Hello and welcome to cooking Yeezys This is Dave Arnold your host cooking issues coming to you on the newsstand studios in Rockefeller Center in Midtown New York. John it's a it's Midtown right yep Midtown kind of midtown mean isn't Rockefeller Center its own kind of neighborhood.

Like right in the middle of midtown, Midtown West I'm in Tony so All right,

all right. Not joined in the studio as usual with a Nastasia the hammer Lopez she is having technical difficulties calling in which means cooking issues crowd that if you are the kind of people that watch the Rankin and bass, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer Christmas special if you're one of the people that that watches those, you have one more week to find in that show. What I've always thought is an error a mistake made in the show, but in fact my son DAX has proved to me is in fact genius is in fact genius. Jackie molecule's also is not going to be calling in he's having issues but he is going to be on the discord, taking care of all of your stuff. If you're a Patreon listener, and for the first time today in the booth, we have Hassan more on the on the what do you call that the panel on the mixing panel? How you doing this on?

Thank you for having me.

Well, no thanks for doing it. And Hassan's dealing with a bunch of issues because cooking issues we bring the bad luck with this wherever we go. So you know, they moved. They moved to new stance Studios back into a studio while they're still under construction. And so they decided that we didn't need lights today. It's kind of fun. So he's working in the dark. How do you like Dennison? It's intimate? I like it. Yeah. And the first time I have someone on, you know, officially doing this, I have to ask them some questions so that the listeners know something about you. What do you like to eat?

Um, my girlfriend told me I have the palate of a five year old so I would say Italian food, Chinese food and burgers.

And do you do cook at all or no, you know,

very minimal. I cook pancakes. My mother makes a salmon dish that I like. And I'm pretty good at cooking that I well.

Let me ask you this about pancakes and I'll let you off the hook. All right. Okay. Okay. Well, first of all, I'm gonna ask you several questions about pancakes. What size pancakes do you typically make?

Bigger than silver dollar, but smaller than those 45 size pancakes.

Alrighty. And are you a buttermilk or milk person? Milk person. Okay. And do you flip when the bubbles don't really collapse? In other words, when the bubbles stay open on the top? Or do you flip just when you start seeing bubbles?

That's an interesting question. I think I'll wait a little while till I see a good amount of bubbles,

the ones that don't kind of close up all the way. So it almost looks like it's going to be a crumpet. And then you flip it like that kind of thing? Correct? Because to me, John, right or wrong? That's kind of one of the main things when do you flip the pancake? I've had like hour long arguments about people when you flip the pancake. It's really more complicated than that. Because it really depends on how stiff the batter is. And I think the pancakes gonna be, but that's what people think about it. All right, listen, before I give you the telephone number for my Patreon listeners, because I'm going to want to tell you why you're going to want to call in right now. We have we're extremely honored to have with us special guest. Like, world famous. I've never met him actually. I don't think Virgilio Martinez is on the phone. How you doing chef? Hi, how you doing quite well. So So So listen, we're talking like the chef of central in in in Lima in Peru. By the way, Chef I'm embarrassed to say I have never been to Peru everyone that I know who's gone to Peru it's crazy. I've never been it's like it's a you know everyone tells me it's like the new food capital of the world Peru and I've not been Isn't that stupid?

Oh, well. Just leave I suppose go to the Amazon. There are so many places to just not love the restaurants, natural environments where you can enjoy food. Yeah, great. Yeah.

Sure. I've never been south of Colombia. It's one of my great regrets. The problem is I don't I've never like in the entire world. I've never been south of Colombia. I've been it just to the equator and no further

Colombia along this square nice yellow color this nice, beautiful.

I have never been to the Amazon I've only been to I've only been to like Bogota and to like can do where the coffee plantations are. And Carter Haney but yeah, I like more that up in the mountains. Then we're gonna we're going to talk about that in a minute. So call your questions of for the chef into 9174 One. Oh 1507 That's 9174010 1507. But I have to ask you this. I read in your bio, that you worked at lutenist in New York.

