Speaker 1: When I do live gigs around the country, I'll be
Speaker 1: honest with you. I sell T shirts and swag to
Speaker 1: the folks who are there, and then people always say,
Speaker 1: can we get this swag without sitting through a whole
Speaker 1: evening of you. Well, it's happened. It's finally here. You
Speaker 1: can buy Craig Ferguson Merch on the Craig Ferguson Merch
Speaker 1: website and you can buy it for yourself or someone
Speaker 1: you hate or someone you love. For more information and
Speaker 1: link to the web store, please go to the Craig
Speaker 1: Fergusonshow dot com. That's all lowercase, the Craig Ferguson show
Speaker 1: dot com. My name is Craig Ferguson. The name of
Speaker 1: this podcast is Joy. I talk to interesting people about
Speaker 1: what brings them happiness. Sorry for eating, I'm just finishing
Speaker 1: my Faberja egg because my guest today is Stephanie Boswell,
Speaker 1: who is the creator of one of the most famous
Speaker 1: desserts in the world, the Faberge egg.
Speaker 2: That she's really clear, verty funny, enjoy.
Speaker 1: How have you been you know, kind of okay, just okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: i'd be busy. You basically don't know what happened. I
Speaker 1: started like I didn't work for a while. I don't
Speaker 1: know if you've ever tried this, but like not working, Oh.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I gave it a go. I did not care
Speaker 3: for it. Personally, it sucks.
Speaker 1: It's the worst, Like you don't work and you just
Speaker 1: sit around thinking about things that you're not or scrolling.
Speaker 3: Scrolling.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you a scroller.
Speaker 3: I just recently became a scroller, and I'm going to
Speaker 3: be honest, it's the worst thing that's ever happened to me.
Speaker 1: Or the human race maybe potentially. Yeah, it's awful.
Speaker 3: I've never in my life had trouble sleeping until the
Speaker 3: short format.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Scroll, it's that little magnifying glass on Instagram. People
Speaker 1: listen to this podcast will get get really mad, probably
Speaker 1: because I say this at every episode, and I feel
Speaker 1: like they feel like I'm judging them and I'm not
Speaker 1: judging them, but I don't like it for.
Speaker 3: Myself much judgment.
Speaker 1: I'm a fucking judging man.
Speaker 3: I I and I feel it's sitting here right now.
Speaker 1: You know I'm not judging.
Speaker 3: You're walking looking like a bratstall that might kill you,
Speaker 3: like the chucky version of a brat stall, and the
Speaker 3: judgment no judgment.
Speaker 1: You said you look, I said you look, I said
Speaker 1: you look sensational. You do look like a golf bratstall though.
Speaker 1: I think it's great. It's a fabulous look. You are
Speaker 1: the best pastry chef in the world officially. Is that right?
Speaker 3: Oh my god? No, I am not even close, not
Speaker 3: even close.
Speaker 1: No, it's true because I have I don't know if
Speaker 1: you know this. You know how David Lynch has Best
Speaker 1: Dressed People of the Year. Sure, well, I have my
Speaker 1: own version of that. It's Pastry Chef for the Year.
Speaker 1: And you've won.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, oh my god. Can we cuse some
Speaker 3: kind of music, like a swell of.
Speaker 1: There and then there'll be a prize obviously what.
Speaker 3: Kind of prize? What's the prize? Is there prize money involved?
Speaker 1: Get you get a ham.
Speaker 3: Type of hand?
Speaker 1: Is it?
Speaker 3: Honey baked?
Speaker 1: I don't know. You're the chef? Do you you get
Speaker 1: you get a roll hand?
Speaker 3: You just got to pick. You got pig, you get
Speaker 3: to raise get out.
Speaker 1: You got a pig. You have to raise the peg
Speaker 1: slower the peg, guys, you would name it. Have you
Speaker 1: ever had to do that?
Speaker 3: I have?
Speaker 1: I have see I thought I don't think I could
Speaker 1: be a chef because I think all that like killing
Speaker 1: stuff way you kill stuff.
Speaker 3: I did when I was younger. I used to spend
Speaker 3: time on on a ranch over the summer to build
Speaker 3: a character.
Speaker 1: Right, was it one of these skip straight things and
Speaker 1: you tell something?
Speaker 3: It was? It was Sally Jesse. Raphael actually said me
Speaker 3: there and and yeah, you you kind of you become
Speaker 3: accustomed to the idea of like certain animals you name
Speaker 3: and certain animals you don't. And the ones you name
Speaker 3: like work around the ranch, they have a.
Speaker 1: Job, horses and stuff, horses.
Speaker 3: Dogs, cats, you know, things like that, But thousands of cows.
Speaker 1: No, you don't, don't get named.
Speaker 3: You don't really want to get attached in that iron.
Speaker 1: Well, man, I just I don't think I could do it,
Speaker 1: Like even people who go hunting. I'm like, I don't
Speaker 1: think I could.
Speaker 3: Do it, you know, hunting is I mean, I sort
Speaker 3: of appreciate hunting in that idea of you know, when
Speaker 3: I feel like vegans would sort of appreciate a hunter,
Speaker 3: you know, like I feel like a vegan would go
Speaker 3: you know what depends on the vegan. You took it down, fair,
Speaker 3: fair dudes.
Speaker 1: Well okay, yeah, I mean you took it down with
Speaker 1: what are you an ak forty seven or a knife
Speaker 1: between your teeth?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 1: Is that a fair fight? Or yeah?
Speaker 3: Are you? Are you hunting it with a bow and arrow?
Speaker 3: Or is it is it some sort of like mass.
Speaker 1: Also bone arrow? Like if you have you been all
Speaker 1: bean in Maine and seeing the boat you could the
Speaker 1: bon arrows you can buy, It's like, this is not really,
Speaker 1: this is not Robin Hood we're talking to.
Speaker 3: I haven't, honestly, I've The first time I went to
Speaker 3: Maine was what two years ago? Take and it's absolutely gorgeous.
Speaker 3: I here's here's a fun fact. I am horrible with geography,
Speaker 3: specifically American geography. I didn't realize Maine was part of
Speaker 3: New England.
Speaker 1: What did you think it was?
Speaker 3: I thought it was like kind of up by like
Speaker 3: Canada Canada. Yeah, but I didn't realize that also New
Speaker 3: England was the accent threw me for a bit of
Speaker 3: a loop because it was it was a bit family guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it was definitely a little family guy.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: That's that said in Rhode Island, doesn't it which is
Speaker 1: near I see where I see the problem. Now I
Speaker 1: see what you're saying. I'm sorry I didn't understand for
Speaker 1: a minute. Now I understand.
Speaker 3: I don't know, but I'm terrible a joke.
Speaker 1: You're the best pasty chef in the world. You won
Speaker 1: the Craig Ferguson Eamed Pastry Chef Challenge.
Speaker 3: And that I am forever great.
