So we also wanted to announce, especially for our crowd in Berlin, that we will make a live taping of Pot Luck Food Talks at the Potfest Berlin. It will be on October 14th and we're going to talk about sandwiches. We're also going to serve some food and we will prepare a very special episode that will be recorded live in front of an audience. So if you want to visit us, just go to potfestberlin.com and get your tickets. Hello everyone, welcome to Pot Luck Food Talks.
Today we're going to talk about harmony. So what's the deal with harmony? What are your thoughts on? Well, actually, I think we should talk about composition in general, which are the processes to compose a dish in the context of a menu, right? Because a dish should always be part of a menu, even if you're cooking at home or if you're preparing a Christmas dinner or whatever. In the best case, this should all be a harmonious concept, right?
Considering the people that is coming, the place where you are, and the drink and the food, of course. Yeah, definitely. I mean, like a dish in itself. Well, that's also like, I mean, if we're starting there, it's kind of like, what's, like, how do you define harmony, you know? And like, does a dish have to be fully harmonious? What does it mean, you know?
Yeah, I was, it's interesting because I've compared many times the idea that, let's say, a musician and a chef both are harmony managers in a way. So I wanted to understand the etymology and what it actually means. And first Greek and then Latin. But it means things fitting together, making things fit. Which makes absolute sense in music and in food, right? And you could also put their poetry or painting or many different things, right?
These are the things that you're trying to achieve when you're conceptualizing a dish. So what's your process? Let's say you have to make a menu next week, let's say for a grill that will be in the countryside. So what happens in your mind at that point? Well, there's many things coming together, no? Like you just said, it's like on one side, obviously, like the most obvious that you think about is sort of like, okay, what ingredients am I working with?
And then you have, you know, you have sort of like, you know, especially if we compare to like music or something, you have your sort of like very broad key notes, you know, say you want something fresh and acidic, you know, or you want something sweet, right? So like, obviously harmony doesn't mean that everything is kind of like just a round sphere.
No, of course you have like a certain direction that it goes in, but then everything around that those sort of like key notes has to kind of like fit together, you know, perfectly. So you kind of think sort of like, okay, where am I at? Which is like terror, which were what we talked about the last episode, you know, what ingredients to have to work with.
And then also, you know, the mood and the whole sort of like idea of the menu plays into it, you know, do you want it to be long and like a sort of banquet? Do you want it to be sharing style, family style, you know, and all those things, they come together in the consideration. How many dishes do I want to do? Why? You know, because it's not just like, oh, I'm going to do eight dishes because, because why not?
You know, there's like a, there's a thought behind it, a sort of like intuitive feeling of sort of like, this feels right, you know? Yeah. Like in my case, I do these things mainly specifically for Christmas dinners, because I'm in family, I'm going to be usually the person that is cooking. And what my family do is that they just drop me in the largest supermarket in the city and tell me, buy whatever you want. My process in that case is that I will work with what I have available.
And while I'm walking in the supermarket and seeing the products in my mind, I'm building the dishes like, okay, this could be the side dish. I could use this for, for the salad. I could add, I didn't knew they had this here. And then I have an idea. Okay, let's look if they also have these other thing.
And just for practical purposes, I won't go crazy about, I'm, I'm missing this super specific ingredient that I need that we will have to take a three hour drive to find it or something like that. That's something I want to avoid because I'm, I have the resources to work out any replacement or any way around, you know, to do like a different variation of any dish without a specific ingredient, or I do something else.
If the ingredient is really like a key ingredient that without it, it wouldn't make sense.
That on one side and on the other side, also when I'm making even pincho tours, when I'm bar hopping and having pinches, I always have like in my mind, like a, like a background rather, where I'm building a menu and I follow the principles, some key principles that I learned from, from traditional Kaiseki, this Japanese tea menus, the most orthodox traditional ones not, but like the, that I took the principles that are common sense principles when you're eating.
You want to have fish and vegetables and lighter flavors first and then stronger flavors. Also you want to start with lighter drinks like whites and then going to the reds and then dessert. Like it's, it's pretty basic to work it out like that.
