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Speaker 1: Welcome to From Scratch, a production of I Heart Radio. I'm Michael Rohlman. I'm a writer. I've spent the last twenty years in professional kitchens, writing about and with the world's best chefs. The great thing about the cooking life is that you never stop learning. In this show, I want to go to the edges of what I know and then go beyond together with you, with all chefs, home cooks, and everyone who cares about food and cooking. In each episode, we'll talk with one chef and one non chef about the same theme. On today's episode, we're going to be learning about preparing raw fish. Eating fish raw is my favorite way to eat fish. It's so clean, fresh, and nourishing. Frankly, I'm not a huge fan of cooked fish. Heat brings out the oils that make fish fishy. Eating it raw you get only the fish itself and the seasoning you bring to it, and the quality of fish available to us now is unparalleled in our culinary history. It's also probably the easiest way to prepare fish, a good thing because I'm not a great fish cook. In this episode, we'll discover a little bit more about preparing raw fish through the personal stories of two very special and different sources. We're going to hear from Chef Timone Blue and tour the construction of his forthcoming restaurant. Blue is an expert and probably all of the different global preparations of raw fish. He walked us through how his twenty year quest to learn countless cuisines was a mirror of his personal struggles to find his own identity. He also gives us high level tips about preparing raw fish yourself. But first, our producer Jonathan met with a valuable member of Miami's local food community, Indira, and I operate an owned short door fish market. Sure To Door Fish Market is a small shotgun style shop in the Cocoanut Grove neighborhood of Miami. Indira, along with many locals, call it the Grove. The narrow market opens up from a small door along a busy street Douglas Road, into a beautifully kept, funky, colorful shop that feels like it could be any place between Miami and Columbia. On the entire left half of the shop are polished stainless steel beds being ice down for incoming fish deliveries. On the opposite side are shelves of locally made jams and hot sauces. The walls everywhere hold pictures of beautiful boats, huge deep sea catches, and chalkboards which display the ever changing menu of fresh fish and their prices. And Deira spoke from the shop's backyard. She wore silver bracelets that occasionally clanged against the beach chair that she sat in, which was pulled up to one of her many shaded picnic tables. We wanted to learn about how to shop for great fish in your own community, but to be again, she started with her inspiration for opening the fish market in the first place. She told us that it comes from her vivid memories as a child growing up in the beach town of La Guira on the north coast of Venezuela. She always loved the conversations she would have with a local fisherman, quite honestly, talking about the weather, talking about the ties, talking about the you know how, you know what what kind of catch they got, how how awesome or how poor the catch was, things like that, Really what type of fish you caught? You know, how you're gonna cook it? Like you know, it just thinks like that. You know. It was simple, but it was but but it meant something, you know, and meant something because it was my part of my our weekend routine to go to the fisherman and be like, you know, my parents would send us to go get fish, or you know, we go to the beach and sit on the beach and the fisherman will pull up with their dinghies with the oysters and chucked the oysters or you know, things like that. You know, it was a lovely time there, for sure. One thing that Indira expresses through work at Shorter Door is her passion for presenting natural resources just as they are fresh and pristine, smelling of the sea. Modern nature to me is perfect. And you know, if I'm in the cold countries, you know areas, I'll have like peaches and I have to because I feel like that's what the vitamin is that my body requires. Weird, I know, but that's how I feel about it and and that's how I grew up. Really, for Indira, the term local is essential to her way of life, not just to work. I believe that you should eat whatever is local for your for your health. You know, like if the magazine season, that's what you should eat. If the avocado is not in a season you don't eat. But now there's like this facade about avocado. So we take all these fruits from taking off the tree before they're ready, which means to me that they're not they're not a benefits for you. Early in her life, she noticed that she wanted to get into the hospitality business. Living La Wada and on the coast and being able to go into hotels and you know, just because I lived around, I go see my friends, like old family that came to the hotels. And I remember I was like, I don't know, maybe nine ten years old, and I asked my mother, what you have to study to be in this industry with people and food and music and wine and beer, just always people in a good mood. Before the beginning Short Door in two thousand and fifteen, she spent thirty years in the hospitality business of Miami. She stayed busy, worked hard, saved her money, and traveled every summer. She became a valued local in the grove, but she was always thinking of what was still needed in her community. Every town should have certain things like a post office, a bank, a bakery, a coffee shop, a fish market, at meat shop, you know, the church, at synagogue. It just you should be the Buddhist temple. You should all be, you know, the surf shop. I mean it's, you know, silly, but that's the ideal things for me. You know, most people have a boat and go fishings, but there's other people, other people that don't have a boat, that don't get to go fishing, that don't get too So I've decided to do, say, you know what for the people that don't have a boat of fish for them. I thought, well, you know, we need a fish market. So I started looking and it so happens that I was driving around and I was like, wow, man, you know, wait, there's a fish right there. I'm gonna just knock on the door. And it was a faded fish on the on the wall. And we knocked on the door, knocked on the door, and nobody would open. And I kept going around to the hood and people asking people, Hey, you know who owns this. She eventually found the owner of the defunct fish market which preceded her, made a deal to take over the property, and within like three months, I quit my job and started doing short the door and it's as pure as you can get, and dear a personally sources all of the fish directly from fisherman that she has built relationships with over her time in the hospitality industry. She even delivers to your home, hence the name, and for her weekly routine, I drive to the keys at least once a week. Yes, they're just local fisherman from the Keys, you know, and here in the grove too. Um they go a fishing every day, rain or shine sometimes, you know. By operating a shop with such a simple philosophy of serving only local and fresh fish, she's certainly run into challenges with communicating that to new customers who simply aren't used to shopping this way for their food. Some people still want to buy what they want when they want it, even if it's frozen. I don't go to fish market thinking I'm gonna buy a piece of grouper. I go to fish market. That's what I want people to get from here. When you come here, come to get the fresh and I mean the fresh local