Speaker 1: Hi, Nathan, Hey Martha, how are you great?
Speaker 2: How are you doing?
Speaker 1: Old friend? Nathan Irvold is a true lifelong learner. His
Speaker 1: interests range from physics, technology, dinosaurs, photography, food. The list
Speaker 1: goes on and on. Nathan, who enrolled in college at
Speaker 1: the age of fourteen, was once the chief strategist and
Speaker 1: chief technology officer at Microsoft, and Bill Gates has been
Speaker 1: quoted as saying, quote, I don't know anyone I would
Speaker 1: say is smarter than Nathan unquote. I've had the pleasure
Speaker 1: of getting to know Nathan over the years. A true
Speaker 1: lover of food, He's been on my television show to
Speaker 1: demonstrate suvid salmon, and I visited him at his impressive laboratory. Nathan,
Speaker 1: who is an amazing photographer, has just released his latest
Speaker 1: book featuring images of food like you've never seen before.
Speaker 1: Joining me to catch up talk about his new book
Speaker 1: and his other book projects and what's happening at his laboratory.
Speaker 1: Is Nathan Merveld. Welcome to my podcast. Nathan. It's so
Speaker 1: nice to see you. Or we're on zoom so I'm
Speaker 1: seeing you, but I'll need an image of you and
Speaker 1: much rather if I were there in your laboratory with you,
Speaker 1: because that is a fascinating place. You built it when.
Speaker 2: Well, we built the first version about ten years ago
Speaker 2: and then at some point we wound up moving to
Speaker 2: a bigger facility, so that was maybe five years ago.
Speaker 1: So I haven't seen your new one.
Speaker 2: The one's much cooler, even.
Speaker 1: It was very cool. The first one I have still
Speaker 1: had machinery that you encouraged me to buy. Sitting around
Speaker 1: and my little laboratories. Oh my gosh, it's so much fun.
Speaker 1: And so you're you're continuing in what is your quest?
Speaker 1: What is your quest with this amazing photography and food
Speaker 1: investigation that you're doing. What are you looking for?
Speaker 2: You know, our general idea is to look at food
Speaker 2: and look at recipes in a different way than anyone
Speaker 2: has done before. You know, we all see food a
Speaker 2: couple times a day because we get hungry and so
Speaker 2: we eat, But do you really look at it? And
Speaker 2: when we do look at it, we're constrained by the
Speaker 2: fact that a we don't have that much time, but
Speaker 2: we also can only see things of a certain size. Well,
Speaker 2: you know, if it's really really tiny, you're not gonna
Speaker 2: be able to appreciate it. If it happens too quickly
Speaker 2: or even too slowly, you don't necessarily see it. So
Speaker 2: photography gives us a way of showing people food, familiar
Speaker 2: food items, but showing it to them in a very
Speaker 2: unfamiliar way. And I think that's kind of cool.
Speaker 1: And these books, by the way, are monumental books. These
Speaker 1: are really extraordinary books. Your first book was five volumes
Speaker 1: and it was the History and Fundamentals, the Ingredients, the
Speaker 1: Techniques and Equipment, the recipes one and the recipes two.
Speaker 1: Five books and a huge slipcase made of what was
Speaker 1: it made out of?
Speaker 2: Plexiglass for the first one, plexiglass. Yes, Since then we've
Speaker 2: moved to sainless steel slipcases.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. And then don't drop them on your foot,
Speaker 1: by the way, don't please. But they're extraordinary. And Nathan
Speaker 1: does a lot of the photography himself. Now have you
Speaker 1: always loved taking pictures?
Speaker 2: Since I was nine years old, which is also the
Speaker 2: time I got serious about cooking. When I was nine,
Speaker 2: I decided I was going to cook Thanksgiving dinner all
Speaker 2: by myself, and I went to the library and got
Speaker 2: all these books and read them and I made Thanksgiving dinner.
Speaker 1: By god, do you remember the menu.
Speaker 2: Yes I do. Yeah, I did a turkey, of course,
Speaker 2: and had a bunch of techniques to try to get
Speaker 2: the turkey to look perfect. It looks pretty good. The
Speaker 2: funniest part is I'd found a cookbook called the Pyromaniacs
Speaker 2: Cookbook which was all about setting things on fire serving
Speaker 2: at flombay, which, to a nine year old boy said,
Speaker 2: the idea of setting dinner on fire at the table
Speaker 2: was just so cool. So of course I had a
Speaker 2: flombey thing. I think I had flombayed soup potatoes yum. Yeah,
Speaker 2: burning rum poured over the top.
Speaker 1: Oh wrong, okay with sweet potatoes is good. That's good.
Speaker 1: And you're were you the only child?
Speaker 2: H No? I have a brother two years younger.
Speaker 1: Does he share your love of food?
Speaker 2: He shares my love of food. He's not as taken
Speaker 2: his cooking to the lunatic extreme that I have.
Speaker 1: But if you have, and what does your mother and
Speaker 1: what does your mother say? You never told me about
Speaker 1: your mother?