But it's, I mean, it's common sense or people that understand food, but I've seen people for instance, making pincho tours, making an absolute messenger, stomach, mixing up the drinks, starting with, you know, the meat and ending with the anchovies at chapecha before dessert. You know, for me, that's a total mess. Yeah. It's not a harmonious. You know, totally, totally. And it's like, that's also the thing. It's kind of like harmony in the sort of like structure, you know?
It's kind of like, it's, if it's just a mess, you know, it's, it's going to be very unenjoyable because it's a very physical experience to eat, you know?
And the more you go to depth with all these like elements that make up like decision-makings in how you put things together, you know, there's also one thing, you know, like you said, it's kind of like if you're in the, with the example of the supermarket, having to rely on what there is, you know, gives you such a creative boost in a way, you know, because it's like a limitation, but you have to make it work with what there is. And so you use the tools you have around you.
And of course you want it to be even like, you are limited, but in that limitation, you find like a creative process. And it's the same with like regionality and regional product and like very high seasonality, you know, it's kind of like, well, like, Hey, this would go really well with avocado and yuzu, right? Because like everything does. But it's like, well, it's fucking, you know, we were, I don't know in Krakow, Poland, there's no avocado and yuzu, you know, so you have to make it work.
And then kind of like, how do I get there? You know, it's kind of like, if you go, if we go with that example, it's sort of like, okay, if I want something fatty, creamy, but like still vegetabley, you know, what can I use? And like, okay, if I want something floral acidic, what, what is there? What can I use?
And then there's also like, what I also think is like really crazy about cooking is that you have this very sort of free creative side where, you know, you can look at the ingredients and be like, okay, I can combine this with this, but also it's something very memory related eating, you know, like very nostalgic and things that we've like experienced. I mean, from one side, from like often from our family sides or sort of like experiences we had as a child.
Yeah. And you can't, you can't mess around with that. You can say like, oh, for instance, here in the Basque country, there is like this corn tortilla variation that has been here for centuries. It's called Talos. You probably know it. It's also with mixed stabilized corns. And if you ask people here, they will tell you that this is from here. Yeah, right.
But since the colonization of the Americas where corn came from, but yeah, if you tell the Basque to, I didn't found the Talos, but we have this corn tortillas and they will behead you, you know, publicly. That's something that will happen. Yeah. You can mess around with memories.
I also was thinking, and this is something probably you that are still working in a kitchen, this moment that is very, this very chef's moment where you're finishing a sauce and perhaps you are asking another colleague or the chef for a check, you know, and perhaps because you're unsure, because you have tried so much and they will use a vocabulary like it's out of balance or perhaps a little bit of sweetness or acidity or this or that.
And I mean, that's a perfectly conversation just on the topic, you know, on harmony, on finding balance. I think that that's what it is all about. Yeah, totally. I mean, with a sauce especially, you know, because like you have, it's just a liquid, right? And it's like a very lengthy process to make. I mean, usually like if we talk about like a jus or, you know, something like that, such a long process to make with so many things can go wrong.
And yeah, like I really learned that when I was, when I spent some time cooking Thai food and before I did that, I just kind of like slid in because I was helping a friend of mine out and I didn't really know much about Thai food. And then like once I got into it, it actually taught me a lot about cooking even, you know, not just like in Thai food, but like just in regular cooking, like in European cooking.
And I really remember like a moment where he was showing me how to make the som tam dressing, like a dressing for the green papaya salad. And it's just fish sauce, palm sugar, lime juice, tamarind and chili. I think that's it. So in Thai food, you always have these like, you always talk about like these like main flavors, you know, sweet, salty, sour, spicy, right? And that was like the perfect example for me because I started mixing it and it's very, very intense, right?
You taste it and you're like, ah, it's salty, but like it needs to be more sour and sweet. And then you add more tamarind, you add more lime juice, you taste it and you're like, ah, now it's a little bit too sour. I need some more tamarind. And you keep seasoning it up until you couldn't season any flavor anymore. Yeah, exactly. I know exactly that process. The first restaurant where I worked, it was a French Caribbean restaurant and there was like a French Caribbean bouillabaisse.
