Sharing

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Speaker 1: A young student in Marson, Turkey. I thought she'd go into the hospitality industry, though everything she'd learned from growing up steered her away from it. She loved the idea of traveling in Europe, especially Germany. She even studied German for five years to improve her chances of getting into the business there. And one day I was watching this commercial. It was a Royal Caribbean cruise ship and it was showing Miami stout beat. I'm like, oh my god. I was like, wow, look at this, this is something so different. I have to be there. I have to see this, I have to experience this. And then one night I told my mom my sister said I'm not going to German, I'm going to America. And they're like what. But the young woman, Ecai suit too, had a problem. For a hospitality job in Florida, you'd need to be able to speak the language there, and back then I didn't know in English. This didn't slower down, however, and she found an agency who lined up a job interview for a hotel on the east coast of the state. The first hotel called me for an interview. It was a fiasco. It went down the hill I couldn't say a word. I was like, Okay, I don't understand what these people are saying, and nothing happened. I still can't fathom what she expected. She didn't understand a word of English, but she was nevertheless unfazed. I'm very stubborn, very stubborn, and I never gave up. I'm very passionate about my plans for my future. I just didn't want to be in Turkey. I wanted to get out of my comfort zone and do something different and that I can be proud myself and then my family can be proud of me as well. Um My father passed away when I was eighteen, and I really didn't get a much uppertunity to connect with him so much. So before he passed away, I told him, you'll see I'm gonna do something really different. You're gonna be proud of me. And then he said, I believe in you because it's in you. See, this is what I love about certain humans. She didn't listen to common sense, which would be to stay on course and go to Germany or suck it up and stay in Turkey. She had a vision and she determined to make it happen. She did what a natural born cook does by nature and chef Brian Poulson's words, adept, persevere and overcome. Yes, this time I had a plan. I had to get my friend, who is an English teacher back home, and I had to use her talents or skills to get the visa to come to the United States. If you didn't completely catch that, Ekai's friend would be impersonating her on her job interview while Ecai listened in. It went something like this, tell me, I tell you that's it's ringing and shut up in Turkish? May I speak with ill? Okay suit please, it's going Yes, this is your gay. Just a few easy questions to begin. Do you have a hospitality degree? Yes, I study food and verage. What do you love about hospitality? I love taking care of other others people, that's great, that's great? And and what are the four values of great hospitality management? One minute? Please? There was a lot of like one minute games, no breaking, no connection, storry, can't hear you, And she just keeps saying that, and then she would have whisper it to me like what do I say? What is this? And I would just scratching chicken switch and then she'll get the pissa paper and trying to read my handwriting, and she's like, what is this? And then she will whisper, okay a minute, what word is this? So at some point we were like muted and they take your pass for like quick ten seconds, and it would have been like I told you, you say this and da da dada and it goes and then okay, hi, yes, I think my connection is better if I stand right here. Can you hear me? Now? I suppose that sounds about the same. Yeah, okay, good. So the four values of hospitality management our service, consistency, resourcefulness, unbelievably, unable to speak the language, and with no real training in a kitchen or a dining room, she got the job. Everything that happened through in my life, it wasn't always a plan. It was something happened naturally, authentically, and I had to come up with a plan and do something in that moment and really go for it, because if I was sitting here in a planning for days and months, it will probably lost what's the meaning of And I didn't want to lose that. Welcome to the final episode of the inaugural season of From Scratch with Michael Ruhman. I'm Michael Roll, and 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 stopped 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 from Scratches, a podcast about cooking. In each episode, we'll talk with one chef and one non chef about the same theme. Today's theme is sharing and not some kind of Kumbaya bullshit about how sharing gives more to the giver than to the receiver, which is really a load if you stop to think about it. What I'm looking at today is how the sharing of food and everything surrounding food, the work of getting it, preparing it, and cleaning up after shapes our lives. But first, the astonishing and unlikely rise of Ekai the Chef. My name is Ekai, and I'm the executive chef at the Metal Door Room. That's Ekai suit to executive chef at the Metador Room in Miami. I can't even pronounce her last name. It's spelled s uu c t u g u. Yes, it's