November 3, 2025 • 39 mins
Tanner and Jerry turn up the heat in this episode all about cooking with fire. With Tanner’s new live-fire restaurant as the spark, they explore how open flames have become one of the hottest trends in modern dining—and how you can bring that same energy home. From choosing the right wood to adding smoke to your cocktails, and even clever tips for apartment cooks, it’s all about mastering the flame. Then, the fire of competition takes center stage as MasterChef Canada winner and host Mary Berg joins the show to talk creativity, pressure, and what it takes to keep your passion burning.
Thank you for listening! Join us again every weekend for more food inspired fun. Have questions you want answered, comments to make the show better, do you want to join our growing list of radio stations partners, or just keep in touch? Let us know at Flavorphiles.com.
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Thank you for listening! Join us again every weekend for more food inspired fun. Have questions you want answered, comments to make the show better, do you want to join our growing list of radio stations partners, or just keep in touch? Let us know at Flavorphiles.com.
Follow on Instagram:
Flavorphiles: https://www.instagram.com/flavorphilespod/
Tanner: https://www.instagram.com/tagaragar/
Follow on Tik Tok:
https://www.tiktok.com/@flavorphiles
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Thanks for joining us. This is Flavor Files.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
I'm Jerry Yegar, broadcaster, my son Tana Agar, restaurant tour
chef and bartender. We talk about food, we talk about
drink and the culture around it all. And we're going
to be talking a lot about fire today and that ties.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Into your muse booze.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Your drink as the you have the only job that
I can think of where the first thing that happens
is you drink alcohol.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Yeah, well, it's generally not the first thing I do
in the course of the day. I do try to
do a couple things first. But you know, it is funny.
There's a famous chef in Iceland and people ask like,
how did you become a chef? And he said, what
was the only job where I could be a little
drunk while I was still there?
Speaker 1 (00:45):
All right?
Speaker 3 (00:45):
But anyway, moving on to the muse booze for today. Okay,
so this is going to be super simple. In my hand,
I've got an old fashioned, classic old fashioned. Everybody's had one.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Smoked.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
Old fashions are really popular. They're incredibly easy to do
at home. As we gear up for the holidays, there's
something called a cocktail chimney It basically looks like a
little hat and you put chips right in the top
of it in a little circle on the top. Then
on the bottom it's got a little circle. And I
really love these. These are probably my favorite way to
(01:16):
smoke a cocktail because you don't have to smoke a
glass and flip it. You don't have to have any
special equipment. You literally just take the little hat, you
put it on top of the drink. Then what you're
gonna do is you're gonna take those little, like but
tane torches. People will like make crember lay with them,
or you can actually find them in headshops or just online.
(01:37):
But basically, you torch, you click it, it'll light up.
The power of the flame pushes the smoke into the drink,
so you know that the smoke's getting into the drink itself.
So i''re just gonna do that.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
You can't do it then with a match.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
No, you can't do this with a match. This techniqu
wouldn't work because you have no force that's pushing the
smoke through and allow it to sink in. But I'm
just gonna do that so I can enjoy this cocktail
while we do the rest of our show.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
All right, I can hear the fire.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
Yeah, so you can hear what I mean. But that's
really like the power of it. Right, And if I
kind of pick it up here so I know you
can see or if you watch it you can sort
of see here what happens is sure there's smoke coming
off the top, but there's a layer of smoke that
sinks down and settles right on the top of the cocktail.
And the reason I love doing this at my restaurant
(02:31):
so I recommend other people doing it, is even when
I pull the chimney off, the smoke still sits right
on top of the cocktail. So it looks beautiful and
you get nice, clean, beautiful smoke that kind of layers
into the cocktail. It's a fantastic way to make cocktails.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
Okay, So are there are there woods that you prefer
for this? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (02:52):
Absolutely. You know we have Flamont. Flamont is a live
fire restaurant. We cook a lot of our food over
a live fire grill. Well, and we'll talk more about that,
but there we use a blend of oak and pecan.
Oak is really solid. You can get it everywhere. It
burns really hot. Pecan has sort of a nutty flavor
like pecan when I'm doing cocktails. I really like things
(03:15):
like cherry wood. I really like things like apple wood.
They add a little bit of a flavor to it,
whereas things like oak kind of have. It's solid and
it tastes sort of classically smoky, but there isn't another
flavor that it layers on. Hickory works really well, by
the way, if you're going to cook with fire or
(03:36):
if you're going to be smoking, those things are true
of all of them. The only thing I really personally
don't like is mesquite. I do not like mosquite. I
don't like the way it tastes. It's super popular in Texas,
but I'm not into it, and I wouldn't recommend smoking
with it if you didn't grow up with that flavor.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
All right, Well, let's talk about cooking with fire. You
just opened that new restaurant, you said, in Plano, Texas,
which is a suburb of Dallas. It's called Flamont and
it's cooking with wood wood fire cooking. The only restaurant
that I go to on any regular basis that does
that tends to be pizza restaurants. Wood fired pizza I
don't know how many wood fired restaurants other than that
(04:14):
I've been to.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
Yeah, you know, so wood firing, wood fire cooking is obviously,
I mean, that's the original cooking right at one point.
It's very funny because now people come to a restaurant
now like the fire gives it such a wonderful flavor,
and you're like, yeah, that's crazy. It's almost like we
co evolved with the advent of cooking over fire and
liking cooking over fire, like it's bread into our DNA. Right,
(04:39):
it has this sort of like primal draw to it.
But fast forward all these years ago or all these
years to the future. You know, pizza restaurants have done
it right. One of my first jobs was wood fired pizza.
But a lot of chefs started saying, hey, yeah, that's cool,
but what if he did everything that way? What if
when you baked you did it with firef when you grilled,
(05:00):
you did it with fire. And so a lot of
restaurants have popped up. There's too many to name, but
a couple that I really loved. There's one called Hesti
and Austin, owned by a guy I know. His name's
Kevin Fink. Amazing enormous fire and everything is oriented around
this fire that you can watch all night long cooking.
But another one one you took me to and introduced
(05:21):
me to is Ketzl in Toronto.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
And I was neglectful when I said only pizza restaurants
that I didn't name Ketzel. It's one of my favorite restaurants.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
Yeah, Ketzel's an amazing restaurant. They've had a Michelin star
for years. Their fireplace is twenty eight feet long and
they're cooking everything. It's a Mexican restaurant, which I love
being here in Toronto or being here in Texas. I
was a little suspicious when you said the best restaurant
in Toronto is Mexican now, and I see a lot
of Mexican food, but they absolutely deliver, and it's kind
(05:52):
of eating at those restaurants. The nature of fire, the
way it tastes, that kind of inspired us to want
to do one. Flamant is definitely more of a Mediterranean
inspired restaurant. I used to live and work in Spain
and France, and so I wanted to incorporate some of
those flavors into our new place. And the way that
the texture of cooking on the fire, the fragrance of
(06:13):
cooking on the fire. We wanted to incorporate that. So
it's different than restaurants we've been to before. But I
think it's so fun, and I think people should really
seek out restaurants that cook this way.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
Okay, but what would I be looking for other than
just hey, we cook with fire.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
Yeah, you know, that's a great question. I understand.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
You know.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
While I can say it's so cool, there's this twenty
eight foot wide grill, I probably imagine a lot of
people don't have that set up in their personal kitchen.
So when you're going to one of these restaurants, the
way you can really tell that someone's doing it and
they know what they're doing is by eating the food
and realizing that the food is made properly. Where the
(06:53):
fire is an ingredient, it shouldn't be the ingredient. If
you're eating something and thinking this is the fun by
the fire, it's too smoky, it's too charred. That means
that they're really not very familiar with how to use it.
There should be a balance. I like to think of
smoke always as a flavor that I'm incorporating into a dish,
(07:16):
and along with that balance of the flavor is the
balance of the texture.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
You know.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
One thing I think is amazing is and this is
crazy that I'm saying, get the chicken when you come
see us. But our chicken is so good. We brinde
it in peppercini, so it's got this nice spice. But
then the way it hits the grill, the way the
thighs we leave the skin on, and so what happens
is thighs are really fatty. You should always cook with
(07:41):
chicken thigh. I am over chicken breasts. Chicken thigh is
the future. But the way that the fat, you know,
is so great as it sits there on the fire,
the way the skin gets so crispy if you're not
a meat eater. Honestly, the broccolini is also one of
the best things that we do because broccoli, when you
cook it over fire, you know, it shouldn't be like ashy,
(08:04):
it shouldn't be dry. We blanche ours, which is where
we just dunk it and boiling water really quick, and
then it's going to go on to the grill, and
what you end up getting is something that's sort of
springy and like a little sponge. By giving it that
hot water. You think about yourself, right, hot water opens
your pores. It kind of does that to the broccolini,
and then once it hits the grill, it just drinks
(08:26):
in the smoke. And it's so wonderful to see that,
and it just makes me so excited. It makes me
excited to eat this way. It makes me excited to
be at the restaurant. And my favorite is when I
can also find a little surprise in it. You know,
one of the things I'm most impressed and I would
look for to answer your question, is I want to
go to a restaurant where they don't just slap you know,
(08:49):
if you just put meat on the grill and take
it off, that's fine. But I sort of view that
as like level one of live fire cooking. Level two
is does the grill really drop the food? Ketzel does this,
Hestia does this, and Austin it really drives the food.
