September 26, 2023 • 54 mins
Bryan Ford is joined by professor of culinary history, Maite Gomez-Rejón. Maite is the founder of ArtBites and she has dedicated her career to exploring the nexus of art and culinary history through lectures, cooking classes, and tastings in museums and universities across the country, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the J. Paul Getty Museum. She co-curated the exhibits Maize: Past, Present, and Future and The Legacy of Cacao at LA Plaza Cocina in Los Angeles and is co-host of the podcast Hungry for History. Bryan brings Maite back to childhood birthday celebrations with a very special crust-cut-off sandwich, Lonches de Piñata.
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Maite Gomez-Rejón IG: @artbites_maite
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Flaky Biscuit is a production of Shondaland Audio in partnership
with iHeartRadio. Welcome to Flaky Biscuit, where each episode we
are cooking up delicious morsels of nistagette, and each episode
I'm creating a recipe from scratch and literally I'm hand
(00:21):
delivering it to my guests.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Today, I happen to pull.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Up with a nice lunch bag reminiscent of like going
to school, little brown bag situation with a surprise in it,
and these recipes I hope that you're making at home
as well.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Today. There's someone very very special here.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
My guest has dedicated her career to exploring the nexus
of art and culinary history through lectures, cooking classes, and
tastings in universities and museums like the Metropolitan Museum of Art,
the LA Museum of Art.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
And the J. Paul Getty Museum.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
I mean, come on, I'm not even close to that level. Man,
were talking about museums. We are talking about museums. She's
also founded art Bites, a combination of food and art
history through classes, lectures, and workshops in which he creates
recipes inspired by historical works. The importance of this work.
I'm just kind of salivating to learn more myself. Co
(01:12):
host of Hungry for History on iHeartRadio's Mike WI Podcast Network.
Please welcome my Tek Gomez rehon.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
Thank you, Brian. I'm so excited to be here.
Speaker 4 (01:24):
I love the concept of your of flaky biscuits, So
I'm just I'm thrilled, and I keep eyeing that little
brown bag.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
I'm glad that you like flaky biscuit. What is it
that you like about it?
Speaker 3 (01:33):
I just love the whole.
Speaker 4 (01:34):
First of all, the name is so inviting. Who doesn't
love a biscuit and a flaky biscuit? Come on, I
just read those two words and I can smell it.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
And you'll get one of those candles biscuit flavored that
you've see in this candle situation happening. Really get a
flaky biscuit candle. You can just smell the flakes coming
off of it.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
I would buy it.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
I literally feel like making biscuits was maybe some eggs
and some frety holds or do.
Speaker 4 (01:58):
You I like it with butter? Do you like regular
butter or salty butter?
Speaker 1 (02:02):
You know, because I bake so much, I don't ever
have salted butter in my kitchen. Is there like a
specific type of salted butter that you would prefer on
your biscuit?
Speaker 4 (02:10):
Or I like the French salted butter that has it
has like chunks of flaky sea salt in it, so
you slice into it and sometimes you see, I'm salimid
just thinking about it. That on a sort of sweet biscuit.
I love that sort of sweet and savory.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
But I can.
Speaker 4 (02:25):
Understand you wouldn't want to bake with it. That's something
that you just want to put on a piece.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Now, you got me curious about that salty butter going
directly on the biscuit. And Jam, I'm a butter jam
combo type.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Yeah. I like to put like a.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Nice like a raspberry or something or guayaba, you know
what I'm saying.
Speaker 4 (02:43):
Jam, that's so good, you know. Yeah, I love apricot jam.
I think that's my favorite.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Oh man, that was one of my dad's favorite jazz.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Oh really yeah, Well, we don't have biscuits here, and
I did not make biscuits today.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
I guess you gave two options and you don't know
what I made for you. How about you open the
bag and tell me what I've made for it.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
I'm so excited.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Closure eyes. I was kidding.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
Oh wait, something soft? Wait what is this? The little sandwich?
Oh my god, this is I have not tasted this
since I was a child.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
So what exactly is it?
Speaker 3 (03:27):
Okay? These are I love the way you packed it
in this little surrender.
Speaker 4 (03:31):
This is exactly how my mom is.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
This is so exciting. Okay.
Speaker 4 (03:37):
I gave you two options, like I said, so one
of them. The first option was lunches. This is the
ultimate birthday party food when I was a child. Should
I open it?
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Just don't eat it yet. Okay, open it.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
You can smell it, you can touch it, but explain
to our listeners exactly what it is. Well, what's inside
the package that you're holding?
Speaker 4 (03:58):
Okay, So it's this little sandwich, very soft bread.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
I just felt it as soon as I stuck my
hand in there.
Speaker 4 (04:05):
And it's basically it's yellow cheese with pimento and either
milk or like carnation, like evaporated milk or something blended together.
And these are sandwiches that my mom used to make
for every birthday party growing up.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
And it wasn't just my mom.
Speaker 4 (04:25):
I think it was just like every single birthday party
that I ever went to growing up, Every Pignetta had
these lunches a being at that it was like the thing,
and I just remember my mom making it and just
being so excited, just the anticipation of the birthday party
and like who was.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
Going to come over? And I guess most kids are
just not really thinking about what food is going to
be served in their birthday party. But I was always
very excited about these lunches.
Speaker 4 (04:54):
And I would help her put the little smear of
this filling, but then also open the little kraft singles.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
The little plastic and just put those in the blender.
Speaker 4 (05:06):
But what you did hear that I'm most excited about
is that the crust cut off perfectly.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
Yeah, you know I got that sharp chef's knife.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Yes, I figured that cutting the crust off in that
kind of perfect angle was necessary. And you better believe
I ate the crust too, Yes, because the crust had
someone a filling on it. Oh my god, I was
nibbling on them crust before we got here.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
This is like the ultimate kid's food.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
And you know, sidebar, this is a birthday party technically,
because it was just my birthday and we're here and
we're celebrating. I remember growing up there was a very
very specific birthday meal that we all got for about
this five year time period between ten and fifteen. Those
are the ages I remember. And I grew up in
(05:52):
a hunder in household. You know, my parents are from Onnudas,
but our birthday meal is not. And you would never guess.
No one would ever guess what it was us. I
don't even think you know, Bridge, I don't think I've
ever talked about this, but me and my siblings we
all talk about this specific moment and it was a
It was a pizza, red bag, Dorito's, a two liter
of pepsi, and that try flavored Napolitan ice cream. Of course,
(06:18):
every birthday, whether it was me and my brother or
we all got that same thing and we would be
so excited for that moment of a digiorno pizza and Doritos.
Speaker 4 (06:27):
So I think there's definitely some kid's birthday food.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Oh you don't play with that, No, you don't forget that,
you don't forget that stuff.
Speaker 4 (06:35):
She used to pack these in a little sandwich bag,
sliced at an angle a little sandwich bag and then
put it in little a little white cardboard box. It
was a sandwich and then a little plastic bag with candies,
and then then we used to tie together and that
was what every kid would get.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
Like a like a ration, exactly exactly. So these are
called lunches. And for the listeners that might not know
what that means, because you know, there's there's different types
of sandwiches, right, there's tortas, lunches, And I feel like
you're the perfect person to explain this.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
What is the difference?
Speaker 3 (07:12):
Oh gosh, that's a good question. And I don't really know.
Speaker 4 (07:16):
Well, a launche it sounds sort of like a it
almost sounds sort of spanglish, right, it's like launche, a lunch.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Lunch, like a lunch.
Speaker 4 (07:24):
Yeah, Like atorta is a piece of bread, and a
torta is usually from a bread like a boli or telera,
like those breads that are more crusty, that are more
I guess, more sophisticated than just the regular white sliced,
you know bread. And the fact that it's like yellow
cheese and it's it's very American. And you grew up
(07:45):
in Laredo, Texas on the border of Texas in Mexico.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
Parents are from Mexico.
Speaker 4 (07:50):
But my mom said that she tasted these for the
first time when she was in Mexico City. But everybody
in Laredo and novel Laredo, which is the Mexican sid
of the border.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
I always used to have the lunches, and.
Speaker 4 (08:00):
I think it's basically comes from just the English word
for lunch. It's a lunch and something that you have
for lunch. It's like a simple, you know, takeaway.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Yeah. I like that, it's not that complicated. It's like
it's lunches, like it's lunch.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
It's that seems so much more war it's sophisticated.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
You're right that the letter bread bolio. What about the
bread that semita. Yeah, it's kind of like that crusty
but seeded almost. I wouldn't call it a burger bun
because the texture is so different, right.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
It's a little more it's a little firmer than the
burger bun. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
Yeah, So Mexico has definitely a very sophisticated sandwich culture.
My in my in my opinion, people kind of sleep
on that. I think when you think of Latin American
cuisine and you think about sandwiches. A lot of people,
Oh like Cuban sandwich. Right, of course, Cuban sandwich got
my heart too, but people forget, you know, like Mexico
got a deep, rich sandwich culture.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
Absolutely.
Speaker 4 (08:57):
I mean there's so many because there's of course that
that goes which is different. It's yeah, but you have
the bread and then there's so many different types of
breads and different breads that are used depending on the
on the torta. And it's this sort of culture that
has that has existed in Mexico since the nineteenth century
when you have all of these French bakers opening up
(09:19):
bakeries and like you said, and it's a certain bread
with sauce, but it doesn't get soggy because it's the birote,
because it's the vidote exactly.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
So birote and I talk about vitote this all the time.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
It's it's a native to Guadalajara in Jalisco, and it's
a bread that is apparently I'd love your take on
this actually, because it's a it's a question that I
always because we're talking about nostalgia actually, and so this
bread is made in Guadalajara, which is at a certain
altitude and has a certain humidity and a certain climate,
and so it's made natural. We call it sourdough, right,
the you know, the sourdough trend or whatever. But this
(09:55):
is a naturally fermented bread wood fired in this part
of Mexico. And the first time I came to La
No maybe the second time I came to La I
befriended my friend Docturo has a bakery and long beach,
this Mexican inspired artismal bakery, and a lot of the
local Mexican American restaurants and communities don't believe you can
(10:15):
make a beatote in the United States. So they make
dotagas and they import the birote from guer Really And
so my friends make a nice sour dough beat out this.
He calls them, well, he stopped calling them beat out
this now because no one would accept them. So but
you know, he makes the bread good flour, good fermentation,
and people are like, no, it doesn't taste the same.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
That's not a beatote.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
And I've been wrestling with this. There's something very special
about that, right, There's a there's a pride in that
specific bread by a specific Mexican community. What are your
thoughts on that. I mean, like, do you think food
can be recreated when it's tied to such specific environmental
conditions or nostalgic moments, like it's Chinese food here still
(11:00):
Chinese food? Or is it just like the idea of
what they used to make in China.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
That's a really good question. It's such a loaded question. No, no, no,
I love I love it.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
I love it.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
It's funny. I was just I was in Mexico City
last week.
Speaker 4 (11:15):
My mom is from Mexico City, and she's coming to
La on Sunday, and she said, buy some bolios, bring
me some bolios, right, and so just bring them, freeze
them and then we could have Sunday night, right.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
So I did.
Speaker 4 (11:30):
So. I came back from Mexico City carrying the third thousand,
and I.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
Tasted one there and it was delicious.
Speaker 4 (11:35):
But I was like, does it really taste that different
than the that I buy in Los Angeles.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (11:44):
I don't know, but the thought, you know, my mom
was so excited to have frozen, frozen bread that came
from you know, this one bakery in Mexico City, and
that's what's valuable.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
Really.
Speaker 4 (11:59):
I mean, I don't know, does it taste better. Does
it taste different? You know maybe? And I think it's
just what you bring to it. You know. I went
to this amazing bakery yesterday in Compton.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
They're from Guerrero.
Speaker 4 (12:12):
They make the breads from this particular region, the Costa
Chica of Guerrero, and this is what they make. And
I love bread, every like love every bread, sweet savory bread.
And it's very different than any bread that I've than
any bandul said that I've tasted. There was just something
very unique about it. I can't really put my finger
on what was different, but it just different. It looked different,
(12:32):
much more rustic.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
And the people were really nice.
Speaker 4 (12:36):
They were hilarious, and they were talking about a lot
of people from Jalisco that live here, sorry not from Haliscool,
from Guerrero, that haven't been back home or haven't been
able to go home in decades maybe and you know,
many many years. They taste their bread and they're completely
transported to home. So this is a bread that's made
(13:01):
in Los Angeles, you know, incomptent, but just the fact
that it's made by people from Guerreto. They're bringing this love,
they're bringing these stories and hey, if that's what it
takes to have a little.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
Taste of home, then that's totally fine.