a very unique last name. It has four years in it. And I'm probably only my family the only people have did on the world as a worldwide. Before scheming her way into a career in America, she grew up in the coastal town of Marson, Turkey, the daughter of a woman who's the chef restaurateur of a tiny restaurant there to fit about maximum fifteen people. It's a very family oriented. The meal is it's more like a self surf. It's like an open buffet. So my mom will go there and three four o'clock in the morning she starts cooking from scratch and buy six o'clock chef breakfast items are ready, and after that she gets ready for lunch, and then it's an all day open and also outside that she has a little bit of terrace out there, and then there's a girl and then she could that was all the girling stuff, which in Turkey, you know, it's very famous Turkish kebab and all of that stuff. And and I think she's really best at making it. I love it. I she still have it this day. And my mom is about sixty plus years old and she still works it through every day. And then she had this restaurant ever since I was in UM, in the middle school and UM. Many times during my high school years, I will go there and be her buster her dishwasher, pretty much cleaned tables, go back to kitchen and wash the dishes and reset the kitchen for her. But I never get into cooking with her. And who the hell would looking at it from the inside, seeing how hard her mother had to work, I always run away from the kitchen because my mom had a restaurant, and and her family had a restaurant. It was like a family business for them. But as I was a little child seeing their lifestyle, and I always promised myself that I will not get into cooking. I will not get into food or the restaurant world or you know, servicing, because I thought they never had a quality life. They always had to be at work. And I remember many nights that I would go I would go home alone and trying to do my homework and there's no parents and who is taking care of me. I'm like, Okay, don't know whom we're going to watch TV. So I didn't want to be in debt and I had a different dreams. That's why I like my Childhoo. Was like every time my mom asked me to come to the kitchen and she will show me something to cook, I would run away and would go to the street and just play games and so that I don't get that stick to me. I was very stubborn and eager to not to be in the kitchen very much. So yeah, and it looked at me now, it was a bumpy beginning, as you'd expect of someone faking it till they're making it. Her first job was as a food runner at the Marriott Hutchinson Island Beach Resort, Golf and Marina. She spent two days running food in the dining room, assisting waiters and understanding not one word. And on the third day, someone came to me said that, hey, we're gonna have to take you off the floor because because of your language bearer, we cannot help you here, which understood it would happen. And then I had a friend who was speaking Turkish. He said that the chef wants to talk to you. I said, who chef and then he said his name. I'm like, what a chef? And then he's like Okay, let me take you the kitchen. And then he took me to my very first executive chef. I never forget him. He came in, he said something I couldn't understand, so my friend translated to me. Obviously, he saw my resume. My mom had a restaurant, and he thought that if mom had a restaurant, she might have to know how to cook, or I have to have to be in the kitchen. But he was wrong. He had a wrong philosophy about me at that moment um. So they put me in the kitchen. They're talking to me. I don't understand anything they're showing me. I don't understand anything. I felt so bad, and I felt like it was the moment for me that it was a big breakdown. I'm like, that's not what I came here for. To feel so little. I can embarrass myself. I have to do this with my little English. I put a few words together and I want to chef. I told him that I want to be in the dish room. He gave me a look like what like, I said, can you please put me into dish pit? And I want to watch dishes. First, he thought that I was scared to being in the kitchen, because you know, when you you don't have a language, you don't know what you're doing, and that's easy way to get away, and then it's hiding points. I'm like, no, I want to go in a dish room so I can actually learn, because when you told me to bring it ladle, I don't know what ladle is. When you tell me bring spotler, I don't know what spotler is. And I went to I remember, I went to UH one of those UH stores and bought like a whole pack of a post post it's, and then I started writing every single word to anybody comes to the dish pit, Hey, where can I get the part or pen or rondo or or bucket and whatever you name it in the dish room that you can't find it? They will show me this is the ladle like ladle, and write it down a word of lattle. What is it means? How do you write it, how do you spell it, how do you read it? And how do you say it? So like all steps in one on one piece of paper, So one paper represented one word for me, and that's how I collected them. And in my room was like a rainbow. I have all kinds of colors of a post it in my room, even in my bathroom. Four o'clock in the morning, I had to