One of the things that Kevin showed us his team
showed us was smoking olive oil. And so one thing
(09:11):
that's so fun about that is you wouldn't think, you know,
olive oil is not one of the things you think
about being smoked, but we use smoked olive oil when
we make beef tartar, so even though you're eating raw,
uncooked beef with us, it still has that taste of
being on our grill. And when people do that with citrus,
if they do things with like charring their bread or
(09:33):
there's spices, I think you end up with a really
more rich flavor profile and it's fun.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
What kind of wood are you using?
Speaker 3 (09:41):
So, like I said before, we use oak and pecan.
You know, that's really our preference for our restaurant. But
if you're going to start to build these, you know,
especially if you're thinking, well this sounds really cool, how
could I do that in my house. We're gonna talk
about that in the next segment, so I hope you
stay tuned. But one of the things to do is
start to seek out wood. You can't just go to
(10:03):
a gas station and buy wood. You want to try
to find, like specifically oak that I find that a
lot of times people like the flavor best of wood
that naturally grows in their area. You know, Mosquite's popular
for people that live in areas with mosquite. I didn't
grow up that way, but a lot of the fruit woods,
the hickories, you know, you find the woods that you
(10:24):
see in the smoking aisle, that sound familiar to you.
That's really what I think is always going to taste best.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
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Speaker 3 (11:23):
We are talking all about fire today. I recently opened
a live fire restaurant where we cook over our hearth
that we build every day, and we're talking now about
how you can do some of that at home. I
think it's an amazing thing to do. I think it's
super fun. There's this really excitement that happens when the
(11:44):
fire is building. And you can do this at home.
You absolutely can, and I think you should. There's a
wonderful book that people should absolutely read if your inter
restaurant history. It's called The Ten Restaurants That Changed America,
And in there it talks about Joe Baum were famous
American restaurant tour and he has a quote about how
he always likes to bring fire in the dining room
(12:06):
because it always delights guests, it always makes them excited.
And I'm reading this quote from the nineteen fifties and
I'm thinking it's so funny, because anytime we have a
cocktail that's flaming or a dish that fires up, everybody
gets so excited. Seventy five years after he said that,
it's still true and you can absolutely do this in
(12:28):
your own kitchen. So as we're sort of looking at
kind of how to do that, you know, Dad, growing up,
we would keep that fire pit in the backyard, and
I don't remember us cooking much more than hot dogs
and maybe s'mores on there as kids. But if you
have the outdoor fire pit, you can absolutely cook a
lot more on that grill. You know, you can get
(12:51):
sort of a grill grade, or you can get you
can also buy like what's called a plancha. It's basically
think cast iron pan but instead like cookie sheet size,
and you can just put that right on top of
your fire. You know, you want to build your fire,
kind of burn it down a little bit, you can
stick that right on top. But I like to cook
right above it. So if you can get a grate,
(13:13):
you know, a strong, sturdy metal grate, you basically pop
that down. Ideally, you know, maybe use a couple of
bricks or something so that you have some space before
the coals itself, and then boom, you have a live
fire grill just as good as the live fire grill
that I'm using in my restaurant every day.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
Well wait a minute, though, when he said I like
when Joe Bahm said, I like to bring the fire
inside that you can't barbecue indoors.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
No, you know, you can't generally do that. We do indoors,
and the last time I got a visit from the
fire marshal about it was this morning. And so you
know you can do it. You have to put a
lot of money into fire suppression and safety for.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
That, okay, but you've got venting and all that kind
of stuff. And cooking, well, if you're using charcoal for instance,
like that's uh, there's a gas that comes off of
that that is not safe inside the house. So if
you're cooking with fire inside the house, you've got to
know what you're doing.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
Absolutely, Again, if you're gonna have actual logs, if you're
lighting a true fire, you should do this outside. This
is an outside activity. And if you don't have a
fire extinguisher, if we were big enough to have a
legal department, I'm sure they would tell me to tell
you that you need to have a fire extinguisher or
a bucket of water or a hose. But moving on
(14:32):
to the fun stuff. So if you've got this grill,
you can stick this thing down and like you are cooked,
Like you're all set up. Now you have an amazing grill.
You functionally have the exact same grill that I have
in my restaurant. Now I know it's really late in
the year for this to be true, but it's finally
cool in Texas. I finally want to be back outside.
So if you've been making your burgers on a grill
(14:55):
that's using propane, but you have a fire pit, just
move over to the fire pit, take those grill racks out,
put them over top of your fire pit, and put
that burger, put that steak, put that chicken right on top,
and just it's the exact same imagine you're grilling. You
just have something adding flavor. Propaine adds heat, but it
(15:16):
doesn't add flavor, or at worst, it actually adds kind
of a bad acrid flavor.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
I don't love pro pain flavor, but we wood it's
so sexy. It's so cool. Your wife will love you
more if you cook that way.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
Okay, hey, I saw something.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
Maybe this is taking you on a tangent, but I
was just watching a thing on television and I have
seen people do this where they get the coals all
down to the really hot coals and then take the
steak and just lay it right on the embers.
Speaker 3 (15:48):
Yeah, so you absolutely can that.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
You can do that.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
It's so hot that it just like absolutely sears the outside.
You have to be careful. I have absolutely seen people
get really excited about doing this, and then if you
get the ember stuck to it or it can get
kind of ashy. It's also you know our fire. I've
measured it the other day. We have a thermometer that
(16:11):
goes to seven hundred degrees before it times out or
like it tops off and just says, can't read it.
Couldn't read the fire we cook on every day. So
I actually don't know how hot our fire is. And
you can get in really bad shape that way. But
if you burn down coals, it will be really hot.
And so if you're gonna do that, you can, but
(16:33):
you need to make sure that you've got a steak
that is thick. I mean inch and a half. Two
inches thick would really be ideal, because otherwise it's gonna
be so hot you're just gonna rip right through and
you're gonna have something well done and you're never gonna
want to listen to flavor files again. But if you
find the whole fire a little intimidating, which totally can be,
think back, think back to s'more, think back to stick
(16:56):
with hot Dog. This is pretty funny. You could take
another food, you could put it on the same stick
and roast it over a fire you wanted to cook
down some that way you have control. But yakatry cooking
in Japan or a mangal cooking in the Middle East
is literally just basically charcoal sticks through food, through food
(17:20):
and gently turning it and rotating it and cooking it.
So if you put a piece of chicken, brush it
with soy sauce and hang it over a fire, you're
already doing You're making yakatori, and now it's gourmet.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
Oh well, all the better then.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
So now we talked about putting meat down on the embers,
What about things like roast peppers, are onions and things
like that.
Speaker 3 (17:47):
Yeah, you know, things like peppers. I like to toast
my tortillas. Onions are really great, right, You think like fijida.
You know, you're kind of building a HETA fijeta goes
really well over a fire. In fact, I'm sure there's
people listening to the segment who think, yes, but I
live in an apartment and I won't be doing this.
You know, if you have a gas powered stove, you
(18:08):
can still do some of this. One of My favorite
things to do is I turn the gas up really high,
and I'll just take peppers and I'll put them right
in there, and they'll turn black and that skin will
start to blister. You can do this right. You can
toast the tortillas over it, and sure you're not going
to get quite the same smoky flavor that you would
(18:30):
have gotten from a live fire, but you will get
this burned, charred skin that you can then sort of
peel away at, and it's going to give you a
texture and a flavor you're not going to get by
just baking them in the oven at three point fifty
like you've done a million times before, and you have
the benefit of not having a giant fire that could
(18:50):
potentially get out of control. Speaking as a person who
maybe had their restaurant burned down one time.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
Well, yes, but that wasn't because of the cooking.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
Yeah, I should clarify that we weren't even there when
this happened. It was an external thing that then got
to our restaurant and then burned it down. But even so,
now when the fire department asked you really want to
have a fire inside your new restaurant, I say yes,
I still do. I'm still willing to roll those dice.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
Now, I don't know how many people, what percentage of
people have an actual indoor fireplace as not a gas one,
but with wood. Maybe you could do it with gas,
but I don't know if people think about actually cooking
in their fireplace.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
But you would, yeah, I mean, I'll cook everywhere, but
you know, I wouldn't cook in a gas fireplace. I
don't know how they're set up. There's a lot of
stuff in there. I would never do that. But if
you have a wood fireplace in your house, absolutely you can.