stuff. It could be grouper, it could be mahi, could be black pinto, and I could be able to I mean, whatever it is, that's what that's what I want people to get from here. So that's it's challenging, but conversely, she loves the opportunity this presents. You teach people about new fish, Like it's not just a yellow toss snapper. You can teach people about triggerfish and uh, you know, golden talect stuff like just different types of fish. And people find it like, wow, this is a great fish, you know. So they'll call me again and be like, hey, Jed, do you do you have this fish? You know, and I have to teach him. Then hey, that was a fresh catch. You know. Some people will go with the flow and be like, Okay, what's logo, what's fresh? That's what I want. And then I'll be like this, this and this, Okay, give me a couple of pounds of days of that. Yeah, it's a little process, you know. I've only been here three years, you know, so it's a little process. We would tell you shorted doors business hours, but they're based on availability too, just like the product. The product she sells is wild. It's one of the few truly wild foods available to us. Call me anytime. If I'm not in the phone is because we're I'm out of town. If I'm not at the shop, it's because we have no fresh local seafood, and I stick by that if we're not here, it's because I don't have anything fresh. Later on, Indera and her chef generously shared with us there are expert tips on shopping for fresh fish, what's to look for, and of course, how to make a really killer cevica. Our next guest is one of Miami's rising star chefs, Timon Blue. My name is Timon Balu, chef owner of Blue Restaurant Downtown Miami and partner at Sugarcane Rob Burt Grill, Miami, Las Vegas in Brooklyn, New York. Blue earned his expertise on all things raw fish through a long and winding path, cooking nearly every major global cuisine, but his dreams of becoming a chef as a youth were nearly abandoned. He thought he'd get into the finance industry to make his family proud. Fortunately for us, that didn't last, and we'll hear about what happened when he embraced his passion for cooking. When we contacted Timone in August of two thousand nineteen, he was in the middle of construction for his forthcoming project called Blue. He found time to chat with our producer or Jonathan in between equipment deliveries and meetings with designers. We wanted to learn his convictions on preparing rough fish, but we also heard his personal journey. Actually, on Saturday mornings, I used to watch instead of cartoons, a chef by the name of Martin Yenne and his show called Yan Can Cook on PBS. Martin Yenne was one of the early TV chefs that he was crazy, enthusiastic, knowledgeable, and able to convey not only that knowledge but his passion for cooking. I love the guy. I was just mesmerized really by the way he would dice and chop using his cleaver, with the loud sounds, the way he would cook with the pans and the flame, and also his charismatic facial expressions, and also his his education of ingredients. But young Tumo always pictured chefs as someone in TV land, like Disney characters. He never internalized becoming a chef as a realistic goal. I want to make my family proud, and I was like, you know, wearing a suit and going to Wall Street with the way, so I had the idea of going into business school and finance and make my way to Wall Street. He really wanted to be a good son. He tried, but it didn't laugh. I wasn't happy with financed by still enrolled in college and I was actually interning at Smith, Barney and Sheerson when I realized that I don't know if this is for me. Then one day fate intervened, well not fate. Timon's wife, then girlfriend intervened. When she was picking up take out from their neighborhood sports bar. She insightfully decided to grab Timon a job application on her way out. She even lined up a job interview on his behalf. And then that led to me quitting school and saying, Okay, I'm gonna, you know, take a hiatus and try to follow my dream and cook and see what happens. And he loved it. It was just dropping wings and chopping rough salads, but he was hooked. However, this restaurant staffed cooks who were sort of working for beer and just getting by. He knew he wanted to climb into more firing environments, and there was a chef from a local hotel that was right next door that would come in and sit in the bar off to work in his Whitesman got a job there first day in the hotel was doing mats of Bryan omelets for a thousand people, and that's one way to get thrown the fire, never really making any omelets, never been shown omelets. I loved it, and I went from every department in that hotel and at the hotel is when I was able to be exposed to a French brigade and that this is a professional industry. And that was part of my decision making to enroll in culinary school and get a formal education. There are pros and cons of going to cooking school, the con being it's fregging expensive, but what you pay for his speed and efficiency. If you find a great program, you learn what you need to know to do the rest, and you learn it fast. And once you've got the fundamentals, you can go anywhere in the world because the fundamentals are the same in every language. To Moan shows Europe, going to Europe and working with the guys that are embedded in it's in their bloodline from the culture of growing up eating cheese and great bread and probably drinking wine at a young age. It's like they know this is probably better than anyone. After you're a blue return to Miami and landed a job with our friend, the amazing Michelle Bernstein. Just working with her exposed exposed me to everything that was one of the best kitchens. This woman was just magical. It was the first time I ever saw so many ingredients from all over the world and saw how that she was using them, and it really blew my mind. You know, God fresh Lngustein's from from Europe, you know Santa Barbara sea urchin and crazy crabs out of the West Coast, and all the uses and and just all these flavors. It was just incredible. Blue kept his forward momentum for discovering every cuisine that he could. He next landed a position at the Miami edition of La Brush Chef Sergey A. Roll was Madrid location of La Broche earned two Michelin stars and was part of the school of Spanish chefs that pushed avant garde cooking forward in new and exciting ways. And it blew my mind because I only knew French. I did not know anything that the guys were doing, not just on the technique of a foam or sphere of pulling neutral sugar and casing it in full grass. So it pursed, not just that. The thought process was the biggest thing I took away and really changed my life. And we were in the morning, going to the coffee station and having espresso, and he goes to me, do you like coffee? While I was putting my sugar out in my espresso, and I said, uh, yeah, I love I love coffee. He's like, no, you don't. I'm like why. He's like, I hate coffee and you do too, so why do you say that. He's like, you're altering the real taste. Coffee is bitter. You don't like the coffee, you like sugar. That fucking baffled me at the time. They've broken down to the pure is of salt, bitter acid texture on your tongue. It was my time where it wasn't just the worker anymore collecting data. It was how to start thinking about the data you started to collect and then hopefully eventually let that data be your voice and food. So now Blue is thinking, he's learning, he's experiencing where the fundamentals can take you. And one of those directions was East learning Japanese thinking Japanese preparations. I