Speaker 1: Fu Well you want to that thing you like you
Speaker 1: that made you famous is a pastry cheff? The faberg
Speaker 1: egg thing? Is that made of actual gold?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: There's real gold in it? Right?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: How did you make a fact?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 1: Can you give a recipe? O? Can you say this
Speaker 1: is how I do it?
Speaker 5: Or?
Speaker 3: Sure? I mean it's it's more it's more technique than
Speaker 3: anything else. The ingredients would necessarily I.
Speaker 1: Thought, it's like somebody saying, oh, I've got some wheels
Speaker 1: and an engine, go make yourself car. Sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a little bit like I've got I've got
Speaker 3: metal and rubber. I made a model.
Speaker 1: Tea, right, So but like skill, Yeah, the the.
Speaker 3: Raw ingredients are there for everyone. But yeah, it's basically
Speaker 3: just casting and you know the best ingredients you can find.
Speaker 3: And then at that after that point it becomes sort
Speaker 3: of just how do you manipulate those ingredients to be
Speaker 3: the most beautiful, perfect that you possibly can and.
Speaker 1: They're tasting along the way though. Oh yeah, because I
Speaker 1: mean it's such an an thing to make a fabergy
Speaker 1: egg out of basically, I guess sugar, mostly chocolate, chocolate.
Speaker 1: I just I would just start crying and knee all
Speaker 1: the chocolate. That's that's my technique.
Speaker 3: That's also part of the part of the methodology. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's a that's a big part of it. Halfway through
Speaker 3: you begin to cry and just eat and just and
Speaker 3: just eat it and then start over.
Speaker 1: And how did you start off being? Like, did you
Speaker 1: like when you were a little girly, like I want
Speaker 1: to be a pastry chef?
Speaker 3: No, no, no, I wanted I mean, well, you know,
Speaker 3: I wanted to be all kinds of things when I
Speaker 3: was really little. I read The Hot Zone when I
Speaker 3: was like twelve. It's a book about ebola, and.
Speaker 1: Oh, you wanted to be a virus.
Speaker 3: I wanted to be. I wanted to grow up to
Speaker 3: be the best virus I could.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we got one.
Speaker 3: I wanted to be an epidemiologist or a virologist.
Speaker 1: That was that was science though it's sciences, it's it's
Speaker 1: sent to it. So you wanted to be Uh, well,
Speaker 1: you into Kate emistry, then you're chemistry, right, so now
Speaker 1: it begins to make sense, it begins to take shit.
Speaker 1: So you're into chemistry because because what you do is
Speaker 1: is really a science. It's a science and an r.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you you definitely have to know, you know, because
Speaker 3: a lot of people say, oh, I'm horrible at baking.
Speaker 3: I'm terrible, I could never get it right, and it
Speaker 3: really does become it's it's sort of it's science, and
Speaker 3: it's also repetition. Right, there's nothing about what chefs do
Speaker 3: that is so spectacular, like as chefs. I feel comfortable
Speaker 3: in saying this. We didn't become chefs because NASA wasn't
Speaker 3: challenging enough. You know, we didn't leave NAS and go,
Speaker 3: you know what, I just want to bake forget rockets, right,
Speaker 3: forget rockets. We need we want to make mattresses, more chocolate,
Speaker 3: more chocolate. So yeah, it's it's really just repetition. It's
Speaker 3: access to ingredients, it's access to different equipment, which nowadays,
Speaker 3: with you know, the Internet, yeah, is extremely accessible to
Speaker 3: almost everyone.
Speaker 1: Are you telling me that it's like practice?
Speaker 3: I think I am.
Speaker 1: It's like a musical instrument or something or like anything analysy,
Speaker 1: you just got to keep doing.
Speaker 3: Right, but do it for a living, and you got it,
Speaker 3: and it's sort of incentive by that to you to
Speaker 3: practice a little bit more.
Speaker 1: Because no one's going to let, you know, a twelve
Speaker 1: year old girl who wants to be a virus coming
Speaker 1: to catch it and make and make desert.
Speaker 3: You'd be surprised.
Speaker 1: There has to be there has to be a journey
Speaker 1: from you know, budding epidemiologist to you know, Fibershire egg
Speaker 1: in Las Vegas. So what so what's the journey from
Speaker 1: there to there?
Speaker 4: Then?
Speaker 1: So you what starts with why did you go off
Speaker 1: your erms?
Speaker 3: Well, it's sort of you know, it's one of those
Speaker 3: uh it's it's the butterfly effect, right, right. So growing
Speaker 3: up I was the youngest in my family. I was
Speaker 3: the only girl, so I got a full attention from
Speaker 3: my mother of you know, like getting the most sort
Speaker 3: of education in the most exposure to different things. So
Speaker 3: every weekend we would go to art museums and it
Speaker 3: was very like it felt sort of like being a
Speaker 3: human project, right, And so I grew up just loving
Speaker 3: science and art and all of that, and then went
Speaker 3: to college.
Speaker 1: And where did you grow up.
Speaker 3: I grew up in the Los Angeles, So.
Speaker 1: So you're going to Mama and you're going to the
Speaker 1: gaddy and going.
Speaker 3: To that me and like one guy named Da Wilson.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can't read Wilson. The only people I grew
Speaker 1: up here has it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Mama Lacma was a huge one for me. The
Speaker 3: Librea tar pits. I mean, you want to give a
Speaker 3: kid a great day.
Speaker 1: I have two children I've raised in Los Angeles, and
Speaker 1: I'm familiar with your so called.
Speaker 3: Well no they're not so called.
Speaker 6: They are.
Speaker 3: So cold.
Speaker 1: The Scottish thing just like try and make everything if
Speaker 1: it's and Scotland does tarpets were Yeah.
Speaker 3: But then you go back to Scotland and I'm sure
Speaker 3: people say you sound like Medline Monroe.
Speaker 1: They get very Do people say you said in Scottish
Speaker 1: when you're in Los Angeles? Yes, because you've been to Scotland.
Speaker 1: I saw you there, Yeah, I saw you. You were
Speaker 1: at my house your birthday bush.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: By the way, did you get COVID That no, because
Speaker 1: everybody got COVID.
Speaker 3: Now I can't stop.
Speaker 1: Yeah, everybody got like fifty seven people go COVID stood the.
Speaker 3: Most spectacular super spreader I've ever been.
Speaker 1: It was a it was a bit of a super
Speaker 1: It was a banger. It was a banger.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: It was a lot of COVID.
Speaker 3: I mean, no, I honestly think because we got COVID
Speaker 3: upon returning, and I truly believe it was from the
Speaker 3: because right when we were taking off was when the
Speaker 3: mask mandate lifted. Right, We're sitting in the plane, right,
Speaker 3: and they come over the PA system and say, the
Speaker 3: mask mandate has been lifted. Yeah, if you want to
Speaker 3: take your mask off, take it off, have fun. And
Speaker 3: every literally the plane cheered, clapped and cheered, took their
Speaker 3: masks off. It was a whole whole thing. And then
Speaker 3: we come back and we're standing in line at customs
Speaker 3: to get back into the country, and it is just
Speaker 3: a cattle call.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, just your boxed. I mean, you know
Speaker 5: the global No, you got to get the global area.
