Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Harold, your hosting cooking issues coming to you live from New York City. I happen to be in the Lower East Side because I have the COVID today. So I'm being remote. But the rest of us, well actually, Nastasia's also.
Nastasia the Hammer Lopez is in California, so she's also remote. But the rest of us, with the exception of Jackie Molecules, who is always in California. Hey, Jack. Hey. How you doing?
Are live on Newstand Studios at Rockefeller Center in the heart of New York City. Hey, how are you guys doing? Alright, doing all right. And uh John, uh customer service uh extraordinaire from Booker Index. John, how you doing?
Doing great, thanks. Yep, Pete. And uh because I'm actually not in the studio, I think like I'm gonna we're gonna do the because so you know, for those of you that listen to this program before, usually, you know, we we uh shoot the breeze for a while and then I introduce the guests. But because like first of all, because like the two guests do kind of such different things, I'm gonna introduce them right now, and everyone we're just gonna get together. How's that sound, John?
Does it sound like an okay thing? Yeah. Yep. Sound good. Okay.
So uh whathing. Keep going. Today we have today. We have uh Phoebe Tran, who uh has uh how you doing, Phoebe? Doing good yeah.
So you have your uh she has her like uh her irons in in in many fires. Uh so you I guess I don't know what do you go what do you go by first? So like uh you you you you set up gardens for the Brooklyn Grange all over the city, right? You're like the you're like a a garden manager like in this in the kind of setup and design side of it. Am I correct in that?
Is that one of the things? Or do you say that your primary thing is um is like the the night market uh festival that you set up the Happy Family Night Market Festival or are you more uh a more on the kind of Bebop side with the you know your your your project to um bring uh like hard to find uh Vietnamese produce and ingredients cook with them to uh to our to our plates like which one of those three are they all this are they all together um I typically I feel like it when it comes to cooking issues I would first and foremost introduce myself as Bebbe uh my Vietnamese roaming pop up and then I mean I guess like most of the time I am in the garden hands in the dirt um specifically tending to like edible gardens all right so you're growing things that are green okay let's just be clear you are growing things that get their energy from the sun and then provide the energy for the rest of the things on earth that that live whereas our other guest Adam D Martino doesn't do that grows things that are uh well they're not parasites they're but they're like they're like us they have to get their energy from things that have already grown mushroom grower uh with um small holes so like so why don't you describe so this is an interesting concept. So you correct me if I'm wrong here. You help other people to grow mushrooms. True or false?
Well, true. Yeah. So in other words, you so I can go on, I can go on your website and I can I can you know order a mushroom kit and grow it myself. But like it seems to me that like what is you're doing a lot of is going into like a Whole Foods setting up like a like a whole grow, what do you call them? Mini Grow State, what do you call them?
What's the name of them? It's uh it what we call them mini farms. Um we sort of do all of the above. Uh we have uh all manner of farm basically. We put automated mushroom farms that are connected to a network uh that we sort of run remotely uh inside of grocery stores and uh restaurants around the country.
Uh and then we also actually have large automated mushroom farms uh the size of uh warehouses, like 20, 35,000 square feet, uh, which grow significant quantities of produce for large retailers around the country. Okay. Now I kind of don't know where to start because again, like mushrooms, not even plants, not even related to plants, closer to closer to animals than to plants and plants. So what's it like? The other thing I should add is that you two are a couple.
So is there ever a problem like the mushroom side versus the plant side? Do you guys get into arguments on this? No. I think our only issue sometimes is that we only to talk about food. Yeah.
Which I feel like isn't much of an issue on cooking issues. Yeah, we um Yeah, right. You know who doesn't like talking about food strangely? Is uh Nastasia. I don't know whether she was having some technical issues.
And by the way, we all had thanks for coming in today. Like, aside from COVID, uh new like a lot of New York City happens to be on lockdown today. So thanks, thanks for making it in. Um Phoebe called an office. Isn't that bizarre?
Uh and drove in actually. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, she drove in, right, because like a lot of the a lot of the what's it called subways are are are shut down. Anyway, I don't even know. I'm not gonna get into it because I don't even know.
I don't even know what's what's going what's what's happened. All right. So again, not knowing where to start, I'm gonna ask this. Or both. Yes.
Yeah. It's uh uh but I guess it's so means like mushrooms making it into the middle of the plate, right? Yeah, that's the concept. Basically, um mushrooms uh are unique in the produce section of the grocery store and in our lives and that they occupy such a central part of it, although often are overlooked, right? Um thirty percent of most forest floors are are made up of fungal matter.
Um and it mostly goes on scene. The largest organism in the world is uh is a honey mushroom. Um up in Oregon. And so these are things that we often just don't really talk about, although I feel they're at the forefront of a lot of people's conversations today. Um and they definitely can occupy the center of like basil can't so oh harshing on basil.
Wow. Not liking the pesto. Wow. Okay then. All right.
All right. Gauntlet throne. Uh so I've heard that that particular uh honey mushroom, the armillaria that out there is uh A, not that delicious, and B, even though it's the largest organism in the world, is actually being endangered by people going to pick pieces of it off because of how famous it is. Because I asked on Twitter whether any like mico friend out there would get, and they're like, don't do it. They're like, don't do it.
It's also like a serious parasite, that mushroom. Yes. Right. I mean, it it's wiping, I mean, it depends on what you like better. Do you like Douglas Furs or do you like uh or do you like uh hugging mushrooms, right?
I mean, I'm partial to both. They can live together, just not in one place. Ish. Uh okay. So, but the interesting thing about this cookbook is first of all, that the paper is extremely stiff.
It's like it's like uh almost like golden book stiff, like like board paper, and it's relatively short. But the idea of it is is that you're buying it and it's actually for a nonprofit. The profits of it go to uh a foundation. You want to talk about that a little bit? Yeah, the Vangi Foundation uh promotes uh biodiversity and mushroom awareness.
