00:00:05
Speaker 1: Welcome to From Scratch. My name is Michael Rohlman and I'm a writer. I've spent the last twenty years in professional kitchens, writing about and with the world's best chefs. From Scratch is a podcast about cooking. In each episode, we'll talk with one chef and one non chef about the same theme. 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. On today's episode, we're going to be exploring the theme of wood. We'll talk with the chef who's preparing to open a restaurant which features a wood grill at the heart of the kitchen. She'll explain her philosophy and tips for cooking with wood. Also, she'll show us a great recipe for a simple vegetable dish that you can try in your own wood fire at home. But first, we wanted to think a little bit outside the box and explore wood in its initial state before it becomes a cooking fuel. We mean trees. We wanted to learn a bit about trees. I recently read two great books about trees, A novel called The Over Story by Richard Powers and The Hidden Life of Trees, a nonfiction book by Peter Volaban. Both ask us to consider the fact that trees communicate with each other and if we listen with us. This is from the preface of Hidden Life of Trees. The most astonishing thing about trees is how social they are. The trees in a forest care for each other, sometimes even going so far as to nourish the stump of a felled tree for centuries after it was cut down, by feeding at sugars and other nutrients and so keeping it alive. Trees need to communicate, and electrical impulses are one of their many means of communication. If a giraffe starts eat in an African acacia, the tree releases a chemical into the air that signals that a threat is at a hand. As the chemical drifts through the air and reaches other trees, they smell it and are warned of the dangers. Even before the giraffe reaches them, they begin producing toxic chemicals. One reason we can't see this is that trees live on a different time scale than we do. Some trees are many thousands of years old, a hundred times our lifespan. It's just something to think about as we think about wood and cooking with wood and ever changing and powerful heat source. But first, we wanted to talk about trees generally with someone who works with them. Ian Wogan is an arborist in Miami. We contacted him because he's a leading expert in all matters having to do with trees. Wogan is a co founder of True Tree Service, a company that accomplishes many different things. Aside from climbing trees while operating chainsaws, they help out with emergency disaster relief, and they even consult with cities on how to add ecological diversity back into urban centers. And we especially wanted to hear from Ian because of a concept called stacking functions. Stacking functions is a term that comes out of the world of permaculture and essentially means to have individual elements in a system perform more than one function. Great cooks stack functions all the time without using that term, but don't worry, we'll come back to that. For Ian Wogan's work, he sees stacking functions as a necessary way to maintain the pre existing complexity of an ecosystem, and he's doing it in small, creative ways all over. For example, he plants herbs and vegetables on the rooftops of his clients, which reduces their building's energy use and of course provides a food supply. Another example, he uses the barks of specific trees as locations to plant infant orchids, which are being reintroduced into the local environment. It stacks the trees functions of shade and beauty with assisting the growth of another smaller organism. He sees each stacked function as a variable in an incalculable equation that makes up a healthy environment in a In a fully functioning ecosystem, the interactions are innumerable, are countless, So there's no way that we can save everything that these orchids do. And so therefore by losing them and by them going extinct, we have no idea what we're missing out on, or what what ecosystem function is not going to be the present anymore. To demonstrate some functions that have stacked themselves naturally over a long long time, Wigan took our producer Jonathan to the water via canoe. He wanted to examine a very peculiar looking tree. One of my favorites for its beguiling appearance, the mangrove. I think mangroves are one of my favorite trees. Mangroves take a long time to grow, for sure. I don't know how old this this stand is, but it's certainly old. We've we've done some restoration plantings and they seem to take forever. Mangroves grow with the edges of water and have a unique appearance because their roots systems begin above the water. Starting at the lower trunk. The roots shoot downward and break into pair after pair of thin arching props which make their way down into the water and beyond. It looks like the mangroves are walking on hands filled with dozens of fingers. All along the shore. Here are the prop roots. So it's these, it's these. It looks like they're almost crawling, but these these thin prop roots coming off of the trunks of the mangrove trees, and they're in these beautiful sweeping arches that that just kind of repeat themselves over and over. But what the prop roots do, because they're above the water line, they can exchange oxygen without being totally under the soil. The main reason that Wogan took to the water to visit the mangrove trees is to show them in contrast with sea walls. Sea walls are flat concrete embankments which extends several feet above the waterline to separate land from sea through modern construction technique, built after a water line has been cleared of mangroves and other plants. But just to give a little context for for where we're at, um, you know, we have this this like perfectly square squared off gray seawall to our left and all this this coastline historically would be mangrove. Well, there's a there's a few different varieties, but the red mangrove grows in salt water conditions right along the coast. They have these big aerial proper roots that allow them to breathe with the tidal fluctuations. And those hundreds of fingerlike roots which extend above the water are world class stackers of functions for starters. As Wegan mentions, they're like snoricles for the tree, allowing it to breathe. Next, because of the huge amount of surface area that the roots have, they pacify the waves that come with storms. Big waves become tiny ripples after they pass through mangrove trees. On the contrary, the cement sea walls, which have replaced the mangroves, have the opposite effect. They work as an echo chamber for waves, reverberating and causing more chaos near the edge of the water and below it. And another major function the mangrove roots systems creates safe spaces for fish nurseries. So they provide habitat for for the fisheries, for all the for all the the hatchlings and the baby fish that are being born. The mothers go up into the mangroves, lay their their eggs in the in the proper root areas, and then the and then the hatchlings have a have a protected sheltered area. Two uh, you know, to grow and to get ready for open water. Because right here where are our bow is is pointed, is basically the in between of this densely urban design philosophy. And then to the right here with the mangrove fringe, the natural ecosystem that would would otherwise exist without our influence. And the real question is not what's better, it's how to design for a combination of the two. Wigan thinks we can learn from the mangroves and apply lessons from nature much faster than the speed at which it evolved. Is the fact that we, as as these cognitive human beings, have they to study and understand and and appreciate and then replicate. So whereas the mangroves took how many hundreds of thousands of years too to develop the form that they did, we now we we can understand that form and then use it to two the benefit of our surrounding environment are built environment. But what about when something in nature was causing a negative effect? What creative stacking of functions can be done? That these trees along the coast here were introduced from Australia because they're super salt tolerant, and they the original intent was to help prevent erosion, and so they brought these what are called Australian pines, even though they're not a true conifer. They brought these Australian pines and planted them and they became a super invasive species. So invasive it's a very relative term um But basically, where we have gone in and disturbed land or populations, a lot of these species will will take over that have been introduced by us from other parts of the world, and the main issue is the fact that they they prevent the the succession of native ecosystems that have been here for many generations, thousands of years and all of the all of the relationships that exist in those native ecosystems. You might be thinking, what the heck does this have to do with cooking, Well, I'm glad you asked so. One of the things, you know, looking at looking at that as an invasive that just needs to be cut down and cartered off is is the the standard model approach. But if you look at that as a resource, there's there's such an abundance of it, and they're you know, they're looking for solutions to um to have it removed. All you do is cut it down and cart it off. You It's it's just the same it's the same thing as as the principle of stacking functions. If you can if you can create a revenue stream from that waste product versus sending it to the landfill, then you then you are maximizing the lifespan and the usability and then and then the energy cycle. We're in the front yard of a friend of Ian's named Ted, who built a clay wood burning oven on his back porch. Ian's preparing the fuel for a pizza party later in the evening. This is Australian pine. So one of the things that we were talking about is how to how to consider what what might be just an invasive species to some how to figure out incorporating resource bank into a use of the energy that's gone into the growth of these trees. So splitting this would and we're gonna burn it in a little would open for making some amazing pizza. The freshly cut Australian pine has a deep rosy pinkish color. When chopped open, it looks kind of like pulled pork when you're starting to pull it apart with two forks. This wood is so spectaculars beautiful. So this would basically dulled the saw that I was using to cut it into rounds. I