1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:10,720
Hi everyone, welcome to Potluck Food Talks. Today's topic is iconic dishes.

2
00:00:10,720 --> 00:00:16,660
Iconic dishes, yeah. I mean, you know, like, what do you think makes an iconic dish? Like,

3
00:00:16,660 --> 00:00:18,920
that kind of transcends time and space.

4
00:00:18,920 --> 00:00:25,240
I guess it's a dish that people talk about and that are representative about a chef and

5
00:00:25,240 --> 00:00:30,000
his identity. For instance, Sex on the Beach, you know that dish?

6
00:00:30,000 --> 00:00:32,640
Yeah, unfortunately I know that dish.

7
00:00:32,640 --> 00:00:38,000
This dish is the most bizarre dish I've ever seen. It's called Sex on the Beach and it's

8
00:00:38,000 --> 00:00:43,680
a dessert and what you get is like something that looks like sand and then you have like

9
00:00:43,680 --> 00:00:50,920
this used condom that it's edible that has milk inside like a creamy thing. And the way

10
00:00:50,920 --> 00:00:57,940
to eat it is that you have to lift the condom and open your mouth and put it into your mouth.

11
00:00:57,940 --> 00:01:02,640
And this is a dessert. It has a creamy thing and strawberries and this and that. But I

12
00:01:02,640 --> 00:01:08,240
think it's pretty crazy. Like, it's almost humiliating for the guests to make them do

13
00:01:08,240 --> 00:01:14,440
that to enjoy the dessert. But at the end of the day, something really punk, I would

14
00:01:14,440 --> 00:01:20,280
say, memorable, maybe in a bad way. And it's a dish that people talk about.

15
00:01:20,280 --> 00:01:24,320
Yeah, I mean it is. And then I think it's made him famous now. Whether you like it or

16
00:01:24,320 --> 00:01:25,880
not, it has shock value.

17
00:01:25,880 --> 00:01:32,080
Okay. All right. So I would say iconic dish. One of the most iconic dishes is the gaugu

18
00:01:32,080 --> 00:01:33,080
yu from Michel Bra.

19
00:01:33,080 --> 00:01:34,640
Oh, amazing dish. Yeah.

20
00:01:34,640 --> 00:01:42,120
Gaugu yu is a riff on a traditional stew from the Obraq region that Michel Bra reinterpreted.

21
00:01:42,120 --> 00:01:47,400
And it's basically a dish consisting of, you know, like 30 plus different vegetables and

22
00:01:47,400 --> 00:01:53,680
herbs and flowers that are cooked in a certain sequence so that they have different textures

23
00:01:53,680 --> 00:01:57,960
depending on the vegetables, in mineral water with a bit of ham. And it then plated like

24
00:01:57,960 --> 00:02:01,680
a very, very elaborate salad of different textures. Also, there's a couple of sort of

25
00:02:01,680 --> 00:02:06,520
sauces on the plate. The dish is constantly changing, constantly evolving. But this is

26
00:02:06,520 --> 00:02:12,200
one of the most replicated dishes in the culinary world without a doubt. I think almost even

27
00:02:12,200 --> 00:02:17,920
like the very well-known Michelin star chefs today, most of them have a dish that's sort

28
00:02:17,920 --> 00:02:19,880
of an homage to this gaugu yu.

29
00:02:19,880 --> 00:02:25,680
Yeah. You will see this dish if you Google Michel Bra. It's usually the cover of his

30
00:02:25,680 --> 00:02:30,500
book of the same name. And when I was working in Mugaritz, we had one of these variations

31
00:02:30,500 --> 00:02:35,800
of that dish. And I was working in the station that was producing the dish. So I would have

32
00:02:35,800 --> 00:02:44,640
to go to the garden and pick up, it was over 30 different herbs, just a leaf of every herb.

33
00:02:44,640 --> 00:02:50,480
And every leaf had to have its own specific size. For instance, you wouldn't have a very

34
00:02:50,480 --> 00:02:56,400
large leaf of sage because it's very powerful, just a very little one. But for instance,

35
00:02:56,400 --> 00:03:00,800
a basil or coriander, you could have a bigger one because you can eat this like a salad.

