The Fish Butcher: Fish Eye Ice Cream, Anyone?

but we also want to hear from your kids and maybe grandkids about their adventures in food.

So please record your kids talking about eating new foods. To share your kids story, please leave us a voice mail at 617-249-3167-617-249-3167 or send a voice memo to [email protected]. Hey, this is Mystery Radio from here. I'm your host, Christopher Kimball. Josh Nile is more than a chef. He's an artist, and his preferred medium is fish. Fish has been done the same forever. It's just we haven't reimagined what's possible,

“and so that's why I want to try to make pasta out of the bones and why I want to make ice cream out of the eyes.”

It's to say that I can give you something delicious and why should you think it's a problem if it was

derived from an eye rather than an egg. Josh Nile and cooks fish like you've never had it before.

That's coming up later in the show. But first, producer Sean Cole brings us a story about how elaborate and resourceful prison cooking can really be. There's this guy in state prison that I've been talking to for a while now. Michael Ravenhart. That's one of his names. He also goes by red bear. He's half-passing a quattie. Now he aligns himself with the Lakota nation. I interviewed him

back in 2005 when he was a bison farmer and new hamster. Then he committed a serious crime and got locked up on a 15-to-20 year sentence. And then got in touch with me again.

Mostly, we just talk about the fantasy books he's writing. He originally reached out to ask if I

have any publishing contacts. But on this one call, we somehow got on the topic of all the cooking he does in his cell. It started with him telling me he prefers to eat from the canteen,

“the prison commissary, where you have to pay for food versus the chow haul. He said it's healthier”

for one thing. Like what would you get? I get bacon, fried cage and rice, and then they had chili in a packet. That's all healthier than what is in the chow haul? Oh heck yeah, healthier than it's a chow haul and the chow haul you're getting new pasta. Or mush, he says. Or meat that he can't confirm is meat. And the prices in the canteen aren't bad. Maybe five bucks for 10 or 12 slices of bacon. I pictured him cooking it on like a plug-in induction burner or

something. But red bear said no. Now just a hot pot. We'll show most of the cooking is under no hot pot. An electric hot pot like you do is in a college dorm to heat up water. And how do you make bacon in a hot pot? The bacon I take a bowl to put the bacon into the bowl and I stick it

“in, you know, on the top of the hot pot, I was like in in the water so that part of the bowl”

is submerged in the water and then it heats the bacon up and I have a cover for the bowl. So and then when it's done, then there is the grease afterward, the fat, and I save that. And I have a cover of it so that I can make my homemade chili. And this is where we entered a whole realm of cooking that I didn't know existed in prison. Homemade dishes like chili, MacGyver together from all these different commissary items and batched, they call it batching, until the sum equals way more than

its parts. Do you kind of learn to adapt? Did you hear me? Did I really love to cook? I learned really early on during my county days when I was still in county. I had a roommate there that was passing every day and I like I ate really good and he was teaching me how to cook so that when I got up into the prison, I would know what to do. And then when I got here, I just took the mantle. And there's this one dish he's known for in the prison. People will bug him about it. Like,

when are you going to make those again? I make these things called drag and rolls, which are really awesome and it's kind of my own little twist on a different recipe that's been around prison for a while. This is much grander but it's something called Mufango. Mufango, it's a Puerto Rican dish, sort of a starchy mound of mashed plantains, garlic, olive oil, maybe some pork belly. Stuff that's not exactly abundant in prison but there's a prison version of

it and red bears dragon rolls are yet another take on the prison version. We take rice, soups, chips, crackers, all kinds of stuff like that and I put just enough pot water in it to kind of soak it up and then I let it cool and it becomes a dove. And then he flattens the dough out on a tray and puts pork meat or roast beef usually from a pouch in the middle there and rolls the

been cut into slices. Ways may be a pound and then he slathers the whole affair with the star

“of the culinary occasion. My cheese sauce. The cheese sauce. And people love my cheese sauce literally”

and it's down. Somebody has offered me already $14 for a bottle of cheese sauce, which is big money in here. Yeah, especially for the people that are only making by or six dollars a week. And then like, I'm not really selling the cheese sauce, man. I'm going to use it for the dragon rolls. Red bear says he makes the dragon rolls maybe four or five times a year and just happened to be getting ready to make a batch he said. So I had him walk me through the process, which he did

over the course of two more phone calls. The next time we talk. You hear that? He was starting in on the cheese sauce. I'm cutting the cheese right now. Cheddar sticks. One of three cheeses he uses. And yes, they're allowed to use plastic knives in the prison. He also curves a block of Velvita in half throws that in and then there's the squeeze cheese, which comes in a bottle. And now I'm going to

