0:08

This is me eat your podcast coming

0:11

at you shirtless, severely, bug

0:13

bitten, and in my case underwear listening

0:15

hunt e podcast. You

0:18

can't predict anything presented

0:21

by first light. Go farther,

0:23

stay longer. You

0:27

know, as as we get into talking about

0:29

different food I feel like it's an important thing to clarify

0:31

here is like, uh, last

0:34

night, me and Janice eight dinner

0:40

at Josh's restaurant, but we've

0:42

also hung out a bit and

0:46

just socially and had some wild

0:49

game that Josh

0:52

and friends you go mostly by Joshua

0:54

or Josh both. Yeah, that

0:59

Josh has gotten from friends or harvested

1:01

themselves. So if when we're talking it

1:03

sounds like there's confusion ever between

1:06

what we consumed in the restaurant and what we consumed

1:09

like for instance, in my hotel room last night. UM,

1:13

bear in mind that that there's like important

1:15

distinctions there between commercially

1:18

produced meat

1:21

that can be sold in a restaurant and

1:23

sport harvested meat and

1:25

fish that you can just get from yourself

1:28

or be gifted to you from a friend and share

1:30

with other other friends when there's no financial

1:32

transaction going on. So just

1:35

bear it in mind as we talk I'm not gonna go in and clarify

1:38

all this stuff all the time. And it's an important distinction,

1:40

and I just want people to be aware of that as we march

1:43

through some of the foods. We're gonna be

1:45

talking about Josh Gaines stays

1:49

On restaurant. Does it annoy you? Does

1:52

it annoy you? When? When? If you if you look at

1:54

stays On online, there's

1:57

two like things that people will point out. Just

2:01

a joy like a Joe Blow.

2:04

If you went and typed in staves on San Francisco,

2:07

he's gonna find that you have three Michelin

2:09

stars, which is like a tremendous

2:11

measure of success as

2:14

a chef and restaurateur. And

2:16

there's gonna be another descriptor does

2:21

that descriptor annoy you? Then

2:24

it comes off you haven't told me what it is yet, because

2:27

it's the it's the if

2:30

you take a national perspective, it's

2:32

the second and most blank. Yeah,

2:35

you know, unfortunately, that's that's the Do

2:38

you hate it? Like kind of like a no,

2:40

I, I you know, I don't. I don't hate it. I mean I think

2:42

that you know, there's a there's a certain reality until

2:45

can you tell people what it is the second most one. Well it's

2:47

it's the second most expensive restaurant in America,

2:49

apparently because reporters can't do math,

2:52

but

2:55

because I feel like it, Um, go ahead

2:57

speak. Well, you know, we we started um

3:01

putting. We we we put the price

3:03

you know, out front in the beginning, right, everything

3:05

was included. And then

3:08

if you look at you know, let's say another

3:10

three star Michelin restaurant, you get

3:13

a basementu price. Then

3:15

there's you know, four or five supplements,

3:17

and you add all those things up and it's like double the

3:19

price of here. So

3:21

you know you got it just by coming out and saying

3:24

here's what it costs for all

3:26

inclusive? Or

3:28

how many courses does wind up being? Uh, it

3:30

just depends anywhere from eight to you

3:33

know, sixteen, So

3:35

you're just laying it when you lay it all out.

3:37

I was trying to put it all out there. I was trying to say, hey, guys, here's

3:40

math. This is so much.

3:43

You'll be here for a couple of hours, it's this much,

3:45

and then it then it positions you in that way

3:48

where you have all

3:50

over online. Yeah,

3:53

people like that expression. Yeah, how

3:55

many three Michelin star restaurants are in the US.

3:58

I think I think there's thirteen or fourteen, maybe twelve

4:00

or thirteen, some twelve and four and some other other ones

4:02

in San Francisco. Uh yeah, there's

4:04

one. So we were we were the first, along

4:06

with another place called Venue. Yeah.

4:08

I think we should explain if we can just

4:11

a real general idea of what Michelin

4:13

stars are, it would be important because

4:15

yeah, that's who's the chef. Who's the

4:17

chef that killed himself when he lost the Michelin

4:19

Star. I mean which one? I

4:22

think there's a few, but the guy you're

4:24

talking about, the famous guy his name in

4:27

France. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know you're talking

4:30

about. So yeah, explain, like the misslim Star thing.

4:32

So Michelin, I guess is the you know, it's

4:34

it's also the tire company. But they started publishing

4:36

a guide I think it was in the thirties

4:39

maybe, uh and uh

4:41

it was meant to uh you

4:43

know, probably meant to sell

4:46

tires, but uh, but

4:48

it gave people, um, you know,

4:50

a guide to uh

4:53

you know, destination

4:55

were the restaurants and so you

4:57

know it was either one, two or three and three is basically

4:59

you know the nacle of the cooking world or

5:02

the restaurant world, and and and it really means

5:04

that it's worth a detour, you know, a full

5:06

trip to go to you know, restaurant and

5:10

then in your place you

5:13

are you wear

5:15

a camouflage hat. I noticed last night when

5:17

I was dying in here, so you had that wasn't

5:20

because you were here. Actually it's just not so

5:23

you. But that's the interesting thing is that, um,

5:26

you're like pretty open, Like you're very

5:28

open about the fact you like

5:30

the hunt. Um,

5:33

even though you live

5:35

in a town that's perceived

5:37

by many people who don't live here,

5:39

like it's perceived by outside as being like a

5:41

place that would be a hostile environment for

5:44

hunters. Yeah, but then to be here's

5:46

like a person who is sort of at the pinnacle

5:50

of the

5:52

restaurant world, the pinnacle of the cooking

5:55

world, in this

5:57

very space and just being

5:59

like add out open about it. Have you

6:01

ever have you ever felt blowback at

6:04

all for just being like, this is what I this is what I like

6:06

to do. This informs my cooking, it's

6:09

my it's a lifestyle I have. I mean,

6:11

you get you get blowback on you know, Instagram

6:14

or something, but you don't, you know, in here. You

6:16

know, it's our purpose is

6:18

just for quality, right, the quality of the product.

6:20

So you know, for me, the whole

6:22

the whole reason for for starting

6:24

hunting again was uh

6:28

good meat. It's you know, you

6:30

you know, as a chef, you start to chase uh

6:33

quality and uh so you know I was

6:36

just looking for, you know, a better quality. And

6:38

so you know, over the years it led me to

6:40

hunting because you can't really replace that

6:43

uh you know that that quality

6:45

level, you know, provided that you handle it in the right

6:47

way, um as getting in yourself

6:49

so or at least seeing the whole process

6:52

through right. Um, so you know,

6:54

whenever we're at the point just I mean to speak

6:56

to that like you're you

6:59

were steaming, like you don't every

7:01

fish that comes into your restaurant you like to come in alive?

7:04

Yeah exactly. Yeah, if we

7:06

if we can get the elk in a live to it, we do that, but it

7:08

might stress him out a little bit and not tasted good. And

7:10

you have staff, you have like a staff fisherman.

7:14

Yeah, yeah, yeah, so we have we have

7:16

fishermen, and these guys bring us basically

7:18

everything alive. So the whole purpose is that we get

7:20

all of our stuff alive because uh,

7:23

you know, the reality is is like as soon as you

7:25

you know, you know, pull a trout

7:27

out of the river, you know, it starts to go downhill.

7:29

You either click it right there, and you know, you get

7:31

to experience that kind of perfect uh

7:34

taste, right, and you know there's a small window.

7:36

There's usually usually for all things, there's like a window.

7:39

You get a window in the beginning and uh

7:42

uh you know that's what maybe thirty

7:44

minutes after you harvest it, whether

7:46

it's meat or or or

7:49

fish or whatever it may

7:51

be, right, it's maybe an hour let's say an hour,

7:53

right, and it's perfect. There's one particular

7:55

taste you know, kind of attached to that that

7:57

period of time. And then you

8:00

know, as time goes by, rigor sets in. You

8:02

know, you can I see your question. I was gonna ask about rigor.

8:04

So if you actually do, say,

8:06

you know, eat you're a piece of your

8:08

elk in that first hour, will you

8:10

actually be able to eat it and enjoy it before

8:13

you have any sort of rigor? Exactly? Yeah,

8:15

So it said you know there's two there's That's what I'm saying. There's

8:18

basically two particular you know, sets of time

8:20

before before rigor sets

8:22

in, before uh, you know, any

8:24

of those things really happened. There's that that taste

8:26

everybody's fromil you know, any hunters familiar with that

8:28

taste. And then there's that I

8:31

guess what we what we call aging right where

8:33

we age our meat to a certain point to where you

8:35

know, the enzymes start to break down the meat

8:37

and they start to make the meat more delicious

8:40

or the fish more delicious. And

8:42

you know, really everything has its its sweet

8:44

spot where it tastes you know, perfect,

8:47

right. So so our job is really to find

8:49

that timing and the products lifespan

8:52

and then uh, you know, choose the right point

8:54

to cook it at. So you know, for an elk, for a big

8:56

big piece of meta, we could hang those primal

8:58

cuts for you know, a

9:00

month, three months even and

9:03

uh and so you know, it's

9:05

really all about just kind of finding that

9:07

that that right right moment when it

9:09

tasts best. I want to get back into

9:12

I want to spend a bunch of time on aging, because you

9:14

were telling me some things like aging game

9:16

that you found just from your own personal

9:19

stuff, and then you're working your restaurant. That's that's

9:21

that's kind of up ended some of the things that I thought were

9:23

possible, some of the extremes that I thought

9:26

were possible on aging and what you get on

9:28

it. I also want to talk about your

9:30

fish killing method. What I call

9:33

what I heard E K G may But how do you properly

9:35

say it? I don't speak Japanese. I

9:37

wouldn't know. I call it a kids. You Yeah, I've

9:39

just listened to the Japanese. Did say it when I go down to the fish

9:41

market. You know, you kid? You man? I think, but

9:43

you, uh, you grew up in Florida,

9:45

But you did you grow up like in Florida. It's like

9:47

the fisherman's paradise, right? Did you grow up a round

9:50

fishing? Oh? Yeah, I grew up fishing, you know, uh,

9:52

you know kind of Jack's Barracuda's

9:55

tarpan sharks. You

9:57

know, you name it alligators?

10:00

Um? But but I um.

10:03

I got out of there in high school, and then

10:05

I moved to Boston and then went to school in New York

10:08

and then finally came out here. Like your your family's

10:10

your whole family moved. Are you just left on your own? No? I

10:12

just left. I grew up around a

10:14

bunch of people that grew up in New York and and

10:16

you know, they always talked about the big city, big lights,

10:18

and so I I, you always had a dream to get out

10:21

of there and go and moved to New York. You studied what

10:23

there? Well, I went to so

10:26

so I went to Boston. I had some family there. Uh

10:28

what plan? Don't actually going to school in Boston then?

10:30

Um? Uh didn't? And then wind up going

10:32

to culinary school New York in a place called French Culinary

10:34

Institute. Yeah, I gave which is

10:36

now I think it's called i SEC International

10:39

Culinary. Yeah, I gave them a beaver tail

10:41

one time. Right, I

10:43

was messing around for

10:46

for a period of time. I was trying to mess around and finding out

10:48

how the Mountain Men cook beaver you know, like,

10:50

yeah, you know what you're reading about the Mountain of Arts and

10:52

they love beaver tail, right, But you get the sense

10:55

that it's just from oral or

10:57

you know, oral stuff

10:59

that was eventually transcribed into writing

11:02

of people describing the Mountain Men's diet,

11:05

but no one really got into how they were actually

11:07

cooking it or what they're doing with it. And so

11:10

I started messling with it and and put some

11:12

stuff up online about messing around with beaver tail,

11:14

and a guy at that at that school, I

11:17

gave him one and he had his students prep

11:20

it out and that it's pretty exciting stuff

11:23

with beaver tail over there. I

11:25

don't know if exciting comes to mind when you give like a

11:27

culinary school, you know, some rare ingredient,

11:29

But but what what is the what's like the

11:32

makeup of the beaver tail. It's scales.

11:35

It's scales over so

11:37

when you look at the beaver tail, you're just seen the scally surface.

11:41

Uh, that tail will

11:43

be emaciated in the spring to

11:46

the point where you'll see you can see the outline

11:48

of the bone that runs the length of it, just like

11:50

the end of the you know, the end of the spine

11:52

right runs into the tail um.

11:56

But in the fall it gets so fat. I

11:58

think it gets like heavier

12:01

and the fall when it builds up fat and

12:04

when you burn off the scales, you

12:06

just put it next to you, fire for a long time and eventually start

12:08

to bubble and burn and you can scrape that

12:11

skin away and underneath it

12:13

is what looks and tastes like

12:15

grizzle and fat on

12:17

a real fatty ass grilled

12:20

steak and

12:22

you slice that thin and you'd eat it and you'd be

12:24

like, that tastes exactly like grizzle. But

12:27

you have to consider that the people that were eating that,

12:29

um, they were living on a diet of

12:32

very lean wild meat. And I think it was

12:34

just like it was a fat source. Basically

12:38

top the bottom just fat, and you slice it

12:40

thin, put some salt on it, and it's like surprising,

12:43

because it's surprising that that is

12:45

what lives inside of a beaver's tail. So

12:48

what about the meat? Do you eat the beaver meat?

12:51

We just put that on top like a little it's like a little toiret

12:54

topping you could make. You could, really you could

12:57

cook the meat down and then put this stuff

12:59

on there, like make its own little

13:01

fat source on there. Alright, I'm gonna

13:03

give you a recipe for beaver tail after this already got

13:05

it. I don't want to know what you need. Yeah.

13:08

Um, So yeah, that was that was my runn

13:10

into that place. But I

13:13

had some other point I was gonna make about beaver beaver

13:15

tails. Yeah,

13:18

I don't know. Did you know

13:20

by this point, like when you were going to school, Like

13:22

at what point growing up, did you know you had a knack

13:24

for cooking? And then also, at what

13:26

point did it be that you started to associate

13:29

hunting and fishing with your

13:32

interest in cooking. Well,

13:36

I don't know if I ever I thought I had a knack

13:38

for cooking in the beginning. I think that

13:40

You're like, I had to I had to pay some

13:42

bills, you know, yeah,

13:45

and uh and so I got a you know, restaurant

13:47

job. Why Stually, my first restaurant job was in Florida. I

13:50

was dishwasher the Japanese restaurant.