Speaker 2: Well, you know, with your Sports Illustrated cover out, it's
Speaker 2: kind of appropriate because my mother was a swimsuit model.
Speaker 1: Ah, how great.
Speaker 2: But when mom was active, they Sports Illustrated didn't do
Speaker 2: that thing. They started in sixty four. If they'd done
Speaker 2: it in fifty four, Mom would have been in the issue.
Speaker 1: Okay, you would have been in the issue she was.
Speaker 1: That's probably That's probably when I should have been in
Speaker 1: the issue. Not in fifty four. Well, I looked good
Speaker 1: in a bathing suitent in fifty four. But I looked
Speaker 1: really good in a bathing suitent around the sixties, like
Speaker 1: that was my that was my prime for.
Speaker 3: Bathing Well, I've never had a prime for bathing suits.
Speaker 3: So so yeah, so mom was a skinny swimsuit model,
Speaker 3: but I grew up in a farm in Minnesota, and
Speaker 3: so she thought food was very important. But I've taken
Speaker 3: the cooking to a level quite beyond moms.
Speaker 1: Right, But this all happened after Really you went to
Speaker 1: college at fourteen? Yeah, fourteen, And where was that? Where'd
Speaker 1: you go?
Speaker 2: Well? Initially I went to Santa Monica College in Santa Monica, California,
Speaker 2: and then then transfer to UCLA. I got a degree
Speaker 2: there in math, bachelor's math and a master's degree in
Speaker 2: geophysics and space physics. And then I went to Princeton
Speaker 2: and I got a master's degree in economics, and then
Speaker 2: I got a PhD in physics from Princeton and I
Speaker 2: was twenty three way then.
Speaker 1: And then did you go straight to Microsoft?
Speaker 2: No, I was a postdoctoral researcher. That normally in physics,
Speaker 2: after you get a PhD, you go and you work
Speaker 2: as a postdoc for a couple of years, and then
Speaker 2: you try to get a faculty position. And I was
Speaker 2: a postdoc with Stephen Hawking.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: The thing about working for Stephen Hawking is after you've
Speaker 2: done that, it makes it very hard to feel sorry
Speaker 2: for yourself because despite his incredible physical challenges because he
Speaker 2: had als, he had a fantastic attitude and a great
Speaker 2: sense of humor. And you know, whenever I start feeling
Speaker 2: down about something, I think, well, hey, what do I
Speaker 2: have to complain about compared to a m.
Speaker 1: Right, Well, that is that is a good lesson and
Speaker 1: it is a good perspective to have because he did
Speaker 1: so much. And Charles Sue My, you know, Charles Simony,
Speaker 1: he has the seat at is it an Oxford?
Speaker 2: Yes, he's Charles endowed a chair at Oxford for the
Speaker 2: Public Understanding of science.
Speaker 1: Right, And he taught me a lot about Stephen Hawkin.
Speaker 1: But wow, it's amazing. So then after that, is that
Speaker 1: when you went to Microsoft.
Speaker 2: Then I wound up starting a company in nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 2: Two years later, I sold the company to Microsoft and
Speaker 2: I went along with it, and I became Microsoft's first
Speaker 2: chief technology officer and.
Speaker 1: Worked on which projects because you know, we all use
Speaker 1: everything that Microsoft's developed, and what were your projects?
Speaker 2: Well, I was one of the development managers. I went
Speaker 2: to IS two point zero and then I you know,
Speaker 2: saw Windows and all the way through. But I also
Speaker 2: was at one point or another Microsoft word in Excel
Speaker 2: and programs like that all reported to me. I also
Speaker 2: started the research group at Microsoft, and we built one
Speaker 2: of the best research groups and computer science in the world.
Speaker 1: Aren't you proud of the company that you really helped build?
Speaker 2: I am.
Speaker 1: It's still an amazing company. It has not gone down
Speaker 1: a rabbit hole. It has been producing and creating ever since.
Speaker 1: And you left in what year?
Speaker 2: I left in ninety nine, so I've been gone for
Speaker 2: a long time.
Speaker 1: But oh, I know, I know. But still maybe.
Speaker 2: That's what it took for them to be successful. As
Speaker 2: you clear out the dead wood, get me out of there.
Speaker 1: They could have started the Microsoft restaurants or something like that.
Speaker 1: But I think what you've done and what they've done
Speaker 1: is just utterly phenomenal. And when you left, did you
Speaker 1: know your focus was going to be food or what
Speaker 1: were you What did you do when you left?
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I'd built a house which had a
Speaker 2: big kitchen. House I saw, Yes, the house you saw,
Speaker 2: and that had a big kitchen in it, which was
Speaker 2: so I wanted to spend more time on cooking. I'd
Speaker 2: always been interested in cooking while I worked at Microsoft.
Speaker 2: I actually got Bill to give me a leave of
Speaker 2: absence to go to chef's school in France. And I
Speaker 2: am the one person that has ever made that request
Speaker 2: and then had it granted.
Speaker 1: Did you ever cook for Bill?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yes, I've cooked for Bill many times.