Um honestly, it's it's one of the cooler uh organizations out there in the mushroom world right now. Um I'd give uh Juliana over there a lot of credit for really pushing that agenda and making people aware of just how important mushrooms are, not just to you know humans, but to the planet. Uh and honestly, that's sort of the mission of of small hold as well. Um we really want to use or sorry to facilitate knowledge around mushrooms in the hopes that people will pay more attention to their natural environment as a result of it. So I noticed in the book that uh there was a little bit of a hate down on the common button mushroom.
And I understand why there needs to be a little bit of a hate down on the common button mushrooms, but come on. They are delicious. Do you not find that they are also delicious? If they were rare, how expensive would they be? So expensive if they were rare.
No? Well, in uh in Korea, they are kind of rare because of uh a manure shortage, right? They don't have the right kind of manure to grow buttons on and uh they're significantly more expensive, like upwards of ten dollars a pound, I think. Um but I'll I'll just say like people like them there as a result of them. Yeah, I mean, I think that they're they eat them and they like them, but yeah, I eat them and I like them.
I'm not anti-button mushroom, I'm just pro all other mushrooms. I have to say though, I feel like I haven't had a white button mushroom in a really long time. Well, I mean, Phoebe, that checks out, doesn't it? I mean, can you imagine if like you if you went if you went like brought home like a standard 10 ounce pack? So people, in case you and I'm gonna ask this later when it comes to like the economics of this, the standard unit of of button mushroom in the United States is a 10-ounce uh uh packet in made of cardboard with perforated plastic over it that's been extremely highly designed to keep those things in decent shape for a while.
Anyway, so that's if you're thinking supermarket mushroom, it's that. That's 10 ounces of mushroom, right? Uh yeah, so I can imagine like so Phoebe, so are you actually Jones in for some button mushrooms now then? I mean, I definitely I feel like the last time I've used it, it was for this like vegan version of a di a Vietnamese dish called bone ryu that my mom makes, and you like have to use white button mushrooms because she like blends it with like a slurry of of other mushrooms, but mainly white button mushrooms and an egg, and then she sort of like quinels it and like drops it into a boiling soup so that it like acts as this like vegan version of like a crab pork cloud. And like you couldn't do that, you couldn't make that recipe with any other sort of like chewier mushroom like oyster mushrooms or trumpet or whatever.
Like it has to be white mushroom button mushrooms. Huh. Huh. What texture are they when they drop? Like straight dumpling texture?
Like what like what are we looking like a mooser? Yeah, like, but not like fish mousse would be a little bit like bouncier. I feel like, yeah, they're pretty slight like very light, like kind of like fall apart in your mouth texture. Give it a name again. I get I guarantee you people are gonna look this up.
What is it? Well, you can't really find the dish anywhere else because she's made her own version of it, but the but the meat version is called bone ryu B-U-N-R-I-E-U. The Ryu word means But the mushroom version. The mushroom, I mean the mushroom version, I guess would still be like a Ryu. Ryu, meaning like traditionally in in Vietnamese cuisine, the the dish is cooked by pounding crab, and then and then sort of boiling that, and then the what what floats up is is the ryu.
And then there's like an Americanized version, which is like crab and pork and lots of eggs and then there's the vegan version which is the white button mushroom with lots of egg. But that's that's your that's your mom's only that's a family thing. It is, yeah. Where is the bunry? Where does that what part of Vietnam does that come from?
Uh Southern, I would say, yeah. Yeah, definitely southern. Which is where your mom comes from. Yeah, that was uh that was John's favorite place in his culinary travels. I've never had the pleasure of going.
And all my travels. And I feel like I feel like I have no, I feel like I have like almost zero knowledge on it's pathetic on Vietnamese uh food. In fact, I didn't realize how huge Vietnam, like physically how many people were there until I looked it up last week, like how big it is. It's like almost 200 million people there, right? It's like, isn't it?
Or is it one one it's it's huge country, much huger than I thought. Um and like my lack of knowledge is pathetic. I went and looked up last week, like like our my particular and people my age in United States, white folks, uh, like our knowledge of different Asian cuisines versus how many people are in that country. And like there are like some huge, huge gaps. I mean, obviously, Philippines, huge, like we know so little compared to how giant that country is, you know.
But I was kind of shocked also at you know, Vietnam, besides the stuff that we all, you know, know and and and eat here in New York on the regular. Would you say that's a a problem in a lot of places? New York specifically. I mean, like I know that there's huge diasporas down south. Uh-huh.
Yeah. I actually grew up in California, but yeah, I grew up in Southern California. There's uh a little part of Garden Grove in Southern California called Little Saigon, where a lot of uh Vietnamese immigrants settled, including my parents after the war. Um I would say there's like there's always like these pockets, but I would say that in New York in particular, there's definitely I don't know, like apparently there's like a really like small Vietnamese community up in the Bronx, but I feel like because there aren't very many Vietnamese immigrants or like a hub of Vietnamese immigrants here, um, it's definitely reflected in like the options for V good Vietnamese food in New York City. 97 million though.
Ninety, not 190, but still huge. A hundred million people is a lot of people. A lot, a lot of people. Uh all right. So yeah, and so in John, you know who else?
John uh said it was w one of their all-time best. I mean, he again, I focus mainly on food was uh Bobby Murphy, bartender at uh uh beverage director at uh existing conditions. He spent like uh a month and a half, two months there just going around eating his way through. And everyone who goes says that the food is like life changing. But I don't know.
I've you know Would you say that it's life changing, John? I don't know. Yeah, I mean, some seeing some of those things, I'm tasting some of them were yeah, amazing. I mean, it's largely the reason why I started farming because I was cooking before I was farming. Okay.
And I don't know. I think I just like realized how much how many ingredients we were lacking, in particular, like herbs we were lacking, um, specifically in New York. Like, you know, there's something to be said about like the fact that I can only go to one grocery store in Chinatown that's closed on Thursdays. It's tiny, it's called Tentin Hung, and that's the only place that you can get like a selection of herbs, but they you know, it's still very limited. It's maybe like five different herbs that you can only find there.
