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>> ANTHONY BOURDAIN: In this episode of The Mind of a Chef, Chef Edward Lee is in New York to discuss how growing up in the rich cultural diversity of Canarsie, Brooklyn, shaped his approach to cooking... >> EDWARD LEE: I used to be in love with diner culture.

I wanted to be a part of it somehow.

>> BOURDAIN: ...hangs in the kitchen with New York chefs Ivan Orkin and Alex Stupak... >> ALEX STUPAK: What's most important for me is the technique.

>> IVAN ORKIN: I make all kinds of things with ketchup just because I want to eat ketchup.

>> BOURDAIN: ...cooks the Korean classic dduk bokki with his mom... >> LEE: Are you proud of me?

>> Oh, yes, of course.

>> BOURDAIN: ...and explains how painting subway trains is like cooking in a kitchen.

>> LEE: You have a tag that's your one signature mark.

>> BOURDAIN: Enter the mind of a chef.

>> LEE: All curious chefs, they're just fascinated by their surroundings.

Boy, that is intense.

They don't teach you this in cooking school.

>> LEE: I didn't even grow up Korean, really.

I mean, I probably knew as much about Jamaican food as I did about Korean food.

Most Koreans, when you move to America, you move to Flushing.

My parents were weird in that they said no.

You know, "We moved here for a reason.

We want you to grow up American."

So instead they moved into a neighborhood with 40 other different immigrant groups.

So this is the neighborhood I grew up in.

Kind of Canarsie-Rockaway part of Brooklyn.

I don't know what was so appealing about this neighborhood that my parents decided to move here.

But what it did was it gave me this incredible exposure to all these different cuisines and people that I never would have had.

Looking at these, like, plantains and sugarcane, stuff like that was normal to me.

And it wasn't part of my culture.

I grew up with a lot of different people, you know?

My friends growing up were, like, a meeting of the UN kids, you know, because it was just all different races.

Every household had its own tradition that stretched back generations, but from another country.

Everyone had their own universe that they came from.

Thinking back on it now, it was really important for me.

So we're going to do dduk bokki today.

This was one of my favorite things to eat growing up.

So this is what?

>> Rice cake, pork, fish cake, onion, green pepper, and mushroom.

>> LEE: Okay.

You do realize that this color doesn't exist in nature, right?

>> Yeah, I know.

>> LEE: How's that?

>> Good.

>> LEE: Good?

>> Sometimes you don't have this ingredient, whatever you have is refrigerate, everything, put in there.

>> LEE: It's like leftover.. >> Leftover... >> LEE: Leftover dduk bokki.

Remember when I was younger, everyone was afraid that I was going to become a cook, remember?

>> Who?

>> LEE: You.

You and Apa, and everyone said, "Oh, no, you're going to become a cook."

And then you thought I was going to be poor for my whole life.

Now look at me.

Are you proud of me?

>> Oh, yes, of course.

Everybody... all my family... >> LEE: Really?

>> Yeah.

They say, "Oh, you are very lucky."

>> LEE: Now they're jealous, right?

>> Yeah, they jealous.

More smaller.

>> LEE: How about that?

>> Yeah, it's good.

Kimchee.

>> LEE: Is that my name on there?

>> Yeah, right there.

>> LEE: That's not how you spell my name.

>> I always confuse.

>> LEE: Okay.

>> First time, E-D-D-Y.

My daughter said, "No, Mommy, it's not Y."

So she said I-E, and then I forgot the E. >> LEE: But here's the thing.

>> Doesn't matter.

>> LEE: You named me, right?

>> Yeah.

No, I give to you name Edward, not Eddie.

>> LEE: Oh.

>> So, I... confused.

>> LEE: You can call me whatever you want.

I'm... you're my mother.

You can call me whatever you want.

You know what I learned from you, Oma?

>> Hmm?

>> LEE: I learned how to be bossy.

You know that?

>> You learned from me?

>> LEE: Do you know the word bossy?

>> Bossy?

>> LEE: Like, telling people what to do.

>> Yes.

>> LEE: I learned that from you.

Everything?

>> Everything.

>> LEE: Okay.

>> Put in there now six spoons.

>> LEE: Six spoons.