Was like a variation of bouillabaisse with some Caribbean variations, right? They didn't have hot sauce, you know, like, but that was like a classic from the house and it has like a very specific flavor and yes, especially salt. Salt is something like, okay, I will add a little bit more and a little bit more. And if you, if you make too much, it's super hard to unsalt something.
Like nowadays I actually would do it just calculating the percentage of the whole weight of the, you know, that will actually save time and make it like more precise. I want actually just for everybody to know between one and 2% is a, of the total weight is like a good amount of salt.
So if you're not sure about how much salt to add to something, like a kind of tolerable but high level of salt, like people that want savory 2% is a, like if you want to add, you could add that to a salad and it will have like a proper amount of salt. Totally. I do, I do the same thing actually. Like, and I only started to do that recently. You know, I was always seasoning like, I mean, I do, I have to say I'm a chef.
I don't, I usually like when I weigh something out, it's because I really have to, you know, I do everything kind of like by feeling by eye, but like I started doing the same thing. For example, like I was making this like venison tartare lately. And so I take like all the offcuts from a venison and then instead of just like grinding it or cutting it raw, I, as you do, you kind of, you freeze it just a little bit so it cuts clean and then I weigh the weight and I just add 2% of salt. Exactly.
Yeah. And then you get through the grinder and it comes out like very, like really red, really, really nicely intensely red and with like a, like a perfect seasoning, you know? Exactly. Yeah. It feels like a perfect seasoning. Yeah, exactly. All I have to do is like mix it and serve it and done, you know? Yeah. I saw once a sashimi chef working and I asked him like, how much salt are you adding to this? And he said straightforward, 2%. 2% of salt.
Yeah. That's also something flavors, I think it's also super important to the texture. If we talk about the harmony, you also want to make like the texture fit together. And if you, if you screw the texture of something that was part of the concept of the dish, it just doesn't work anymore. Like there is this, there are a few places here that make this amazing picks here that is super soft on the inside and it has to be super crispy, like crystal crispy on the outside.
Otherwise, that dish doesn't make any sense. But once in a while, especially when it's too crowded, you'll get a picks here that is not super crispy and it just, it just doesn't make sense. You know, like it's not the idea of the dish. Yeah. Shameful. But what can you say about texture?
I mean, and here, especially here in the Basque country, texture plays a key role in the food identity, like this stickiness, the collagen stickiness that you will find in many sauces and fishes and things and stews. Yeah. It's, um, texture is just as important as flavor, you know, honestly, because it's like, you know, like if you think of an example of kind of like, and that's the difficult thing about making dishes. If you, you can make a puree, right?
And season it perfectly and have it super silky smooth and stuff and you taste it and you're like, ah, that's delicious. You know, we'll make three other purees, you know, and you can make them and be sort of like, okay, it's perfectly made, super nice, perfectly seasoned, but take a plate and put the fucking four purees together. It's going to be a dish, you know? Yeah, absolutely. But, um, it's like, it just doesn't work.
You know, it's like, and that's something that's very hard to explain because you can't say like, oh, you need something creamy. You need something frisbee. You know, that's, that's not how it works because it's kind of like, there are no rules, but there are kind of rules, you know, it's like puree times four is not nice, but then sort of like how much puree is enough. Yeah. Counterbalance that.
Yeah. I remember like, like a crazy moments also in the kitchen working with maybe like a legendary chef and I'm like making a puree and I give it to taste and the chef will tell me like, add a half a teaspoon or like a teaspoon of honey. Yeah. And I was like, what? I would have never come up with that. And I added, and it tastes completely different. And it actually, you know, it made absolute sense. Uh, I was like, wow, completely like amazed about it.
Yeah. And that's such a, like, that's a thing because we can talk about like harmony and techniques and stuff like that to a certain extent where they make sense, but to a very large extent also does like an intuitive feeling that you have because of your experience, you know? But I think, I think they're not exclusive when I'm from each other. I think like, I think intuition is aiming for harmony. No, no, no, totally.
But I mean, sort of like there's, there's certain things that I can't really, that like, you have to have the experience and you have to have like tasted and made and, and seen and observed, you know, and like work with people to have this like thing because like, for example, now I have, I have a fresh, a fresh batch of apprentices in my kitchen, right? And you know, you're kind of showing them and they're like as fresh as they can be. And so you, you know, you show them how to make a thing.
