When Your Friends are Famous Chefs | Anthony Bourdain's The Mind of a Chef | Full Episode

Viewers like you make this program possible. Support your local PBS station. In this episode, Chef David Chang travels the globe to cook with some of his friends. In San Francisco, Chef Daniel Patterson makes popcorn grits. That's super cool. The texture, right? No, it's grits. Chef Claude Baussi makes breakfast. Off-the-cuff cuisine, that's what they call it. It's off-the-cuff, baby. Let's do it. And in Copenhagen, Chef Rene Redzepi makes a Danish ramen. There's no noodles, it's just vegetables. It looks easy. It ain't easy. And Chef Sat Bains makes vegetables. It's really important to think about the balance. That was crazy. That was two complete sentences in a row. Enter the mind of a chef. In my case, I do a whole chicken soup. It's hands down the best chicken soup I've ever had. Meals with friends. It's a magical time, you know? There are not many things in life that are a better, more satisfying way to spend your time. What would we do if that was final time? I don't know. I think our conversations would be a lot shorter. And it's a good life indeed if you happen to have friends who cook for you. Like Dave Chang does around the world. Maybe we can Google it, how to cook starfish. Here's a taste. For me, I think about grits. I think about corn. So in terms of American food, everyone knows popcorn. It's a cultural reference that is totally familiar. So I'm using a lot of oil, a lot of oil, because the whole point about this dish, you want to capture that moment of popping, like right at the moment it gets popped is what we want to get. And so all of that flavor is in the fat. You know what's amazing to me? How few cooks know how to make popcorn? What, do you don't just put it in a microwave? See, this is what I'm talking about. Popcorn, high heat. Normally with cooking, it's all about sight and smell, and it is that to some degree. So you gotta have enough popcorn in there so it creates steam. It's not just frying. Frying plus steam. So I'm gonna get this out of here. Here's the fun part. So we got popcorn, we got a ton of butter. And what we're gonna do is basically make an infusion, like a bouillon. It's water, butter, popcorn. This is gonna be the beginning of one stock. It's very fast. I'll cook it for a minute or less. I'm gonna drain it off, put more in. Drain it off, put more in. And then keep tasting the whole time. More butter, more salt. So it's coming up to a boil, and it's so stupid easy, and you're gonna say like, why hasn't someone else done this? This stuff has like softened and become really malleable. I want you to try the stock. Here. So it tastes like buttered popcorn. That's buttered popcorn. So then we got this other stuff on top, which is the waste product. But typically you make a stock and you discard bones, whatever. There's just this very kind of brutish separation of the good stuff from the bad stuff. And from the good stuff that goes through, it's a very small percentage. Now don't push it too hard. What comes out in the bottom is the beginning of the grits. That's rad. Check that out. So now at this point, you got this product, right? Which has no moisture in it. That can become like a popcorn pancake. Oh, that's super cool. So you can do anything with that. But what we're gonna make is like a really buttery bowl of grits style. But the texture, right? It's grits. Patterson, this may be your finest culinary invention ever. Dead serious. And how do you stumble across it? Just like. Staring you right in your face. Yeah, but this is the first time I ever cooked with popcorn and this is the first time I ever made that connection. All of these cultures just kind of bedrock underlying all these things, corn, but dry corn. So my goal is to kind of bury the techniques and make food that looks like any monkey can do it. You know? Food that's impossible to recreate that looks like no effort went into it. So I get no credit whatsoever. Totally different when you say monkeys cooking. I literally want monkeys to cook the food. I just want it to look like they did. You know, the focus is on the food and not the cook. We got the grit stuff, but it's hard. You know, it's like, it's good if you want to use it in some kind of preparation where you're adding a bunch of other fat or a bunch of liquid, like a pancake or something, or like you make a popcorn cake. How about that? When you're thinking about it, you're using dried corn that hasn't been pulverized. But when you're making polenta or grits, you're just rehydrating dry corn anyway. And that's why the flavor is the same. Reverse engineer. It's a stroke of brilliance. Luck. Brilliance. Luck. All right, so we got the bouillon. You can see it's been kind of slightly thickened. Ton of butter. We're going to