mean, just just ate the chain up and this would be considered a bit wet, but once it gets going, it's incredibly hot. So my name is Ted Sante's. I'm a veterinarian live in Miami, Florida, and I love to cook at home. So I have a little wood burning oven here that we're testing out some wood today, and then I built this kind of outdoor pizza oven because we entertain a lot, so we have a lot of people over and basically pizzas like the perfect the perfect cooking event to bring people together. So so you have to have a wood burning oven, and it has to be outside because it can't be inside. So we've made this nice little uh of an outside. So this is a batch of Australian pine logs that we harvested today from a tree that was felled in Hurricane Irma two seventeen. That the Australian pine is an incredible high temperature burn that has very little sap, so it doesn't have a lot of sootiness or or smoke that that comes off of it. For me, I just needed to heat up the oven, so I need it's something that works fast, that burns nice, and that you know, is an intense heat hardwoods. Obviously you put a soft wood, which we have a lot of, it burns so quick, it just does not it doesn't heat the oven up. So this is actually a very very dense woods and it's doing a very good job at heating the oven right now. But we make our own dough um. It's actually mimicked after the famous Brooklyn Roberta pizza dough um. And we made our own little homemade sauce. Um. We're gonna do a little bit more since it's a smaller crowd, We're gonna do some more exotic. Sometimes when I cook for big crowds, you can't put the fancy ingredients where we put out some nice, fancier mushrooms. We've got our house special, which is our kale, pepper and lemon pizza, and then we have a little bit of a fresh arugula to top off, so it would be a simple menu. Think so far it's working really well. Australian pine is an invasive species, so I would love to see it all gone and and when not have Australian pine to use. But in the meantime, I think it's a great thing to use instead of using hardwoods from other places in the country. For a chef guest. In this episode, I was lucky to sit down in conversation with Suzanne Cups. She's preparing to open a new restaurant called to thirty two Bleaker in Manhattan, which will feature a wood fired grill at the center of its kitchen. We talked about cooking with wood, menu development, and even how home cooks can stack functions in their own kitchens to reduce waste and increase verie to be with their food. But first, I always want to know how chef's got started. Most have always had an affinity for cooking, or at least an interested food from an early age. Suzanne showed an astonishing lack of natural acumen in the kitchen and one of my first memories of cooking was we would make like for lunch, like tuna fish salad um. And one time I was old enough to use the stove. I'm not sure how old that was, but my sister said, hey, Mom and I are going out, can you go ahead and harriboled eggs for the tuna salad um? So I did it, and when they got home, um, my mom went, my mom and sister went to make the tuna fish and crack the eggs and they were completely raw, and they're like, what what did you do? Did you why didn't you horribled eggs? And I was like I did, and they're like, what did you do? I said, I, well, I took the eggs. I put them in a pot of water, and I put them in the sink and I ran cold water over him, because that's what I always saw my mom do. At the end, I just didn't realize that had to boil first. Suzanne, raised in South Carolina, moved to New York in or early twenties and landed a job in the HR department of the famous Waldorf Astoria hotel. I didn't really understand what the hospitality business was until I went to that hotel, and then I started realizing, like, oh, this is really interesting. This is just how it is in the South. You know, you're welcoming, you smile at people, you want to make sure everybody feels comfortable whatever it is UM. And so I really got interested in like that idea of hotels UM and hospitality UM. And part way through my time there, they needed some help in the steakhouse, the Boulomare Steakhouse, and so along with my normal HR job, I started kind of working a couple of nights a week in the steakhouse and more of like maitre d type of work welcoming people UM. But it didn't take long before the kitchen called to her, specifically one at the Institute of Culinary Education in Lower Manhattan, a culinary school usually referred to as I had a friend who was a co worker at the Wald Earth and she um started going to ICE for some recreational classes. And she would bring into the office all these cakes and um cookies and elaborate desserts that she made, and I was amazed. You know, it was a little fancier than what I was used to eating, and I was amazed. I didn't really know anything about the cooking school, UM in general, and so she started telling me about it, and then, UM, once something like that happens, I just, you know, can't stop thinking about it, and ended up going to see the school. And once I saw the kitchens at ICE, and that's when I was on twenty Street, I was just kind of hooked. After six years of cooking experience under chef Anita Low at Anissa, Suzanne found herself stoking the wood fire at a long time favorite restaurant of mine, the Grammarcy Tavern. So I started on the tavern woodburn and grill. Uh. It was so hard. It's uh, it's very busy for twooks out there. So if you were the sioux chef, or if someone had to step in and help you step in between the two cooks, which is not a lot of room, and you're standing directly in front of the fire. So there's a door that kind of separates the fire that you have to open to feed it. And when a lot of times if you're if you know how to work with fire, you have to have a lot of oxygen, so sometimes you have to keep that door open. So if you're in if you're the six chef in the middle, and it's busy and you're plating and you're in front of that fire, it gets pretty hot. Yeah, you're pretty much medium. Well sure, Um, what do you like about cooking over wood over flame? I mean, what I love about it is it's alive. You know, it's always changing, You're really engaged in the cooking. What do you like about cooking with fire? I think there's a bunch one of this is just what you said. I think it is an engaging experience. It's um, It's number one. It's the taste of it. You know, food over a wood burning grill is, if it's done right, is super delicious. Um. And then I I love the what it brings to a restaurant. I love the openness because you know Woodbritain girls, they're not down in the basement or in the back, They're right out in front of the gas. And I like that. It's a it's a experience that you can have along with the gas that come into the restaurant. So I think that that, um, that idea of cooking and being next to the people you're cooking for is a really special thing. I think the fun part about grilling it is a little trial and error, Like you have to be able to say, Okay, today, I'm going to cook the chips and I'm gonna see how this state comes out, and tomorrow I'm gonna do it with that and kind of see how it acts people cooking at home. What what should they what should they keep in mind when they're choosing what to put over live flames versus a uniform heat of a gas or electric range. One thing I think you wanna uh think about is the cut of what you're buying. So for example, you may wanna if you if you like fish and you're cooking in a pan over gas burners, something like trout is great. Um, it's thin it's quick to cook. You can get like a crispy skin on it really easily. Now, if you have a home grill, your grill um number one, your fish might stick a little bit more to the grill. So thinking about UM, how do you treat it? You are you doing skin on? Are you taking that skin off? Maybe it might be an easier way UM picking a thicker fish. Like I really love um arctic char um, which for anybody who hasn't had, is a lot like a salmon um. I I like it because I feel like it doesn't dry out. It the same as salmon um. But salmon arctic char um kind of a thicker like a shripe bass could work really well on a grill. So also um being able to create some flavor something that's really thin. If you put it on the grill um and you keep it on for too long, it's really thin, it's gonna overcook. So I think when you have a little bit thicker piece of meat or fish, it's it's a little easier to get the correct temperature that you want UM and getting some flavor into it. That's that's really interesting. Talk about the variations and the differences in the levels yeah, I think the the it's it's important. I think you want to create, um, your hot spots. So again, if you're you're grilling a chicken, you we want that brownness, you want that crispy skin. Um. But if you're doing head of cauliflower, I don't know that I want that coming in in flames and sit all over it. I think you want you want to enhance the flavor of the vegetable without masking it. Especially fish too. I think I love grilled grilled fish. Um. But if the fish just tastes like grill, if the fish is delicate, you have to be able to have yeah, you know, building, whether it's different levels or different spots on the grill for items. Well, also you have you can think of cooking time. Chicken and cauliflower take a long time. Fish takes a short amount of time, right, So so you have to manage your you know, indirect heat and direct heat. Use indirect heat in the oh yeah lots. Yeah, I think indirect heat is one of the most interesting and even things like um like even more direct such as cooking in the embers. Um. I'm excited about doing that. And a lot of vegetable dishes that either get cooked right before service in the embers or something that gets finished in the embers. Is really interesting to me that that heat is outstanding. Yeah. So in the in the bottom of the fire where you're collecting all the ash, um, it's just a really it's not quite the same heat as above it above the grill. So cooking in the embers um all the ash that's produced by the fire gives it really mellow, nice heat. You have to you have to protect the food. So a lot of times, um, I'll wrap something in foil or double foil. Um. But another way is if you have like a heavy cast iron pot, that's great to kind of just put down there or um, it doesn't burn in the same way if as if you have it up top. So a lot of times you can keep something in