worked amongst the sushi steps, learning their philosophy and technique on how to treat fish. Why do they marinate some sakus or loins in in combu? What that does to it? You know? How do you treat the fish with the pristine you know? Why? It's important your knife is sharp so you can cut direct and straight through accompaniments to not overpower and realize fat content. What does changing elements of uh torching something? You know? So it started to make me think, think, think the most underrated skill in the kitchen. Blue is cooked for more than twenty years now, but he still has a student's mentality, and he repeatedly talks about new lessons as collecting data. Maybe some of his finance lessons did prove to be of use. Nonetheless, to my own has a complex identity to discover about himself, and it seems that he's been continuously exploring it through his journey through the flavors of the world and it's many cultures and the many cultures inside him. Because when I grew up, my mother used to speak UH manner into me, and I went to a Chinese preschool. But being a kid, I wanted to be so americanized, as I said, stop speaking uh, you know, speaking less and I actually forgot how to speak. My dad's Indian, my mother's makes I have black and me. I have all these cultures in me. I'm a brown dude. People don't know where the funk I'm from. In the back of my mind, I always was trying to find myself. Although Timon is working on a new concept, his existing restaurants called Sugarcane are alive and thriving, with locations in Dumbo, Brooklyn, Las Vegas, and in Midtown Miami. Of course, as he made his way inside his new space, he told us about what an important step Sugarcane has been for his personal discovery. So when I came to Miami and when that came back to South Florida doing Sugar Cane and in in in Midtown, nothing was there at the time, and it was economy was tanking, and they can buildings everywhere, high rises, you know, with cranes that were just not working, and kind of opened up in what at the time was a sketchy neighborhood. But it was about cooking chef's food and and we had to like check our egos kind of and the model change and people couldn't afford to go to find dinning. So we were just making regular food, really good, the best kind of food there is. Of course, now that Timon and his partners have set up three successful locations of Sugar Can, he was ready for a more comfortable, small scale expression of the flavors that excite him. He led us on a walking tour to explain why here is the right place for his next restaurant. We're here in downtown Miami, in the corner of you know, East Flagler and Northeast Second Avenue AH, and Flaggler is just one of the most historic streets in Miami. The downtown renaissance that's happening right now is incredible. Like every city, you have these pockets of neighborhoods that emerge, and for many years, downtown Miami kind of sat dormant, with a lot of vacancies, a lot of empty retail shops, but these old, classic architectured buildings, and no one besides a financial district South was really doing a lot here. So it's like it's such an awesome city to be in and this old feeling area is so raw. It's like one of the best canvases for young creators. So we wanted to inject ourselves here. And what we notice is this feels like downtown l A. This feels like you could be in a different in Chicago somewhere, you could be in a different city. So we have all of that romance coupled with the magic of South Florida. This is the concrete, This is the vibe. This is the real Miami. This is the area that whether people say it's next, this is the area where we should be doing. This is the street and anything that comes from the street is real. As for the restaurant itself, it's finally a line completely with Timon's identity. It's name Blue Blue, is small and cozy. It'll only have around twenty seats and somehow they planned to ff three cooks on a ten ft line. Oh and by the way, it's hidden from the street. It's down a corridor, almost hidden, like if you see in Tokyo Gero Dreams of Sushi, or if you go in New York sometimes you have to walk down into a basement and you find this magical, majexiic place and you're like, what the did I just step into. It's like taking the red or the green pill and going down in the matrix. We don't have any signage. We're not any frontage of the street. We're actually down what they call an alley or arcade of this this old ingram building. So there's a couple, you know, uh vendors to the left and right, like if there's a dental office here, the wine bars in the front. There's a gym to the left, and I'm just a little All the way down the alley, you can see my neon loose sign and you can see an exposed kitchen where I'll be cooking every day. This will probably be the first time I am doing some fusion food. But it took me twenty years to be able to do fusion, and I was hated the word for so long. So while gathering the data and cutting your teeth, I wanted to work for the best friendship or the best Spanish chef or the best Japanese chef, and I never wanted to create fusion because that was known as confusion. And it didn't take until again being forty and being an adult and not having an ego and realizing being comfortable in my skin to be able to show what I actually like and what I believe America is now. We're a global melting pot and we are all fused now again my Trinidadian roots and realizing what does that mean? And my Indian roots, what spices and flavors does that mean? And and just trying to bring the smells of my house to the city of Miami, the smells of my house bringing them They're transportable. I love that American cuisine is a mixture now. And what I love to know is that we could be of any different color. But maybe I go to your house and I'm sure you probably have a cholulas or a saracha next to the hinds ketchup and a Helman's mayo, because that is what America is now, and we all are engulfed and we're like cross bread in each other, and that's what the beauty of food is. So this will be me presenting that to you from away. The chef wants to eat it, and that's it. It's known more. Let me cook only worried about the business. Now, I'm cooking only for me, and I hope you guys enjoyed it. Coming up after the break, Condira Timone and another special guest give us their expert tips on how to shop for sashimi quality fish and how to prepare a really killer simple savica fish cooked cold in acid. During our conversation in the yard at short Door, Indira's friend and colleague, chef Carlos Sandoval joined unexpectedly and what luck Carlos and Nol I'm a chef and a culinary producer. Carlos is an accomplished chef, TV producer, kite surfer and helps out at short a door and for a short ador. He loves taking great care of the fish that Endeira sources. I'm here helping cut in the fish, using every part of the fish and none don't have any waste. It's very important is that when we receive a fish, we make sure that we have the freshest, that we cut it on the right temperature, and we use every part of the fish. For example, after I get I feel it a snapper, you know, I also get the chick bones out because you can use that for sewish. Scrape the bones and there's always a little bit of meat. Even if you're a proke cutting the fish, there's always some leftover meat that get trapped on the on the bones and you can scrap that out and then the carcass you can make an excellent soup. So it's very important to acknowledge that it's an animal that is from our earth. So we have to we have to use every part of it. If no, it's just being it's just cheating to