whisk it all together. This is cool, man. Three things that are basically using hands, a pot, some water, a little bit of butter, a whisk. It's a mentality. It doesn't have anything to do with what you put in things. You do, you don't, it doesn't matter. It's like, how can you do things better? How can you do them more interesting? How can you make something that tastes great? Let's boil it. You give it 30 seconds to boil. Thicken it a little bit. Oh, maybe just a little bit more flavor. Oh, man. I think that's it. Seriously, man, that's the coolest dish you've ever created. And you created some cool shit, but that's super cool. And then, gotta do that. So here's what I like about this. Because it's labor intensive, but the way it's done, it captures that kind of just popped buttered popcorn flavor. So it's like everything you know, which is grits, but like this other overlay of cultural reference. That's beautiful, man. Thank you. Daniel Patterson is letting us borrow his restaurant for a little bit. And we have with us one of my dearest friends in the whole world, Claude Bossy. The guy behind me is Saad Bains. Where is he? One of the things I learned and I love about these two guys is off-the-cuff cuisine. That's what they call it. It's off-the-cuff, baby. Let's do it. You take ingredients and literally, it's like improvisational jazz. You just go and you follow your gut. These are two of the best off-the-cuffers I've ever met. Don't put me in the same line, Daniel. With Saad, you're right. I'm sorry about that. Anyway. You wanker. So off-the-cuff is literally this. We rolled into the kitchen and Claude was like, I want this, I want this, I want this. And I have no idea what you're going to do. So what are you making? Making breakfast. I eat here last night. We find some, he give us a dish with potatoes. It was fantastic. And I find them in the fridge. So we just cook them very simply. Some mushroom, some of lemon verbena, just start it now. A bit of sep, some sprite shoots, and fried eggs on it. That's it. Saad grew up in Lyon, and that is a culinary capital. Yeah. And he has a great respect for food, and the guy can cook. So he's added some dashi to some local- Mushroom dashi. Ooh. That's going to be cooking a bit. I'm just going to get it back to a proper heat. Give it a bit of caramelization. Fry your eggs in it. I'll just finish with the lemon verbena, like that. Fantastic. I'll just finish with some of this expensive oil. Do you hear them? They're not cooked yet. They will be cooked in a bit. Look at that beautiful color. I think it's a movement of the cuff cuisine. It's freshness. That's all. That is off the cuff, man. He doesn't even know what he's doing. I'm just doing it a little bit. Look at that. Smell that. And we're going to eat that in the pan. Get me a plate. Yeah. This is what we call off the cuff. Wait. So you're done? Yeah. Boom. That is porcini mushrooms, baby Yukon gold potatoes, broccoli rabe, lemon verbena. Finish with a little mushroom dashi. Beautiful. That's good. This is Claude's off the cuff morning for you. That's my breakfast. Ideally, for me, it's really important to think about the balance of what you're eating and to get yourself something that can be quite fresh, but also something that's quite common. So you look at it. It's cabbage, it's turnip, it's this, but hang on, hang on. How the hell did you get that flavor or that texture or that temperature? We're trying to incorporate lots of individual dishes. The idea is not to have that one dish as a star, but so the whole menu is balanced. Whoa. I've never heard you so serious before in my entire life. Have you? I don't know what to do right now. He's shocked and I'm shocked. I didn't know you got that language in you. That was crazy. That was two complete sentences in a row. Shit. There was no cue cards. No nothing. So what we've got is some cabbage. What we've done is salted it. It just draws out a little bit of bitterness. And then the idea is we've made a mayonnaise. You're whisking away. And what happens is the mayonnaise is made with smoked oil. So what I'm trying to do is give you the fat content on something that is very clean. So what's in there? It looks like you put a vanilla bean in there. No, ash. The ash we've got is onion ash. You burn the shit out of an onion. And then dry it out. Yeah. To dehydrate it and then blitz it. And what you end up with is something that's quite smoky. But it also looks smoky. So as you're eating it from a visual, you're thinking, ah, I know that's going to be aggressive because it's black. And that's the point. So let me have some brassicas. Brassicas is a family of vegetables from the mustard family. I'm just going to put some vinaigrette. See that shake? Oh, sorry. I just Spiderman'd him. Have you ever done a Spiderman? As you can