36
00:03:00,800 --> 00:03:06,360
So we would know how many bookings we had every day. So if we had like, let's say 30

37
00:03:06,360 --> 00:03:14,120
bookings, I had to pick, let's say 35 leaves of each single, it was like over 30 herbs

38
00:03:14,120 --> 00:03:21,640
and about 12 flowers, like flower petals. And this was served just with an emmental

39
00:03:21,640 --> 00:03:27,600
cheese water, which was made by mixing emmental cheese and mineral water on the thermomix

40
00:03:27,600 --> 00:03:32,000
and then just strain it. And on top there was just a beurre noisette and that was the

41
00:03:32,000 --> 00:03:40,520
dish. It was amazing. Yeah. So my next one would be Robuchon's potato puree, mashed potatoes.

42
00:03:40,520 --> 00:03:45,600
You know that dish? Of course, everybody knows it. I think it's the benchmark of any potato

43
00:03:45,600 --> 00:03:50,560
puree around the world. It's what is always referenced. And I mean, it's also a sort of

44
00:03:50,560 --> 00:03:55,360
representation of that sort of, you know, French cooking that I mean, dictates so much

45
00:03:55,360 --> 00:04:00,800
of the cooking that's going on in the world. To make this puree, you pass the potato first

46
00:04:00,800 --> 00:04:07,240
with a thicker kind of a strain and then a finer one. And then you emulsify it with sheets,

47
00:04:07,240 --> 00:04:13,320
lots of butter and that's what makes it so nice. And so it has this texture that it almost

48
00:04:13,320 --> 00:04:19,920
falls from the spoon. Yeah, really nice puree. I heard him say once you need really good

49
00:04:19,920 --> 00:04:23,640
potatoes, you need to boil them with the skin on, not skinned, like you don't peel them

50
00:04:23,640 --> 00:04:27,920
before you boil them. That's very important. And I think he said it's two parts potato,

51
00:04:27,920 --> 00:04:32,920
one part butter. It's a lot. It's a lot of butter. Yeah, it's almost yellow at the end.

52
00:04:32,920 --> 00:04:41,120
All right. For me, one of the really good signature dish, iconic dish is Martin Beresategui's

53
00:04:41,120 --> 00:04:46,680
foie gras with green apple and eel. Ah, that's a classic. Yeah. Yeah. It's such a classic.

54
00:04:46,680 --> 00:04:51,680
It's also been replicated quite a lot. And it's just such a like back when he because

55
00:04:51,680 --> 00:04:57,160
it's been on his menu for a long time, but it was a very modern sort of interpretation

56
00:04:57,160 --> 00:05:02,800
and a mix of ingredients, you know, it had a little bit of a Japanese influence, I feel

57
00:05:02,800 --> 00:05:08,480
like. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, the fattiness from the foie and the eel,

58
00:05:08,480 --> 00:05:14,120
the texture together with the green apple, I feel like kind of is a symbol of that sort

59
00:05:14,120 --> 00:05:17,760
of like new wave of cooking, you know, kind of like a little bit more fresh, a little

60
00:05:17,760 --> 00:05:21,560
bit more vibrant, more modern that kind of emerged together with Beresategui, especially

61
00:05:21,560 --> 00:05:28,160
it's been. I would say next, Fergus Henderson's bone marrow dish. I mean, that's that's an

62
00:05:28,160 --> 00:05:34,720
all time, all time classic. And it's so simple. Just cook bone marrows that you spread on

63
00:05:34,720 --> 00:05:41,800
a good loaf of toasted bread. And it comes with a parsley, lemon salad. And that's it.