I mean, if you think about it, putting a cast
iron onto your home fireplace. That is absolutely classic cooking
(19:58):
when you think back, you know, even only two hundred
years ago, everyone cooked that way. You can also your
photos of that will do so well on Instagram. That
is so cozy, it's so fun.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
And you can just cook in there.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
So this can be as easy as just having a
skillet and cooking in there. You know, you don't have
to have this beautiful Argentine style grill to cook with fire.
You should have insurance and you should have a little
bit of courage. But you know, even if you end up.
You know, only taking one of those little torches we
were talking about earlier and caramelizing your food or making
(20:35):
a crumbrewlet fire can make your food feel so much
more fun. It can put you so much more in
touch with the food. And it's actually a lot more
approachable and easy than people want to think it is.
And I want to take a quick little tangent from
what we're talking about. You know, you and I love
word games. We're both pretty proud of our knowledge of
(20:57):
words or vocabulary. You Avi are a professional communicator. I
am a wanna be communicator. So I learned a new word.
And I don't know if you've ever heard this word.
It is funny because it sounds like a word that
would appear on a food show. It's nibbling. But it's
not nibbling as in eating food little bite by bite.
(21:21):
It's nibbling with one bee. What does it mean?
Speaker 2 (21:24):
I think I should know this, And uh, it's because
I'm I'm sort of thinking I've run into this word
and I think it's sort of like being picky or
something like that.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
No, not even close. I'm so sorry. So the word
nibbling it means it's a catch all gender neutral term
for a group of nieces and nephews, the nibbling, the nibblings. Yeah,
my little nibblings, which my little nibblings sounds like a
blog I would write about snacks.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
That's right, that's great.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
So, yeah, it's funny because we just had a nephew.
We had two nieces before, but now we have a nephew,
and we're like, well, we can't say the nieces. That's
who they've always been, right, that's their identity. And so
we went, why isn't there a term like sibling that
refers to the nieces and the nephews, and good old
Merriam Webster. Apparently it's not officially been added to their dictionary,
(22:25):
but it's a word they're tracking. If it gets enough usage,
they will add it to the dictionary. So I am
here using my platform as a semi professional communicator to
get the word nibbling into people, into their vernacular, because
I want it added to the dictionary. I'm passionate about nibblings.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
All right, Well, I'll have a chance to use it
soon because your uncle Glenn is coming with his kids,
So I'll call them the nibblings. I want to tell
a little story just with a whole theme of what
we've been talking about here through this hour has been
fire and cook with fire. But I want to talk
about the first time I think you ever went to
(23:06):
a higher end restaurant as opposed to going out to
the fast food restaurants and diners and places you take
your kids. And your birthday was coming up. We were
living in Raleigh, North Carolina, and I was a spokesperson
for Ruth's Chris restaurant.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
There in Raleigh.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
I did ads on the radio for them, and I
was in talking to the manager. We were having a
nice time and I mentioned that your birthday was coming up,
and he said, bring him in, we'll give him dinner.
So we went to Ruth Chris for a dinner on
the manager at Ruth Chris, which was fantastic, and we're
having the meal, and then I started talking about the
(23:41):
bananas foster and he said, yeah, we only do that
on the weekend, and we were there on a weekday,
I guess, and I said, oh, okay. And then then
they came around with the little cart and everything they
do the bananas foster with and said, well, since it's
your birthday, and we're going to do it as a
special thing, which means then that other people are going
to start ordering it. But we decided to go for it.
What he said, so they came out and bananas foster
(24:03):
is why don't you describe how to make a bananas foster?
Speaker 3 (24:06):
Well, what you really want to do is you want
to take a spirit. Lots of times it's frum and
if you get a spirit warm, what happens is the
alcohol starts to cook out of it, and if you
take a torchu or a match, it'll ignite. And that
ignition not only looks amazing, I mean, it looks so cool,
but it also kind of helps caramelize the bananas. So
(24:28):
bananas have a lot of starch, they have a lot
of sugar, so it's actually best to cook with them
when they're a little over ripe, and then this catches
all of that and starts to caramelize them. So it's
not just flash. It does make the food taste good.
But you know, having a foot or two foot tall
flame in a dining room is also just it's just cool.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
Well, it's bananas and ice cream and a dish and.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
Then you pour this alcohol over it.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
Light it on fire, and the look on your face
like you're just a founded you and you were just
a child. And I wonder if that was one of
the things that sort of sent you on your journey,
the rocket fuel had sent you on your journey.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
Yeah, it's funny, you know, when you look back on
your life, so many things make sense that you couldn't
have known at the time. Also, I was ten, so
I think you were seven or eight. Yeah, maybe you know.
But it was funny, you know, thinking about moments like
that that I was so excited to go to rus
(25:30):
Chris Steakhouse because it's the fanciest restaurant ever, and here
I am building those types of styles of restaurants. The
other thing that I remember about that place, and this
is classic little kid, right. I talked earlier about how
our grill is at least seven hundred degrees. I'm not
sure how hot our grill is because my thermometer literally
can't measure that high. But I remember the manager you
(25:51):
were friends with says, the plates are really hot. Don't
touch them because we put them in the same you know,
oven as we're using. And the best way to make
a little kid do something is to tell them not
to do that thing, and I immediately I remember three
things about that dinner. It was so fun and I
really was so excited to be there and to tell
(26:12):
my friends about it. Two, the fire of the bananas
foster was like so just eye popping to me. And
three the play was so hot.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
Well, when people tell you don't touch hot, oftentimes it's
best to just listen.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
We talk about fire.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
We talk about the smell, the sizzle, and the wonder
of seeing that dessert catch fire there at the table.
Not necessarily with fire, but flavor is the most important
thing at home or in especially in a restaurant. But
beyond the flavor, how could somebody at home, I've got
(26:50):
some people coming over for dinner, How could I put
some flash, some sizzle into the meal to flash up
what I do as entertainment.
Speaker 3 (26:58):
You can make a bananas FoST stretch your house right,
You can make a flambay.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
You can do this.
Speaker 3 (27:03):
It's not that hard. You put some spirit in a
pot and you sort of let it heat up, and
then you pour it onto whatever you're doing as you
introduce it to fire. If you're feeling a little intimidated
by turning your dining room into a potential remake of
the movie Fireproof. Then I think one thing you can
(27:25):
do is also just try to find ingredients that are
going to be unusual to people that you're having to dinner.
You know, we've talked in different episodes before out a
lot of really interesting out there ingredients. And if there's
a market you really like, I would go there. Talk
to the person behind the fish counter, talk to the
person behind the meat counter, talk to people that are
(27:47):
passionate about the food that they serve. And what you'll
find a lot of times at these local markets is
these aren't people who are just punching a clock.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
How much do you want.
Speaker 3 (27:58):
If you're going to become a fish, if you're going
to become a butcher, you have to be passionate about that.
And some of the best cooking tips I've ever gotten
are actually from a butcher or from a fishmonger who goes, oh, hey,
you know, like a hangar steak. That's one of those
cuts that restaurant people are in on that butchers are into,
(28:19):
but the public isn't into yet, So maybe that's a
good option. Or maybe there's a funky fish and your
fishmonger can tell you how to cook it. They can
point you in the right direction. With so much internet
available to you, you can figure out how to cook something.
And that would kind of be the first thing I
would go to, is what's an ingredient I'm maybe not
as confident in that my guests haven't seen before, and
(28:42):
all of a sudden, I'm going, oh, yeah, it's monkfish.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
I love it.
Speaker 3 (28:47):
It's the poor man's lobster. I made little lobster rolls
out of it, but with monkfish because I thought it
would be fun. Oh, anybody who has the new ingredients
has the knowledge, that's the way to kind of light
up that dinner and get people talking.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
Okay, give people something they aren't used to eating is
one thing you're saying.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
I guess yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
Absolutely. At the end of the day, you know, if
you can make amazing classics and that's where you feel comfortable,
your dinner party should be fun for you. So if
making something you've made a hundred times, put you in
your wheelhouse and make sure that you're having a drink
in your hand and making your guests laugh, that's a
great way to do with dinner party. But if you're
wanting to step out, be brave, ask a local quality market,
(29:29):
what's something in season, what's something you can do. You'll
be amazed how knowledgeable they are about cooking and some
of the advice they could give you to kind of
give it that pop, give it that conversation that you're
looking for. We have a special guest today. She is
one of Canada's most beloved food personalities. She is the
Master Chef Canada Champion for season three and is now
one of the hosts and judges as well as the
(29:50):
star of Mary Makes It Easy and Mary's Kitchen Crush.