Like for example, I've got this like tomato essence, like vinaigrette where first you make a tomato water and then you make like a, you lightly fermented, make like a vinaigrette out of it. So it's very easy, but it has to be seasoned really perfectly to be really nice. And so they check in with me and they're like, okay, so how's this? And I'm like, no, you need to add more salt, a little bit of sugar, a little bit of verjoo.
And they're like, okay, so they start seasoning it and they taste it to the point where they think it's perfect. And then you taste it and you're like, no, it needs more salt, more verjoo. And they're like, okay, they make it again. They tasted it like, okay, now, now it's perfect. Now it's, now it's really good. Yeah. That's the same process I had with, while I was learning to make this bouillabaisse, I was talking about, because you had to add salt, you had to add a hot sauce.
It also had saffron. It also had like pasties. Yeah. And everything had to be in harmony. You know, if you add too much Tabasco, too much salt or too much pasties or too much this, you will get like, not the wanted effect, you know? Yeah. Yeah, for sure. We talked about another key factor in harmony, which is temperature.
And you will see, you can tell a chef, if you see someone in a restaurant where a dish comes and the guy or the person touches first the dish and then each single element of the dish, which it's fingers to check if it's warm or cold. That's it. But you do, you thought everybody did that? No, no, I've only seen anybody do that. I would be really weirded out of my, with the back of the finger touching like the, I mean, you know, you do that. Come on.
I had no, not if when I'm in a restaurant, I don't do it. No. But if I touch the plate first thing, I touch the plate to see if the plate is hot. That's like, you know, like, I don't know, something I have from the kitchen. Yeah, that's true.
I mean, I do, it is super important to temperature, you know, I feel like it's one, especially in like European cooking or like Western kitchens in general, Asia is different, but it's something that we kind of forget about a little bit because we're sort of like, well, like, because there's hot and there's really hot, right? And there's a big difference between those two. And I feel like often here we kind of think like, well, it's hot steaming, you know, it's freshly made. So it's fine.
But you know, for example, if you go to Japan and you order a soup, you know, and if it's not boiling, boiling hot, they will send it back because the whole experience is completely different. That happened to me once cooking ramen at home and it wasn't super hot. And I realized like, oh, okay.
Yeah. Because actually soup, temperature is not common sensing because if you're sending a broth, it's not okay to send it boiling hot and sending it to, because it will be too hot and it will take too long to eat. So that's really like, like, I don't know, 85 degrees or something like that. Like just a step below that.
Yeah. But the thing is kind of like, if you're serving it, what temperature do you heat it to so that you like pour it into the bowl, the waiter comes, brings it out by the time it lands at the hands of customer. But then it's kind of like, but that's why chefs go so crazy also, you know, it's kind of like you think about all these things and you like try to fucking find the perfect temperature for this fucking broth. And then you see it go out and you're like, oh yeah.
And then it lands in front of the customer and they just ignore it for like 10 minutes, you know, and just keep talking and blah. And then it has taken the first sip and they're like, oh, this is old. Like what the fuck are they doing in the kitchen? You know, then that makes me want to just kind of, you know, throw a pan at them or something. Not that we condone this behavior. Well, just to finish the temperature thing, there is a saying in Spanish that is very straightforward.
It's a curing saying that says lo caliente caliente y lo frío frío. So what's supposed to be hot, hot. And what's supposed to be cold, cold. And that's something you don't want a hot salad or a cold soup. So that's something that has to be managed also. And also especially things that are fridge cold. You also don't want that. Let's say a tomato salad. You don't want a tomato that just came out of the fridge and it's super cold. That's horrible.
Like it loses the whole meaning of eating a nice tomato. Absolutely. Yeah, totally. And I would say the very last thing, I would say the very last element in dish harmony, I would say it's the visual appeal. I remember once you were like giving opinions on this typical chef platforms that are on Instagram that post a lot of plating techniques and these kinds of things.