Speaker 5: I do now, but at the time I did, that's
Speaker 5: a big difference. Well yeah, I know, well, well you
Speaker 5: were still in al Qaeda.
Speaker 1: You're probably I.
Speaker 3: Was flying the flag, you know. I mean, when you're younger,
Speaker 3: you do things that you regret. You know, you can't
Speaker 3: take them back, you think about it later on and
Speaker 3: you cringe.
Speaker 1: I you know, I have to say I feel for
Speaker 1: the young people right now. All the stupid mistakes that
Speaker 1: they're making, they're all going to be available.
Speaker 3: All documented, all documented. It's crazy, isn't it awful? So bad? Like?
Speaker 3: On one hand, I feel, you know, like I feel
Speaker 3: sort of like, oh, these kids aren't going to have
Speaker 3: any of these embarrassing makeup and hair mistakes that I
Speaker 3: had growing up. Of like, now I look back at
Speaker 3: the way I styled myself when I was a teenager
Speaker 3: in my early twenties and kind of recoil at what
Speaker 3: was happening there.
Speaker 1: Part of life.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're not going to have that because they've got
Speaker 3: you know, millions of tutorials on how to look beautiful
Speaker 3: at all times. I disagree, Yeah, I disagree. Disagree.
Speaker 1: The only thing I think is because you still, even
Speaker 1: no matter how whale it's applied, you're going to look
Speaker 1: back at it ten years ago. The fuck was I thinking?
Speaker 3: The other thing is it's it's recycling so fast now,
Speaker 3: you know. It's like now now there's there's people on
Speaker 3: you know, there's the YouTubers that do specifically makeup and beauty,
Speaker 3: and they're saying things like twenty sixteen, makeup is back.
Speaker 3: It's like twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1: That's like twenty minutes ago talking about it.
Speaker 3: I just dreamed about Jurassics. What is happening?
Speaker 1: Moms taking you to museums in Los Angeles and you're
Speaker 1: looking at uh, well are you looking at? I guess
Speaker 1: you're looking at everything. It's really eclectic. So from Barbizon,
Speaker 1: French Impressionists all the way up to Warhole, abstract Expressionism,
Speaker 1: all that kind of.
Speaker 3: Suff're looking at all of that everything.
Speaker 1: Can you think cake? And no?
Speaker 3: No, not right away, No, not right away, not right away.
Speaker 3: I thought, I like this, It's fantastic. It's something that,
Speaker 3: you know, I find a lot of joy in spending
Speaker 3: every weekend at a museum or the Huntington or going
Speaker 3: to an opera like it all sort of influenced. And
Speaker 3: then got into college and did you study at college
Speaker 3: art history and chemistry?
Speaker 1: Art history and chemistry? There now it begins to form
Speaker 1: out of the mess right exactly.
Speaker 3: And then I started doing sort of the ment whole
Speaker 3: math of I don't actually want to do any of
Speaker 3: the jobs that a degree in art history or chemistry
Speaker 3: would lead to Okay, you know, I lead to.
Speaker 1: It guys like museum.
Speaker 3: Creator, curator or you know, like lab tech.
Speaker 7: Like I didn't wait, like way down the list, like
Speaker 7: beyond what did you study communications in a way?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I studied in a way. I studied chemistry and communications.
Speaker 1: These were my majors. So you're you're looking at these
Speaker 1: things and none of the things that you're studying leads
Speaker 1: you to the job you want, right And I didn't
Speaker 1: know what.
Speaker 3: I wanted at that point, you know, like I think now,
Speaker 3: you know, as an adult looking back, it's really bizarre
Speaker 3: and almost cruel to say, you're eighteen, what do you
Speaker 3: want to do forever?
Speaker 1: Couldn't agree more?
Speaker 3: What do you want to do for the rest of
Speaker 3: your life? Let me invest one hundred thousand dollars that
Speaker 3: will cripple you financially into something.
Speaker 1: Do you want to think the way while since you've
Speaker 1: been at college, I got kids.
Speaker 3: Now it's s eyewatering.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's too much like a house.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I basically I was sort of stock and
Speaker 3: I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life.
Speaker 3: And I was talking to my brother about it, and
Speaker 3: I sort of had this I always loved to cook.
Speaker 3: My grandmother taught me to cook. I cooked constantly.
Speaker 1: This is interesting because a lot of pastry chefs that
Speaker 1: I know, and I admittedly you're the only one, but
Speaker 1: a lot of cooks that people I know that work
Speaker 1: in kitchens, and I do know my brother in laws
Speaker 1: a chef and my sistant laws a chef, but they
Speaker 1: kind of fall into people who cook or people who bake.
Speaker 1: Sure is that? Is that a real thing?
Speaker 2: Sure?
Speaker 3: It is so culinary. It the way I generally explained
Speaker 3: it as culinary is just a big imagine it as
Speaker 3: a big graph, like a big pie chart. Right within
Speaker 3: that is specializations. So a specialization is pastry of coolinary.
Speaker 3: You need to know how to cook in order to
Speaker 3: do pastry right. And then from that specialization you can
Speaker 3: specialize even further into all I do is vn waree
Speaker 3: or all I do and ware is it like croissants laminated?
Speaker 1: Does all of that like beautiful?
Speaker 3: Exactly? And there's people who do like the most astounding
Speaker 3: things with it that would I mean, just make your
Speaker 3: nose bleed looking at them, like just incredible work. And
Speaker 3: then from there you can also specialize in wedding cakes
Speaker 3: all you do is wedding cakes. All you do is
Speaker 3: sculptured cakes. All you do is ice cream. All you
Speaker 3: do is sugar sculptures. All you do is chocolate sculptures.
Speaker 3: There's so many different specializations, Like it's it's niche on
Speaker 3: niche on niche.
Speaker 1: I love this. Yeah, it's getting really interesting. Is that
Speaker 1: what happened to you?
Speaker 3: I'm glad, No, but is that what happened to you
Speaker 3: that you.
Speaker 1: You kind of go, I like that, and then you
Speaker 1: start to kind of zero in a little more on
Speaker 1: on Yeah, how it makes you feel? Does make it
Speaker 1: feel different?
Speaker 3: I just sort of fell into it, honestly because I
Speaker 3: was talking to my brother and he said, you know,
Speaker 3: I said, I think I want to go to culinary
Speaker 3: school and my family would you know, at that point
Speaker 3: in time, cooking was not fashionable. Being a chef was
Speaker 3: not fashionable.
Speaker 1: It was not you said, the pre Bordain years.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this was this was pre sort of food network years.
Speaker 3: This was you know, cooking and being a chef was
Speaker 3: sort of seen as a tradecraft. You know, it would
Speaker 3: be the same as.
Speaker 1: Like in America. I mean in France it's been.