13:53

And um, and I just always

13:55

had restaurant jobs because they were easy to get. You know, back

13:57

then, you can, you know, any any you know,

13:59

schmuck can get a restaurant job. So I was just, you

14:01

know, it was just what I had. And when

14:03

you were back there scrubbing dishes, you were like, some of a

14:05

bitch man, this is what I'm I do with my life? What

14:08

you know? I I So I grew up doing martial

14:11

arts, and I started once about five or so, and

14:14

uh and so the organization

14:16

of actually dishwashing and and

14:18

getting you know, a pile of ship thrown

14:20

at you, you know, play a bust you know, bus

14:23

tubs of uh of plates

14:25

and cups, you know, and

14:27

and and having and having to go through the process of

14:29

like rinsing them, washing them, getting in

14:31

there, getting out of dishwasher, getting put away, drying

14:34

them, wax. It

14:36

was like this movement, you know, smartial arts movement.

14:38

So I was excited about it. Really, I like my

14:40

dishwashing job. So

14:43

there was the fastest dishwasher in town. Man, right,

14:46

a COVID of dishwasher. You know that it worked

14:48

for me when I was my short little stit in the kitchen

14:51

when we had new guys washing dishes and

14:53

me, and they'd be just crossing in the weeds and be at the end

14:55

of the night where not only do they have all the cups and dishes

14:57

and plates and still we're coming at them, but the whole

14:59

kitchen is just breaking down. So now there's you

15:01

know, pots was you know, stuff stuck on

15:03

them, and cheese melted everywhere, and all kinds

15:06

of pans, and man, if you just jumped in

15:08

there a couple of nights and gave him like an hour

15:10

of your time and just busted but

15:12

with them, and then all of a sudden, it's like your

15:15

rapport with them was just golden

15:17

forever. You know, they're just like, all right, man, I like

15:19

you. I like you forever. This dude can handle

15:22

burned on cheese. Then

15:26

yeah, I don't want to I don't want to like labor your bio,

15:28

but I do want understand kind of how you came to

15:31

be who you are. Well, I think I think it was really random,

15:33

you know, it was really just kind of happenstance in my opinion.

15:36

You know, I I I was interested

15:38

in certain things, you know, cooking,

15:40

you know, his physical act. And I

15:42

think you know, growing up doing martial arts, it was you

15:44

know, a relationship to crafts,

15:47

right, I mean, you know it's a craft and so but

15:50

in fact, I went back and forth on cooking

15:52

and martial arts for a long period of time when I first

15:54

started, you know, after I went to corner school. Like

15:56

you were, like you were doing competitive martial arts.

15:59

Uh yeah, yeah, when I was younger, I did

16:01

I did I do Chinese martial arts and

16:04

and and so. Um,

16:07

you know I did some compete when I was younger, but um,

16:10

but I always went back and forth and

16:12

because you know, really practicing

16:14

took up so much time. Uh

16:16

and uh and so cooking at that time was

16:18

you know, distraction from practicing. And so I went back

16:21

and forth and and finally around twenty

16:23

you know, twenty or so, I gave up

16:26

and and just just you know, needed to pay my

16:28

bills, and you know, I started cooking full

16:30

time. And uh and so and

16:32

where were you then? I was in Boston. I

16:34

was in Boston. What kind of food were you doing? Uh?

16:39

Just like be stro food, you know, random

16:42

bistro I worked out. I worked a couple of restaurants in Boston

16:44

that are well known. Um, but

16:46

uh, but it was it was you

16:50

know, it's like I used to sneak in the bathroom, like read

16:52

my like martial arts book, you know, a little scrolls

16:54

and ship in the bathroom. I was like, oh, I gotta breakdown.

16:56

It's fifteen minute break and we go read my scrolls in the

16:58

bathroom. So so I was went back and forth, um

17:01

and uh. And it wasn't really until I came out to

17:03

San Francisco where I really really like,

17:06

uh started to Um.

17:09

It was what thirteen years ago I really started

17:11

to, uh, you know, focus

17:13

wholly on cooking. So

17:16

so working working, working

17:18

in other places at the time. Still, Yeah,

17:21

So well, yeah, when I came out here, I worked at a

17:23

place in the South Bay called H T J. Little

17:25

little, um, little restaurant that it's been

17:27

around for maybe like twenty five years, and

17:30

I had a garden in the back. But but it allowed

17:32

me to really refocus and really you know, uh,

17:35

you know, treated as a career and um and

17:38

uh, you know, it was a learning process.

17:40

I came out here and there was all these incredible products,

17:43

you know, coming from the East Coast, where there's there's

17:45

just not the same you know, you

17:47

know, convergence of you know, all all these

17:49

amazing things. There's like a there's a cheese

17:51

producing region here, there's a wine producing

17:53

region. You know, you can you can

17:56

you know, go outside and and hunt. I

17:58

guess you can do that anywhere. But um,

18:00

but basically they have everything everything you would

18:02

want here as a chef to really produce good

18:04

fit. You felt that, like you felt

18:06

that the the ingredients available

18:08

to you and the products available to you was just

18:11

better here than it was in the East. I

18:13

mean, go you know, you go to Whole Foods. I

18:15

mean, I don't know about now, right, it's a little different now.

18:18

But when I came here, Yeah, for sure. I mean you can go to Whole

18:20

Foods and you can look at you know, three varieties

18:22

of radish, whereas you know the you

18:25

know, uh that I was named that place

18:27

in the East Coast. I don't know if you got a supermarket out there, and

18:29

at that time it was just just wasn't the same. Yeah,

18:32

maybe it's because I was dirt poor when I

18:34

lived in the East Coast. You know what we were talking about yesterday

18:36

driving around here is, um, we're

18:38

kind of in the last couple of days. You've done kind of a tour

18:40

where San Jose

18:43

down to Santa Cruz, Santa

18:45

Cruz up to here. It was like

18:49

where I you know, where I grew up, where I've lived most of my

18:51

life. When you are in an agricultural area,

18:53

you're usually looking at stuff

18:56

that's fed

18:59

to stuff that will become food, right

19:02

like where groups like alfalfa

19:04

and feed corn. When

19:06

you're driving around California, like be like, oh, ship,

19:09

there's a field of cauliflower or

19:11

there's you know, there's like products you

19:13

know where you're like, you're you're able to

19:15

in this climate in this area grow the

19:17

actual things that

19:20

you eat. You know, all the artichokes,

19:22

tree nuts. It just kind of gives you a different relationship

19:25

to how stuff is after because

19:27

most people just look at are looking

19:29

more at commodities when they look at agricultural

19:32

fields rather than looking at like finished

19:34

table ready items

19:36

being grown unless you have a garden. Yeah,

19:40

yeah, that's true. Out here, you know, it's got everything,

19:42

but it's still you know, I mean, there's you

19:45

know, all that stuff out here is still most of the majority

19:47

of it's still you know, kind of monoculture

19:49

and and um, you know, you

19:51

know, cities devoted

19:53

to just artichokes, right,

19:56

So it's still it still has its issues out here.

19:58

Right. So it's really all the small it's it's

20:00

it's it's all practices, right until you really get into

20:02

the smaller practices than it. Then you

20:05

know there's a there's a lot of

20:07

issues with with you know, agriculture

20:09

in general. So when you when you got there, I

20:11

need to start your own. Is this the first restaurant you started?

20:13

Yeah? Did you at the

20:15

same time decide to be that You're gonna get

20:17

a restaurant and get a farm?

20:21

Well, I mean I yeah, I mean you need a farm

20:23

to to really have the best things. Like

20:25

most restaurants don't have a goddamn farm.

20:27

Well that's true, but you know, if you're gonna make good

20:29

food, you gotta have farm. If you if you're

20:32

still good to be like that. That's as simple as

20:34

that. Like if you have a rest if I'm

20:36

gonna have a restaurant, a farm, need a fisherman,

20:38

you know, need to get need to get media, a certain place,

20:40

you need to find uh you know, uh,

20:43

you know dry goods. So you know,

20:45

as a chef, you gotta you gotta go through,

20:48

uh, you gotta audit your list of

20:50

of how are you really procure

20:52

ingredients if you really want to get to

20:54

to a place where you're actually producing

20:57

good food in earnest, Right, So

21:00

explain the farm that goes with stays On. Is

21:02

it called says On farm? Uh?

21:04

Yeah, sure, we'll call it that. It's

21:06

just I saw it written somewhere you got a duck hanging

21:08

up somewhere, and I saw it, said like, yeah,

21:10

that's just in our internal language. We don't we just

21:13

our farm, right, it's called the farm.

21:15

But yeah, it's just you know, you gotta

21:17

you have to you know, you got you have a you

21:19

have choices, right, you can pick up the phone as a chevy you

21:21

can call you know, your your purveyor, your

21:23

wholesaler and say, hey, look, you know, uh,

21:26

take six heads of lettuce today,

21:28

right, Um. But you

21:31

know that the whole process of of wholesaling

21:34

is you know, there's there's a middleman there,

21:36

there's a you know usually maybe another middleman,

21:39

someone who actually sources all this stuff out. Then

21:41

there's the actual producer. So you're separated

21:43

and by the time it gets a restaurant, you're five layers

21:45

away from from getting the actual product.

21:48

So you know, it goes to a whole, it goes to you

21:50

know, shipping, it goes through holding

21:53

in the warehouse, and then maybe you get it maybe

21:55

three or four or five, six, seven days later, right,

21:57

So at that point, you know, it doesn't taste have

22:00

any resemblance to really what a

22:03

great product really is anymore. You

22:05

know, the aroma was gone. That that that original

22:07

taste when you picked it has gone. And and most

22:10

likely the product itself is is you

22:12

know, some from some seed that

22:14

was uh, you know, spliced

22:17

and diced you know, seven different ways to

22:19

to have no resemblance of the the original

22:21

taste of that product. So we just wanted

22:23

to to you know, take it back to a

22:25

time to where everything had flavor, right, I

22:28

mean really since what World

22:30

War one or two or where it was that you

22:32

know, everything has been you know, um,

22:35

you kind of bastardize our seeds, our seeds

22:38

and you know all the produce you know, I

22:40

mean you really think about, um,

22:42

you know how many people have eating a ripe

22:44

tomato, you know, from a great seed off

22:46

the vine when it's when it's truly like right,

22:48

it's very few. So that was our purpose.

22:51

We wanted to just you know, have

22:53

great products. You know. That's the thing that comes up

22:55

a lot in conversations about food. I feel

22:57

like over the last two decades or whatever, is uh,

23:00

the I sit

23:02

on both sides of what I'm gonna bring up where people

23:05

talk about the industrialization of

23:07

food, Okay, and we generally

23:09

now sort of talk about it as

23:11

a negative because we have the luxury

23:15

in this country, We had the luxury of like eating

23:17

very fine food. But to

23:19

contextualize it a little bit, just

23:21

to show you that, just to demonstrate, like my how

23:24

I sit on both sizes contextualized a little

23:26

bit. During World War two, we

23:29

had estimates very but

23:32

perhaps some millions of people starved

23:34

to death in Europe. We

23:36

had rations in

23:38

this country on you

23:41

know, there was like dairy rations, meat

23:43

rations, major shortages, and

23:45

coming out of that, it

23:48

wasn't long after that that we got used to this

23:50

idea that we might be in the very

23:52

near future entering into another major

23:55

world conflict with the Soviet

23:57

Union. And I think at the time the most

23:59

pressed thing issue was how can we

24:01

create a system where

24:03

we have the capability of throwing a

24:06

switch and feeding

24:08

Europe and

24:11

fielding this military. And so we

24:13

just like, it wasn't that we got

24:15

lost our way. It's just that we had a period

24:17

where our priorities were completely

24:20

different and we and then some

24:22

good things came out of it, like that we would bank soil

24:24

right, You'd have like farms that were put

24:27

out that when dairy prices

24:29

dropped, rather than having a dairy

24:31

farmer go out of business, we would

24:33

subsidize them so that they could stay

24:35

ready to jump into action should

24:38

the need occur. So

24:40

now we look at it. I feel like now

24:42

we look at were like we're getting away from that, We're getting

24:44

away from the industrialization. I feel

24:46

like we always gonna keep an open eye for the fact that it's

24:48

just because we have the luxury of doing that.

24:51

But it wasn't like evil people trying to do evil

24:53

ship because just people trying to get

24:55

ready for a catastrophe which we had

24:57

just witnessed happened. No,

25:00

it's true. And uh, you know, we

25:02

we operate within a very narrow little hole,

25:04

right, so so so our you know,

25:06

our ore are in our little hole, you know, our

25:08

little pond we were are. Our focus is purely

25:11

tastes, right, it's tasting along

25:13

with taste comes from others saying anyway,

25:16

saying that you're guilty. Why I just claimed. But I think that there's

25:18

like there's a way that when when we

25:20

lose I think we lose sight of some of the motivations

25:23

of how stuff came to be and treated

25:25

like it was just bad decision making. Yeah,

25:27

you like it's all just Monsanto just trying

25:29

to make next right, Yeah, but it's like a lot

25:31

of factors at play, right, Yeah,

25:33

No, it's not just the evil uncle right then that yeah,

25:37

but but you yeah, but now just

25:39

to get back to where we are, Yeah, now, we do have

25:42

at this moment in time the luxury

25:45

to have like to pursue

25:48

perfection and absolute ripeness

25:51

and food rather than just shelf stability.

25:53

Well, there's also some really cool solutions

25:55

too that you see coming around, right especially with

25:57

with the age of technology. There's there's a clue

26:00

is loop agriculture systems that are happening that produce

26:02

you know, I think it's you know, twenty

26:04

x the volume of of product

26:07

and in a really small space, so you can put

26:10

you know, one of the most interesting

26:12

ones is uh.

26:14

You know, it's completely closed loop. So

26:17

what that means is really you've got you

26:19

know, a little pot, a little capsule, and

26:22

it's an artificial and growing environment, and

26:24

you can fit a ton of product in there. You can grow

26:26

a ton of product in a very small space. Um,

26:29

you produce. You can produce

26:32

uh. I don't remember what the numbers were, but

26:34

I think it's roughly x uh

26:36

the volume of food out

26:39

of this little small space. You can also

26:41

control the nutrient drink that goes in.