Speaker 4 (13:17):
I don't think it's ever going to be one hundred
percent like exactly the same, but I think it's if
you're open to it what you bring to it.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
I like this take.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Actually you're basically saying this nostalgic is the sum of
the parts. In a way, it's the not necessarily just
that bread or that food item, but the you know,
the family that's making it and their history and where
are their parents from. You know, a connection that you
develop and then when you eat it, you're like, yeah, man,
this you know. Sure it might not be a one
to one exact but I don't know. My opinion is
(13:45):
that's kind of impossible to do that. It's like it's
hard because in the moment, you're eating something and it's
hard to compare that to a past flavor.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
But I really, first of all, got to go to
that bakery.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
You have to go. It's called Banisty Loco Pala.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
You have to go Banisty Loco Pala. Yes.
Speaker 3 (13:59):
Oh, it's in a garage, in somebody's garage.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
I'm talking about.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
It's in a residential neighborhood.
Speaker 4 (14:05):
That place you just sent me today isn't because I
was creeping on your social media and I was like,
I gotta go.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
It's amazing. It's in a residential neighborhood. You just have
to follow your nose. Follow the yeast is in the backyard.
It's amazing.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
All right, well we're going to try to get you
to follow your nose here because I've always been curious.
So I went to a couple of grocery stores looking
for this pimiento cheese right, and I couldn't find it.
My understand, I haven't eaten much of piando cheese.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
What is the deal with it? Is it? This is
an actual Mexican thing.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
This is a thing. I have not found the roots
for this. I asked my mom, is this your thing?
She was like, no, no, no, no, no, it's not my thing.
Speaker 4 (14:48):
I tasted this in Mexico City and this is basically
the launche that was served at every being at that
every birthday party and then when I was a little kid,
and I think it's very much an American thing with
the yellow cheese and the pimento. It seems like a
weird thing that a children would like, but maybe I'm
just just a weird kid.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
Yeah, no, you're not, because I've been so so let's
get down to the let's get down to the situation.
You're definitely not a weird kid. I've been snacking on
this all day. Yes, I'm gonna explain to you what
I did to get here. So first and foremost, we'll
talk about the bread. Because you mentioned the bread. I
went through a couple of iterations from an idea perspective,
(15:29):
and I landed on not making the bread from scratch
because there's something about the texture of that style of
sliced white bread you know that comes in a bag.
This one is the particular brand is Bimbo?
Speaker 3 (15:42):
Oh probably.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
So when I saw the Bimbo to my listeners and
to anyone else that doesn't know about Bimbo.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Just google it.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
You'll see the white mascot thing figure dude, little face,
get the powdered donuts. When I went to Hunters for
the first time, I remember my my uncle gave me
Bimbo donuts. It's just very Latin American thing. Very double
checked Bimbo before we go promote him. Sometimes the CEO's
be doing crazy shit, man, he's damn it, man, I just
(16:12):
wanted to talk about Bimbo. It's like, yeah, go ahead,
and me I was like, bro every Hispanic had to
clean their cabinet out.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
Remember, yeah, is so good. I love it too, but
it's can I use it?
Speaker 4 (16:25):
Can I just put it in another contended?
Speaker 3 (16:31):
They broke our heart.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
They really did. So I didn't make bread. I got
the I got the bimbo bread.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
It's very sounding.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
Now I made a couple of errors, all right, So
there's a little bit of cheddar in there, but it
is predominantly American cheese whipped into it. So because I
thought the American cheese that you said in an email,
I thought that should go like on the bread, and
then you put a cheddar based spread on and then
I was like, no, that doesn't make sense. So I
cut in a good bit of American cheese in there.
(17:00):
So that was that was flawed number one.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
No, it's going to elevate it.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
Flaw number two because I have to be transparent. There's
mayo in this.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
You should have let her eat it first before you
went through the thing.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
No, no, no, no, I can't. No, this is how
it works.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
I got to explain myself first, all right, she went
from nostalgic level high to like not. I think the
level just dropped a little bit. I like, so, here's
what I happened research this recipe. I saw a lot
of iterations of these recipes and most of them include
a little mayonnaise, all right, and I was like, what
harm could this be? So after I make it with
(17:42):
all the ingredients, Bridgie goes, oh, she doesn't like mayo.
I was like, so there's a little bit of mayo
in there, Okay, I personally don't think it's enough to
make you. For my listeners that don't know, Mike doesn't
does not like mayonnaise, and we do need it, honestly,
we need to talk about that. Mayonnaise is like the
(18:02):
fruit of sandwich to me.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
I mean mayonnaise.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
Mayonnaise just provides such a level of moisture and deliciousness
to sandwiches. For me, you are just biting your tongue
so hard.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Now, you know what, Let's just have it out now.
Speaker 4 (18:15):
I totally My mom used to use some sort of
milk or evaporating milk or something. Okay, so I look,
if there's a little bit of mayonnaise, I'm good. But yeah,
mayonnaise is one of those things that I'm I love
mustard on a sandwich, not on a mustard, not on
a sanwich.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
No mustard.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Well, maybe we'll sidebar and have a separate mayo episode. Okay,
somewhere for the heat, it didn't have any halapeno, which
I understand a little bit of that is traditional, but
I did have it was in New Mexico, and they
had this hatch Chile salt, which I've been using in
a lot of stuff I've been cooking, and so for
the spice level, I added some of that into this.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
So it has a nice little salty heat now, and
that's pretty much it stay flaky. We'll be right back.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
Enough of that, back to the interview, and now it's
time for you to take a bite.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
Okay, I'm excited.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
It's time to see where you go.
Speaker 3 (19:26):
Let me see. This is beautiful. It's just like I
love the way you packaged it.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
I mean I had no choice. I figured that, you know,
it was probably packaged like that.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
It was like this.
Speaker 4 (19:36):
I think sometimes when my mom used to take it
to other people's houses, this is exactly how it would
how it would be done.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
You have some for the rest of the family here, Lauren,
we got for the production team.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
So also because you can't, you can't.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
Just bring one of these. Yeah, So what are your
initial thoughts? I mean textually, visually, the color text I
need to know. I need to know that the deats
don't be shy.
Speaker 4 (19:57):
Textually, the bread is beautiful, the edges are perfectly cut. Actually,
this one still has a little bit of brown, which
I like because.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
I no, no, no, no, no, I don't mean it in
a whoops way. I prefer a little bit.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
How does it smell.
Speaker 4 (20:11):
It smells like it smells like childhood teers.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
We're gonna cheers that it's beautiful.
Speaker 3 (20:20):
Oh my god, this is really delicious.
Speaker 4 (20:25):
Okay, okay, this is exactly the way it tastes.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
That's exactly the way it tastes.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
This is exactly the way it tastes. It really is.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
I'm looking at your eyes right now. I'm feeling what
are you tasting? What are you feeling?
Speaker 4 (20:40):
Hmm, It's really good. The texture is perfection. I don't
taste the mayonnaise.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
I have to say that's good.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
I wouldn't have known. I wouldn't have known had you
not told you.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
Yeah, I just didn't know if you had like a
mayonnaise allergy or something.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
So I'm just gonna let you notice some male in there.
Speaker 4 (20:59):
I'm trying to find some eloquent words to say when
I really just want to sit here and eat the sound.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
Sit here and eat. There's no listen. You don't have
to say much. Silence is better. Actually, are you feeling
the effects of the shredded cheddar?
Speaker 2 (21:12):
Though?
Speaker 3 (21:13):
No? Okay, no, it tastes because it's not super strong.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
No it's not.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
It's not like extra sharp shuddar or anything like that.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
It was definitely like a mild cheddar.
Speaker 4 (21:25):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, So I wonder if my mom used
to use like a mixture of different yellow cheeses, because
the cheese it tastes the same. I would say the
main difference is that it has more and she used
to do like a like a little light layer, a
lighter layer.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
So I'm a little too loaded up on the filling.
Speaker 3 (21:42):
Okay, okay, that's not a bad thing. That's more of
the adult deserved of the adult thing.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
Yeah, I'm trying to eat.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Yeah, So we always want to know from our guests,
did I nail it?
Speaker 2 (21:54):
Where did I bring you?
Speaker 1 (21:55):
Did I bring you back, and I want to hear
some specifics about exactly where you are right now.
Speaker 4 (22:03):
I feel like, yes, you totally nailed it visually, especially
when I stuck. When I pulled them out of the
little bag and it was these four little, perfect little squares,
these perfect little sandwiches. The smell, the texture like it
sort of it just transports me to my mom's kitchen
and helping her put this together and the anticipation of,
(22:27):
oh my god, my friends are coming over.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
Where's the Yeah, Grandma told you to set up a petta.
Now what happened? I even show you the picture of
what I wanted. Man, what happened.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
I'm certainly very very excited about the fact that you
were being able to have been brought back. Yes, for
my listeners, as usual, we would love to see you
guys make this recipe of course on seaanlan dot com.
Make sure you're tagging us. We want to see your
shot at it. We want to know if you used
to eat these as a kid as well. You know,
we love to kind of encourage people to be like, yoh,
I used to eat that too, man, But like you know,
(23:03):
my mom used to da da da da da no, Na,
me and Bridget were eating spoonful of basically it's.
Speaker 3 (23:10):
Really good, really good. It's like them perfect. It's it's
so simple.
Speaker 4 (23:14):
I mean it's when I was asked, so what what
kind of food? My brain immediately went to launches and
I was like, that's too low brow like and it's
too and I.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
Was like, you know what, No, I'm glad that you
included this as an option because I think it helps
show people how, no matter where we get into our
in our career, how advanced our food knowledge might become
or whatever. There are some things like a you know,
like a Dojorno pizza might rekindle a certain memory of mine.
And I know it's absolutely terrible for you. Another sponsorship
deal I'm not getting. So I love talking to you.
(23:48):
You have such an expansive knowledge of food. How did
you get interested in food.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
History and culture and art?
Speaker 4 (23:54):
Like?
Speaker 1 (23:54):
Where did how did you go from from this birthday
party to being such a a renowned food historian?
Speaker 3 (24:02):
Oh? I think it started at home. Really.
Speaker 4 (24:06):
I think you know, growing up in Laredo, Texas, you know,
there really weren't that many restaurants. You know, we would
never really go out to eat to restaurants, and when
we would it was mostly Mexican restaurants, so what was available.
But my parents always loved food, and I remember like
on Sunday evenings, my mom.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
Used to have like themed dinners, like she would make.
Speaker 4 (24:30):
Tempora, or she would make by yeah, or she would
make clams with like this green sauce and just always
like interesting foods from different parts of the world, and
our friends would come over. I have two brothers, and
it was always an event. And my dad was the
most amazing storyteller. And it's not like he was talking
about food or anything like that, but it was just
(24:53):
this whole idea of bringing our friends together through a meal.
And you know, my mom was making temporo and there
were no Japanese restaurants, you know, in town.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
So it was always interesting to me.
Speaker 4 (25:06):
And then as far as art, whenever we would travel,
our trips were mostly to Mexico, which is where my
parents were from, and we would always go to museums
and architecture, and it was we were always dragged to
these cultural places. So I think both of these things
were very much a part of me. So when I
(25:27):
first went to school, I studied art and then I moved,
you know, after graduate school, I moved to New York
with the idea of, you know, I'm going to be
an artist, but I love to cook for people, and
I always I realized one day that I found such
immense satisfaction and creativity from preparing a meal and creating
(25:47):
an experience, which.
Speaker 3 (25:49):
You just did with this sandwich.
Speaker 4 (25:51):
You sort of create this experience and then it's gone, yeah,
And I loved that. And then I was like, oh, well,
I'm going to go to culinary school just to see.
And I was working in museum education at the time.
I remember I was in culinary school. I was working
at the Met in New York. And then I started
(26:11):
researching a medieval tapestry for a program that I was developing,
and I came across medieval manuscripts and recipes and I
was like, oh.
Speaker 3 (26:20):
My god, people have always eaten.
Speaker 4 (26:23):
I was like, walking through museum was completely like I
never did it again.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
The same way.
Speaker 4 (26:29):
It's like I would walk by a painting of a portrait,
I wonder what that person was eating, and I went
to what the artist was eating, and I wonder who
was what the person that was making the paint was eating.
And I wonder and every and what was the king
eating and what was the popper eating?
Speaker 3 (26:42):
And that's when I just.