“get the cheese out of the cheese bottles. Okay. So all of that goes into two empty cleaned out”

marshmallow fluff containers, each of which is placed double boiler style into its own hot pot. Red bear Selmate, Congy, also has a hot pot. I talked to him a little too. I'm usually the head assistant and golfer. I see. He is the master chef and I am the sweet chef with that. Anyway, after Congy and Red bear fill the fluff containers with cheese. Now I'm going to add ketchup. It's open the other bottle of ketchup. Plus barbecues sauce, honey,

which is spices, curry, cumin, ginger, lots of stuff. This whole process lasts for more than an hour. And then? Oh, I forgot one more ingredient. What's that? Bacon grease. The bacon grease. That helps. Because we get bacon on canteen. And um, I heated up in a bowl and the bowl collects the grease. This happens sometimes with Red bear on his calls. He'll forget he's already explained something to me. Right. It's a trick of being in prison. The days and

hours all kind of meld like Mafongo do into one big groundhog day mound. So there's little to

distinguish what's happening from what's already happened. Finally, all of the ingredients for the

cheese sauce are mixed together in the fluff containers. And then you heat it for four to five days. Four or five days? Yes. If I don't have a crock pot. Oh, I see. If I had a crock pot, it would maybe be a day or two days. So I'll take it off at the end of the night and put it back on in the morning. And then you stir it constantly. I see. You keep that going. I don't cook. But the experts on this show tell me that even if he had a crock pot,

two days would be extreme. A week goes by. He calls me again. Are you covered in dragon roll to try to sendo and she's sauce? Um, for no. I actually, I... But bear is surprisingly serene. Everything's done. Do is set. Cheese sauce is all warmed up. He's just waiting for three other guys on the pod to bring the meat they've been heating up in their hot pots. A whole thing is sort of a meal share program. There's guys checking ingredients and red bear makes them dragon rolls, too.

Oops. I haven't every time. I'm overly dramatic about it on purpose.

“All right. I think I kind of like it. Okay. Well, that's a whole other line of question.”

To verdict is out on that one. And then one by one, red bear composes each guy's dragon roll. One of them says it's a pleasure just to watch him do it. Folding the dough over the meat, drizzling the cheese sauce on it. In this time, he mixed together a separate concoction of everything that goes in the cheese sauce except the cheese and drizzles that on there, too. So these

rolls are extra spicy. And then each of them digs a sport in. And as usual, it's amazing. That's

guy they call Perseus. That's very delicious. That's Ian also known as the tavern burner. He does that in video games, not in real life. And here's Kongie again. Red bear sell meat. Oh, it is good. And I'm already breaking out the sweat. Really? It's that hot. It is. There's just so much spice in it. And maybe I shouldn't use this word considering that this is a story of a prisoner's. But if you ask Kongie, making the dragon rolls is also kind of an escape. It cuts into that groundhog day effect.

It gives us some to look forward to. And then we can talk about it from the next couple of days. How good it was. And Ian will is probably the be asking tomorrow once the next one. And then you do it all over again. I'm doing it all over again. It's great.

he'll have to pass on the tradition to somebody else. That story was reported by Sean Cole. He's a radio producer and poet. Now it's time to answer your cooking questions with my co-host Sarah Molten. Sarah is of course the star of Sarah's weeknight meals on public television. Also author of Home Cooking 101. So Chris, before we take any calls, I was wondering since I've seen you last,

have you learned anything new? No. Not a thing. No, I'm just kidding. Yeah, I'd say every day. Tell me something that stood out. Okay, three things we've worked on recently that have

completely stood out. Cremberly. Okay. Now I don't make Cremberly because I always think it's a restaurant

“dish and it's a pain and you have to heat the milk and suffuse milk and you need it towards it.”

And you need ramic, well the torch is okay. The ramic ends and it's a water bath and blah blah blah. So I said, let's figure out how to make this simpler. So we came up with a method. It takes four minutes to get it in the oven. There's no water bath and it's delicious. And it's a little livelier than regular Cremberly. It's absolutely phenomenal. Rosada was another one. It's like, okay, 25 minutes. You keep adding all hot stuff in your standing and it's like,

we figured out a way to do it. So you finish it in a skill in five minutes.

A little soaking in some other things. But that was really, really interesting.