Which streets, which streets that on? It's on Bowery and Grand. Unless you don't want to call it out. What it's on the bottom. Oh no, I'm I'm all for promoting them.
Yeah. 121 Bowery. That's uh wait, you say Bowery and Grand? That's my neighborhood. How have I not gone there?
Bowery and Grand? Yeah, Bowery and Grand. There were there used to be another one called Can Hang on Grand, and that closed during the pandemic. Like a lot of chance. Now, is it a problem in New York growing these things because like our weather's not that good?
No, I mean, in New York, we actually have like a subtropical climate in the summertime. So as long as you're starting things uh sort of like earlier on, like indoors in a greenhouse, then I mean, tropical varieties can thrive in the summer. Unless people um steal your starts. Somebody stole Phoebe's starts this morning. Literally, there's a plant thief.
Come on. From where? Like, where do they like they jump into your area? Like they jump into your private area. No, no.
I mean, we have a shared sort of storage floor, and I left it on the floor while I was grabbing some stuff, but it actually got returned. Oh, yeah. Uh, someone's boss got really upset and they claimed that they thought it was trash. Oh uh, you know what? You know what?
You know what? Having dealt with people like that who are like, like, oh my God, I can imagine it. Like they just want to be jerks and they're like, it's not exactly the way I want. So they just throw it all out to make a point, but they don't really because they know they can't do it. So they save it and then they give it back to you.
I know this kind of person. I hate this kind of person. I know and hate this kind of person if it's the kind of person I'm assuming it is. You think, am I right here or am I barking up the wrong tree? I mean they it definitely wasn't trash.
They they took the tray of plants inside of a crate and left the crate. So yeah. Yeah. I know people like this. Uh unpleasant unpleasant people.
So what are the what are the herbs that you think could like be like in terms of the the average like person like myself like super slam dunks like super slam dunk herbs that we don't already know about. Are you familiar with uh rice patty herb? I mean I uh slightly I don't know where I can buy it man I know what it is uh you know I know what it tastes like but yeah I don't know where to buy it but uh yeah because I anyone likes spicy and and sour right I mean so it's not really sour it actually smells a lot like citrusy citrusy like it smells like it smells like cumin it's uh you can definitely get it at Tan Tenhung and it's it's traditionally used for uh a Vietnamese um sweet and sour soup called ganju it's like used as a garnish but like I mean, I feel like I had a I had a recent pop-up at my my friend's pop-up, a pop-up and a pop-up. Metapophazdak be it in uh on Forsyth. They just had their last uh pop-up last weekend.
And uh they were using it in this like sort of like raw fish uh salad um that we made, like a crude o salad, and it was so good. And I've been obsessed with it ever since. How um how uh what's it called? How indestructible is it? How fragile is it?
Oh, it's not a few. I've just had it served to me. It's pretty it's pretty sturdy, yeah. I mean it's meant to be served cooked. Um yeah.
Have you had uh fish mint that is crazy? I haven't. I have not had it. Uh, but I am intrigued by the idea of a mint that has a fishy aroma. Yeah.
Apparently there's also um a mushroom herb uh that's that tastes like mushrooms. That's not Vietnamese, but I did order I d I did order a plant on that sea to see our world color. That would be an interesting uh that'd be interesting cross pollination there, right? Uh an or this so like but talking about the fish mint, like like does it really smell like fish? Yes.
John can attest. Yeah, it is it was mind-boggling the first time I I encountered it. I feel like it's the like what kind of fish? Like what do you mean by fish? Like dried fish.
No. Like ammonia? Like a a white fish. Yeah. I don't know.
Just it I felt like when I was smelling it, I it was like not quite. I don't know, but yeah. I would say like tilapia is closer. Or catfish. Oh, catfish, I'd say, yeah.
I don't know, but it was like it was clean smelling. I don't know, it was just, it was really, I don't know. It's like putting your face in a bowl of like fish fume for me, like minus the the acidity of the wine, but it's just like it was crazy, yeah. So is it used mainly in fish preps then? Or do they is it opposite land where they use it in non-fish preps or like what?
And does the fish smell stay when it's cooked? Uh it's not typically so the the fish mince in particular is not typically cooked. It's served fresh on like an herb plate with many other herbs. So it's meant to be paired with other herbs like perilla and mint and uh I don't know, lettuces and and sorrel. But like the the herb itself, I don't know.
Like it's it's it's meant to be it's meant to be paired. It's it's meant to eat be eaten fresh with like you know, other like like fried things or soupy things. You could top it in a soup and then in that sense it would be cooked. I think that's like a common misconception for people who go out to eat uh you know Vietnamese in America is that herbs are sort of a side part of the meal and a coutrema. Uh whereas, you know, if you're eating Vietnamese food, it's an integral part of the meal.
Right? You mix you you have your herbs as a part of that meal every meal. It comes in a giant bowl right next to your dish. I mean, it is meant to be copiously added to what you're eating. It's great.
I like that. Yeah. I like that. Um and in Vietnam, they also use what I know of here in the Latin markets as coulantro, right? Mm-hmm.
Yep. The the cilantro tasting thing that's kind of long and looks like a long tongue. Yep. Satcha. What's it called there?
Uh um. Yeah. I don't really like that one that much. I gotta be honest. I would always rather have cilantro.
What about you? Like, what do you guys think? John, what do you think? Are you like the are you a coulantro fan? Or do you like, would you always in other words?
I understand that everybody needs different things, but I'm saying if someone if if if I had to reach for to cook with cilantro or coulantro, I would always grab the cilantro. Am I just being a a butthead here? Probably. Probably. I don't know.
I would I feel like I would also grab cilantro, but that's because of my lack of familiarity with the coulantro, even though I've had it a bunch of times. I still I don't know. I think it's more, I think the way that you think about it is less like interchangeably with other herbs and more like in combination. Also, it's magai, not na um. Just thought I correct myself.