there for two hours without it getting scorched because you're not cooking with flame. You're just cooking with the heat of the embers. Right. And another one of my favorite things to do is like turnups and cole robbie um to do those in the embers of the grill, because they get sweet and they get you know, just really they take on a different taste. Will you put them in the ash, I will, but I like to wrap them so like for something like Cole Robbie. Um, you can do it many different ways, but I actually like to peel it, toss it with a little olive oil and salt, wrap it in foil. So it's just kind of creating a little pouch. So it's halfway steams to So can you taste the Can you taste the fire? Oh? Yeah, and it's it's about the fire, but it's also about um, like converting them in their their sugars too, and the sweetness that comes out of them when you cook it like that. It's much different than if you're doing it in a regular oven or blanching it or you know, would you do you have the need to part cook something before you brill it, definitely? I think um that's part of the key of why restaurant food taste so good and people try to replicate at home sometimes miss that stab. Just to be clear, part of cooking means cooking something part way in advance, and when it comes time to serve, cooking it the rest of the way, often with a different technique like boiling and shocking something before grilling it, like for qualifier. I I steam it first almost always. Um, so it's completely done no, Um, like halfway done yeah. Um. I think when you do that, then you get the inside cooked perfectly. And then what you're doing, um to order right when the guest guest once it is is charring it. So it's the flavor. So I think, Um, that's a big technique that restaurants use is if you're cooking from from raw vegetables. Um, it depends how you cut it. If you cut it thin, no problem. Um. But to get the timing right and to get the taste right, it's really halfway cooked. Um. One thing I love is that I'll definitely do is grilled carrots. Um. But again for me carrots, um, I love roasting them first, so that act of roasting them changes the texture and the taste, and then putting them on the grill, rolling them on the grill at the end is what makes them really special. UM. Let's talk about the wood itself. Does it matter and what kind of would do you use? What do you prefer, what do you what's best, what's acceptable? I think would the type of wood does matter? Um. However, I would say anybody grilling on true root wood. It doesn't matter, So it doesn't it doesn't matter. I think for a restaurant it does. UM. At home, I would be excited to kind of use whatever whatever is around UM. But for when I cooked, when I was telling you, these were just lugs like you get for your fireplace, is that kind of what just hard whatever hard wood it was, And I think that's fine. UM. I think it's for me. It's a little bit more how you use the fire than it is what type of wood. UM. But having said that, I'm really I'm actually researching in the middle of deciding what, um, what would I want to use for two thirty two. I've used white oak before, a Gramercy UM, and that's a great wood. I think it's um. It creates flavor, but not overpowering flavor. So UM. But I've been I've been kind of picking everybody's brain and talking to UM chefs all over to see what what kind of wood that they use. UM. I'm I'm learning more people are going with things that are like apple wood or um peach wood. Yeahforts yeah. I think again the idea that you want something that helps to flavor food but not overpower it is really the key One way that great chefs like Susanne Cups are stacking functions around their wood fire grills is by looking past the most traditional ingredients for grilling. A lot of times people associate grill with with big meats like steak, pork, things like that, sausages and yeah, great, we're gonna be doing that too. But what I love is is to be able to um, to showcase vegetables, seasonal and local vegetables, um over a wood burning grill. Um. Again, that's not a new concept by any means, but I think, um, it's not done as much as as such as steaks or fish on a grill. Like what kind of vegetables everything? Uh of cauliflower or um, maybe not a whole head, but um, I'm working on like a quarterhead of cauliflower. Um. This. There's this vegetable that Norwich Meadows um uh started growing. I think last year might have been his first year, called Georgia Banana roasting squash. And it's this giant squash. It's uh maybe three ft long, um, really heavy. Uh. And when the farmer is a first brought it to me, I was like, this tastes good. I don't know about this one. You know, you always see those like decorative gourds that you know are UM and it is super delicious. So I'm I'm excited about UM. You know, all the nuance, all the diversity of of vegetables being cooked over that grill. I think it UM. My point is to make vegetables taste delicious, not to force them on people. UM. And so I think that we're going to make some really tasty vegetables over that grill. Part of what I've been doing for the past a few years is really leaning into what are the right cooking techniques for vegetables and and how do I have less manipulation because these farmers that we work with grow delicious organic vegetables, So I don't want to puree and shop all of them. I want them to look like what the vegetable is. Suzanne's expertise with wood fired grilling will be center stage at a brand new restaurant in Greenwich Village. So the restaurant is called two thirty two Bleaker, very easy to find since it's a also the address. So the restaurant will be neighborhood UH facialist casual. UM. It'll be again open kitchen with the woodburnning grill will do some homie pasta's a well, and it'll really be it'll feel like New York. It'll feel like the seasons. Again. I'm super excited about having that wood and fire in the wintertime. I think, you know, for us, I guess I'm a New Yorker now in your seventeen years, which is crazy. Um, but in the winter, like, where do you want to go if you're if you're getting out of your warm apartment, you want to go somewhere that feels cozy, that feels more and that fire relay will help. Um, But it's it's gonna be a fun space. It's going to be a place that you can, um, you can come and you can meet a friend that you haven't seen in a while, or to be a place that you can come once a week. And that's the type of food that I want to cook is something that is feels interesting and feels new, and they're you're always discovering, you know, slightly different flavors, but it's not something that is unrecognizable. When you read the menu, you'll say, oh, this sounds good, I like this, I know this, or maybe this I haven't had it this way, you know, so hopefully it's a place that UM does food feels a little bit straightforward, UM, but maybe a little bit different than maybe you might cook it at home. When I explained to Suzanne the concept of stacking functions, she agreed that this is something that great chefs have always had to do. She offered some of her favorite ways to multiply the effectiveness of the resources that you put into your home cooking. The best way to cook at home is to think not just in terms of one meal, but think for like three meals. And I think the less waste that way, because a lot of times you cook one dish and you know, you get tired of eating it after the second or third day, or maybe the first day. UM. And so to be able to whether it's chicken and you know, cutting out your bones first and using those in the stock, or whether it's grilling that chicken breast one day and then everything that you don't UM eat you get chopped up and put in a pasta the next day. I think those are those are definitely UM a lot of what you want to think about when you go to the grocery store. And for those that plan ahead, one great tool at your disposal is a freezer. I am a big advocate for using the freezer. I think people, um, people feel like, oh, when it goes in the freezer, it gets frost and it goes to die. But um, but the reality is when you make something and you freeze it that first day that you make it, it's delicious. You take it out sometimes three weeks a month later, Um, it's it's great, whether it's a soup or a stock or um or even just a cook chicken breast. A lot of times, um, that's the best way. Not if you leave it in your fridge for three days and then you decide to freeze it, it's not going to taste the same. Well. There is a New Yorker cartoon I saw recently. It's two suburban, middle aged women in a kitchen and one saying the other should I throw this out now? Or should I put it in the freezer first? That's yeah, that's true. What's your recommendation for people not abandoning their food to thee I think you have to. Again, you have to have it in mind when you first buy that food, when you first bring it into your kitchen, if you if it's an afterthought. It's not gonna get eaten, it's gonna it's gonna turn in your fridge, or it's gonna be, you know, be an afterthought and put in your freezer and again like you're just gonna leave it. So I think, um, you know the idea of right now, it's grape season in New York, there's like delicious concord grapes, Mars grapes, all all different kinds, and I want to use those, but the restaurant I'm opening isn't opening in the next three weeks. So um, what I'm thinking of is is creating like a roasted grape sauce and roasting them with time and shallots and and maybe a little rosemary and and making a delicious sauce. Putting it in the right size containers. I think that's part of it. Is if you put it in a giant container that you know, you're like, oh, I don't really need a whole court of this. I'm not going to pull this out now. But if you if you freeze things in like cup container sizes, it's very easy to pull out. Um, you know, at Thanksgiving when you're like I'm tired of cranberry sauce. Oh, but I have this really delicious concord grapesauce that I made a month ago. So I think it's just um. You have to be thoughtful and what self respecting cook doesn't love pickling vegetables, putting food up, as we used to say, preserving food, being the keepers of the food. In my cooking, I use so many, um, different types of pickles. And it's not your standard dill pickle like everybody thinks it's. Um. It's really like, right now is the kind of the end of pepper season or sweet peppers, um, But they're so great and so just creating