yourself, I believe amen. He explained his tips for buying great fish for use in raw preparations. Well, first, just get a really fresh food. Important, very important. If if if the fish is not fresh, and you know, people are not handling the right you can get sick by it. You know, okay, don't make people sick. Good business practice. But how about practical tips for the home cook? How do you know when when a fish is not good? When you smell it. If you feel some spiciness or something on your throw, that means that that it's just that's not not a right fish. If it smells like fish, that means that it's not as fresh, you know. Okay, So if you feel it's sliminess through the old fish, that fish is not it's not fresh. Also in size inside where where it was are his gods, you can see if the coloration is how do you say oxidize that just means it's off color. Enzymes and spoilage, bacteria just color fish. It should look good. Your eyes should tell you, your nose should tell you that you want to eat it. And don't be afraid to question your fishmonger if it's in a case, asked to smell the fish before you buy it touch it. Even after we spoke with our three guests, funny thing happened. Even though they've each been all over the world and lead very different lives, they had all but identical tips about sevich, proof of its absolute simplicity and purity. Take it away, guys. People ask me how to make ceviche, which is very simple, very light, and people come back and they're like, man, I'm making that again, you know, like you know, that was a great recipe and it's super light, and people don't have that sense of like, oh my god, I'm stuffed. You know, given that you've already sourced great quality fish. It's just seem equality. You know, we say she seem equality because it's a universal language that it means you can eat it raw, super fresh, great source, and really you the hardest thing is to try not to mess it up when it comes to seafood. I happen to believe strongly the less the better because you're gonna get this beautiful quality ingredients and you don't want to mask all the flames season it. You're gonna take away from its true flavor, you know, which is you know the ocean right. The first thing I think about when preparing fish raw comes down to the muscle, texture, composition of the fish and how that's going the field in your mouth. I would say the best fish first is the white fish like snapper, grouper. Pumping. It needs a couple of elements, three elements, honestly, salinity, sea salt, and you're gonna salt them first. Salt It draws out water from the fish and seasons the fish. Very important. You cut them on the same size, you put on a bowl or whatever a container. The salt is gonna dehydrate all these juice, okay, but it's gonna contain they're they're okay, and you live in there for like five five minutes, five to six minutes. Make sure that all the dice are the same size because you're gonna be cooking the fish with the pH acid, the acidity of the lemon, little lime of any of these fruits that has the acidity. Acid waivers that tasty water drawn out and cooks the protein the fish. And when you add the juice, because the fish was dehydrated by the south, now the fish is gonna absorb all those liquids, you know, and it's going to be part of the fish. And then you choose if you want better or sweet. It's a choice, so maybe do both. For example, strawberries and gray fruit has a lot of sweet, you know, so if you're using a lime or lemon and then you squeeze it, like if you squeeze it too much, you start getting some really tangy flavor. You wanna balance that out. You use a gray fruit, you know, to balance. And then because the fish is so delicate and neutral, firm but gentle seasoning, then you add obviously something you know, a little bit spicy peper, halapp not too much and uh seela contro red onions. All of this is adding vibrant colors to the fish which is becoming opaque from the cold cooking of the acid. The next thing is I would say it's probably falls under category of texture because you'll see seviches or you'll see raw fish either cut dicing cubes like give you that chunky meaty mouth fuel, either marinated for short or long periods of time, changing the composition of the meat texture more than six hours of each it. And that is in all these lemon lime juices for more than six hours start losing some tender in qualities. So I would say like over that time you shouldn't you know, is it becomes a deference of each But the key first two ingredients that pair grate with fish is salinity, acid and finally, because we use lean fish for sevich in there your work fat, some olive oil, avocado, even sesame oil depending but some fat and delicately. And that said, you know, that's the basic recipe for I say each it. We make food and cooking so complicated in this country. It's not buy good fresh ingredients and prepare them simply, and there's nothing simpler than raw fish. Buying and preparing raw fish should not be intimidating. If it is, you're in the wrong place. Thanks to men and women like Indira, Timown and Carlos, you can see the simplicity of savicha and easily give it a shot today. Why not be off in a way. Well, just go to to find places like short to or around you and that in courcha and that. So we have more and more and more. Okay. So that's a sustainable business for us to to have. So we have to help help us out. Now, find the local fish, you know, go see all these signs that you're getting a good fish. Talk to a person who is selling it. Make them responsive for what they're selling you, you know. So it's a community may uh see situation, and then that's it, you know. Make sure you know that which fish our locals and talk to your fishermen. You know. I'm a meat and potatoes kind of guy. I'm born and raised in the Midwest. I don't eat a lot of fish. But taking India's and Carlos advice, I went and searched out of place near my New York City apartment in the West Village. So I have come here to the Chelsea Market at fifteenth and ninth Avenue, and I know there's a busy seafood place. You want a busy place, and I'm gonna check it out. Never bought fisher so I'm gonna check it out. So I'm looking. I'm looking for some fresh fish to make some vich with. What do you have here that you recommend? Snapper? Hell of it? Yeah? All right? Um? When did this come in every day? All right? Um? It looks good, it looks clean and pink and and right, I will take pound of red snapper please. Yeah, that's it. Thank you so much. I was impressed. I liked it. A real variety of shellfish and really Christine seafood, all nicely displayed on ice, big busy place. So you know they do a lot of volume, and that's good. So they get their fish in fresh every day, he said, And you know I was impressed. And now I'm on my way home to make some SAVICHA bottom line, whether you live on a coast or if your fish is shipped in many stories get their fish overnight it so it really is fresh. Find those places in your city, then spread the words so that those great places thrive, so that good food thrives and all will be well. Thanks again to our guests, endar a Fewness, to Moon Balue and Carlos Sandival from Scratches, produced by Jonathan Dressler. Our acutive producer is Christopher Hasiotis. Our supervising producer is Gabrielle Collins. All of the music is by Ryan Scott off his album A Freak Grows in Brooklyn. Also, I've got a new book out called From Scratch, about ten staple meals and all they can teach you about cooking. We'll have a link in the show notes, or go to Amazon or any independent bookseller. From Scratch