She's a best selling cookbook author, daytime TV regular, and
she's a master making great food feel doable through her
undeniable charm. Please welcome Mary Bird.
Speaker 4 (30:04):
Hello. Thank you so much for having me. Gentlemen.
Speaker 3 (30:07):
Absolutely, it's so exciting to have you. I have been
watching the new series. You're doing a great job hosting
and it was interesting, you know, since it's gone on
a little bit of a break and now it's back.
You know, there was no lead in the five minutes
into the show starting. You immediately show them your signature dish,
the lemon rang piet as sort of a new version
from the one that got you on the show and said, okay, great,
(30:30):
you have to make this if you're going to make
the next round. And I was really surprised. You know,
I actually started in pastry, but now as a professional chef,
I thought, I have thirty minutes and I have to
without my recipe book, make the cookie. I have to
make them a rang. I have to make the lemon curd.
How can people do this? How is that possible?
Speaker 5 (30:51):
There is something so special that happens in the Master
Chef Canada kitchen. I did things that I never thought
I would be able to do.
Speaker 4 (31:00):
It's funny. It's almost like you're in this really a.
Speaker 5 (31:02):
Pressure cooker where you're given a time frame, You're given
a task, and your only job in that timeframe is
to make that dish and complete it to the best
of your ability.
Speaker 4 (31:14):
Now we only give them half an hour to do that.
Speaker 5 (31:18):
And for eleven merangue pie, making a salvelet cookie, a
merangue like a Swiss merangue, and a lemon creud, it's
a tall order, for sure. There were varying degrees of
success with that first dish as well, But honestly.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
I.
Speaker 4 (31:31):
Unless you are taking part and competing in the Master
Chief Canada Kitchen.
Speaker 5 (31:35):
I still don't think I would have been able to
get that done unless I was under those circumstances too.
It's really remarkable what you can actually accomplish when you
are under that pressure and under the clock. It's really
amazing to see and terrifying. It's lightly anxiety inducing. Throws
me right back to my time in the Masters.
Speaker 4 (31:53):
Of Kennedy Kitchen.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
Well, Mary, you've been on my radio show and I've
told you that on that season where you were a contestant,
I picked you right from the very beginning because there's
something so compelling about you. But how did it feel
to you?
Speaker 5 (32:05):
Honestly terrifying. I always say like I was never the
most competitive person, but that's a little bit of a lie.
I'm not competitive necessarily, like in sports or things like that,
but I'm competitive with myself. I want to do my best,
I want to show my best. That's something that I've
always wanted to do. But walking into that kitchen was terrifying.
(32:27):
It was so outside of any realm of comfort of
anything that I've ever walked into before. I mean, even
if you as a chef, as a cook, as a
home cook as anything. Walk into an unfamiliar kitchen and
are expected to create something, not knowing where the spoons are,
not knowing which burner's wonky, not knowing how the.
Speaker 4 (32:47):
Oven temperature is.
Speaker 5 (32:49):
Like, there's so many variables that you don't think of,
so it was really intimidating. It was incredibly scary, and
every time I was walking into that kitchen, I convinced
myself I had forgotten how to oil water.
Speaker 4 (33:01):
But as soon as that clock started, all I did
was cook like it. It was me doing my favorite thing.
Speaker 5 (33:08):
And I didn't ignore the fact that there were cameras
and things like that there, but just I saw it
as part of the process.
Speaker 4 (33:18):
I saw it as.
Speaker 5 (33:19):
It's so cool seeing these cameras do their work, and
these chefs up at the top, the judges watching us
do our work, and us. My job there was to
cook the best meal I could, and every time I
did it, I did make some missteps. Not gonna lie,
I might have cried a couple times, but you know
I got there in the end.
Speaker 3 (33:40):
You are literally the only person who sat on both
sides of the table. I'm sure that's a wild experience
seeing everybody reflect back to you the emotions you experienced.
Speaker 4 (33:50):
It really is.
Speaker 5 (33:51):
I think that's something that I really thought about when
I was coming back into the Master Chef Canada Kitchen,
but this time is a judge. I thought about the
fact that am I going to be able to kind
of park not like not turn off the empathy, but
like park that side of me that can literally feel
how they're feeling.
Speaker 4 (34:09):
And to know how odd it is to make a dish.
Speaker 5 (34:13):
You're making one good plate, bring it up to three
people who are going to eat it while they're staring
at you in the eyes.
Speaker 4 (34:21):
You're not sitting down and enjoying the dish with them.
Speaker 5 (34:24):
We just silently eat it and look at them, and
it's it's terrifying. And having to still play that role
as the judge and take on that job was really intimidating,
but it was.
Speaker 4 (34:38):
Fun.
Speaker 5 (34:38):
I think that's what makes this season a little bit
different because I have because I have both sides of
knowledge there.
Speaker 4 (34:45):
I've been in their shoes. Literally.
Speaker 5 (34:47):
I can see what this title and what this show
and what this experience can do for people. It's really
amazing to see it all kind of pan out and
be a part of their story.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
You came on Master chef. Nobody knew you other well,
other than your friends, et cetera, but you weren't nationally known.
You won the thing and it changed your life. You
have your TV shows, now you're a judge, you have cookbooks,
et cetera. I was at an event recently and they
brought out the special chef who was doing this event,
and he was a person from one of those shows.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
It changes lives.
Speaker 4 (35:22):
It's true.
Speaker 5 (35:22):
There's it's funny because Master Chef Canada is special in
that it's not it's not trained chefs coming into the kitchen.
Speaker 4 (35:31):
These are home cooks.
Speaker 5 (35:32):
These are people who the person in your friend group
who's the one that you always get them to like
make their special like lasagnire, they's special cake or they're
special whatever.
Speaker 4 (35:42):
So it is it's it's kind of a wild ride.
And Tanner like speaking to you, you are.
Speaker 5 (35:46):
A chef, like that is a that is a skill
that you've worked on, that you went to school for,
that you've worked through kitchens to game and that's just
not the case part of these people. So it's it's
pretty impressive seeing the turnaround and what can happen. I myself,
I consider myself I love writing recipes. I love developing
recipes and figuring out ways to get home cooks in
(36:11):
the kitchen cooking successfully or as successfully as possible, because
that's the thing that I get the most kind of
gratification out of and I feel the most fulfilled by.
Speaker 4 (36:20):
And that's the thing. I think.
Speaker 5 (36:21):
There's so many different avenues you can take in the
world of food, especially now with social media, with podcasts,
with radio, with so many different things that it's like,
it's cool seeing how many different ways people can kind
of take this experience and run with it.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
Absolutely. So you mentioned being not that competitive earlier and
then said maybe that's not true. Do you miss the competition?
Am I going to see you on beat Bobby Flay next?
Speaker 4 (36:47):
Oh my god, No, I could never.
Speaker 5 (36:50):
I like, my the worst version of me is when
I'm playing uker, Like that's the most competitive version of me,
and I don't think the world wants to see that.
Speaker 3 (37:03):
No.
Speaker 5 (37:04):
I have so much respect for people who kind of
feed off like competition and the idea of kind of
continuing that that push to get those accolades and things
like that. But I feel like I'm a one and
done in terms of competitions.
Speaker 3 (37:21):
Well, I mean if you never compete, you can never lose.
So you know that a thousand tanner.
Speaker 4 (37:27):
I'm not gonna lie. That has crossed my mind.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
Mary, you're unique in this because you're a judge now,
but you were a contestant. So does that make you
approach them differently? You know how they're gonna feel when
you judge their food.
Speaker 5 (37:41):
Yeah, I think I definitely have that because I have
that lived experience and I've felt how it feels after
spending half an hour, an hour, three hours, whatever it is,
preparing something and then having people literally tell you what
they think of it and try to find issues with it.
Speaker 4 (37:59):
It's really scary, it's really intimidating.
Speaker 5 (38:01):
I think that that is something, like we've said, I
bring to the table that's a little different than the
other judges. My co judges this season are Craig Wong
and Hugh Atchison. And Hugh Adchison's won James Beard Awards,
he writes cookbooks, he's run kitchens, he does private chef stuff,
all this stuff, and Craig Wog is like a huge
(38:21):
chef in Toronto and is absolutely amazing.
Speaker 4 (38:24):
So they have a.
Speaker 5 (38:24):
Completely different kind of worldview or view of this competition
and view of food in general than I do.
Speaker 4 (38:30):
But I think it's a really balanced kind of panel.
Speaker 5 (38:33):
Because these are home cooks, you kind of the chef in.
Maybe Craig and Hugh have to pull back a little
and understand that these people are not used to these
time crunches and things like that, but they still need
to present really tasty food like that's the bottom line.