Speaker 1: And now he spends his time Nathan spends his time
Speaker 1: in this laboratory. I only saw the first laboratory, but
Speaker 1: the second laboratory must be just extraordinary. I have to
Speaker 1: come visit. You do do, yes? I do well. This
Speaker 1: new book Food and Drink Modernist cuisine photography is utterly stunning, Nathan. Oh,
Speaker 1: and where did the idea for this come up?
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I since my first book, which came
Speaker 2: out in twenty ten, the first big cookbook that had
Speaker 2: unusual photos of food. I have continued to take pictures
Speaker 2: both for subsequent books like Modernist Pizza or Modernist Brand,
Speaker 2: and also just pictures for their own sake. I've actually
Speaker 2: have a couple of galleries where I sell my pictures
Speaker 2: of food.
Speaker 1: And another thing that Nathan has excelled at is to
Speaker 1: is photographing like yeast rising, dough rising with all the
Speaker 1: air bubbles in it, and other substances that you never
Speaker 1: even imagined that their food. Oh you people out there, listeners,
Speaker 1: please take a look at food and drink Modernist Cuisine
Speaker 1: photography by Nathan Mervold. And what is the Modernist Cuisine
Speaker 1: brand all about?
Speaker 2: Well, after building that house with that kitchen, I sort
Speaker 2: of wanted to get back into cooking. I had more
Speaker 2: time since I'd retired from Microsoft, and I certainly evenly thought, well,
Speaker 2: I know that there's a bunch of new cooking techniques
Speaker 2: that people had been developing chefs like for An Adrea
Speaker 2: or Heston Blumenthal or Wiley Defrayine in New York or
Speaker 2: Grand Akets at Alnea. So I knew that that was
Speaker 2: going on. I natally thought, well, I'll just get buy
Speaker 2: some big book on it and i'll learn about it,
Speaker 2: and there was no big book on it at the time,
Speaker 2: and I also, in reading everything I could about it,
Speaker 2: I realized that the normal intuition that people had about
Speaker 2: traditional cooking and traditional cooking techniques wouldn't always work. So
Speaker 2: I started doing lots of scientific experiments, and I did
Speaker 2: a bunch of computer simulations, and I eventually decided, hey,
Speaker 2: since that big book doesn't exist, I should write it.
Speaker 2: And that's what led to the first Modernist Cuisine, and
Speaker 2: since then we've continued the same spirit of exploration in
Speaker 2: other topics. We did Modernist Cuisine at Home that was
Speaker 2: a home version of the book that Our next big
Speaker 2: book was Modernist Bread, where bread is one of these
Speaker 2: amazing foods of mankind. It's thousands and thousands of years old.
Speaker 2: But it's very complex because you need to have the
Speaker 2: yeast work just right everything else work correctly. There's a
Speaker 2: lot of stories and legends that are passed down about
Speaker 2: why you do something in cooking, and some of those
Speaker 2: are brilliant observations that are totally correct, and some of
Speaker 2: them aren't. But if you're just doing the same recipe
Speaker 2: over and over again, it kind of doesn't matter whether
Speaker 2: they're true or not, because those are just stories that
Speaker 2: you tell while you're following the recipe. And you don't
Speaker 2: need to know how a recipe works to follow it.
Speaker 2: You just follow it fairly, faithfully, and you're going to
Speaker 2: get a good result if it's a decent recipe. But
Speaker 2: I was interested in why. I was curious, so why
Speaker 2: does something work this way? How does it work? And
Speaker 2: so that's what the Monarchs cuisine brand is about. It's
Speaker 2: about books where we go into enormous detail to understand
Speaker 2: everything we possibly can bring lots of curiosity and lots
Speaker 2: of scientific knowledge, maybe lots of unique equipment and things.
Speaker 2: Read a book that is both a cookbook, but it's
Speaker 2: also explaining how things work.
Speaker 1: And that is so valuable to the home cook. It's
Speaker 1: so valuable to the chef, the professional chef, and to
Speaker 1: anybody interested in food. I just love looking and learning
Speaker 1: from your books because you learn a lot. Now I
Speaker 1: have forgotten I have something I wanted to ask you.
Speaker 1: Have you done Potashoe?
Speaker 2: Well, our next book is Modernist Pastry? Okay, so we're
Speaker 2: doing Patashoe for Modernist pastry. It's one of the one
Speaker 2: of the key dough types and as you know, very
Speaker 2: different than other kinds of does and batters because you
Speaker 2: cook it partially.
Speaker 1: First. I've looked at so many potashoe recipes. So I
Speaker 1: have a young man who was working in my kitchen.
Speaker 1: If you go back into many other books, the proportions
Speaker 1: are pretty much the same. So this guy, Moys's his
Speaker 1: name is. He's just a beginner cook, chef, and he
Speaker 1: misread the recipe and he added fourteen eggs.
Speaker 2: Okay, so he was making an omelet.
Speaker 1: No no, and my eggs are My eggs were small.