is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 1: Welcome to From Scratch, a production of I Heart Radio. I'm Michael Rohlman. I'm a writer. I've spent the last twenty years in professional kitchens, writing about and with the world's best chefs. The great thing about the cooking life is that you never stop learning. In this show, I want to go to the edges of what I know and then go beyond together with you, with all chefs, home cooks, and everyone who cares about food and cooking. In each episode, we'll talk with one chef and one non chef about the same theme. On today's episode, we're going to be learning about preparing raw fish. Eating fish raw is my favorite way to eat fish. It's so clean, fresh, and nourishing. Frankly, I'm not a huge fan of cooked fish. Heat brings out the oils that make fish fishy. Eating it raw you get only the fish itself and the seasoning you bring to it, and the quality of fish available to us now is unparalleled in our culinary history. It's also probably the easiest way to prepare fish, a good thing because I'm not a great fish cook. In this episode, we'll discover a little bit more about preparing raw fish through the personal stories of two very special and different sources. We're going to hear from Chef Timone Blue and tour the construction of his forthcoming restaurant. Blue is an expert and probably all of the different global preparations of raw fish. He walked us through how his twenty year quest to learn countless cuisines was a mirror of his personal struggles to find his own identity. He also gives us high level tips about preparing raw fish yourself. But first, our producer Jonathan met with a valuable member of Miami's local food community, Indira, and I operate an owned short door fish market. Sure To Door Fish Market is a small shotgun style shop in the Cocoanut Grove neighborhood of Miami. Indira, along with many locals, call it the Grove. The narrow market opens up from a small door along a busy street Douglas Road, into a beautifully kept, funky, colorful shop that feels like it could be any place between Miami and Columbia. On the entire left half of the shop are polished stainless steel beds being ice down for incoming fish deliveries. On the opposite side are shelves of locally made jams and hot sauces. The walls everywhere hold pictures of beautiful boats, huge deep sea catches, and chalkboards which display the ever changing menu of fresh fish and their prices. And Deira spoke from the shop's backyard. She wore silver bracelets that occasionally clanged against the beach chair that she sat in, which was pulled up to one of her many shaded picnic tables. We wanted to learn about how to shop for great fish in your own community, but to be again, she started with her inspiration for opening the fish market in the first place. She told us that it comes from her vivid memories as a child growing up in the beach town of La Guira on the north coast of Venezuela. She always loved the conversations she would have with a local fisherman, quite honestly, talking about the weather, talking about the ties, talking about the you know how, you know what what kind of catch they got, how how awesome or how poor the catch was, things like that, Really what type of fish you caught? You know, how you're gonna cook it? Like you know, it just thinks like that. You know. It was simple, but it was but but it meant something, you know, and meant something because it was my part of my our weekend routine to go to the fisherman and be like, you know, my parents would send us to go get fish, or you know, we go to the beach and sit on the beach and the fisherman will pull up with their dinghies with the oysters and chucked the oysters or you know, things like that. You know, it was a lovely time there, for sure. One thing that Indira expresses through work at Shorter Door is her passion for presenting natural resources just as they are fresh and pristine, smelling of the sea. Modern nature to me is perfect. And you know, if I'm in the cold countries, you know areas, I'll have like peaches and I have to because I feel like that's what the vitamin is that my body requires. Weird, I know, but that's how I feel about it and and that's how I grew up. Really, for Indira, the term local is essential to her way of life, not just to work. I believe that you should eat whatever is local for your for your health. You know, like if the magazine season, that's what you should eat. If the avocado is not in a season you don't eat. But now there's like this facade about avocado. So we take all these fruits from taking off the tree before they're ready, which means to me that they're not they're not a benefits for you. Early in her life, she noticed that she wanted to get into the hospitality business. Living La Wada and on the coast and being able to go into hotels and you know, just because I lived around, I go see my friends, like old family that came to the hotels. And I remember I was like, I don't know, maybe nine ten years old, and I asked my mother, what you have to study to be in this industry with people and food and music and wine and beer, just always people in a good mood. Before the beginning Short Door in two thousand and fifteen, she spent thirty years in the hospitality business of Miami. She stayed busy, worked hard, saved her money, and traveled every summer. She became a valued local in the grove, but she was always thinking of what was still needed in her community. Every town should have certain things like a post office, a bank, a bakery, a coffee shop, a fish market, at meat shop, you know, the church, at synagogue. It just you should be the Buddhist temple. You should all be, you know, the surf shop. I mean it's, you know, silly, but that's the ideal things for me. You know, most people have a boat and go fishings, but there's other people, other people that don't have a boat, that don't get to go fishing, that don't get too So I've decided to do, say, you know what for the people that don't have a boat of fish for them. I thought, well, you know, we need a fish market. So I started looking and it so happens that I was driving around and I was like, wow, man, you know, wait, there's a fish right there. I'm gonna just knock on the door. And it was a faded fish on the on the wall. And we knocked on the door, knocked on the door, and nobody would open. And I kept going around to the hood and people asking people, Hey, you know who owns this. She eventually found the owner of the defunct fish market which preceded her, made a deal to take over the property, and within like three months, I quit my job and started doing short the door and it's as pure as you can get, and dear a personally sources all of the fish directly from fisherman that she has built relationships with over her time in the hospitality industry. She even delivers to your home, hence the name, and for her weekly routine, I drive to the keys at least once a week. Yes, they're just local fisherman from the Keys, you know, and here in the grove too. Um they go a fishing every day, rain or shine sometimes, you know. By operating a shop with such a simple philosophy of serving only local and fresh fish, she's certainly run into challenges with communicating that to new customers who simply aren't used to shopping this way for their food. Some people still want to buy what they want when they want it, even if it's frozen. I don't go to fish market thinking I'm gonna buy a piece of grouper. I go to fish market. That's what I want people to get from here. When you come here, come to get the fresh and I mean the fresh local stuff. It could be grouper, it