They got to get it on the plate, they've got
to get it there, and hopefully they have at least
(38:54):
a little fun doing it, even though some of that
fun is shrouded.
Speaker 2 (38:59):
In Well, Mary, we really appreciate you doing this. I
think you're so special. I did pick you that first
time I saw you on TV, and I go around
telling people that because it makes me look good.
Speaker 4 (39:11):
Thank you so much, Jerry Tannel. This has been so fun.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
Thanks, thanks very much for listening to flavor Files. We're
available at flavor files dot com. That's p H I
L E. S. Flavor files dot com and we'll talk
to you next week right here on flavor Files.
Thanks for joining us. This is Flavor Files.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
I'm Jerry Yegar, broadcaster, my son Tana Agar, restaurant tour
chef and bartender. We talk about food, we talk about
drink and the culture around it all. And we're going
to be talking a lot about fire today and that ties.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Into your muse booze.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Your drink as the you have the only job that
I can think of where the first thing that happens
is you drink alcohol.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Yeah, well, it's generally not the first thing I do
in the course of the day. I do try to
do a couple things first. But you know, it is funny.
There's a famous chef in Iceland and people ask like,
how did you become a chef? And he said, what
was the only job where I could be a little
drunk while I was still there?
Speaker 1 (00:45):
All right?
Speaker 3 (00:45):
But anyway, moving on to the muse booze for today. Okay,
so this is going to be super simple. In my hand,
I've got an old fashioned, classic old fashioned. Everybody's had one.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Smoked.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
Old fashions are really popular. They're incredibly easy to do
at home. As we gear up for the holidays, there's
something called a cocktail chimney It basically looks like a
little hat and you put chips right in the top
of it in a little circle on the top. Then
on the bottom it's got a little circle. And I
really love these. These are probably my favorite way to
(01:16):
smoke a cocktail because you don't have to smoke a
glass and flip it. You don't have to have any
special equipment. You literally just take the little hat, you
put it on top of the drink. Then what you're
gonna do is you're gonna take those little, like but
tane torches. People will like make crember lay with them,
or you can actually find them in headshops or just online.
(01:37):
But basically, you torch, you click it, it'll light up.
The power of the flame pushes the smoke into the drink,
so you know that the smoke's getting into the drink itself.
So i''re just gonna do that.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
You can't do it then with a match.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
No, you can't do this with a match. This techniqu
wouldn't work because you have no force that's pushing the
smoke through and allow it to sink in. But I'm
just gonna do that so I can enjoy this cocktail
while we do the rest of our show.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
All right, I can hear the fire.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
Yeah, so you can hear what I mean. But that's
really like the power of it. Right, And if I
kind of pick it up here so I know you
can see or if you watch it you can sort
of see here what happens is sure there's smoke coming
off the top, but there's a layer of smoke that
sinks down and settles right on the top of the cocktail.
And the reason I love doing this at my restaurant
(02:31):
so I recommend other people doing it, is even when
I pull the chimney off, the smoke still sits right
on top of the cocktail. So it looks beautiful and
you get nice, clean, beautiful smoke that kind of layers
into the cocktail. It's a fantastic way to make cocktails.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
Okay, So are there are there woods that you prefer
for this? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (02:52):
Absolutely. You know we have Flamont. Flamont is a live
fire restaurant. We cook a lot of our food over
a live fire grill. Well, and we'll talk more about that,
but there we use a blend of oak and pecan.
Oak is really solid. You can get it everywhere. It
burns really hot. Pecan has sort of a nutty flavor
like pecan when I'm doing cocktails. I really like things
(03:15):
like cherry wood. I really like things like apple wood.
They add a little bit of a flavor to it,
whereas things like oak kind of have. It's solid and
it tastes sort of classically smoky, but there isn't another
flavor that it layers on. Hickory works really well, by
the way, if you're going to cook with fire or
(03:36):
if you're going to be smoking, those things are true
of all of them. The only thing I really personally
don't like is mesquite. I do not like mosquite. I
don't like the way it tastes. It's super popular in Texas,
but I'm not into it, and I wouldn't recommend smoking
with it if you didn't grow up with that flavor.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
All right, Well, let's talk about cooking with fire. You
just opened that new restaurant, you said, in Plano, Texas,
which is a suburb of Dallas. It's called Flamont and
it's cooking with wood wood fire cooking. The only restaurant
that I go to on any regular basis that does
that tends to be pizza restaurants. Wood fired pizza I
don't know how many wood fired restaurants other than that
(04:14):
I've been to.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
Yeah, you know, so wood firing, wood fire cooking is obviously,
I mean, that's the original cooking right at one point.
It's very funny because now people come to a restaurant
now like the fire gives it such a wonderful flavor,
and you're like, yeah, that's crazy. It's almost like we
co evolved with the advent of cooking over fire and
liking cooking over fire, like it's bread into our DNA. Right,
(04:39):
it has this sort of like primal draw to it.
But fast forward all these years ago or all these
years to the future. You know, pizza restaurants have done
it right. One of my first jobs was wood fired pizza.
But a lot of chefs started saying, hey, yeah, that's cool,
but what if he did everything that way? What if
when you baked you did it with firef when you grilled,
(05:00):
you did it with fire. And so a lot of
restaurants have popped up. There's too many to name, but
a couple that I really loved. There's one called Hesti
and Austin, owned by a guy I know. His name's
Kevin Fink. Amazing enormous fire and everything is oriented around
this fire that you can watch all night long cooking.
But another one one you took me to and introduced
(05:21):
me to is Ketzl in Toronto.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
And I was neglectful when I said only pizza restaurants
that I didn't name Ketzel. It's one of my favorite restaurants.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
Yeah, Ketzel's an amazing restaurant. They've had a Michelin star
for years. Their fireplace is twenty eight feet long and
they're cooking everything. It's a Mexican restaurant, which I love
being here in Toronto or being here in Texas. I
was a little suspicious when you said the best restaurant
in Toronto is Mexican now, and I see a lot
of Mexican food, but they absolutely deliver, and it's kind
(05:52):
of eating at those restaurants. The nature of fire, the
way it tastes, that kind of inspired us to want
to do one. Flamant is definitely more of a Mediterranean
inspired restaurant. I used to live and work in Spain
and France, and so I wanted to incorporate some of
those flavors into our new place. And the way that
the texture of cooking on the fire, the fragrance of
(06:13):
cooking on the fire. We wanted to incorporate that. So
it's different than restaurants we've been to before. But I
think it's so fun, and I think people should really
seek out restaurants that cook this way.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
Okay, but what would I be looking for other than
just hey, we cook with fire.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
Yeah, you know, that's a great question. I understand.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
You know.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
While I can say it's so cool, there's this twenty
eight foot wide grill, I probably imagine a lot of
people don't have that set up in their personal kitchen.
So when you're going to one of these restaurants, the
way you can really tell that someone's doing it and
they know what they're doing is by eating the food
and realizing that the food is made properly. Where the
(06:53):
fire is an ingredient, it shouldn't be the ingredient. If
you're eating something and thinking this is the fun by
the fire, it's too smoky, it's too charred. That means
that they're really not very familiar with how to use it.
There should be a balance. I like to think of
smoke always as a flavor that I'm incorporating into a dish,
(07:16):
and along with that balance of the flavor is the
balance of the texture.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
You know.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
One thing I think is amazing is and this is
crazy that I'm saying, get the chicken when you come
see us. But our chicken is so good. We brinde
it in peppercini, so it's got this nice spice. But
then the way it hits the grill, the way the
thighs we leave the skin on, and so what happens
is thighs are really fatty. You should always cook with
(07:41):
chicken thigh. I am over chicken breasts. Chicken thigh is
the future. But the way that the fat, you know,
is so great as it sits there on the fire,
the way the skin gets so crispy if you're not
a meat eater. Honestly, the broccolini is also one of
the best things that we do because broccoli, when you
cook it over fire, you know, it shouldn't be like ashy,
(08:04):
it shouldn't be dry. We blanche ours, which is where
we just dunk it and boiling water really quick, and
then it's going to go on to the grill, and
what you end up getting is something that's sort of
springy and like a little sponge. By giving it that
hot water. You think about yourself, right, hot water opens
your pores. It kind of does that to the broccolini,
and then once it hits the grill, it just drinks
(08:26):
in the smoke. And it's so wonderful to see that,
and it just makes me so excited. It makes me
excited to eat this way. It makes me excited to
be at the restaurant. And my favorite is when I
can also find a little surprise in it. You know,
one of the things I'm most impressed and I would
look for to answer your question, is I want to
go to a restaurant where they don't just slap you know,
(08:49):
if you just put meat on the grill and take
it off, that's fine. But I sort of view that
as like level one of live fire cooking. Level two
is does the grill really drop the food? Ketzel does this,
Hestia does this, and Austin it really drives the food.
