
butter. And butter is a very good food supplement
for you with very healthy fats and amino acids,
which are crucial to... um for you to to function
and yeah what dishes are like heavily butter
based well for example like a good um i can think
of a lemon pie you know like a lemon cream oh
yeah which is basically lemon infused butter
with some other stuff with a little bit of yeah
egg and and whatever but it's You would be surprised
how little lemon there is in your lemon pie.
I have an amazing recipe for lemon pie. It's
like I found it last year. Well, I didn't find
it. Katie gave it to me. It's a recipe from Gordon
Ramsay that I changed up a little bit. And it's
become my absolutely favorite. I can't imagine
that there's a better recipe for lemon, like
a lemon custard. And it's so ingenious and it's
so easy and so cool. But it's like. I think there's
like a quarter of citrus juice in it. The rest
is egg and butter and sugar. And still it tastes
really, really citrusy, really lemony, really
bright. Pretty much, yeah. I used to make one
from Pierre Hermé. And yeah, the thing had so
much butter that you had to put it like in batches,
you know, while the Blitz is running. But I mean,
there are so many things where basically you're
eating butter with some other stuff, like a croissant,
like a brioche. That shit has so much butter.
And that's what keeps these dairy fatty flavors.
Absolutely, yeah. And often also this light lactic
acidity. I love it when things have this butter,
this sourness from well -made dairy. I think
to me that's super, super tasty. I mean, like,
you know, mashed potatoes. I mean, the Robuchon
mashed potatoes. Ah, also 60 % butter or 70%.
Basically, yeah. And I started making my mashed
potatoes very differently. I used to, like, melt
butter in milk and add it to the potatoes and
stuff. Nowadays, I boil good quality potatoes.
I peel them. I rice them. And while they're hot,
I keep adding butter and melting it, like, folding
it into the potatoes. until I feel like the whole
thing is going to split completely. And then
I start adding some hot milk just to bring it
back together and keep the emulsification going.
And it's the best mashed potato ever. The texture
is perfect. The flavor is perfect. That's pretty
much the Rabuchon one. It's pretty much, as you
said, you add the butter. uh never never melted
more like cold or yeah cold and in cubes so you
you can let it melt while it's mixing and it's
super good and it's like sometimes you sometimes
i mean as chef you taste something and you can
tell it needs more fat right like like a sauce
and sometimes you're like addressing or something
you'll taste it and you'll be like now we need
to emulsify some fat into this to round it out
to give it this There's the silkiness, but also
not just in the texture visually, but on the
mouthfeel. There's really smart ways of using
fat also, especially animal fats. I think animal
fats are also really underrated. I was going
into that because, I mean, olive oil and butter
are pretty common sense, you know, and we could...
Make a whole episode about butter. We could talk
about roasted butter or clarified butter and
these kind of things. But yeah, using animal
fats like chuleta fat, one of my favorite ingredients
in the world. 100%. Dog fat, same. And chicken
fat, also super cool. Very, very widely used
in Jewish cooking as schmaltz. Schmaltz, correct.
super nice i don't know why it isn't like more
widely used because it's like it's absolutely
delicious also beef tallow which is beef fat
it's so good i mean from like really obvious
things like roasting potatoes or something or
vegetables but you know like what i used to do
with all the wagyu fat i used to trim the the
fat cap off dice it down and then render it slowly
so all the fat melts But then all the solids
that remain, keep cooking them until they crisp
up and brown. And then you strain that fat off
and you have this like roasted meat fat. And
using that to just like brush your fat instead
of like using oil or brush your meat, instead
of like using oil or whatever while you're grilling
it or like glazing it afterwards, it super boosts
your meat flavor. It's so good. And it's not
an unhealthy fat. It's not a refined sort of
like processed. Completely natural. I've also
had fries, French fries, potatoes in goose fat
or in cow fat. Also super, super, super nice.
It's so good, yeah. Once I went to a restaurant
in London called Lyle's. Very well -known restaurant.
It's really, really good. And they had a dessert
on with a really beautiful, like, buttery caramel
sauce. And it was really complex and nice. One
of the waiters came to us. He was sort of like,
yeah, how do you like the dessert? And I was
like, yeah, super nice. And he was like, can
you tell what the secret ingredient is? And we
couldn't. And he was like, the caramel is made
with duck fat. So they emulsified, instead of
using butter, how you would for traditional like
butter caramel, they used roasted duck fat. And
it gave this caramel this like really deep, complex
taste. And it wasn't like immediately apparent.