a very very simple vinegar water maybe a little sugar honey based pickle. Um, it's something as long as it's submerged, you can keep in your refrigerator for a year. Um. So thinking about that and it really again adds to your cooking. I love pickled peppers and winter squash. Um. But the pickled peppers aren't around when the squash is out. So being able to pull that out and have a little arder for yourself really, you know, make some delicious meals for the winter. My takeaway from hearing both Ian Wogan and Suzanne cups Is this systems are complex and need all the support and creativity they can get. Whether it's a major ecological center or your own home kitchen, both can benefit from the concept of stacking functions. And we don't expect you to know how to wake up tomorrow and plant orchids on the barks of forty foot trees or reinstall mangroves on coastlines in your area, but thinking about stacking functions can help you today. With your own kitchen. You can think ahead about methods that multiply the effectiveness of your resources. You can brainstorm new practices that reduce your own waste, whether from food or other cooking materials. You can even start caring for a cast iron pan. They could stay in your family for a century, like a great tree. When we come back, we're making grilled jerked carrots with Chef Suzanne cups h. How would you recommend people at home do this? They're gonna hear as soon as say I want to. That sounds good. I want to grill carrots. I think it's so easy to do do at home. I'm just finishing up, but entitled now this is the next weeks my last week. UM yeah, and we're doing a jerk carrot. Um. So we're making kind of like a jerk marinade. And so we we pre roast the carrots before service, and then during dinner, Um, when someone orders, we we brushed them with a little the jerk sauce, throw them on the grill, so it gets a little bit of like how you would imagine jerk chicken. Uh, and then a little bit more when they come off super delicious. Love that idea. So we've come to untitled where she is executive chef, is her very last day before she heads over to her new venture on Deco Street, and we're gonna talk to her about and watch her cook jerked carrots. So um, the inspiration is definitely UM, I really love to cook uh flavors from over the world. So even though we try to highlight um local seasonal ingredients and especially vegetables in this recipe, UM I want to, I don't want it to. I'll just be from New York, the flavors of the U s and and not just the Northeast. So UM, I love kind of making a play on this on this sauce very traditional and that it's got ginger and hallapeno and garlic and all spice and nutmeg and clove, all those kind of traditional seasonings. Um, but we're we're adding our own twist on it with seasonal peppers also. Um. And in the type of food I cook, I I don't love anything that's nuclear, uh, and so I don't want anything that's that's overwhelming and flavor. So I love the jerk flay or without without all the spice. Yeah. Um. So we make the marinated and then we roast the carrots, and then we put it all together, so it doesn't have that, um, same taste of you know, the chicken mean cooked over a grill with the jerk for hours. Um. But I think you'll still uh, you'll you'll still find some really fun flavors that you know, and jerk beautiful. Let's let's do it. So all I do is, uh, take the carrots lightly, scrub them. I love the skin is good, flavor, the color is beautiful. There's no reason really to peel it. So we scrub them, toss him in olive oil and salt, and bake him in an oven if you're doing it at home, four or fifty until they're they're tender. And that's that's the other key. You want to stick a knife in them. Make sure it's cooked, not mushy, but but the whole way through. So they could in your home level. Depending on the size of the carrot, it could take thirty minutes. It could most likely take more more like forty five minutes. They look thoroughly cooked, they looked if the carrots are beautifully caramelized. And then really all it is is throwing them on the grill. I like to do it dry first, um, and then start adding that that kind of lacker of the jerk sauce. D you put it on before you put on? Yeah, on a saucet, Just get it on, start getting some char on it. I don't even put any I've already roasted them with olive oil, so I don't need any olive oil or salt to start. Um. I just want that that uh grill, that flavor of the grill, and then starting to get that that um jerk sauce kind of worked in there. Did you want to cook that jerk sauce too? Yeah, so there are are are jerk sauce. We we do cook it beforehand and before we blend it. So that all the all the ginger and garlic and spices are already roasted out, so we predo it. Of of course, we're in a restaurant, so we're doing things to order. Um. If you're at home, yeah, you could totally cook it. The only thing is you don't want to overcook. Your carrots are already fully cooked, so really you're warming them in the jerk sauce. Beautiful, Yeah, just describe what you're doing. So I'm gonna get a kind of medium to high heat. Again, the idea that the carrots are already cooked, um, and I just want that flavor and some char on them. So I'm putting them all on the grill first, and I'm gonna take a paint brush and my jerk sauces. Um, it has a little body to it. It's not too thin, and it's gonna stick right on that carrot and I'm just gonna lightly brush them. Again. It depends, Uh, it depends your flavor profile. If you like it spicy, put some hobbing euros in. We we use something a little less spicy, like New mex peppers or um or like habanada, which is a local type of pepper that is has the same floral flavors as having euro but without the spice, which is awesome for me. Um. So, I'm gonna roll the carrots as they're cooking. So the top side I had seasoned with the jerk, now that's going to be on the bottom against the grill, and I'm just gonn roll them over and continue season. It depends on how your grill is. Um, these should be done and what size your carrots are. These should be done in five minutes or less. You could do this with any vegetables. An egg plant. It's a great I love with eggplant. I love doing a mi so honey, so me so honey, a little rice spun, vinegar or lemon or something to brighten it up. That that's a perfect analogy. Um. And it's the same thing. You brush it because you want to create that flavor flavor and like layers, you don't want to just put it on the top like you're saucing a dish. Um. You want to to kind of cook into and vegetables like you know, they got a lot of water content and they they'll absorb the flavor if you if you um do it layer by labor, layer and you season it as you go. So I'm gonna turn over those carrots one more time, and you can see they're already starting to get that nice char again. I don't wanna. I'm you could say they're they're getting blackened a little bit, but I'm not going for burnt carrots. I really just want some of that grill and to to create that flavor of the jerk and you and you can still see the carrots through. It is not a thick sauce. Um, it's more for a flavor. The other key to this is whenever you're cooking vegetables like this, when they're hot, is when you want to finish seat your seasoning. So um, when they're so warm, I'm going to brush them with one more time with the jerk. I had originally salted them when I cooked them the first time, but they need a little finishing salt. I just used kosher salt, but you could use you know, whatever, your favorite malden or whatever. Um. And then Mikey always a little lemon juice, lemon line something like that, whatever you have at home. It just needs acid. It gets heavy if you don't add that. And then when I'm putting them on a plate um. I made another sauce. So the idea where when you have jerk, sometimes it's a little spicy, it's a little as a depth of flavor. I love to balance it with something that's fresh. So we made a cucumber mint sauce, super easy. You put whole cucumbers in a blender, um with h some blanched so cook, cook that mint just for a second, and then a little tofu. So the tofu adds some you can't taste it. She doesn't make it taste Asian or anything like that. Somebody it's it's not watery, not too thin. And I put a little olive oil as well, just for a mouth feels it makes a nice, fresh, bright sauce. And then again like the idea that carrots are delicious. But I'm in a restaurant. I wanna i wanna make it really interesting for the guests. So I've got those marinated cucumbers. We're using Persians, but you can use um, you know, any kind of more fresh maybe not a pickled, fully pickled cucumber. Again, it's all about how your dish looks when when it gets to the table. You want to be pleasing to the eye. So we've got these multicolored carrots, shaves um and then uh, to finish it, one of my favorite things is um candied ginger, So make it an house. We just take ginger, we slice it and cut it really thin and julienne to cook it down in a little simple syrup and then we fry it and then that I think that adds to what the flavors of jerk normally are. What's a gorgeous plate that you You've got this beautiful bright green a sauce beneath the cucumber mint sauce, and then we've got the main item, the carrots um that are beautifully sauced, and we've got the big curls of fresh carrots. We've got some lightly lightly dressed cucumbers and some beautiful candy ginger for more flavor and crunch. Looks like a beautiful vegetable dinner. Great. This is very versatile. You can do eggplant. You can also do a fish like this if you if you um, we're using blackfish right now, stripe bass, whatever you want to grill you can still you can brush that jerk sauce right on it. Um and you can do carrots in fish you know, it doesn't have to be just a vegetable dish. I think it works. Um works great in that way, too, Beautiful Chef, thank you so much, really appreciate it. Thanks for stopping in. Special thanks to our guests Chef Suzanne Cups and arborus Ian Wogan. You can find links for more information about their work on our show. Notes. From Scratch is produced by Jonathan Dress. Our executive producer is Christopher Hasiotis are supervising producer is Gabrielle Collins. All of the music on From Scratches 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 My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Rose here and Well has been here, Gotta Smile form with me as a man, Henry only want my mo Everything's only