could be mahi, could be black pinto, and I could be able to I mean, whatever it is, that's what that's what I want people to get from here. So that's it's challenging, but conversely, she loves the opportunity this presents. You teach people about new fish, Like it's not just a yellow toss snapper. You can teach people about triggerfish and uh, you know, golden talect stuff like just different types of fish. And people find it like, wow, this is a great fish, you know. So they'll call me again and be like, hey, Jed, do you do you have this fish? You know, and I have to teach him. Then hey, that was a fresh catch. You know. Some people will go with the flow and be like, Okay, what's logo, what's fresh? That's what I want. And then I'll be like this, this and this, Okay, give me a couple of pounds of days of that. Yeah, it's a little process, you know. I've only been here three years, you know, so it's a little process. We would tell you shorted doors business hours, but they're based on availability too, just like the product. The product she sells is wild. It's one of the few truly wild foods available to us. Call me anytime. If I'm not in the phone is because we're I'm out of town. If I'm not at the shop, it's because we have no fresh local seafood, and I stick by that if we're not here, it's because I don't have anything fresh. Later on, Indera and her chef generously shared with us there are expert tips on shopping for fresh fish, what's to look for, and of course, how to make a really killer cevica. Our next guest is one of Miami's rising star chefs, Timon Blue. My name is Timon Balu, chef owner of Blue Restaurant Downtown Miami and partner at Sugarcane Rob Burt Grill, Miami, Las Vegas in Brooklyn, New York. Blue earned his expertise on all things raw fish through a long and winding path, cooking nearly every major global cuisine, but his dreams of becoming a chef as a youth were nearly abandoned. He thought he'd get into the finance industry to make his family proud. Fortunately for us, that didn't last, and we'll hear about what happened when he embraced his passion for cooking. When we contacted Timone in August of two thousand nineteen, he was in the middle of construction for his forthcoming project called Blue. He found time to chat with our producer or Jonathan in between equipment deliveries and meetings with designers. We wanted to learn his convictions on preparing rough fish, but we also heard his personal journey. Actually, on Saturday mornings, I used to watch instead of cartoons, a chef by the name of Martin Yenne and his show called Yan Can Cook on PBS. Martin Yenne was one of the early TV chefs that he was crazy, enthusiastic, knowledgeable, and able to convey not only that knowledge but his passion for cooking. I love the guy. I was just mesmerized really by the way he would dice and chop using his cleaver, with the loud sounds, the way he would cook with the pans and the flame, and also his charismatic facial expressions, and also his his education of ingredients. But young Tumo always pictured chefs as someone in TV land, like Disney characters. He never internalized becoming a chef as a realistic goal. I want to make my family proud, and I was like, you know, wearing a suit and going to Wall Street with the way, so I had the idea of going into business school and finance and make my way to Wall Street. He really wanted to be a good son. He tried, but it didn't laugh. I wasn't happy with financed by still enrolled in college and I was actually interning at Smith, Barney and Sheerson when I realized that I don't know if this is for me. Then one day fate intervened, well not fate. Timon's wife, then girlfriend intervened. When she was picking up take out from their neighborhood sports bar. She insightfully decided to grab Timon a job application on her way out. She even lined up a job interview on his behalf. And then that led to me quitting school and saying, Okay, I'm gonna, you know, take a hiatus and try to follow my dream and cook and see what happens. And he loved it. It was just dropping wings and chopping rough salads, but he was hooked. However, this restaurant staffed cooks who were sort of working for beer and just getting by. He knew he wanted to climb into more firing environments, and there was a chef from a local hotel that was right next door that would come in and sit in the bar off to work in his Whitesman got a job there first day in the hotel was doing mats of Bryan omelets for a thousand people, and that's one way to get thrown the fire, never really making any omelets, never been shown omelets. I loved it, and I went from every department in that hotel and at the hotel is when I was able to be exposed to a French brigade and that this is a professional industry. And that was part of my decision making to enroll in culinary school and get a formal education. There are pros and cons of going to cooking school, the con being it's fregging expensive, but what you pay for his speed and efficiency. If you find a great program, you learn what you need to know to do the rest, and you learn it fast. And once you've got the fundamentals, you can go anywhere in the world because the fundamentals are the same in every language. To Moan shows Europe, going to Europe and working with the guys that are embedded in it's in their bloodline from the culture of growing up eating cheese and great bread and probably drinking wine at a young age. It's like they know this is probably better than anyone. After you're a blue return to Miami and landed a job with our friend, the amazing Michelle Bernstein. Just working with her exposed exposed me to everything that was one of the best kitchens. This woman was just magical. It was the first time I ever saw so many ingredients from all over the world and saw how that she was using them, and it really blew my mind. You know, God fresh Lngustein's from from Europe, you know Santa Barbara sea urchin and crazy crabs out of the West Coast, and all the uses and and just all these flavors. It was just incredible. Blue kept his forward momentum for discovering every cuisine that he could. He next landed a position at the Miami edition of La Brush Chef Sergey A. Roll was Madrid location of La Broche earned two Michelin stars and was part of the school of Spanish chefs that pushed avant garde cooking forward in new and exciting ways. And it blew my mind because I only knew French. I did not know anything that the guys were doing, not just on the technique of a foam or sphere of pulling neutral sugar and casing it in full grass. So it pursed, not just that. The thought process was the biggest thing I took away and really changed my life. And we were in the morning, going to the coffee station and having espresso, and he goes to me, do you like coffee? While I was putting my sugar out in my espresso, and I said, uh, yeah, I love I love coffee. He's like, no, you don't. I'm like why. He's like, I hate coffee and you do too, so why do you say that. He's like, you're altering the real taste. Coffee is bitter. You don't like the coffee, you like sugar. That fucking baffled me at the time. They've broken down to the pure is of salt, bitter acid texture on your tongue. It was my time where it wasn't just the worker anymore collecting data. It was how to start thinking about the data you started to collect and then hopefully eventually let that data be your voice and food. So now Blue is thinking, he's learning, he's experiencing where the fundamentals can take you. And one of those directions was East learning Japanese thinking Japanese preparations. I worked amongst the sushi