It didn't taste like duck, right? But it was
really, really smart. And I really love using
fats like this in a creative way. Also, if you
see like very old pastry recipes like cookies,
and then especially here in Spain, you will find
a lot of pork fat going on in those cookies as
a secret ingredient. Mm. Pork fat, man. Pork
fat is amazing. You know, like after, um, being
to Mexico, um, I have a new, uh, found appreciation
for pork fat as in like, you know, I feel like,
yeah. And even tortillas, even like tortillas,
um, the arena flour tortillas. Um, I had, it
seems like such a simple thing, right? A flour,
wheat flour, flatbread. I've tried to make them.
few times at home and i'm a chef i can make a
flatbread right it's just not quite the same
as you know as the the grandmas in in mexico
were making it and then i started like asking
a couple of friends of mine and they were sending
me recipes and they all use pork fat for their
tortillas there's a little bit of there's a little
bit of manteca in there and i feel like it gives
it this like little je ne sais quoi it's amazing
yeah You know what is also crazy? Have you heard,
you probably have, about ketogenic diet? Yeah.
That's insane because it's so counterintuitive.
I tried to do it once, but if you don't do it
100%, it can be very dangerous and very bad.
So you have to pull it off until the end. And
it's basically a high -fat diet. So you add,
I don't know, like butter to your coffee and
your breakfast is yogurt with extra olive oil.
And then you have like a bowl of butter for lunch.
So you really have to rethink about what food
is and how it works. And what happens in your
body is that once you get cetosis or ketosis
in English. it's like a change of metabolism
that your body starts to use instead of carbs,
fats as energy. So there's a change in the energy
generation system of your... But of course, if
you add a little bit of carb to the formula,
it gets reversed. And this is not only for weight
loss, but it's also a very recommended diet for
people with cancer. because this kind of diet,
it helps very much to kill the cancer cells.
They can't survive in such a fatty body, apparently.
As I said, I tried to do it, and it's very counterintuitive,
everything, because, you know, lots of nuts,
lots of oils. While I was trying it, you can
get satiated pretty easy with a high -fat diet,
you know. What other fats? Coconut fat? Do you
like coconut fat? Yes and no. Not so much. I
think it's cool when you have real coconut cream
and you skim the fat off, like in Thai cooking,
and you use that. It's a very different fat to
use. Not the refined super, like the coconut
fat that you buy in the supermarket, but that
kind of thing, like to cook a curry paste before
you add the coconut milk. That is very cool,
I think. That's very, very interesting. But what
I also think is... that's very underappreciated
is high quality like alternate alternates like
nut oils like for example here in germany we
can buy um really high quality walnut oil like
cold pressed walnut oil it's insane absolutely
insane we're making an ice cream with it here
so like a white walnut ice cream that has no
actual walnuts in it just like cold pressed walnut
oil as an ice cream super cool that sounds delicious
yeah and it was it's like a completely different
flavor because it's almost like green walnuts
you know so it's like really it's just very different
but also things like um plum seed oil ah that's
incredible amazing right i mean remember how
we were using it in margot yeah For like certain
things, absolutely incredible. But for that matter,
any stone fruit oil, you know, it could be plums,
it could be cherries. Apricots. Yeah. Yeah, totally.
Yeah, cherry pit oil, for example, also super
delicious. We used to make a cherry pit vinaigrette
here at the restaurant where we'd use like cherry
vinegar and cherry pit oil a little bit and olive
oil and stuff. Super, super nice. It's such a
unique flavor. um that you can find and sort
of like like for me it's like umeboshi kind of
tastes like that it has this like very particular
oh what's it it's like i'm almost arsenic you
know it's like um alwyn flavor do you like avocado
oil i have not used avocado oil that much i think
honestly okay uh you yeah it's not among my favorites
like i i feel it Avocado is fatty in itself,
so I think avocado is a very good source of fattiness.
Oh yeah, for sure. And it also has these aromas,
and you usually add some acidity to it, and you
have your fatty thing. And when it comes to avocado
oil, I'm like, there's a lot of stuff missing
there, because it's made, again, with the seeds.
Yeah. What about egg yolks? Egg yolks. Would
you count egg yolks as a fat? What percentage
of egg yolks is fat? I don't know. 35%. 35%.
Yeah, I don't know. For me, they enter kind of
like into the fatty category. Well, what about
the emulsions? All kinds of mayos, aliolis, all
those sauces. It's like 80 % fat, basically.
Basically, if you're eating mayonnaise, it's
like drinking oil. Basically. And it's really
scary because I'm a person that if I have a plate
of chips, like a plate of French fries, I could
just finish a fucking pint of mayonnaise or aioli,
you know? Jesus Christ. But yeah, I mean, emotions,
knowing and understanding emotions and how they
work and what you can do with them. I think it's
one of the most important skills for a chef.
It's such a huge, huge thing. I mean, like even
a good dressing versus a bad dressing. I have
very early on figured out how to make nice salad
dressings by making, and I was making my salad
dressings almost like I was making mayonnaise.