And the last is, Homeus, I was in Ohio and I went to a Middle Eastern restaurant and they of course put homeus on the table and it was super light. I mean it was just light. I love homeus. But it can be a little spackly. Sometimes it can be a little heavy. So this had a fair amount of tahini and it was just super light. And so we did a lot of research and tried it. And part of the solution was ice. Wow. So super light homeus much faster risotto and then the Cremberly, which is

easier than vanilla pudding. Wow. Well, much excited. So there you go. I had a fabulous week. You've been busy. Okay. Well, now let's take a call. Welcome to most street, who's calling? This is Adam Burns from Holland, Michigan. Hello, Adam Burns. How can we help you? Well, I discovered that a local specialty grocer Terry's frozen rabbits. Yeah. I don't really know what to do with them. I've heard of

"Possent Freckler" thanks to "Bugs Bunny" to Welsh Rabbit, which isn't really rabbit. Right. And I know that you're 100 and so I might have some suggestions. I do. I've hunted rabbits for many years. And we

“usually have a big game dinner with the seasons over in mid-March. The only thing I need to know is”

there's not much meat in the frontlight. So it's the back legs and then the tenderloin or back strap, whatever you want to refer to it as. Right. That part, like a tenderloin, you would cook very quickly. The legs, however, like legs in a turkey or chicken, need to be brazed or cooked for a long time. So I would cook them very differently. If I was going to braze them, which is nice with some herbs and wine and other things, and then you could add the back strap to the last like 10 minutes

or you could just grill it separately. All right. There are any particular spaces that you would use with rabbit, because I heard it can be strong. It depends. I think the farmed raised rabbits are probably not as strong as the wild rabbits. That would be my guess. Obviously Rosemary is something you would use. You could use almost anything you want, but I would have a fairly strong herb to go with it. I would keep it simple, like a simple sauce to go with it or braze to go with it

with some stock, a little wine, which you previously reduced. Some herbs, shallots, that sort of thing, and braze it. The legs you could probably braze for an hour, so 45 minutes to an hour. Sarah Multon has actually cooked rabbits professionally. Right. It's so interesting now, because you don't usually see it on a menu, but when I was a chef at a restaurant in Boston called Sebel's,

“we used to have rabbit every so often. But ours was domesticated, which is what I think you've”

got access to. I never found it very gamey at all. It is very nice braze. Also, it's good fried.

You soak it overnight in buttermilk and salt, and then dip it into flour the next day and shallow frives really yummy. That sounds really good. Yeah, anything you do with chicken, and you could do with wappet. Yeah, sounds good. All right. So Adam, I hope you do it, and let us know how it goes. Yeah, I will. Thank you so much for your help and suggestions. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. This is Milk Street Radio. We're here to fix your recipes.

Give us a ring any time, 855-426-9843. That's 855-426-9843, or email us at [email protected].

Well, how can we help you today? Well, my question has to do with a recipe for a bowl in

“Yaze or Ragu, like a meat sauce for pasta? Yes. And I learned recipes from my favorite German uncle,”

one I lived in Munich over 20 years ago. I've made it many times since returning home to the

States, and it's always good, but never quite like Uncle Gottfried's was. So I've experimented a lot

with like leaner, paddy, or meat, different tomatoes, all kinds of things, and I can't quite replicate it. And then, you know, he seems to pass away, but this past summer I was visiting relatives in Munich, and I decided to make them Gottfried's Ragu as a treat, and to my surprise, it tasted just like I remembered his be. So it's like a smoother, more buttery texture and a sweeter taste that I got in the States. So I had a theory about why this might be, and I thought I'd run it by you,

and also hear if you have other ideas. What is your theory? Well, my theory is that when I bought the meat, which was a mix of beef and pork that I just picked up from the grocery store, or near their house, the grind in the meat was like noticeably finer than I see in the States.

“And I suspect that might be the difference. I went to like different butcher's and tried to find”

more finely ground meat, or asking that they'll grind it finer, and the grocery stores don't even

have a grinder anymore, I learned and then I found a mom and pop butcher shop that wanted me to buy 10 pounds of meat to do it, and I tried putting it a food processor, which kind of turned it a mush. So before I invest in a meat grinder or something, I thought I'd see if that makes sense, or if you have any other ideas. The thing to me that seems the most obvious is the quality of the meat you were using. You know, a lot of times like what the animal was fed well influenced the flavor,

obviously the fat content and you've already considered that it sounds like. I wonder if what you worked with here was much leaner than what you got there, because most of the beef you find the ground beef is extremely lean here. I try to get a fadier one, but yeah. But if you're going to do

this more regularly, you can get a meat grinder. Do you have a stand mixer? I do, yeah, the kitchen

aid. Because they have grinding attachments. And so then you could thought that, you know, you could actually just pick the meat yourself and grind it yourself. Would you buy a particular cut of meat that's not at all ground or could you take already ground meat and try grind it finder, or how would you approach that? If you're going to bother to get a grinding attachment, I would buy the meat and get flavorful meat. I would get a pork shoulder and a fadier cut of beef also.