Sure. That was amazing. Yeah. One of the major scenes of that I'm actually very proud of being just part of that team, rather than

when were you in the test?

Work like, he was part of the last era of just when baby food was the ship, and we were close in the restaurant. It was after. After the German chef,

after Andre Soldner had already Yeah, I love Andre. So

yeah, I just don't know. Yeah, he wasn't he was there, but he wasn't able to make us included because he was he was yeah, he was obviously, but then we had a new generation of checks taking over the kitchen he was surprised for user for French food in New York. You know, the Japanese were coming in different things. Were coming to New York so it wasn't all about Italian or French cuisine. Fine dining.

Yep. Now worked all over when did you open your restaurant Sentra which is always on like the on the top 50 list except, well, how long ago do you open that?

I'm sorry, it wasn't eight. Yeah, we opened in Dubai in the district of Madhya Pradesh and then we just moved about four years to run whichever place and now we've Yeah, we're happy about the place because we see a bright future you know, after all, disaster happened in June

so what I want to talk about, I guess it Central is the kind of famous idea of the tasting menus based on altitude. And I think you know, the one thing like like I told you when I went to Columbia what I what I kind of loved is you choose your kind of climate and you choose kind of the ingredients based on the altitude and you have because the you know, the mountains are so high and the temperature changes but what's so amazing is is that you have ingredients in these different places that can only grow in like there because they need a constant temperature or relatively constant temperature like all the time which you can only get in these kinds of Equatorial Highlands you want to talk about cooking based on or not cooking but ingredients based on altitude

Sure, I'm actually restaurant which is in meters above sea level up in the month of January through in Cusco the political means when we were working with local communities and we just serve food just coming from that area. I mean we don't have any any flow which is entirely game where we are just in from the receipt will have any seafood and not no food coming from yet just for that growth this is to do so. But the different elevations in the monster engineer this so you can basically find it you see the quinoa all these Andean grains different varieties of quinoa to snowball the appeal as many people believe that we had a loved one that is genuine white and there were so many others and then some other kind of again wait and then we have another another ecosystem to where you find different pitches or routes and different races of the pages I mean, we got we got along I mean by the by the by one Institute for 1700 varieties of potatoes in one region and this is like a lot of ingredients and then there's another place in these mountains where you find different ranges of corn and then fruit there then we have a separate Valley I don't know if you if you have heard about this area near but in Cusco where it's surrounded by beautiful fruit and aromatic so most most of the food that we we consume there is like guys more like British I wouldn't. I wouldn't say like everything is vegan. This also meat. But yeah, most of our vegetables Coffee, because coffee can be elevations, surprisingly friendly with the coffee.

Cusco is so high. How do you cook there? It's very hard to do like, like, how hard is it to adapt to cooking that high up? It's so high.

Oh, yeah, first of all, you got to adapt your body to your mind and you feel kind of ECU integrated Cusco. Firstly, quite difficult to because of this lack of oxygen, of course being in high altitude. But then after two days, you start to feel utterly perfect. Well, and the energy there is fantastic is amazing. So you actually change your mood, and then being in touch with these new ingredients, because there is always something new to explore. So when we do the 14 different herbs and vegetables. So this is this, this is such an amazing variety of videos. But yeah, cooking the various different because it's difficult because no surprises that we use in the course, as doesn't work in the end, the level of humidity, very, very low. So things work in a very different way. So whenever we work, any recipe that we prepare, probably you're preparing or preparing debug data don't

do you have to use a lot of pressure cookers are you only adapted to like things that want to be cooked at that high of an altitude?