Speaker 3: For way back right, Oh, very different culture in France
Speaker 3: about that. I mean, you can start when you're sixteen
Speaker 3: and just go you know what high school was not
Speaker 3: for me. I'd like to bake. And that's generally why
Speaker 3: everyone feels a lot of kind of competitive spirit with
Speaker 3: the French, right, is because they start from such a
Speaker 3: young age and they have I mean, by the time
Speaker 3: an American kid finishes culinary school, they're already six years
Speaker 3: behind a French person.
Speaker 1: French kid, right, So what happened? What culinary school did
Speaker 1: you go to?
Speaker 3: Oh? I just went to a little trade school in
Speaker 3: Orange County because I had already spent enough money and
Speaker 3: I knew and I was old enough at that point
Speaker 3: to know if I go to like a proper Cia
Speaker 3: or one of these schools that costs a lot of money,
Speaker 3: I'm going to still start at the same place.
Speaker 1: In a kitchen.
Speaker 3: I'm going to still start as a prep cooks, even
Speaker 3: a dishwasher.
Speaker 1: I've done that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's how you start.
Speaker 1: That's the highest rung I got in the culinary world.
Speaker 3: Well, it's a good rung. I mean, everyone's everyone is
Speaker 3: super important in the kitchen, and you know it's a
Speaker 3: pirate ship, right, So it sort of draws these people
Speaker 3: in that that have all sort of universally decided we
Speaker 3: don't want to grow up for a living.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a world to itself. Yeah, it is
Speaker 1: a it's like your hours are different. Is it's collegiate.
Speaker 1: It's a kind of like a pirate ship, really, isn't it. Yeah?
Speaker 1: So what you go to this place? And how long
Speaker 1: are you at the two years?
Speaker 3: And I worked at the same time.
Speaker 1: And you come out, I know you speak fluent French absolutely,
Speaker 1: and well you were working in a kitchen at the
Speaker 1: same time I was.
Speaker 3: I was. I was working in a kitchen at the
Speaker 3: same time and also bartending to keep a roof over
Speaker 3: my head.
Speaker 1: Any fancy places that we would know or just places
Speaker 1: we would know, Yeah, I.
Speaker 3: Mean I worked at Pelican Hill, I worked at the
Speaker 3: uh golf club. It is it's down in it's down
Speaker 3: in a Newport coast. It's very fair.
Speaker 1: That sounds quite fancy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's very fairy.
Speaker 1: You're making like turkey clubs.
Speaker 3: Well at the country club I was making. I started
Speaker 3: out on you know, just guarde. Well, I started out
Speaker 3: on prep.
Speaker 1: So I was preps for if you don't know, a
Speaker 1: kitchen was prep.
Speaker 3: Prep is a lot of chopping. You're cutting a lot
Speaker 3: of vegetables, you're making stock. You're making so much stock,
Speaker 3: a lot of soup, so not even soup you're not
Speaker 3: responsible for. Yeah, you're making the basically beginnings of soup.
Speaker 3: You're cutting carrots and onions and celery.
Speaker 1: Because it don't feel soup. It's just suits. And then
Speaker 1: you later.
Speaker 3: Loud and yeah, and I mean there was you know,
Speaker 3: there's steam jackets. There's these enormous kettles. You know, I'm
Speaker 3: five five and the kettle was probably six two. I
Speaker 3: mean enormous, and I would have to like dig in there,
Speaker 3: literally crawl inside a kettle just to clean it out.
Speaker 1: Well, today I could have Oh my god, that's horrifying.
Speaker 3: And yet I survived.
Speaker 1: Has that ever happened? Has anyone ever been you know
Speaker 1: what I've been? It has, so I don't want to.
Speaker 1: I know I talked about it. Probably has. So you're
Speaker 1: working on prep and you're studying. Yeah, and so now
Speaker 1: at this point do you start to go, I know
Speaker 1: what area the kitchen I want to work in.
Speaker 3: No, you still don't know, because at this point I sucked.
Speaker 3: I was terrible. I honestly believe and I don't know
Speaker 3: if it's not my own imposter syndrome or what, but
Speaker 3: I honestly believe there's no such thing as like someone,
Speaker 3: and it's just naturally suited for a kitchen, right. It's
Speaker 3: a different culture, it's a different life.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I've been aroundom enough to know, Yeah, you've got.
Speaker 3: To get a little bit of runway there.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think people can be born with a natural inclination
Speaker 3: to understanding flavor and color and balance and texture and
Speaker 3: all these things, but actually working in a kitchen is
Speaker 3: a very different thing.
Speaker 1: It's a rock band mentality as well. It's a little
Speaker 1: bit a lot of drugs as well. A lot of drugs,
Speaker 1: a lot of bad behavior are, a lot of staying
Speaker 1: up too late, a lot of you know, as long
Speaker 1: as you can do the one thing that you do,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter how you live your life everywhere else.
Speaker 3: All that, a lot of burning the candles at both ends,
Speaker 3: especially in your twenties. But well, you know, then you get,
Speaker 3: you know, for me specifically, I hit the I hit
Speaker 3: my thirtieth year and I thought, wait, you know that's
Speaker 3: not cute anymore.
Speaker 1: I did. I didn't even know you were thirty now
Speaker 1: I did ten years ago. Oh well, muscle tough, thank you. Well,
Speaker 1: you know what, It's all the moisture being inside those
Speaker 1: big steaming thoughts, so.
Speaker 6: Fresh, like a beautiful braized cook I've been pouched. So
Speaker 6: you're thirty No, no, I'm forty.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 1: But what I'm saying is we're on your journey.
Speaker 3: Oh no, no, no yet at this point I'm early twenties.
Speaker 3: It's all sort of a glittery haze. I like the hazes, glittering,
Speaker 3: glittery and like, you know, at that point, I was
Speaker 3: smoking and like going outside for breaks and waxing poetic
Speaker 3: on the meaning of life. But I knew enough then
Speaker 3: to know if I can learn every single station, they
Speaker 3: can't fire me, right, So I just need to learn,
Speaker 3: like because right now I'm on prep. If I learn
Speaker 3: how to do you know, the fry station? If I
Speaker 3: learn how to do like every single different stations.
Speaker 1: Many stations, is it like stations of the Cross or
Speaker 1: similar to stations of the Cross?
Speaker 3: More frying, Yeah, more frying, more making of sandwiches. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's very It depends on the kind of kitchen you
Speaker 3: work in, so extremely traditional French kitchens will have like
Speaker 3: a different person for just making sauces a different person,
Speaker 3: for just doing intermezzo a different person. Intermezzo is a
Speaker 3: course in your dinner wherein you have it's almost like
Speaker 3: a break. So you have like a little bit of
Speaker 3: celery sorbet okay, with a sour cherry, but.
Speaker 1: A musin in the middle exactly right, okay, exactly not
Speaker 1: a moose bush at the beginning, because that's the beginning,
Speaker 1: correct moose.
Speaker 3: Boushes at the midnute is at the beginning, intermetso is
Speaker 3: somewhere in between, right, just to sort.