Speaker 1: They were all the little pullet eggs in my in
Speaker 1: my bowl from my chickens, and they were the best
Speaker 1: puffs I have really eaten. So tell your chefs will
Speaker 1: try the pata shoe with more than four eggs. You
Speaker 1: might have already found that out already, but I'm telling
Speaker 1: you they are a thin, thin shell of dough and
Speaker 1: a absolutely empty center.
Speaker 2: Well that's very interesting.
Speaker 1: But again, this is the way great recipes happen. Yes,
Speaker 1: experimentation and error, a mistake, you know, some misreading. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was just phenomenal what happened. And I thought about you.
Speaker 1: I thought about you right away. Awesome. Nathan has to
Speaker 1: know about this. So who do you make your books for?
Speaker 1: Is it a special audience? Have you found you've done
Speaker 1: research on your audience? I'm sure.
Speaker 2: Well. I like to say that we write for people
Speaker 2: that are passionate and curious about food. If you're not
Speaker 2: passionate about food, you're not going to pick up much
Speaker 2: less buy and read these books that are twenty five
Speaker 2: hundred pages long. And of course you don't have to
Speaker 2: read them from one end of the book to the
Speaker 2: other end of the book. You can dip into them.
Speaker 2: Some of the people who who buy the book buy
Speaker 2: it because I think the book is a beautiful object
Speaker 2: into itself. We try to have good quality paper and
Speaker 2: high quality printing and great photos and so forth. Other
Speaker 2: people are have it more for how does this work? Notion?
Speaker 2: So they're curious about how how things work in cooking,
Speaker 2: and they know that our books will explain it in
Speaker 2: a way that they can understand and ask lots of
Speaker 2: crazy questions most people don't ask. Then there's a course
Speaker 2: serious home cooks and there's professional cooks. And a key
Speaker 2: principle we have is we don't try to dumb stuff down.
Speaker 2: You know, there's a bunch of books like cooking for dummies,
Speaker 2: and those are fine books.
Speaker 1: But I can't write those are Peter Workman books. He
Speaker 1: was smart. Do you have any of those books?
Speaker 2: He sold a lot of those books. But here's the thing.
Speaker 2: I can't write that book better than he did. Okay,
Speaker 2: it's these don't these don't Well, the world doesn't need
Speaker 2: yet another one of those. The thing that that I
Speaker 2: can do, hopefully is do these books that have a
Speaker 2: bigger scope than most because we do tons of research
Speaker 2: about history, about all other aspects of the food and
Speaker 2: higher production values and try and lots of cool stuff.
Speaker 2: So it's a very different take than most cookbooks. But
Speaker 2: that's why we exist.
Speaker 1: Well, they're extraordinary and I keep saying that, but I
Speaker 1: really mean it. You use technology in a way nobody's
Speaker 1: ever used before for food. There is a guy that
Speaker 1: lives in Seattle. Do you know Kenji alt oh I?
Speaker 2: Kenji? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Does Kenji come and work with you ever?
Speaker 2: He's been the lab and we'd love to have him
Speaker 2: come to the lab more. I mean the last couple
Speaker 2: of years, no one who's coming to the use of COVID.
Speaker 1: He's he's a very curious journalist who writes very serious
Speaker 1: articles from the New York Times and publishes them. He
Speaker 1: just published another recipe last week on how to cook
Speaker 1: salmon with the skin on. But he salts it and
Speaker 1: leaves it for up to three days and salt the
Speaker 1: heavily salted fish and then just cooks it, doesn't rinse it.
Speaker 1: How do you cook salmon?
Speaker 2: Well as as little as possible, Right, So, I like
Speaker 2: salmon cooked to about one hundred and thirteen degrees now
Speaker 2: in you in the Southwest in the summer, that's outside
Speaker 2: temperature just about or hot tub temperature. At that temperature,
Speaker 2: it doesn't really change color. It looks almost more like
Speaker 2: smoked salmon or even raw salmon, but it is fully cooked.
Speaker 2: What Kenji was trying to get away from is the
Speaker 2: fact that you have juices come out of the salmon
Speaker 2: and beat up on the salmon on the outside. Then
Speaker 2: they usually solidify.
Speaker 1: That white stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, if you cook it at one hundred and
Speaker 2: thirteen degrees, just so very briefly, but so it's all
Speaker 2: the way through one hundred and thirteen degrees, that doesn't happen.
Speaker 2: Now it's not crispy at that stage, so that that
Speaker 2: would be a soft salmon. Otherwise, the key thing to
Speaker 2: do is to sear it like crazy under high heat
Speaker 2: and then let the heat just soak through the rest.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree with that. I like that one too.
Speaker 1: But he's an amazing researcher. And but he doesn't have
Speaker 1: a lab like yours.