No. wood fire

I've seen I've seen the pictures

from from from maybe you see that? Yeah, we take away most of the expiration some input. And the local ones who actually they've been doing this for years, first of year. So we try to adopt this technique, which in the end raises because this part of our learning process is a school that we have tremendous diversity to to understand new methods and new things because actually, I'm coming from the from the old school from the, from the from the French base astronomy, and then I done some casinos and one of the Spanish casinos, you know the, what is called the molecular Casino. So I have done these different techniques, but after after, you know committed and this past, let's say of 16 years, 20 years I've been doing this acoustal been a change of everything. Now I actually feel like I'm cooking. So medicine,

well, I Well, we'll get into the collection of all kinds of like the actual medicinal stuff, which is fascinating in a minute. But the pictures from from meal are like amazing. Is that the prettiest restaurant view ever? Like ever? It's so beautiful. Oh, yeah,

that's the one that you Yeah, you see these terraces that were built spray in time. And that was useless. Requests for a lab where people were work releasing different ecosystems and different approaches and different elevations of different pieces of land where the pressures were trends. So they were able to present different crops and they were able to see more strength to see. So it was pretty much a useful place to to, you know, understand these mountains and this huge ecosystem which is which were raised under colonial standards. So we're just in front of the face of the of the a football stadium, which is huge and we have this in front of the restaurant. So part of being in the restaurant is that you get to do it this view and He also did a review of mass, our research deputation center because we want to have an installation and Research Center to understand Understand how to apply these different needs from ingredients to our booking.

One more question about Cusco, how often does it happen that a tourist comes to Cusco comes to the restaurant first day, first day has a bottle of wine and falls over from the altitude. Just as like, they don't understand. They can't drink that much in high altitude and boom, they fall over how often like every day or like some days.

Yeah, every two days. Yeah, I had to say yeah,

yeah, I mean,

out of 40 people, I mean to people who provide some, you know, some messages and whatever you whatever is needed. Yeah.

So go to the restaurant the second day people go there, but go to the restaurant on the second day, the second day? Yeah. Oh, yeah. And so, I also want to ask you, because I think a lot of people gonna find this very interesting. And this actually kind of harkens back to solten are a little bit who, you know, his business partner was, was his wife forever. What's it like, like hat being married to the Chef de Cuisine, Chef, Chef, paleo and that's got to be kind of, that's got to be hard in such like a high powered restaurant. You know, that being actually married and working?

Yeah, I've been asked this a lot. Before I used to, I used to ask her that was it difficult you need, you need a way to negotiate things, the kitchen. And then we try different strategies and techniques to you know, have different spaces, and then understand where we want to be together, cooking together. So for now, it's quite cool, because now she has a restaurant next to my restaurants, so she won't be replaced. But the thing is that she's so much to sell Brenda, she's also the head of the club. So we're still working together. But the season that now she's more likely to her restaurant. And it's just, it's crazy for us, because being a cook, of course, you know, that demands so much of your time. And you lose, you know, connection with your family, people, friends, parties, and families and you want to be in your kids. Whenever to score. A goal with some some plans about anything is sometimes everything becomes everything. Everything is about astronomy or food about our restaurant and resilient. So if I have a partner that is that is enjoying this with me. I mean, whatever. Like, I feel like we were living a good time together.

That's great, because it could go either way. Right? I mean, that's

Sure, sure. Sure. Sure. But we spent the news, you know what she likes what I like, where we just say that, of course, it says everything. Beautiful. I mean, we did some best to sometimes to deal with struggling about you know, this, this stress in the kitchen. But I think we are at this point, after 10 years doing this together. I think that we know each other enough to understand where you know, somebody has to have to be left alone.

That's amazing. And then what's interesting also you partner with your sister Molina in the I'm gonna butcher that again. Forgive me I'm gonna butcher any pronunciation Mater. InnoGear Teva. Yes. Yeah. Which is the talk about this kind of research program you guys have? Yeah,

she said when she was connecting to different disciplines. So because we work with different fields from different diseases, not just thrown on me. That's what amazed me that I don't see only only chef and clothes and food. So we work with different people that apologies from from from from historian to the world, from the art and the culture. So so my Lena what she does is she is articulating all these different people to create different than programs and studies. So they given us a sense views of you know, how it's going to be our next menus husband and be our next experiences. And what should we do? We should, what should we do? What should we be doing in the next few years from now, so it's about these memories, a dealer is, of course, cataloging everything, every single thing that we find, of course, matter. Research and interpretation center is providing these knowledge and ideas coming from different fields. And from science and art. And, and you know, the innovation is very good, and the creativity, the level of creativity that we can actively teach, in some cases. We are what we were expecting.