Um do you remember like oh well, I don't want to, I don't know, like eight years ago when everyone was like, Delphinium's the new thing because it's like cilantro light. Also, I would never rather grab that. Would you? Would you ever be like, I mean, I I like it. It's great, but like I don't I mean, maybe it's just because I grew up eating so much cilantro that to me, like, I mean, I just I go through so much cilantro in my house.
Maybe that's it. The things that are similar to it, but not it, I'm always like, it's fine. You know what I mean? It's it's a mental problem. I think I'm having a mental problem, and uh, as I'm speaking, I'm realizing that I need to address it.
I'm pretty sure that's what's happening. Uh I need to address my uh lack of uh willingness to try other cilantro-like products. Because I'm happy with other basils and other mints. I love trying like different kinds of uh basil and mint relatives. I mean, they're all relatives, but anyway.
Uh you know what, Dave, how do you think? How about we don't get that at that place in uh go for it? Ask your question. Well, no, no, ask your question and then I'll I'll introduce. Can we get can we get the fishman at that place on Bowery and Grand?
Yeah. Oh, nice. Oh. As soon as I'm not quarantined, I'm gonna go there. As soon as I'm not quarantined.
What were you saying, John? How about we do a quick commercial break? Yeah. All right. Okay.
We'll be right back with more cooking issues. Today's episode brought to you by Oura King Salmon, everybody's favorite fish. And today we have Michael Fabro from Oura King Salmon to talk to us more about how it's uh raised and bred. So I haven't really thought about this, but when you're raising wheat, you're raising just like a kind of a like a bunch of clones, right? Or you know, of a specific variety, not a lot of uh diversity.
So how do you make sure that there's gonna be enough diversity when you're when you're raising these salmon? So one thing that's different about us is we have our own hatchery. So we're not buying eggs, and this is traditional husbandry. This is selective breeding. Sometimes I'll use the analogy, it's like it's like raising thoroughbreds.
You know, some of the traits we look for are fat content or skin color, flesh color. And there's a lot of science behind it. You know, we have well over 200,000 individual broodstock salmon in our database that they can go to and look at eat the characteristics of each one. We have well over a hundred family groups, so we're able to ensure enough genetic diversity and avoid potential issues with inbreeding. So this is a uh science and an art of traditional husbandry, and it's really critical.
Like controlling your own breeding and hatchery really helps you develop a a very unique salmon in the end. Awesome. Or a king salmon, everybody's favorite fish. And we're back. Uh oh, before we go uh in, I just wanted to say this.
So Stuart Fox, who uh uh helped us uh finishing up the uh exhibition for opening uh Africanslash American, making uh the nation's table at uh the Africa Center with Museum of Food and Drink. So he's working on a uh project. So I'm just gonna read a little promo that we thought might be good for particularly uh people who list listen to us who are in New York who are in the uh hospitality business. As restaurants around New York City finally get back uh begin to get back on their feet, over a million of our neighbors are still wondering where their next meal will come from. The North Brooklyn Mutual Aid Society maintains free distribution sites around Williams Point Williamsburg and Greenpoint, and it needs your help keeping people fed.
If you are a cook, chef, restaurant, or bar owner, or if you are a grocery or bordega, bodego who would like to provide space, material support, technical capacity, or food in support of ready-made meals to the local free distribution sites, please contact the North uh Brooklyn Mutual Aid Free Fridge Program team at Greenpoint Helpers at gmail.com. That's Greenpoint Helpers at gmail.com. And thank you for helping us to make sure none of our neighbors have to go hungry. And their website is uh North Brooklyn MutualAid.org as well. And I'm sorry, Stuart, that I I I can't give it my usual gusto, but the COVID is taking me down to about I would say 70% of my normal scream factor.
I've only got about 70% of myself here, so I apologize. I couldn't give it the normal scream a rama. But was that all right, John? Was I all right with that? That was great.
And if anyone missed any of that, feel free to reach out to me on any of the socials or email or anything like that, and we can talk more about it. Yeah, if you are a if you are a food supplier and you have food and or time and want to help making ready-made meals for people to pick up at local distribution points in Brooklyn where there's plenty of people who who don't have enough food to eat, reach out. Yep. Right? Right.
Right. And then one more thing too that we forgot to mention at the top. Uh if you want to call in, call 917-410-1507. Yeah. Okay.
Now, Phoebe, I want to get back to this because I had a question. So you're also, you do uh a festival once a year. Are you still are you continuing or did did did the pandemic uh do damage to the to the uh to the happy family? Yeah, we actually uh so I actually stepped away from the project in 2020 when I started farming. Um and also, yeah, like we weren't allowed to do like 2,000 plus people per person uh festivals anymore.
So yeah, we pivoted, they pivoted to online programming. Um and supposedly another Happy Family Night Market Festival is supposed to be happening either this year or next year. Um yeah. Well, you had a lot of good people doing it, like a lot of people, like even from my neighborhood, like Copi Kyom and all those guys. Um a lot of really good people at it.
Was is is it named after Happy Family the Dish? It is. It is, and actually uh it was inspired by the by Mofad's um uh last exhibition. Oh, Chow? Chow.
That's so nice. That's great. I love that exhibition. Um actually, John, you came on to Mofad during Chow, right? During during the making of Chow?
I did, yeah. A year after it opened. I started in 2017 on Mofad. Were you there at the same time? Yeah.
That uh I think I might have been. With other John? With John Hutt. When John Hutt was there. Yeah, it was John Hugh.
Yeah, so we must have must have been. John the Hutt. Yeah, John the Hutt uh is like somewhere like being himself in in Spain right now. Yeah. For those of you who don't know, that was the he was the Mofad chef.