I was emulsifying them until they were very,
very thick. I was seasoning them like very intensely,
like nice point of acidity, nice point of salt
and enough sweetness to balance out the acidity.
So it's harmonious. It would like coat the salad
in like a really nice way and be just like a
super pungent flavor thing. And like, just if
you understand that and you can take so, so many
preparations further. In Mugaritz, for example,
we were making a fat emulsion made out of chuleta
fat, which you mentioned earlier. Yeah, I had
that with artichokes. Super nice. Grilled artichokes
with chuleta mayo. There's nothing better in
life. Yeah, and it's really cool because usually
it'd be sort of like the meat in the centerpiece
and then have a side of artichokes. And here
you have the vegetable as the main actor. and
still have the, like, roasty fattiness from the
chuleta to accentuate it, which is really, really
nice. For me, that's the best way to cook vegetables,
to be honest, to have vegetables with some layer
of animal fat or animal protein, you know, pretty
much like the way you find it in woks in Asia.
But yeah, or cooking vegetables in chicken fat
or adding, you know, pieces of Iberico ham to
the whatever you're doing. It's just the best
way to eat them. Sorry, vegans. Yeah, for sure.
You know what I think is a really underrated
and mis, not misused, but like, yeah, just very
underrated and there's not enough knowledge about
it is. cream and things like cream fresh and
stuff like that um i think people don't really
know what good cream is anymore like people buy
the fucking tefrapaks from from the supermarket
and they you know they pour it into their sauces
it's like the super standardized thing i was
reminded of this last year when i was kind of
trying out new suppliers and i was looking around
and there was this one place that um specializes
in organic produce and they had these like buckets
of high quality cream from a local dairy here
and i was like okay cool it's like a five kilo
bucket and it's like well it's a little bit less
practical but i wanted to give it a try and it
came and it was like just how cream should be
really thick solid layer on the top that you
kind of have to mix it with the liquid is like
split because there's no emulsifiers right it's
just a natural product And immediately I noticed
such a huge difference. And then you think to
like old school cooking where you have like,
you know, poulet à la crème, right? Just like
chicken in a cream sauce with like mushrooms
or whatever. You add a spoonful of this cream
and you put it in. The flavor and the texture
immediately gets really thick and creamy. While
with like the other cream, you have to reduce
it down and whatnot. Completely different. And
it really made me think that this thing that
we're using. like um this cream is that we buy
in the supermarket it's nothing to do with the
real product the way that it used to be the same
with milk right like i think of the mamia you
know that used with a like a nice caserio milk
right where you can taste the grass that the
cow has been eating and then you compare it to
this like milk it's like milk is fucking everywhere
it's in every fucking coffee shop It's just a
white liquid, really. There's nothing really
to it. And I think it's a really important topic.
It's the same with creme fraiche, right? Creme
fraiche is a cultured cream. If you've ever tried
a freshly well -cultured creme fraiche, it's
incredible, the flavor. And if people would put
more effort into sourcing or making things like
that. I think it would impact cooking for people
in a massive way because immediately it's like
a jump that's like five times better. What about
clarified butter? You know, I was recently...
We haven't talked about this. I had a recent
trip to New York and Boston. And yeah, I went
to this place in the docks in Boston. I think
it's Sail Loft is the name. It's like a very
traditional place. And I was recommended to have
the clam chowder there. which you get served
like in a ceramic jar. And it's, you know, overflowing,
super thick, quite delicious. Apparently there
are two schools of chowder. One is like more
creamy. The other one is more like a brothy liquid
texture. They're both very different. I wouldn't
say I like one better than the other. And then
I had like a lobster roll, like the classic lobster
rolls you get in Boston is one of the iconic
things you get there. So it was this roll and
a brioche bread, and you would get like a little
cup of clarified butter just to pour it on top
of your lobster. That's very nice. Life is just
better with a little bit of liquid butter to
put on top of your shellfish. Ain't that the
truth, brother. Yeah, super nice. Super, super
nice. When you make a hollandaise, do you clarify
your butter? I haven't done a Hollandaise in
quite a while. I remember I used to do it until
someone told me, you don't need to clarify it.
And then I stopped doing it. Yeah, that was kind
of my process. Yeah, I actually do the same.
I melt it, of course. I let it come up one time,
but I don't clarify it. I don't strain it. I
think that the dairy solids in butter are super,
super delicious, right? And I always emulsify
them into my hollandaise also because I don't
see the point of wasting them because that's
like a lot of the butter flavor is coming from
there. And at the end of the day, you know, if
you're making brown butter, beurre noisette,
that's really what gives you the flavor. It's
that you're cooking these solids until they separate
and start to brown. That is really the only thing
that is giving you the brown butter flavor.