So originally, you guys were cataloging like, local indigenous products from Peru. And I think one of the interesting things you said on your, on the website there is that, you know, you could live in Lima your whole life, and you go up the mountain, and all of a sudden you're a foreigner. That's how different the the ingredients are. But then you decided at some point to shift to not just Peru, but to the range of products kind of all throughout the Andes. And that kind of led to the the book that you just came out with, which we're going to I guess we should start talking about before we run out of time, right?

Yeah, well, what, you know, what happened is that we started as something very, very small, with Melinda and like, we started going, we were going to be handed to them one time to where we had to move like, just like, maybe a few hours from Lima. From the coast, we are just next to the sea. And then we started to go to the Amazon. So why didn't you Why didn't you bear with us everything is quite close for being such a diverse for being in a way they learn by diversity. So we're doing this and little by little after maybe about six years, we've been creating more and more programs and more people have been has been coming to our ideas and our projects. So what is happening now is that we want to know more about what's going on in America about because this one thing is true, we're close to the Amazon, and they understand this. And they did this and they post and we kind of see the same thing happening in South America and America. So and the whole process of explore has been something that for us, it's something that we need. So nowadays, we want to know more about America, we've had a lot of these places. So what I see beyond the borders of through which it has been very fruitful for for our our team. And then we came up with this. This work, of course, where we were doing something quite exciting from from scratch, because we are doing some of the categories, some of the recipes that we we, we decided they were that they were one of the most emblematic or probably one of the most there was a 30 minute pick to serve.

So the name of the book, by the way, is the for those of you who are, I haven't, I should have told you guys right away with the name of the book, as I apologize. It's the Latin American cookbook. But it's not. I mean, it's not even just like a cookbook. It's like, it's an encyclopedia. It's interesting and harkens back to an older style of book. And you're doing all the way from like the very, very southern tip of South America all the way up to the Rio Grande all the way up to like, you know, Juarez all the way up to like the Rio Grande. So it's like, an all the way over to to the Caribbean. Right? So it's, I mean, it's incredibly physically large, but also incredibly diverse region. So you know, like I, you know, I read would fight and put out because it's one fight and things and they were like, well, this is the second in the series we had, you know, we had a book on the cuisine of the North, like Scandinavia is like Scandinavia is like four countries with like two different kinds of people in it. No offense, Scandinavia, no offense, you know what I mean? But it's like maybe three kinds of people in Scandinavia. Whereas like, you know, Latin America is like, like you can't even comprehend it. You know what I mean? And yet you still in the book, you say that there is enough of a combination already that you feel like you can draw it all together into one book, you want to talk about that.

Yeah. Just one thing that we as people think that we are the same, we are not

people from different people from Mexico and Brazil, Argentina and Chile and Ecuador and Bolivia, so and then, it seems like people in my country, we're so different. I mean, I'm from the coast. And then you find people from the moment that you mentioned the people that say different to what we believe, the way we see the world, our mindset, our, the way we see the world is different. And then the people in the Amazon is so different. So same is happening in America. So you know, if we compare with the Bible, I don't know how to call this, we send it to do a cookbook recipe for them, we send it every single recipe has a different story. And that we needed to share. I mean, the book could be like, huge, and it could take us maybe like, more more years to finish. But I think we did a great job. Just like yeah, you mentioned, the notebook is about four different projects is what we need to see to recover city to country. And we have 1000 recipes. There, we put down to 600 recipes, about almost 200 photos of recipes, which is it is a lot. But we need to be great because the level of complexity in the domain issues. So I will say we are not the same. Every single country has a different stories and different different things, different traditions. The Melting Pot happens in many countries are just amazing. I think this is a hotspot or district, we've been we've been we are the result of probably, you know, Japanese Chinese funds for to eat Italian, our interest rate. same is happening on different countries. So we're trying to put a bit of this. And and then with all these our differences with all our differences, we want to do something that probably we will say like, okay,

yeah, and you focus mainly on food that kind of either people cook or people eat in a kind of a normal, sometimes festive as well, but not like not necessarily like fine dining. This is like food that like just people would eat right?