Speaker 4 (26:44):
Became completely obsessed, completely obsessed with researching, you know, culinary
history through that and when I was teaching the art,
I started bringing in elements of like food and food
history and at the end I would hand out recipe
ease and it was interesting to me and that food
(27:04):
is so accessible, right, but walking into museum can be
very intimidating. Don't touch, like, there's so many rules. But
when you bring in the food component, all of a sudden,
this painting of a seventeen century king wearing a fur
you know whatever, cape and a big wig, all of
(27:24):
a sudden is relatable because oh my god, he liked
it whatever.
Speaker 3 (27:31):
He was trying to eat exactly.
Speaker 4 (27:34):
Oh my god, he used to prepare his own hot chocolate.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
What.
Speaker 4 (27:39):
So then it's like, oh, oh, food is the ultimate connector.
So that's how I started on this path, you know,
and until I decided, Okay, this is what I'm going
to do, combine the art history with the food history,
because it's it's just it's life, right, It connects us all.
Speaker 3 (27:58):
It takes his home and it takes us around the world.
That's sort of how it happened.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
I mean, you went from exploring random museums as a
kid not really understanding what was going on and eating
good food to you know, working at the met and
being in culinary school, which is like a high level
of this kind of the same experience. Like, you know,
I think it's interesting what you're saying because my second
cookbook's coming out and a lot of Latin American baking
(28:24):
history has to do with colonization, right, It has to
do with how colonists brought over certain ideas, And it's
like you're saying about kings. I don't know the specifics,
but you know many recipes in Latin America. You know, it
could be bandhulus, it could be whatever. But like it
always started because some random king wanted to have banquets.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
No, I'm serious.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Everything you're saying is exactly how I've been researching and
how I picture it was. Like the king would be like, yo, man,
I'm from France, so I want you know x y Z,
and the indigenous people were like, well, we don't have wheat,
good wheat, so we're gonna throw some corn in some massa.
We're just gonna make this with Masa or we're gonna
make you know, we're gonna make some crazy hybrid of
(29:09):
this and they're you know, they serve the King.
Speaker 4 (29:11):
No, but it's so true. I mean, it's just how
cuisine just evolves.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
Right well, I mean we touched on this briefly at
the beginning. It's like what.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
Is is American Chinese food? Chinese food is is Deep
Dish pizza, pizza is New York pizza.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
Like whatever it is.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
What really happened is certain cultures came to a different
land that has different grains, ingredients, water, everything, and they
try to replicate food from a different land the best
way possible. So I think the answer is yes across
the board, because you know, my parents are immigrants, So like,
is my mom's Baliada and Louisiana the same as one
(29:49):
in San Perosula?
Speaker 2 (29:50):
I think, I mean yeah, because like you know, well, man, we.
Speaker 4 (29:53):
Could go on and oh no, it's the whole question
of what is authentic and what does it mean? You know,
what is authenticity mean? You know, it's like, well, sometimes
this is just authentic because it's authentic to me.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
Yeah, yeah, and that's okay, we should Yeah, we as
a society, Well there is.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
I feel like we should be a little more accepting
and less interested in this idea of authenticity in food
because I think it there's so much personal nostalgia that
goes into what is or.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
Is not X y Z.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
So I and is this why you started art bites?
Is this this culmination of all of this stuff?
Speaker 2 (30:32):
Like that's is that what drove you to kind of
doing that? And like and what does it really entail?
Speaker 3 (30:37):
Absolutely? It is.
Speaker 4 (30:38):
It is creating these these experiences, right, sort of bringing
people together. So in a typical class that I teach,
we tour an exhibition, so we'll spend an hour looking
at art, weaving in the stories of the food, and
then prepare a meal inspired by history. Often, you know,
(31:01):
people have told me, oh, I came to a class
and I'm leaving a party, and I love that, you know,
people prepare contemporary meal inspired by history because I also,
I'm not really interested in making some weird ancient Roman
you know, thing that people are going to taste and
be like it's kind of weird. More, I'm more interested
in the stories right and then adapting it right to.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
Something delicious and palatable. Exactly, not like full I too.
My first time, you know, I was like, what's going
on here? So, like, how do you cook in a museum?
Speaker 3 (31:33):
Well, it depends.
Speaker 4 (31:34):
I've blown fuses at every museum in Southern California bringing
in hotplates and toaster ovens when I first started this career,
and I'm really I remember one time I was at
a museum in the Santa Anna Museum of Art in
Orange County, and I was telling them, like, this is
a really old building. I think we need the electricians
here just to make sure that everything is wired correctly.
(31:56):
They're like, no, no, no, it's going to be fine. Blue
every fus we ended up ordering from for your local.
But then I sort of figured it out and you know,
work with the electricians.
Speaker 3 (32:06):
I've learned the lingo, you know, electricity lingo. I think
we need a spider here.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
And this might be againness Book of World Records.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
Have you submitted to them every seuseum in South California?
Speaker 2 (32:18):
If blown I did that, no one would ever break
that record.
Speaker 3 (32:21):
I don't think so, I don't think.
Speaker 2 (32:23):
So.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
What are some examples of classes that we can take
it by? I want to take a class arpis one's
the next class.
Speaker 3 (32:29):
What's going on the next one?
Speaker 4 (32:31):
I actually have them coming up at the at the
Huntington Library in Pasadena. We're doing the Grand Tour, which
is one of my favorite classes where we tour. It
was this interesting time period that started around you know,
fifteen hundreds, when British aristocrats would travel through you or
like go to Italy and go to France, and this
(32:52):
whole concept of traveling just for the sake of traveling
curiosity for the first time, maybe not fifty hundred and
sixteen hundreds, not for to colonize, but like, hey, let's
see what they're eating over there. Let's taste some of
that French bread in Paris. Yeah, let's just have some
of that pasta and roam or whatever it was.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
So they would do that.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
Portuguese colonists in Brazil would go back to France to
do exactly what you're saying, because they wanted better bread
in Brazil, so they would send some people off for luxury. Basically, hey,
go taste the bread, hug so they come back and
that's how they started making the Balfrances.
Speaker 3 (33:29):
Oh interesting French Breadrench bread.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
Or balgia, so you know, and the Brazilian bakers would
actually add like butter and more sugar to it because
again the wheat is not as good, so you got
to you gotta kind of put a us something in
there to try to replicate a texture or a feeling.
But at some point someone had to be like, uh,
you know, I'm going on vacation.
Speaker 3 (33:49):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So it was around the sixteen hundred.
Speaker 4 (33:52):
Well you know what, Yeah, I just wanted to travel,
just to go with my friends and just to see
what's happening.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
I'm tired of killing all these people in this land
and ruin in their agriculture.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
I need a break from this.
Speaker 4 (34:02):
Yes, it's interesting because these grand tourists as they were called,
they used to keep diaries and they would send a
lot of these diaries. Exist a lot of the letters
that were sent home, and they comment a lot on
the food that they were eating, which I find that's so.
Speaker 3 (34:16):
Interesting because that's when we travel.
Speaker 4 (34:18):
That's really the way in to a culture is the food.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
It's the food.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
And is that how you like, how do you create
these courses? Like is that would that be the foundation
of these courses?
Speaker 4 (34:29):
Is?
Speaker 2 (34:30):
Yeah, there's the artwork.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
But like analyzing, like those diaries analyzing the writing and
then from there taking a step back, like like how
exactly are these courses? How do you kind of package
that together and put your own flavor to it.
Speaker 3 (34:42):
Yeah, it depends.
Speaker 4 (34:43):
Sometimes it starts with the art, and sometimes it starts
with the food. Sometimes it's like, oh, you know what,
I really want to focus on this historic cookbook or
this or these series of letters, and then I'll look
to see what, you know, what art is available that
I could sort of weave the two together. So I
have a relationship with different museums in La and during
(35:03):
the pandemic it was so easy because everything was virtual,
so I was able to go all over the world,
and sometimes I just I'll just focus on I'll give
a talk on a particular cookbook or time period and
then make one thing or have a tasting.
Speaker 3 (35:18):
So sometimes it starts with the art.
Speaker 4 (35:19):
Sometimes it starts with the cookbook or the series of
cookbooks or the letters, and so there's really no one
way to do it. Like I'm doing something in the
summer at LAKHMA, the La County Museum of Art, they
have an exhibit called Pressing Politics. It's all political art
from Mexico and Germany and so we're doing a beer tasting.
Speaker 3 (35:41):
Oh snap, So I'll do a history of.
Speaker 4 (35:44):
Beer beer tasting, and we're going to have hot dog vendors.
So there's lots of different ways, and I feel so
lucky that there are people that are like, oh, yeah,
that's a good idea, let's try it.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
Yeah, that sounds like a phenomenal idea. Yeah, don't go anywhere.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
We'll be right back after this. Welcome back to Flaky Biscuit.
(36:27):
It reminds me of something I read that you wrote.
It's in Life and Time, titled Tamalas in Time, and
it really resonated with me because the formation of Mexican
culture has largely been viewed in European terms. I have
my own opinions about what this means, but I would
love it if you could expand on that, because it
(36:50):
really kind of hit home.
Speaker 3 (36:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (36:52):
Well, definitely in Mexico for sure, you know, with the conquest,
and it wasn't until the early nineteen hundreds when the
Mexican Revolution was beginning to sort of brew and a
lot of artists, you know, particularly artists like the Rivera
and Cicato's and all of these the big names of
the Mexican you know, Renaissance movement. They were really the leaders,
(37:17):
in addition to the revolutionaries and Milion Azabat and Benchebell
and all of these big names that people At the
end of the nineteenth century, beginning of the twentieth century,
you know, Mexico City is growing and people are discovering
all of these objects, all of these artifacts that had
been destroyed, you know, sort of fragments of them. The
(37:39):
Spaniards destroyed everything or tried to destroy everything. I mean
in Mexico City itself, the main temple, the stones of
the temple were used to build the cathedral right on
top of it in the ultimate fu right, it's.
Speaker 3 (37:52):
Like ruthless, ruthless, ruthless.
Speaker 4 (37:55):
You can hear about it, but if you go to
Mexico City, you literally you see it. It's such a
part of life. But for so many centuries during the
colonial period, everything was what was from Spain or what
was French, or what was European, what was better? And
it wasn't until the late nineteenth early twentieth century that
(38:16):
Mexicans started to discover their Mexicanidad, right, their mexicanness, and
the root of this was to do food because for
many years, corn, which is the soul of Mexico, was
replaced with wheat, right, which was for the right, for
the respectable people. And the wider the bread, the better
(38:39):
the bread, the darker the bread.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
You know, it was just sort of the category. And
then corn was at the very bottom.
Speaker 4 (38:44):
And then this time of the nineteen hundreds, people are
discovering their roots. You know, what we are in mais
this isn't who we are, this is life, this is
corn and discovering what Mexico actually came from, and the
importance of the native in Mexico and finding pride in that.
(39:05):
So this is something that's relatively new, you could say
the past, you know, one hundred years, the sense of
Mexican nests really developed. And one thing that's really interesting,
even before this, the earliest cookbooks in Mexico weren't printed
until the earliest cookbook published in Mexico was eighteen thirty one,
which has hardly any mention of Mexican recipes. It reads
(39:27):
more like a French cookbook with a few recipes for
tamalez you know, here and there. But it's when this
concept of what is Mexican began to be formed, which
is very European still. But this was even before the
Mexican National Anthem, so before these national library and theater
(39:47):
and all of this, it was through food.
Speaker 1 (39:49):
But the thing is, the thing is, though, is that
even though something like wheat was kind of like an infiltration,
if you fast forward to today, you know, get the
bolo and we wouldn't have Mexican bread concast. And so
even though a specific crop or a specific technique was
(40:09):
brought over by specific people, it doesn't really matter anymore
to me. I view as a completely different, very distinctly
Latin American or Mexican food item.
Speaker 2 (40:20):
And you know, flower, the flower.
Speaker 1 (40:25):
Is more popular than the North and the borderlands obviously
South Texas and everything that you know. In Honduras, flower
tortillas are the dominant tortilla because our national dish is
the baliara.
Speaker 2 (40:37):
But we still eat tortillas, of course.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
I mean, you know most of you know Mexico and
Central America. My biggest takeaway is always it seems like
the Europeans forgot that they learn how to bake from
African people. Everything everything stays, everything stays so European forward, right,
and it's look, man, I'll eat a croissant and all that,
and it's it's good.
Speaker 2 (40:58):
I'm not gonna say it's not bad.
Speaker 1 (40:59):
But it's interesting how food ways and how it's baking
may have originated in Turkey, the Middle East.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
North Africa.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
Some I don't no one can really pinpoint that's where
baking started. But you know, but and these traditions are
moved into Europe and out to Asia, East, West, fucking whatever.