And uh he was the one who was using the we used we had to have a uh uh an induction walk there, which is why everyone who hates on induction walks is like, you know, I don't know if you've used this hardcore induction walk, because this induction walk, it would get like cherry red. It was crazy. And first of all, like you guys went like at the beginning of that exhibition were doing the craziest, like fermenting like so many crazy distilling illegal stuff there. It was kind of a fun time, you know? Yeah, I think John John just aspired to just always have a fermentation kitchen wherever he was.
He also had a pretty eclectic knife knife collection. Yeah. Yeah. A lot. But I remember I went to go visit him.
Yeah. I went to go visit him at this um Australian cafe that he was also working at at the time. And he took me downstairs to the fermentation kitchen that he had set up down uh yeah. I guess they they couldn't they couldn't afford to hire him, so part of his uh agreement with them was that they would he would be able to set up a fermentation kitchen downstairs. Yeah.
That checks out. He's not so much with uh uh rules. He's not so much with rules. Doesn't like them. Doesn't enjoy rules.
You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. His later his latest. So the happy family.
What? Well, his latest paper, I I think that or in video uh was the title was it I'm proofreading that paper now. It was uh from fermenting anti-capitalism. Yep, yeah. Uh that checks out.
Uh that checks out. Uh so Happy Family, I have to say, this is how this is how demented I am. Like I always thought it was a perverse. So Happy Family is a dish that has like a lot of different meats in it. For those of you that have never heard of Happy Family, right?
It's got a lot of different meats in it. And I always thought that someone was going into like a barn with a machete and just wiping out all of the animals that were in the barn and making it into this one dish. And so it was like a, you know, like kind of like a demented happy family, in other words, just like some sort of Manson family massacre of all of these animals to make the one dish. Yeah. And then just today, just today when I was looking over the stuff, I was like, oh, it's probably that your family is happy because you can serve them all of these meat.
It's not a sarcastic that the animals must be happy, and it's I always thought, you know what I mean? That just goes to show where my brain goes. For years I've been thinking this. I mean, it's a really kitchen sink dish, right? I'm pretty sure it's that you're yeah.
I think everyone's happy. Yeah, but it's like the maximum number of different kinds of animals killed for one dish of anything I can think of off the top of my head. You know what I'm saying? Who is this? It's the maximum carnage.
Well there was uh it was a a king in the Huei Dynasty who had uh people scour the scour all of Vietnam and the lands beyond for the most random uh stuff he could they could find and bring it back to them, him and then they would combine it into these weird sculptures. It's it's super esoteric. Yeah, there's uh the royal cuisine of of Hue cooking. Um I did like a a sort of like research post on it on my Instagram, and it was uh it was a it was like a big feast that featured all these like exotic animals that were caught by these knights in Vietnam that would like bring them back, and it was like bear claw and orangutan grain and just like you know, really crazy but then combined into sculptural food pieces with like pig snouts and tails. Um I mean, I kind of want to see that.
I don't want any orangutans killed, but I kind of want to see it, you know? Um like a like a real-life arcing buldo, but with animals instead of vegetables, huh? Yeah, so okay, so I found the I found the toast. So each of the emperor's meals consisted of 35 to 50 dishes prepared by a team of 50 people who made up the Tuung Tian Doi, a kitchen cabinet that oversaw the sourcing preparation, cooking customs, ceremonies, a medicinal balance of each dish. Um, each meal needed to include eight auspicious dishes that were believed to bring health and longevity to the emperors, uh, peacock spring rolls, phoenix rolls, birds' nest, rhino skin, bear paw, deer tendon, orangutan lips, and elephant leg meat.
Uh yeah. Wow. Talk about kitchen sink. But keep going. Is there more?
I mean, like, uh that's already that's already a conservationist nightmare right there. Well, yeah. I mean, the statement was these dishes were centered around exotic and now endangered and beats, elaborately displayed as works of art and passed on from generation to generation. So now there's there's one woman uh who lives in Hue that has her sort of like uh school that she maintains to carry on this like tradition of of Hue cuisine. And it's not just those like eight auspicious dishes, it's like the entire sort of like process of like carving these elaborate sort of like vegetables and and putting them together here.
I'll show I'll show John. Oh wow, that's wild. I have heard that bear paw is actually delicious. I have heard this. I've only eaten bear once and it tasted terrible.
Now I cooked it and I don't know how to cook bear, so it could be on me. Also, like it's it was an old bear. I had a very, very old bear. But uh, I don't know. Where did you get it?
I've had enough different people tell me that bear tastes. Sorry. Uh well, there used to be this guy out of Chicago who sold uh who sold kind of uh uh exotic meats. And uh when I was back at the French Culinary Institute, we bought some stuff from him because on his website he made it seem like everything was lit legitimately sourced, right? Like legitimately, like not just legal, but like, you know, uh you know, not amoral, right?
And uh I found out later that uh that wasn't the case, that he was doing like a lot of really bad uh stuff. Uh and so we didn't order from him anymore. So bear was one of the things that uh that that we got. You know what the worst was though? Raccoon.
That tasted terrible. I mean it was a greasy, tough little terrible. I feel like raccoon winter maybe a pinch. Yak. I I don't know about choosing to eat.
I know what they eat. How'd you prepare it? Uh we low temped all of it just to see like kind of like because and we tried to keep it as neutral as possible. Like we weren't saucing it. I know I don't want to, I don't even know what I don't need it, I know what a what a good sauce tastes like.
I want to know what the meats tasted like, right? So we basically just uh low temped them for a long time and then just tried to like flash them off to you know get a little uh color on the on the outside. And yeah, the raccoon, I was no part of it I liked. Bear too. Uh the yak, delicious, delicious.
I would I would travel to eat good yak. High altitude yak. Yak. As well. I have not had yak's milk.
I've had yak's milk cheese. I've never had yak's milk. But yeah, but yak itself, that's a good product. But uh, but the bear, I'm willing to try the the bear again. I've heard that the bear from Hokkaido is like the bear to have.
Like if you want to go like like very northern, you know, part of Japan, that Hokkaido's got the bear to beat. If you want like the best quality bear. Not that I'm saying you should go to Hokkaido and kill a bear. I'm not saying that at all. Sounds dangerous.