Sure, that's what some people do. When we decided to book about 15 guys in my kitchen and the kitchen, in the restaurant, in both restaurant and also in matter in the research area, where people were coming from different nationalities from mostly from South America. So I mean, they have 17 people. So they have different context. So we got in touch with different people from different different countries. food writers, journalists, anthropologists, historians, and so we're able to understand, you know, a little bit of every country on Saturday, we I know that many chefs from from from their neighbor friends and colleagues, they were helping me to do this. And this is a work of market research area with all most of most of our friends colleagues. They were put to work with recipes. Then an awful writer was helping us and Nicola so he was is a traveler, he's a journalist, and he was peeking places and recipes. I have been asked to combine anything one thing,

right, because it's interesting, like you say that, you know, as you as you just said, that you you're trying to first taste a dish or talk to someone, like have it made by the hands who know what it's supposed to taste like or with the ingredients that it's supposed to taste like sometimes we even go to the places where they're made to have them in like Original locale but then you're in one way, adapting them by making them in your kitchen trying to make a recipe that's adaptable. But on the other hand, you're also telling people like real ingredients. So here's a book, I combine America that has a recipe for RIA eggs. And for those of you that don't know, Ria is like a, it's like a small ostrich like bird from South America, and we can't get the eggs here, you know what I mean? So it's, it's a very interesting, it's very interesting combination of adapted, but also not adapted. Right? So it's like, it's, it's a very, it's an interesting line to kind of dance down. What do you think?

Sure. That's what I call in the in the role, you know, improvisation is called, don't be a stress, because it's stressful, do it the recipe 100% If you don't find ingredients, just get into the creative process. And, and, and do whatever you think is good. And it doesn't mean that the recipes don't work. I mean, they do work with destroying the recipes, as you were saying, when we work with recipes, even when we're thinking before, we're imagining that we were in this magic a beach in Santa Hana, or that we were in Venezuela, you know, this kind of one time, so we're seeing nowadays, like, of course, different books used to contact a very helpful seen that making a movie like this, maybe 10 years ago, will be like, a different. But nowadays, having the sense of places is very important. Because of many people working with us, have you heard these people have been, has been has been wonderful. For Yeah, I think having one of the biggest challenges was like having one piece of, you know, even if you're very good at one book, which is challenging is difficult.

I noticed you you left out Kathy Barra, one of my favorite meats from South America, you just don't I guess you don't like, you know, what do they call copy bearer and prove they eat it? They're the Chico era from Colombia?

Oh, yeah. Because we we focus on the Commandos, the camo, camo. Yeah, we didn't have rallied venison. And, of course, those are the native meats. And then we were then the pork, the beef became they came with the with the service. And you know, how much breastfeed how much is using meat. And that's been a new way and better way. So, yeah, isn't about like doing everything they can, I would, I would message the team. We within like 5050, like, also some of the things that we do in the past, from the years of mature our patients.

So I don't want to run out of time, because we have some questions from our listeners for you. And actually, this person started with you in Bogota, at Astrid, a guest on this is Nicolas from Ecuador. He didn't give me his last name. But he said he started with you at SVD got a guest on. And so he said why do you think? Yeah, he's Why do you think besides Mexico and Brazil, it has taken all other taken other Latin American countries such a long time to be recognized for their traditional cuisines. Even though we all share similar products, ingredients and flavors.