Speaker 2: Well, I don't think many people have a lab your partisan,
Speaker 2: and if they do, they're probably putting it to a
Speaker 2: higher purpose than fooling around with the cooking. But here's
Speaker 2: an example of something we discovered recently that I thought
Speaker 2: it illustrates something. We're working chocolate chip cookies. So we've
Speaker 2: gathered hundreds of chocolate chip cookie recipes. We analyze them
Speaker 2: and analyze the differences. But here was the thing that
Speaker 2: just started to bug me. Most recipes have baking soda
Speaker 2: in them. Baking soda needs to react with acid. What's
Speaker 2: the acid? Here's the other thing that was weird. Normally,
Speaker 2: when you make something with baking soda, you have to
Speaker 2: cook it right away because it's bubbling and if you
Speaker 2: put it in the fridge overnight, you're not going to
Speaker 2: have any rise to it. But it's quite often people
Speaker 2: do put the cookies in the fridge for hours or overnight.
Speaker 2: It turns out it's the brown sugar, which is weird.
Speaker 2: But brown sugar and molasses for that matter, are acidic.
Speaker 2: It's so sweet. We don't normally think of it as
Speaker 2: a cidy, but if you test it with a little
Speaker 2: pH test strip or a pH meter, it's a cidy.
Speaker 2: And that's part of what the strong flavor of molasses
Speaker 2: is about. There's other flavors that are in there as well.
Speaker 2: So that was weird. I'd never We tried lots of books,
Speaker 2: we tried asking everybody I knew. Nobody knew what the
Speaker 2: acid was if that could possibly react. Of course, if
Speaker 2: you use baking powder, baking better comes with its own acid,
Speaker 2: and so that would explain it. But most cookie recipes
Speaker 2: are soda.
Speaker 1: Are you putting a chocolate chip cookie in your pastry book? Oh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely we are.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, Now is it a thin, crispy cookie or
Speaker 1: is it a big fat doe cookie.
Speaker 2: That's you know, like tomato or tomato. It's I think
Speaker 2: it's whatever people grew up with is the one that
Speaker 2: they're going to gravitate towards. And so we have a
Speaker 2: whole section where we describe if you want to get
Speaker 2: different textures, here's what you do you know. You also
Speaker 2: get this interesting philosophical question, what is a chocolate chip cookie?
Speaker 2: In Europe? Where they know that Americans eat chocolate chip cookies,
Speaker 2: but a lot of European bakers never seem to have
Speaker 2: actually had one. You'll see things like in Paris right now,
Speaker 2: it's very trendy to have chocolate chip cookies. Most of
Speaker 2: the bakeries in Paris and now absolutely the weirdest thing,
Speaker 2: and most of them, by American standards.
Speaker 1: Are terrible.
Speaker 2: Most of them are shortbread cookies that have chocolate chips
Speaker 2: in them. So it has the texture of a short bread,
Speaker 2: which is not a bad thing, but it's not what
Speaker 2: we would call it chocolate chip cookie.
Speaker 1: But mine is baking powder and baking soda in it
Speaker 1: and brown sugar and white sugar and chocolate chips.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So brown sugar, as we explained a little minute ago,
Speaker 2: is good for the flavor, but it also really does
Speaker 2: help it rise oddly enough.
Speaker 1: Oh, I can't wait to see your book because pastry
Speaker 1: is my favorite thing. Yeah, I mean, I just I
Speaker 1: just love making the best pie crust, and I love
Speaker 1: making the patashu and theday all those things. That's all.
Speaker 1: I that's what I really like to make. And Brioch.
Speaker 1: Oh are you gonna do Breosia? That in your bread book?
Speaker 2: Well, we have it in the read book. We've actually
Speaker 2: learned some new things. We have an update to the
Speaker 2: Brioche that'll be in the pastry book in large part
Speaker 2: because there's lots of other pastries that are Brioche based.
Speaker 2: Right now, you start with brioche and then you're either
Speaker 2: going to accessorize it after baking or you're going to
Speaker 2: use that as the basis for making something like a
Speaker 2: Danish pastry or something of that sort.
Speaker 1: Well, tell me when you're doing something really excited and
Speaker 1: I'll come to Seattle to see your lab because that
Speaker 1: that is pastry is my thing. I mean, I just
Speaker 1: love it so much. So is there is pastry? Does
Speaker 1: that include cakes?
Speaker 2: Yeah? And that is Uh, it's a big task. It
Speaker 2: turns out Earth has a lot of cakes. Yeah, there's
Speaker 2: a ton of them. We can't comprehensively cover all of them.
Speaker 1: Of course, what's your favorite cake?
Speaker 2: So for the cake base, the actual cake part of
Speaker 2: the cake, not the frosting and the decoration. We've been
Speaker 2: doing a lot of stuff with chiffon cake, and I
Speaker 2: like chiffon cake better, I've decided, than an ordinary sponge
Speaker 2: cake or a frenchien mas base. It's got a I
Speaker 2: think it's got the ideal texture for something that you're
Speaker 2: then going to frost or fill or do that sort
Speaker 2: of thing too. We have all of them in the book,
Speaker 2: of course, but that's probably my favorite.