26:43

You can control the sun cycle, you

26:45

know, all of those elements that go into growing

26:47

food. And since it's closed loop,

26:49

you're basically recycling you know, all of that

26:52

taste and all of the nutrient drink. So um,

26:55

and it's all computerized. Uh,

26:57

and so you can basically, let's say you had uh,

27:00

you know, an artichoke that was perfect

27:03

in uh two thousand one in

27:06

you know, Salinas, when that was the best arti shark you ever

27:08

had in your life, you could go you can go look

27:10

up all of the historical data or all

27:12

the weather data, and you can plug in those data

27:15

points to this closed loop system and you can basically

27:17

replicate that exactly. So there's

27:19

some cool stuff coming out also, but that's in that

27:21

would have interesting implications for the

27:23

wine world. Yeah, well

27:25

see the issue with that now. But the

27:27

issue is that you lose a little bit of what's called

27:30

taroa right you know, because you

27:32

can still produce a delicious sweet plant.

27:34

That's that's great, that's the way that you maybe

27:37

like it. But you

27:40

can ever replicate really

27:42

truly the taste of nature, right, It doesn't

27:44

just it's not possible you can. So

27:47

so that's the downside of that. Where

27:49

uh, where in your

27:53

if we're in if we're checking back in

27:56

on and on your biography, and at this

27:58

point we kind of got you where you're

28:00

here. You got a restaurant, you

28:02

got a farm, Um,

28:05

where did like you're sort of a where did your

28:08

re awareness of hunting come in? Because you were

28:10

like exposed to it in a way in Florida

28:12

and we're aware that it was the thing people do. You'd

28:15

like to run around out the wood, Yeah, you run around, you know, as

28:17

a kid, you run around and there's Alegan run

28:20

around with spears. Yeah, you know, at least to

28:22

try to hunt ut wild boars with spears. Never successful,

28:24

but you know it was waiting the tree and try to throw a spear down.

28:27

But it was it was more of a you know, just

28:29

just being a kid, you know, trying to exactly

28:32

you get some frogs. You know, we get frogs and we uh,

28:36

you know, eat some water moccasins and rattlesnakes

28:38

and stuff. But but you know,

28:40

it can't it came around because of products. It's it's

28:42

really taste. Right. At a certain point you look at

28:45

you start to dissect all of our practices,

28:47

you know, and all of our food practices, um

28:50

and at a certain point realize is a chef that that uh,

28:53

you know, grain fed beef doesn't

28:55

taste good anymore? Right, You start

28:57

to notice, you know, it's a process. We start to notice

28:59

the fact that that beef, you know, or

29:02

or meat in general, everything tastes like corn,

29:04

or everything tastes like shitty

29:07

wheat, you know, or whatever it

29:09

may taste like. So, so the whole purpose

29:12

was was taste. Really, that's our whole

29:14

purposes really taste. Right now, do we really you

29:16

know, find a product that did is uh,

29:18

you know, like it once was or or or

29:20

whatever our reference points are for a particular

29:23

product, right like, what is what is the

29:25

most delicious uh meat? What

29:27

is the most delicious lettuce? You know?

29:30

And then so your experience is wild

29:32

game kind of started to shape

29:34

your impressions of what was possible and what

29:36

could be done and what things would taste like variations.

29:40

Well, I've been I've been getting uh,

29:42

you know, we get we get a lot of we get a lot of hunters

29:45

here that give us meat, you know, get u s wild ducks

29:47

or or deer or whatever and just kind of donate

29:49

it to me. And um, so

29:51

been eating it for a few years out here. Um

29:54

surprising. There's a lot of hunters in California, or

29:57

at least a handful. Um.

30:00

Some friends would pass long stuff you check out.

30:02

They just passed along meat I eat here and

30:04

duck and and um I got

30:06

you interested. Well it just yeah, it just it. It

30:08

really re sparked that or reignited

30:11

that spark, right, And uh,

30:14

I mean wild ducks are really delicious, right

30:16

and wild meats you know, really good. We treat

30:18

it the right way. So so at

30:20

a certain point, I just want to get it myself, you know, I just I

30:22

just wanted to. I wanted to, you know, have all wild

30:24

meat. So there's the thing that happens.

30:27

Maybe you can explain this to me. When

30:29

you're looking at when you're reading

30:31

about chefs and reading about great restaurants, you're

30:34

always seeing that that anyone

30:37

can produce I shouldn't say anyone, but

30:39

yeah, let's just say anyone can produce

30:41

this great dish once,

30:44

okay. But the true

30:47

sign of expertise, so like mastering your

30:49

craft is that you can do it seventy

30:52

times in a night or

30:54

whatever number of times in a night and

30:56

have it be the same. And then

30:58

you can do that for weeks, right,

31:01

and just like executed again and again and

31:03

again. I

31:05

don't know if you use that measure of

31:07

success, but yeah, you're familiar with That's the thing people

31:09

bring up when talking about being a

31:11

great cook. But with wild

31:14

game, you look at me like you've never heard I've never heard

31:16

of that, to be honest, Yeah, I was reading

31:18

that. I was reading someone talking about that. No,

31:20

I was reading there a day someone saying I

31:23

was reading a profile of chef in the New

31:25

Yorker. Makes sense, And it was a guy saying

31:27

like, yeah, um, perfection

31:30

to me is three eggs,

31:33

like eggs benedict, without

31:35

a mistake, without one returned, without

31:37

one customer return sure, like as

31:40

as the craft of cooking goes. Yeah,

31:42

so I hear that now

31:44

and then. And

31:46

on the other hand, with wild game,

31:49

you're opening yourself up to such a tremendous amount

31:51

of variability because

31:54

they're not the same. You know,

31:56

if you if you identified, like if you have a

31:58

farm and you're identified. Man, this this dude

32:01

at this farm produces some goodass

32:03

lamb because he's got some breed

32:05

of lamb that works well

32:08

on the land where he raises it.

32:11

He's got a great irrigated pasture

32:14

with like the right blend of

32:17

forbes and grasses, and his

32:19

alfalfa is beautiful, and he's

32:21

able to run this thing. And when I get a leg

32:23

of land from him

32:26

this year. It's great, I get a leg

32:28

of land from him next year. It's great. That

32:30

ship isn't what wild game is like. Well,

32:33

because you shooting, you're shooting an

32:35

animal. But you know, I don't know. I look,

32:37

it looked like a good animal. I shot it, but I got

32:39

over there and had recently crashed into

32:41

a porcupine, so its entire

32:43

belly was full of quills and every

32:46

one of those injuries was full of post. It

32:48

was emaciated. Or

32:51

I shot it and wasn't the first

32:53

guy that shot it, because it's back leg on the side

32:56

not facing me had

32:58

been injured by a it, and so

33:01

you know, it was packed with dirt and it was

33:03

a mass. Or I killed some big crazy

33:05

buck that had been rotting hard for two months

33:08

and hasn't probably eaten a liquor grass for two

33:10

months, and tasted like ship.

33:12

Or I shot a deer and it fell into a big sinkhole

33:15

and I couldn't get it out till a couple of days later, with

33:17

a rope and a buddy holding my ankles.

33:22

So I'm just saying that isn't

33:24

like this dude that produces these wonderful lambs

33:26

time and time again, it's like you

33:29

can't there is like perfection is

33:31

out there, but perfection isn't always

33:34

out there. Yeah, I think like we

33:36

we killed like whatever it was going on that year in Idaho

33:38

and we killed Yanni. We killed

33:40

some stomper bucks in Idaho. And I don't know what

33:42

was going on that year in Idaho, but that was like it was

33:45

the best mule deer

33:47

meat ever. And

33:50

I'm eating a shipload of mule deer right

33:52

and I don't know. It defied everything you're supposed

33:54

because supposed to be like big giant bucks on taste. These

33:56

are big giant bucks pre rut

33:59

that had two which is of tallow on their

34:01

back. And we're great. So

34:05

that's my question, Well, how do you

34:07

deal with all the lack how do you deal with all the lack

34:09

of consistency when you're

34:13

as a chef who's dealing with wild

34:16

game and not just commercially produced

34:18

wild game, but on your own, you're dealing with hunted wild

34:20

game. Yeah, for us, For for

34:22

us, that's all. I mean, every product is like

34:24

that, right, I mean the whole for us. You know, it's so

34:26

specialized that you know, when we get a radish

34:29

in one day from the farm, it's not

34:31

necessarily the same as the next day from the farm,

34:33

right, so you can you can

34:35

you know, uh, you know, take

34:38

that theory with with any product that you use.

34:40

Could be the rain, could be

34:42

you know, the amount of sun you get in one day, could

34:45

be uh, you know, their diet. But every

34:47

product changes a little bit every day. So the way

34:49

that we operate is we basically get

34:51

a product in the door, look at it,

34:53

and then decide what to do from there. Because even

34:56

if you're getting you know, that lamb, you

34:58

know, maybe they forgot to feed

35:00

it one day. Who knows, maybe

35:02

the lamb is sick, you don't, you don't know, right, So

35:05

so everything changes just to touch,

35:08

and even if it's just incrementally, it still changes

35:10

every day. And so our focus is really on

35:12

kind of capturing that taste. So you

35:14

know, if we get uh, if we get a buck in it's

35:17

very um um

35:20

bucky, then you know,

35:23

you've got to decide what to do with it from there. So

35:26

do you grind it to maybe

35:28

purge some of that flavor out? You know,

35:30

maybe you throak in and salt water for salted

35:33

water for a few days, just to kind of purge

35:35

it and have have a clean flavor. Maybe

35:38

it's like that that mule deer you've got and just

35:40

throw it right and grill. You don't even age it. So

35:42

it just depends. And so so our

35:44

whole operating system in the kitchen

35:46

is based on really kind of assessing

35:49

what the product is and then deciding,

35:52

you know, what methods to go through for

35:54

preservation and so that that

35:57

you know, select just selecting the right product is

36:00

is a huge part of it. But um,

36:03

you know you can either for us, we either especially

36:05

sparticularly meat and game.

36:07

You know, you either choose either use it right

36:09

there or there's some sort of continuation

36:12

and the preservation process that happens. So whether

36:14

it's aging or curing or

36:17

grinding into a sausage or whatever

36:19

it may be. You know, it's just just

36:21

like anything else. Can you take this

36:24

menu and do the

36:26

many that you served last night and do a sort

36:28

of speed walkthrough? Uh

36:32

yeah, I got one over here. Well

36:34

I want people to get I want people to get a sense

36:36

of of what of what dishes

36:38

you like to serve. Well,

36:41

um, let's see you had a fistfull caviar,

36:43

start white sturge

36:45

and caviar. It's white surgeon caviar. It's

36:48

farmed, right, it's farm caviar. But we we

36:50

but that is a fish that that is a fish that a Felican

36:52

fish for Yeah.

36:55

In the Columbia drainage, they have like uh, you

36:58

know they have see they have uh

37:04

open seasons and within those seasons they have kill

37:06

seasons. Were allowed to like harvest sturgeon.

37:09

We were making our own sturgeon caviare

37:11

this year with a very abundant sturgeon

37:13

called shovel nose sturgeon. But

37:16

it's material in the Yellowstone

37:18

River. Yeah, you're about ten a day

37:21

shovel noses and you get them in the spring.

37:23

They're about you know, a big one to be

37:25

two and a half feet long. So, but they have

37:27

caviar inside. Yeah, but it's it's like

37:30

painstaking the

37:33

eggs. Yeah, we're gonna put it through a little sieve. You

37:36

gotta just mess with it. No, there's nothing

37:38

to save out. So when you open them up, when

37:41

you get a female, you open

37:43

them up and you know some fish

37:46

have like the skein, right, the sack that holds

37:48

the eggs like the most the easiest

37:50

example of over egg to clean would

37:52

be salmon where

37:54

you open up that skein and you can just kind of like the

37:56

eggs just kind of fall away. On

38:00

sturgeon, the

38:02

skein and the eggs are just like almost

38:04

interwoven where each

38:06

egg needs to be kind of separated from the skein,

38:09

and it's it's painstaking, like you get

38:11

it where you have a ton of it, and then we just

38:14

cleaned it for a long time and

38:16

they were like, dude, I can't keep cleaning these eggs. And

38:18

then we salt water the eggs and just

38:20

ate them. You've seen you've seen the commercial

38:23

process a cavy are right, I have never seen

38:25

how they do it. So they just take they take, uh, I

38:27

mean it's the same, right, Maybe it's more

38:29

on this like wild surge and shovel nose, but

38:31

but on you know, like a white sturge and you take the caviar

38:34

shack out, you throw it into a sieve and

38:36

the sieve is you know, the right side

38:38

for the beads. But but they just rub it. They

38:40

rubb it pretty hard, and they rub it and then it breaks

38:42

away all the membrane and only the eggs based then

38:46

they basically drop it in in a salted water bath

38:48

and then a lot of that stuff will well, a lot

38:50

of the membrane will float. You just lift it off

38:53

and then the caviars left over, and they repeat

38:55

that process till it's clean. The shovel nosed

38:57

sturgeon, uh

38:59

there egg is probably about this is this

39:01

ballpark in it, but their eggs probably about half

39:04

the diameter of a white sturgeon.

39:06

There's another you know, there's also another

39:09

sturgeon or another caviard that comes

39:12

out of the Yellowstone is

39:14

um paddlefish

39:17

caviar which people collect and that's

39:19

bigger and that's a high grade caviar. And

39:21

then we used to get caviar out of uh

39:24

you know, and there's even a commercial market for

39:26

for white Great lakes. Whitefish have

39:28

a pretty good caviar and that's the thing that people you know, it's

39:31

rod and real angers can catch. The reason I bring

39:33

that up is not just like as you walk through this, I

39:36

want to just establish what these

39:38

things even though you're dealing with a commercially

39:41

caught version or you're dealing with uh,

39:44

you know, something that's in the commercial chain, right

39:47

that can be legally purchased and soul in the restaurant

39:49

that so much of what you're dealing with would

39:52

also be identified as a type of

39:54

wild game because, especially in the ocean,

39:57

pretty much anything you're buying for restaurants

39:59

things that people can go catch

40:02

on their own on sport fishing tackle. Right, So

40:05

sturgeon, Uh though most people

40:07

don't do it, most fishermen don't do it. Um

40:09

producing caveat is something that just like anybody

40:12

could go do from a wide

40:14

variety of fish. Yeah, they got they

40:16

did. They got a surgeon fishing out here.

40:19

Yeah, and there's some kill seasons. Wasn't

40:21

Scott Peterson when he cut up his wife and

40:24

dumped her in San Francisco Bay. Part of his

40:26

defense was that he was sturgeon fishing When they asked him

40:28

why he was out in the boat that day, did

40:30

you know that? I have no idea. He

40:33

did. And me and my fake uncle Donn

40:35

used to troll stripers in San Francisco Bay

40:37

and we would go right, it was baiting the

40:39

sturgeon. So

40:42

yeah, as he was doing a chum line. Um.