Speaker 1: Of and then when's Clette that's at the head.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, let I love ra klutt. I've got some
Speaker 3: in the fridge right now. And then you've got minyor
Speaker 3: D's for your for the finale. Min your d's is
Speaker 3: the same sort of like tiny little bite, but it's
Speaker 3: usually sweet so and it can also be kind of
Speaker 3: given as like a takeaway.
Speaker 1: So this seems to me like it's all kind of French.
Speaker 1: Is that a French restaurant.
Speaker 3: Most things are sort of based around the French brigade really,
Speaker 3: even like yeah, most most kitchens are structured loosely around that,
Speaker 3: some more stringently.
Speaker 1: Even like in an Italian restaurant and stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I've never worked in an Italian restaurant, ye,
Speaker 3: but yeah, it's all sort of it's all sort of
Speaker 3: based on this similar brigade of of this is like
Speaker 3: the hierarchy and I guess.
Speaker 1: A guitar six strings and how you play it now
Speaker 1: it's done. It's different, but that's what it is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the instrument. Yeah, so you're doing you lay on
Speaker 1: all the different stations in the kitchen for job security.
Speaker 3: Correct, right, because I figure they can't fire me if
Speaker 3: I know everything.
Speaker 1: That's true, you'd be surprised.
Speaker 3: Fortunately they didn't. But and then at one point, I
Speaker 3: don't know what I mean, a lot of the different
Speaker 3: things transpired. So the pastry department suffered losses. There was,
Speaker 3: you know, one girl moved to the Pahamas, one guy
Speaker 3: got fired, one guy just quit. So they basically lost
Speaker 3: the entire department within a week or so. I mean,
Speaker 3: it was dramatic.
Speaker 1: I'm seeing an opportunity for you here, precisely.
Speaker 3: My friend. Right, So the executive chef came to like
Speaker 3: gathered around all the cooks, right, and said, who would
Speaker 3: like to go help out pastry for a bit because
Speaker 3: they're suffering. And my hand shot up and I said,
Speaker 3: I will do it because again job security.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: So I go start working in pastry and realize, oh
Speaker 3: my god.
Speaker 8: It's art and chemistry, chemistry, it's our it's science. It's
Speaker 8: all the things in the kitchen, and it's in a
Speaker 8: kitchen and it has all the kind of things. Yeah,
Speaker 8: this is great, and so now you find your thing.
Speaker 3: So now I find my thing.
Speaker 1: And you start burning sugar with little.
Speaker 3: Yeah things Krembrew lit lots of do.
Speaker 1: They start do they start letting you make your own
Speaker 1: deserts at that point?
Speaker 3: No, god, no, no, my god.
Speaker 1: So I feel such a fool. So you make what
Speaker 1: you're told by the executive chef.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well by the executive pastry chef.
Speaker 1: So there's an executive chef and then execative pastry shof correct, okay, correct.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the brigade, the pirate chip, right, so there's there's
Speaker 3: there's a very first mate.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the executive pastry chef says, okay, today you're making
Speaker 1: cranberry and a faberge.
Speaker 3: No, executive pastry chef. I mean it depends on where
Speaker 3: you work. But at a country club, for instance, it's
Speaker 3: usually more along the lines of you're going to be
Speaker 3: making six thousand chocolate chip cookies today, and then after
Speaker 3: that you're going to be making give or take a
Speaker 3: thousand brownies, and then we've got, you know, on the fly,
Speaker 3: someone wants a birthday cake, so we're going to need
Speaker 3: to make that. And it's very it's it's it's very
Speaker 3: kind of I don't want to say grunt work, but
Speaker 3: it's very like repetitive.
Speaker 1: It's repetitive.
Speaker 3: It's it's big, and it's repetitive.
Speaker 1: So when do you start getting to feel like you're
Speaker 1: being creative in.
Speaker 3: This not for quite a few years. You you know,
Speaker 3: you you And that's part of the brilliance and the
Speaker 3: importance of working for a lot of different chefs is
Speaker 3: you want to learn as much as you can from
Speaker 3: each person you work under, right, because each person you
Speaker 3: work under has, you know, a mirror, you know, it's
Speaker 3: the sort of the spider web thing almost like this
Speaker 3: like red red string theory of like everywhere they've learned
Speaker 3: from So they've learned from all of these different chefs
Speaker 3: throughout their careers and they're funneling all of that information
Speaker 3: into you. And then you take all of that information
Speaker 3: go to another chef and you've got you know, another
Speaker 3: let's say, six chefs that your next chef has worked under.
Speaker 3: So you're just collating and constantly trying to sponge in
Speaker 3: as much information and as many recipes as you can
Speaker 3: and different tech niques.
Speaker 1: So this seems to me like a world that's very
Speaker 1: involved and very insular, right, yes, can be right? So
Speaker 1: then how come because you're a Food Network star I
Speaker 1: think I think we can say that the greatest spaceship
Speaker 1: in the world and a start of the Food Network.
Speaker 3: I mean, I am the winner of the Coveted.
Speaker 1: Which is like you can have a Michelin starf what
Speaker 1: but you know that's the one they're all after. It's
Speaker 1: a new award and like about half an hour old.
Speaker 1: But the how do you get into like the more
Speaker 1: kind of show business element, I mean so preduminantly last
Speaker 1: time you're like everybody. I feel like Bordain is like
Speaker 1: Jackie Robinson in a way a little bit. He kind
Speaker 1: of changes it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, is that is that right to say that Bordain?
Speaker 3: I mean, Bordain changed so much of the culture, you know,
Speaker 3: and he he brought the culture of the kitchen into
Speaker 3: into a world that like you know, didn't want to
Speaker 3: necessarily see it and like and he made it cool
Speaker 3: and he made it rock star and like, I mean,
Speaker 3: it's it's him. And then there's Marco Pierre White, who
Speaker 3: I mean, like yeah, who was absolutely the like you know,
Speaker 3: he's got aggy pop one, like you know, growing up
Speaker 3: in the kitchen, hearing stories about how he would walk
Speaker 3: out into the dining room and tell people to you know,
Speaker 3: like like you don't like the food, you can have
Speaker 3: food somewhere else. Like that is like that was revolutionary
Speaker 3: for me because I you know, the kitchens I worked in,
Speaker 3: it was always the culture of the word no doesn't exist, right,
Speaker 3: it simply doesn't. So hearing that like someone was like
Speaker 3: ballsy enough to do that. Yeah, Marco Pierre Oh yeah,
Speaker 3: you can go on Google and see videos of Marco
Speaker 3: Pierre White like in his younger days smoking and Gordon
Speaker 3: Ramsay is like seventeen years old in the background, kind
Speaker 3: of looking like wild eyed and kind of goofy, and
Speaker 3: Marco Pierro ruffles his hair a little bit and it's
Speaker 3: like his big brother. I mean, it's just adorable. So
Speaker 3: but to get to your question, the how do you
Speaker 3: translate that into.
Speaker 1: Yeah, do you end in show business? Really?
Speaker 3: Sure?
Speaker 1: Well you kind of are not.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 3: It's so it's such a bizarre thing for me to
Speaker 3: to say out loud because I still, you know, I
Speaker 3: have trouble sort of wrapping my head around that, around
Speaker 3: that reality, because I still see myself as just a chef,
Speaker 3: and so it's.
