The Mind of a Chef

Korean-American Author and Chef David Chang visits a noodle factory in Japan, eats the best bowl of ramen in his life, and cooks two incredible dishes with the instant ramen variety. Food Scientist Harold McGee explains how alkaline salts make ramen noodles unique.

David Chang revisits his favorite dishes from childhood and reflects upon summer eating, his time in Japan and golf.

There is something rotten in David Chang’s kitchen and that’s a good thing. Rotten is delicious; katsuibushi in Japan, XO sauce, rotten bananas with Chef Christina Tosi, and Kimchi.

Dishes in this episode are deceivingly simple; Chang travels to Japan for some Yakitori and high-end sushi, and his pal Daniel Patterson makes beets.

Chang makes eggs with his chef pals; Wylie Dufresne, Daniel Patterson, Rene Redzepi, and makes his Ko egg.

This episode is all New York with the Torrsi boys, oysters, carrot dashi, and farming. Plus Chang visits native New Yorker Ivan Ramen in Tokyo where he is making ramen that is taking the city by storm.

This episode is all soy; Chang visits tofu and miso factories in Japan, Chef Christina Tosi makes Burnt Miso.

Chang profiles regional BBQ in North Carolina, Texas, and Kansas City plus the other-worldly smoky bacon from Allen Benton in Tennessee.

A spotlight on the regional variations of southern cuisine. Chef Steven Satterfield makes okra and grits. Chef John Currence makes tamales. Chef Ed Lee creates a dish using bourbon, sorghum and country ham. Pastry chef Lisa Donavan makes a buttermilk pie. New host Sean Brock is joined by the Lee Brothers to make deviled crab

The resurrection of Carolina gold rice, which disappeared following the Civil War era, is examined. Included: making pilaf and Hoppin John fritters. Also: Louisiana chef Donald Link makes jambalaya; and Senegalese chef Fati Ly makes pilau.

Preservation techniques that play an important role in Southern culture are discussed, including drying, salt-curing, canning and fermentation.

Host Sean Brock prepares an outdoor feast on a friends farm, where hes joined by barbecue pitmaster Rodney Scott, who roasts a whole pig; and Steven Satterfield, who makes Savannah red rice. Brock also prepares frogmore stew

Chef April Bloomfield visits London, where she began her cooking career. Cooking walnut tagliatelle with chef Ruth Rogers. Making rabbit pie with chef Fergus Henderson, and enjoying a pint and scotch eggs with chef Rowley Leigh.

Explore the origins of curry and England’s versions of this historic cuisine.

April travels four hours outside London to Cornwall to visit and cook with farmer and chef Tom Adams on his farm. Tom raises the cute, furry and delicious mangalitsa pigs. April and Tom butcher and cook the entire pig piece by piece: loin, shoulder, belly and head.

Chef Bloomfield wrestles with the questions every aspiring new or expanding veteran chef has to confront. April and her business partner, Ken Friedman, explore the challenges of opening their first out-of-state venture in San Francisco: Tosca. April is inspired by a local morning bun, and she’s busy in the kitchen testing and tasting dishes for her new menu.

Head to Houston, Texas, where a sweat-inducing crawfish dinner exemplifies how flavors can blend together to create an entirely new American cuisine.

Taste the food and culture of Louisville, Kentucky, the place Ed now calls home.

What grows together, goes together. Ed explores combining the food of different cultures as culinary borders disappear.

Ed tends bar and serves up a tentacled dish for actress and bourbon-lover Aisha Tyler.

After a long winter, the arrival of spring awakens the delicate flavors of young herbs. The sun remains perched in the sky until midnight, the temperature climbs, and life returns to the once snow-covered landscape. This episode takes advantage of this brief window of time to explore the ingredients of spring in Sweden.

Return with Magnus to France, a place that had a profound impact on his culinary career.

Explore how seasons affect a restaurant’s menu when the food is sourced in a 100-mile radius.

A day in the life of chef Magnus Nilsson as he and the Fäviken staff prepare for dinner. The routine starts early, as Nilsson forages for spruce branches for his scallop dish and ends late, as every detail of the dinner is meticulously choreographed and executed.

Having been raised in a large family with many mouths to feed, to then needing to fend for herself from a very young age, Gabrielle Hamilton is the master of utilizing scraps.

From a very young age, Gabrielle Hamilton was left alone in her home to fend for herself. She rummaged through what was left in the pantry and refrigerator and satisfied her hunger with what she could scavenge. At 16, she moved to New York City where she used her jar of change to feed herself. All her experiences with hunger made her the chef she is today.

Surviving the restaurant game for 15 years in New York City takes some major hustle. From lying about her age to get her first dishwasher gig to lying about her tips, getting busted and charged with grand larceny, hustling was the easy part in running a restaurant for Gabrielle Hamilton.

Gabrielle looks long and hard at how she has evolved not only as a chef, but as a writer and restaurant owner.

Food is evolution, and wise chefs never forget from whence they came. A solid foundation allows them to test new boundaries and push things to new limits.

A dish is only as good as its ingredients, but an ingredient can also be manipulated in many ways. In this episode, David focuses his attention to the strawberry, at the height of its season during production, to celebrate the summer favorite.

Diners these days can be pickier than ever, and they seem to have no problem telling a chef how to do his or her job. Allergies, self-diagnosed sensitivities and customer “dislikes” have become the bane of several chefs’ existence.

A perfect tasting menu relies on balance, and on not fatiguing a customer’s palate. Based on that theory, no meal should be more than 25 bites.

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It takes a great chef to make a great chef. This episode is all about paying homage to the greatest culinary minds in the world. Fergus Henderson, Eric Ripert, Pascal Barbot and more spend some quality time cooking with our alumni.

How does a chef trained in the finest kitchens of France translate his haute cuisine to fast food? Ludo’s obsession with a perfectly cooked bird can be traced back to France, where he learned to roast chicken, and his love for the American classic was solidified when he ate at KFC for the first time.

Ludo came up under mentors like Alain Passard and Mark Meneau, chefs with an almost pathological obsession with ingredients. His eyes light up when he describes the Lobsters of Brittany, the Oysters from Cancale, and the myriad of other extraordinary culinary jewels in the oceanic bounty of France.

The demands of a celebrity chef, especially one that runs three vibrant restaurants and a fried chicken franchise, are rigorous. When Ludo needs to escape the chaos, he heads to the lilting and poetic world of Paris in the spring, where the emphasis is placed on the joy and fun of life.

Does an artist follow instinct, training or intuition…or perhaps all three? This episode examines the ties between artists and their education, and how childlike wonder can, in fact, translate into a career.

Explore the wet and dry side of our culinary world as Magnus Nilsson dry-ages a steak in kidney fat as long as he possibly can, April Bloomfield hallucinates while at a butcher shop, and Ed Lee makes a ribeye with eel puree.

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