see, working with these guys is sometimes extraordinarily difficult. It's kitchen love. Kitchen love. So here's the cabbage. All we do is make it into a mayonnaise. A mayonnaise with the... Smoked oil and some onion ash. And then you smoke the oil by how? I'm going to be honest. I found it. I found it down here. You love that oil. Yeah. Every chef I know wants to do egg dishes. Why do chefs love eggs so much? Flavor. Simplicity. So you don't have to do anything. That's sexy. That is sexy, chef. You heated the egg in oil, with an olive oil. What temperature? Normally you can cook this around 65 plus. It takes around 45 minutes. We have here some turnips which are cooked in dashi. That's that Japanese influence where once we were shown dashi and how to prepare it and the benefits it has, it was something that we've done now. It's an incredible part of our cuisine. And she wants some fresh, rich, seasoned broccoli. So we're just going to add some vinaigrette. That's delicate, man. Like woman food. Let me just translate. That's like women's food done by an ogre. We have here, again, I found this. I don't know what it is, but it smells nice. It's smoked breadcrumbs. Adding a little bit of texture. And continuing the theme of smokiness throughout. Yeah, because for me, the brassicas can take the smoke. The brassicas. It should be a very light salad. And the richness comes from a hidden egg yolk. So when you break into it, you're almost like, where did that come from? And then you've got the relish to finish. We don't season this. We just leave it nice and fresh. The idea is it should be very exciting to eat. You want it to be something that's very fresh. And then when you break into it, it's very rich. That's my dish. It's the brassicas with a poached egg. Thank you, sir. Chef, I'm going to take some of your misoplast. The not miso. The Nordic miso. Nordic miso. Spoonful of that. I'm going to add clam stock. I'm going to make a type of miso soup, hopefully. A vegetable dish. There is a bit of clam juice in it, but tons of vegetables. All the different onions. This is really the wide spectrum of the Allium family. I love it. And also, this one is interesting. We saw this white flower where I showed you the berry on top. This is one of my favorite things that you introduced me to. Actually, I have a flower here. The ramp. You can see it here. You see, this flower is just about to lose the petals. When the petal drops, which it will in a couple of weeks, then what you have left is this berry that's not fully grown. Take that berry and turn it into this. It's a lot of work, chef. It takes forever to clean them. And then salt it for three months and into vinegar. And then it's like this. And you have a caper that's just super tasty, strong, so full of flavor. It's amazing. Don't you think that would be good with the miso? Absolutely. It would be good on anything. Like bacon. I'm going to boil these different types of onions. I want the sweetness in this case, because we're going to have a lot of full-bodied flavor from the miso soup. That is this. From red onions. Just like that. We have... At least a dozen types. Also, what I'm thinking a little bit is a type of ramen. I see where you're going. There's no noodles. It's just vegetables. We have young garlics, young leeks. Different types of shallots. Just everything money can buy in terms of onions. Some pickled onions here. Exactly. Two different types. Both of them shallots. One of them is called a lesser onion, which is the name of an island. And it's a variety of onion that only exists there. It's a study of onion. In the old days, you would have called it a symphony. I'm going to add a few of these leaves of ramson, which is, I guess, like our ram from North Europe. The only difference is we can only eat the leaves. We don't eat the onions of them. Then a few of these berries. A few of these. A type of onion flour. Then I am going to add... That's a pheasant egg. Poached pheasant egg. Or cooked pheasant egg, you could say. Which I will just gently open. It's a good-looking dish, man. And then finally, I just pour on this set of a broth of dashi, bacon, pork stock. That is beautiful, my friend. Seriously, beautiful. That'd be delicious. If you like onion. We're at Momofuku-ko. We're with Chef Laurent Gras. And he's been cooking here the past couple days. We've been very honored to have what I feel is one of the best chefs the world's ever known. When Jack Nicholson said this about Stanley Kubrick, he said, everyone agrees that he's the man. And I still feel that highly underrates him. That's how I feel about you. So, what are you going to show us? We're not going to cook anything today. We're just going to slice, put some dressing, and then try the fish. Here we have a piece of medai, which is a sea bream. This one I sliced