That some of these dishes you feel that they're like trying to make it as colorful as possible and adding as many elements as possible to make it look more pro. So like, and for me in many cases, that's exactly what they're communicating with those dishes. I don't know that hunger of showing off something just for its appeal, which I'm not interested at all. Yeah, totally.
I mean, it's like, it's like show me that you don't know how to cook without like, without telling me that you don't know how to cook, you know. I really hate those sorts of like, it's not just these like Instagram influencers. There's a lot of chefs that do that also, you know, where the look of something is more important than the actual substance of the dish. Where it's kind of like, well, I've got this like pea water that when I add lime juice, it turns purple.
Yeah, or this, this, how to say this phrase is like, ah, let's add some green to this dish. And it's like, why green? You know, why are you talking about that color? For me, actually, I would say the, if there would be a hierarchy, the visual appeal, I don't know. I don't think there would be a hierarchy between flavor, texture, visual and temperature. I think they're all as important, but I would say if the visual is not perfect and everything else is, it could be a killer dish, you know.
If you have the flavor, the texture and the temperature, but the dish, I mean, it could be something hidden inside a, that you can, under a foam, for instance, you know, you see a white foam and under it you have this universe of flavors and textures and temperatures, which is actually a resource that you will see once in a while in restaurants, hiding the dish.
I think, I think we need to make the difference between like, because like the visual is very important, but the visual can be very simple, right? But like, it's not the same, like caring for the visual as saying, oh, let's add more color. That's the wrong way. You know, that's not the, that's not the true way, you know. Absolutely.
Yeah. Because you can, yeah, you can make something really nice, just showcasing the product and the technique that you, and you can just, just put an element in the center of the dish and that's it. Yeah. It's kind of like, what's beautiful, you know, like what is beautiful? Is a lot of flowers beautiful? Yeah, sure. But it's not, that's not the only thing that's beautiful. Is blanched green spinach that's super bright green? Is it beautiful? That's super beautiful.
But spinach that's been slow cooked for like two hours and that's like army green, but like super tender and like cooked through, like they do in Indian food, you know, it's not green, you know, it's more brown green, but that's very beautiful, you know, like it's like, it is a leak that you like grill the shit out of until it's black, you know, and inside and only when you cut into it, you see the like beautiful white inside. That's super beautiful, you know.
So it's kind of like going with nature and going with the natural things, you know, is very nice and like, Hey, in summer, you know, sort of like, I also, I put a lot of flowers on my dishes at the moment because we have a lot of the garden, but that's over soon and then you have to embrace the other things, you know, the like the autumn, the Browns, you know, the muted colors, because that's, that's what there is, you know, and I think
once you, like, if you go with nature, you know, you, you find, um, like you find the aesthetic, you know, because nature, nature isn't really raw. Yeah. Yeah. I would also add, uh, I learned from, from Thomas Keller, I think in an interview, he mentioned this, I think I have mentioned this in another episode, but he talks about the law of diminishing returns. That means that you add elements to something until a point that if you add more elements, you're not making it better, but worse.
So that's the point you want to understand of a dish that you add, add, add. Okay. Here it is. If I add more, I'm starting to, to make it worse, not better. So in understanding where that line is in any of the things we talk about in flavor, in texture, in visual appeal, or in temperature, you have to understand that line that you want to, to get the best out of the dish. Absolutely. Like a hundred percent.
It's very difficult to get to that line and it's like a plane, you know, you kind of like, ah, and you, you try to hit that line exactly, you know, but often, especially when you're like younger and you, you're just starting, you overshoot it because you're overcompensating. And then like, once you are able to hit that line and then you try to do that all the time, and then you take it one step further and you take away. Right. That's what I think. That's what I see really great chefs doing.
It's like they, they are able to write that line perfectly. And then they're sort of like, no, now I'm going to take away. I'm going to do even less. Yeah. But the things that I do, you know, they're exceptionally good. Like it takes so much skill to do a Magnus Nielsen and just serve a piece of meat with like a condiment, you know, and that's enough. That's all you need. And it's an amazing dish. That's really difficult. That's it for this week's episode of potluck food talks.
If you like what we're doing, make sure to subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode. You can also find us on Instagram and Tik Tok as potluck food talks. The show airs every Monday.