Where am I in California, I'd be west, doesn't matter anyway.
So it is interesting to me that you go out
to eat, or if you think about fine dining or
think about fine food, it is all still viewed through
(41:30):
a European lens still, and I'm like tired. I'm like, man,
it's like it's exhausting.
Speaker 3 (41:36):
It is unpacked, it is, you know. But do you
think it's changing.
Speaker 1 (41:41):
Hmmm, No, in the baking world or in just the
food world in gener I think in the food world
in general, there's a movement. There's a very strong movement
in my opinion, when you think about like if you
think about in Mexico or in Brazil, fine dining for
a while was European food. You know, there's Brazilian chefs
that after a while there.
Speaker 2 (42:00):
Like why am I making this? I should be making
Brazilian food.
Speaker 1 (42:03):
You know, there's there's been a lot of chefs that
have been able to take a stand and actually cook
high end, fine dining, regional cuisine that's not rooted in
European dominance. I think baking's far behind. I think bakings
so far behind. It's far behind in the in the
popular trends of American society. How about we say that
(42:24):
because you know, obviously you go to Africa, They're like,
we bacon our stuff over here. But you know, we
kind of live in this world that's this little food media,
Western American eyed world that we view food from which
which a lot of people think is the only lens.
Speaker 3 (42:40):
Right.
Speaker 2 (42:41):
It's definitely there's a long way to go to get
someone to be like.
Speaker 1 (42:44):
Oh, boleos, that's great, or oh, you know, non or
wrote anything anything else.
Speaker 3 (42:51):
Than the begette or the croissant.
Speaker 1 (42:53):
Yeah, if I ask you, like, what's what are the
top five bakeries that have opened in la or in
New York or whatever, these are usually the exact same thing.
Speaker 3 (43:01):
That's true?
Speaker 2 (43:03):
Is loaded?
Speaker 4 (43:03):
Man?
Speaker 3 (43:03):
We I mean now it is? It is. It's tough
it's never ending.
Speaker 2 (43:07):
Well, so what's your answer. Do you think it's changing?
Speaker 4 (43:10):
I mean, I think that the fact that people are
having these conversations is a really good thing. That are
celebrating other cuisines. I think that there's I think that
there's an interest in that in celebrating other cuisines right now.
Speaker 3 (43:23):
So so maybe.
Speaker 1 (43:27):
Maybe we just got we got a little too pensive
in here. It's starting to get starting to get philosophical. So,
speaking of Mexican food, we always love to play a
flaky game with our guests. Okay, I promise you I'm
one hundred percent sure that you have all the answers.
It's multiple choice and it's about Mexican food.
Speaker 2 (43:49):
Are you ready?
Speaker 3 (43:54):
Okay?
Speaker 2 (43:54):
Are you ready for the flaky game?
Speaker 3 (43:56):
I'm ready for the flaky all right?
Speaker 2 (44:00):
Okay, got a couple of questions for you.
Speaker 1 (44:03):
Number one, you need to have pork and pineapple if
you want this street food to be done, right.
Speaker 2 (44:09):
Is it?
Speaker 3 (44:10):
That's my favorite?
Speaker 1 (44:17):
Don't even need to list off options. That is the
level you're operating on.
Speaker 3 (44:22):
With that one. That's my favorite.
Speaker 2 (44:24):
That that was impressive.
Speaker 3 (44:25):
Of course, cycles you have to check them in your hair.
Speaker 2 (44:28):
Yeah, we've been before.
Speaker 1 (44:30):
Also phenomenal because it's all about the dordilla. Sometimes that's
true if the filling could be good. But a lot
of Leo's is on point. But there's a couple out
there you'd be like, what do you get the dordia?
You got a bunch of you got them costco and
then they crumble when you try to fold them.
Speaker 2 (44:46):
Anyway, here we go, dating back to Mayan times.
Speaker 1 (44:51):
Oh, ship, this dish needs a sauce on it to
be complete?
Speaker 2 (44:57):
What is it called?
Speaker 1 (45:00):
Is it turo? Is it a burrito? Is it aenchiladas
or tamales?
Speaker 2 (45:10):
Hmmm?
Speaker 3 (45:11):
I would say that, am I wrong?
Speaker 2 (45:13):
I don't think you're actually wrong?
Speaker 1 (45:15):
Well, I mean the answer I hat highlighted was achilaas,
But if you think about it less like a traditional
Mexican damal, Is it sauce based?
Speaker 2 (45:25):
Is there a sauce that goes on?
Speaker 3 (45:26):
Well, I guess it's the sauce is inside or you meant.
Speaker 2 (45:29):
The sauce one.
Speaker 1 (45:30):
You're right, though, but I wouldn't associate in it says
which this needs a sauce to be complete. So oh,
so I was thinking that you were right also because
if the sauce is inside, maybe yeah, maybe maybe it's both.
Speaker 3 (45:45):
Maybe it's both.
Speaker 4 (45:46):
Maybe maybe I'm wrong, But in chiladas, do you need
a sauce on top?
Speaker 2 (45:50):
Dude? What's your favorite type ofila?
Speaker 3 (45:52):
I like green and chilas green sauce. What about you?
Speaker 2 (45:56):
The green ones elis as well? They no? Son, all right,
we got one more?
Speaker 1 (46:02):
Okay, Oh that's funny. What is the dish that's not
necessarily for breakfast but it's still enjoyed by a lot
of people for breakfast?
Speaker 2 (46:14):
Is it less manula or tacos chi?
Speaker 1 (46:23):
Lucky Lucky lest I shouldn't have disclosed the the fourth
coming like.
Speaker 4 (46:28):
That's okay, Yeah, yeah, I don't think of tacos for breakfast. Well,
you can like the breakfast that goes Texas breakfast that
goes yeah.
Speaker 1 (46:36):
No, but you're e're correct, you like you less like again.
My experience in Mexico is like you're eating tea like
you less in the morning. That's for you're going to
a coffee shop or a little cafette. Everyone's like you less.
You're like, oh, I'm gonna get down with that too.
Speaker 4 (46:48):
I tasted some amazing like you LETSI mechk and a
few months ago they had this sauce, but it was
like a green sauce us, but it had walk I
was kind of creamy. You were a little spicy, but
it was The alvocada was delicious.
Speaker 2 (47:07):
M m mmmmm.
Speaker 1 (47:08):
Man. And the out there is a different variety. California
got some pretty good Yeah, California basically the same thing.
Dolen Land playing playing Guys last one And this one's interesting.
I've never heard of this before. I researched this for
for a little game here. So what is one of
the most patriotic dishes in all of Mexico? Is it
(47:29):
tiaron Gilius rehenos? Is it Gilius and nogada?
Speaker 3 (47:36):
That one?
Speaker 2 (47:38):
Yes, good? I saw what is love?
Speaker 4 (47:43):
That's one of my favorite things in the world. And
it is the most beautiful dish. It's a chili that's
stuffed with a combination of you know, ground piccadillo and
ground beef, and I put nuts in mine, and sometimes
I'll put raisins and it's just like a sort of
sweet and savory pica with like a tomato sort of
bass stuffed. And then the norada sauce is is creamy
(48:07):
walnut sauce. It's like geso Fresco walnuts, milk sugar port
on top. So you have the green chile with the
white sauce and traditionally you're supposed to peel the walnuts.
Speaker 3 (48:19):
It was just white.
Speaker 4 (48:20):
I don't do that because whatever. And then it's garnished
with pomegranate seeds.
Speaker 2 (48:25):
Mm. So it makes the colors of the Mexican flag. Wow.
Speaker 4 (48:29):
It's beautiful and delicious, different textures. It's an explosion of flavor.
Speaker 1 (48:34):
I've never had it, but now I feel like I'm
going to go somewhere.
Speaker 2 (48:38):
Right now until March another month. Basically, Okay, you make
them for you guys.
Speaker 3 (48:43):
Yes, I'll make them. I will.
Speaker 4 (48:44):
I'll make them if you have time.
Speaker 2 (48:48):
Absolutely, yes, we definitely have time for that.
Speaker 3 (48:52):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (48:53):
So I'll give you four for four.
Speaker 1 (48:54):
You know, I think you're good. I think passive, leaky
game and usually towards it. You know, at the end
of episode, we love to talk about with our guests
an organization that is special to you and what are
the things that are on your mind to try to
further our community, and from what I understand is know
us without you la, So I'd love to learn more
about this.
Speaker 2 (49:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (49:14):
Absolutely, So there's two organizations that I would love to
give a shout out too. So know Us Without You
is one of them, and they are amazing. They're based
here in LA and they started during the pandemic when.
Speaker 3 (49:27):
All of the restaurants closed and everybody's up the job.
Speaker 4 (49:30):
So they focus on helping undocumented back of house restaurant
workers wow.
Speaker 3 (49:35):
Feeding them.
Speaker 4 (49:36):
And at the height of the pandemic, they were feeding
about sixteen hundred people undocumented workers. And now with things
have opened up, but the ripple effects are still very
much being felt. So they're still helping with undocumented immigrants,
feeding them, but also now since some of them are
now back at work, helping their children get tutors, are
(50:00):
helping them with probo no therapy or mental health or
helping them. They have this whole this new wish list
system where if they need help for rent, or if
they need help for clothing for their for their children.
But it's all about helping undocumented workers that worked in
the restaurant business, these essential workers. You know that that
(50:23):
we're just left out.
Speaker 3 (50:24):
In the in the cold.
Speaker 4 (50:26):
Yeah, sit.
Speaker 3 (50:26):
There an incredible.
Speaker 2 (50:27):
Organization that's the heartbeat to the restaurant industry.
Speaker 1 (50:32):
The whole circulatory system, heartbeat, lungs.
Speaker 3 (50:37):
Everything, the pulse. Yeah, it's the pulls.
Speaker 4 (50:40):
And the people that started it with were in the
hospitality business. There are bartenders and now they've shifted and
this is what they do. Another organization that I think
is amazing is there's this restaurant in little Ethiopia here
in La called Flavors from Afar and they work together
or they're run by this organization called the taf Foundation,
(51:00):
and it's owned and operated by a woman who's Somalian refugee.
Speaker 3 (51:06):
She's been in the US since she was a child.
Speaker 4 (51:09):
But the chefs of the Flavors from a Far restaurant
are all immigrants. So every month is a different immigrants
and they're refugees actually, So you might go one month
and it's Guatemalan food.
Speaker 3 (51:22):
You might go another month and it's Syrian food.
Speaker 4 (51:25):
So every month is a different cuisine and it's all
home cooks, and it's this whole idea of you know,
going you know, full circle, it's your connection to home.
They're preserving these traditions because if you don't continue to
cook these foods then they're going to disappear. So they're
another incredible organization. Both of them are very close to
(51:46):
my heart.
Speaker 1 (51:47):
Wow, in case of a refugee coming to this country,
it can be a pretty traumatic experience. And getting the
opportunity to just cook the food that makes you feel
like you're at home and sharing that with your new community, that's.
Speaker 4 (52:00):
Extremely and making money right.
Speaker 3 (52:07):
Exactly, it's important.
Speaker 1 (52:09):
Yeah, we'll have the websites and calls to action in
our show notes. You know, I'm assuming with both of
these we can volunteer. You know, you can donated to
volunteer and the websites will provide to the listeners and uh,
I'll have to.
Speaker 2 (52:21):
Check it out myself.
Speaker 1 (52:22):
Thank you, thank you for coming to biscuit.
Speaker 3 (52:26):
Has been such so much fun.
Speaker 1 (52:31):
Thanks for listening y'all. If you want to make the
lunches for yourself, find the recipe on the Shondaland website.
Speaker 2 (52:38):
And I want to know how it goes.
Speaker 1 (52:40):
Tag me artists and Brian tag Mita at art Bites,
Underscore mitya host a photo.
Speaker 2 (52:46):
Tell me how you.
Speaker 1 (52:47):
Did use mayonnaise. Don't use mayonnaise, I don't know. My
advice would be you go through your heart desires and
don't forget to check out flavors from Afar at flavors
from Afar dot co and know Us without Ula at
Know Us without you dot La. You can find my
handle and all the links I mentioned in the show
(53:07):
notes for this episode.
Speaker 2 (53:11):
Fam.
Speaker 1 (53:11):
If you like Flaky Biscuit, you already know what to do.
Leave us a rating, review, share, subscribe. You already know
we coming through with the best food podcast content out there,
so you might as well let everybody else know that too.