You know, and grind it up yourself, control it. I'm sure it would be really tasty. Chris, what are your thoughts? I was in Belongia a couple of years ago and he stopped at a restaurant that was famous for its ragdoo ball and as a, and we made it together. Their grind was pretty coarse. So the flavor you're talking about or texture, I don't think it's anything to do with a

“quality of the grind. I think Sarah's actually right. It's the meat. Now, there are three kinds of”

meat they use in making it, right? They have beef, they have pork, and they also will have some panchetta. So the panchetta, which is very fatty, is going to deliver that silky mouthfeel. I don't like that term very much, but you get that smooth silky feel and that's where it's coming from. So I don't know if your recipe uses panchetta, but that'll solve that problem. As far as grinding meat, I agree with Sarah, get the best possible cuts you can and grind them yourself. That'll be

much better than whatever you buy pre-ground in the supermarket. And you'd also don't use a lot of tomato. They use onion, celery, a little tomato. It's mostly the meat. You just cook it for three or four hours over low flame. It doesn't matter about the grind because you're going to cook it down. But the point of grinding it yourself is that way you can pick what meat you grind absolutely true. And you can do it in a food processor. If you cut the meat into strips, freeze it for 15 or

20 minutes, and then pulse it, you can actually grind meat in your food processor. You won't be quite as even as in that way. No, it won't be as even, but if you're going to cook it for three hours, it doesn't really matter because the meat will break down anyway. But anyway, it's the panchetta. I would try that. Okay, I'll try that. Those are all great suggestions. But you know, you're getting better meat in Germany. The print was the answer. Yeah, because it was hard to wrap this up. You just

you just have to go to Germany to make your batch with ball and you say, that's all. Bring it back to the suitcase and freeze it. Yeah, stop you zero. No, not at all. No, no, no, no. That doesn't happen. But hey, right, Dave, try these things and let us know. Okay, sounds good. Thank you so much. Okay. Bye, buddy. Bye, bye. You're listening to Milk Street Radio. Coming up, how to make ice cream and chips. How to fish.

This is Milk Street Radio. I'm your host, Christopher Kimball.

Wholefish cooking from Finn to Gil. He lets nothing go to waste. He's the author of the Wholefish Cookbook and runs the restaurant St. Peter and fish butchery, both in Sydney, Australia. Josh, welcome to Milk Street. Thanks, Chris. Thanks for having me. So first off, I love your book and your work. And I've come to the conclusion that there is some level of madness or maybe genius at the core of it. And I think you're a genius. That's sort of where

“I come down. But I look at like, here's the thing that really struck me. You have a photograph”

of a grouper and then you have it cut up into 31 distinct parts. Like I've been flyfishing all my life

in a million years, if you would said to me, you know, you can make chips out of the eyeballs and

some other things from 31 parts. I would have gone, okay, we were born a different plan. So I love the idea you take meat butchery and apply that concept to fish. So let's just start there. What drives the subsistiveness with really thinking about the components of fish and how to cook each of them? Well, thank you. That's very kind. Yeah, bit mad in general. But for me, I worked in a really good restaurant at age 18 and got shown the right way how to

do fine dining and be on a fish section. And I think I've found it incredibly fascinating that you needed a calculator and really sharp knives and a whole lot of tools that the rest of the kitchen

didn't really have. And then you start to think, oh well, I actually enjoy doing fish more than

everything else. And with all of that, then Julie, my wife and I decided to open our own restaurant when I was 26 and independently owning an operating restaurant now for the last nine years.

“I believe the only way that that can happen is because we've got an incredibly distinct point of view.”

Rather than try to be a jack of all, I try to be a master of one. And as much as you get that kind of thing where people say, oh, you're the fish guy. You know, I'm okay with that. It's good. It gives me parameters to work within. And I think what really was the catalyst behind all of the creativity and all of the innovation was that I had a problem to solve. And it was an economical one.

So the solution was to put some trays on top of the garbage bins so that none of the cooks could

throw anything away after they were cutting a fish. And that opened the door for a whole lot of creativity, like making sausages and prosciutto and ice cream out of eyeballs. And, you know, all these things where it was to try not to make the guest uneasy or squeamish. It was to bring comfort in the form of texture and aesthetic to an otherwise very compromised part of a fish. I mean, there's so many parts of the world that will consume the entirety of a fish. But

rarely does that textually correlate or aesthetically correlate with a Western audience. And so that's why I looked more into meat butchery and what that could do in the world of fish.

“So the first day you had fish eye chips. Yeah. Was there a long explanation process required?”

Or did you just do it in people just, you know, went for it? Well, I went home one night in that time where everything was quite tense and the accountant's calling me most days and my wife's in my ear, most days. And I woke up one morning and just thought, well, it'd be kind of fun to make a prawn chip like a prawn cracker that you get in a Chinese restaurant out of fish eyes. So instead of doing the chefy thing where we go round and round in circles, wondering how we

might potentially do it, I just made a prawn cracker but I used fish eyes instead. And then I got something that worked and then rather than doing a long-winded conversation at the table or putting it on the menu and gimmickly kind of putting it in inverted commas and calling it fish eye chips. We just put them on the table when they sat down and we just gave them away. And we didn't tell people what it was, they were just crunchy deep fried and had salt on them.