40:45

Yeah, me, my fake uncle don used to uh

40:48

do some trolling for stripe bass out here in San Francisco

40:51

Bay back in two thousand four, and

40:53

we would just troll right in front of the

40:55

jail. We're they we're

40:57

Scott Peterson is housed the prison

41:00

him. Yeah, what's it called.

41:03

It's not a San San Quentin.

41:05

San Quentin. Yeah, yeah, they got they got like

41:07

watch towers. You we would, I'm not shooting you. We

41:09

would be trolling by. You'd wave at dudes and watched

41:11

towers. I feel like there's some sort of environmental

41:15

issues over there, maybe some waste or something.

41:17

I was describing to be honest, that we would that I would

41:19

say that those for for toxic

41:22

fish, they were delicious. So

41:24

out of the next one turbot, Yeah, with

41:27

diamond turbo. So diamond turbots is just a

41:29

just a local, local species of turbo

41:32

and a little it's smaller for the most

41:34

part, um but

41:37

you can fish it. Yeah, and you brought

41:39

that fish too. You showed me the

41:41

fish one of your guys that the

41:44

fish was alive on a plate, like

41:47

alive, alive and

41:49

in it wasn't

41:51

how how many minutes went by? Five

41:54

six, and I was presented with so one

41:56

minute, the fish is there on my plate alive. I

41:58

grabbed its jaw and it was very flexible,

42:01

and in a couple minutes later, I had the

42:06

liver two ways, well different

42:08

his liver and a different fishes liver two ways. You

42:12

had made chitlands, right,

42:14

explain that. So you got so

42:17

you you basically like you know, on especially

42:19

a fish like turbo, you've got, I mean, you could use almost

42:22

the whole thing, right, every everything is good about it

42:24

as long as you're you know, especially when it's alive

42:26

a few minutes before. But um, the

42:29

the guts, uh, the heart,

42:31

the livers and

42:34

and and essentially the chiplands are the

42:36

the intestines, the intestinal track and

42:38

the stomach are all delicious. You

42:40

just had to clean it properly. So we boil

42:42

it in salted water a few times, scrape it out, boil

42:45

it, scrape it out, boil it. Uh,

42:47

and then once you chill it down, it's got this little

42:49

you know, crunchy texture. Um.

42:52

But it was it was shocking to have

42:54

that, Like how good it was? The delicious right?

42:56

Yeah, the little on sauce on there,

42:59

we've got we've got the sauce called sas on sauce. It's

43:01

a it's our it's our seasoning

43:03

elixir. And it's like it's basically a

43:05

brew uh made of

43:08

seaweeds, local seaweeds, local

43:10

little silver fish, all

43:12

of the excess bones and trim

43:15

and anything that we get from our fish. And

43:17

then it's grilled or barbecued or

43:19

and then it's mixed together and it's basically inoculated

43:22

with a with a bacteria, and then

43:24

it's allowed to culture and ferment and it turns

43:26

into this kind of a lixir that's like

43:28

the savory almost crossed

43:31

between white soy and fish sauce. And

43:33

so we season a lot of things with that. You'll bathe that'll

43:35

fish, you'll bathe the fish and testines

43:38

in that stuff. Yeah, but season a little bit in that

43:40

season yeah. Yeah. And then the livers we the

43:42

livers are are are basically salted

43:45

or rinsed in salted water like a brine, right, because

43:47

you've got to purge the liver um and

43:50

uh, and then you you salt the liver a little bit.

43:53

And then and then we um either

43:55

poaching salted water, we grill it or we

43:57

we you know, the version you had was basically

44:00

halted for about a week ranch and

44:02

then put in uh

44:04

a seasoning paste which is like stays on seasoning

44:07

past. It's kind of like a misa it's basically the same thing as

44:09

a misa um. So you had

44:11

one version that was poached in one version that was salted

44:13

and seasoned in our seasoning paste. And

44:15

then the ribs slab explain

44:19

what you do with the fish ribs

44:22

or how the fish rib has become like a little

44:24

serving tray grilled little

44:26

rib yeah, yeah, uh

44:29

so, uh yeah,

44:31

I guess really the reason for that was because

44:34

you know, the bones still have meat on

44:36

it, right, they have they have flavor, they have taste, so

44:39

and and typically all the little tail pieces

44:42

anything you might feel might be tough. You

44:44

know, the connective tissue of the um.

44:47

You know the skirts, the little a little skirt around

44:49

the outside of the fin, right basically the ship that

44:52

nine percent of fishermen throwing the garbage.

44:55

Yeah, it's and you know that stuff is full of flavor,

44:57

like a lot a lot of those little little sweet

44:59

bits or you know that that's the sweetmeat

45:01

to me because it's full of flavor. It's the stuff that gets a

45:03

lot of use. Um and that's

45:06

all gets chopped up and then basically mixed

45:08

into this chopped seasoned

45:10

mixture. And then and then put back on the bone

45:12

and then brushed with a sauce and then grilled,

45:15

and so it's like a little riblet. Do

45:17

you know that? In and I

45:19

see I'm sitting right next to one of the scopier's

45:21

books. That's how a scopia

45:24

would handle carp. Ye know, in

45:26

a lot of other countries, carper like a very

45:28

popular food fish. And in fact

45:31

they were introduced into the Great Lakes when when

45:33

the Great Lakes fisheries were declining

45:36

at like catastrophic rates.

45:39

Um a fish cultural has had the

45:41

idea that they would put common carp

45:43

into the Great Lakes to make up

45:45

for the loss of food fish from

45:47

environmental destruction in the Great Lakes. But

45:50

it is obviously never caught out with Americans. Like Americans

45:52

don't like the generally speaking, Americans

45:55

don't like to eat carp. But scopiers

45:58

carp recipes would basically be that

46:01

you poach to fish whatever you're gonna do to

46:03

it to be able to strip all meat off

46:05

the bone. Then he

46:08

would mix that with all kinds

46:10

of good ship to eat. Right like you

46:12

said, you're a little you're a little chopped up combination

46:14

you put on there. But he would mix it with butter cream

46:18

truffles, and then lay the carp's

46:20

tail and head down where they belong,

46:23

and reform the fish's body

46:26

out of this concoction

46:28

that he would make, and then putting new scales

46:31

back on it and

46:33

serve that as carp. And

46:36

once you go through all that, that carp

46:38

becomes pretty damn good. But it doesn't

46:40

have a whole lot to do with carpet anymore. He

46:42

just Yeah, it's

46:45

like it tastes like a truffle.

46:47

Yeah, exactly, a creamy a creamy

46:50

truffle kind of moose. Well,

46:52

back then, you know, there's a lot of a

46:54

lot of um masking, right

46:57

because you guys, handling

46:59

was a little different back then, right, And now we've got

47:02

we have so much information that we can we can

47:04

uh, you know, we've

47:06

learned from other other you know, cultures

47:09

that like like Japan is a great

47:11

example of handling, right where everything's just

47:13

handled so well that the taste winds

47:15

up being clean and kind of pure, right,

47:18

like it the records. Yeah, it's like,

47:20

I guess that's the way of putting it is. The way you're handling

47:23

stuff that's so fresh, is you're

47:25

just trying like showcasing what the thing is.

47:28

You're not using it to make some other thing out

47:30

of it. Yeah, exactly, you're not

47:32

doing like a radical transformation. What's

47:35

good. It's good enough to where you you don't need to write,

47:37

there's no there's no need to you know, stuff it full of troubles

47:39

and cream because it already tastes the lessous. You just can't,

47:42

you know, you can't screw it up. So the

47:44

rib slabs, then you cook the tail. Yeah,

47:48

yet you had the head, you had the tail. The rib

47:50

slabs and the head and the tail are basically just

47:53

just purged and salted water. Uh.

47:55

And then we we poached them

47:58

and then we grill them.

48:00

So he's poaching for a few minutes at the low temperature

48:02

I think it's like sixty degrees just to set

48:05

the head. Yeah. And so it basically cooks the

48:07

head, you know, evenly all the way through and

48:10

um and and loosens up all the all the

48:12

good bits like the little the lips and

48:14

the connective tissue and the cart

48:16

lit or whatever whatever is and whatever

48:18

the makeup of the fishes. But it loosens all that stuff

48:20

up. Um. And then we grill it. And

48:22

then you you just pull it all apart, right, so the whole thing

48:24

falls apart basically, and then all of that good stuff

48:27

on the inside, which is really one of my favorite pieces

48:29

or my favorite bits, is you know, easily

48:32

easy to get at. So on the like

48:34

on the fish were eating last night, we ate the head, the

48:37

tail, the trim, the guts.

48:40

The hell do you guys do with the

48:42

the flame the meat? Well that's what you

48:44

ate in the little bull with the flowers. So

48:47

that's just served raw. Yeah, that's just wrong.

48:50

And then when you kill a fish. I

48:52

learned this from my friend Helen Chow because I was out fishing

48:54

with Helen Chow and her boyfriend John

48:58

Um. We're at this one

49:00

time dicking around on a on a fish

49:03

and charter and the fish they would catch, they

49:05

would John would kind of sever

49:07

the spine and

49:10

then run a

49:12

hunkle wire down the interior

49:15

of the spinal cord to relax

49:17

the fish. And I was explaining

49:20

to you last night that in South America, I

49:22

watched amor Indians do that

49:24

with big turtles that they would catch. Because

49:27

if he was ever caught a snap turtle and you cut

49:29

snap turtle's head off the

49:31

heads very much. We call it it's

49:33

not alive in any kind of sense of the word of

49:35

being cognizant, but it's full

49:38

of activity. The body is

49:41

clenched up, and the body stays absolutely

49:43

clenched up, and not like rigor

49:45

mortis, for just like a nervous system clenched

49:48

up for hours up

49:50

to eight hours before I think finally relaxes

49:52

and you can skin it. And they would do that

49:55

practice e K G. May.

49:57

I'm sure that's not the word they used down there, but

49:59

they would say differently. They would

50:01

remount the spine and

50:04

just relax the whole animal, and you get the same

50:06

effect by when

50:08

the electoral shock uh

50:11

cattle doing the slaughter process. Little

50:13

hit that thing in the head with a captive bolt gun and

50:17

I can't remember if they then I watched them doing

50:19

it in a couple different places. They bleed

50:21

it and then shock it, and

50:23

that shocking relaxes the animal. But

50:26

you're getting at something with fish, like can you explain

50:28

the process. Yeah, we'll say it's not even

50:30

just fish, it's also game to like. The way that

50:32

I try to hunt is for pretty specific also, but I'll

50:34

talk about fish first. So um

50:37

uh, you know, it's it's it's basically just

50:39

neural death. You're basically just ruining the nerves so

50:41

that there's no reaction, continued reaction, right,

50:43

So you basically, you know, let's say, let's take

50:45

the turbot for instance. Every fish is a little

50:47

different in the way you kill it, but but the goal

50:50

is really the same, and you get brain death and neural death,

50:52

right or neural destruction, I

50:54

guess. And uh and

50:56

so uh you know you

50:58

you we we friends since you know, insert

51:00

a knife right at the place where the

51:03

head and uh, the spine

51:05

meat and also the brain

51:07

is and so it's basically just one one

51:09

stroke, one kill, right, And

51:12

then we make a little decision on the back

51:14

of the tail through the spinal cord, you know, that's

51:16

right, that's where he that's where John runs the wires

51:18

the tail side. Yeah, and so you grab the tail.

51:20

It gives you a little handle basically, and grab the tail

51:23

and you stick the wire on the neural

51:25

cavity of the neural column. Basically that goes,

51:27

you know, all the way through the spine of the fish,

51:29

and you just run that up and down until it basically

51:32

destroys the nerves and then the fish is

51:34

limb and then preserves

51:36

that. Yeah, and it just presert goes completely limp,

51:38

and that preserves that texture in the fish,

51:41

and the taste is very it also to me, it

51:43

also produced. It produces a really a super clean

51:45

taste, right you don't you don't, um

51:48

you know there's something about an animal running

51:51

away or or struggling

51:54

that produces a different taste, right releases

51:56

Uh, whatever releases in the system,

51:58

and that tastes to me is from right. Yeah,

52:01

And you're gonna touch on hunting, and I wanted, like, I'm

52:03

gonna preface what you're gonna say with and I'm not gonna

52:05

like go after you about it or challenge about it.

52:07

But what what

52:10

this man is about to say is a

52:12

controversial notion. But I'll let him. I'll

52:14

let him speak to you talking about head shooting. Yeah,

52:17

head shots. Yeah, yeah, your head shot man.

52:20

Yeah, absolutely so. Cent of the time I

52:22

count among my head shooting. Uh

52:24

associates you and my friend Ron,

52:27

Like, m M, no, I got another

52:29

head shooter, buddy. Isn't Tony a head shooter?

52:32

I don't know? But he's like

52:34

a a marine corps Oh

52:37

that Tony, Yes, he is. You're right, he is.

52:40

Yeah, yeah, you

52:42

like to you like to do neural what do you call

52:44

it? Neural death. It's the same thing.

52:46

I mean, it's the same principle, really, but you gotta you gotta

52:49

let me preface that with like, if you're if you're not gonna

52:51

put several thousand rounds through you

52:53

know each each you know shot and in

52:56

every way you can possibly practice, he

52:58

probably shouldn't try shoot for a head, right, but

53:01

because you're robbing yourself of your margin

53:04

for error right well, into

53:06

me. Even worse is that you're gonna injure it and it's

53:08

gonna run away. Yeah, that's what that's

53:10

the worst part, you know. I don't mean that. Yeah, I'm not worried

53:12

about if it was like if every

53:14

shot was either instant death or

53:17

a myths, there's no shot I would

53:19

ever pass up. It's

53:21

the trouble is, you

53:23

know, the trouble

53:25

is in those ones that that fall in

53:27

the gray area between those

53:29

two extremes, Like when someone shooting at shooting

53:32

at an elk with a bow and trying to hit it in the

53:34

heart and they spine it and

53:36

it drops and they're all excited. You

53:39

could be like, well, I would temper your excitement

53:41

with the fact that you were like eighteen

53:45

inches off, And if you had moved

53:47

that eighteen inches off in other

53:49

directions, you would have had a very different outcome.