steps, learning their philosophy and technique on how to treat fish. Why do they marinate some sakus or loins in in combu? What that does to it? You know? How do you treat the fish with the pristine you know? Why? It's important your knife is sharp so you can cut direct and straight through accompaniments to not overpower and realize fat content. What does changing elements of uh torching something? You know? So it started to make me think, think, think the most underrated skill in the kitchen. Blue is cooked for more than twenty years now, but he still has a student's mentality, and he repeatedly talks about new lessons as collecting data. Maybe some of his finance lessons did prove to be of use. Nonetheless, to my own has a complex identity to discover about himself, and it seems that he's been continuously exploring it through his journey through the flavors of the world and it's many cultures and the many cultures inside him. Because when I grew up, my mother used to speak UH manner into me, and I went to a Chinese preschool. But being a kid, I wanted to be so americanized, as I said, stop speaking uh, you know, speaking less and I actually forgot how to speak. My dad's Indian, my mother's makes I have black and me. I have all these cultures in me. I'm a brown dude. People don't know where the funk I'm from. In the back of my mind, I always was trying to find myself. Although Timon is working on a new concept, his existing restaurants called Sugarcane are alive and thriving, with locations in Dumbo, Brooklyn, Las Vegas, and in Midtown Miami. Of course, as he made his way inside his new space, he told us about what an important step Sugarcane has been for his personal discovery. So when I came to Miami and when that came back to South Florida doing Sugar Cane and in in in Midtown, nothing was there at the time, and it was economy was tanking, and they can buildings everywhere, high rises, you know, with cranes that were just not working, and kind of opened up in what at the time was a sketchy neighborhood. But it was about cooking chef's food and and we had to like check our egos kind of and the model change and people couldn't afford to go to find dinning. So we were just making regular food, really good, the best kind of food there is. Of course, now that Timon and his partners have set up three successful locations of Sugar Can, he was ready for a more comfortable, small scale expression of the flavors that excite him. He led us on a walking tour to explain why here is the right place for his next restaurant. We're here in downtown Miami, in the corner of you know, East Flagler and Northeast Second Avenue AH, and Flaggler is just one of the most historic streets in Miami. The downtown renaissance that's happening right now is incredible. Like every city, you have these pockets of neighborhoods that emerge, and for many years, downtown Miami kind of sat dormant, with a lot of vacancies, a lot of empty retail shops, but these old, classic architectured buildings, and no one besides a financial district South was really doing a lot here. So it's like it's such an awesome city to be in and this old feeling area is so raw. It's like one of the best canvases for young creators. So we wanted to inject ourselves here. And what we notice is this feels like downtown l A. This feels like you could be in a different in Chicago somewhere, you could be in a different city. So we have all of that romance coupled with the magic of South Florida. This is the concrete, This is the vibe. This is the real Miami. This is the area that whether people say it's next, this is the area where we should be doing. This is the street and anything that comes from the street is real. As for the restaurant itself, it's finally a line completely with Timon's identity. It's name Blue Blue, is small and cozy. It'll only have around twenty seats and somehow they planned to ff three cooks on a ten ft line. Oh and by the way, it's hidden from the street. It's down a corridor, almost hidden, like if you see in Tokyo Gero Dreams of Sushi, or if you go in New York sometimes you have to walk down into a basement and you find this magical, majexiic place and you're like, what the did I just step into. It's like taking the red or the green pill and going down in the matrix. We don't have any signage. We're not any frontage of the street. We're actually down what they call an alley or arcade of this this old ingram building. So there's a couple, you know, uh vendors to the left and right, like if there's a dental office here, the wine bars in the front. There's a gym to the left, and I'm just a little All the way down the alley, you can see my neon loose sign and you can see an exposed kitchen where I'll be cooking every day. This will probably be the first time I am doing some fusion food. But it took me twenty years to be able to do fusion, and I was hated the word for so long. So while gathering the data and cutting your teeth, I wanted to work for the best friendship or the best Spanish chef or the best Japanese chef, and I never wanted to create fusion because that was known as confusion. And it didn't take until again being forty and being an adult and not having an ego and realizing being comfortable in my skin to be able to show what I actually like and what I believe America is now. We're a global melting pot and we are all fused now again my Trinidadian roots and realizing what does that mean? And my Indian roots, what spices and flavors does that mean? And and just trying to bring the smells of my house to the city of Miami, the smells of my house bringing them They're transportable. I love that American cuisine is a mixture now. And what I love to know is that we could be of any different color. But maybe I go to your house and I'm sure you probably have a cholulas or a saracha next to the hinds ketchup and a Helman's mayo, because that is what America is now, and we all are engulfed and we're like cross bread in each other, and that's what the beauty of food is. So this will be me presenting that to you from away. The chef wants to eat it, and that's it. It's known more. Let me cook only worried about the business. Now, I'm cooking only for me, and I hope you guys enjoyed it. Coming up after the break, Condira Timone and another special guest give us their expert tips on how to shop for sashimi quality fish and how to prepare a really killer simple savica fish cooked cold in acid. During our conversation in the yard at short Door, Indira's friend and colleague, chef Carlos Sandoval joined unexpectedly and what luck Carlos and Nol I'm a chef and a culinary producer. Carlos is an accomplished chef, TV producer, kite surfer and helps out at short a door and for a short ador. He loves taking great care of the fish that Endeira sources. I'm here helping cut in the fish, using every part of the fish and none don't have any waste. It's very important is that when we receive a fish, we make sure that we have the freshest, that we cut it on the right temperature, and we use every part of the fish. For example, after I get I feel it a snapper, you know, I also get the chick bones out because you can use that for sewish. Scrape the bones and there's always a little bit of meat. Even if you're a proke cutting the fish, there's always some leftover meat that get trapped on the on the bones and you can scrap that out and then the carcass you can make an excellent soup. So it's very important to acknowledge that it's an animal that is from our earth. So we have to we have to use every part of it. If no, it's just being it's just cheating to yourself, I believe amen. He