And at the end of the meal, we went over to the table and we said, how is your meal? How was everything? Yeah, yeah, we loved it. It was great. And then you said, how was the chip that you got at the beginning? And then they said, oh, yeah, that was yummy. What was that? And then, you know, then you unpack it. And then you say, well, that's a fish eye. And they do what you are doing. Now, they had a giggle. They looked at each other. They were shocked. And that was then what gave us

the word of mouth. Everybody started to have a chat about this little restaurant that was giving away these eye chips and doing a lot more with a fish than most. You talk about cost. So I think you say that half of a whole fish ends up as waste,

work. So does the additional work cancel out the savings you get from fish? And so it's really not

economic. It's more your artistic intent here. It's interesting. You know, how is it that laboring over a number of different fish to extract? You know, a thumbnail sized fish heart to then threaded onto a bone that you've taken out of that fish and then grilled it over the barbecue.

“How does that make any sense? And I think there's a lot, like you said, of artistic expression,”

there's the intent to be provocative so that we can affect change. Oftentimes, the owners of the issue around sustainability and the economics of fish gets put back on the consumer and what I'm trying to say is that the issue that we have with the overcatching and the absorbent and amount of food waste that happens within the world of fish lies with the industry squaly. And so the work that I do and the work that our team does is to show that there's so much more that you can achieve

with one single fish and to, you know, be the first at doing some of these things. You know,

is always going to be a little more painful than once everybody starts doing it. But nearly 10 years

in now, we're able to execute, you know, a beautiful menu that's 10 to 11 courses and you've got this enrolled client base that's super excited to consume everything but the fillet, which is

“kind of fun. You talk a lot about the culinary need for preservation, you know, like bread and butter”

pudding or using sort of steel bread and leftover, obviously all the cured hams, etc. And obviously this salt cod. Are there other traditions in other cultures around the world where they were preserving fish in interesting ways that you read about and wanted to imitate or use as a starting point? I mean, aging fish, I think you can look to Japan over the last, you know, a few centuries and they've been aging their tuna in a way that I suppose a little bit different to the way that

I age the fish that I have. My whole thing is that once a fish comes out of water, it never goes

back in water. And so let me stop you just second. So what you're saying is I also found this just yes, that fish should not be washed. No, in water. Keeping a fish dry during processing is the most incredibly important variable of all, but usually what you find is that a fish gets scaled, gets washed, gets gutted, gets washed, gets filleted, it gets washed. And what's happening in that time is there's an organic compound in a fish called trimithlamine oxide and upon the use of

fresh water during processing, trimithlamine oxide converts into ammonia and ammonia is then what

“we all refer to as fishy fish. And the only way to mitigate ammonia is through the use of acidity,”

which is then why we've got a culinary repertoire, specifically French repertoire that states the use of acidity with fish, you know, holidays and tartar sauce and, you know, fish has been done the same forever. It's just for me, fascinating to learn more about meat-buttory rather than look to the world of fish. And I think we're continually running into the same problems, where as we get more and more privileged in our consumption of foods, we take exactly what we want, we hone in on the

primary cut right out of the middle and then there's very little consideration left for the rest. And so that's why I want to try to make pasta out of the bones and why I want to make ice cream out of the eyes. So let's go through some other things here. You do smoked Kingfish melt, okay? The one that really surprised me was fascinating, the dry aged yellow fintuna rack. Talk about that. That's a really cool photo and it's a cool idea.

Well, the funniest story that came of that, when we started to break down a tuna more with the lens that we were breaking down a cow, we were able to generate a ribeye of tuna. We were able to take a surline. We were able to take a tenderloin, able to take a skirt steak in the form of the belly, ocebucco cut from the tail and almost like an ox tail from the very end of the tail. And so all these meat-based practices that we were taking out, you know, this glorious last

loin that was left on the bone with the French rack, we interpreted it as a rib of tuna and we grilled it over charcoal and it was delicious. And we served it with usual suspects of sourced bananas or a chimituri or, you know, a servant with fries. And we had a gentleman get dragged in by his two daughters to St. Peter and these two girls came over to him and said, "Oh, it was so excited to be here." And Dad kind of piped on and said, "Yeah, the girls dragged me.

I don't eat fish, so I'll just have to sit here and endure it." And at the end of the meal,

And then Dad pipes up and goes, "Mate, you know, if cooking fish doesn't ever work out for you, you make sure that you keep cooking steak." And I said to him, "You know, that was tuna, I hadn't," and then he was just like, "What?" And then he's daughter started laughing that they played along the whole time and told him that it was a rib of beef as well. So I often go to a, I buy most of my fish from a local fish manga, which is great, but

I've also buy for the supermarket, usually. So I'm standing there, there's glass over the case. Yep, I can't touch the fish easily. Or it's pre-packed. You talk about the eyes or the gills,

“but what are the visual size to help me decide whether it's fresh or not?”