64
00:05:41,800 --> 00:05:46,360
Yeah. With capers in the salad. Yeah. It's just like a yeah, like a small salad. It's

65
00:05:46,360 --> 00:05:52,440
just kind of like parsley that you lightly chop. I mean, I think Fergus says you and

66
00:05:52,440 --> 00:05:55,640
he doesn't say you should chop the parsley, he says you should discipline it a little

67
00:05:55,640 --> 00:05:59,280
bit, which just means kind of running your knife through it a little bit. Fergus is such

68
00:05:59,280 --> 00:06:03,420
a poetic guy. Yeah. You want the leaves of the parsley to be there, but of course not

69
00:06:03,420 --> 00:06:08,280
like a complete one. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, why is it an iconic dish? You know, I mean,

70
00:06:08,280 --> 00:06:13,340
I the first of all, it's delicious. I ate it many, many times actually at St. John.

71
00:06:13,340 --> 00:06:20,120
And it's so simple. But I mean, again, it's a kind of encompasses a movement that Fergus

72
00:06:20,120 --> 00:06:24,840
Henderson started this whole nose to tail cooking, you know, and it really is the sort

73
00:06:24,840 --> 00:06:30,240
of like flag for for this movement that he did. I remember once Anthony Bourdain wrote

74
00:06:30,240 --> 00:06:35,200
that if you would see this dish on a menu, you would know that that chef was a good fellow.

75
00:06:35,200 --> 00:06:41,280
He was one of us. Yeah, it's true. It's true. And it's kind of like that in London also,

76
00:06:41,280 --> 00:06:45,480
like people who work for St. John, you know, they're like a clique, they're like a family.

77
00:06:45,480 --> 00:06:53,040
OK, I think I mean, one of the most old school signature dishes is the truffle soup by Bocuse,

78
00:06:53,040 --> 00:06:58,040
which you know, it's like it really is like it just encompasses like Bocuse cooking, you

79
00:06:58,040 --> 00:07:03,840
know, I mean, Bocuse is very old school and the dish was pretty full on and had like whole

80
00:07:03,840 --> 00:07:08,340
truffles in the soup, you know, like cooked and cooked in the soup. And it comes in this

81
00:07:08,340 --> 00:07:15,720
like classic white porcelain dish with a puff pastry lid. And it's just everything from

82
00:07:15,720 --> 00:07:19,960
like a bygone era, you know, that's sort of like turning point of sort of like, you know,

83
00:07:19,960 --> 00:07:23,820
the Bocuse era of cooking to sort of like nouvelle cuisine to like a fresher sort of

84
00:07:23,820 --> 00:07:27,960
less heavy style of cooking. But I think the fact that like this is pretty badass putting

85
00:07:27,960 --> 00:07:34,760
a whole truffles in your soup. So my next dish is Old Mole from Enrique Olvera. And

86
00:07:34,760 --> 00:07:41,280
I really like this dish because it's so minimalistic and it tells a story because you have like,

87
00:07:41,280 --> 00:07:47,920
it's just like one dot inside of a bigger dot. The dot on the center is the young mole

88
00:07:47,920 --> 00:07:54,240
and around it is the old mole. So it's you're basically doing like this principle of mixing

89
00:07:54,240 --> 00:07:59,800
an old sauce with a new sauce, which is the same you see with mother sauces or mother

90
00:07:59,800 --> 00:08:04,120
doughs or sour doughs or these kind of things, but made with mole and that's a dish. You

91
00:08:04,120 --> 00:08:08,960
get it just like that. I didn't have this mole, but I went to Cosme, which is one of

92
00:08:08,960 --> 00:08:14,880
Olvera's restaurant run by Daniel Sotoines in New York. And I had the mole they made

93
00:08:14,880 --> 00:08:21,080
there with burrata cheese with wood, which was an amazing combination, man.