>> Yeah.

>> LEE: Of gochujang.

The fermented chili paste, right?

>> Yes.

>> LEE: All right, six.

Looks good.

>> Finished.

>> LEE: Finished?

>> Yes.

>> LEE: I've got to say, this is really, really looking good.

It smells fantastic.

I can't wait to dig in to this.

You did a good job.

I have a surprise for you.

Taste that.

You know what that is?

It's pork, pork skin.

>> Mmm.

>> LEE: It's good, right?

>> Yeah.

>> LEE: Okay, I knew it.

>> Pork skin.

>> LEE: But it's fried, and then we grind it into a powder.

But I'm going to put it on top of here.

What do you think?

>> It's more...

There's almost no calorie.

>> LEE: Oh, no cal... oh, I didn't know we're cooking health food now.

>> The health food.

>> LEE: Oh, this is health... this is health food.

>> Maybe 200-something.

Just, like, 480.

Doesn't matter.

>> LEE: This is, like, my Korean food with Southern pork rinds.

>> Mmm.

>> LEE: It's good, huh?

Thank you, Mommy.

>> Okay.

>> LEE: This was very nice.

I think my mom living in Korea was probably a very sheepish woman.

And I think New York changed her and made her tough.

That's what I get from her.

And I think, you know, you can't grow up in a place like this and sort of be docile.

When you are surrounded by all these different ethnicities and all these different cultures, you really have to stake a place for yourself.

If you were not going to be crushed by the weight of all the people hustling their way to the top, you had to sort of stand up and, you know, push your elbows to the side.

You do whatever it takes to get ahead.

And I think the restaurant business is like that.

I don't care if you're doing high end food, or a fast food shop, every day is a struggle.

Every day is a hustle.

Brooklyn back then was rough, it was poor, very working class.

Then there was Manhattan.

And Manhattan was the dream, it was the magic, it was the... it was everything you ever wanted.

So this is where you grew up?

This is what you... >> ORKIN: My parents used to live right down the block, so I'd amble in here for breakfast often.

My quintessential food, if I had to choose one, sushi is the thing I'd eat if I was going to be dying.

But after sushi is... it's a turkey club.

>> LEE: Okay.

Ivan is a chef from Long Island who went out to Tokyo and created an empire based on ramen, and did it as a New York Jew, and became pretty much a celebrity in Tokyo, and has now returned, come back to New York, create another small empire.

Ivan, introduce me to what you're going to do.

>> ORKIN: It's so challenging to offer people solid vegetable dishes.

So I said, you know, "Why don't we make a vegetarian chili?"

And they were like, "Well, let's get some..." and then we grabbed the white onion, we chopped it all up, and we sprinkled it over, and it was, like, total... like, a Coney Island hot dog.

So we're going to take basic criminis, and we're going to make sort of a chop here.

Let's get some ginger and garlic.

I'll add my chopped-up mushroom stuff.

>> LEE: What is that?

>> ORKIN: That's mirin, which is sweetened rice wine, and sake.

I'm going to add some of this juice from the pickled garlic that I make.

>> LEE: This garlic is pickled in here?

>> ORKIN: It's pickled in there with a little smoked fish product, and sugar and vinegar and soy, and it's... >> LEE: It's really good.

I could drink this.

>> ORKIN: Really, it's drinkable.

And the blond miso.

Good old fashioned Heinz ketchup.

>> LEE: Oh, so you're putting ketchup in here.

>> ORKIN: I make all kinds of things with ketchup just because I want to eat ketchup.

>> LEE: Yeah.

>> ORKIN: And I spend my whole life thinking of more ways to pour ketchup on things.

And I'm not ashamed.

I'm going to pour a little of that juice in there.

Throw in some beech mushrooms, just a nice handful.

>> LEE: Is that a nice handful?

>> ORKIN: Yeah, that's a nice handful.

Stir that around, and then we're going to grab some tofu.

>> LEE: All right, what do you want?

>> ORKIN: Just nice, nice cubes.

>> LEE: What does nice cubes mean?

Is it an inch and a half, an inch and a... half an inch?

What's a nice cube?

>> ORKIN: You mean when I say nice cube, you don't... that didn't just pop into your mind?