Yeah, I mean, this is always the hardest question to answer and, you know, to identify people within

your own community that handle fish really well, that's the best place to start. You know, if you're able to go have a conversation with the person that's at that fish manga and kind of say, "Well, what came today?" Or what is the freshest product that you've got? What you are looking for is convex eyes rather than concave, but if you're talking about filets, you don't want to see freezer burn, you don't want to see fish sitting in a puddle of water.

You know, have a chat with the people there and say, "Can I get you to scale and fill it this fish for me?" But don't wash it for me and you can leave all the sediment on the outside and I'll just wipe it when I get home. And so if you take that fill at home and then put it on that cake rack and leave it for a full day overnight and fridge with the fan, you're going to have something extraordinary. Like I promise you to blow your mind in terms of how different it is to

what you've been consuming to this point. That was the most useful piece of fish buying preparation I've ever heard of. Another question I have is this, you know, Japan obviously loves raw fish in sushi and sashimi, et cetera. But when they cook fish, I found much to my surprise that they cook the heck out of it. I mean, that's the salmon filet that they often serve for breakfast. Yeah. They just broil it to death. They love raw fish or they want fully cook fish. Yeah.

But there's not that in between. Yeah. So what is your thinking about, you know, getting a filet of

“center of cut of filet of salmon? To what degree have done this do you think we should cook that fish?”

Yeah. I mean, it's medium rare. All the time. I mean, that's a cultural interpretation. But with most of the fish that we, well, yeah, pretty much 95% of the fish that we serve at St. Peter.

It's always medium rare. And if we're serving a whole fillet where we haven't actually

sliced it, then we always instruct the guests to start at the thinner side of the fish and work their way across to the thick side. If you start on the thinner side, eventually, by the time you make your way across, that fish will be perfectly cooked. And it's really to make sure that people when eating a fish can understand the taste and perhaps even the water that it was swimming in, because a lot of the nuances of fish is found when it is slightly underdone. So, okay.

So how are we going to cook fish? Yeah. You talk about the low oven, like a 250 oven, than 500 of a skillet of grill. I love that. I do that with steak. I never thought about doing that

“with tuna. Yeah. A couple other ideas for people who are trepidacious about cooking fish?”

Well, I mean, I love cooking a grill with some charcoal. I think it's arguably one of the best ways to cook a fish because you impart so much flavor in a short period of time, putting it on a cake rack that's sitting on your barbecue. Because I think a lot of times, people don't barbecue fish for fear of how do I get it off the grill once I put it on. And if you put a wire rack or trivet cake rack on top of that hot barbecue, and then put the fish on that, then if you find that

the fish is getting too hot or not hot enough or whatever it might be, then you're able to take the rack off rather than trying to take the fish off. That's a great idea. And once my skin's crispy, usually people will turn the fish over to the flesh side, which results in this kind of overcooked dry chicken breast, like texture, that's really miserable. So my suggestion is to, when you put the fish on the rack, cook it with either a large saucepan, fill with a bit of water,

sitting on top of the fish while it cooks. And what that does is it's a stainless steel disc,

basically, that's weighted. And as heat rises, the heat collects on the stainless steel and slowly

starts to cook the flesh of the fish without damaging it to the point of changing the texture to something that's quite dry. And that means then you don't need to flip the fish over to finish the cooking. So, did you have a moment in this transformation to become a fish butary expert in chef?

going like, oh yeah, you know, this is, I'm kind of way over my head of the deep end with this.

Yeah, I mean, there was the moment when we opened fish portray, which, you know, some people called like the Apple Store meets fish shop, which was this long marble bench at the end of it had this refrigerated glass cube at where there was one single fish of each species that we were carrying dressed up in as most glamorous way that I could possibly think of. And people would come in and kind of laugh and take the photos of the kind of weird fish shop and

then they'd leave. And so we had all this foot traffic go through fish portray, yet

“weren't really able to capture any revenue. So, what has you changed to make it work?”