lengthwise. And because being so soft, it allowed me to do a different preparation. We'll cut those loin into fine strips next to each other. Sea bream is a very soft meat. And I think that fish, especially raw fish, you don't want to do too much to it. So we just season with a touch of salt. These are lemon, Meyer lemon skin, which has been cured into salt and cut into a fine brunoise. A few shiso leaves. Any of the preparation you can do. And that's pretty much it. And then what we do, we just roll the fish on itself. Beautiful. And then we have bites. And it's well measured, it's well seasoned, and it's a full feeling. When you eat it, you don't feel you need something else. And I think that the most important is not to forget to remove the plastic film. So this is perfect for summer. It's really a summer dish. And I think that the beauty of the dish is really the bouillon, which I call a white ponzu sauce, which is in fact a dashi. And then over that dashi, I soak more kombu into it to bring more viscosity, more bonito, white soy sauce, and a little bit of brunoise vinegar. Trying to infuse as much flavor and umami in it as possible. The first bite is really acidity, spiciness, saltiness. You don't want to have anything else. So we have a little bit of basil oil to complement just your greens. I think presentation is always important and you can say even if you don't need sometimes a few components, you want to add just a little touch for the visual effect, which is also an important part of the experience. What you want to achieve, how much focus and how much energy you're going to put into your food, how much time you're going to invest to achieve the result you're proud of and then you feel that the customer are going to enjoy the most. You're really the first person I've met that I think has pulled it off where modern technique matched with old school, classic, classic. It's really interesting for me to see that something like this, which looks very simple, the techniques that go into it or a dish that you make now, it's a lifetime of work. The older you get and the simpler you present your food because you get confidence. When you're confident, then you can do something very simple or when you're confident, then you can generate a product which is exceptional and doesn't need anything else. And now a conversation about giving credit where credit is due over a bread bowl of clam chowder. Taste that San Francisco sourdough. That is delicious. Cheers, Daniel, for your hospitality. Cheers. So we're talking about chefs copying. Everyone copies. The world is very small now through the internet. If you're going to take something, just say where it came from and be honest. It's wrong to deny where you got the idea from. I think that's it. If you're honest, you will always walk away with integrity. I feel very strongly that chefs need to know where their techniques are coming from and it's something I even ask. You can talk until you're blue in the face about copying but it's not about copying, it's about voice. Writing, cooking, same thing. When you get to a top level, you want something that's honest and something that's unique to someone. So when you guys were cooking, when we're cooking all together, you look at each dish and you can see that is Sat, that is Claude, and I like that. It's not about influence, it's about at the end product are people expressing themselves in a way that's theirs. Inspired. When you get to a certain point, which we are now, there's so many things that have been done. Nothing new. There's very few people that invent new techniques. I always say this, it's like what Stanley Kubrick says, everything's already been done, it's our job to do it just a little bit better. Get in your kitchen, cook, talk to your friends, share what you're doing, and have a good time. We are lucky enough to have people coming to our restaurant giving us money to do the job we love doing. And I think if you can do that, it's fantastic. It's the best job in the world. It's amazing. You have to be quite intellectual. Cooking at the highest level requires many things. Respect. This may be your finest culinary invention ever. Dedication to the craft. When you start to get complicated for yourself and for the customer, then I think you lose really the momentum of the beauty of the product. Creativity. There's ingredients to do 1,000 dishes if you see the possibilities. And stamina. Hello, good morning everybody. But you've also got to be willing to share. It's a bit bitter. Thank you for testing it out. To borrow and be inspired by the works of others. No one really talks about it, what it is to be a chef now. It's an interesting time. What's the next step? Is it expansion? Do you do TV? What do you do? Time is the only answer. Because we don't have the answers.