Speaker 1: Welcome to From Scratch. My name is Michael Rohlman and I'm a writer. I've spent the last twenty years in professional kitchens, writing about and with the world's best chefs. From Scratch is a podcast about cooking. In each episode, we'll talk with one chef and one non chef about the same theme. 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. On today's episode, we're going to be exploring the theme of wood. We'll talk with the chef who's preparing to open a restaurant which features a wood grill at the heart of the kitchen. She'll explain her philosophy and tips for cooking with wood. Also, she'll show us a great recipe for a simple vegetable dish that you can try in your own wood fire at home. But first, we wanted to think a little bit outside the box and explore wood in its initial state before it becomes a cooking fuel. We mean trees. We wanted to learn a bit about trees. I recently read two great books about trees, A novel called The Over Story by Richard Powers and The Hidden Life of Trees, a nonfiction book by Peter Volaban. Both ask us to consider the fact that trees communicate with each other and if we listen with us. This is from the preface of Hidden Life of Trees. The most astonishing thing about trees is how social they are. The trees in a forest care for each other, sometimes even going so far as to nourish the stump of a felled tree for centuries after it was cut down, by feeding at sugars and other nutrients and so keeping it alive. Trees need to communicate, and electrical impulses are one of their many means of communication. If a giraffe starts eat in an African acacia, the tree releases a chemical into the air that signals that a threat is at a hand. As the chemical drifts through the air and reaches other trees, they smell it and are warned of the dangers. Even before the giraffe reaches them, they begin producing toxic chemicals. One reason we can't see this is that trees live on a different time scale than we do. Some trees are many thousands of years old, a hundred times our lifespan. It's just something to think about as we think about wood and cooking with wood and ever changing and powerful heat source. But first, we wanted to talk about trees generally with someone who works with them. Ian Wogan is an arborist in Miami. We contacted him because he's a leading expert in all matters having to do with trees. Wogan is a co founder of True Tree Service, a company that accomplishes many different things. Aside from climbing trees while operating chainsaws, they help out with emergency disaster relief, and they even consult with cities on how to add ecological diversity back into urban centers. And we especially wanted to hear from Ian because of a concept called stacking functions. Stacking functions is a term that comes out of the world of permaculture and essentially means to have individual elements in a system perform more than one function. Great cooks stack functions all the time without using that term, but don't worry, we'll come back to that. For Ian Wogan's work, he sees stacking functions as a necessary way to maintain the pre existing complexity of an ecosystem, and he's doing it in small, creative ways all over. For example, he plants herbs and vegetables on the rooftops of his clients, which reduces their building's energy use and of course provides a food supply. Another example, he uses the barks of specific trees as locations to plant infant orchids, which are being reintroduced into the local environment. It stacks the trees functions of shade and beauty with assisting the growth of another smaller organism. He sees each stacked function as a variable in an incalculable equation that makes up a healthy environment in a In a fully functioning ecosystem, the interactions are innumerable, are countless, So there's no way that we can save everything that these orchids do. And so therefore by losing them and by them going extinct, we have no idea what we're missing out on, or what what ecosystem function is not going to be the present anymore. To demonstrate some functions that have stacked themselves naturally over a long long time, Wigan took our producer Jonathan to the water via canoe. He wanted to examine a very peculiar looking tree. One of my favorites for its beguiling appearance, the mangrove. I think mangroves are one of my favorite trees. Mangroves take a long time to grow, for sure. I don't know how old this this stand is, but it's certainly old. We've we've done some restoration plantings and they seem to take forever. Mangroves grow with the edges of water and have a unique appearance because their roots systems begin above the water. Starting at the lower trunk. The roots shoot downward and break into pair after pair of thin arching props which make their way down into the water and beyond. It looks like the mangroves are walking on hands filled with dozens of fingers. All along the shore. Here are the prop roots. So it's these, it's these. It looks like they're almost crawling, but these these thin prop roots coming off of the trunks of the mangrove trees, and they're in these beautiful sweeping arches that that just kind of repeat themselves over and over. But what the prop roots do, because they're above the water line, they can exchange oxygen without being totally under the soil. The main reason that Wogan took to the water to visit the mangrove trees is to show them in contrast with sea walls. Sea walls are flat concrete embankments which extends several feet above the waterline to separate land from sea through modern construction technique, built after a water line has been cleared of mangroves and other plants. But just to give a little context for for where we're at, um, you know, we have this this like perfectly square squared off gray seawall to our left and all this this coastline historically would be mangrove. Well, there's a there's a few different varieties, but the red mangrove grows in salt water conditions right along the coast. They have these big aerial proper roots that allow them to breathe with the tidal fluctuations. And those hundreds of fingerlike roots which extend above the water are world class stackers of functions for starters. As Wegan mentions, they're like snoricles for the tree, allowing it to breathe. Next, because of the huge amount of surface area that the roots have, they pacify the waves that come with storms. Big waves become tiny ripples after they pass through mangrove trees. On the contrary, the cement sea walls, which have replaced the mangroves, have the opposite effect. They work as an echo chamber for waves, reverberating and causing more chaos near the edge of the water and below it. And another major function the mangrove roots systems creates safe spaces for fish nurseries. So they provide habitat for for the fisheries, for all the for all the the hatchlings and the baby fish that are being born. The mothers go up into the mangroves, lay their their eggs in the in the proper root areas, and then the and then the hatchlings have a have a protected sheltered area. Two uh, you know, to grow and to get ready for open water. Because right here where are our bow is is pointed, is basically the in between of this densely urban design philosophy. And then to the right here with the mangrove fringe, the natural ecosystem that would would otherwise exist without our influence. And the real question is not what's better, it's how to design for a combination of the two. Wigan thinks we can learn from the mangroves and apply lessons from nature much faster than the speed at which it evolved. Is the fact that we, as as these cognitive human beings, have they to study and understand and and appreciate and then replicate. So whereas the mangroves took how many hundreds of thousands of years too to develop the form that they did, we now we we can understand that form and then use it to two the benefit of our surrounding environment are built environment. But what about when something in nature was causing a negative effect? What creative stacking of functions can be done? That these trees along the coast here were introduced from Australia because they're super salt tolerant, and they the original intent was to help prevent erosion, and so they brought these what are called Australian pines, even though they're not a true conifer. They brought these Australian pines and planted them and they became a super invasive species. So invasive it's a very relative term um But basically, where we have gone in and disturbed land or populations, a lot of these species will will take over that have been introduced by us from other parts of the world, and the main issue is the fact that they they prevent the the succession of native ecosystems that have been here for many generations, thousands of years and all of the all of the relationships that exist in those native ecosystems. You might be thinking, what the heck does this have to do with cooking, Well, I'm glad you asked so. One of the things, you know, looking at looking at that as an invasive that just needs to be cut down and cartered off is is the the standard model approach. But if you look at that as a resource, there's there's such an abundance of it, and they're you know, they're looking for solutions to um to have it removed. All you do is cut it down and cart it off. You It's it's just the same it's the same thing as as the principle of stacking functions. If you can if you can create a revenue stream from that waste product versus sending it to the landfill, then you then you are maximizing the lifespan and the usability and then and then the energy cycle. We're in the front yard of a friend of Ian's named Ted, who built a clay wood burning oven on his back porch. Ian's preparing the fuel for a pizza party later in the evening. This is Australian pine. So one of the things that we were talking about is how to how to consider what what might be just an invasive species to some how to figure out incorporating resource bank into a use of the energy that's gone into the growth of these trees. So splitting this would and we're gonna burn it in a little would open for making some amazing pizza. The freshly cut Australian pine has a deep rosy pinkish color. When chopped open, it looks kind of like pulled pork when you're starting to pull it apart with two forks. This wood is so spectaculars beautiful. So this would basically dulled the saw that I was using to cut it into rounds. I mean, just