get up and go to work, and then I was getting ready, brushing my teeth, and then look into my mirror. I'm like, oh, now I get in the world. It was this one. And sometimes I walk in my room like a crazy person trying to find the words that I know, because I put it somewhere so that three months later I had a bit of English on my own. Chef e Kai's idea to start at the bottom worked. She learned the language and kept moving until she reached her current post in the J G V restaurant. The stunning Matador Room inside the Miami Beach Edition Hotel. It's a powerful space. You descend into the oval dining room, low light, with lots of rich wood it. The mood is quiet, almost churchlike, with a matador's jacket on a stand where the priest would be. Meals are primarily served family style rather than ala carte, meaning that many small plates are offered to be shared by the entire table. Family style is It's not for everybody. I'll tell you this, especially someone who comes from the big family. Probably they have an experience of like sitting in a one table under the table kicking each other or who's gonna eat the most food, or you know, stealing food from each other's plate, Give me salt, no, like all of those fights. Right, family meal experience is really different for every person. I love it because I'm coming from a big family. I have three siblings on the baby, so we always had this small fights in the table. But there are some individuals that are really hate that. It's not their passion. They don't want to sit in front of the siblings or parents or anybody who cousins, uncles, whatever, just sit there and get embarrassed or get questioned or had to explain themselves. Right. They wanted to be comfortable while they're eating because that's gonna be their charging moment. So it is really different. There's a lot of people like all a cart service because when you go to a beautiful restaurant, hello, my name is this is this, I'm going to be your server whenever we're ready, let me know which you like, will make it happen for you. And that's the happy moment for someone that likes to eat by themselves. As from all a cart restaurant. But for people who was in the later ages probably feel that family meal is more important because that brings the memories back for them and then they will love that. They will come in here maybe when they were ten and lay around, maybe their thirty or forties. Now they're coming and say, hey, remember we had this food when we're literally were fighting with me or we were talking about this. There's so many memories and stories to bring it back. Is the connection family meal? For me, it is a icebreaking moment. You get comfortable, you get together, and if you really enjoy being around the people that you love and you want to share what's happening in your life, maybe that's the time that you can actually speak about something. It celebration, bad news, good news, who knows, but that's the moment that you build in that connection. How does the chef think to create food for this style of dining? For me, when I come to the first thing, when I come to the kitchen, it's not like, okay, what are we cooking today? But okay, we're cooking this product, but how are we going to serve this so that people can enjoy it and share from the same plate. It's really important of the presentations in here. The importance is the presentation and the flavors of you print together, and how are you going to display it on the plate? If you put it one little salad in the middle of the plate, no one's going to be able to reach out to you. So you have to spread it beautifully nicely, and then that everybody equally can get something what's in front of them. Let's say you bring in a bone and meat. Right, you don't want to separate that bone. You want to keep it together because that's how it allows you to get the beautiful flavor out of it. It treated like that. But then how are you gonna put one piece of meat with the bone in the middle of the plate and expect everybody to eat that? And you have That's where the chefs comes into moment. And in creative of the cooking that meat and slicing and beautifully and make the signature something special. As a sauce, you create some sort of sauce that is unique to you. But but yeah, you get together with of a family, you're slicing a beautiful stick on the bone and you get that the juice in it is and the fat and smell and texture and flavor all together, and you're putting a beautiful sauce and then the presentation on the plate. That's where the chefs comes in a place to make that happen. For me, if I'm making something really small depends on the product and you're cooking, I have to make sure that there's a one or two three bites that in one plate that if there's two people or three people can at least get one bite out of it instead of you're sharing one little piece. So that's why if you ask to any of my staff members today, when I see the plates, they're like so tight and you know, in a in a modern way, the presentation the plates, everything needs to look so neat and tight and clean. I agree. But at the same time, you're serving to a family style. You're serving more than one person, so that it needs to become comfortable. If I'm putting a salad again in the middle of the plate