One of the things that Kevin showed us his team
showed us was smoking olive oil. And so one thing
(09:11):
that's so fun about that is you wouldn't think, you know,
olive oil is not one of the things you think
about being smoked, but we use smoked olive oil when
we make beef tartar, so even though you're eating raw,
uncooked beef with us, it still has that taste of
being on our grill. And when people do that with citrus,
if they do things with like charring their bread or
(09:33):
there's spices, I think you end up with a really
more rich flavor profile and it's fun.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
What kind of wood are you using?
Speaker 3 (09:41):
So, like I said before, we use oak and pecan.
You know, that's really our preference for our restaurant. But
if you're going to start to build these, you know,
especially if you're thinking, well this sounds really cool, how
could I do that in my house. We're gonna talk
about that in the next segment, so I hope you
stay tuned. But one of the things to do is
start to seek out wood. You can't just go to
(10:03):
a gas station and buy wood. You want to try
to find, like specifically oak that I find that a
lot of times people like the flavor best of wood
that naturally grows in their area. You know, Mosquite's popular
for people that live in areas with mosquite. I didn't
grow up that way, but a lot of the fruit woods,
the hickories, you know, you find the woods that you
(10:24):
see in the smoking aisle, that sound familiar to you.
That's really what I think is always going to taste best.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
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Speaker 3 (11:23):
We are talking all about fire today. I recently opened
a live fire restaurant where we cook over our hearth
that we build every day, and we're talking now about
how you can do some of that at home. I
think it's an amazing thing to do. I think it's
super fun. There's this really excitement that happens when the
(11:44):
fire is building. And you can do this at home.
You absolutely can, and I think you should. There's a
wonderful book that people should absolutely read if your inter
restaurant history. It's called The Ten Restaurants That Changed America,
And in there it talks about Joe Baum were famous
American restaurant tour and he has a quote about how
he always likes to bring fire in the dining room
(12:06):
because it always delights guests, it always makes them excited.
And I'm reading this quote from the nineteen fifties and
I'm thinking it's so funny, because anytime we have a
cocktail that's flaming or a dish that fires up, everybody
gets so excited. Seventy five years after he said that,
it's still true and you can absolutely do this in
(12:28):
your own kitchen. So as we're sort of looking at
kind of how to do that, you know, Dad, growing up,
we would keep that fire pit in the backyard, and
I don't remember us cooking much more than hot dogs
and maybe s'mores on there as kids. But if you
have the outdoor fire pit, you can absolutely cook a
lot more on that grill. You know, you can get
(12:51):
sort of a grill grade, or you can get you
can also buy like what's called a plancha. It's basically
think cast iron pan but instead like cookie sheet size,
and you can just put that right on top of
your fire. You know, you want to build your fire,
kind of burn it down a little bit, you can
stick that right on top. But I like to cook
right above it. So if you can get a grate,
(13:13):
you know, a strong, sturdy metal grate, you basically pop
that down. Ideally, you know, maybe use a couple of
bricks or something so that you have some space before
the coals itself, and then boom, you have a live
fire grill just as good as the live fire grill
that I'm using in my restaurant every day.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
Well wait a minute, though, when he said I like
when Joe Bahm said, I like to bring the fire
inside that you can't barbecue indoors.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
No, you know, you can't generally do that. We do indoors,
and the last time I got a visit from the
fire marshal about it was this morning. And so you
know you can do it. You have to put a
lot of money into fire suppression and safety for.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
That, okay, but you've got venting and all that kind
of stuff. And cooking, well, if you're using charcoal for instance,
like that's uh, there's a gas that comes off of
that that is not safe inside the house. So if
you're cooking with fire inside the house, you've got to
know what you're doing.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
Absolutely, Again, if you're gonna have actual logs, if you're
lighting a true fire, you should do this outside. This
is an outside activity. And if you don't have a
fire extinguisher, if we were big enough to have a
legal department, I'm sure they would tell me to tell
you that you need to have a fire extinguisher or
a bucket of water or a hose. But moving on
(14:32):
to the fun stuff. So if you've got this grill,
you can stick this thing down and like you are cooked,
Like you're all set up. Now you have an amazing grill.
You functionally have the exact same grill that I have
in my restaurant. Now I know it's really late in
the year for this to be true, but it's finally
cool in Texas. I finally want to be back outside.
So if you've been making your burgers on a grill
(14:55):
that's using propane, but you have a fire pit, just
move over to the fire pit, take those grill racks out,
put them over top of your fire pit, and put
that burger, put that steak, put that chicken right on top,
and just it's the exact same imagine you're grilling. You
just have something adding flavor. Propaine adds heat, but it
(15:16):
doesn't add flavor, or at worst, it actually adds kind
of a bad acrid flavor.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
I don't love pro pain flavor, but we wood it's
so sexy. It's so cool. Your wife will love you
more if you cook that way.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
Okay, hey, I saw something.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
Maybe this is taking you on a tangent, but I
was just watching a thing on television and I have
seen people do this where they get the coals all
down to the really hot coals and then take the
steak and just lay it right on the embers.
Speaker 3 (15:48):
Yeah, so you absolutely can that.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
You can do that.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
It's so hot that it just like absolutely sears the outside.
You have to be careful. I have absolutely seen people
get really excited about doing this, and then if you
get the ember stuck to it or it can get
kind of ashy. It's also you know our fire. I've
measured it the other day. We have a thermometer that
(16:11):
goes to seven hundred degrees before it times out or
like it tops off and just says, can't read it.
Couldn't read the fire we cook on every day. So
I actually don't know how hot our fire is. And
you can get in really bad shape that way. But
if you burn down coals, it will be really hot.
And so if you're gonna do that, you can, but
(16:33):
you need to make sure that you've got a steak
that is thick. I mean inch and a half. Two
inches thick would really be ideal, because otherwise it's gonna
be so hot you're just gonna rip right through and
you're gonna have something well done and you're never gonna
want to listen to flavor files again. But if you
find the whole fire a little intimidating, which totally can be,
think back, think back to s'more, think back to stick
(16:56):
with hot Dog. This is pretty funny. You could take
another food, you could put it on the same stick
and roast it over a fire you wanted to cook
down some that way you have control. But yakatry cooking
in Japan or a mangal cooking in the Middle East
is literally just basically charcoal sticks through food, through food
(17:20):
and gently turning it and rotating it and cooking it.
So if you put a piece of chicken, brush it
with soy sauce and hang it over a fire, you're
already doing You're making yakatori, and now it's gourmet.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
Oh well, all the better then.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
So now we talked about putting meat down on the embers,
What about things like roast peppers, are onions and things
like that.
Speaker 3 (17:47):
Yeah, you know, things like peppers. I like to toast
my tortillas. Onions are really great, right, You think like fijida.
You know, you're kind of building a HETA fijeta goes
really well over a fire. In fact, I'm sure there's
people listening to the segment who think, yes, but I
live in an apartment and I won't be doing this.
You know, if you have a gas powered stove, you
(18:08):
can still do some of this. One of My favorite
things to do is I turn the gas up really high,
and I'll just take peppers and I'll put them right
in there, and they'll turn black and that skin will
start to blister. You can do this right. You can
toast the tortillas over it, and sure you're not going
to get quite the same smoky flavor that you would
(18:30):
have gotten from a live fire, but you will get
this burned, charred skin that you can then sort of
peel away at, and it's going to give you a
texture and a flavor you're not going to get by
just baking them in the oven at three point fifty
like you've done a million times before, and you have
the benefit of not having a giant fire that could
(18:50):
potentially get out of control. Speaking as a person who
maybe had their restaurant burned down one time.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
Well, yes, but that wasn't because of the cooking.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
Yeah, I should clarify that we weren't even there when
this happened. It was an external thing that then got
to our restaurant and then burned it down. But even so,
now when the fire department asked you really want to
have a fire inside your new restaurant, I say yes,
I still do. I'm still willing to roll those dice.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
Now, I don't know how many people, what percentage of
people have an actual indoor fireplace as not a gas one,
but with wood. Maybe you could do it with gas,
but I don't know if people think about actually cooking
in their fireplace.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
But you would, yeah, I mean, I'll cook everywhere, but
you know, I wouldn't cook in a gas fireplace. I
don't know how they're set up. There's a lot of
stuff in there. I would never do that. But if
you have a wood fireplace in your house, absolutely you can.
I mean, if you think about it, putting a cast
iron onto your home fireplace. That is absolutely classic cooking
(19:58):
when you think back, you know, even only two hundred
years ago, everyone cooked that way. You can also your
photos of that will do so well on Instagram. That
is so cozy, it's so fun.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
And you can just cook in there.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
So this can be as easy as just having a
skillet and cooking in there. You know, you don't have
to have this beautiful Argentine style grill to cook with fire.