Speaker 1: Like, yeah, yeah, but it's a different world.
Speaker 6: It is.
Speaker 1: To be honest, I think everything is show business now,
Speaker 1: Like even if, like if you're a laundromat, you have
Speaker 1: an Instagram account and like, come down today, look at
Speaker 1: these sheets.
Speaker 3: My god, all the blood out this guy.
Speaker 1: Blood Let's play a game of blood.
Speaker 3: Or we may never know.
Speaker 1: So how do you make this transition? Then? What happens?
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm not sure. I've had this question a lot,
Speaker 3: especially from you know, like former colleagues and stuff asking
Speaker 3: me how can they get into it? And and for me,
Speaker 3: it was it was the most bizarre experience. I was at,
Speaker 3: you know, I was at the Peninsula Beverly Hills, and
Speaker 3: and I'd been there for many years.
Speaker 1: And you're working in the kitchen there.
Speaker 3: I was the executive pastry chef.
Speaker 1: Yeah, by this time, this is you're the like you
Speaker 1: decide who's making the kookies, correct, right, and it ain't
Speaker 1: ain't you.
Speaker 6: It was.
Speaker 1: The bus. But I'm also.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I never wanted to be like because I grew
Speaker 3: up with so many chefs that were you know, very
Speaker 3: hands off and very you know, delegatory thank you uh,
Speaker 3: to the to the point where you start sort of
Speaker 3: you know, again the pirate ship analogy. You're not going
Speaker 3: to get a lot of respect from your cooks if
Speaker 3: you don't actually get in there with them and sort
Speaker 3: of and fight side by side. So I was there,
Speaker 3: and we would do these sort of media walkarounds, right,
Speaker 3: So it would be like, you know, a writer from
Speaker 3: Harper's Bazaar and a writer from Forbes, and you know,
Speaker 3: all these different sort of media sorts would come in
Speaker 3: and would show them a lovely time, and we'd teach
Speaker 3: them a cooking class, and then they would get a
Speaker 3: beautiful tour of our brand new kitchen and our brand
Speaker 3: new restaurants and they'd.
Speaker 1: Sit and it's a show business environment because it's the
Speaker 1: Peninsula in Beverly Hills, right, right.
Speaker 3: So the executive chef at that point was supposed to
Speaker 3: be doing their their cooking class for them, and it's
Speaker 3: only like, you know, fifteen thirty minutes long, right, And
Speaker 3: he runs into the pastry shop and says, Steph, I
Speaker 3: can't do it. I'm not feeling well. I need to go.
Speaker 3: There's a media group coming in that needs a cooking
Speaker 3: class and it's in fifteen minutes and it needs to
Speaker 3: be something healthy. So have fun. Good luck.
Speaker 1: You're the past chef. How are you doing the healthy thing?
Speaker 1: You work in sugar?
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly right, exactly what I thought was like healthy, okay,
Speaker 3: not a fruitball though, Like what am I?
Speaker 1: I don't know, I'm I raised for you. This is terrible.
Speaker 1: This is a terrible idea.
Speaker 3: The audacity, the circus of audacity. Yeah, so I think
Speaker 3: to myself, all right, Pastry Pastry is normally also in
Speaker 3: charge of the cheese program of most restaurants and hotels.
Speaker 1: The cheese Program. It's my favorite show on the BBC.
Speaker 3: Yes, the best one. Welcome to all the contestants are
Speaker 3: so nice, they're so kind today.
Speaker 1: Were looking at still Stilton.
Speaker 3: I don't even notice.
Speaker 1: It's a vainy It's.
Speaker 3: A veiny wooster. Gloucestershire cheese, lovely, lovely cheese from all
Speaker 3: the sheeps in the county.
Speaker 1: Mostly just Margaret.
Speaker 3: All of the sheeps we euthanize with a soft pillow.
Speaker 1: Here in Kent, you've got fifteen minutes to.
Speaker 3: Put team instant and put together a demo and also
Speaker 3: deep clean the kitchen because now we've got people coming
Speaker 3: in and taking photos and they're gonna be regretting about
Speaker 3: it is beautiful magazines and talking all about it. So
Speaker 3: it's it needs to be like everything needs to be
Speaker 3: scrubbed surgically. So I'm thinking, all right, I'll teach them
Speaker 3: how to make ricotta. It's cheese, cheese, all protein. It
Speaker 3: takes no time to make. It takes like two ingredients
Speaker 3: and it's super I mean it's just super clean, super easy.
Speaker 3: And then you can do all these things of like
Speaker 3: and you can put some strawberries with a bit of
Speaker 3: a spring o.
Speaker 1: Samic glaze glaze and perhaps a sprig of something like
Speaker 1: sprig sprague, a sprig of shovel. That's what I was thinking.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so did that. It went great? They came through,
Speaker 3: I you know, showed them the kitchen. I showed them
Speaker 3: my sourdough starter, which at that point in time was
Speaker 3: named Amy Winehouse because I love her.
Speaker 1: I'm just going to stop you for a second because
Speaker 1: I have chefs in my family and I've heard them
Speaker 1: say sourdough starter. Yeah, I don't know what that is.
Speaker 3: So sour dough starter is basically a way of creating
Speaker 3: your own yeast. So you take flour and usually bread flour,
Speaker 3: but you can use any that you like, and water
Speaker 3: and that's it. You combine them and with that hydration,
Speaker 3: the sugars, in the natural sugars starts developing and the
Speaker 3: yeast that exists naturally on all things that are organic
Speaker 3: begin to eat said sugar, and then they grow and
Speaker 3: then you feed them again, and the yeast grows and
Speaker 3: grows and grows and grows and develops a really beautiful
Speaker 3: sort of aged flavor.
Speaker 1: It becomes and it becomes an organic thing. That's why
Speaker 1: you give it a name.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, it's sort of like having a pet. I mean,
Speaker 3: it'll never die.
Speaker 1: Well. But she comes from a very old Western family.
Speaker 1: They've had the same Sara dou Star from like the
Speaker 1: Civil War or something.
Speaker 3: That's amazing.
Speaker 1: It's crazy.
Speaker 3: What does it smell like?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm not allowed to get.
Speaker 3: I want to know. Now, it's just is it like
Speaker 3: locked in a like it's covered some ways.
Speaker 1: I mean, but I think she gives like bits of
Speaker 1: it to people and you can't.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can. The original sort of yeast of it
Speaker 3: won't die necessarily, so it's you know, it will change
Speaker 3: over time with different saturations. So say like the Civil
Speaker 3: War era yeast, it still exists somewhere in there, but
Speaker 3: it has been significantly diluted over you know, the last
Speaker 3: one hundred and twenty years or so, just with new
Speaker 3: flowers that bring in different types of yeast for wherever
Speaker 3: they are in the country.
Speaker 1: Is a constantly changed and organic thing that lives in
Speaker 1: uh tupperware.