Okay. Yeah. All right. So back to mushrooms for a second before I get to the Patreon questions because I don't want to miss them before before we go. Adam, have you ever been?
And I know that you're not, I know specifically that you aren't interested or a part of the mainstream mushroom industry, but I kind of have to ask, have you been to the mushroom festival in Kennet Square? Yes. It's very wholesome. I have been wanting to go for a number of years. Years.
I've been wanting to get the t-shirts. Years. Should I go to the Kenneth Square Mushroom Festival? Um, I would say that's that's a hard yes. I mean, it's uh, you know, it it's it's similar to a lot of towns who have a produce or something that comes from them.
Like we have an Apple Festival uh in my parents' town up in Connecticut. Um it's it's similar to that. Uh although uh a lot more deep fried mushrooms, lots of fried mushroom products. Yeah. There's also another mushroom festival.
Did you did you enter the contest? Did you enter the deep-fried mushroom eating contest? No, no, you know about that. Um, yeah, I mean, we're kind of uh we're friends with a lot of the growers down there. Um it's not not a bad place to be.
And mushrooms are great. The people who grow mushrooms are all uh it's all one big kind of family in Kenneth. Uh everybody, like uh the shipper is somebody's cousin who knows Bob who started a mushroom farm, used to work for John, who started another mushroom farm. Uh it's a very sort of awesome part of the country. I think like 70% of the mushrooms in the country come from there.
Yeah, it's bizarre. It's huge, right? And so, like what I you know, one of the things I thought uh was interesting is that um, you know, you were pointing out like butt but button mushrooms are rare, and but but 70% of all of the mushrooms in the United States come from there, no matter what the variety is. Yeah, in this town that no this area that no one's heard of. How the hell did that happen?
Well, the um I think I forget which wave of Italian immigration it was, but basically in Philadelphia, which is our first city, um, the main mode of transportation and a lot of you know uh uh the the business was focused around livestock and horses, uh, and the byproduct of having you know cows and horses uh is a lot of manure, and that's actually uh a business if you grow mushrooms. Uh and you know, Italians grew mushrooms on that manure uh when they emigrated to the United States. And that's how the business sort of started and it grew from there. Um, you know, fast forward about a century and a half, uh, and you have uh a highly industrialized mushroom, you know, business. Uh, you know, stratify with shipping and logistics integrated, and uh it's a pretty it's a pretty massive thing.
So it's basically become essentially uh the the iceberg lettuce of the mushroom world. Uh so I'm not again, it's like button mushrooms are good. I like iceberg lettuce too. I just uh wouldn't want to only eat iceberg lettuce. Yeah, it has a great texture.
Mushroom again on pizza, button mushrooms are are awesome. Um but there's a world of mushrooms out there besides buttons that most Americans, you know, not in Vietnam, right? There's there's a lot of different kinds of mushrooms uh that are not you know misconstrued with meat textures. That's one of my biggest pet peeves is uh when people call something that has uh you know mushrooms in it plant-based, or they compare it to meat. Um I I think that there's a there's a world of mushrooms out there besides button mushrooms.
That's a whole kingdom. Yeah. Yeah, whole kingdom. Well, yeah, yeah. So uh by the way, just a point of point of question.
What's the difference? Is there a difference? And when do you use it? You you use trumpet. Is that the same as what I call king oyster?
Like the like the royal trumpet. Is it the same, or are they slightly different? Yeah, and that that's correct. They're the same mushroom. Uh and actually uh buttons and portabellas, right, and cremini are the same mushrooms as well.
There's one that's one mushroom just at different stages of maturity, uh, and babybellas. Um and so they've just been sort of chopping up button mushrooms for again, like a century. Um when if you make a comparison just again to greens, uh we saw kale, right? Kale hit the grocery stores in you know, late 80s, early 90s, and it was sort of the the indicator species in a way for a wider organic movement that was opening up with like Whole Foods. Uh and I think we saw that with Shiitakis that brought the word umami to our lexicon in in America.
Although I feel like there was a bit of a missed opportunity there to sort of promote mushrooms on a larger way, in a larger way. Yeah. Well, I mean, shiitakis, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but unlike uh I looked it up, I had to do some writing the other day. Uh actually it was months ago now, sorry, the other day. Uh I think button mushrooms worldwide are are only fifth in terms of how many are are produced, and shiitakis are number one.
Yeah, like number one worldwide. China has they grow them all. They grow it million pound harvests of shiitakis uh per farm. Like it's not it's a it's a massive industry. The fact that we sort of missed that is still, I as somebody who's been working in the industry for a minute, uh, is still surprising.
Like how how do we miss mushrooms? Now, uh on shiitakis for a second. Uh with with shiitakis, now that they can grow them if they want to in humidity controlled environments and temperature-controlled environments, right? They're no longer beholden to what's going on. They can make the flower style shiitakis whenever they want now, right?
Do you think that those ones that are grown that way that aren't natural, like the flower top or whatever, uh, whatever you want to call them? You can tell me what you prefer to call them on the ship. Do you really think that they taste any better? Um, I mean, honestly, I've had some mind-blowing shiitakis in Seoul. And I was actually supposed to fly to China in March of 2020 in February.
I got a call from my fixer. Uh, you know, you shouldn't come here. Um, and so I'm I'm really bummed that I got to miss that or had to miss that. But uh yeah, like they're the concept of like a gift mushroom with that's pristine and has been grown in the optimal conditions and selected, uh, is very real. And I feel like if not just a psychosomatic sort of sort of impression of them, giving them their flavor is is true.
I I do feel like there's techniques that growers can use to make shiitakis grow slower and take nutrients uh in different ways that add flavor uh and uh visual appeal that go back millennia. And I don't think we should discount that from the Shaitak. And also there's genetics, right? And so and growing them outside uh in a specific way, especially there's a farmer in Japan uh whose uh output is actually changing due to climate change. Um but he has been farming mushrooms in this same patch of forest in the same style, dunking them in the same pond for you know generations.