You should have insurance and you should have a little
bit of courage. But you know, even if you end up.
You know, only taking one of those little torches we
were talking about earlier and caramelizing your food or making
(20:35):
a crumbrewlet fire can make your food feel so much
more fun. It can put you so much more in
touch with the food. And it's actually a lot more
approachable and easy than people want to think it is.
And I want to take a quick little tangent from
what we're talking about. You know, you and I love
word games. We're both pretty proud of our knowledge of
(20:57):
words or vocabulary. You Avi are a professional communicator. I
am a wanna be communicator. So I learned a new word.
And I don't know if you've ever heard this word.
It is funny because it sounds like a word that
would appear on a food show. It's nibbling. But it's
not nibbling as in eating food little bite by bite.
(21:21):
It's nibbling with one bee. What does it mean?
Speaker 2 (21:24):
I think I should know this, And uh, it's because
I'm I'm sort of thinking I've run into this word
and I think it's sort of like being picky or
something like that.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
No, not even close. I'm so sorry. So the word
nibbling it means it's a catch all gender neutral term
for a group of nieces and nephews, the nibbling, the nibblings. Yeah,
my little nibblings, which my little nibblings sounds like a
blog I would write about snacks.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
That's right, that's great.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
So, yeah, it's funny because we just had a nephew.
We had two nieces before, but now we have a nephew,
and we're like, well, we can't say the nieces. That's
who they've always been, right, that's their identity. And so
we went, why isn't there a term like sibling that
refers to the nieces and the nephews, and good old
Merriam Webster. Apparently it's not officially been added to their dictionary,
(22:25):
but it's a word they're tracking. If it gets enough usage,
they will add it to the dictionary. So I am
here using my platform as a semi professional communicator to
get the word nibbling into people, into their vernacular, because
I want it added to the dictionary. I'm passionate about nibblings.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
All right, Well, I'll have a chance to use it
soon because your uncle Glenn is coming with his kids,
So I'll call them the nibblings. I want to tell
a little story just with a whole theme of what
we've been talking about here through this hour has been
fire and cook with fire. But I want to talk
about the first time I think you ever went to
(23:06):
a higher end restaurant as opposed to going out to
the fast food restaurants and diners and places you take
your kids. And your birthday was coming up. We were
living in Raleigh, North Carolina, and I was a spokesperson
for Ruth's Chris restaurant.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
There in Raleigh.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
I did ads on the radio for them, and I
was in talking to the manager. We were having a
nice time and I mentioned that your birthday was coming up,
and he said, bring him in, we'll give him dinner.
So we went to Ruth Chris for a dinner on
the manager at Ruth Chris, which was fantastic, and we're
having the meal, and then I started talking about the
(23:41):
bananas foster and he said, yeah, we only do that
on the weekend, and we were there on a weekday,
I guess, and I said, oh, okay. And then then
they came around with the little cart and everything they
do the bananas foster with and said, well, since it's
your birthday, and we're going to do it as a
special thing, which means then that other people are going
to start ordering it. But we decided to go for it.
What he said, so they came out and bananas foster
(24:03):
is why don't you describe how to make a bananas foster?
Speaker 3 (24:06):
Well, what you really want to do is you want
to take a spirit. Lots of times it's frum and
if you get a spirit warm, what happens is the
alcohol starts to cook out of it, and if you
take a torchu or a match, it'll ignite. And that
ignition not only looks amazing, I mean, it looks so cool,
but it also kind of helps caramelize the bananas. So
(24:28):
bananas have a lot of starch, they have a lot
of sugar, so it's actually best to cook with them
when they're a little over ripe, and then this catches
all of that and starts to caramelize them. So it's
not just flash. It does make the food taste good.
But you know, having a foot or two foot tall
flame in a dining room is also just it's just cool.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
Well, it's bananas and ice cream and a dish and.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
Then you pour this alcohol over it.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
Light it on fire, and the look on your face
like you're just a founded you and you were just
a child. And I wonder if that was one of
the things that sort of sent you on your journey,
the rocket fuel had sent you on your journey.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
Yeah, it's funny, you know, when you look back on
your life, so many things make sense that you couldn't
have known at the time. Also, I was ten, so
I think you were seven or eight. Yeah, maybe you know.
But it was funny, you know, thinking about moments like
that that I was so excited to go to rus
(25:30):
Chris Steakhouse because it's the fanciest restaurant ever, and here
I am building those types of styles of restaurants. The
other thing that I remember about that place, and this
is classic little kid, right. I talked earlier about how
our grill is at least seven hundred degrees. I'm not
sure how hot our grill is because my thermometer literally
can't measure that high. But I remember the manager you
(25:51):
were friends with says, the plates are really hot. Don't
touch them because we put them in the same you know,
oven as we're using. And the best way to make
a little kid do something is to tell them not
to do that thing, and I immediately I remember three
things about that dinner. It was so fun and I
really was so excited to be there and to tell
(26:12):
my friends about it. Two, the fire of the bananas
foster was like so just eye popping to me. And
three the play was so hot.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
Well, when people tell you don't touch hot, oftentimes it's
best to just listen.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
We talk about fire.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
We talk about the smell, the sizzle, and the wonder
of seeing that dessert catch fire there at the table.
Not necessarily with fire, but flavor is the most important
thing at home or in especially in a restaurant. But
beyond the flavor, how could somebody at home, I've got
(26:50):
some people coming over for dinner, How could I put
some flash, some sizzle into the meal to flash up
what I do as entertainment.
Speaker 3 (26:58):
You can make a bananas FoST stretch your house right,
You can make a flambay.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
You can do this.
Speaker 3 (27:03):
It's not that hard. You put some spirit in a
pot and you sort of let it heat up, and
then you pour it onto whatever you're doing as you
introduce it to fire. If you're feeling a little intimidated
by turning your dining room into a potential remake of
the movie Fireproof. Then I think one thing you can
(27:25):
do is also just try to find ingredients that are
going to be unusual to people that you're having to dinner.
You know, we've talked in different episodes before out a
lot of really interesting out there ingredients. And if there's
a market you really like, I would go there. Talk
to the person behind the fish counter, talk to the
person behind the meat counter, talk to people that are
(27:47):
passionate about the food that they serve. And what you'll
find a lot of times at these local markets is
these aren't people who are just punching a clock.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
How much do you want.
Speaker 3 (27:58):
If you're going to become a fish, if you're going
to become a butcher, you have to be passionate about that.
And some of the best cooking tips I've ever gotten
are actually from a butcher or from a fishmonger who goes, oh, hey,
you know, like a hangar steak. That's one of those
cuts that restaurant people are in on that butchers are into,
(28:19):
but the public isn't into yet, So maybe that's a
good option. Or maybe there's a funky fish and your
fishmonger can tell you how to cook it. They can
point you in the right direction. With so much internet
available to you, you can figure out how to cook something.
And that would kind of be the first thing I
would go to, is what's an ingredient I'm maybe not
as confident in that my guests haven't seen before, and
(28:42):
all of a sudden, I'm going, oh, yeah, it's monkfish.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
I love it.
Speaker 3 (28:47):
It's the poor man's lobster. I made little lobster rolls
out of it, but with monkfish because I thought it
would be fun. Oh, anybody who has the new ingredients
has the knowledge, that's the way to kind of light
up that dinner and get people talking.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
Okay, give people something they aren't used to eating is
one thing you're saying.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
I guess yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
Absolutely. At the end of the day, you know, if
you can make amazing classics and that's where you feel comfortable,
your dinner party should be fun for you. So if
making something you've made a hundred times, put you in
your wheelhouse and make sure that you're having a drink
in your hand and making your guests laugh, that's a
great way to do with dinner party. But if you're
wanting to step out, be brave, ask a local quality market,
(29:29):
what's something in season, what's something you can do. You'll
be amazed how knowledgeable they are about cooking and some
of the advice they could give you to kind of
give it that pop, give it that conversation that you're
looking for. We have a special guest today. She is
one of Canada's most beloved food personalities. She is the
Master Chef Canada Champion for season three and is now
one of the hosts and judges as well as the
(29:50):
star of Mary Makes It Easy and Mary's Kitchen Crush.
She's a best selling cookbook author, daytime TV regular, and
she's a master making great food feel doable through her
undeniable charm. Please welcome Mary Bird.
Speaker 4 (30:04):
Hello. Thank you so much for having me. Gentlemen.
Speaker 3 (30:07):
Absolutely, it's so exciting to have you. I have been
watching the new series. You're doing a great job hosting
and it was interesting, you know, since it's gone on
a little bit of a break and now it's back.