Well, we had to be less outlandish, I suppose, and the effort really went into the communication side of things. So, yeah, it eventually got to a point where we had guests coming in with notebooks writing down what we told them to do last week with the species that they got and now writing down new notes for how to do this week's fish. And it was really lovely to have this group of people that really appreciated what we were doing. I was hoping you were going to say

you put a sign out of front saying fish and chips, Dylan. Yeah, fish and something really, we were definitely doing that as well. And at the same time, we were doing our tuna cheeseburger. So, you know, the sculler potdog, the tuna cheeseburger and the fish and cheeseburger may have been the catalyst behind the business. It's not the romance of the story, it was the hot dog. Ah, yeah. Josh, this is fascinating. I've decided you really are genius and thanks so much for

being with us here in the history. Thank you so much. It's very kind, thank you. That was Josh Nailin, author of the whole fish cookbook. He also runs two restaurants in Sydney, St. Peter and Fish Butcherie. Nose to tail or in Josh Nailin's case from Fendi Gill is the case of remaking a concept as old as time itself, which is letting nothing go to waste. Many folks are happy to pay for the pricey bits like Center Cut salmon and leave the rest un-eaten.

During a recent trip to Japan, this culinary conundrum came into focus. Raw shrimp guts was, for me, beyond the pale, but milk, that's fish sperm and a custard-like terrain, was surprisingly tasty. So, sure, cook from Fendi Gill. Some things will be shockingly delicious and others not. But at the same time, I applaud the chefs who are giving me a choice. As they say, "shack on us on goo" or "each" to their own taste.

You're listening to Milk Street Radio. Coming up the world's best restaurants, you've never heard of.

I'm Christopher Campbell, you're listening to Milk Street Radio. I'm now joined by Mac Goulding, he's the co-founder of Roads and Kingdoms, which publishes articles online as well as books, and now they just launched the first issue of their print magazine. Matt, welcome back to A Mostree. Great to be here, Chris. Thanks for having me. So, this is an important time, Roads and Kingdoms, which was all digital all the time, is now actually produced a print issue.

And if you ever want to call me up late tonight and talk to me about that, I'd be happy to discuss it over a bourbon. But you've also featuring a restaurant list, the top 50 restaurants, Roads and Kingdoms compiled by many of the people you've worked with over the years.

“The selection of these restaurants, though, I think, is slightly different than,”

let's say, the Michelin Guide, right? Slightly would be an understatement. I think the entire purpose of this was to provide an alternative to the increasing quantity of lists and guides out there, a tent of focus on a certain style of restaurant, white tablecloth, serious tasting menu, very expensive. We love these restaurants from time to time, but the preponderance of these lists can be a little overwhelming and a little bit repetitive, let's say, in terms of the kinds of

cuisine they celebrate. We want to come up with the list that ultimately sort of address the

question of where would your last meal be? You know, the place you want to go back to time and time again is that there are in K-50s, those kinds of restaurants across the world, pulled together by contributors and writers and world class chefs who are lucky enough to call our friends. This list, and we're going to talk about five of them, but before we get to the list,

“I think I have exactly the same point of view you have, which is I'm done with all of the”

pizazz and the multi-courses and I don't need that anymore. You know, I want the place that has fabulous southern Indian food and it doesn't even have menus, you know, that's kind of what I want.

So what is the first restaurant on your list? The first one, I'll selfishly start in my own home

“town here in Barcelona. It's called Ultramarino's Marine, run by a Basque chef named Borja Ordonio,”

two blocks from my house and what Borja did, you kind of fused the great culture of the Basque country, which is called the Asador culture, kind of a grill or hearth-based restaurant where everything passes over the flame. And you brought that to the middle of Barcelona. I mean, really, who Borja is, he's a chef's chef. You know, he goes to the fish auctions every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at dawn. He's that guy who reads tombs on ancient Roman cookery on his

days off and that kind of deep love of food and what it can be really ultimately shows on the plate. Everything you eat there is in contention with the best of that version you've ever had. The best red shrimp of ever had, the best smashed potato cooked in rendered pig fat until it's crispy on the outside and creamy in the middle. And there's not a chef who's coming to Barcelona and that I haven't taken directly to Ultramarino over the years. Okay, the second, now I have a question

because the second one is Jose Andres and this is also a restaurant near his house. So this is becoming a theme. So Bethesda crap house, this one shocked me of all the ones in here. So this is Jose's favorite restaurant. I mean, this is among Jose's three or four places that he sent to us. And essentially, it's exactly like it sounds. It's a very simple, no frills, family-owned crap house in Bethesda. They cook crops very simply but very well. You can get them sort of naked and

get them with old bay and they bring them out on butcher paper stacked high and you just kind of

methodically work through these incredible crabs with cold beer, usually a bucket of cold beer.

I can't complain about that the way the way you tell the story anyway. I mean, look, the man knows a thing or two about crustaceans and crab being his favorite food on the planet. This is probably his favorite place to eat it. Third place is near and dear to my heart. It's in Kyoto, Japan and I was there in May and I found a lot of places like this like eight to 10 seats, two employees, usually married or friends, and just an amazing food but it's almost not a restaurant.