I think it's quite simple because I think Mexico and Brazil they play their role in the world seat. Because many of the things I don't know because of soccer, football are different participation to the world economy in fashion, whatever it is, different trends. So the astronomy were exposed before some of the countries but it is moving very pleased. Now people are listening into something different. And I think it's always gonna be the same for for April name a few, some other countries.

Chef, let me ask you this to kind of piggyback on Nicholas's question. It seems like maybe the past 2025 years, in South America, more people are getting in, there's a kind of two things like people who kind of are, like edge, like more educated than maybe maybe 50 years ago are getting into food. And you know, nowadays, like people who are, you know, kind of, like, have a lot of education, which at the same time, people are also all of a sudden interested in more local ingredients, and it's caused kind of this explosion, do you think that's true or not? That's kind of what I noticed in Colombia. And you know, from what I've read from other other places, do you think that's true?

What Yeah, I think a witness is because I've never seen so many people coming to Beirut and asking going to market or just going to Cusco and probably don't turn people just looking for the normal stuff and, you know, going to the Inca ruins, ecological site, they want to go to market they want to go into food and different in the market. They want to see the street food vendors. So I think of course, this explosion, I think is something because I don't know, it's like the worst the worst changes now because local variable, what they what do you think nowadays in the region or food is important?

How much credit eat within South America do people give to Alex Atala because I remember, years ago, he came up to do a demonstration at in New York at starships. And I was like, No one here had heard of like any of the ingredients that he had had dealt with. And this was before, you know, normal was famous for these like, hyper local ingredients. And I think he just kind of blew all of our heads off. We were just like, What the hell is happening? Everyone wanted to go I've never been because, again, I've never been South Colombia. But two people in South America still kind of give him credit because I feel like worldwide, he helped kind of kick off an important movement. Now.

One of the main ways to to start this with pride, averages that you may have seen worldwide. Yeah, I remember when he certainly was trouble I was diving or was just maybe or within the stages somewhat PrimaryKey was he was coming with a not so many ingredients. And yeah, we're probably you've never seen before. And yes, he was. He was working with a little bit different aromatics. And, of course, again, he was he was, he's, he came from, from from the classic French for the day, then of course, it will be when he came back to work even back to Brazil. He switched to work with with local natives, and also their products. And that was quite interesting. And within atmosphere with audio, and video where he started he, he, he was, he was a chef in France and he came to Peru and he started to discover not difficult, we discover alterations and maybe more visible to the world.

And on these local ingredients. Here's something I think that a lot of people I know like our listeners here might be interested in, there's a it's not a problem, maybe it's a problem, there's a fine line, right between you, you, you bring these like very local ingredients to light that in one way, almost like save them from extinction because some of these places are getting wiped out, right. But on the other hand, if they get too popular, it's also a problem, right? Because then, like they go, so how do you ride that line where it's like celebrating, like helping to survive without at the same time destroying by making it too popular? It's very hard, right?

So that's why you have to have a team. It's not about just crazy cooks, discovering new ways of showing the bsme recipe by the way you need to work on conservation or preservation of species and then we need to understand you know, part of our traditions and why why if we're working on innovation, we are working on showing these ingredients and probably making them and we will do the work and probably create new markets. We want to make sure what I want to make sure when I study is that will help any to meet the in our in very far area. So we were learning from mistakes and you haven't repeated why it happened with maca root you have different reasons you know, they were they were you know they became trendy the traditions they were not gauging anything about that trend so now we were we were all empowered to to to create this atmosphere where you know fair trade things are coming to our places and we understand that if we do something that is going to create a quite a small trend or whatever different different habits in our cuisine it has to it has to be very well studied before

apt one C writes in what are the best United States domestic chili pepper substitutes for Peruvian chili peppers I guess especially the hammer you're right if you could only grow three Peruvian chili peppers what would they be and what are the best practices for using frozen fish in CVG or should freshness be paramount that was from one of our listeners

okay so what the chillers I mean you guys you guys know the freshwater but you are dehydrated basically chips which are amazingly smoky given us you got lots of references from from from Mexican which is quite good if I have to choose one one to grow in the face which I know you don't find funny there is they do they choose ever on base another one call which is very popular here is called Roboto Roboto Roboto is like a rental center it is Wi Fi TVs and then about the fish right you mentioned about