and we're looking at each other, who's going to get that bite right? You don't want to create that moment. You want to be like, oh great, I have this part of the plate in front of me, other parties on the other persons, So Devich shared that moment or you pass on the plates the around and there's still enough food to share. That's that's in my head when I see the presentation of the place going out, I gotta make sure that every person experience that plate, not only one person and a fight for a second bite. And those shared meals are happening behind the scenes in important ways between the staff each night, a staff of astonishing diversity who share their own family meal I have from most of them are Latin America. I have Columbia, Puerto Rico, Cuba. I also have Jamaica, Haiti, Turkey. So when I first started in the kitchen, I work with many people from different countries, different backgrounds, and a little bit a little bit of English that I had. I tried to understand them and connect them. What is it so important for us to cook for people to eat? First, it's a job. But then yes, with my non experienced kitchen moments, it was a job I had to collect my paycheck. But then working with the different people in that kitchen and understanding their backgrounds of where they were here, I thought that I was given an amazing opportunity and it was there for me. The whole time that I never saw that, and I was run away from it because that's had it. There was a disadvantage of being in the kitchen, but then working with those people them connecting together. We will hustle, working together all day long, eighteen hours at some point and eighteen a day, and we realized that we didn't need anything all day. We were feeding thousands of people, and they would actually get one of the plates to each other, put on the on the floor like some sort of mat or seats, the milk crates flip overset and each of the will get that plate and then scoop it out from the pot and that would be our family meal at that moment. And that's where I'm connecting with those people working through the hustle and then seeing the beautiful place going out there, but you don't have a moment to sit down and eat. But then eventually you sit down with those people and shared that moment and you enjoy the food because you work for it so hard. And that's where I get connected, connecting with the kitchen. How I get to it. It was the people for me, not necessarily the food. It was the people that who made me fell in love being in the kitchen because we weren't understand each other and in the language wise, but we were moving the same way, we were thinking the same way, and all of us had the same mission and the same goal at the end of the day, and then we would sit down and eat together and we feel so proud of each other that, yeah, we did it today, and we made it just many food for that many people, and now it's our time to sit down and celebrate everybody. Every time someone asked me who inspired to be in the kitchen, I don't have a specific name to tell you. I have all those people that I work with that made me fall in love with the kitchen. Before we left, Chef Echai named the one person that she wishes she could share a meal with. I mean, if you ask me, what would you like to eat and who you want to cook for and things like that, I will say that I wouldn't want to cook the simplest food ever. Could be tomato, soup, could be salad, it could be anything, and I would like to sit down and eat with my father because I'm connected that and I know that this is not going to happen, so it's my dream. Every time I make things that my father used to like. So I feel like, okay, let's visit, let's talk, let's sit down, like this is it. I guess I might be really emotional about this stuff, which is nothing wrong with that. I'm very happy and proud of it, because if I lose those emotions and connections, I'm not gonna be who I am. I do know what she means. I was lucky enough to have had forty five years with my dad before he died, and how he loved to eat, how he loved to share food. But it wasn't just the food. Who was the people. As his good friends Stuart Eisler's remembered at his service, Rip wouldn't even have gotten the grill going before the guests arrived because he knew that the sooner he got the grill going, the sooner people would be leaving, and he wanted people to stay. How I wish he would have stayed so I could cook him one more meal, just as Kai does. When we come back, I'm talking with the founding director of a school who has an experimental and unusual practice regarding food at her school. Welcome back to Front Scratch. I'm Michael Ruhlman and I reached out to Suda sit Rama, who created the Treelock School t R I l Okay in Brooklyn, New York. Heavily art centric, as we'll see, but what I found most fascinating was the uncommon relationship she and the students and parents have with food. I spoke with her by phone from Rhode Island, she and her school's media editing studio with my producer Jonathan. I'm Sudasamin. I'm the executive director of Trillo School. And how do you describe the school to other people? It's a progressive school. Progressive is overrated today, but um, in our terms, it is more think out of the box. We don't want the education to be