53:52

Yeah, but you happen to be eighteen off in exactly

53:54

the right spot, you know, well, I

53:56

mean, I guess my opinion is if you can't, if you

53:59

if you don't feel confident

54:01

with the shot, don't take it. I mean, that's

54:03

that's like, if you if you don't feel like you're guaranteeing

54:05

yourself, you know that you're gonna you're

54:07

gonna your point of impact is gonna be

54:10

exactly where you think it's gonna be. Just don't shoot.

54:12

Yeah, I'm with you. That's what people like, we've

54:14

we've been asked many times like what's the what's the um

54:18

what's an ethical shot an unethical shot?

54:21

And after wringing my hands about

54:23

that question a long time, I was like, if

54:25

you're surprised you got its

54:29

ethical shot, if

54:31

you want to be like, holy shit, I can't believe

54:33

I got it that, I was like, you probably shouldn't have touched the

54:35

trigger, but yeah, so so yeah,

54:38

so we'll leave We'll leave that one there. But explain, like what

54:40

you're after, so provided it all the

54:42

provided all that, then um, you're

54:45

you're really after the same thing after with the fish, you

54:47

know, you're you're basically I'm shooting right

54:49

behind the head where it meets the spine,

54:52

and um and uh

54:54

at that point it's going through and the thing drops us dead.

54:57

You know, at least I think it's dead. Well,

55:00

if that happened, would be pretty damn dead. Yeah,

55:02

I mean it doesn't move afterwards, that's for sure.

55:05

Do you have any thoughts on bleeding because I believe

55:07

Ron doesn't say when he makes a good

55:09

headshot he immediately runs up

55:12

to it. And yeah, because the lung because it

55:14

bleeds it. Because if you when you hit

55:16

something through the lungs, you're like self

55:18

bleeding it right. The blood's all gonna

55:20

expel. There's no need to run up and then cut its

55:22

throat because the bloods laying

55:24

in the chest, cavity or all over the ground. I

55:27

have a different opinion about blood and game.

55:29

I think it's just hands. Well

55:31

there there's so there's an old French method. Let

55:33

me hold you up for aeman, because finish what you're saying about, like

55:37

why you would bleed it after you hit in

55:39

the head. Yeah, right,

55:41

because like you're saying, if you hit it in the long or this is

55:44

ron's thinking, if we it's legit

55:46

thinking. I mean livestock. It's how they slaughter

55:48

livestock. It's how they slaughter cattle, right,

55:51

so that you're I guess that your meat is not

55:53

full of blood the

55:56

flavor of blood, and cut

55:59

its throat and beat it. Yeah. So like

56:01

when when you're slaughtering cattle, they

56:03

hit it with like I mentioned earlier, somehow this came

56:05

up electric electric Using electricity,

56:08

you hit in the head of a captive bolt gun or

56:10

in the old days of twenty two, and

56:12

then right away, while

56:15

it's still kicking on the ground,

56:18

hoisted up near by the back foot and

56:21

cut his juggler to

56:23

expel the blood. I think that has

56:25

to do. It's also like shelf stability, yeah,

56:29

and flavor issues. But go ahead, I mean, I'm

56:31

I'm gonna i'll

56:33

i'll like mostly defer to your judgment on

56:35

the taste of it. You know, it's

56:37

subjective. But there's a there's an old so

56:39

you know about the there's an old French method

56:42

where they suffocate like a bird like a pigeon

56:46

for that. Yeah, and so the

56:48

taste wines up being um pretty

56:50

good. You know, it's it's different, but it's

56:52

it's like, uh, it's

56:55

bloody, it's spicy, but I

56:57

like it. It's delicious. And so I

56:59

mean you really think about it. You know, animals,

57:02

the meat is full of blood, right, so

57:06

so you're eating anyway, a little more blood's

57:08

not gonna kill you, right so you know, I

57:10

you don't you just take it as a given that blood

57:12

has to get out, No, not at all, I don't

57:15

think so. I mean, you know, at least the fish,

57:17

like the fish you killed that night, you believe, definitely

57:19

say fish that's a different story because fish has

57:21

this uh very kind

57:23

of fish blood has its very irony,

57:26

kind of metallic taste. They don't

57:28

want it all. And I think you know, old blood has

57:30

that to some degree. But a lot

57:32

of animal blood, like duck blood. You know, there's

57:35

think about you know, old French sauces like um,

57:38

you know, duck blood in the sauce or or

57:40

um in any any birds

57:43

or uh um. I

57:45

mean a lot of cultures across the world

57:47

eat a lot of blood, right, blood. They don't waste

57:49

the blood here for some reason, you catch

57:52

the blood and make blood sauceage with it or so

57:54

I like the blood personally, I think it's good.

57:56

You just gotta you again, it's practices, right,

57:58

it's it's handling and practice says. But but

58:01

has a lot of things too where you use the

58:03

rabbit blood. Yeah, sauce.

58:07

Yeah, that's a good point.

58:09

Yeah. So, um

58:11

so anyway, what we're talking about headshots, Yeah,

58:14

like what you're striving for the kids you may have, you

58:16

know, wild game of kids you may essentially

58:18

right now, that's that's what we're striving for. Were striving for

58:20

that that instant death where it's basically

58:23

there's zero suffering involved. And

58:25

but even before that, one of the things

58:27

that I've noticed is that if you go out there and you scare

58:30

an animal and it's running

58:32

away or maybe you injure

58:34

it, which I have before and I always

58:36

feel horrible about, but um

58:39

it's running away and then and then you

58:41

finally get it, it tastes different, the

58:43

thing taste. It tastes totally different. So

58:46

so for me, it's one of the things where you basically sneak

58:48

up on something you know, you put in the word put it enough work

58:50

to actually harvest in a way where has no idea. You're

58:53

there, you know, it's eating some flowers, just like

58:55

this bear that I just gone. You know it's it's sitting

58:57

there eating dandelion flowers and the next thing is dead

58:59

right shot, one kill, instant,

59:01

It's done right. So to me, that's

59:03

that's that's the way I like that. Do you feel

59:06

like it could not only affect the flavor,

59:08

um, like the difference between an animal

59:10

that's you know, hurried or rush scared

59:12

versus you know, completely unaware, and

59:15

as well as the uh, the texture

59:18

or sort of like the tenderness

59:20

without a doubt, Yeah, without a doubt,

59:23

if you I mean, it's it's the same. It's the same principle,

59:25

like if you if that thing goes down right

59:27

away and it's completely limped the second

59:29

you know that bullet hits that, you know wherever,

59:33

uh it's limp, right, it's already relaxed.

59:35

There's no there's zero struggle involved

59:37

in the process of the thing is left and the meat

59:39

soft. Another reason I don't

59:41

like that idea, it's

59:44

because I have all kinds of animal skulls around

59:46

my house, and yeah,

59:49

I would I wouldn't have that anymore. There's your

59:51

beer right there. You take a look at that school. Well

59:54

how did you get to put back together again? And never

59:56

I never shot the skull. I shot right there behind

59:58

the skull, so it's right in the neck piece,

1:00:00

right right where the basically and

1:00:02

I basically and putting my eye right

1:00:05

on the back of that skull, right behind the

1:00:07

year right and that's where I'm looking. Yeah, all

1:00:09

right, man, We'll leave it at that. Now, box

1:00:12

crab, what the hell? Why is there? Why? Why

1:00:14

is uh box crab? Not a thing?

1:00:17

Let me let me go back one second. The other

1:00:19

thing is is the other the other way

1:00:21

that I will shoot too if if I know that

1:00:23

I can't, if I if I really want to, you

1:00:25

know, get that animal. And I know

1:00:27

I can't make a perfect headshot as

1:00:30

the eye shoulder right where the spine is, eye

1:00:32

shoulder, the bullet splits apart, it shoots into

1:00:35

everywhere and the same same thing basically,

1:00:37

but it gets familiar with that one and and I've I've

1:00:40

gone for that a couple of times. And right one

1:00:42

uh right

1:00:44

when monolithic bullets started to be very

1:00:47

started to become more popular. Um,

1:00:50

you know, solid copper bullets people.

1:00:54

Yeah, and you should explain this because you follow this ship

1:00:57

better than I do. Like the barn. Yeah,

1:00:59

Like like monolithic bullets became more popular,

1:01:01

you started hearing way more people talk

1:01:03

about high shoulder shots. Things

1:01:07

punched right through right right, So a lot of people

1:01:10

are getting there, like the pencil effect when

1:01:12

it would just go through the you know, if they missed

1:01:14

the entering rib, you know, they weren't getting

1:01:16

that expansion they were used to in a you

1:01:19

know, lead core bullet, jacket bullet,

1:01:21

and so it was getting that pencil effect, and

1:01:23

the deer was running a little bit farther than they

1:01:25

were used to, And so I think they were moving

1:01:27

their shot placement to that high shoulder.

1:01:30

Which I advocate that all the time because

1:01:32

I think it's it's a pretty big uh

1:01:35

target. Still, you know, you don't have to

1:01:37

aim that close to the spine. The spine actually

1:01:39

sort of dips down behind

1:01:41

the shoulders, so it's not like you're aiming, you

1:01:43

know, only three inches below the top of his uh

1:01:46

or yeah, below the top of his back

1:01:49

there. But there's also up in that areas

1:01:51

what's called the void. Yeah, dude,

1:01:53

I listen, it's hard to make predictions

1:01:55

about the future. I will die. I

1:01:58

will live out my life hopefully and get

1:02:00

really old, and then I'll die.

1:02:03

And on my deathbed, if you said to me, hey man,

1:02:05

what's a perfect shot placement, I'm still good, I'll

1:02:08

be like, really, that's what you want to talk

1:02:10

about right now? And then I'll say but if if

1:02:12

in fact, that is what you want to know, as I'm dying double

1:02:15

lung, and I'll tell you why. The first time

1:02:17

I shot ami with a monolithic bullet, well,

1:02:20

I was hunting New Zealand and I shot

1:02:22

a stag with a monolithic

1:02:24

bullet and it was pretty far out there, but not ridiculously

1:02:26

far out there, and

1:02:29

I was like, oh, should I missed? Okay,

1:02:31

because he's running around, running these

1:02:33

high's, chasing them around. And

1:02:35

then a while later he kind of got where he looked

1:02:38

like he wasn't feeling well, but

1:02:40

still was like, you know, I'll keep chasing these highness.

1:02:42

You know, I'm not feeling too well. And then all of a sudden

1:02:45

got woozy and tipped over and it looked

1:02:47

like someone had taken when I butchered

1:02:49

it, it it looked like someone took a field tip arrow

1:02:53

just an arrow with a practice point on it and

1:02:55

jabbed it through the chest cavity. So

1:02:58

I've had this with pigs before. While boors it was down

1:03:00

and down in southern California. You have

1:03:02

to shoot all

1:03:05

copper right, you can't shootnything. It's not copper steel.

1:03:07

There's no let allout. It's condor zone. And

1:03:10

so no, right,

1:03:12

not yet. I think it's next year. It's

1:03:16

definitely coming. Yeah. Um that's

1:03:18

why I washed. Washington's real nice right now. But

1:03:21

um, you know, I've I've

1:03:23

shot pigs where you know. There was a

1:03:25

group of them and I and I shot three

1:03:27

at three different pigs, and

1:03:30

uh, I thought I completely missed. I was like, well

1:03:33

they ran away. I was like, they just gone. I was like, I

1:03:36

don't usually miss because I don't usually

1:03:38

take those shots. And I put in a lot of practice, and

1:03:41

uh in any way, we uh

1:03:44

we saw one running away. He ran up

1:03:46

the hill, little one and then he dropped dead. And

1:03:49

then so I was okay, I did miss. So then we started

1:03:51

looking for the other two pigs. Found

1:03:53

all three. But in the end it was the same thing, that little puncture

1:03:55

that went straight through they were all they

1:03:58

were all straight through the lungs right by the heart. They

1:04:00

just keep going. It doesn't it doesn't have that terminal,

1:04:03

uh, you know, damage right, No, And then I got

1:04:05

onto the after that, I got into the whole high shoulder

1:04:07

scene. But again

1:04:09

I hit like, remember that when we're hunting musk

1:04:12

cocks. M hm, dude,

1:04:14

he didn't even give it ship to that. It's like, I

1:04:16

just feel like it's imperfect.

1:04:19

You could speak to it. I don't care. No,

1:04:22

But you remember that you said you

1:04:24

did pull forward just a little bit

1:04:26

because I was worried about you about

1:04:28

hitting another animal, and so you

1:04:31

like you personally, you know, judge and put

1:04:34

it forward. But I feel like with the long shot

1:04:36

too, you can be off the lungs in the back

1:04:38

and all of a sudden you're you know, into the liver, which

1:04:40

animals go a long way when they've got a bullet

1:04:43

through their liver, and you go farther back and you've

1:04:45

just gone, you know, straight through the paunch and good luck

1:04:47

finding that. Well, look, at the end of the day,

1:04:50

if you know for sure you're gonna make the shot,

1:04:52

it's ethical. Yeah, all

1:04:55

right. I want to be confident. I want to keep marching

1:04:57

down things. I want to talk about some other stuff box

1:05:00

crab. What okay, if you went

1:05:02

out and asked Joe blow, Joe

1:05:05

blow, dude who eats at Red Lobster or

1:05:07

whatever? Uh, just as Red

1:05:09

Lobster sttle business. I don't know, but

1:05:11

I just read something about get somebody getting food poisoning there

1:05:13

the other day when I was a kid, I'm telling you, what if you

1:05:15

were going out to that was the pinnacle

1:05:18

of a fancy dinner like on prom

1:05:20

night, just like dudes

1:05:23

would take to take your high school

1:05:25

girlfriend down the Red Lobster and you were like tearing,

1:05:27

you were set in the stage man and listen,

1:05:30

guys out there, if that was that's your plan,

1:05:32

or you just did that, took your lady out

1:05:34

there like a couple of weeks ago and it was prom night.

1:05:36

Uh, we're not We're not dogging. I'm not

1:05:39

dogging it at all. I'm just saying I don't know if there's still

1:05:41

I don't know how Red Lobs are

1:05:43

still kicking as or not. Yeah, no, I

1:05:45

think they're still around. Well just just let

1:05:47

me let me also help with anybody out there may

1:05:49

get food poison from Red Lobster. I

1:05:52

got food poison one time. From some

1:05:54

sort of bio disease and the and the oysters

1:05:56

here in the Bay Area, and I was, I was like,

1:05:58

I was really sick, man, I I ate. I

1:06:00

don't know how many oysters I ate that day, but

1:06:02

but they're contaminated with something and

1:06:04

um and uh so I was.