they want to they want to know using frozen fish and so Vijay

okay, I know I'm just against process fish it just depends on how you feed your fish or how you how you how you serve the fish after this so when you are posting efficiently how what they need to use you know you have to be covered it has to be you give me the frozen fish in the fridge overnight. That was a bad idea. But you know the problem is when you when we've processed stuff that has been frozen many times and you have no control you will have no liability you have no information or disability and sadly we know this because of the price you know because of you know the your buying processes which is the best example is this good. Mostly most of the money is coming it's coming frozen frozen magazine in Japan, Korea, China in through Mexico. So what is the thing is just like how what can we use to work with this frozen fish? So don't don't previously share something very particular.

So Pablo writes in with another sub EJ question and while we're at it like I know you mentioned in the book like the history of severe che you might want to go like a short thing on the kind of history of House of Vijay, you were talking about, like maybe what it was like prior to you know, when citrus fruits were available if you want to talk about that, but what Pablo wants to know is does the lemon juice do something besides giving flavor in civvy che because it's usually used as an example of cooking with acidity but they don't seem to be long together long enough to actually put one when I make it they turn color I mean they turn anyway but go ahead go ahead chef. What do you think?

Yeah, yeah. Because you know when you're cooking the fish is something bad happens and you know once once that we in fatal silica you kind of attack the fish with the with the line was it was relentless goes to the fish, the fish turns white. So that's what it looks like of course. So the question is, what do we call it? When something is cooking, you know is a unique case or not? But if we were to pretend we're cooking the fish with with with them Until of course we will in a way like cue the fish and the fish in seconds it changed the texture so

of course we cookie the fish but also what he what changes the texture on the fish, it becomes a you know, like filmer it becomes whiter. And the thing is that because of our chairman Cleveland in the past 3020 years, we've been fast in the space we are we're adding the lime juice for just a few staples before serving so we'll keep the lime juice you know, we don't keep their fish upstream with lime juice because otherwise do your pain is very firm fish. And in a way it's kind of you're not respecting the freshness of the fish. So, one of the most beautiful things just to get a fresh fish in seconds, use the also called Fish add some salt before the lime juice to protect me and then add the lemon juice and then send it straight away which which in this case is the like choose away it says use in the land case we prefer something which is the rescue of the book which is called natural to the human. What makes Tigers mean which is a reducer we have we are having division.

I have to ask you this before because John here will kill me if I don't you somehow smuggled Parana, vacuum packed Parana, first of all, first of all, what is it Parana tastes like what do they taste like?

us so much. I think this is an example of the texture is explained. Because it takes like, you know, like, like having this nice crystal like crunchy means it provides a flavor. And then things that when you meet is very clean. So you want to be careful whenever you do you do do the phone rang as to the disconnect. And yeah, we're happy to be there. They weren't like they were already really cooked. dehydrated, so they were not shrimp fish. So what are these kinds of people when they were?

Right? They're dehydrated. Okay, that makes a little more sense. But let me tell you something like, this is lax people. So he's like He flies into LAX. And I don't know if any of you guys have dealt with US Customs before. But it they're not exactly. I mean nothing against them. They're not the friendliest bunch on Earth. I can't imagine them looking at a package of vacuum packed Parana and being like, okay. Okay. And you just wouldn't say, yeah, how the hell did you talk through that? Did you don't have to say this, but did you bribe them? Bribe US customers?

might imagine most of the time when I travel, whichever to cook, and you mentioned that I went to work in New York right at the chef's presentation. So most of us, we bring images to our cooking demonstrations. So in my case the thing is, most of the time we bring dehydrated fish, any kind of fish you can bring, even cure a fever. Like, let's say like, if somebody asked you what you have, and you say, Okay, I'm having like a fuel cell phone. I'm having a smoke smoke Coopersville but I think I committed because I was gonna say okay, what we're doing. What is that actually was quite, to me, it took me two hours to to, to, you know, to, to work well.