as it was for our grandfather or their grandfather. I think our time is very different. The younger generation's time is very different. So then we say progressive, we literally mean we have no grades in our schools. We took Annie the play, but it's completely Brooklyn centric. It's it is written by the kids, it's visualized by the kids. So it just changed its name. It was a female and now it's a male Anthony, so they changed the whole thing. But it is inspired by the any play, so you know, and we put one act and now we're going to work on our second act coming up. And the kids themselves right the play and they design the sets and they make the sets, and they literally work hard on doing everything. But here's where the food component comes in. We also are very progressive and it comes to eating. I've seen in America. I've been in America for thirty years, and I've seen that very few occasions that people really share their food. We are big time food lovers. We grow our own food, We share our food every single day. We are an international school. We literally have families from around the globe and we want to taste everyone's food. Tell me about your your personal relationship to food. Oh, my goodness, I I love food. I am a Tamilian. I'm from south of India. I'm a person from Tamil Nadu. But I grew up in gud Rat, which is the west of India. That's where my father was a professor and I am Indian Institute of Management. So he was a business management professor. And so we every day had these cool discussions on the dining table. So would this be would this be in the evening. In the evening, yes, in the evening meals. What was, for instance, a staple What would a staple meal be? A staple meal will be. My mother was very creative. She was a teacher too. She didn't want to repeat the same menu. So literally every day we would have something interesting. Of course, we are coming from India, right, so the cuisines are countless, so we would have meals prepared from different parts of the country. So one day it'll be Gujati food, one day it'll South Indian food, one day it will be Bengali food. Yes, I imagine. I imagine also that during dinner when when you're reading that the talk and discussion of one another's days, what you're doing was an important part of the meal time. Yes, it was. It was a big part of the meal time. That is where all of our feelings were shared. You know, wherever My mother used to say, wherever you guys are, even when we were teenagers. Okay, we were having dates, are going and it doesn't doesn't matter, bring your date, bring everybody, but dinner time, every single person should be home at seven, at six thirty seven o'clock. That was like, and then you guys can have meetings after, you can have meetings before, including my dad, who was super achiever. He was all over the world, but he would still make the dinner time on time. So it was kind of very very important for us. When student's first daughter was in school, Suita noticed some things at meal times that made her very uncomfortable. For me, one of the biggest jarring things that I saw with my older daughter in the lunch room. Those kids would go they are screaming their heads off, they're talking to each other, and then they have so much food that they go and take it from the counter and then go and dump it into the trash bin, even without tasting. So there was no talk around the food. There was no talk about the food. There was teachers were there, people were there, but it was just a mechanical job. It was not an important factor. For me. Food was important. And I see that people don't share food. They hold their lunch boxes and they eat and they don't even ask can you eat something? Do you want something? I mean, that was not that is not bad. I'm not judging at all, but that is something that I think comes with being free and open about the food that we have and what we do with our food that we have. So for me, having a school uh and not talking or thinking about food was not the thing at all because we live in a time of rampant food allergies and intolerances. How did she handle the parents because most of the people ask me, oh, you share your food. That means I have my child has allergies. What am I going to do? Like? Oh, great, it's an inclusive program, which means we know your child has allergies, and we know the other students also know that your child has an allergy, and we start talking about what is allergy. When they are two, they just hear the term allergy and they are being very nice to their neighbors student. But as they get older, it becomes an immune system class biology class for the student's oldest students. So they say, why am I getting allergy to this food? What is making me do? What? What symptoms do I get? So that goes into the next level there. How did you how did this policy of sharing come about? And did you face resistance from parents? And um, just I'm fascinated by it and how does it? How does it physically work every day? It's a very difficult. It's a It's a very difficult thing to do, but I did it seamlessly. Is because I would speak at the tour itself. You know, when they first come to see the school, I do tell them that we are progressive because of many, many, many reasons, and this is one of the biggest