just ate the chain up and this would be considered a bit wet, but once it gets going, it's incredibly hot. So my name is Ted Sante's. I'm a veterinarian live in Miami, Florida, and I love to cook at home. So I have a little wood burning oven here that we're testing out some wood today, and then I built this kind of outdoor pizza oven because we entertain a lot, so we have a lot of people over and basically pizzas like the perfect the perfect cooking event to bring people together. So so you have to have a wood burning oven, and it has to be outside because it can't be inside. So we've made this nice little uh of an outside. So this is a batch of Australian pine logs that we harvested today from a tree that was felled in Hurricane Irma two seventeen. That the Australian pine is an incredible high temperature burn that has very little sap, so it doesn't have a lot of sootiness or or smoke that that comes off of it. For me, I just needed to heat up the oven, so I need it's something that works fast, that burns nice, and that you know, is an intense heat hardwoods. Obviously you put a soft wood, which we have a lot of, it burns so quick, it just does not it doesn't heat the oven up. So this is actually a very very dense woods and it's doing a very good job at heating the oven right now. But we make our own dough um. It's actually mimicked after the famous Brooklyn Roberta pizza dough um. And we made our own little homemade sauce. Um. We're gonna do a little bit more since it's a smaller crowd, We're gonna do some more exotic. Sometimes when I cook for big crowds, you can't put the fancy ingredients where we put out some nice, fancier mushrooms. We've got our house special, which is our kale, pepper and lemon pizza, and then we have a little bit of a fresh arugula to top off, so it would be a simple menu. Think so far it's working really well. Australian pine is an invasive species, so I would love to see it all gone and and when not have Australian pine to use. But in the meantime, I think it's a great thing to use instead of using hardwoods from other places in the country. For a chef guest. In this episode, I was lucky to sit down in conversation with Suzanne Cups. She's preparing to open a new restaurant called to thirty two Bleaker in Manhattan, which will feature a wood fired grill at the center of its kitchen. We talked about cooking with wood, menu development, and even how home cooks can stack functions in their own kitchens to reduce waste and increase verie to be with their food. But first, I always want to know how chef's got started. Most have always had an affinity for cooking, or at least an interested food from an early age. Suzanne showed an astonishing lack of natural acumen in the kitchen and one of my first memories of cooking was we would make like for lunch, like tuna fish salad um. And one time I was old enough to use the stove. I'm not sure how old that was, but my sister said, hey, Mom and I are going out, can you go ahead and harriboled eggs for the tuna salad um? So I did it, and when they got home, um, my mom went, my mom and sister went to make the tuna fish and crack the eggs and they were completely raw, and they're like, what what did you do? Did you why didn't you horribled eggs? And I was like I did, and they're like, what did you do? I said, I, well, I took the eggs. I put them in a pot of water, and I put them in the sink and I ran cold water over him, because that's what I always saw my mom do. At the end, I just didn't realize that had to boil first. Suzanne, raised in South Carolina, moved to New York in or early twenties and landed a job in the HR department of the famous Waldorf Astoria hotel. I didn't really understand what the hospitality business was until I went to that hotel, and then I started realizing, like, oh, this is really interesting. This is just how it is in the South. You know, you're welcoming, you smile at people, you want to make sure everybody feels comfortable whatever it is UM. And so I really got interested in like that idea of hotels UM and hospitality UM. And part way through my time there, they needed some help in the steakhouse, the Boulomare Steakhouse, and so along with my normal HR job, I started kind of working a couple of nights a week in the steakhouse and more of like maitre d type of work welcoming people UM. But it didn't take long before the kitchen called to her, specifically one at the Institute of Culinary Education in Lower Manhattan, a culinary school usually referred to as I had a friend who was a co worker at the Wald Earth and she um started going to ICE for some recreational classes. And she would bring into the office all these cakes and um cookies and elaborate desserts that she made, and I was amazed. You know, it was a little fancier than what I was used to eating, and I was amazed. I didn't really know anything about the cooking school, UM in general, and so she started telling me about it, and then, UM, once something like that happens, I just, you know, can't stop thinking about it, and ended up going to see the school. And once I saw the kitchens at ICE, and that's when I was on twenty Street, I was just kind of hooked. After six years of cooking experience under chef Anita Low at Anissa, Suzanne found herself stoking the wood fire at a long time favorite restaurant of mine, the Grammarcy Tavern. So I started on the tavern woodburn and grill. Uh. It was so hard. It's uh, it's very busy for twooks out there. So if you were the sioux chef, or if someone had to step in and help you step in between the two cooks, which is not a lot of room, and you're standing directly in front of the fire. So there's a door that kind of separates the fire that you have to open to feed it. And when a lot of times if you're if you know how to work with fire, you have to have a lot of oxygen, so sometimes you have to keep that door open. So if you're in if you're the six chef in the middle, and it's busy and you're plating and you're in front of that fire, it gets pretty hot. Yeah, you're pretty much medium. Well sure, Um, what do you like about cooking over wood over flame? I mean, what I love about it is it's alive. You know, it's always changing, You're really engaged in the cooking. What do you like about cooking with fire? I think there's a bunch one of this is just what you said. I think it is an engaging experience. It's um, It's number one. It's the taste of it. You know, food over a wood burning grill is, if it's done right, is super delicious. Um. And then I I love the what it brings to a restaurant. I love the openness because you know Woodbritain girls, they're not down in the basement or in the back, They're right out in front of the gas. And I like that. It's a it's a experience that you can have along with the gas that come into the restaurant. So I think that that, um, that idea of cooking and being next to the people you're cooking for is a really special thing. I think the fun part about grilling it is a little trial and error, Like you have to be able to say, Okay, today, I'm going to cook the chips and I'm gonna see how this state comes out, and tomorrow I'm gonna do it with that and kind of see how it acts people cooking at home. What what should they what should they keep in mind when they're choosing what to put over live flames versus a uniform heat of a gas or electric range. One thing I think you wanna uh think about is the cut of what you're buying. So for example, you may wanna if you if you like fish and you're cooking in a pan over gas burners, something like trout is great. Um, it's thin it's quick to cook. You can get like a crispy skin on it really easily. Now, if you have a home grill, your grill um number one, your fish might stick a little bit more to the grill. So thinking about UM, how do you treat it? You are you doing skin on? Are you taking that skin off? Maybe it might be an easier way UM picking a thicker fish. Like I really love um arctic char um, which for anybody who hasn't had, is a lot like a salmon um. I I like it because I feel like it doesn't dry out. It the same as salmon um. But salmon arctic char um kind of a thicker like a shripe bass could work really well on a grill. So also um being able to create some flavor something that's really thin. If you put it on the grill um and you keep it on for too long, it's really thin, it's gonna overcook. So I think when you have a little bit thicker piece of meat or fish, it's it's a little easier to get the correct temperature that you want UM and getting some flavor into it. That's that's really interesting. Talk about the variations and the differences in the levels yeah, I think the the it's it's important. I think you want to create, um, your hot spots. So again, if you're you're grilling a chicken, you we want that brownness, you want that crispy skin. Um. But if you're doing head of cauliflower, I don't know that I want that coming in in flames and sit all over it. I think you want you want to enhance the flavor of the vegetable without masking it. Especially fish too. I think I love grilled grilled fish. Um. But if the fish just tastes like grill, if the fish is delicate, you have to be able to have yeah, you know, building, whether it's different levels or different spots on the grill for items. Well, also you have you can think of cooking time. Chicken and cauliflower take a long time. Fish takes a short amount of time, right, So so you have to manage your you know, indirect heat and direct heat. Use indirect heat in the oh yeah lots. Yeah, I think indirect heat is one of the most interesting and even things like um like even more direct such as cooking in the embers. Um. I'm excited about doing that. And a lot of vegetable dishes that either get cooked right before service in the embers or something that gets finished in the embers. Is really interesting to me that that heat is outstanding. Yeah. So in the in the bottom of the fire where you're collecting all the ash, um, it's just a really it's not quite the same heat as above it above the grill. So cooking in the embers um all the ash that's produced by the fire gives it really mellow, nice heat. You have to you have to protect the food. So a lot of times, um, I'll wrap something in foil or double foil. Um. But another way is if you have like a heavy cast iron pot, that's great to kind of just put down there or um, it doesn't burn in the same way if as if you have it up top. So a lot of times you can keep something in there