Flaky Biscuit is executive produced by Sandy Bailey, alex Alja,
Lauren Homan, Tyler Klang, and Gabrielle Collins. Our creative producer
(53:33):
is Bridget Kenna and our editor and producer is Nicholas Harder,
with music by Crucial. Recipes from Flaky Biscuit can be
found each week on Shondaland dot com. Subscribe to the
Shondaland YouTube channel for more Flaky Biscuit content. Flaky Biscuit
is a production of Shondaland Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from Shondaland Audio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
(53:57):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite show.
Flaky Biscuit is a production of Shondaland Audio in partnership
with iHeartRadio. Welcome to Flaky Biscuit, where each episode we
are cooking up delicious morsels of nistagette, and each episode
I'm creating a recipe from scratch and literally I'm hand
(00:21):
delivering it to my guests.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Today, I happen to pull.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Up with a nice lunch bag reminiscent of like going
to school, little brown bag situation with a surprise in it,
and these recipes I hope that you're making at home
as well.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Today. There's someone very very special here.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
My guest has dedicated her career to exploring the nexus
of art and culinary history through lectures, cooking classes, and
tastings in universities and museums like the Metropolitan Museum of Art,
the LA Museum of Art.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
And the J. Paul Getty Museum.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
I mean, come on, I'm not even close to that level. Man,
were talking about museums. We are talking about museums. She's
also founded art Bites, a combination of food and art
history through classes, lectures, and workshops in which he creates
recipes inspired by historical works. The importance of this work.
I'm just kind of salivating to learn more myself. Co
(01:12):
host of Hungry for History on iHeartRadio's Mike WI Podcast Network.
Please welcome my Tek Gomez rehon.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
Thank you, Brian. I'm so excited to be here.
Speaker 4 (01:24):
I love the concept of your of flaky biscuits, So
I'm just I'm thrilled, and I keep eyeing that little
brown bag.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
I'm glad that you like flaky biscuit. What is it
that you like about it?
Speaker 3 (01:33):
I just love the whole.
Speaker 4 (01:34):
First of all, the name is so inviting. Who doesn't
love a biscuit and a flaky biscuit? Come on, I
just read those two words and I can smell it.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
And you'll get one of those candles biscuit flavored that
you've see in this candle situation happening. Really get a
flaky biscuit candle. You can just smell the flakes coming
off of it.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
I would buy it.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
I literally feel like making biscuits was maybe some eggs
and some frety holds or do.
Speaker 4 (01:58):
You I like it with butter? Do you like regular
butter or salty butter?
Speaker 1 (02:02):
You know, because I bake so much, I don't ever
have salted butter in my kitchen. Is there like a
specific type of salted butter that you would prefer on
your biscuit?
Speaker 4 (02:10):
Or I like the French salted butter that has it
has like chunks of flaky sea salt in it, so
you slice into it and sometimes you see, I'm salimid
just thinking about it. That on a sort of sweet biscuit.
I love that sort of sweet and savory.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
But I can.
Speaker 4 (02:25):
Understand you wouldn't want to bake with it. That's something
that you just want to put on a piece.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Now, you got me curious about that salty butter going
directly on the biscuit. And Jam, I'm a butter jam
combo type.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Yeah. I like to put like a.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Nice like a raspberry or something or guayaba, you know
what I'm saying.
Speaker 4 (02:43):
Jam, that's so good, you know. Yeah, I love apricot jam.
I think that's my favorite.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Oh man, that was one of my dad's favorite jazz.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Oh really yeah, Well, we don't have biscuits here, and
I did not make biscuits today.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
I guess you gave two options and you don't know
what I made for you. How about you open the
bag and tell me what I've made for it.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
I'm so excited.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Closure eyes. I was kidding.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
Oh wait, something soft? Wait what is this? The little sandwich?
Oh my god, this is I have not tasted this
since I was a child.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
So what exactly is it?
Speaker 3 (03:27):
Okay? These are I love the way you packed it
in this little surrender.
Speaker 4 (03:31):
This is exactly how my mom is.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
This is so exciting. Okay.
Speaker 4 (03:37):
I gave you two options, like I said, so one
of them. The first option was lunches. This is the
ultimate birthday party food when I was a child. Should
I open it?
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Just don't eat it yet. Okay, open it.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
You can smell it, you can touch it, but explain
to our listeners exactly what it is. Well, what's inside
the package that you're holding?
Speaker 4 (03:58):
Okay, So it's this little sandwich, very soft bread.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
I just felt it as soon as I stuck my
hand in there.
Speaker 4 (04:05):
And it's basically it's yellow cheese with pimento and either
milk or like carnation, like evaporated milk or something blended together.
And these are sandwiches that my mom used to make
for every birthday party growing up.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
And it wasn't just my mom.
Speaker 4 (04:25):
I think it was just like every single birthday party
that I ever went to growing up, Every Pignetta had
these lunches a being at that it was like the thing,
and I just remember my mom making it and just
being so excited, just the anticipation of the birthday party
and like who was.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
Going to come over? And I guess most kids are
just not really thinking about what food is going to
be served in their birthday party. But I was always
very excited about these lunches.
Speaker 4 (04:54):
And I would help her put the little smear of
this filling, but then also open the little kraft singles.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
The little plastic and just put those in the blender.
Speaker 4 (05:06):
But what you did hear that I'm most excited about
is that the crust cut off perfectly.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
Yeah, you know I got that sharp chef's knife.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Yes, I figured that cutting the crust off in that
kind of perfect angle was necessary. And you better believe
I ate the crust too, Yes, because the crust had
someone a filling on it. Oh my god, I was
nibbling on them crust before we got here.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
This is like the ultimate kid's food.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
And you know, sidebar, this is a birthday party technically,
because it was just my birthday and we're here and
we're celebrating. I remember growing up there was a very
very specific birthday meal that we all got for about
this five year time period between ten and fifteen. Those
are the ages I remember. And I grew up in
(05:52):
a hunder in household. You know, my parents are from Onnudas,
but our birthday meal is not. And you would never guess.
No one would ever guess what it was us. I
don't even think you know, Bridge, I don't think I've
ever talked about this, but me and my siblings we
all talk about this specific moment and it was a
It was a pizza, red bag, Dorito's, a two liter
of pepsi, and that try flavored Napolitan ice cream. Of course,
(06:18):
every birthday, whether it was me and my brother or
we all got that same thing and we would be
so excited for that moment of a digiorno pizza and Doritos.
Speaker 4 (06:27):
So I think there's definitely some kid's birthday food.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Oh you don't play with that, No, you don't forget that,
you don't forget that stuff.
Speaker 4 (06:35):
She used to pack these in a little sandwich bag,
sliced at an angle a little sandwich bag and then
put it in little a little white cardboard box. It
was a sandwich and then a little plastic bag with candies,
and then then we used to tie together and that
was what every kid would get.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
Like a like a ration, exactly exactly. So these are
called lunches. And for the listeners that might not know
what that means, because you know, there's there's different types
of sandwiches, right, there's tortas, lunches, And I feel like
you're the perfect person to explain this.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
What is the difference?
Speaker 3 (07:12):
Oh gosh, that's a good question. And I don't really know.
Speaker 4 (07:16):
Well, a launche it sounds sort of like a it
almost sounds sort of spanglish, right, it's like launche, a lunch.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Lunch, like a lunch.
Speaker 4 (07:24):
Yeah, Like atorta is a piece of bread, and a
torta is usually from a bread like a boli or telera,
like those breads that are more crusty, that are more
I guess, more sophisticated than just the regular white sliced,
you know bread. And the fact that it's like yellow
cheese and it's it's very American. And you grew up
(07:45):
in Laredo, Texas on the border of Texas in Mexico.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
Parents are from Mexico.
Speaker 4 (07:50):
But my mom said that she tasted these for the
first time when she was in Mexico City. But everybody
in Laredo and novel Laredo, which is the Mexican sid
of the border.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
I always used to have the lunches, and.
Speaker 4 (08:00):
I think it's basically comes from just the English word
for lunch. It's a lunch and something that you have
for lunch. It's like a simple, you know, takeaway.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Yeah. I like that, it's not that complicated. It's like
it's lunches, like it's lunch.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
It's that seems so much more war it's sophisticated.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
You're right that the letter bread bolio. What about the
bread that semita. Yeah, it's kind of like that crusty
but seeded almost. I wouldn't call it a burger bun
because the texture is so different, right.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
It's a little more it's a little firmer than the
burger bun. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
Yeah, So Mexico has definitely a very sophisticated sandwich culture.
My in my in my opinion, people kind of sleep
on that. I think when you think of Latin American
cuisine and you think about sandwiches. A lot of people,
Oh like Cuban sandwich. Right, of course, Cuban sandwich got
my heart too, but people forget, you know, like Mexico
got a deep, rich sandwich culture.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
Absolutely.
Speaker 4 (08:57):
I mean there's so many because there's of course that
that goes which is different. It's yeah, but you have
the bread and then there's so many different types of
breads and different breads that are used depending on the
on the torta. And it's this sort of culture that
has that has existed in Mexico since the nineteenth century
when you have all of these French bakers opening up
(09:19):
bakeries and like you said, and it's a certain bread
with sauce, but it doesn't get soggy because it's the birote,
because it's the vidote exactly.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
So birote and I talk about vitote this all the time.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
It's it's a native to Guadalajara in Jalisco, and it's
a bread that is apparently I'd love your take on
this actually, because it's a it's a question that I
always because we're talking about nostalgia actually, and so this
bread is made in Guadalajara, which is at a certain
altitude and has a certain humidity and a certain climate,
and so it's made natural. We call it sourdough, right,
the you know, the sourdough trend or whatever. But this
(09:55):
is a naturally fermented bread wood fired in this part
of Mexico. And the first time I came to La
No maybe the second time I came to La I
befriended my friend Docturo has a bakery and long beach,
this Mexican inspired artismal bakery, and a lot of the
local Mexican American restaurants and communities don't believe you can
(10:15):
make a beatote in the United States. So they make
dotagas and they import the birote from guer Really And
so my friends make a nice sour dough beat out this.
He calls them, well, he stopped calling them beat out
this now because no one would accept them. So but
you know, he makes the bread good flour, good fermentation,
and people are like, no, it doesn't taste the same.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
That's not a beatote.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
And I've been wrestling with this. There's something very special
about that, right, There's a there's a pride in that
specific bread by a specific Mexican community. What are your
thoughts on that. I mean, like, do you think food
can be recreated when it's tied to such specific environmental
conditions or nostalgic moments, like it's Chinese food here still
(11:00):
Chinese food? Or is it just like the idea of
what they used to make in China.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
That's a really good question. It's such a loaded question. No, no, no,
I love I love it.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
I love it.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
It's funny. I was just I was in Mexico City
last week.
Speaker 4 (11:15):
My mom is from Mexico City, and she's coming to
La on Sunday, and she said, buy some bolios, bring
me some bolios, right, and so just bring them, freeze
them and then we could have Sunday night, right.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
So I did.
Speaker 4 (11:30):
So. I came back from Mexico City carrying the third thousand,
and I.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
Tasted one there and it was delicious.
Speaker 4 (11:35):
But I was like, does it really taste that different
than the that I buy in Los Angeles.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (11:44):
I don't know, but the thought, you know, my mom
was so excited to have frozen, frozen bread that came
from you know, this one bakery in Mexico City, and
that's what's valuable.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
Really.
Speaker 4 (11:59):
I mean, I don't know, does it taste better. Does
it taste different? You know maybe? And I think it's
just what you bring to it. You know. I went
to this amazing bakery yesterday in Compton.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
They're from Guerrero.
Speaker 4 (12:12):
They make the breads from this particular region, the Costa
Chica of Guerrero, and this is what they make. And
I love bread, every like love every bread, sweet savory bread.
And it's very different than any bread that I've than
any bandul said that I've tasted. There was just something
very unique about it. I can't really put my finger
on what was different, but it just different. It looked different,
(12:32):
much more rustic.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
And the people were really nice.
Speaker 4 (12:36):
They were hilarious, and they were talking about a lot
of people from Jalisco that live here, sorry not from Haliscool,
from Guerrero, that haven't been back home or haven't been
able to go home in decades maybe and you know,
many many years. They taste their bread and they're completely
transported to home. So this is a bread that's made
(13:01):
in Los Angeles, you know, incomptent, but just the fact
that it's made by people from Guerreto. They're bringing this love,
they're bringing these stories and hey, if that's what it
takes to have a little.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
Taste of home, then that's totally fine.