Speaker 3: Sure, some people do like glassware. I have a big
Speaker 3: cambro that is that like it's a chef thing.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, Yeah, I thought it was like that, Like
Speaker 1: a camaro.
Speaker 3: Does exactly like a camaro. Yes, I keep it inside.
Speaker 1: I keep my drives a camaro. That's how wealthy I've become.
Speaker 3: It's a cambro. Is it's a brand, It's almost it's
Speaker 3: sort of like cleanex at this point, I feel like
Speaker 3: it's a brand name, but it describes like this sort
Speaker 3: of storage unit that kitchens use and they've got different
Speaker 3: colored lids, so like a two quart cambro is just
Speaker 3: a little two quart square container and they stack perfectly
Speaker 3: on each other. Yeah, it's basically it's industrial tupperware.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah. Yeah, So you you show these people around
Speaker 1: your sod star are you introduced them to your You're
Speaker 1: so good at keeping on track.
Speaker 3: I'm so bad I and you are really just helping out.
Speaker 1: I'm the pastry chef, right, So you you do that
Speaker 1: and you show them around, and they say, you're great.
Speaker 1: Do you want to come and work in our show
Speaker 1: business world?
Speaker 3: Literally?
Speaker 1: Really?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's actually first Gate. Okay.
Speaker 3: So they're sitting down having lunch. I check in with
Speaker 3: them a few times just to make sure they're happy
Speaker 3: with everything they've had. I send them out a bunch
Speaker 3: of desserts. Check in again, and one of the women
Speaker 3: looks up and says, would you like a TV show.
Speaker 1: Just like that? Like Hollywood?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Like crazy, And at that point in time, I said, yeah,
Speaker 3: don't threaten me with a bat, you know, with a
Speaker 3: good time, Like yeah, yeah, I want all of that.
Speaker 3: So she said, great, my partner and I will be
Speaker 3: in contact with you next week. So talk to them
Speaker 3: and we start developing a show about interestingly enough renovating
Speaker 3: like kind of failing bakeries and pastry shops. We do
Speaker 3: a sizzle reel, we shop it to Food Network, we
Speaker 3: shop it to a bunch of different producers, and they
Speaker 3: they take onto it. I think at one point what
Speaker 3: what actually got me noticed was we did a sizzle
Speaker 3: reel for for the show where I was just walking
Speaker 3: around Los Angeles eating at a bunch of different pastry shops,
Speaker 3: right and Commons, Yeah, yeah, and and one of them,
Speaker 3: I said, a very well known pastry shop. I had
Speaker 3: a Claire, and I said, it's like the it's like
Speaker 3: a Honda Civic of a. Claire's like, it's it's not bad.
Speaker 1: It's functional.
Speaker 3: It's it's functional. It will get you from point A
Speaker 3: to point B.
Speaker 1: It Claire needs exactly, Claire exactly.
Speaker 3: But it's not something that costs eighteen dollars. How much
Speaker 3: it was yes, staggering, eye watering, I mean, just ridiculous
Speaker 3: extortionate amounts of money for a little tiny pastry.
Speaker 1: That I'm angry, you should be.
Speaker 3: I was outrage I wrote a congressman, and since then
Speaker 3: the restraining order is actually but yeah, and then from
Speaker 3: there Food Network liked who I was. I suppose, you know,
Speaker 3: like like you are.
Speaker 1: A vivacious, attractive personality that has a very marketable skill
Speaker 1: for a network called the Food Network. It seems to
Speaker 1: make perfect sends.
Speaker 3: It does seem to add up. So we shot a
Speaker 3: show with them which was like this like, uh, pastry
Speaker 3: boot camp kind of show and I loved it and
Speaker 3: I had so much fun doing it, but the focus
Speaker 3: but we didn't have like a really cohesive idea of
Speaker 3: what it was like is it a competition, do they
Speaker 3: win something? Is it just is it just for fun
Speaker 3: and for volity? Because I was always sort of annoyed
Speaker 3: by Nailed It the show because Nailed It always felt
Speaker 3: like it felt kind of mean girlsy. It felt sort
Speaker 3: of like poking fun at the slow kid, and then
Speaker 3: you know like they're not actually learning how to do anything.
Speaker 3: They're just failing, and we are supporting their failing.
Speaker 1: They're failing and we're laughing at it.
Speaker 3: Right, it felt sort of mean spirited to me. So
Speaker 3: I wanted to do a show that was actually like, Okay,
Speaker 3: you're not good at baking. You have raised your hand
Speaker 3: in life and said I'm not good at baking. I
Speaker 3: want to get good. So we take these people and
Speaker 3: literally give them a two day boot camp on how
Speaker 3: to bake and build a cake. And then, you know,
Speaker 3: like congratulate the person that made the most improvement from
Speaker 3: start to finish, and you know, gave them a KitchenAid
Speaker 3: mixer and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: The kitchen Aade mixer is a great thing. I best
Speaker 1: buy with points from my credit card. Yeah. Well when
Speaker 1: I say by, you know, I've never used it, but.
Speaker 3: It exists in your home and if you ever do
Speaker 3: need to Megan's.
Speaker 1: You know, Meghan cooks and stuff she's good at at Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah, she she does that. But anyway,
Speaker 1: so what's the show you're doing now?
Speaker 3: Now we we're currently in you know, it's airing. Is
Speaker 3: the Next Baking Master Colon?
Speaker 1: Paris? The Next Baking Master Colon?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, So you punctuations is important, is it? So?
Speaker 1: Can it affect your colon being a bacon master only
Speaker 1: in the best ways? Yeah? I guess it would. So
Speaker 1: you go to Paris and you yeah, and you what
Speaker 1: do you do there?
Speaker 3: Go to Paris and we invite ten American pastry chefs
Speaker 3: to come and compete, and they all live together in
Speaker 3: one condo that they have to do.
Speaker 1: That's the rule of those types of shows. It's amazing.
Speaker 3: It's amazing. I mean the the fact that they all
Speaker 3: live together. Like I didn't get to see any of that,
Speaker 3: so I was really only there for you know, like
Speaker 3: what they produced.
Speaker 1: And like the Heidlu you're the Heidi Clue is like,
Speaker 1: never compare myself to I think that's a great comparison.
Speaker 1: You woke in and go fashion. No, cookery is sometimes
Speaker 1: very off you mas, one day you are bakings, the
Speaker 1: next day you're not baking, so your glum and you go,
Speaker 1: this is not tasty for me, This is tasty for me?
Speaker 3: Correct?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 1: Okay? Correct?
Speaker 3: Do you use a I do use a fake German
Speaker 3: accent actually to go.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: It was a little confusing at the time, but then
Speaker 3: I explained to people, I imagine Heidi Clue, imagine what
Speaker 3: eight feet of legs saying.
Speaker 1: So, now you are a world champion baker. Now you
Speaker 1: know who you know who wins, but you can't reveal it,
Speaker 1: right of course? Not right? Okay, what fun would that be?
Speaker 3: That's madness.