reason, because we do believe that, um, whatever you put in is what you're gonna give. So I want to talk to you about your food sharing. So the people started thinking, oh, my goodness, food sharing, which means I have to bring food for thirty kids. I have to bring food for twelve kids. I said, no, you just think about your child and bring me food. Um uh to bring me food? Um, that is just for you, know, these kids that are here, which means I want you to think about your child. Your child will need some proteins, some vegetables, some fruit, and some starts. So think about that and just pack. But when you're packing sandwiches, cut them into twelve pieces. When you're thinking about rice, take twelve pieces of rice spoons, you know, so that I can give it to the twelve kids. But believe it or not, we are in America, so most of our parents are thinking about similar things, and so we will have a second serve. We will have a third serve, so don't worry at all, your child will be cared. But it was very shocking for a lot of parents. Some of them were like very happy when they started, and then after a point they were saying, oh, this is this is very scary. I don't know if my child is getting everything. I'm like, our teachers are paying full attention. They are trained to do this very organically. They were trying to organize as parents groups. You know, I'll bring this vegetable, you bring this, I'll do this. I said, why are you complicating things that are so simple, So let's just keep it simple. She kept the whole food program simple, and what she noticed was that the way children aid changed their disposition, changed who they were. For me, the food program um is the highlight, and I always tell them about that because that's what it's going to make your child calm. In the school, I have sixties to seventy kids right now. You won't hear the sound at all. It is. Kids are really relaxed. In fact, we had few public school kids that joined us. They're very jittery to begin with in the beginning because they came with lots of frustrations and anger and ideas. But then once they started eating our school eating sharing program, that the toughest child became the easiest child, and she could. I mean, I wish I had done a scientist that was here and could write down all the the the the what you call the the data collection they could have done. You have been really amazing to see how much our kids are at ease sharing food. If you share food, there's no snatching of scales or rubbers or toys or all those anxieties that people have about sharing. It's all very very simple. It's like, so you're so you're saying that the sharing of food actually translates into different behavior throughout the day. Absolutely. Absolutely, The calmness, the mindfulness, this was second nature even in America. I mean food, We used to really cook together and we used to eat lots of time spent around food. But now we are so meturalistic. I think, uh, then being who we are that we start running after time and time is is in. You just take your time, eat, don't run and eat your food. Don't run and take a snack bar and run because you have to be on schedule. How does it physically work. I'm i'm for example, i'm uh. I have a ten year old son at your school. For instance, what do I send him to school with? And what is his lunch experience? You send what culturally you eat, Like I come from south of India. I make Italy's and those and send my year old child to school and the other kids are like, what is this food? They in our school, they won't ask that question. They know she's coming from this country, or her mother comes from this country, her father comes from Ireland, and so they have these food that they bring and so we talk about that in the lunch room during the lunch time. Who brought this food? At the age two, it is even talked. And then by the time they get to ten year old is fifth grader. By the time they get to fifth grade, they would be talking to the others, you know, if they are a new students, they will be explaining to them what what is happening in the classrooms. So they just send their regular food, whatever their parents are making for them. They can either make it the day night night before and they can bring that, or they can get up in the morning and cook and bring it so it doesn't matter as long as the child knows. In fact, as they get to third grade and fourth grade, we asked the kids to pack their own lunches so that they can know what is going into their lunch box and they can come and talk about what they brought today, and so that really becomes the most amazing learning ground for them. And she's expanding Treelocks program beyond the lunchtime hour. Food is it are woven into the fabric of the school as it is in life, not simply a period like history or math. So right now, um, we have around sixty kids, so we make produce to maybe feed twenty kids, but we are trying to multiply that into three times so that we'll have three farm greenhouses so we will be able to get the produce to at least do salads and some vegetables. We won't be able to do rice, and we won't be able to do pasta dishes and stuff yet, but maybe at some point, you know the way we are going, that might happen. Even the school's pet turtles and fish get in on the