1:06:06

I was at the point where I was like sick for hours

1:06:09

and I was dry heating. There's no liquids left in my

1:06:11

body. Went to the hospital. They gave me

1:06:13

this little ivy thing and a pill felt better

1:06:15

than like ten minutes. Yeah,

1:06:17

listen, Yeah, the fact it obsessed

1:06:20

me that you even insinuate that I was dogging on Red

1:06:22

Lobster, because if you were the number line

1:06:24

out on a one to ten number line

1:06:26

out on the quality, like if you took a week and be

1:06:28

like, Okay, what quality of foods does this

1:06:30

person consumed during a week? If

1:06:33

I Red Lobsters, be like on the five mark

1:06:36

not do you way? Yeah, I think I'm

1:06:38

dog on a Red Lobster. I just haven't been following.

1:06:41

I just haven't been following

1:06:43

whatever the scene is over at Red Lobster

1:06:45

right now. But box what else makes my

1:06:48

damn point? People

1:06:50

know that there's good crabs right, and

1:06:52

they're like snow crab, dungeoness

1:06:55

crab, blue crab, king

1:06:59

crab. And there's a

1:07:01

redundancy here like tanners or snows right.

1:07:04

Tanner Tanner is another word check

1:07:07

that. I think a tank. I think when

1:07:09

you hear Tanner, it's a there's

1:07:11

there's a redundancy. I'm not thinking

1:07:13

clear right now. There's a redundancy in that list. But

1:07:17

your favorite crab is a crab that

1:07:19

doesn't fall on the list of super good crabs.

1:07:23

That's because nobody knows about it. You think that's fishermen

1:07:25

don't even really fish. When I came in and I looked

1:07:27

at that tank of crabs, I thought you

1:07:29

had a bunch of dungee

1:07:31

bodies in there, legless

1:07:33

dungee bodies because of the way they suck

1:07:36

their legs in. Yeah, they box up, that's what you got

1:07:38

the name. Basically, they basically pull in all their extremities

1:07:40

and it forms like a perfect shape

1:07:44

into the around their shell. They're

1:07:48

not so they don't cost nearly what a They

1:07:50

gotta be way cheaper than a dungeoness. Oh

1:07:53

no, they're they're more expensive because

1:07:55

nobody fishes them. I mean, you got it's it's a boutique

1:07:58

fishery basically. So I've got a fisher men

1:08:00

who have to pay you know, uh,

1:08:02

you know, X amount of expenses

1:08:04

to just to get you know, the stuff

1:08:06

we want, right, so it winds up being a little more expensive.

1:08:09

So how did you come to like prefer box crab

1:08:11

and not be like helly man. Everybody knows that King

1:08:13

Crab is the best crab in the world or Dungeoness

1:08:16

is the best crab in the world, like you just don't see box

1:08:18

crab around commercially. First

1:08:20

of all, we we we try to just use everything

1:08:22

just from right here. Okay, you

1:08:25

know, we'll take it all. It's it's West Coast because

1:08:27

it makes sense for us in terms of taste. So

1:08:29

everything you can pull from BC down

1:08:31

to south of here, yeah, exactly, down

1:08:34

to like Santa Barbara basically, and so that's

1:08:36

all that's all relatively the same environment,

1:08:38

right more or less. I mean there's obviously some variation,

1:08:40

but but um, northerly

1:08:43

northerly Pacific waters, yeah

1:08:45

exactly. Um, but

1:08:48

you know, we we just get we get random

1:08:50

stuff from our guys, whether it's our gatherer

1:08:53

or our you know, which gathers our forger and

1:08:55

um. Whether it's our fishermen or whatever it is,

1:08:57

they bring us a bunch of stuff, you know, all the time, random

1:08:59

things and um.

1:09:01

And so we're constantly kind of exploring,

1:09:04

you know, what are these Uh, what

1:09:06

can we grow? What can we find? Uh?

1:09:08

There's a lot of stuff out there, especially in fisheries

1:09:10

that aren't fish, because everybody is

1:09:12

so focused on one kind of commodity,

1:09:15

you know, a good that that everybody's

1:09:17

gonna you know, basically pilfer you

1:09:20

know, the entire salmon population, you

1:09:22

know, until there's no more left because they get a

1:09:24

higher price. But then there's twenty other species

1:09:26

out there that are actually really delicious. They're underutilized

1:09:29

and completely underutilized. Yeah, like

1:09:32

another dish. And this is the thing I've been harpened on for

1:09:34

people to live you know, in the

1:09:37

Pacific waters is what I what I

1:09:39

feel it's gonna be like the

1:09:42

most underutilized. Now that being underutilized

1:09:44

is a bad thing, but the sea cucumber

1:09:47

being a thing that's just like

1:09:49

like in my mind underutilized, Well,

1:09:51

it's you know, it's it's like I feel like it's a like

1:09:54

a challenging thing for people to to

1:09:56

get past because it's you know, it's

1:09:58

it's slimy. It looks anasty to some

1:10:00

people, and and but you

1:10:03

know it's it's it's kind of a hidden

1:10:05

treasure. In my opinion, it's delicious once you treat

1:10:07

it the right. Yeah, it's just did you guys

1:10:09

like that, you caucumber last? It's great,

1:10:11

Man's delicious. It's not the way we do them.

1:10:14

I know, you don't fry anything. You fry anything.

1:10:17

We grill fry. So our whole our you

1:10:19

know, our whole um kind of ethos is

1:10:21

all fire cooking. So if you noticed,

1:10:23

you know, every single thing you had was

1:10:25

cooked over the fire in some way, some manner,

1:10:28

and so all of the methods that we used to use for

1:10:31

regular cooking, we've now created a way to

1:10:33

cook it over the fire in the same way. So when we fry

1:10:35

something, what it's called grill fry.

1:10:37

And so let's say you have a flower

1:10:40

and we'll coat this flower the

1:10:42

like a like a floral flower, right, and

1:10:44

uh, we'll code it in a batter, it was a

1:10:47

specific batter, and we

1:10:49

will let it dry a little bit, and

1:10:51

then we have perforated pants.

1:10:54

They're just like sautee pants, and

1:10:56

so we'll we'll we'll then take the dried

1:10:59

the code dried semi

1:11:01

dried rather or at least the batter's fried

1:11:04

flour, and then we'll we'll brush

1:11:06

the pan with the oil and then brush the flower

1:11:08

with the oil and then throw it on the grill. So

1:11:11

it's basically ceiling that batter around

1:11:13

the outside. And so you wind up with what we call

1:11:15

grill fry. Do you call that your heart

1:11:18

over there? Yeah? Yeah, okay, So we're

1:11:22

gonna take a we'll take a picture just to put it up

1:11:24

in the show notes so you can go check it out. Um,

1:11:27

you got a horror thalnel was like six

1:11:30

ft wide, it's eight

1:11:32

ft plus um six ft yeah,

1:11:34

and different sections. You gotta fire

1:11:36

going in there and what and what would you you know,

1:11:38

you said you'll burn some almond, almond,

1:11:41

uh. Fruit woods of different kinds

1:11:43

depending on the season. So if you have, you know, for

1:11:46

instance, fake season right now, So we'll take

1:11:48

fig wood and we'll grill a thig dish

1:11:50

over the fake wood. And so we use that

1:11:52

kind of layering method

1:11:54

for different fruits. Could be apple, could be

1:11:56

quinns, could be pair whatever it is. And when I

1:11:58

came in here this morning. You about a rick of wood

1:12:00

stacked outside of your front doorway and to come inside.

1:12:03

So they got a fire, they got like a rip,

1:12:05

like a camp fire burning in

1:12:08

your kitchen. And as

1:12:10

I was eating, I was looking over there and imagining

1:12:13

that I would walk over and be like this giant

1:12:15

grill set up with a big gas fire and

1:12:17

a grill way over it. But what

1:12:20

the guys are doing is there's a camp fire

1:12:22

burning, and they're

1:12:24

shoveling out little like

1:12:29

little shovel

1:12:31

piles of amber. Feel like you're miss

1:12:34

setting the camp fire, because right, there's

1:12:36

more not a camp fer. There's no one camping. Yeah,

1:12:39

but it's not, it's not. How is it different than the fire

1:12:41

you build if you built a fire anywhere? Tell

1:12:44

us so it's the fire,

1:12:46

non relatively,

1:12:49

I think. So now we're just

1:12:51

burning down a bed of ambers,

1:12:53

basically that the fire is devoted. Yeah,

1:12:56

okay, Yanni's tin camp. Okay,

1:12:59

all right, I'll tell my version. You tell

1:13:01

your version, all right, you

1:13:03

gotta damn fire. Would burning

1:13:05

in a fire that was remarkably similar

1:13:08

to how one might think of

1:13:10

as a camp fire, right,

1:13:13

it's not in a It's just burning in the

1:13:15

corner. Right, my wrong, m my right

1:13:17

right, And you're your

1:13:19

cooks who are working this. Take

1:13:22

what it looks like the kind of shovel if you had

1:13:24

a fireplace and you had like a little

1:13:26

shovel to shovel out ash out of your fireplace

1:13:28

periodically. They have one of those, and

1:13:31

they scoop out a pile

1:13:33

of embers, it's not even a

1:13:36

court of embers and

1:13:39

make a little ember bed

1:13:41

bed and have little grates

1:13:44

that they have sitting over that ember bed, and that's what

1:13:46

they're working on, or any any

1:13:48

utensil. So we have perforated pans,

1:13:50

we've got grades, we've got uh,

1:13:53

skewers, a variety

1:13:55

of different tools that we used to cook over

1:13:57

the ambers. And the amber bed is not

1:14:00

more than two inches deep and

1:14:03

probably not that and maybe a square foot, yeah,

1:14:05

depending on what you're cook depending on what you're doing. So there's

1:14:08

a lot of I mean basically the majority

1:14:10

of the cooking is done near the fire

1:14:13

and over the ambers. And then you got your

1:14:15

racks way the hell above the fire, right

1:14:17

where you just got all kinds of ship stacked

1:14:19

up there. And give an example of like

1:14:21

uh, you know, like uh so we you

1:14:24

dehydration, right, dehydrate u

1:14:27

um whatever. So

1:14:29

for us let's give me for instance,

1:14:31

let's use there's a dish that's well known

1:14:33

that we do that's called brasicas. And

1:14:36

so it's a bunch of Braska leaves. Things in Nebraska

1:14:38

family could mustards, you know, cabbages,

1:14:40

whatever, broccolia and

1:14:43

uh so you take the leaves and

1:14:45

we basically lay it out flat and maybe brush

1:14:47

a little light amount of oil on there and then lay it

1:14:49

out flat on a rack and then

1:14:51

we'll put it over almost imperceptible

1:14:54

heat, just a really a scattering of ambers

1:14:56

where it's probably over for it's

1:14:59

probably over or four ft above that. Well,

1:15:02

that's that's a different thing. That's that's what

1:15:04

we call fire in the sky. So that's a different method.

1:15:06

It's like a different different type

1:15:08

of dehydration where it's where slowly getting

1:15:10

smoked, but it's a similar it's a similar thing,

1:15:13

um different outcome. And

1:15:16

so this is just you know, above a little bed

1:15:18

maybe three inches above. It's on a rack,

1:15:21

a bunch of leaves and it just slowly kind of

1:15:23

absorbs the flavor of the fire and

1:15:25

it gets dehydrated. So that's one example of

1:15:27

and it's like a chip and you can just eat it like potato chips

1:15:30

after but it's also has

1:15:32

that like beautiful sweet smoke from the fire. So

1:15:35

that's one example like really low cooking. And then

1:15:37

and then you know, for meat, for instance, what we'll

1:15:39

do is we'll temper we'll we'll get a chunk of

1:15:41

meat out right, and we'll we'll temper it near

1:15:43

the fire. So it's already slowly

1:15:46

starting to accept the heat, right, and

1:15:48

it's and it's, uh, you know, we pulled out

1:15:50

of the out of the aging room,

1:15:52

let it come to room temperature, put it near the fire,

1:15:55

okay, and it's so it's slowly already starting

1:15:57

to accept the heat a little bit, right, and it's

1:15:59

softening and it's developing more

1:16:01

flavor, right. Uh. And

1:16:03

then we'll throw it on a bed of ambers, which is,

1:16:05

you know, however big the product is, and

1:16:08

the height of the bed depends on the heat that we

1:16:10

want, and then the distance from

1:16:12

the top of the ambers to the bottom of the product

1:16:15

is also depending on how long we want

1:16:17

to cook it for, how much you know heat be want, or

1:16:19

how hard we want to sear it or whatever. Right,

1:16:23

Yeah, so okay,

1:16:25

talk about those quail. How long do you so you

1:16:27

gotta plucked quail? How

1:16:30

long do you age a plucked quail for six

1:16:32

days? At forty five degrees in a

1:16:35

room with a lot of circulation, a lot of air circulations,

1:16:37

the keys that you've gotta have. You've gotta

1:16:40

have air circulation all the way around these

1:16:42

meats, so that you're starting you're starting to dry

1:16:44

it, but you want the humidity to also

1:16:46

be high enough to where it doesn't dry out too much.

1:16:48

Right, So that's about the perfect room.

1:16:51

Perfect room. It's forty five or so degrees

1:16:54

in six days, and that coil sits

1:16:56

there plucked, just gutted and plucked for

1:16:59

six days. Yeah, and then you

1:17:01

grilled the quail. And I've grilled like a

1:17:03

mess of quail. And I was telling

1:17:05

you that when I grill a quail, I grilled that quail

1:17:07

for not ten minutes. You

1:17:11

grill your quail for two hours.

1:17:13

Yeah, really really low heat in

1:17:15

and out of the heat, right in and out. So

1:17:18

you're basically that's you know, it's an in and out method

1:17:20

of of roasting meat to where you're basically exposing

1:17:22

the meat to uh.

1:17:25

Depending on how much fat content is meat,

1:17:27

um let's say for this quail, for instance,

1:17:30

you know, medium heat

1:17:32

for just a very brief period time, and

1:17:34

you take it off the heat and you let it rest out

1:17:36

its residual. You know, heat

1:17:38

really has the opportunity to spread throughout

1:17:41

the entire piece of meat. And then

1:17:43

once it comes down to basically tep

1:17:45

it or room temperature where there's no more cooking

1:17:47

happen, than you repeat that process over and over

1:17:49

again and you wind up.