Speaker 4 (13:17):
I don't think it's ever going to be one hundred
percent like exactly the same, but I think it's if
you're open to it what you bring to it.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
I like this take.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Actually you're basically saying this nostalgic is the sum of
the parts. In a way, it's the not necessarily just
that bread or that food item, but the you know,
the family that's making it and their history and where
are their parents from. You know, a connection that you
develop and then when you eat it, you're like, yeah, man,
this you know. Sure it might not be a one
to one exact but I don't know. My opinion is
(13:45):
that's kind of impossible to do that. It's like it's
hard because in the moment, you're eating something and it's
hard to compare that to a past flavor.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
But I really, first of all, got to go to
that bakery.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
You have to go. It's called Banisty Loco Pala.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
You have to go Banisty Loco Pala. Yes.
Speaker 3 (13:59):
Oh, it's in a garage, in somebody's garage.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
I'm talking about.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
It's in a residential neighborhood.
Speaker 4 (14:05):
That place you just sent me today isn't because I
was creeping on your social media and I was like,
I gotta go.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
It's amazing. It's in a residential neighborhood. You just have
to follow your nose. Follow the yeast is in the backyard.
It's amazing.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
All right, well we're going to try to get you
to follow your nose here because I've always been curious.
So I went to a couple of grocery stores looking
for this pimiento cheese right, and I couldn't find it.
My understand, I haven't eaten much of piando cheese.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
What is the deal with it? Is it? This is
an actual Mexican thing.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
This is a thing. I have not found the roots
for this. I asked my mom, is this your thing?
She was like, no, no, no, no, no, it's not my thing.
Speaker 4 (14:48):
I tasted this in Mexico City and this is basically
the launche that was served at every being at that
every birthday party and then when I was a little kid,
and I think it's very much an American thing with
the yellow cheese and the pimento. It seems like a
weird thing that a children would like, but maybe I'm
just just a weird kid.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
Yeah, no, you're not, because I've been so so let's
get down to the let's get down to the situation.
You're definitely not a weird kid. I've been snacking on
this all day. Yes, I'm gonna explain to you what
I did to get here. So first and foremost, we'll
talk about the bread. Because you mentioned the bread. I
went through a couple of iterations from an idea perspective,
(15:29):
and I landed on not making the bread from scratch
because there's something about the texture of that style of
sliced white bread you know that comes in a bag.
This one is the particular brand is Bimbo?
Speaker 3 (15:42):
Oh probably.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
So when I saw the Bimbo to my listeners and
to anyone else that doesn't know about Bimbo.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Just google it.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
You'll see the white mascot thing figure dude, little face,
get the powdered donuts. When I went to Hunters for
the first time, I remember my my uncle gave me
Bimbo donuts. It's just very Latin American thing. Very double
checked Bimbo before we go promote him. Sometimes the CEO's
be doing crazy shit, man, he's damn it, man, I just
(16:12):
wanted to talk about Bimbo. It's like, yeah, go ahead,
and me I was like, bro every Hispanic had to
clean their cabinet out.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
Remember, yeah, is so good. I love it too, but
it's can I use it?
Speaker 4 (16:25):
Can I just put it in another contended?
Speaker 3 (16:31):
They broke our heart.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
They really did. So I didn't make bread. I got
the I got the bimbo bread.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
It's very sounding.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
Now I made a couple of errors, all right, So
there's a little bit of cheddar in there, but it
is predominantly American cheese whipped into it. So because I
thought the American cheese that you said in an email,
I thought that should go like on the bread, and
then you put a cheddar based spread on and then
I was like, no, that doesn't make sense. So I
cut in a good bit of American cheese in there.
(17:00):
So that was that was flawed number one.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
No, it's going to elevate it.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
Flaw number two because I have to be transparent. There's
mayo in this.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
You should have let her eat it first before you
went through the thing.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
No, no, no, no, I can't. No, this is how
it works.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
I got to explain myself first, all right, she went
from nostalgic level high to like not. I think the
level just dropped a little bit. I like, so, here's
what I happened research this recipe. I saw a lot
of iterations of these recipes and most of them include
a little mayonnaise, all right, and I was like, what
harm could this be? So after I make it with
(17:42):
all the ingredients, Bridgie goes, oh, she doesn't like mayo.
I was like, so there's a little bit of mayo
in there, Okay, I personally don't think it's enough to
make you. For my listeners that don't know, Mike doesn't
does not like mayonnaise, and we do need it, honestly,
we need to talk about that. Mayonnaise is like the
(18:02):
fruit of sandwich to me.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
I mean mayonnaise.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
Mayonnaise just provides such a level of moisture and deliciousness
to sandwiches. For me, you are just biting your tongue
so hard.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Now, you know what, Let's just have it out now.
Speaker 4 (18:15):
I totally My mom used to use some sort of
milk or evaporating milk or something. Okay, so I look,
if there's a little bit of mayonnaise, I'm good. But yeah,
mayonnaise is one of those things that I'm I love
mustard on a sandwich, not on a mustard, not on
a sanwich.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
No mustard.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Well, maybe we'll sidebar and have a separate mayo episode. Okay,
somewhere for the heat, it didn't have any halapeno, which
I understand a little bit of that is traditional, but
I did have it was in New Mexico, and they
had this hatch Chile salt, which I've been using in
a lot of stuff I've been cooking, and so for
the spice level, I added some of that into this.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
So it has a nice little salty heat now, and
that's pretty much it stay flaky. We'll be right back.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
Enough of that, back to the interview, and now it's
time for you to take a bite.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
Okay, I'm excited.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
It's time to see where you go.
Speaker 3 (19:26):
Let me see. This is beautiful. It's just like I
love the way you packaged it.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
I mean I had no choice. I figured that, you know,
it was probably packaged like that.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
It was like this.
Speaker 4 (19:36):
I think sometimes when my mom used to take it
to other people's houses, this is exactly how it would
how it would be done.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
You have some for the rest of the family here, Lauren,
we got for the production team.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
So also because you can't, you can't.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
Just bring one of these. Yeah, So what are your
initial thoughts? I mean textually, visually, the color text I
need to know. I need to know that the deats
don't be shy.
Speaker 4 (19:57):
Textually, the bread is beautiful, the edges are perfectly cut. Actually,
this one still has a little bit of brown, which
I like because.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
I no, no, no, no, no, I don't mean it in
a whoops way. I prefer a little bit.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
How does it smell.
Speaker 4 (20:11):
It smells like it smells like childhood teers.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
We're gonna cheers that it's beautiful.
Speaker 3 (20:20):
Oh my god, this is really delicious.
Speaker 4 (20:25):
Okay, okay, this is exactly the way it tastes.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
That's exactly the way it tastes.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
This is exactly the way it tastes. It really is.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
I'm looking at your eyes right now. I'm feeling what
are you tasting? What are you feeling?
Speaker 4 (20:40):
Hmm, It's really good. The texture is perfection. I don't
taste the mayonnaise.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
I have to say that's good.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
I wouldn't have known. I wouldn't have known had you
not told you.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
Yeah, I just didn't know if you had like a
mayonnaise allergy or something.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
So I'm just gonna let you notice some male in there.
Speaker 4 (20:59):
I'm trying to find some eloquent words to say when
I really just want to sit here and eat the sound.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
Sit here and eat. There's no listen. You don't have
to say much. Silence is better. Actually, are you feeling
the effects of the shredded cheddar?
Speaker 2 (21:12):
Though?
Speaker 3 (21:13):
No? Okay, no, it tastes because it's not super strong.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
No it's not.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
It's not like extra sharp shuddar or anything like that.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
It was definitely like a mild cheddar.
Speaker 4 (21:25):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, So I wonder if my mom used
to use like a mixture of different yellow cheeses, because
the cheese it tastes the same. I would say the
main difference is that it has more and she used
to do like a like a little light layer, a
lighter layer.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
So I'm a little too loaded up on the filling.
Speaker 3 (21:42):
Okay, okay, that's not a bad thing. That's more of
the adult deserved of the adult thing.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
Yeah, I'm trying to eat.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Yeah, So we always want to know from our guests,
did I nail it?
Speaker 2 (21:54):
Where did I bring you?
Speaker 1 (21:55):
Did I bring you back, and I want to hear
some specifics about exactly where you are right now.
Speaker 4 (22:03):
I feel like, yes, you totally nailed it visually, especially
when I stuck. When I pulled them out of the
little bag and it was these four little, perfect little squares,
these perfect little sandwiches. The smell, the texture like it
sort of it just transports me to my mom's kitchen
and helping her put this together and the anticipation of,
(22:27):
oh my god, my friends are coming over.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
Where's the Yeah, Grandma told you to set up a petta.
Now what happened? I even show you the picture of
what I wanted. Man, what happened.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
I'm certainly very very excited about the fact that you
were being able to have been brought back. Yes, for
my listeners, as usual, we would love to see you
guys make this recipe of course on seaanlan dot com.
Make sure you're tagging us. We want to see your
shot at it. We want to know if you used
to eat these as a kid as well. You know,
we love to kind of encourage people to be like, yoh,
I used to eat that too, man, But like you know,
(23:03):
my mom used to da da da da da no, Na,
me and Bridget were eating spoonful of basically it's.
Speaker 3 (23:10):
Really good, really good. It's like them perfect. It's it's
so simple.
Speaker 4 (23:14):
I mean it's when I was asked, so what what
kind of food? My brain immediately went to launches and
I was like, that's too low brow like and it's
too and I.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
Was like, you know what, No, I'm glad that you
included this as an option because I think it helps
show people how, no matter where we get into our
in our career, how advanced our food knowledge might become
or whatever. There are some things like a you know,
like a Dojorno pizza might rekindle a certain memory of mine.
And I know it's absolutely terrible for you. Another sponsorship
deal I'm not getting. So I love talking to you.
(23:48):
You have such an expansive knowledge of food. How did
you get interested in food.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
History and culture and art?
Speaker 4 (23:54):
Like?
Speaker 1 (23:54):
Where did how did you go from from this birthday
party to being such a a renowned food historian?
Speaker 3 (24:02):
Oh? I think it started at home. Really.
Speaker 4 (24:06):
I think you know, growing up in Laredo, Texas, you know,
there really weren't that many restaurants. You know, we would
never really go out to eat to restaurants, and when
we would it was mostly Mexican restaurants, so what was available.
But my parents always loved food, and I remember like
on Sunday evenings, my mom.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
Used to have like themed dinners, like she would make.
Speaker 4 (24:30):
Tempora, or she would make by yeah, or she would
make clams with like this green sauce and just always
like interesting foods from different parts of the world, and
our friends would come over. I have two brothers, and
it was always an event. And my dad was the
most amazing storyteller. And it's not like he was talking
about food or anything like that, but it was just
(24:53):
this whole idea of bringing our friends together through a meal.
And you know, my mom was making temporo and there
were no Japanese restaurants, you know, in town.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
So it was always interesting to me.
Speaker 4 (25:06):
And then as far as art, whenever we would travel,
our trips were mostly to Mexico, which is where my
parents were from, and we would always go to museums
and architecture, and it was we were always dragged to
these cultural places. So I think both of these things
were very much a part of me. So when I
(25:27):
first went to school, I studied art and then I moved,
you know, after graduate school, I moved to New York
with the idea of, you know, I'm going to be
an artist, but I love to cook for people, and
I always I realized one day that I found such
immense satisfaction and creativity from preparing a meal and creating
(25:47):
an experience, which.
Speaker 3 (25:49):
You just did with this sandwich.
Speaker 4 (25:51):
You sort of create this experience and then it's gone, yeah,
And I loved that. And then I was like, oh, well,
I'm going to go to culinary school just to see.
And I was working in museum education at the time.
I remember I was in culinary school. I was working
at the Met in New York. And then I started
(26:11):
researching a medieval tapestry for a program that I was developing,
and I came across medieval manuscripts and recipes and I
was like, oh.
Speaker 3 (26:20):
My god, people have always eaten.
Speaker 4 (26:23):
I was like, walking through museum was completely like I
never did it again.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
The same way.
Speaker 4 (26:29):
It's like I would walk by a painting of a portrait,
I wonder what that person was eating, and I went
to what the artist was eating, and I wonder who
was what the person that was making the paint was eating.
And I wonder and every and what was the king
eating and what was the popper eating?
Speaker 3 (26:42):
And that's when I just.
Speaker 4 (26:44):
Became completely obsessed, completely obsessed with researching, you know, culinary
history through that and when I was teaching the art,
I started bringing in elements of like food and food
history and at the end I would hand out recipe
ease and it was interesting to me and that food
(27:04):
is so accessible, right, but walking into museum can be
very intimidating. Don't touch, like, there's so many rules. But
when you bring in the food component, all of a sudden,
this painting of a seventeen century king wearing a fur
you know whatever, cape and a big wig, all of
(27:24):
a sudden is relatable because oh my god, he liked
it whatever.