for two hours without it getting scorched because you're not cooking with flame. You're just cooking with the heat of the embers. Right. And another one of my favorite things to do is like turnups and cole robbie um to do those in the embers of the grill, because they get sweet and they get you know, just really they take on a different taste. Will you put them in the ash, I will, but I like to wrap them so like for something like Cole Robbie. Um, you can do it many different ways, but I actually like to peel it, toss it with a little olive oil and salt, wrap it in foil. So it's just kind of creating a little pouch. So it's halfway steams to So can you taste the Can you taste the fire? Oh? Yeah, and it's it's about the fire, but it's also about um, like converting them in their their sugars too, and the sweetness that comes out of them when you cook it like that. It's much different than if you're doing it in a regular oven or blanching it or you know, would you do you have the need to part cook something before you brill it, definitely? I think um that's part of the key of why restaurant food taste so good and people try to replicate at home sometimes miss that stab. Just to be clear, part of cooking means cooking something part way in advance, and when it comes time to serve, cooking it the rest of the way, often with a different technique like boiling and shocking something before grilling it, like for qualifier. I I steam it first almost always. Um, so it's completely done no, Um, like halfway done yeah. Um. I think when you do that, then you get the inside cooked perfectly. And then what you're doing, um to order right when the guest guest once it is is charring it. So it's the flavor. So I think, Um, that's a big technique that restaurants use is if you're cooking from from raw vegetables. Um, it depends how you cut it. If you cut it thin, no problem. Um. But to get the timing right and to get the taste right, it's really halfway cooked. Um. One thing I love is that I'll definitely do is grilled carrots. Um. But again for me carrots, um, I love roasting them first, so that act of roasting them changes the texture and the taste, and then putting them on the grill, rolling them on the grill at the end is what makes them really special. UM. Let's talk about the wood itself. Does it matter and what kind of would do you use? What do you prefer, what do you what's best, what's acceptable? I think would the type of wood does matter? Um. However, I would say anybody grilling on true root wood. It doesn't matter, So it doesn't it doesn't matter. I think for a restaurant it does. UM. At home, I would be excited to kind of use whatever whatever is around UM. But for when I cooked, when I was telling you, these were just lugs like you get for your fireplace, is that kind of what just hard whatever hard wood it was, And I think that's fine. UM. I think it's for me. It's a little bit more how you use the fire than it is what type of wood. UM. But having said that, I'm really I'm actually researching in the middle of deciding what, um, what would I want to use for two thirty two. I've used white oak before, a Gramercy UM, and that's a great wood. I think it's um. It creates flavor, but not overpowering flavor. So UM. But I've been I've been kind of picking everybody's brain and talking to UM chefs all over to see what what kind of wood that they use. UM. I'm I'm learning more people are going with things that are like apple wood or um peach wood. Yeahforts yeah. I think again the idea that you want something that helps to flavor food but not overpower it is really the key One way that great chefs like Susanne Cups are stacking functions around their wood fire grills is by looking past the most traditional ingredients for grilling. A lot of times people associate grill with with big meats like steak, pork, things like that, sausages and yeah, great, we're gonna be doing that too. But what I love is is to be able to um, to showcase vegetables, seasonal and local vegetables, um over a wood burning grill. Um. Again, that's not a new concept by any means, but I think, um, it's not done as much as as such as steaks or fish on a grill. Like what kind of vegetables everything? Uh of cauliflower or um, maybe not a whole head, but um, I'm working on like a quarterhead of cauliflower. Um. This. There's this vegetable that Norwich Meadows um uh started growing. I think last year might have been his first year, called Georgia Banana roasting squash. And it's this giant squash. It's uh maybe three ft long, um, really heavy. Uh. And when the farmer is a first brought it to me, I was like, this tastes good. I don't know about this one. You know, you always see those like decorative gourds that you know are UM and it is super delicious. So I'm I'm excited about UM. You know, all the nuance, all the diversity of of vegetables being cooked over that grill. I think it UM. My point is to make vegetables taste delicious, not to force them on people. UM. And so I think that we're going to make some really tasty vegetables over that grill. Part of what I've been doing for the past a few years is really leaning into what are the right cooking techniques for vegetables and and how do I have less manipulation because these farmers that we work with grow delicious organic vegetables, So I don't want to puree and shop all of them. I want them to look like what the vegetable is. Suzanne's expertise with wood fired grilling will be center stage at a brand new restaurant in Greenwich Village. So the restaurant is called two thirty two Bleaker, very easy to find since it's a also the address. So the restaurant will be neighborhood UH facialist casual. UM. It'll be again open kitchen with the woodburnning grill will do some homie pasta's a well, and it'll really be it'll feel like New York. It'll feel like the seasons. Again. I'm super excited about having that wood and fire in the wintertime. I think, you know, for us, I guess I'm a New Yorker now in your seventeen years, which is crazy. Um, but in the winter, like, where do you want to go if you're if you're getting out of your warm apartment, you want to go somewhere that feels cozy, that feels more and that fire relay will help. Um, But it's it's gonna be a fun space. It's going to be a place that you can, um, you can come and you can meet a friend that you haven't seen in a while, or to be a place that you can come once a week. And that's the type of food that I want to cook is something that is feels interesting and feels new, and they're you're always discovering, you know, slightly different flavors, but it's not something that is unrecognizable. When you read the menu, you'll say, oh, this sounds good, I like this, I know this, or maybe this I haven't had it this way, you know, so hopefully it's a place that UM does food feels a little bit straightforward, UM, but maybe a little bit different than maybe you might cook it at home. When I explained to Suzanne the concept of stacking functions, she agreed that this is something that great chefs have always had to do. She offered some of her favorite ways to multiply the effectiveness of the resources that you put into your home cooking. The best way to cook at home is to think not just in terms of one meal, but think for like three meals. And I think the less waste that way, because a lot of times you cook one dish and you know, you get tired of eating it after the second or third day, or maybe the first day. UM. And so to be able to whether it's chicken and you know, cutting out your bones first and using those in the stock, or whether it's grilling that chicken breast one day and then everything that you don't UM eat you get chopped up and put in a pasta the next day. I think those are those are definitely UM a lot of what you want to think about when you go to the grocery store. And for those that plan ahead, one great tool at your disposal is a freezer. I am a big advocate for using the freezer. I think people, um, people feel like, oh, when it goes in the freezer, it gets frost and it goes to die. But um, but the reality is when you make something and you freeze it that first day that you make it, it's delicious. You take it out sometimes three weeks a month later, Um, it's it's great, whether it's a soup or a stock or um or even just a cook chicken breast. A lot of times, um, that's the best way. Not if you leave it in your fridge for three days and then you decide to freeze it, it's not going to taste the same. Well. There is a New Yorker cartoon I saw recently. It's two suburban, middle aged women in a kitchen and one saying the other should I throw this out now? Or should I put it in the freezer first? That's yeah, that's true. What's your recommendation for people not abandoning their food to thee I think you have to. Again, you have to have it in mind when you first buy that food, when you first bring it into your kitchen, if you if it's an afterthought. It's not gonna get eaten, it's gonna it's gonna turn in your fridge, or it's gonna be, you know, be an afterthought and put in your freezer and again like you're just gonna leave it. So I think, um, you know the idea of right now, it's grape season in New York, there's like delicious concord grapes, Mars grapes, all all different kinds, and I want to use those, but the restaurant I'm opening isn't opening in the next three weeks. So um, what I'm thinking of is is creating like a roasted grape sauce and roasting them with time and shallots and and maybe a little rosemary and and making a delicious sauce. Putting it in the right size containers. I think that's part of it. Is if you put it in a giant container that you know, you're like, oh, I don't really need a whole court of this. I'm not going to pull this out now. But if you if you freeze things in like cup container sizes, it's very easy to pull out. Um, you know, at Thanksgiving when you're like I'm tired of cranberry sauce. Oh, but I have this really delicious concord grapesauce that I made a month ago. So I think it's just um. You have to be thoughtful and what self respecting cook doesn't love pickling vegetables, putting food up, as we used to say, preserving food, being the keepers of the food. In my cooking, I use so many, um, different types of pickles. And it's not your standard dill pickle like everybody thinks it's. Um. It's really like, right now is the kind of the end of pepper season or sweet peppers, um, But they're so great and so just creating a