It's like it's like to go into someone's house. So once you describe that because I think that makes Japan such an interesting place from a restaurant point of view. That's it. I mean, it's the

“place that's called Lake Atorza. It's right in the middle of Kyoto and the truth is there's a hundred”

places like this around Japan in the sense that as you said, it's small. It's family-owned. It's focused on just a small handful of things but they're done incredibly well. In this case, house-made chakudari, house-made terreens are really simple but really delicious wagyu steak. You know, cooked really hard on the flat top towards got this crispy crust and kind of yielding center and served with like a really simple but beautifully dressed salad on the side. You know,

the owners got this incredible jazz record collection as so many these Japanese chefs do.

You have that in a glass of natural wine and you're like this is this is where I want to be. You know, I remember Leon being in Japan and meeting a chef and I asked him what is your future ambition for this restaurant and he says well right now I have eight seats and the future I would like to have six. That's right. That said, that said it all to me. Yeah that's really great quote. Okay India. So this is a place in Amada Bad but serves a sort of a tally style mix plate

of the classic everyday cuisine of India. It's called the Gobi dining hall and this is from a friend of Rosen Kingdom's Vishwesh but who is based down in Mississippi but is also, you know, from India originally and knows this stuff on both sides of the world and ultimately this is a place that workers go to to fill up on the best possible food and that means the best imaginable

doll, incredible fresh seasonal vegetable dishes, beautiful grilled cooked brotes based with ghee

and literally like a four dollar lunch that everybody up and down the social stratum is going to be coming to line up for it says a lot about what's really great about Indian cuisine.

“Finally we're in Angola. Why is Angola one of your favorite destinations?”

I should say we run a trip to Angola now with a really great local writer named Claudio Silva and Claudio came to us a few years ago and said look Angola's ready yet we've been through

underside of this and the combination of cultures here is always made for good eating and this place

“which is called Baraka.tv is a classic plastic stool kind of place to kind of place that”

bordane would wrap about in the gushiest of terms back in the sort of no reservations or parts unknown days you know they bring a platter of fish up to you and they say you know these are the three or four fish we have today we have a fresh water to lap yeah we've got a macro they marinated in fresh sea water cut with ginger and other spices and then they cook it over life fire. So the idea of marinating in fresh sea water is that something you've encountered

many places not a lot but it's interesting it's like it's a built in Brian though right I mean when you take a bite out of this freshly grilled macro it's like this sounds great this absolutely makes sense where do I sign up. So that dish which is kind of one of the national dishes of

“Angola is called Moefetti it's that combination of grilled fish and beans with plantains and”

sweet potatoes you can imagine going to a place like this hungry from your travels being shocked by the quality of food and then wine to come back time and time again. You know you mentioned Tony Burden there seems to be a throughline here right because his anti four star point of view is this connected back to him in some way because he's obviously this would be a list he would love and is this something that you think it's time has come or do you think that most people still

aren't you know this is not a list most people are gonna get serious about. Look I mean to the first question is one thousand percent connected back to Tony you know he was for me a hero you know and an idol and through some turn of fate I ended up getting a chance to spend a lot of years working with him and so the magazine actually opens up with a letter to Tony and it kind of is a state of the union what has happened in the seven years since Tony died and why do we

believe in food more than ever as a way to make sense of the world during times that feel totally

“nonsensical. I think what I find so interesting is you can tell a lot about people by the way they”

think about food it's not so much the recipe or the restaurant there's a philosophy or way of seeing food and cooking and how they approach it what it means to them you really understand someone much better when you sit there and cook with them. I mean for me personally I think that's

Tony's great gift to the world which was what he always wanted was to engender more empathy

and what better way to do that than through food the one thing that all of us to some level understand and so I think when you look at this list it really does come back to that behind every one of these meals behind every one of these restaurants are group of people who really feel strongly about hospitality who feel strongly about the power of food to bring people together and who know how to make things that keep you wanting more.

Matt a fabulous list next time give me a call I'll give you the 51st of course restaurant the world I would love to hear thanks for having me on take care. That was Matt Goulding he's the co-founder of Rhodes and Kingdoms magazine. You can find all of our episodes in most street radio.com or wherever you get your podcasts to explore milk street and everything we have to offer please go to 177milkstreet.com.

There you can become a member, get full access to every recipe, free standard shipping for the Milk Street store and more. You can also find us on Facebook a Christopher Kimmel's Milk Street on Instagram at 177milkstreet. We'll be back next week with more food stories

and kitchen questions and thanks as always for listening.

Christopher Kimmel's Milk Street Radio is produced by Milk Street in association with GPH. Co-founder Melissa Baldina, executive producer, Annie Simseba, senior editor, Melissa Allison, senior producer, Sarah Clark, producer, Caroline Davis, assistant producer, Mari Arosco, additional editing by Sydney Lewis, audio mixing by Jay Allison, at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Theme music by TubeBub crew, additional music by George

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