🎙 EP192 — Some chefs leave the brigade behind. Others never join one at all. So who earns the title "chef," and who actually lives the better life?

🎧 In This Episode:

👨‍🍳 Who actually gets to call themselves a chef?

🔪 Private chef life: escape or career upgrade?

🏃‍♂️ Leaving the brigade behind

🚪 Skipping the restaurant kitchen entirely

🎓 Culinary school doesn’t make you a chef

🔥 Why the apprenticeship still matters

🌟 The self-taught chef exception

📱 Social media shortcuts and fake expertise

💸 Why private dining can make serious money

😬 Talented chefs who can’t sell themselves

🧢 The problem with inflated chef résumés

🍬 Gummy bears, art catering, and empty concepts

⚠️ When private chef work becomes a scam

🏠 Cooking inside someone else’s home

🚁 The billionaire’s sandwich before the helicopter

⛓️ Service vs. servitude

🧱 Why shortcuts damage the craft

🍽️ Private dining as the anti-restaurant model

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🍷 Enjoy

🎙️ EP191 — Who decided pasta must be al dente? Who said risotto needs a bite? Do cooks really need to follow every rule they inherit? Breaking kitchen rules and questioning culinary dogma.

🎧 In This Episode:

🍝 Pasta that crunches like glass

🐟 Baked flour that tastes like fish

🧫 Why fermentation feels lazy nowadays

🤌 The al dente lie

🥘 Spain's impossible paella timing

🍚 Pulling rice off the heat early

👨‍🍳 A new cook in tears

🫘 Chickpeas should never have a bite

😤 The cocky sous chef and his rice book

🍚 The rice method that never fails

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🍷 Enjoy

🎙️ EP190 — When food makes you cry, puts you back in that place or that moment. Can cooks create emotions on purpose? Can we hack nostalgia in the kitchen?

🎧 In This Episode:

🗺️ Forget about cuisines

🍽️ Cooking through someone else's lens

🇨🇴 Building a concept around your identity

📋 Fixed menu vs specials and why both matter

🎷 The saxophone analogy

🧠 Food puts you back in a place. No other art form does.

🌾 Hay ice cream and the guest who cried

🥘 When an unknown dish feels like authentic home cooking

🔥 A two-component dessert that broke a table at Etxebarri

🎯 Can you hack nostalgia on purpose?

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🍷 Enjoy

🎙️ EP189 — Curing meat with ash. Charcoal cooking renaissance. Berries replacing butter. Everything we learned about trending techniques pro cooks are testing right now.

🎧 In This Episode:

🌬️ Ramón Perisé: when terroir becomes your mood

🥩 A poetic name made the same dish taste different

🦗 A grasshopper is basically a shrimp

⚠️ Big Mac garums, 24-hour koji "aging": the gastro-cringe

🍽️ Bring back plain white plates

🔥 The charcoal cooking renaissance

🌫️ Ash to wrap and cure meat

🫐 Berry butter, berry cheese, berry fats

🛸 Jules Verne vs. Josh Niland

🐟 Aponiente grows its own fish in a 3-year salt marsh

🐑 Marsh lamb tastes like the marsh (The Sportsman, Kent)

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🔥 Enjoy!

🎙️ EP188 — Dutch fermentation specialist Christian Weij on why Koji works on any ingredient, why salt selects rather than kills, why rushing your miso is leaving 391 flavors undeveloped. Oh, and why the best Koji incubator he ever built was a sauna.

🎧 In This Episode:

🔥 Fermentation came before fire.

🧂 Salt selects bacteria, it doesn't kill them

🔬 9 flavors vs 400: the miso data

⏳ No shortcuts: wooden barrels, full fermentation

🚗 Driving miso an hour to a Michelin kitchen mid-service

🌽 The exclusive corn miso

🍄 Koji works on any substrate

🛁 A sauna turned 150kg Koji incubator

🌍 African fermentation: 900 cultures, zero coverage

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🔥 Enjoy!

🎙️ EP187 — If done right, it's one of the best salads there is. Sweetheart cabbage. Sharp vinegar. Dressed à la minute. Everything we've learned and haven't learned about coleslaw.

🎧 In This Episode:

🥬 One of the best salads there is

⏱️ Dress à la minute (or it weeps)

✅ Sweetheart cabbage, not Napa

🧪 Kimchi and food-as-medicine?

🥄 The dressing: mayo + yogurt + acid

💥 Sharp distilled vinegar hack

🧅 Cut the onion the right way

🌶️ Pitt Cue's green chili coleslaw

🍏 Green apple, kohlrabi, carrots

📋 Phil's full coleslaw recipe

🍍 Arturos and Venezuelan pineapple coleslaw

🐟 Brussels hearts & kimchi-juice beurre blanc

🥟 Forgotten German cabbage cooking

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🔥 Enjoy!

🎙️ EP186 — Smash your cloves. Wait 10. Then cook it. Everything we've learned and haven't learned about garlic.

🎧 In This Episode:

🧄 Can there be too much garlic?

👨‍🍳 Ben Morgan's nixtamalized garlic at Mugaritz

🔬 Dani Lasa taking the soul out of a clove

🇱🇧 The original alioli had no egg

🍅 Stop drowning your pan con tomate

🥒 The tiny-garlic-big-umami pickle rule

🫒 The methodical Basque way

🍜 Mayu: The black garlic oil

🖤 Why we're over black garlic

💙 What makes garlic turn blue

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🎙️ EP185 — Great dishes have no unnecessary BS. Just good craft stripped down to the essentials. This episode gets into restraint, confidence, quiet technique, and the kind of cooking that has nowhere to hide.

🎧 Topics Covered in This Episode:

🍽️ What Makes Food Good

🧱 Substance Over Style

🐓 The Problem With Chicken

🍝 Why Cooks Avoid Pasta

🔥 Restaurants That Get It Right

⭐ When Michelin Is Worth It

👨‍🍳 The Chef’s Chef

🇬🇧 British Produce Done Well

🔪 Classical Technique

⏸️ Food That Stops Time

🧠 Confidence in Cooking

📝 Menu Writing Mistakes

🤫 Quiet Food, Loud Skill

🏛️ St. John & Restraint

⚖️ Elegance Without Bullshit

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