actions. So when we tell the kids it's the poop of the fish that makes our food, they're going like what but that is what the reality of real life is, you know. So h But I wondered if she noticed any friction from the internetting of so many cultures in an American school. I think, Um, it is we are all, at the end of it, human beings. And when you have a good point that you communicate, well, it will come across and people will take it and they will accept. And they have accepted the food program in the best way possible. Yes, we do share food every single day. Yes, it is a new concept, but we do it seamlessly. It becomes it's not my country, your country, your ideas, my ideas. It does our ideas. It is east idea, just best idea. We all did sharing, but we just forgot somewhere in the line, and now we are rediscovering. We're coming back to it. That's what it is. What are give me an example of some of the foods that that kids bring into share. Okay, um, okay, that's a very good question. We have sushi. I'm like, what all do I tell? We have sushi that comes, we have Korean um glass noodle dish that comes. We have in one day, you will have all of this, Okay, and then you will have Italy's that's from south of India that comes. Then you have m the sandwich from America that it comes. Then you have um Uh Indonesian mom that actually came and cooked for us and fed all of us some lovely Indonesian food, so that she brings those those are like special kind of rice balls that they make which is very different. So so all these I mean in a day, you would literally have a variety of sea of food, a sea of food, and all the food is shared and enjoyed on wide silver partition plates traditional in India called tally tally or plate is basically a plate that is with divisions in it so that you know that you're getting all your protein, you're getting your your vegetables, you're getting your fruit, you're getting your start, you're getting your you know, any other vitamins that you need. You're getting everything in it. So it kind of divides and it becomes a learning plate, so people learn from that so that they know that they're eating all of this consciously. I want kids to eat consciously. I want them to feel or even the adults, even my teachers, I tell them all the time, we have food topic all the time, because we do want them to understand that what you put in is what you're gonna give. So that's why we say no fa soda, not because soda is bad. Soda is bad because off So you give the whole reasoning behind it, so then you know that they are there. These are smart kids, these are our kids, so they will learn way more than what we can even imagine. Well, I'm I'm almost ashamed to ask what the someone like me who's American Midwestern guy would bring in. You know what would they what is made of the peanut butter and jelly sandwich or the bologna sandwich on wonder bread and the bag of lace potato chips, So we will take that too. I do believe that junk food is equally important in life as much as good food. And if you don't bring me that peanut butter jelly sandwich that you're talking about, I will never know that that even existed and what that means or what it tastes like. And the more you're going to say no to junk food, people are going to want more junk food. So I'm not here stopping anyone from anything. In our school, one of the biggest philosophy that we teach our teachers is please don't say no to them. Say no only when you really mean no, no, and then stick to the no. So if there is a no, there should be a reasoning behind it. Uh. And the reasoning is that if you if you're eating junk food, what is it doing to your body? You know, how many peanut butter jelly sandwiches can you have? And what does it do to your body? And what are you missing? And what how are you going to get that? You know? And Okay, in this meal you peanut butter jelly sand which next meal will be peut butter jelly sandwich with maybe a little bit of roccoley, maybe a little bit of carrot. Who likes carrot? The rabbits like carrot? So do am I a rabbit today? Or am I a broccoli kid today? So that as our conversation wound down, Suda on our own brought up what I've long preached, our fundamental facets of our humanity and our connection to one another. Two things that connect all of us. They come from the tongue. Okay. The first is the language. If you go to any country and learn three sentences of their country and talk to them. Before you know, they will give you everything under the sun because they think you're so awesome. You learned my language, you're like the best, so that makes you the best friends. Okay. The second one is the food. The minute you say those things in the language, the food comes. The culture comes the food eating and talking to someone about what is your like about food? And you start talking, Believe it or not, everyone will become your friend. As Suda said, two things that connect us all and they come from the tongue, taste and talk, food and language. We are the only animal that cooks and the only animal that tells stories, and they are hard wired into our species. It became clear to me when I read a book called Catching Fire, How Cooking Made Us Human. It's by Richard Rangum, a Harvard evolutionary biologist. In it, he theorizes that