1:17:51

What I have never said this is, this is the most surprising

1:17:54

thing that that you cook. Is it

1:17:56

you wind up with? It's

1:18:01

like the texture that you can tear

1:18:03

the bird apart. Okay, it

1:18:05

breaks apart like it breaks apart, like how bird

1:18:07

should break apart. It's cooked. But the

1:18:09

texture is you achieve a texture

1:18:11

that's more like raw coail

1:18:15

but not flabby though, no, but

1:18:17

it still has a translucent to it. Right,

1:18:20

it doesn't turn into like it doesn't

1:18:22

turn into your classic like white

1:18:25

stringy. Yeah. Yeah,

1:18:28

it's still it's translucent down

1:18:30

to the bone and definitely not raw,

1:18:34

but has like almost like a cired quality

1:18:36

to it. Well, here's what we're doing. Basically, you're basically

1:18:39

you're you're you're not only allowing

1:18:41

it to age. Those those oils start

1:18:43

to Uh. First of

1:18:45

all, some of the moisture comes out of the bird, right, And

1:18:48

then when you're going back and forth on the heat

1:18:50

like that, you're getting all that moisture

1:18:52

to move around a little bit, but you're not putting

1:18:54

on so high of the heat that you're forcing it out, right,

1:18:57

So that stuff is just moving around and there gently, and

1:19:00

eventually it just rests out and rests

1:19:02

over to where it's that it's cooked, but

1:19:05

it's not overcooked. Yeah, oh yeah,

1:19:07

I forgot. We're gonna come back to you know, you're gonna

1:19:09

offer the more accurate version of the damn

1:19:11

fire. I'm curious about this. Actually, well,

1:19:14

when I saw the fire that when I saw two things

1:19:16

that I was gonna ask about. Actually one the

1:19:18

campfire that Steve was referring to,

1:19:22

I went, I doubled around and said, it's not the camp

1:19:24

art's fire if he's referring

1:19:26

to that was in the right back corner, right.

1:19:30

I just felt like there was an intense management

1:19:33

of that fire. That and

1:19:35

you're saying campers don't manage

1:19:38

their fire, sure, we just how just imagine the fires

1:19:40

just like this, like pile of wood that's on fire,

1:19:42

and there may or may not be a bunch of members or whatever,

1:19:44

but this was like two or three pieces

1:19:46

of wood were being very carefully

1:19:48

managed to extract those

1:19:50

embers. Yeah, here's the difference. But yeah,

1:19:53

you're right, and um, yeah, that's something I

1:19:55

don't even notice that really, I don't even think about that consciously.

1:19:57

But basically, you know, you're camping, you want the

1:19:59

flame. You're out there, you want to flame you when you heat

1:20:01

from the flame. For us, we want the ambers.

1:20:03

So we're we're basically positioning the way to where

1:20:05

it's all piled on top of each other so

1:20:07

that you can stick a shovel in there and harvest the ambers

1:20:09

when you need it. And you're pulling out you're

1:20:12

pulling out, are you? Are

1:20:15

you guys crushing the embers a little bit, but

1:20:17

that's pulling out like centimeter like

1:20:19

square centimeter embers. Yeah. So

1:20:21

that's why we chose almond wood because it burns

1:20:24

down almost perfectly. But a lot of wood

1:20:26

does too. If you just if you just manage

1:20:28

the fire like you're like you just talking about, so

1:20:30

you have you know, we've got that little

1:20:33

fire of you know, under the amber pile.

1:20:35

Let's say, imagine, is I don't know, four

1:20:37

to six pieces of wood all burnt

1:20:40

down, and then you've got another

1:20:42

maybe two or three on top to just regulate

1:20:45

that bed of ambers, so it keeps it glowing

1:20:47

hot the whole time. So I've got some flame

1:20:49

going on. So you're not you're not

1:20:51

like you're not grading out the embers,

1:20:53

like how the embers all looks so perfect. That's just the quality

1:20:56

of how the fire is being managed.

1:20:58

And what kind of would you're burnt? Yeah,

1:21:00

I mean you could, I mean pretty much any would you can accomplish

1:21:03

the same thing with. But it's really the management of the pile

1:21:06

of uh flame, flaming

1:21:08

logs on top of the bed of the ambers to keep it hot.

1:21:12

And I'm guessing there's also some sort of it looked like there

1:21:14

was just like the perfect draw, like

1:21:17

the perfect air moving across

1:21:19

that fire, right Like

1:21:21

it was just like it seemed

1:21:23

like you could put your hand three ft above where

1:21:25

that fire was and you would burn your hand just because

1:21:27

of the way that air is moving across it providing

1:21:30

oxygen you know too, So it's burning super

1:21:32

hot. Yeah, this is a design of the

1:21:34

fireplace, right, So it's got that you know, it's got

1:21:36

that suction and basically like the way that this

1:21:38

this has a little lip over the like

1:21:40

the hood has a lip over the fireplace. That basically

1:21:43

UH draws the air in the fireplace up

1:21:45

around and then out the flu So it's just good

1:21:47

fireplaces time. Yeah. Yeah, it's

1:21:49

really surprising to me, like how much

1:21:51

you guys are cooking over fire everything,

1:21:54

even dessert. Yeah

1:21:56

it tastes better. Man. Did you have to dick

1:21:58

around a lot to get the uh to get your

1:22:01

hearth or fireplace right with circulation?

1:22:05

Well no, I mean I had a really talented

1:22:07

designer who designed the draw of the

1:22:09

fireplace got um

1:22:13

abaloni. So those small Because

1:22:16

you can die for abalone in

1:22:18

California, you can die for abaloni Alaska.

1:22:21

There's like regulations on it. I know that, Like

1:22:23

for instance, um

1:22:25

at our place in Alaska. Because I'm not a resident

1:22:27

of Alaska, I'm not able to dive for abaloni.

1:22:30

My brother is, he's a resident

1:22:32

of Alaska. He's allowed a couple of abaloni the

1:22:35

day. There's much smaller than down here. They got

1:22:37

a size limit on him. So you

1:22:39

serve some small those must

1:22:41

be out of an aquaculture facility. Yeah, exactly

1:22:44

what got you. And then you had some giant

1:22:46

abaloni shells and those are probably like wild

1:22:49

wild shells. Those those are the ones

1:22:52

I ate. Just use it as a plate. Now do

1:22:54

you die for him? You never die

1:22:56

for him? No, yeah, no, ever

1:22:59

since, ever since, I alred story about my

1:23:01

buddy, Well, this guy that I know, and I'm a

1:23:03

buddy, but the guy that I know that dives

1:23:06

for a blowing around here it's like

1:23:08

a sea forger. And uh.

1:23:11

He was telling the story about how they went up

1:23:13

I think it's around Eureka or Fort Bragg or

1:23:15

something like that. A lot of blowing up there, and

1:23:18

him and his friend were they got in the water

1:23:21

and uh and uh there's

1:23:23

there's a bunch of seals in the water, and

1:23:26

which is a good sign there's no shark, right basically,

1:23:29

or it's a good sign that there might be one soon.

1:23:31

Well, so, uh

1:23:33

so they're diving and he comes up

1:23:35

and I guess the boat is off in the disk the

1:23:38

hundred yards maybe, and uh then

1:23:40

he realizes there's zero seals in the water, right,

1:23:43

All the seals are on the rocks, and so you know, obviously

1:23:45

he's freaking out a little bit in his head and swims

1:23:48

to the boat. Uh, takes his gear

1:23:50

off, takes his flippers off, throws in the boat. You

1:23:52

know. Uh, it goes to push up

1:23:54

into the boat, sits down, turns around,

1:23:56

and there's a great white right below him

1:23:59

with his mouth oak him maybe a

1:24:01

few feet. It just takes

1:24:03

it takes a pass by. That's

1:24:05

that's terrifying. I feel that they

1:24:07

surfers get a lot of mileage out of their

1:24:10

dealings with white sharks. But there's a lot more

1:24:12

surfers in there are Abaloni divers, and I think

1:24:14

that the Abaloni divers are more in the mix.

1:24:17

Have you have you read Canny Roll by John Steinbeck?

1:24:21

Um. We talked about it a couple times

1:24:23

yesterday because it's you know, takes place

1:24:25

in Monterey Bay, and

1:24:27

um, they do a lot of even back then. So Steinbeck

1:24:30

was writing, you know, in

1:24:32

the during the

1:24:34

Great Depression, right or writing about that era,

1:24:36

and there in that book, those boys are always

1:24:39

illegally harvesting avalone's back

1:24:41

then. It's

1:24:43

been like a tightly regulated industry for a long

1:24:45

time. We also talked about Canny

1:24:47

Roll because in the book, Um,

1:24:50

one of them works at a bar and when he whenever

1:24:52

he whenever a client leaves, he just takes

1:24:54

whatever was left in their glass and

1:24:57

dumps it into a bucket. And that's

1:24:59

how him and that's what him and his friends all drink. That's

1:25:01

their alcohol source. Wait

1:25:03

what I missed that? What was it? What do they drink? So

1:25:06

the guy that works in the bar, anytime a client

1:25:08

leaves anything left in his drink in

1:25:11

his glass, beer, wine, liquor

1:25:13

whatever it is, it just goes into a bucket. They

1:25:15

just dump it into a bucket and they drink

1:25:17

that at the end of the night. And that's what That's what

1:25:20

the crew, that's

1:25:22

what the crew in Cannary row. That's their

1:25:24

alcohol source is just the dregs

1:25:26

from everyone's drinks. But they're also avid,

1:25:29

avid abalone poachers. Uh

1:25:31

monkey faced eel. I've fished for those before.

1:25:35

That's not a that's not a popular

1:25:37

commercial fish. Nope.

1:25:40

But they just I think they just um

1:25:42

allowed commercial fistory on it now Yeah

1:25:45

yeah, um, well,

1:25:47

I mean I think I don't

1:25:50

think ellen in general is very popular, right

1:25:52

for a lot of people, unless it's like you

1:25:54

know, nagi, but it's

1:25:57

delicious. It's very similar, right, if you if you were to

1:25:59

cook it exactly same way as a nag you come out,

1:26:01

you'd wind up with a very simular so it's

1:26:03

less fatty, but other than that, it's very similar.

1:26:05

Yeah, you know what, the unagi um

1:26:08

More and more they're turning to American eels

1:26:11

because of how depleted eels are.

1:26:14

The eels that the that the Japanese are traditionally

1:26:16

using are so depleted that they're turning

1:26:18

out to American eels. And

1:26:21

there's a lot of controversy right now

1:26:23

because guys, what guys are doing is harvesting

1:26:25

glass eels, which

1:26:27

is uh a little baby a baby

1:26:29

eel because you know, like anagramous

1:26:31

fish, right, A nagmus fish live in the ocean

1:26:34

and run up river to spawn. A

1:26:36

catagronous fish lives

1:26:38

in a river and goes

1:26:40

out to the ocean to spawn. And eels are

1:26:42

cattagroniusts. So they're in the

1:26:44

in in American rivers and

1:26:47

they go out and they just keep going

1:26:50

out in the Atlantic and they keep us going to deeper and

1:26:52

deeper and deeper water, and that eventually leads

1:26:54

into a place called the Sargasso Sea, and

1:26:57

they spawn in the Sargasso Sea,

1:27:01

and then the larva does free flow on

1:27:03

the currents, and eventually the larva develops

1:27:05

into what's called a glass eel, which is just a little

1:27:08

teeny thing that looks like a looks

1:27:10

like a translucent piece of a

1:27:12

noodle or just like a little almost like a little

1:27:15

piece of seaweed that you can see through. And

1:27:18

they start migrating up rivers,

1:27:21

and now there's a big market for guys that go out

1:27:23

and harvest glass eels, you

1:27:26

know, which are worth thousands and thousands and thousands

1:27:28

of dollars per pound, to sell

1:27:30

glass eels into

1:27:32

aquaculture facilities because you obviously

1:27:34

can't breed them in captivity. When

1:27:36

you you can, you can raise them in

1:27:38

captivity, but they can't be bread and captivity.

1:27:41

So we're in a situation now where the US Fish

1:27:44

and Wildlife Services more aggressively trying

1:27:46

to get a get a grip like asses.

1:27:48

Demand for glass eels is growing, to

1:27:51

try to get a grip on where these things

1:27:54

are coming from, where they're going and if we're gonna

1:27:56

wind up doing to our own eels what

1:28:00

aided their eels and completely deplete

1:28:02

them out. So have you had a full,

1:28:04

full grown glass siel. Oh

1:28:06

yeah, yeah, we smoke them. Yeah,

1:28:08

I used to. Like I lived for a while. I

1:28:11

had an old girlfriend that was doing a writing fellowship

1:28:13

in Rhode Island, and we

1:28:16

rented a house. She rented a house that sat

1:28:18

on the tideline and Rhode Island, and

1:28:21

I would trim deer steaks at night,

1:28:23

whatever were and I would just take like whatever I trimmed

1:28:26

off silver skin and stuff, and I put it on a hook

1:28:29

and I could cast it off my deck. I

1:28:31

oughtn't do a little bay, and

1:28:34

I would open the bail on my rod

1:28:37

and lay it in front of the

1:28:39

couch when we're watching movies at night, and

1:28:42

I would take a little piece of mask and tape that

1:28:44

was white and just pinched that mask

1:28:46

and tape on the line at my rod tip

1:28:49

and we'd be watching the movie and pretty soon you'd see

1:28:51

that mask and tape moving across

1:28:53

the living room rug. Then

1:28:57

I could just grab my rod, open a slide door

1:28:59

and i'd pull eel up over the deck rail. And you can

1:29:01

get some freaking giants, man, and I would just gut

1:29:03

them. That is a brilliant way to

1:29:06

lazy fishing. I would

1:29:08

just leave the head on gut them

1:29:11

and brine them and smoke

1:29:13

them. And what I the way I would produce

1:29:15

him is there's a guy, Uh, there's

1:29:17

a guy named Ray Turner on the Delaware River

1:29:19

who runs the eel weird. And when you're

1:29:22

doing eel weirds, they just build rock wall rock

1:29:24

wall funnels for commercial harvest

1:29:27

and their harvest instead of like they're harvesting

1:29:29

the run, right, the eel run,

1:29:32

But the eel run is going down

1:29:34

river. Everyone thinks

1:29:36

of like a fish run going up river, but they harvest

1:29:38

them one the eels are migrating to spawn

1:29:41

headed down river. And so I

1:29:44

was writing about him in my first book, and he kind

1:29:46

of turned me on to how he likes to cook his eels. And he runs

1:29:48

a place called Delaware Delicacies and

1:29:51

sells eel and sells American eels,

1:29:53

smoke them. He

1:29:55

runs a smoke house, so he

1:29:57

smells a variety, he sells a variety of smoke

1:30:00

products. But his his

1:30:02

his like main offering that he sells

1:30:04

in the restaurants and things, is that his main offering

1:30:06

is a smoked deal. Well,

1:30:08

these guys, these guys are you know what they're

1:30:10

they're basically in rock holes

1:30:13

right, monkey face. That's how my uncle

1:30:15

Don taught me how to catch them, is

1:30:17

just dipping bait down into cracks in the

1:30:19

rocks. Yeah, yeah, they have out here. They have

1:30:21

this little like upside down poll. It's like a stick

1:30:23

basically with a little leader on it.