They have been farming them in for generations. Uh and people swear by those. So I would I would say yeah. Because shiitakis are grown on on wood, right? Plugged wood, and then you have to get them wet before they start the fruit.
Is that how it works? Like can you can you run through? I know that they're gonna cut us off pretty soon, but can you run through the the process? Kakota asked, would love to hear Adam talk about the underground mycelium network, but they're not all underground. Like so many things are grown on different kinds of substrates.
Can you can you just run through that really quickly? Yeah, I mean, more more to mushrooms in general and and how they're farmed uh indoors, I guess. There's like there's outdoor farming and there's indoor farming. Outdoor farming is a little bit of a it's still a lift, like it technically it's like hard to do. Uh, but indoor farming, you're you're managing the climate uh all the time.
And so uh with blocks of mushrooms, what you're doing, we're primarily uh growing decomposers, right? So uh they're decomposing wood and turning that into it's it's their food. Uh and so you'll you'll start off with sawdust and agricultural waste product. Mushrooms grow on waste streams, uh, or at least the ones that we grow. Those uh mushrooms uh take the you'll take the substrate, uh, the sawdust, as it were, and put that in an autoclave, which is uh pressure vessel.
Uh and that pressure vessel is the size of a submarine usually, uh and you put it in 500 pound racks, uh, and then you cook it. Uh, you know, I'm I'm sort of going quickly here because I know we have time. Um you cook it and you kill everything else that could be competitive uh with the mushroom that you want to grow on that substrate. Uh so any bacteria, right? Any pathogenic stuff.
Uh, and then you add your spawn, which has been genetically selected uh, you know, over time, uh, to that substrate, let it colonize in a plastic bag. Um, and uh that takes, you know, two to four weeks, depending on the mushroom and a few other factors, uh, and then you enter the fruiting cycle, at which point you expose that uh substrate, you open the bag, uh, the high heat uh bag. It's it's able to be to withstand the temperatures of an autoclave. Uh and then you open that and expose that substrate and the fungus to oxygen, and you change the lighting, and it triggers the fruiting process. Uh and then from there it's about another generally two to four weeks, but you know, some mushrooms take longer and some mushrooms are shorter.
The key to all of it is is sterility indoors. So when I if you go on, if you go on your website and you buy one of the mushroom kits, and right now you have well, you have two different ones, right? That you're selling right now? Lion's mane and blue oyster. Oh yeah, nice.
I like lion's mane. So now it it says delivers in two to three weeks. Is that because you just like it's just like you can't catch up, or is it because you want them to be exactly the way they need to be when they show up so that they're ready to rock and roll when they hit when they hit the your doorstep? You mean two weeks to fruit? No, I well, it's uh like your shipping was two two weeks out on the on the thing last time I checked.
Um, you know, to be completely honest, uh it's a living product and we kind of have to grow it. Uh to if we have a bunch of uh fruiting blocks sitting around, they're gonna keep growing and we'll have a lot of wasted products. So we we give ourselves a bit of a lead time to make sure that the product is ready to grow out uh before it hits yeah, hits the doorstep. And then when you cut it open, you have to do it. Right.
You're not you're not selling BS that's like either like too too young or too old, like you're waiting to get the order, you're getting it primed just right, and you when it shows up, it's though it's the right way. Yeah. I bought one not from you guys. I bought one once from a place in uh on the West Coast and I brought it home and it did not grow at all. Like it got parasitized by something else.
I don't know what the hell happened. Uh I forget what kind of mushroom it was. This was over a decade ago. And uh I don't know whether it I I tried not let it dry. I don't know what the hell what the hell happened.
But my question is if I get if I go and I buy one of the blocks that you have, first of all, how mu how many mushrooms am I gonna get out of one of these blocks that I get from you? One. And two, will you help the person try to make sure that it's not gonna go south on them like it did for me that time? Yeah, we're uh we're pretty active with customer support and especially on Instagram, uh in our email. Um I actually my phone number was the main phone number for for a couple of years, and I had like it was we got featured in a couple of uh like new news news outlets, like and after that I I had to change my my phone number because everybody kept calling asking how to grow up.
But we definitely are don't do that answering them. Um and yeah, I mean honestly, like you're gonna get um Phoebe's mom actually is crazy uh she uh obviously gets the hookup uh and uh has set up a mini mushroom farm of her she constructed a mushroom farm in her house uh and now gets she gets like the best biological efficiency off of those blocks that I've seen pretty much anybody get with uh anywhere from two to five pounds uh sometimes more off of a block so you're getting two to two to five pounds off of a block over the course of how long? Uh she'll do multiple flushes which a flush is um you know every time a mushroom fruits off the block and so uh every harvest basically uh and uh so yeah she'll she'll do that over a period of basically four weeks I think all right so an easily a very easily consumable quantity of mushrooms. Yeah actually I mean um who was it ste Stephanie Stephanie Bardeen uh who uh is a a mutual friend of Phoebe and I's uh actually just uh texted me um she got I think it was like seven or eight pounds off of a couple blocks uh and now that actually becomes an issue because then all of a sudden you have all these mushrooms and you gotta you basically eat mushrooms for I mean not that I I'm opposed to it I just people get overwhelmed sometimes. So be prepared.
Dave fire off those last two questions. Now I noticed some of the things some of the things that you're selling right uh with with that you're creating like the actual like grow units which this uh goes in Monty Zukowski want to know what kind of investment does it take to set up a facility. How do you figure out what the earning potential is and can it work in a small community with tens of thousands of people in it? Right. I noticed that like the the blocks that you're using, you have, is that UV light to stop like nasties from growing on this stuff?
Or like what is that? Like they're kind of glowing that kind of bluish color. Yeah, there's two uh well so there's two kinds of facilities. I think uh I'm not sure but the the question asked might be referring to our larger facilities. So for instance we're opening one in LA in two weeks uh downtown LA and that's like a 35,000 square foot facility and that's like many millions of dollars.