94
00:08:21,080 --> 00:08:26,720
Yeah, I actually had the dish in the original Peugeot before they moved. And it's like

95
00:08:26,720 --> 00:08:32,200
to say it's such a cool dish because it's so minimalistic. The mole itself, I mean,

96
00:08:32,200 --> 00:08:36,080
both moles are super delicious. You just get a couple of tortillas on the side and you

97
00:08:36,080 --> 00:08:40,280
just like scoop it up and eat it. And I think this dish is pretty cool because it makes

98
00:08:40,280 --> 00:08:47,880
you understand a very sort of complex cultural aspect of Mexican cooking, you know, because

99
00:08:47,880 --> 00:08:52,320
people like if you get a stew, like if you get chicken in mole, you know, you'll eat

100
00:08:52,320 --> 00:08:56,200
it and you think, oh, this is delicious, but you won't necessarily think about that sauce

101
00:08:56,200 --> 00:09:00,960
and all that goes in it and the cultural background of it, you know, and the complexity of it

102
00:09:00,960 --> 00:09:05,360
also that it's, you know, so on so many days old and that keeps evolving and evolving and

103
00:09:05,360 --> 00:09:09,920
evolving. And I think it's that's really why this dish is so cool because it draws, it

104
00:09:09,920 --> 00:09:12,600
teaches you something about what you're eating and where you are.

105
00:09:12,600 --> 00:09:16,480
That's amazing. Yeah. I think that's one of the most difficult things to do to tell a

106
00:09:16,480 --> 00:09:18,000
story through a dish.

107
00:09:18,000 --> 00:09:25,760
Yeah, for sure. Okay, so my next one on the Idiya Saba Anyoki from Bulgaria. Quite a while

108
00:09:25,760 --> 00:09:30,520
ago now that they had this dish on. But for me, it's like quintessential Bulgarian dish,

109
00:09:30,520 --> 00:09:37,040
you know, it's like a mix again of sort of like sense of place and technique. I mean,

110
00:09:37,040 --> 00:09:42,880
for people who don't know, these are fake gnocchi that are made from Idiya Saba. The

111
00:09:42,880 --> 00:09:47,400
Idiya Saba cheese is a very traditional cheese in the Basque region. And you basically make

112
00:09:47,400 --> 00:09:52,840
a, you make a water from this cheese and you mix it with kuzu, which is a Japanese starch

113
00:09:52,840 --> 00:09:58,200
from, from tubers, from mountain tubers. And it's basically why you then pipe it into a

114
00:09:58,200 --> 00:10:03,360
liquid and it gelifies into the liquid while you kind of cut off these gnocchi. So what

115
00:10:03,360 --> 00:10:09,760
happens is that you have these potato gnocchi that when you eat them, just like completely,

116
00:10:09,760 --> 00:10:13,280
they're completely creamy in your mouth. I think it gets served, like it used to get

117
00:10:13,280 --> 00:10:18,560
served with just like a very light ham stock, like a very clear ham stock, if I'm not mistaken,

118
00:10:18,560 --> 00:10:24,180
and a couple of herbs on top, that's it. And it's, it's this mix of like ingredient driven

119
00:10:24,180 --> 00:10:30,680
cooking and like super forward thinking technique that really embodies the Leipzig-Garrett spirit,

120
00:10:30,680 --> 00:10:31,680
in my opinion.

121
00:10:31,680 --> 00:10:38,720
My next dish would be pineapple and ants from Alex Atala. And again, this is just a two

122
00:10:38,720 --> 00:10:45,000
ingredient dish and it's amazing. It's just a, a dice of pineapple and on top are, it's

123
00:10:45,000 --> 00:10:51,480
just a piece of ant that tastes like lemon. We, we have similar ants in Venezuela. We

124
00:10:51,480 --> 00:10:55,840
call it lemon ants. And yeah, and that's it. I think this dish also tells a story. You

125
00:10:55,840 --> 00:11:00,880
see this and you're probably seeing that these are two ingredients that come from America.

126
00:11:00,880 --> 00:11:07,360
You think about Amazonian cuisine. I mean, it evokes many things just by seeing it before

127
00:11:07,360 --> 00:11:08,360
you taste it.