You know, there was no lead in the five minutes
into the show starting. You immediately show them your signature dish,
the lemon rang piet as sort of a new version
from the one that got you on the show and said, okay, great,
(30:30):
you have to make this if you're going to make
the next round. And I was really surprised. You know,
I actually started in pastry, but now as a professional chef,
I thought, I have thirty minutes and I have to
without my recipe book, make the cookie. I have to
make them a rang. I have to make the lemon curd.
How can people do this? How is that possible?
Speaker 5 (30:51):
There is something so special that happens in the Master
Chef Canada kitchen. I did things that I never thought
I would be able to do.
Speaker 4 (31:00):
It's funny. It's almost like you're in this really a.
Speaker 5 (31:02):
Pressure cooker where you're given a time frame, You're given
a task, and your only job in that timeframe is
to make that dish and complete it to the best
of your ability.
Speaker 4 (31:14):
Now we only give them half an hour to do that.
Speaker 5 (31:18):
And for eleven merangue pie, making a salvelet cookie, a
merangue like a Swiss merangue, and a lemon creud, it's
a tall order, for sure. There were varying degrees of
success with that first dish as well, But honestly.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
I.
Speaker 4 (31:31):
Unless you are taking part and competing in the Master
Chief Canada Kitchen.
Speaker 5 (31:35):
I still don't think I would have been able to
get that done unless I was under those circumstances too.
It's really remarkable what you can actually accomplish when you
are under that pressure and under the clock. It's really
amazing to see and terrifying. It's lightly anxiety inducing. Throws
me right back to my time in the Masters.
Speaker 4 (31:53):
Of Kennedy Kitchen.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
Well, Mary, you've been on my radio show and I've
told you that on that season where you were a contestant,
I picked you right from the very beginning because there's
something so compelling about you. But how did it feel
to you?
Speaker 5 (32:05):
Honestly terrifying. I always say like I was never the
most competitive person, but that's a little bit of a lie.
I'm not competitive necessarily, like in sports or things like that,
but I'm competitive with myself. I want to do my best,
I want to show my best. That's something that I've
always wanted to do. But walking into that kitchen was terrifying.
(32:27):
It was so outside of any realm of comfort of
anything that I've ever walked into before. I mean, even
if you as a chef, as a cook, as a
home cook as anything. Walk into an unfamiliar kitchen and
are expected to create something, not knowing where the spoons are,
not knowing which burner's wonky, not knowing how the.
Speaker 4 (32:47):
Oven temperature is.
Speaker 5 (32:49):
Like, there's so many variables that you don't think of,
so it was really intimidating. It was incredibly scary, and
every time I was walking into that kitchen, I convinced
myself I had forgotten how to oil water.
Speaker 4 (33:01):
But as soon as that clock started, all I did
was cook like it. It was me doing my favorite thing.
Speaker 5 (33:08):
And I didn't ignore the fact that there were cameras
and things like that there, but just I saw it
as part of the process.
Speaker 4 (33:18):
I saw it as.
Speaker 5 (33:19):
It's so cool seeing these cameras do their work, and
these chefs up at the top, the judges watching us
do our work, and us. My job there was to
cook the best meal I could, and every time I
did it, I did make some missteps. Not gonna lie,
I might have cried a couple times, but you know
I got there in the end.
Speaker 3 (33:40):
You are literally the only person who sat on both
sides of the table. I'm sure that's a wild experience
seeing everybody reflect back to you the emotions you experienced.
Speaker 4 (33:50):
It really is.
Speaker 5 (33:51):
I think that's something that I really thought about when
I was coming back into the Master Chef Canada Kitchen,
but this time is a judge. I thought about the
fact that am I going to be able to kind
of park not like not turn off the empathy, but
like park that side of me that can literally feel
how they're feeling.
Speaker 4 (34:09):
And to know how odd it is to make a dish.
Speaker 5 (34:13):
You're making one good plate, bring it up to three
people who are going to eat it while they're staring
at you in the eyes.
Speaker 4 (34:21):
You're not sitting down and enjoying the dish with them.
Speaker 5 (34:24):
We just silently eat it and look at them, and
it's it's terrifying. And having to still play that role
as the judge and take on that job was really intimidating,
but it was.
Speaker 4 (34:38):
Fun.
Speaker 5 (34:38):
I think that's what makes this season a little bit
different because I have because I have both sides of
knowledge there.
Speaker 4 (34:45):
I've been in their shoes. Literally.
Speaker 5 (34:47):
I can see what this title and what this show
and what this experience can do for people. It's really
amazing to see it all kind of pan out and
be a part of their story.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
You came on Master chef. Nobody knew you other well,
other than your friends, et cetera, but you weren't nationally known.
You won the thing and it changed your life. You
have your TV shows, now you're a judge, you have cookbooks,
et cetera. I was at an event recently and they
brought out the special chef who was doing this event,
and he was a person from one of those shows.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
It changes lives.
Speaker 4 (35:22):
It's true.
Speaker 5 (35:22):
There's it's funny because Master Chef Canada is special in
that it's not it's not trained chefs coming into the kitchen.
Speaker 4 (35:31):
These are home cooks.
Speaker 5 (35:32):
These are people who the person in your friend group
who's the one that you always get them to like
make their special like lasagnire, they's special cake or they're
special whatever.
Speaker 4 (35:42):
So it is it's it's kind of a wild ride.
And Tanner like speaking to you, you are.
Speaker 5 (35:46):
A chef, like that is a that is a skill
that you've worked on, that you went to school for,
that you've worked through kitchens to game and that's just
not the case part of these people. So it's it's
pretty impressive seeing the turnaround and what can happen. I myself,
I consider myself I love writing recipes. I love developing
recipes and figuring out ways to get home cooks in
(36:11):
the kitchen cooking successfully or as successfully as possible, because
that's the thing that I get the most kind of
gratification out of and I feel the most fulfilled by.
Speaker 4 (36:20):
And that's the thing. I think.
Speaker 5 (36:21):
There's so many different avenues you can take in the
world of food, especially now with social media, with podcasts,
with radio, with so many different things that it's like,
it's cool seeing how many different ways people can kind
of take this experience and run with it.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
Absolutely. So you mentioned being not that competitive earlier and
then said maybe that's not true. Do you miss the competition?
Am I going to see you on beat Bobby Flay next?
Speaker 4 (36:47):
Oh my god, No, I could never.
Speaker 5 (36:50):
I like, my the worst version of me is when
I'm playing uker, Like that's the most competitive version of me,
and I don't think the world wants to see that.
Speaker 3 (37:03):
No.
Speaker 5 (37:04):
I have so much respect for people who kind of
feed off like competition and the idea of kind of
continuing that that push to get those accolades and things
like that. But I feel like I'm a one and
done in terms of competitions.
Speaker 3 (37:21):
Well, I mean if you never compete, you can never lose.
So you know that a thousand tanner.
Speaker 4 (37:27):
I'm not gonna lie. That has crossed my mind.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
Mary, you're unique in this because you're a judge now,
but you were a contestant. So does that make you
approach them differently? You know how they're gonna feel when
you judge their food.
Speaker 5 (37:41):
Yeah, I think I definitely have that because I have
that lived experience and I've felt how it feels after
spending half an hour, an hour, three hours, whatever it is,
preparing something and then having people literally tell you what
they think of it and try to find issues with it.
Speaker 4 (37:59):
It's really scary, it's really intimidating.
Speaker 5 (38:01):
I think that that is something, like we've said, I
bring to the table that's a little different than the
other judges. My co judges this season are Craig Wong
and Hugh Atchison. And Hugh Adchison's won James Beard Awards,
he writes cookbooks, he's run kitchens, he does private chef stuff,
all this stuff, and Craig Wog is like a huge
(38:21):
chef in Toronto and is absolutely amazing.
Speaker 4 (38:24):
So they have a.
Speaker 5 (38:24):
Completely different kind of worldview or view of this competition
and view of food in general than I do.
Speaker 4 (38:30):
But I think it's a really balanced kind of panel.
Speaker 5 (38:33):
Because these are home cooks, you kind of the chef in.
Maybe Craig and Hugh have to pull back a little
and understand that these people are not used to these
time crunches and things like that, but they still need
to present really tasty food like that's the bottom line.
They got to get it on the plate, they've got
to get it there, and hopefully they have at least
(38:54):
a little fun doing it, even though some of that
fun is shrouded.
Speaker 2 (38:59):
In Well, Mary, we really appreciate you doing this. I
think you're so special. I did pick you that first
time I saw you on TV, and I go around
telling people that because it makes me look good.
Speaker 4 (39:11):
Thank you so much, Jerry Tannel. This has been so fun.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
Thanks, thanks very much for listening to flavor Files. We're
available at flavor files dot com. That's p H I
L E. S. Flavor files dot com and we'll talk
to you next week right here on flavor Files.
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