Speaker 1: Now I want to take you back to the very
Speaker 1: beginning of our conversation. Oh my gosh, because I talked
Speaker 1: to you about the Faberge egg made you famous, And
Speaker 1: I see right there you said WII in the Parisian manner.
Speaker 1: It wasn't just we as in we as way as
Speaker 1: in like some smug French bastard who says you know,
Speaker 1: it's saying we properly. So what what led you to
Speaker 1: the Faberge Because that's kind of that's kind of a
Speaker 1: thing for you, isn't it. That's kind of you like
Speaker 1: it was.
Speaker 3: I mean, what's interesting about, you know, any any form
Speaker 3: of art? And I really do think that that culinarian
Speaker 3: cooking is in is an art form whole to it
Speaker 3: the form of communication. And at that point in time,
Speaker 3: you know, I was in my early thirties and I
Speaker 3: was really not to say I was angry, but I
Speaker 3: was in this in this headspace of like this almost
Speaker 3: fight club sort of headspace. If I want to destroy
Speaker 3: something beautiful, like all of the all of the pieces
Speaker 3: of art I saw growing up, wouldn't it be fun
Speaker 3: to just throw paint? Wouldn't it? Like let that intrusive
Speaker 3: thought sort of I understand the empire, something beautiful in
Speaker 3: front of you, and you just get to smash.
Speaker 1: It in the genre of late night Kick the Living exactly,
Speaker 1: I understand.
Speaker 3: So, and I thought, you know, at that point in time,
Speaker 3: like I want to make something beautiful, takes hours to
Speaker 3: make one, and then give people the opportunity to just
Speaker 3: smash it to pieces and eat it and destroy it,
Speaker 3: and that becomes the art. That's the that is the thing.
Speaker 3: It's not me making it. It's not the hours, it's
Speaker 3: not the gold, it's not the colors, it's not all
Speaker 3: of the filligree work. It's the actual destruction of it
Speaker 3: that is the art.
Speaker 1: So, so you you start to make this egg, these eggs,
Speaker 1: how do you make like the faberc egg based on
Speaker 1: of course the Faberge eggs made for the Czarina was it?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, it was like you know, Russian, Russian, Russian.
Speaker 4: I think it was something Bob Fiberg was making them, Yeah,
Speaker 4: to please his wife, Yeah, and something. It's God's way
Speaker 4: of saying, you have too much money, yeah one of So, yeah,
Speaker 4: started making them. They're basically just you know, the the
Speaker 4: making of them is quite easy. It's just molded chocolate
Speaker 4: into an egg shape. And then it becomes a little
Speaker 4: bit more challenging because you have to essentially fill it
Speaker 4: with dessert and then hand paint each one in different
Speaker 4: ways because each one was unique.
Speaker 3: There was no two the same, and each.
Speaker 1: Feel it like a syringe full of custard or something.
Speaker 1: You put it insight the egg.
Speaker 3: I'm not going to tell you how often it's got
Speaker 3: to be a well, you know what, maybe we can yeah.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's a hatch. It's a hatch. It's a little hatch.
Speaker 1: Fill it up with custard and then right, okay, so
Speaker 1: you filled your egg with custard with the hatch. With that,
Speaker 1: you've closed the hatch, and then you have to decorate
Speaker 1: the outside. So it's straight up sculpture at this point, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it becomes I mean it's it's sculptured. It's also
Speaker 3: hand painting. And and I gave you know, each of
Speaker 3: my cooks was allowed to do as many as they wanted.
Speaker 3: It was sort of like a project of like each
Speaker 3: one of them could use whatever colors they want and decorate.
Speaker 1: The however, sex Chef and the Faber interesting I wanted
Speaker 1: them to. Wanted them with the paintings. It's like, you know,
Speaker 1: you're like, okay, here's what we're going to do. And
Speaker 1: then you start directing people to do it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I love this. But at the same time,
Speaker 3: they can do whatever they want.
Speaker 1: So you let your pastry that you're the executive pastry
Speaker 1: chef and you're constructing the idea of the faberg egg.
Speaker 1: You're the one that puts the custards through the hatch
Speaker 1: with a syringe, with a syringe. And then they all
Speaker 1: do you give them drawings and say let's do so No,
Speaker 1: they just do it.
Speaker 3: They can do whatever they want, right, Okay, Yeah, that
Speaker 3: was sort of I wanted each of them.
Speaker 1: To even with colors and stuff, your lie, anything they wanted.
Speaker 1: That's cool for them as well, isn't it.
Speaker 3: Well, I would hope so I always you know, it's
Speaker 3: sort of like raising children. You're not trying to raise kids,
Speaker 3: You're trying to raise adults, right, you know, nice And
Speaker 3: I was never trying to raise cooks. I was trying
Speaker 3: to raise chefs.
Speaker 1: Nice.
Speaker 3: I wanted them to be able to leave working for
Speaker 3: me and and know a lot and and have confidence
Speaker 3: and have a viewpoint and have an artistic thing to say,
Speaker 3: and and yeah it.
Speaker 1: Felt did it?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 1: So the faberc egg now is that in the peninsula
Speaker 1: that you do is they still do it. They still
Speaker 1: do it. So if I had enough money, I could
Speaker 1: go to the Peninsula and have a fabercy egg and.
Speaker 3: A yeah and a speak t Yeah.
Speaker 1: What would you what would you have with it? I
Speaker 1: don't brink alcohol, so I couldn't have a dessert. Way, well,
Speaker 1: I like espresso with express with dessert. I agree, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, so it's great, so you you can still
Speaker 1: get And did they name it after you? Is it
Speaker 1: the definitely? Is it the Boswelian?
Speaker 3: No? No, no, because anytime, and this is the same
Speaker 3: for Savory Side, anytime you create something in an establishment,
Speaker 3: it naturally the ip sort of belongs to the establishment.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 1: That's kind of the same like the old Late Night show,
Speaker 1: like all the ship it all belongs to.
Speaker 3: That's that's kind of how it works.
Speaker 1: I guess, I suppose what did I get?
Speaker 6: Oh?
Speaker 1: Yeah, money, I guess.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, it's totally a castle.
Speaker 1: Well, just because you've been in my eyes, get you
Speaker 1: get to call it a castle.
Speaker 5: It's because I've seen it, but I get to call
Speaker 5: it a castle, COVID castle.
Speaker 3: It's the whole like observation of it that leads me
Speaker 3: to call it a cast.
Speaker 1: Well, you. You're welcome to it again and here again anytime.
Speaker 1: It's been lovely talking to you.
Speaker 3: This has been amazing.
Speaker 1: It's just such fun and I'm so glad you could
Speaker 1: do it. Now get out all right? No, you know
Speaker 1: it's we are at the end, we're done.
Speaker 3: Can you do it in a full Malcolm Tucker for me?
Speaker 4: Though?
Speaker 1: No, I can't do that. Why not you could say
Speaker 1: whatever you want, No, I can't. I don't. Haven't you
Speaker 1: noticed No? No, I never maybe saying the opposite of
Speaker 1: what's true for COVID, The effect