Speaker 1: My favorite cake of all time was the Chipriani cake,
Speaker 1: the merangue cake. So that's basically a chiffon cake but
Speaker 1: as egg yolks in it. And that's one little eight
Speaker 1: inch cake that comes out to be like, you know,
Speaker 1: like ten inches high, and it's all covered with meringue,
Speaker 1: and that the crimpitches here in the in the middle
Speaker 1: with whip cream. That's a very seriously good recipe.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, we will make sure we include it then.
Speaker 1: So how many people are working with you nowadays in
Speaker 1: your lab?
Speaker 2: Well on the cookbook, We've got about six people in
Speaker 2: the kitchen that we have, you know, probably another six
Speaker 2: or seven people that are working editorial or marketing or
Speaker 2: other things. So that's our little publishing company. There's all
Speaker 2: together that there's one of the one hundred people that
Speaker 2: come to work in the lab doing other more serious
Speaker 2: science work right.
Speaker 1: But you are you still doing your whole company with
Speaker 1: the patents?
Speaker 2: Yes, we are still well. A lot of the whole
Speaker 2: startup world is focused on people starting companies, but there's
Speaker 2: been less attention I felt on the process of invention,
Speaker 2: of coming up with what a new idea is. So
Speaker 2: we made a company that was dedicated to invention, both
Speaker 2: coming up with our own inventions, supporting external inventors who
Speaker 2: are really good at coming up with inventions, and investing
Speaker 2: in existing inventions. And so I've been running that for
Speaker 2: god long twenty years now.
Speaker 1: So what's what was last year's invention of the year.
Speaker 2: Well, for the very newest inventions, there's two ways you
Speaker 2: can count that. You can either say, what are the
Speaker 2: things that seem to be doing the best at the moment,
Speaker 2: and there We've got a bunch of inventions and a
Speaker 2: technology called meta materials. It's an exotic part of stolid
Speaker 2: state physics. It's about making new kinds of wireless communications devices.
Speaker 2: So we've got a couple of companies that we've started
Speaker 2: that are doing well at that. Probably our most dramatic
Speaker 2: one is we invented a new type of nuclear power
Speaker 2: reactor to make carbon free Energy, and we have a
Speaker 2: company that we've spun out Bill Gates as the chairman
Speaker 2: of that company. I'm the vice Gaerman and we have
Speaker 2: a deal to build a power plant in.
Speaker 1: Wyoming using nuclear power.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a new type, so it'll be the first
Speaker 2: really new type of nuclear power reactor built in like
Speaker 2: thirty years.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: Big, Well, they're all big in some sense of the
Speaker 2: word big.
Speaker 1: Well, I meant I meant in size. You know, the
Speaker 1: nuclear reactors that you fly over all the time are
Speaker 1: really clunky looking giant cones that sit there.
Speaker 2: Yes, that those big cones that you're seeing are actually
Speaker 2: the cooling towers. That's not where the nuclear stuff happens.
Speaker 2: It happens in a much smaller building. But that's the
Speaker 2: image of them quite rightly. So ours are smaller than that.
Speaker 2: The trouble is they're less efficient if you build them
Speaker 2: very small. So there are some people trying to work
Speaker 2: on very small nuclear reactors, but you get some efficiency
Speaker 2: issues if you build them very small. There's also an
Speaker 2: issue with finding a site to build them, because it
Speaker 2: turns out the neighbors don't want it built in their
Speaker 2: backyard and they don't care if it's a small nuclear
Speaker 2: reactor or a big nuclear reactor, because even a small
Speaker 2: reactor is big in terms of the energy output.
Speaker 1: So are they Are they dangerous?
Speaker 2: Well, we think ours are by far the safest that
Speaker 2: anyone's ever designed. You know, the world needs to find
Speaker 2: carbon free sources of energy, and you have to measure
Speaker 2: both what's the objective danger that you have from the
Speaker 2: power plant with the longer term danger from climate change.
Speaker 2: In the case of a coal or a natural gas
Speaker 2: power plant, they killed people every year, way more people
Speaker 2: have ever been killed by nuclear.
Speaker 1: But also what about the pollution.
Speaker 2: The pollution, Well, that's the trouble is the pollution then
Speaker 2: from those fossil fuel plants that may seem like either
Speaker 2: they're not really safe, but they may seem like they're bounded.
Speaker 2: Ultimately the pollution is going to cause way way way
Speaker 2: more harm. So I think if you take a very
Speaker 2: rational view, you have to say, we need to have
Speaker 2: carbon free sources of energy. Solar and wind are some
Speaker 2: of those things, but they don't work either someone by
Speaker 2: twenty four or solar doesn't work at night. So you
Speaker 2: need to have what are called base load power supplies
Speaker 2: to balance that, and nuclear is perfect for that.
Speaker 1: We think you get the gist listeners. Nathan is involved
Speaker 1: in a lot of interesting projects, not just food, but many, many,
Speaker 1: many other forereaching projects. I have a few silly questions
Speaker 1: for you back to food. You've learned many things, and
Speaker 1: I would love to get your opinion on fresh versus
Speaker 1: aged mozzurilla, which is better.