Speaker 3 (27:31):
He was trying to eat exactly.
Speaker 4 (27:34):
Oh my god, he used to prepare his own hot chocolate.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
What.
Speaker 4 (27:39):
So then it's like, oh, oh, food is the ultimate connector.
So that's how I started on this path, you know,
and until I decided, Okay, this is what I'm going
to do, combine the art history with the food history,
because it's it's just it's life, right, It connects us all.
Speaker 3 (27:58):
It takes his home and it takes us around the world.
That's sort of how it happened.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
I mean, you went from exploring random museums as a
kid not really understanding what was going on and eating
good food to you know, working at the met and
being in culinary school, which is like a high level
of this kind of the same experience. Like, you know,
I think it's interesting what you're saying because my second
cookbook's coming out and a lot of Latin American baking
(28:24):
history has to do with colonization, right, It has to
do with how colonists brought over certain ideas, And it's
like you're saying about kings. I don't know the specifics,
but you know many recipes in Latin America. You know, it
could be bandhulus, it could be whatever. But like it
always started because some random king wanted to have banquets.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
No, I'm serious.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Everything you're saying is exactly how I've been researching and
how I picture it was. Like the king would be like, yo, man,
I'm from France, so I want you know x y Z,
and the indigenous people were like, well, we don't have wheat,
good wheat, so we're gonna throw some corn in some massa.
We're just gonna make this with Masa or we're gonna
make you know, we're gonna make some crazy hybrid of
(29:09):
this and they're you know, they serve the King.
Speaker 4 (29:11):
No, but it's so true. I mean, it's just how
cuisine just evolves.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
Right well, I mean we touched on this briefly at
the beginning. It's like what.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
Is is American Chinese food? Chinese food is is Deep
Dish pizza, pizza is New York pizza.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
Like whatever it is.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
What really happened is certain cultures came to a different
land that has different grains, ingredients, water, everything, and they
try to replicate food from a different land the best
way possible. So I think the answer is yes across
the board, because you know, my parents are immigrants, So like,
is my mom's Baliada and Louisiana the same as one
(29:49):
in San Perosula?
Speaker 2 (29:50):
I think, I mean yeah, because like you know, well, man, we.
Speaker 4 (29:53):
Could go on and oh no, it's the whole question
of what is authentic and what does it mean? You know,
what is authenticity mean? You know, it's like, well, sometimes
this is just authentic because it's authentic to me.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
Yeah, yeah, and that's okay, we should Yeah, we as
a society, Well there is.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
I feel like we should be a little more accepting
and less interested in this idea of authenticity in food
because I think it there's so much personal nostalgia that
goes into what is or.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
Is not X y Z.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
So I and is this why you started art bites?
Is this this culmination of all of this stuff?
Speaker 2 (30:32):
Like that's is that what drove you to kind of
doing that? And like and what does it really entail?
Speaker 3 (30:37):
Absolutely? It is.
Speaker 4 (30:38):
It is creating these these experiences, right, sort of bringing
people together. So in a typical class that I teach,
we tour an exhibition, so we'll spend an hour looking
at art, weaving in the stories of the food, and
then prepare a meal inspired by history. Often, you know,
(31:01):
people have told me, oh, I came to a class
and I'm leaving a party, and I love that, you know,
people prepare contemporary meal inspired by history because I also,
I'm not really interested in making some weird ancient Roman
you know, thing that people are going to taste and
be like it's kind of weird. More, I'm more interested
in the stories right and then adapting it right to.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
Something delicious and palatable. Exactly, not like full I too.
My first time, you know, I was like, what's going
on here? So, like, how do you cook in a museum?
Speaker 3 (31:33):
Well, it depends.
Speaker 4 (31:34):
I've blown fuses at every museum in Southern California bringing
in hotplates and toaster ovens when I first started this career,
and I'm really I remember one time I was at
a museum in the Santa Anna Museum of Art in
Orange County, and I was telling them, like, this is
a really old building. I think we need the electricians
here just to make sure that everything is wired correctly.
(31:56):
They're like, no, no, no, it's going to be fine. Blue
every fus we ended up ordering from for your local.
But then I sort of figured it out and you know,
work with the electricians.
Speaker 3 (32:06):
I've learned the lingo, you know, electricity lingo. I think
we need a spider here.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
And this might be againness Book of World Records.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
Have you submitted to them every seuseum in South California?
Speaker 2 (32:18):
If blown I did that, no one would ever break
that record.
Speaker 3 (32:21):
I don't think so, I don't think.
Speaker 2 (32:23):
So.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
What are some examples of classes that we can take
it by? I want to take a class arpis one's
the next class.
Speaker 3 (32:29):
What's going on the next one?
Speaker 4 (32:31):
I actually have them coming up at the at the
Huntington Library in Pasadena. We're doing the Grand Tour, which
is one of my favorite classes where we tour. It
was this interesting time period that started around you know,
fifteen hundreds, when British aristocrats would travel through you or
like go to Italy and go to France, and this
(32:52):
whole concept of traveling just for the sake of traveling
curiosity for the first time, maybe not fifty hundred and
sixteen hundreds, not for to colonize, but like, hey, let's
see what they're eating over there. Let's taste some of
that French bread in Paris. Yeah, let's just have some
of that pasta and roam or whatever it was.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
So they would do that.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
Portuguese colonists in Brazil would go back to France to
do exactly what you're saying, because they wanted better bread
in Brazil, so they would send some people off for luxury. Basically, hey,
go taste the bread, hug so they come back and
that's how they started making the Balfrances.
Speaker 3 (33:29):
Oh interesting French Breadrench bread.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
Or balgia, so you know, and the Brazilian bakers would
actually add like butter and more sugar to it because
again the wheat is not as good, so you got
to you gotta kind of put a us something in
there to try to replicate a texture or a feeling.
But at some point someone had to be like, uh,
you know, I'm going on vacation.
Speaker 3 (33:49):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So it was around the sixteen hundred.
Speaker 4 (33:52):
Well you know what, Yeah, I just wanted to travel,
just to go with my friends and just to see
what's happening.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
I'm tired of killing all these people in this land
and ruin in their agriculture.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
I need a break from this.
Speaker 4 (34:02):
Yes, it's interesting because these grand tourists as they were called,
they used to keep diaries and they would send a
lot of these diaries. Exist a lot of the letters
that were sent home, and they comment a lot on
the food that they were eating, which I find that's so.
Speaker 3 (34:16):
Interesting because that's when we travel.
Speaker 4 (34:18):
That's really the way in to a culture is the food.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
It's the food.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
And is that how you like, how do you create
these courses? Like is that would that be the foundation
of these courses?
Speaker 4 (34:29):
Is?
Speaker 2 (34:30):
Yeah, there's the artwork.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
But like analyzing, like those diaries analyzing the writing and
then from there taking a step back, like like how
exactly are these courses? How do you kind of package
that together and put your own flavor to it.
Speaker 3 (34:42):
Yeah, it depends.
Speaker 4 (34:43):
Sometimes it starts with the art, and sometimes it starts
with the food. Sometimes it's like, oh, you know what,
I really want to focus on this historic cookbook or
this or these series of letters, and then I'll look
to see what, you know, what art is available that
I could sort of weave the two together. So I
have a relationship with different museums in La and during
(35:03):
the pandemic it was so easy because everything was virtual,
so I was able to go all over the world,
and sometimes I just I'll just focus on I'll give
a talk on a particular cookbook or time period and
then make one thing or have a tasting.
Speaker 3 (35:18):
So sometimes it starts with the art.
Speaker 4 (35:19):
Sometimes it starts with the cookbook or the series of
cookbooks or the letters, and so there's really no one
way to do it. Like I'm doing something in the
summer at LAKHMA, the La County Museum of Art, they
have an exhibit called Pressing Politics. It's all political art
from Mexico and Germany and so we're doing a beer tasting.
Speaker 3 (35:41):
Oh snap, So I'll do a history of.
Speaker 4 (35:44):
Beer beer tasting, and we're going to have hot dog vendors.
So there's lots of different ways, and I feel so
lucky that there are people that are like, oh, yeah,
that's a good idea, let's try it.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
Yeah, that sounds like a phenomenal idea. Yeah, don't go anywhere.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
We'll be right back after this. Welcome back to Flaky Biscuit.
(36:27):
It reminds me of something I read that you wrote.
It's in Life and Time, titled Tamalas in Time, and
it really resonated with me because the formation of Mexican
culture has largely been viewed in European terms. I have
my own opinions about what this means, but I would
love it if you could expand on that, because it
(36:50):
really kind of hit home.
Speaker 3 (36:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (36:52):
Well, definitely in Mexico for sure, you know, with the conquest,
and it wasn't until the early nineteen hundreds when the
Mexican Revolution was beginning to sort of brew and a
lot of artists, you know, particularly artists like the Rivera
and Cicato's and all of these the big names of
the Mexican you know, Renaissance movement. They were really the leaders,
(37:17):
in addition to the revolutionaries and Milion Azabat and Benchebell
and all of these big names that people At the
end of the nineteenth century, beginning of the twentieth century,
you know, Mexico City is growing and people are discovering
all of these objects, all of these artifacts that had
been destroyed, you know, sort of fragments of them. The
(37:39):
Spaniards destroyed everything or tried to destroy everything. I mean
in Mexico City itself, the main temple, the stones of
the temple were used to build the cathedral right on
top of it in the ultimate fu right, it's.
Speaker 3 (37:52):
Like ruthless, ruthless, ruthless.
Speaker 4 (37:55):
You can hear about it, but if you go to
Mexico City, you literally you see it. It's such a
part of life. But for so many centuries during the
colonial period, everything was what was from Spain or what
was French, or what was European, what was better? And
it wasn't until the late nineteenth early twentieth century that
(38:16):
Mexicans started to discover their Mexicanidad, right, their mexicanness, and
the root of this was to do food because for
many years, corn, which is the soul of Mexico, was
replaced with wheat, right, which was for the right, for
the respectable people. And the wider the bread, the better
(38:39):
the bread, the darker the bread.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
You know, it was just sort of the category. And
then corn was at the very bottom.
Speaker 4 (38:44):
And then this time of the nineteen hundreds, people are
discovering their roots. You know, what we are in mais
this isn't who we are, this is life, this is
corn and discovering what Mexico actually came from, and the
importance of the native in Mexico and finding pride in that.
(39:05):
So this is something that's relatively new, you could say
the past, you know, one hundred years, the sense of
Mexican nests really developed. And one thing that's really interesting,
even before this, the earliest cookbooks in Mexico weren't printed
until the earliest cookbook published in Mexico was eighteen thirty one,
which has hardly any mention of Mexican recipes. It reads
(39:27):
more like a French cookbook with a few recipes for
tamalez you know, here and there. But it's when this
concept of what is Mexican began to be formed, which
is very European still. But this was even before the
Mexican National Anthem, so before these national library and theater
(39:47):
and all of this, it was through food.
Speaker 1 (39:49):
But the thing is, the thing is, though, is that
even though something like wheat was kind of like an infiltration,
if you fast forward to today, you know, get the
bolo and we wouldn't have Mexican bread concast. And so
even though a specific crop or a specific technique was
(40:09):
brought over by specific people, it doesn't really matter anymore
to me. I view as a completely different, very distinctly
Latin American or Mexican food item.
Speaker 2 (40:20):
And you know, flower, the flower.
Speaker 1 (40:25):
Is more popular than the North and the borderlands obviously
South Texas and everything that you know. In Honduras, flower
tortillas are the dominant tortilla because our national dish is
the baliara.
Speaker 2 (40:37):
But we still eat tortillas, of course.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
I mean, you know most of you know Mexico and
Central America. My biggest takeaway is always it seems like
the Europeans forgot that they learn how to bake from
African people. Everything everything stays, everything stays so European forward, right,
and it's look, man, I'll eat a croissant and all that,
and it's it's good.
Speaker 2 (40:58):
I'm not gonna say it's not bad.
Speaker 1 (40:59):
But it's interesting how food ways and how it's baking
may have originated in Turkey, the Middle East.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
North Africa.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
Some I don't no one can really pinpoint that's where
baking started. But you know, but and these traditions are
moved into Europe and out to Asia, East, West, fucking whatever.
Where am I in California, I'd be west, doesn't matter anyway.
So it is interesting to me that you go out
to eat, or if you think about fine dining or
think about fine food, it is all still viewed through
(41:30):
a European lens still, and I'm like tired. I'm like, man,
it's like it's exhausting.
Speaker 3 (41:36):
It is unpacked, it is, you know. But do you
think it's changing.