1:30:26

I guess, a little hook and bait.

1:30:29

He just it's almost like jigging for

1:30:31

him. Yeah, you only have you only have like six inches

1:30:33

of wire off the end of your rod because you want to be able

1:30:35

to cram. You want

1:30:37

to be able to cram the

1:30:40

stick back into things. Then you're pretty you'll

1:30:42

feel and they're big, you know, you'll feel them in. They're

1:30:44

bucking around and you drag

1:30:47

them out. But it's like a six inch leader in de bait on

1:30:49

the end of a you know, like

1:30:51

a you know,

1:30:53

eight foot long car antenna.

1:30:56

That's an interesting way to fish. So there's no line,

1:30:59

Well all there's a leader. Yeah,

1:31:03

you got a poken pole. The technical

1:31:05

the tentnacle term be a poken pole with a leader

1:31:07

like a wire on the end with a hook, and

1:31:10

you're just trying to deliver that bait by

1:31:12

cramming it into cavities under

1:31:15

rocks. Any kind of cave thing and

1:31:18

you'll hook him. Sometimes what you

1:31:20

gotta be careful about. You gotta think ahead, like are you gonna

1:31:22

be able to drag a big gass deal out of there? Because

1:31:24

he might have come in some other route, Like

1:31:27

let's say he's got something you don't even know about where

1:31:29

he's coming in some hole and then

1:31:31

he winds up in the spot and you cram through

1:31:33

some little crack to

1:31:36

get him, and then you get him where he's on, but

1:31:38

you can't get him out how you came

1:31:40

in. So you gotta make sure you're aways fishing

1:31:43

or crack. It's gonna be big enough to pull like an

1:31:45

average monkey faced fell back

1:31:48

out of the hole. And it's a dangerous fishing

1:31:50

because you're out and ship that's just getting battered by waves.

1:31:53

So it's fun, man, but it's like

1:31:55

a high it's like a high risk angling. So

1:31:58

all right, we talked about c q can is writing,

1:32:02

which is kind of my I'm like way into sea cucumbers

1:32:04

right now. But we gotta touch on that again because

1:32:08

the sea cucumbers were

1:32:10

talking about the eel skin yet no,

1:32:13

and that's another crazy thing. Yeah,

1:32:16

so well so so for these eels, it's just they're

1:32:18

basically grilled, Like the flesh is grilled, but

1:32:21

um, there's a sauce that's brust

1:32:23

on with made with all of the like

1:32:26

all the grilled bits that the bones,

1:32:28

the trim, all that stuff from the eel and it's

1:32:30

it's put into the sauce and allowed to

1:32:33

basically create a glaze more or less, and

1:32:35

it's brushed on the eel flesh and it's

1:32:37

grilled. Right. But the skin, you

1:32:40

know, like they in Japan they do uh what's

1:32:43

called uh food goo the

1:32:45

blowfish. So they

1:32:48

that's the one that has a toxic part. Right, Yeah,

1:32:50

so if you don't cut it the right way, it'll kill you.

1:32:53

Um. But but anyway, they take the

1:32:55

skin and they make like a cold skin

1:32:57

kind of like salad or something or you eat it with the

1:33:00

flesh. And so it's basically boiled

1:33:02

skin like cleaned and then boiled skin

1:33:04

and then chilled and then it's just like uh

1:33:07

five minutes. It just depends, uh

1:33:10

you know in monkey face deal, it's pretty quick.

1:33:12

So you scrape all the slime off, clean

1:33:15

it, purge it, rubbing a little salt, rinse

1:33:17

it in some water, uh, and get all the

1:33:19

meat off and then you can basically just boil it on pot

1:33:22

if you want. For us, we we put it intide

1:33:24

inside a cry back back and it's basically you

1:33:26

know, compressed in the cry back back so it's flat,

1:33:28

it never curls up. And then we just steam it when

1:33:30

it's in the cry back back until it's tender and you can

1:33:32

just push through it. You can just put your fingers through the skin.

1:33:35

Then once that's tender, you take it out, throw a nice

1:33:37

path and it's it's ready, got ready. You can steam

1:33:39

it in the cry it's not in the water. It's in

1:33:41

the water because it's in a cry evac Well,

1:33:44

we just place the skin directly in the bag.

1:33:46

You don't have to and just and just seal

1:33:48

it and compress it and steel and then put it in your

1:33:51

your like su vie water. Yeah, you can do

1:33:53

that, or you can just steam it just holding

1:33:55

it over, just put it, throw

1:33:57

it inside a steamer. Okay, yeah

1:34:00

yeah. And then and then you either put it in the water

1:34:02

or you can just steam it right. Um

1:34:04

and uh, and then what's extend or just chill it?

1:34:06

And how long?

1:34:09

Uh? Just a couple of minutes. Every fish is different,

1:34:11

but in this particular case, it's like three minutes

1:34:14

and then you like slice it so it looks like Julian

1:34:17

carrots accepted

1:34:19

with the texture of like cold

1:34:21

noodles, you know, and then you put a

1:34:23

sauce on ad or toss it and something. Yeah,

1:34:25

there's like a little vinegar made from the monkey face steal

1:34:27

bones and some herbs, and then you start it with the flesh.

1:34:31

Yeah, that was a very surprising dish

1:34:33

the kid. Yeah, because that's

1:34:35

the thing. That's kind of thing that impressed me most about

1:34:38

what you're doing is you

1:34:41

put more attention into the

1:34:43

more love and care into the ship that everybody throws

1:34:45

away. It's

1:34:47

good stuff, man, that's the sweetmeat. That's

1:34:50

that's the good. Like a lot of this stuff is like the

1:34:53

you know, the chip lands or the skin or you

1:34:55

know, and there's so many alternative textures

1:34:57

or you know, other textures or flavors that we don't

1:35:00

use. We, in my opinion, we have a very wasteful,

1:35:02

you know, kind of culture in the way that we are, at

1:35:04

least right now, because in our food

1:35:07

practices are so like, oh, let's just take

1:35:09

the you know, let's just take the tender loin and throw the rest away,

1:35:11

or let's just you know, because we don't know what to do

1:35:13

with it. So really a lot of it is just you know,

1:35:16

you know, uh, it's gonna reassess

1:35:18

some of these things. Yeah, that's the thing I think

1:35:20

that needs to

1:35:22

happen in

1:35:25

in game management is a lot of states are

1:35:27

aggressive about uh,

1:35:31

salvage requirements, okay,

1:35:33

um, about

1:35:36

curbing want and waste. And

1:35:38

I think that it's not even like it's

1:35:40

not even like a lefty righty thing, right

1:35:43

where you have like some like politically

1:35:45

very conservative states Alaska,

1:35:48

Montana that are really strict

1:35:50

about salvage requirements. So if

1:35:52

you think about that, you're like, like, the goal

1:35:54

of you know, a

1:35:56

goal of conservatism would be that you're

1:35:58

alleviating people from regulation. Right,

1:36:02

you're not telling your like the goals and not tell people

1:36:04

what to do, not mandate to them how

1:36:06

to behave or what to do. But here

1:36:08

you have like really conservative states

1:36:11

who are also saying, no, dude, you're

1:36:14

gonna retain the usable

1:36:16

portions of your animals, to the point

1:36:19

where my brother hunts a moose unit in

1:36:21

Alaska where they mandate

1:36:24

do you retain the liver? That's

1:36:27

the only case I can think of where a state has come

1:36:29

out and said you're not gonna waste that moose's livery

1:36:32

and that in that particular unit, but

1:36:34

some states are still like really lax about

1:36:36

it. I remember being down. I remember going down in

1:36:38

South Carolina with a friend of mine down

1:36:41

to his local butcher. And

1:36:43

when they gutt a deer, part of their dear

1:36:46

gutting process is two saws

1:36:48

all the way the ribs,

1:36:51

and saws all the way the shanks, and that

1:36:53

all goes into a dumpster. Because

1:36:56

even they're a commercial process that they

1:36:58

have the salvage require start in place,

1:37:01

and then the commercial process there's not even even

1:37:03

attempting to deal with it. Ribs

1:37:06

and shanks. My

1:37:08

own two eyes, every shank and

1:37:10

every rib off those deer was into a dumpster.

1:37:13

That's crazy to me. You to think about think about it from

1:37:15

just like a like a you know, sustainability

1:37:17

perspective, like you got if

1:37:20

you're if you're a hunter and you're out there and you're

1:37:22

thrown away, half of these

1:37:24

things it could be turned into Ian think

1:37:26

about it. You could make soup for

1:37:28

a week, two weeks, three weeks.

1:37:31

You can braise the you know, shanks

1:37:33

and make stew for your whole family

1:37:36

for you know, another week. Uh

1:37:39

you know you there's just there's so

1:37:41

much that's uh um.

1:37:44

I don't know how it got like this crazy though, So

1:37:46

there's so much on this. We live

1:37:48

in abundance. Many we

1:37:50

live in abundance. Yeah, I'd say in most states, you

1:37:52

don't have to keep the neck. No,

1:37:56

No, I don't know about most No. I would say, yeah, probably

1:37:58

most states you don't need to keep the neck. But it's

1:38:00

like it's like, over the

1:38:02

course of over the course of my hunting

1:38:04

life, I always

1:38:06

learned more and more stuff. Like I remember we

1:38:09

used to always bone out our shanks and just grind them

1:38:11

for burger and I was like, oh, Ship, you can make all kinds of good

1:38:13

stuff with shanks. And then I remember

1:38:15

the first time I ever tried to mess It was

1:38:17

my third year of college. We

1:38:19

started trying to mess with cooking deer tongues

1:38:22

and we couldn't really figure it out, but eventually got it

1:38:24

figured out. I'm like, oh, no, Ship, you can cook tongue. And

1:38:27

then on down the line, right and

1:38:29

anything. You get to a point where you're like, man, I'm

1:38:31

getting new point where I'm really utilizing a lot

1:38:33

of stuff. But then last

1:38:36

night I eat with you and

1:38:39

I'm like, yeah, I haven't even scratched the surface.

1:38:42

I'm still like, recently we discovered collars

1:38:44

on fish. Okay, so the

1:38:48

meat surrounding the meat

1:38:51

surrounding the um

1:38:53

behind the gill cover like the throat

1:38:56

of the fish. Okay. Uh

1:39:00

still discovered that. I was like, no, ship, I

1:39:02

can't believe how many pounds of this stuff

1:39:04

we have. How many pounds of this stuff

1:39:06

we're thrown away? You know? Another thing like, uh

1:39:09

like on the waste thing, man, is

1:39:14

black bears? You

1:39:16

really like you did? You really were hunting bears the spring

1:39:18

and BC. Yeah,

1:39:21

um, I've never like,

1:39:25

I'm never eating organs on bears, even

1:39:27

though obviously they'd be fine. I can't think of ever eating

1:39:29

a bear heart because I feel like, uh, you

1:39:34

know, man, I mean, for lack of a

1:39:36

better word, I feel like there's like a lot of

1:39:38

weird uh almost

1:39:40

like a spirit like for lack of

1:39:42

a better word, like a spirituality thing,

1:39:44

man, or like a bear heart. Like it's

1:39:46

just like as I can't look at it as

1:39:48

an appetizing thing for some reason. But

1:39:51

you were saying there's a tradition in Scotland that you

1:39:53

cut an X. Yeah, there's an all. Yeah,

1:39:55

the tip of the heart. I feel you on that. I understand

1:39:58

what you mean by that and obviously

1:40:00

not the first person to think it because of what you told me

1:40:02

that when we're talking about heart. No, I

1:40:04

mean it took me a while to get to the point to be able

1:40:06

to even one a hunt of bear. In

1:40:09

fact, some of it came from just actually watching

1:40:11

your show too. But yeah,

1:40:14

there's an old tradition where you basically make an X

1:40:16

in the bottom of the heart and they say it's

1:40:18

supposed to release the soul, right, so it's

1:40:20

basically allows you to you know, consume

1:40:23

this thing freely. Yeah. And

1:40:25

then so I never a bare heart. I

1:40:29

never a bare tongue for another illogical

1:40:31

reason because when I used to send bears and to get

1:40:34

them tested for trickin nosis, um,

1:40:36

they want the tongue because apparently it's a great there's

1:40:40

a lot of larva getting

1:40:42

the tongue and that's stuck in my head. Um,

1:40:45

you know, sorry to that just brings

1:40:47

up a question for me. Is

1:40:51

Steve and I both carriers of did

1:40:55

you have a sore tongue when you

1:40:58

had sore back muscles, eggs.

1:41:00

My tongue never got sore. You got

1:41:02

a sore tongue. No, So you're saying that it

1:41:04

never goes away completely,

1:41:07

Well, they only know from animals that they've

1:41:10

It's hard for them to really map uh

1:41:12

when it goes away because you have to you'd

1:41:15

have to have an infected animal. No,

1:41:18

I mean, I mean you're you know, as a

1:41:20

consumer of at least

1:41:22

yeah, you stay infected at least ten years.

1:41:25

You can't get sick. You have to take medicine

1:41:28

because you can't. You can't unless you ate

1:41:30

your own arm. You can't get sick. Again,

1:41:32

you're a carrier, and when something scavenges

1:41:35

your carcass, they'll

1:41:37

get sick. But you can't get sick

1:41:39

from your own infected meat. It's

1:41:41

out of your digestive track and the larva

1:41:43

living calcified cysts in

1:41:46

your muscle. So the bear that we got sick

1:41:48

from head I think it was eight hundred and sixty eight

1:41:50

larva per graham.

1:41:52

So if you ate a pound of that bear, you ate a

1:41:54

half million larva and

1:41:57

they die at hundred sixty five degrees. So