Speaker 2: So when I went to Italy for the Pizza book,
Speaker 2: we went and ate mozzarella de bouffala, you know, just
Speaker 2: coming right out of the vat, and it had a
Speaker 2: totally different texture than any mozzarella buffalo to have the
Speaker 2: United States, and I had it in Italy before, but it
Speaker 2: really struck me what is going on? And it turns out,
Speaker 2: whenever we get fresh mozzarella in the United States, if
Speaker 2: it's mozzerrella de buffala, it's coming from Italy. It's not fresh.
Speaker 2: It's a week or two old. And so the super
Speaker 2: soft texture that you might be used to from a
Speaker 2: cuprasi salad or something like that, the very fresh stuff
Speaker 2: doesn't have it. It squeaks when you bite it, so
Speaker 2: it's a totally different texture. So yeah, and now that's
Speaker 2: not extremely aged cheese, like like a blue cheese or
Speaker 2: a parmechant or something else that could be aged for
Speaker 2: for months or even years. But it's very striking to
Speaker 2: me how some of the the reasons that people would
Speaker 2: say they love mozzarella de buffalo if you talk to
Speaker 2: people in the United States are totally missing in Italy because
Speaker 2: it's a different cheese.
Speaker 1: Does it melt nicely on the pizza?
Speaker 2: Well, fresh mozzarella has a problem with melting on a pizza,
Speaker 2: which is it can be too.
Speaker 1: Watery, too wet, rage.
Speaker 2: So what all of the best pizzolas and aples do
Speaker 2: is they shred it, put it in a colander in
Speaker 2: the fridge and let it sit overnight, you know, in
Speaker 2: a bowl, so that you can let it drain. And
Speaker 2: that drain mozzarella is way easier to use on a
Speaker 2: pizza without it getting soupy in the middle.
Speaker 1: That's a good idea. Why does the sauce keep the
Speaker 1: center of the pizza from rising?
Speaker 2: That was another one of our curiosity questions. I was
Speaker 2: looking at a pizza, say how come the rim is
Speaker 2: so tall compared to the center, And people say, oh, well,
Speaker 2: that's because leaving more dough at the rim. But in Naples,
Speaker 2: the traditional approach, the dough is dead flat, there's no
Speaker 2: extra dough at the rim, you just put it in
Speaker 2: the center. Then we thought, well, maybe it's the weight
Speaker 2: of the sauce and the dough and the cheese. So
Speaker 2: we took sand, We weighed out and equal a weight
Speaker 2: of sand, spread that on our pizza. Pizza just puffed
Speaker 2: right up. Threw the sand off, it doesn't care. And
Speaker 2: so the reason is that the sauce is wet. And
Speaker 2: because the sauce is wet, it doesn't matter if the
Speaker 2: oven is five hundred degrees. The wet sauce is going
Speaker 2: to boil when it gets hot. That means it can't
Speaker 2: be higher than two hundred and twelve degrees fahrenheit, and
Speaker 2: that's actually relatively cold. And it's that cooling effect that
Speaker 2: keeps the pizza from puffing up, because most of that
Speaker 2: puffing up in the rim is puffing up by steam.
Speaker 2: It's actually the same method as Patta show in your
Speaker 2: high egg you putta show, it's the same deal. Your
Speaker 2: steam is what powers that. And if you've got a
Speaker 2: layer of tomato sauce on top, you don't get hot
Speaker 2: enough to have enough steam. That's what makes the center
Speaker 2: of the pizza low.
Speaker 1: What can the home cooked. You to optimize the home
Speaker 1: oven for pizza, so.
Speaker 2: Pizza ovens are almost always hotter than home ovens. There
Speaker 2: are a few kinds of pizza that work very well
Speaker 2: in home ovens, but they're a specific type. Detroit style pizza,
Speaker 2: which has a thick crust fo katcha, which isn't really
Speaker 2: a kind of pizza, but you can put toppings kind
Speaker 2: of like a pizza. Those things work super well in
Speaker 2: a home oven. If you really want to go beyond that,
Speaker 2: what you need to do is get something that will
Speaker 2: hold heat. So people will use a pizza stone. I
Speaker 2: don't think the pizza stone is as good as a
Speaker 2: big block of metal. So the simplest way to get
Speaker 2: a block of metal is a flat cast iron skillet.
Speaker 2: They're cheap, you know, These black iron things are about
Speaker 2: a quarter of an inch thick.
Speaker 1: That's good enough.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that works great. So then you put that in
Speaker 2: there and you make your oven very hot, by very hot,
Speaker 2: basically hos.
Speaker 1: It will go like five hundred that's about the that's
Speaker 1: about the limit for most home ovens.
Speaker 2: Most home ovens four fifty five hundred, yeah, is marked
Speaker 2: on the oven, and then depending on the oven, sometimes
Speaker 2: it's marked as five hundred and it's really five point
Speaker 2: fifty and sometimes it's really.
Speaker 1: Four fifty, right the thermometer.