humans didn't become the most successful species on the planet because of a genetic fluke or the taming of fire. He argues that humans became the most successful species on the planet because we learned to cook food. When we cook food, we were suddenly able to consume massive amounts of calories. Before we started cooking food, our ape ancestors sat alone for six to eight hours masticating raw vegetation. Once we started cooking food, we could get huge amounts of calories very quickly. These calories grew our very calorie hungry brain. It changed the shape of our bodies. It made us healthy, so our genes spread. And then it did something really important. It changed our disposition. It changed who we were. Cooking food takes work. Someone has to gather it so monastic prepare it. Someone has to care for what happens after all the food is consumed. Someone has to tend the families as those gathering the food get the food. The cooking of food forced us to cooperate. If we wanted the advantages of cooked food of all these calories, we had to work together. It changed us, and it did another thing. Because we weren't shoving massive amounts of raw vegetation down our throats, we were able to evolve nuanced vocal anatomy that allowed for nuanced speech, the speech required for language. We became storytellers, and I think we became storytellers around food. The ability to tell stories allowed us to tell each other where the food was, where predators might be. We were pretty low on the food chain back then, but language and storytelling helped us to survive. As my mentor, the writer Reynolds Price, wrote, a need to tell and hear your stories is essential to the species Homo sapiens second in necessity, apparently after nourishment and before love and shelter. Millions live without love or shelter, he wrote, No one lives without the sound of stories. And so many of those stories we tell each other happen around food during the meals we share. We're the only animal that tells stories, and we're the only animal that cooks. There's something to be learned from this and something to be lost for failing to acknowledge it. I really want to end this show with some cooking and a technique that I love in Indian cuisine. I was inspired by Suda, and I also want to end up by sharing some food with my producer, Hi Jonathan. Thank you so much for filling me do this. It's a great technique. I've got some doll here, but the key here is the tempering. It's called here or tadka in India. And I've got some butter about. I have stick of butter and a big pot of lentils here, and we cook this butter until it's brown and frothy. The butter is gonna get nutty and delicious. Then all I'm gonna do is add some raw ginger and garlic, some Indian spices too. Teaspoons are gara masala, teaspoon of human, half teaspoon of turmeric, one quarter teaspoon cayenne, the garlic, and inch of minced ginger, and a big squeeze of lemon. First step is browning the butter. I've got about a half stick of butter here. I can see it's getting frocky um and a little bit brown on top, and the bubbles are getting a little bigger. I can add my garlic and cook that. Get that cooking in the brown butter. I'm gonna add my seasoning, my spices to the brown butter, already mixing a ramicin let those bloom. Yes, listen it sound. I love it, and it's getting so fragrant and it's beautiful. And then I'm gonna cool it down so it doesn't burn. With a splash of lemon, here's that scissle again, and we're done with the butter tempering and all we're gonna do is stir this now into our hot doll, and that finishes it with this beautiful fragrant spiced butter so that the season oil comes in at the end on top, comes in right at the end on top, and this allows for great fragrance, great flavors. As a rest before it in my book, of course, gave you a taste earlier of how plain it was, Jonathan Um and now we're gonna taste it and you can see how it has been transformed by these spices and the technique called toddka okay so wow. I got a little kick to it too at the end that's from the Kayen, but it really transforms the whole doll dish and it's a really great technique. Let's see. Special thanks to our guests Ecai soup to interviewed in Miami by my producer Jonathan Hodge Dressler, and thank you Whitney in the whole team at the Manador Room. Thanks also to sudac To Romin and her talented and thoughtful staff at the Treelock School in Brooklyn, New York. Special thanks to our actress and translation expert Berna Parlock. My new book is out now. It's also called From Scratch, but it's all about cooking and ten meals that can teach us all we need to know in the kitchen. We'll have a link to it in the show notes and on my site Roman dot com. From Scratches produced by Jonathan Hawes Dressler. Our executive producer is Christopher Hasiotis. Our supervising producer is Gabrielle Collins. The music except for the cruise Ship Mambo is by Ryan Scott off his album A Freak Grows in Brooklyn and listeners don't worry. Season two of From Scratches already under production and will be arriving soon In until then, we'll be releasing several bonus episodes featuring full interviews with some of our wonderful guests. From Scratch is a production of I Heart Radio. 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