Speaker 1 (41:41):
Hmmm, No, in the baking world or in just the
food world in gener I think in the food world
in general, there's a movement. There's a very strong movement
in my opinion, when you think about like if you
think about in Mexico or in Brazil, fine dining for
a while was European food. You know, there's Brazilian chefs
that after a while there.
Speaker 2 (42:00):
Like why am I making this? I should be making
Brazilian food.
Speaker 1 (42:03):
You know, there's there's been a lot of chefs that
have been able to take a stand and actually cook
high end, fine dining, regional cuisine that's not rooted in
European dominance. I think baking's far behind. I think bakings
so far behind. It's far behind in the in the
popular trends of American society. How about we say that
(42:24):
because you know, obviously you go to Africa, They're like,
we bacon our stuff over here. But you know, we
kind of live in this world that's this little food media,
Western American eyed world that we view food from which
which a lot of people think is the only lens.
Speaker 3 (42:40):
Right.
Speaker 2 (42:41):
It's definitely there's a long way to go to get
someone to be like.
Speaker 1 (42:44):
Oh, boleos, that's great, or oh, you know, non or
wrote anything anything else.
Speaker 3 (42:51):
Than the begette or the croissant.
Speaker 1 (42:53):
Yeah, if I ask you, like, what's what are the
top five bakeries that have opened in la or in
New York or whatever, these are usually the exact same thing.
Speaker 3 (43:01):
That's true?
Speaker 2 (43:03):
Is loaded?
Speaker 4 (43:03):
Man?
Speaker 3 (43:03):
We I mean now it is? It is. It's tough
it's never ending.
Speaker 2 (43:07):
Well, so what's your answer. Do you think it's changing?
Speaker 4 (43:10):
I mean, I think that the fact that people are
having these conversations is a really good thing. That are
celebrating other cuisines. I think that there's I think that
there's an interest in that in celebrating other cuisines right now.
Speaker 3 (43:23):
So so maybe.
Speaker 1 (43:27):
Maybe we just got we got a little too pensive
in here. It's starting to get starting to get philosophical. So,
speaking of Mexican food, we always love to play a
flaky game with our guests. Okay, I promise you I'm
one hundred percent sure that you have all the answers.
It's multiple choice and it's about Mexican food.
Speaker 2 (43:49):
Are you ready?
Speaker 3 (43:54):
Okay?
Speaker 2 (43:54):
Are you ready for the flaky game?
Speaker 3 (43:56):
I'm ready for the flaky all right?
Speaker 2 (44:00):
Okay, got a couple of questions for you.
Speaker 1 (44:03):
Number one, you need to have pork and pineapple if
you want this street food to be done, right.
Speaker 2 (44:09):
Is it?
Speaker 3 (44:10):
That's my favorite?
Speaker 1 (44:17):
Don't even need to list off options. That is the
level you're operating on.
Speaker 3 (44:22):
With that one. That's my favorite.
Speaker 2 (44:24):
That that was impressive.
Speaker 3 (44:25):
Of course, cycles you have to check them in your hair.
Speaker 2 (44:28):
Yeah, we've been before.
Speaker 1 (44:30):
Also phenomenal because it's all about the dordilla. Sometimes that's
true if the filling could be good. But a lot
of Leo's is on point. But there's a couple out
there you'd be like, what do you get the dordia?
You got a bunch of you got them costco and
then they crumble when you try to fold them.
Speaker 2 (44:46):
Anyway, here we go, dating back to Mayan times.
Speaker 1 (44:51):
Oh, ship, this dish needs a sauce on it to
be complete?
Speaker 2 (44:57):
What is it called?
Speaker 1 (45:00):
Is it turo? Is it a burrito? Is it aenchiladas
or tamales?
Speaker 2 (45:10):
Hmmm?
Speaker 3 (45:11):
I would say that, am I wrong?
Speaker 2 (45:13):
I don't think you're actually wrong?
Speaker 1 (45:15):
Well, I mean the answer I hat highlighted was achilaas,
But if you think about it less like a traditional
Mexican damal, Is it sauce based?
Speaker 2 (45:25):
Is there a sauce that goes on?
Speaker 3 (45:26):
Well, I guess it's the sauce is inside or you meant.
Speaker 2 (45:29):
The sauce one.
Speaker 1 (45:30):
You're right, though, but I wouldn't associate in it says
which this needs a sauce to be complete. So oh,
so I was thinking that you were right also because
if the sauce is inside, maybe yeah, maybe maybe it's both.
Speaker 3 (45:45):
Maybe it's both.
Speaker 4 (45:46):
Maybe maybe I'm wrong, But in chiladas, do you need
a sauce on top?
Speaker 2 (45:50):
Dude? What's your favorite type ofila?
Speaker 3 (45:52):
I like green and chilas green sauce. What about you?
Speaker 2 (45:56):
The green ones elis as well? They no? Son, all right,
we got one more?
Speaker 1 (46:02):
Okay, Oh that's funny. What is the dish that's not
necessarily for breakfast but it's still enjoyed by a lot
of people for breakfast?
Speaker 2 (46:14):
Is it less manula or tacos chi?
Speaker 1 (46:23):
Lucky Lucky lest I shouldn't have disclosed the the fourth
coming like.
Speaker 4 (46:28):
That's okay, Yeah, yeah, I don't think of tacos for breakfast. Well,
you can like the breakfast that goes Texas breakfast that
goes yeah.
Speaker 1 (46:36):
No, but you're e're correct, you like you less like again.
My experience in Mexico is like you're eating tea like
you less in the morning. That's for you're going to
a coffee shop or a little cafette. Everyone's like you less.
You're like, oh, I'm gonna get down with that too.
Speaker 4 (46:48):
I tasted some amazing like you LETSI mechk and a
few months ago they had this sauce, but it was
like a green sauce us, but it had walk I
was kind of creamy. You were a little spicy, but
it was The alvocada was delicious.
Speaker 2 (47:07):
M m mmmmm.
Speaker 1 (47:08):
Man. And the out there is a different variety. California
got some pretty good Yeah, California basically the same thing.
Dolen Land playing playing Guys last one And this one's interesting.
I've never heard of this before. I researched this for
for a little game here. So what is one of
the most patriotic dishes in all of Mexico? Is it
(47:29):
tiaron Gilius rehenos? Is it Gilius and nogada?
Speaker 3 (47:36):
That one?
Speaker 2 (47:38):
Yes, good? I saw what is love?
Speaker 4 (47:43):
That's one of my favorite things in the world. And
it is the most beautiful dish. It's a chili that's
stuffed with a combination of you know, ground piccadillo and
ground beef, and I put nuts in mine, and sometimes
I'll put raisins and it's just like a sort of
sweet and savory pica with like a tomato sort of
bass stuffed. And then the norada sauce is is creamy
(48:07):
walnut sauce. It's like geso Fresco walnuts, milk sugar port
on top. So you have the green chile with the
white sauce and traditionally you're supposed to peel the walnuts.
Speaker 3 (48:19):
It was just white.
Speaker 4 (48:20):
I don't do that because whatever. And then it's garnished
with pomegranate seeds.
Speaker 2 (48:25):
Mm. So it makes the colors of the Mexican flag. Wow.
Speaker 4 (48:29):
It's beautiful and delicious, different textures. It's an explosion of flavor.
Speaker 1 (48:34):
I've never had it, but now I feel like I'm
going to go somewhere.
Speaker 2 (48:38):
Right now until March another month. Basically, Okay, you make
them for you guys.
Speaker 3 (48:43):
Yes, I'll make them. I will.
Speaker 4 (48:44):
I'll make them if you have time.
Speaker 2 (48:48):
Absolutely, yes, we definitely have time for that.
Speaker 3 (48:52):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (48:53):
So I'll give you four for four.
Speaker 1 (48:54):
You know, I think you're good. I think passive, leaky
game and usually towards it. You know, at the end
of episode, we love to talk about with our guests
an organization that is special to you and what are
the things that are on your mind to try to
further our community, and from what I understand is know
us without you la, So I'd love to learn more
about this.
Speaker 2 (49:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (49:14):
Absolutely, So there's two organizations that I would love to
give a shout out too. So know Us Without You
is one of them, and they are amazing. They're based
here in LA and they started during the pandemic when.
Speaker 3 (49:27):
All of the restaurants closed and everybody's up the job.
Speaker 4 (49:30):
So they focus on helping undocumented back of house restaurant
workers wow.
Speaker 3 (49:35):
Feeding them.
Speaker 4 (49:36):
And at the height of the pandemic, they were feeding
about sixteen hundred people undocumented workers. And now with things
have opened up, but the ripple effects are still very
much being felt. So they're still helping with undocumented immigrants,
feeding them, but also now since some of them are
now back at work, helping their children get tutors, are
(50:00):
helping them with probo no therapy or mental health or
helping them. They have this whole this new wish list
system where if they need help for rent, or if
they need help for clothing for their for their children.
But it's all about helping undocumented workers that worked in
the restaurant business, these essential workers. You know that that
(50:23):
we're just left out.
Speaker 3 (50:24):
In the in the cold.
Speaker 4 (50:26):
Yeah, sit.
Speaker 3 (50:26):
There an incredible.
Speaker 2 (50:27):
Organization that's the heartbeat to the restaurant industry.
Speaker 1 (50:32):
The whole circulatory system, heartbeat, lungs.
Speaker 3 (50:37):
Everything, the pulse. Yeah, it's the pulls.
Speaker 4 (50:40):
And the people that started it with were in the
hospitality business. There are bartenders and now they've shifted and
this is what they do. Another organization that I think
is amazing is there's this restaurant in little Ethiopia here
in La called Flavors from Afar and they work together
or they're run by this organization called the taf Foundation,
(51:00):
and it's owned and operated by a woman who's Somalian refugee.
Speaker 3 (51:06):
She's been in the US since she was a child.
Speaker 4 (51:09):
But the chefs of the Flavors from a Far restaurant
are all immigrants. So every month is a different immigrants
and they're refugees actually, So you might go one month
and it's Guatemalan food.
Speaker 3 (51:22):
You might go another month and it's Syrian food.
Speaker 4 (51:25):
So every month is a different cuisine and it's all
home cooks, and it's this whole idea of you know,
going you know, full circle, it's your connection to home.
They're preserving these traditions because if you don't continue to
cook these foods then they're going to disappear. So they're
another incredible organization. Both of them are very close to
(51:46):
my heart.
Speaker 1 (51:47):
Wow, in case of a refugee coming to this country,
it can be a pretty traumatic experience. And getting the
opportunity to just cook the food that makes you feel
like you're at home and sharing that with your new community, that's.
Speaker 4 (52:00):
Extremely and making money right.
Speaker 3 (52:07):
Exactly, it's important.
Speaker 1 (52:09):
Yeah, we'll have the websites and calls to action in
our show notes. You know, I'm assuming with both of
these we can volunteer. You know, you can donated to
volunteer and the websites will provide to the listeners and uh,
I'll have to.
Speaker 2 (52:21):
Check it out myself.
Speaker 1 (52:22):
Thank you, thank you for coming to biscuit.
Speaker 3 (52:26):
Has been such so much fun.
Speaker 1 (52:31):
Thanks for listening y'all. If you want to make the
lunches for yourself, find the recipe on the Shondaland website.
Speaker 2 (52:38):
And I want to know how it goes.
Speaker 1 (52:40):
Tag me artists and Brian tag Mita at art Bites,
Underscore mitya host a photo.
Speaker 2 (52:46):
Tell me how you.
Speaker 1 (52:47):
Did use mayonnaise. Don't use mayonnaise, I don't know. My
advice would be you go through your heart desires and
don't forget to check out flavors from Afar at flavors
from Afar dot co and know Us without Ula at
Know Us without you dot La. You can find my
handle and all the links I mentioned in the show
(53:07):
notes for this episode.
Speaker 2 (53:11):
Fam.
Speaker 1 (53:11):
If you like Flaky Biscuit, you already know what to do.
Leave us a rating, review, share, subscribe. You already know
we coming through with the best food podcast content out there,
so you might as well let everybody else know that too.
Flaky Biscuit is executive produced by Sandy Bailey, alex Alja,
Lauren Homan, Tyler Klang, and Gabrielle Collins. Our creative producer
(53:33):
is Bridget Kenna and our editor and producer is Nicholas Harder,
with music by Crucial. Recipes from Flaky Biscuit can be
found each week on Shondaland dot com. Subscribe to the
Shondaland YouTube channel for more Flaky Biscuit content. Flaky Biscuit
is a production of Shondaland Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from Shondaland Audio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
(53:57):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite show.
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