Speaker 2: Use the thermometer. But if you let it heat up
Speaker 2: for twenty thirty minutes before you put the dough onto
Speaker 2: that hot surface, you'll get enough stored heat transfer that
Speaker 2: it'll make the bottom of your pizza better. It'll rise
Speaker 2: better the edges. So that's a really a great technique.
Speaker 2: We're swell outside too. You can put that same cast
Speaker 2: iron skillet on your barbecue. If you've got a covered
Speaker 2: barbecue like a Weber or a green Egg or one
Speaker 2: of those. If you put on one of those skillets
Speaker 2: that gets nice and hot, you can put your pizza
Speaker 2: directly onto that.
Speaker 1: What is your favorite grill? Now that we're outside and
Speaker 1: cooking outside, what's your favorite well?
Speaker 2: For convenience, I like a gas grill. There's really no
Speaker 2: difference in cooking with charcoal briquettes or rough charcoal or
Speaker 2: gas into there's no product From the whole point of
Speaker 2: charcoal is it takes out all of the smell and
Speaker 2: the unique thing. So if someone says, oh you need
Speaker 2: to have a mesquite charcoal, askuite charcole is just charcoal.
Speaker 2: You don't need it. And what you do in as
Speaker 2: grill instead is you typically have some metal plates. Those
Speaker 2: metal plates get hot, and it's the infrared radiation given
Speaker 2: off by those plates that is part of what grilling
Speaker 2: is about. But the other part. If you just go
Speaker 2: from a like a broiler where the infred he on
Speaker 2: the top, it doesn't taste the same as a grill,
Speaker 2: and that's because a grill also has flavor that comes
Speaker 2: from fat from the food dripping off and flaring up
Speaker 2: and burning. And you see that happen all the time.
Speaker 2: It's one of the reasons that people sometimes have trouble
Speaker 2: grilling vegetables if you put a corn on the cob,
Speaker 2: or you put cut up peppers or onions.
Speaker 1: Because there's no fat.
Speaker 2: There's no fat exactly, and if there's no fat, there's
Speaker 2: no drips. If there's no drips, you don't get that
Speaker 2: grilling flavor. So we like putting on an oil marinate
Speaker 2: on them and then that drips and that gives you
Speaker 2: all those of those things. But if you have a
Speaker 2: really nice hot grill, however, you're heating the plates on
Speaker 2: the grill gas that he is most convenient and you
Speaker 2: put a nice steak on there. The dripping is what
Speaker 2: gives you the characteristic grilling taste.
Speaker 1: What was the last thing that filled you with awe?
Speaker 2: Some of these cooking things that we discover fill me
Speaker 2: with awe. I mean that the most recent thing wasn't
Speaker 2: the one I mentioned about the sugar being the acting
Speaker 2: as the partially the levener. But things like that when
Speaker 2: you discover some brand new thing and it just like
Speaker 2: shocks you. And we've discovered a bunch of them so far,
Speaker 2: but the cool thing is we're always finding more of them.
Speaker 2: And you got like, we'll try adding extra eggs and
Speaker 2: I think it'll make an awesome pet of shoe. But
Speaker 2: then really understanding that and doing experiments, we can figure
Speaker 2: out why is it working that way? You know, I
Speaker 2: think it's awesome when you discover something new. Well, the
Speaker 2: thing that's cool to me is about discovering it for
Speaker 2: the first time. Maybe not for the first time in humanity, right,
Speaker 2: first time? For me? That that is fun.
Speaker 1: After pastry, what's next?
Speaker 2: So if you ask a restaurant show what the pastry
Speaker 2: chef does, it's almost any kind of dessert. But for
Speaker 2: this book, we take pastry to mean pastries like something
Speaker 2: in a bakery, so not ice cream, for example, not mooses.
Speaker 2: We'll have a few mooses for filling a cake. But
Speaker 2: we had to cut down the size of the endeavor
Speaker 2: a little bit because baking as it stands is so
Speaker 2: broad that we couldn't do all of the things we'd
Speaker 2: like to do with gelato and sorbet and all these
Speaker 2: other wonderful, wonderful things. But basically, this book is about
Speaker 2: desserts that involve flour and heat. You know, the next
Speaker 2: book after that will be about desserts where we do
Speaker 2: more broadly what you would do in a dessert, which
Speaker 2: could include things that have no flour and no heat.
Speaker 1: Well, it's just incredible the things that you do and
Speaker 1: have done, and it's always a pleasure Nathan to talk
Speaker 1: to you. And you can find Nathan's latest book, Food
Speaker 1: and Drink Modernist Cuisine Photography wherever you like to get
Speaker 1: your books. It's a beautiful book and you'll all want
Speaker 1: to get one. It's a great present. And also follow
Speaker 1: Modernist Cuisine Instagram at Maude Cuisine. Nathan, thank you, it's
Speaker 1: been too long, and I hope to see you in
Speaker 1: the near future. And I do want to come to
Speaker 1: your lab and see something about the pastry book.
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, excellent.
Speaker 1: All right, well, thank you so very much and I
Speaker 1: best to your wife and sons.
Speaker 2: Okay, great, thank you bye,