128
00:11:08,360 --> 00:11:12,800
Yeah, definitely. And then again, it's like, when he put it on, you know, like, entomophagy

129
00:11:12,800 --> 00:11:17,200
in these Indian sects wasn't like so much of a big thing. I mean, it still isn't, but

130
00:11:17,200 --> 00:11:21,600
again, it's kind of like, especially for, you know, you're in Latin America and then

131
00:11:21,600 --> 00:11:26,200
you have guests that come to your restaurant that are like a little bit more how to say,

132
00:11:26,200 --> 00:11:30,480
they're like a little bit more used to safe things. And then you really get sort of like

133
00:11:30,480 --> 00:11:36,280
pulled out of this like safe, like fine dining environment, get really put into a place where

134
00:11:36,280 --> 00:11:40,560
sort of like, yeah, this is here, you know, like this is here. This is the Amazon, you

135
00:11:40,560 --> 00:11:45,440
know, like, like people, Indian sites, right? But that's really cool. That was really brave.

136
00:11:45,440 --> 00:11:46,440
Yeah, that's pretty cool.

137
00:11:46,440 --> 00:11:53,000
Okay, so my next dish is the Salmonette de Gaudi from very early days of El Bui, which,

138
00:11:53,000 --> 00:12:00,600
you know, is the cover picture of the Mediterranean cookbook from Ferran Andrea and is, I think,

139
00:12:00,600 --> 00:12:06,320
you know, one of the most iconic dishes from early days of El Bui. I think like before

140
00:12:06,320 --> 00:12:09,760
they really took off, it was like the most iconic dish that they did.

141
00:12:09,760 --> 00:12:10,760
Probably. Yeah.

142
00:12:10,760 --> 00:12:15,760
And I mean, it's actually a very simple dish. It's a red mullet fillet that gets cooked

143
00:12:15,760 --> 00:12:23,520
with a crust of very finely diced mixed vegetables like peppers, mixed peppers mainly. What else

144
00:12:23,520 --> 00:12:24,520
is in there?

145
00:12:24,520 --> 00:12:29,360
I think peppers, zucchini, like the typical dishes you get in Catalan cuisine. And they

146
00:12:29,360 --> 00:12:36,120
resemble this mosaics you see in Barcelona from Andorra Gaudi. And yeah, it's pretty

147
00:12:36,120 --> 00:12:38,240
cool actually. This also tells a story.

148
00:12:38,240 --> 00:12:42,240
Yeah. And it was so forward thinking because actually it's quite a traditional sort of

149
00:12:42,240 --> 00:12:46,280
like flavor combination and dish. I mean, it's a piece of fish with vegetables on top.

150
00:12:46,280 --> 00:12:51,240
But what made it so interesting was the beginning of the approach that they took to using new

151
00:12:51,240 --> 00:12:55,920
techniques in that kitchen. The fact that they achieved this like really even thin crust

152
00:12:55,920 --> 00:13:02,040
of vegetables is because they stuck the vegetables to the fish using a gelatin that activates.

153
00:13:02,040 --> 00:13:06,500
Normally gelatin activates when it cools down, when it gets dissolved hot and then cools

154
00:13:06,500 --> 00:13:10,800
down and it gelifies. But this gelatin is the opposite. You mix it cold and then when

155
00:13:10,800 --> 00:13:16,040
it heats up, it binds. So they would brush the fish with this gelatin, add the vegetables

156
00:13:16,040 --> 00:13:20,600
on top very, very neatly and then carefully place the fish skin side down. And as the

157
00:13:20,600 --> 00:13:24,400
fish was cooking, this gelatin would stick the vegetables to the fish, which I mean,

158
00:13:24,400 --> 00:13:29,680
it was completely unheard of at that time, you know. And I mean, for me still today is

159
00:13:29,680 --> 00:13:35,080
an amazing technique.

160
00:13:35,080 --> 00:13:39,600
That's it for this week's episode of Potluck Food Talks. If you like what we're doing,

161
00:13:39,600 --> 00:13:44,040
make sure to subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode. You can also find us

162
00:13:44,040 --> 00:14:11,040
on Instagram and TikTok as Potluck Food Talks. The show airs every Monday.