explained his tips for buying great fish for use in raw preparations. Well, first, just get a really fresh food. Important, very important. If if if the fish is not fresh, and you know, people are not handling the right you can get sick by it. You know, okay, don't make people sick. Good business practice. But how about practical tips for the home cook? How do you know when when a fish is not good? When you smell it. If you feel some spiciness or something on your throw, that means that that it's just that's not not a right fish. If it smells like fish, that means that it's not as fresh, you know. Okay, So if you feel it's sliminess through the old fish, that fish is not it's not fresh. Also in size inside where where it was are his gods, you can see if the coloration is how do you say oxidize that just means it's off color. Enzymes and spoilage, bacteria just color fish. It should look good. Your eyes should tell you, your nose should tell you that you want to eat it. And don't be afraid to question your fishmonger if it's in a case, asked to smell the fish before you buy it touch it. Even after we spoke with our three guests, funny thing happened. Even though they've each been all over the world and lead very different lives, they had all but identical tips about sevich, proof of its absolute simplicity and purity. Take it away, guys. People ask me how to make ceviche, which is very simple, very light, and people come back and they're like, man, I'm making that again, you know, like you know, that was a great recipe and it's super light, and people don't have that sense of like, oh my god, I'm stuffed. You know, given that you've already sourced great quality fish. It's just seem equality. You know, we say she seem equality because it's a universal language that it means you can eat it raw, super fresh, great source, and really you the hardest thing is to try not to mess it up when it comes to seafood. I happen to believe strongly the less the better because you're gonna get this beautiful quality ingredients and you don't want to mask all the flames season it. You're gonna take away from its true flavor, you know, which is you know the ocean right. The first thing I think about when preparing fish raw comes down to the muscle, texture, composition of the fish and how that's going the field in your mouth. I would say the best fish first is the white fish like snapper, grouper. Pumping. It needs a couple of elements, three elements, honestly, salinity, sea salt, and you're gonna salt them first. Salt It draws out water from the fish and seasons the fish. Very important. You cut them on the same size, you put on a bowl or whatever a container. The salt is gonna dehydrate all these juice, okay, but it's gonna contain they're they're okay, and you live in there for like five five minutes, five to six minutes. Make sure that all the dice are the same size because you're gonna be cooking the fish with the pH acid, the acidity of the lemon, little lime of any of these fruits that has the acidity. Acid waivers that tasty water drawn out and cooks the protein the fish. And when you add the juice, because the fish was dehydrated by the south, now the fish is gonna absorb all those liquids, you know, and it's going to be part of the fish. And then you choose if you want better or sweet. It's a choice, so maybe do both. For example, strawberries and gray fruit has a lot of sweet, you know, so if you're using a lime or lemon and then you squeeze it, like if you squeeze it too much, you start getting some really tangy flavor. You wanna balance that out. You use a gray fruit, you know, to balance. And then because the fish is so delicate and neutral, firm but gentle seasoning, then you add obviously something you know, a little bit spicy peper, halapp not too much and uh seela contro red onions. All of this is adding vibrant colors to the fish which is becoming opaque from the cold cooking of the acid. The next thing is I would say it's probably falls under category of texture because you'll see seviches or you'll see raw fish either cut dicing cubes like give you that chunky meaty mouth fuel, either marinated for short or long periods of time, changing the composition of the meat texture more than six hours of each it. And that is in all these lemon lime juices for more than six hours start losing some tender in qualities. So I would say like over that time you shouldn't you know, is it becomes a deference of each But the key first two ingredients that pair grate with fish is salinity, acid and finally, because we use lean fish for sevich in there your work fat, some olive oil, avocado, even sesame oil depending but some fat and delicately. And that said, you know, that's the basic recipe for I say each it. We make food and cooking so complicated in this country. It's not buy good fresh ingredients and prepare them simply, and there's nothing simpler than raw fish. Buying and preparing raw fish should not be intimidating. If it is, you're in the wrong place. Thanks to men and women like Indira, Timown and Carlos, you can see the simplicity of savicha and easily give it a shot today. Why not be off in a way. Well, just go to to find places like short to or around you and that in courcha and that. So we have more and more and more. Okay. So that's a sustainable business for us to to have. So we have to help help us out. Now, find the local fish, you know, go see all these signs that you're getting a good fish. Talk to a person who is selling it. Make them responsive for what they're selling you, you know. So it's a community may uh see situation, and then that's it, you know. Make sure you know that which fish our locals and talk to your fishermen. You know. I'm a meat and potatoes kind of guy. I'm born and raised in the Midwest. I don't eat a lot of fish. But taking India's and Carlos advice, I went and searched out of place near my New York City apartment in the West Village. So I have come here to the Chelsea Market at fifteenth and ninth Avenue, and I know there's a busy seafood place. You want a busy place, and I'm gonna check it out. Never bought fisher so I'm gonna check it out. So I'm looking. I'm looking for some fresh fish to make some vich with. What do you have here that you recommend? Snapper? Hell of it? Yeah? All right? Um? When did this come in every day? All right? Um? It looks good, it looks clean and pink and and right, I will take pound of red snapper please. Yeah, that's it. Thank you so much. I was impressed. I liked it. A real variety of shellfish and really Christine seafood, all nicely displayed on ice, big busy place. So you know they do a lot of volume, and that's good. So they get their fish in fresh every day, he said, And you know I was impressed. And now I'm on my way home to make some SAVICHA bottom line, whether you live on a coast or if your fish is shipped in many stories get their fish overnight it so it really is fresh. Find those places in your city, then spread the words so that those great places thrive, so that good food thrives and all will be well. Thanks again to our guests, endar a Fewness, to Moon Balue and Carlos Sandival from Scratches, produced by Jonathan Dressler. Our acutive producer is Christopher Hasiotis. Our supervising producer is Gabrielle Collins. All of the music is by Ryan Scott off his album A Freak Grows in Brooklyn. Also, I've got a new book out called From Scratch, about ten staple meals and all they can teach you about cooking. We'll have a link in the show notes, or go to Amazon or any independent bookseller. From Scratch is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