Uh and then the the home well we don't have a home unit but a unit for a restaurant or a grocery store you know you're talking about anywhere depending on the modifications uh between 10 and and 30 thousand dollars uh and then but it yields uh significant output and so it is viable for a lot of people to make a business out of it that was actually the original intention for the business was to set up uh we set it had a shipping container on North Brooklyn Farms uh as a proof of concept that we would be able to uh put modular farms on other farmers land to provide them with alternate sources of revenue so there is a business model there for people who want to start up small farms and I'm happy to engage them if you want to give my info out. So so let's just let me just back back of the envelope. Don't give me real numbers just back of the envelope. So 20, let's say 20K for the initial investment, right? And like how many pounds a year am I getting out of what the what are the input costs?
Like in other words like how much is a pound of mushrooms cost to make um in a in a home unit, like you're gonna be the block itself will cost you depending on where you live and shipping you know anywhere between 10 and 40 dollars. I can't really speak to you know people in sort of the nether regions of the of the country. Um and then you can charge at a farmer's market, right? If you if you put it in a pint, um you can charge up to you know thirty, thirty-five dollars a pound, uh, especially in a market uh where people don't see those mushrooms often, right? Right.
And it grows by the way 40 pounds a week. And your your inputs excuse me, in terms of electricity for the lighting and whatnot are are minimal, right? Because you're it's LEDs. Yeah, we stores it a lot of money in electricity as well. It's just it's it, you know, I I wish I could, you know, say it's more complicated.
I mean, the the system itself is complicated in how it regulates the temperature in an environment. Um, but the actual utility costs are very low. Mushrooms actually don't, they're not a very water intensive crop. Uh and also um the light is the simple LEDs. Uh, we're not using any complex.
There's a little bit of UV in there that we use uh basically to promote you know healthy cap development and royal trumpets and blue oysters. But aside from that, um they don't actually require full spectrum light like plants, which is most of the expense in running like those large indoor operations uh from a utility perspective. So yeah. Pretty cheap. Can it can I listen?
I need someone to do this. Do you have an inn with the New York Botanical Garden? Have you been to the New York Botanical Garden? You're the only mushroom producer I've spoken to, so I need to tell you this. Okay, so you know how they have that tunnel in between the two sections of the of the you go to the Init Hau Conservatory, you go and to get from one wing to the other, you go underneath in a tunnel.
Mushrooms. Grow mushrooms down there. They're fire off from the room. You can get them to do it. Okay.
Uh let's go to Phoebe on uh Derek Black and wants to know any tips for growing uh Rao Ram. Uh I can never get it to overwinter indoors in a container. I am in USDA hardiness zone 6B, which is negative five Fahrenheit. Uh I've had success creating like a greenhouse effect. So like putting like plastic over it.
Um obviously keeping it within like a temperature range of like I don't know, around like 75 degrees. Um but yeah, keeping it keep it like keep it covered in plastic so that there's like it's a there's humidity so it doesn't dry out from the heat. I'm finding the material, I guess the mushrooms still have a lot of uh unextracted flavor in them. A blender seems to do a better job, but then clarification is a challenge. Is there food grade chitinate?
So for those of you that don't know, the the main structural item in uh mushrooms is chitin uh or similar agent. I have not sargan found a chitin agent, but I mean do you guys uh I mean like uh do you guys have any suggestions for this? I would say just use the uh you know, cook the alcohol out of the uh mushrooms when you're done and use them for a culinary thing. Don't throw them away. There's actually a guy who makes uh mushroom spirits and sells them at farmers' markets.
He used to his farm was called Blue Oyster Cultivation. Uh I think I saw that. Yeah, and now he's almost I'm not sure if he exclusively sells the spirits, but he definitely does that. In terms of making a martini, I mean I would just rim it with mushroom salt. It wouldn't be the easiest way, but when I get super technical, maybe Phoebe.
I haven't tested that before. Making a mushroom liquor. I've made mushroom fish sauce or vegan fish sauce. Oh, how is that? How's the mushroom fish sauce?
I think that it you have more success using like fishier oyster mushrooms like yellow oysters or pink oysters. Um and I was actually doing the experiment at MoFad. Um with John. Did you write it? Did you do one of those presentations?
I tasted it. I mean, there's actually if you want to make a mushroom drink, there in the cookbook is a uh mushrooms in the middle. There's a shiitake bloody Mary recipe. Not a martini, I'm sorry, but it calls for uh you know 15 grams of dried shiitakis quite a bit. All right, Dave.
Yeah. We used to at Booker and Dax, we used to do a uh cognac and shiitake called the Championistino. That was uh Nick Bennett's uh Nick Bennett's drink. Uh actually one suggestion drying the mushrooms. Dehydrating the mushrooms concentrates the flavor.
When you rehydrate them, that's how you get the most flavor out of the mushroom. Yeah, this is also true. Also, um it's not a myth that if you rehydrate them at a lower temperature rather than using heat, you'll get more of the umami-based compounds out of them. So uh, you know, a lot of people try to skip it and go with hot water, and you can rehydrate a uh a dried mushroom with hot water, but if you have the time, cold water rehydration and then bringing it up slowly and letting it sit because all of the cool reactions in mushrooms happen around 60 degrees Celsius and below. Just that's a separate.
By the way, Adam, I was just playing around with the button mushroom. Obviously, I think everyone should go get fun, cool mushrooms. Everyone should get cool mushrooms. Go uh go check out uh go check out uh I don't know, John. You you say all the things you should check out because I'm gonna forget some stuff on the way up.
At small hold on Instagram. Come on, John. And I'm I'm saying it at small hold on Instagram and Phoebe. I'm gonna mispronounce it, but at beb.baby kitchen. There we go.
And I'll post them on the Patreon stuff for now. All right, thank you. Thanks, guys. All right, thanks guys. Cooking issues.
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