Yeah. And wow, I can't believe you got that through. You know, the old trick people do with cheeses because in the US you can't bring raw milk cheese younger than 60 days. So the people who will I just say it's, it's older than 60 days and they're like Hawker. They don't know customs doesn't really Yeah, because customs person can't necessarily tell the difference being the salmon and a Parana strangely, but once they know what the Parana chefs yeah not too happy about it since I have you on the phone

Yeah, they weren't they were they were very intrigued and so some of them were laughing at me. Anyway, but I explained various banks in Australia when you go to work for food they got really really scary because they are protecting the land. Oh, yeah. And that's a willing to take off all your food. Yeah, where are we?

I mean Australia. Yeah, I mean

honestly, that was the first time the last time I bring any food

so something Peruvian that I only tried to make once and it was so terrible that I need to know how to properly make it. Okay. The when I take when I made it, it tasted like I was sucking on on the bedding from from a goat. It tasted like like a barn the two new night now I know there's a white train your black Tonio I bought the white one I don't know the difference in flavor between the white one and the black one. And that's different from the the purpose sake as the dried potatoes that you use in the dehydrated potato stew right can you tell me the difference in flavor between those three ingredients and how to not make it taste terrible?

Yeah. Yeah, basically they worked in the personal fermentation and then the most of these are fish right and they sometimes soak wire from the rivers and if it's something they natural what they do with people in the motor they can do this for years and up I've got the nick of information where you fish right but they were doing this personal use case with this kind of potatoes what they do is they permitted provisionals for a long long time so the smell of the CISI and so the blood one there was no field so the blood the black the black skin the why appeal because you preserve the White River the water from the river so the river speeding status and they're there you don't want to do the the smell of what we're doing in the kitchen because we don't use any any any any any texture or any any any flower that we don't know where it's coming from because you know we eventually key like I mentioned grains are different cereals so we're so we're getting the 10 of the flour from the starch right rarely tapioca you can make a salad so when you're trying to use we're trying to use every single starch from from this vegetable root or different which several legumes or even from the coca leaf. We're using such so what is happening is that with the potato while we do it, whenever we went out seeking from sources we great. We obtained this powder of potato. So we have this Mexican and it seems very nice. Beautiful texture.

But it's the flower is the black one more mild to shake. Try the black one. Yeah. Okay, I'll try the black one. I gotta do it again. I never want chef is I always have to do something at least three times. And this is why I need to come to Peru. I need to have it like I'm supposed to have it first. I know what it's supposed to taste like otherwise, how do I know if I'm wrong? You know, how do I know I will never know unless I

go to so Sami go I want to like to go through some of the like recipes in here. For instance, you talk about this fish Tamaki, which is also the pacu you said it tastes like pork this Amazonian fish tastes like pork.

Oh yeah, they smoked pork right? Yeah. Yeah

that fish because when you see a species versus the surface to eat foods it's just a beautiful thing so we do a issues with it work within the restaurant data and interpretation of what we see in nature. So if we weren't in Amazon and we see the fish just waiting for the tomatoes or different fruits, mangoes coming down from the tree, you seriously go into the surface for the truth. So we do where do we make a saving on this menu? The fish with the filter the fishing consuming so you see these fish as a base like a bit adding effects of pork because it's more of a depiction we should

yeah, I mean, look this book I like we're running out of time the Latin American cookbook by Virgilio Martinez. It has got like I'll just go through some of the stuff really quickly when I read the read the book I thought was interesting is that I would just I would see something and then I would have to go down in internet rabbit hole to look at it just like the cassava recipes alone like the cassava liquid I mean the bread so the bread baby this like baby shaped bread from the Andes does that taste good? Or is it more the way it looks chef?

Wow, I got a taste in the breakfast Lou is good it's just all these colors that they do so that it looks sometimes seems gotta look beautiful. We more or less variations of