very very simple vinegar water maybe a little sugar honey based pickle. Um, it's something as long as it's submerged, you can keep in your refrigerator for a year. Um. So thinking about that and it really again adds to your cooking. I love pickled peppers and winter squash. Um. But the pickled peppers aren't around when the squash is out. So being able to pull that out and have a little arder for yourself really, you know, make some delicious meals for the winter. My takeaway from hearing both Ian Wogan and Suzanne cups Is this systems are complex and need all the support and creativity they can get. Whether it's a major ecological center or your own home kitchen, both can benefit from the concept of stacking functions. And we don't expect you to know how to wake up tomorrow and plant orchids on the barks of forty foot trees or reinstall mangroves on coastlines in your area, but thinking about stacking functions can help you today. With your own kitchen. You can think ahead about methods that multiply the effectiveness of your resources. You can brainstorm new practices that reduce your own waste, whether from food or other cooking materials. You can even start caring for a cast iron pan. They could stay in your family for a century, like a great tree. When we come back, we're making grilled jerked carrots with Chef Suzanne cups h. How would you recommend people at home do this? They're gonna hear as soon as say I want to. That sounds good. I want to grill carrots. I think it's so easy to do do at home. I'm just finishing up, but entitled now this is the next weeks my last week. UM yeah, and we're doing a jerk carrot. Um. So we're making kind of like a jerk marinade. And so we we pre roast the carrots before service, and then during dinner, Um, when someone orders, we we brushed them with a little the jerk sauce, throw them on the grill, so it gets a little bit of like how you would imagine jerk chicken. Uh, and then a little bit more when they come off super delicious. Love that idea. So we've come to untitled where she is executive chef, is her very last day before she heads over to her new venture on Deco Street, and we're gonna talk to her about and watch her cook jerked carrots. So um, the inspiration is definitely UM, I really love to cook uh flavors from over the world. So even though we try to highlight um local seasonal ingredients and especially vegetables in this recipe, UM I want to, I don't want it to. I'll just be from New York, the flavors of the U s and and not just the Northeast. So UM, I love kind of making a play on this on this sauce very traditional and that it's got ginger and hallapeno and garlic and all spice and nutmeg and clove, all those kind of traditional seasonings. Um, but we're we're adding our own twist on it with seasonal peppers also. Um. And in the type of food I cook, I I don't love anything that's nuclear, uh, and so I don't want anything that's that's overwhelming and flavor. So I love the jerk flay or without without all the spice. Yeah. Um. So we make the marinated and then we roast the carrots, and then we put it all together, so it doesn't have that, um, same taste of you know, the chicken mean cooked over a grill with the jerk for hours. Um. But I think you'll still uh, you'll you'll still find some really fun flavors that you know, and jerk beautiful. Let's let's do it. So all I do is, uh, take the carrots lightly, scrub them. I love the skin is good, flavor, the color is beautiful. There's no reason really to peel it. So we scrub them, toss him in olive oil and salt, and bake him in an oven if you're doing it at home, four or fifty until they're they're tender. And that's that's the other key. You want to stick a knife in them. Make sure it's cooked, not mushy, but but the whole way through. So they could in your home level. Depending on the size of the carrot, it could take thirty minutes. It could most likely take more more like forty five minutes. They look thoroughly cooked, they looked if the carrots are beautifully caramelized. And then really all it is is throwing them on the grill. I like to do it dry first, um, and then start adding that that kind of lacker of the jerk sauce. D you put it on before you put on? Yeah, on a saucet, Just get it on, start getting some char on it. I don't even put any I've already roasted them with olive oil, so I don't need any olive oil or salt to start. Um. I just want that that uh grill, that flavor of the grill, and then starting to get that that um jerk sauce kind of worked in there. Did you want to cook that jerk sauce too? Yeah, so there are are are jerk sauce. We we do cook it beforehand and before we blend it. So that all the all the ginger and garlic and spices are already roasted out, so we predo it. Of of course, we're in a restaurant, so we're doing things to order. Um. If you're at home, yeah, you could totally cook it. The only thing is you don't want to overcook. Your carrots are already fully cooked, so really you're warming them in the jerk sauce. Beautiful, Yeah, just describe what you're doing. So I'm gonna get a kind of medium to high heat. Again, the idea that the carrots are already cooked, um, and I just want that flavor and some char on them. So I'm putting them all on the grill first, and I'm gonna take a paint brush and my jerk sauces. Um, it has a little body to it. It's not too thin, and it's gonna stick right on that carrot and I'm just gonna lightly brush them. Again. It depends, Uh, it depends your flavor profile. If you like it spicy, put some hobbing euros in. We we use something a little less spicy, like New mex peppers or um or like habanada, which is a local type of pepper that is has the same floral flavors as having euro but without the spice, which is awesome for me. Um. So, I'm gonna roll the carrots as they're cooking. So the top side I had seasoned with the jerk, now that's going to be on the bottom against the grill, and I'm just gonn roll them over and continue season. It depends on how your grill is. Um, these should be done and what size your carrots are. These should be done in five minutes or less. You could do this with any vegetables. An egg plant. It's a great I love with eggplant. I love doing a mi so honey, so me so honey, a little rice spun, vinegar or lemon or something to brighten it up. That that's a perfect analogy. Um. And it's the same thing. You brush it because you want to create that flavor flavor and like layers, you don't want to just put it on the top like you're saucing a dish. Um. You want to to kind of cook into and vegetables like you know, they got a lot of water content and they they'll absorb the flavor if you if you um do it layer by labor, layer and you season it as you go. So I'm gonna turn over those carrots one more time, and you can see they're already starting to get that nice char again. I don't wanna. I'm you could say they're they're getting blackened a little bit, but I'm not going for burnt carrots. I really just want some of that grill and to to create that flavor of the jerk and you and you can still see the carrots through. It is not a thick sauce. Um, it's more for a flavor. The other key to this is whenever you're cooking vegetables like this, when they're hot, is when you want to finish seat your seasoning. So um, when they're so warm, I'm going to brush them with one more time with the jerk. I had originally salted them when I cooked them the first time, but they need a little finishing salt. I just used kosher salt, but you could use you know, whatever, your favorite malden or whatever. Um. And then Mikey always a little lemon juice, lemon line something like that, whatever you have at home. It just needs acid. It gets heavy if you don't add that. And then when I'm putting them on a plate um. I made another sauce. So the idea where when you have jerk, sometimes it's a little spicy, it's a little as a depth of flavor. I love to balance it with something that's fresh. So we made a cucumber mint sauce, super easy. You put whole cucumbers in a blender, um with h some blanched so cook, cook that mint just for a second, and then a little tofu. So the tofu adds some you can't taste it. She doesn't make it taste Asian or anything like that. Somebody it's it's not watery, not too thin. And I put a little olive oil as well, just for a mouth feels it makes a nice, fresh, bright sauce. And then again like the idea that carrots are delicious. But I'm in a restaurant. I wanna i wanna make it really interesting for the guests. So I've got those marinated cucumbers. We're using Persians, but you can use um, you know, any kind of more fresh maybe not a pickled, fully pickled cucumber. Again, it's all about how your dish looks when when it gets to the table. You want to be pleasing to the eye. So we've got these multicolored carrots, shaves um and then uh, to finish it, one of my favorite things is um candied ginger, So make it an house. We just take ginger, we slice it and cut it really thin and julienne to cook it down in a little simple syrup and then we fry it and then that I think that adds to what the flavors of jerk normally are. What's a gorgeous plate that you You've got this beautiful bright green a sauce beneath the cucumber mint sauce, and then we've got the main item, the carrots um that are beautifully sauced, and we've got the big curls of fresh carrots. We've got some lightly lightly dressed cucumbers and some beautiful candy ginger for more flavor and crunch. Looks like a beautiful vegetable dinner. Great. This is very versatile. You can do eggplant. You can also do a fish like this if you if you um, we're using blackfish right now, stripe bass, whatever you want to grill you can still you can brush that jerk sauce right on it. Um and you can do carrots in fish you know, it doesn't have to be just a vegetable dish. I think it works. Um works great in that way, too, Beautiful Chef, thank you so much, really appreciate it. Thanks for stopping in. Special thanks to our guests Chef Suzanne Cups and arborus Ian Wogan. You can find links for more information about their work on our show. Notes. From Scratch is produced by Jonathan Dress. Our executive producer is Christopher Hasiotis are supervising producer is Gabrielle Collins. All of the music on From Scratches 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 My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Rose here and Well has been here, Gotta Smile form with me as a man, Henry only want my mo Everything's only