Right there, yep.

>> LEE: Right there?

That's a nice cube?

>> ORKIN: That's a nice cube.

And then you'll cut that in threes.

>> LEE: This way in threes.

>> ORKIN: Yeah, that threes, and then down... and then down the... >> LEE: So I had it... >> ORKIN: You were right, see?

You've got nice cubes.

>> LEE: Nice.

>> ORKIN: And we're going to add these... let's take our cornstarch, and... >> LEE: This is for a crust?

>> ORKIN: Yeah, this will give, yeah, a little bit of a nice crust on the outside of the tofu.

And we're just going to use this fryer, let these guys cook up.

I think that any good chef builds a taste memory.

>> LEE: Yeah.

>> ORKIN: And every time you eat something that inspires you, it goes into that place.

And when you're thinking about a new dish, you taste those things in your mind, and you can see how they would fit in your dish.

And then when you cook that food, it comes out of all those experiences, and then it just becomes who you are, you know?

I'm Ivan Ramen, I make Ivan Ramen food.

I've never said that I'm a ramen expert, necessarily.

I'm an Ivan Ramen expert, because it's my shop.

>> LEE: Your whole life is just about building reference points, you know?

>> ORKIN: Right.

>> LEE: That's it.

And then at some point you go, "Let me take all those reference points, combine them..." >> ORKIN: Right.

>> LEE: ...and, you know, see what comes out of my fingers."

>> ORKIN: When you look at the final dish, it feels like something you'd eat in Coney Island.

>> LEE: Yeah.

>> ORKIN: I mean, I grew up in Long Island, so... >> LEE: It's funny.

So you're an island guy.

>> ORKIN: I'm an island guy.

Long Island.

>> LEE: Coney Island.

>> ORKIN: Yeah, yeah.

>> LEE: Japan island.

>> ORKIN: Yeah, that's right, that's weird.

So we're going to take this, and... >> LEE: Hey, don't get fancy with me on this.

Do you have a tweezer in your back pocket?

>> ORKIN: I have no...

I have never used a tweezer to put food on a plate.

Put our chili stuff all around.

We're going to sprinkle some onions on there.

And then I have a little... >> LEE: Scallions.

>> ORKIN: ...scallions.

Of course, we're going to take our... >> LEE: So you're going to put French's mustard on it?

>> ORKIN: I am.

>> LEE: Why French's?

>> ORKIN: You can't say, "Why French's?"

>> LEE: Why not?

>> ORKIN: What do you mean?

It's, like, the standard thing that sits on the counter when you get a hot dog.

It's got to be yellow, it's got to be tart.

Mustard can be really sophisticated, but the French's is very simple.

Let's give a little color here.

And that's your tofu Coney Island.

>> LEE: That's awesome.

>> ORKIN: Yeah.

>> LEE: For me it's not so much the cuisine as this type of eating-- this, like, old, sort of New York style, whether it's a diner, or a Jewish deli, and how it's just kind of going away.

And this feels like home to me.

You know, it's not even my home or my culture, but it feels like home to me.

>> ORKIN: It's very comforting.

>> LEE: It is.

>> ORKIN: It's really comforting food.

>> LEE: This is my quintessential New York dish.

My sort of New York growing up was a Greek diner.

And I used to work in a lot of them growing up.

Every day during shift meal, I'd have a BLT.

>> ORKIN: Right.

>> LEE: That was my groove.

The first problem of a BLT is that you use strips of bacon, right?

And so you end up taking a bite, and you eat the whole strip of BLT, because it comes out of your sandwich.

I love the flavors of a BLT, but how do you make it so that you're going to get an equal portion of bacon in every bite along the way?

So I decided to make a schmear.

>> ORKIN: A schmear.

>> LEE: Of bacon.

So I'm just going to cut this up, and then start sautéing it.

>> ORKIN: That is really beautiful bacon.

>> LEE: Isn't it?

>> ORKIN: Yeah.

>> LEE: I'm going to throw some onions in there.

And what's going to happen is that as that onion sautés, it's going to soak up all that bacon fat.

>> ORKIN: Nice.

>> LEE: And I don't really want to crisp the bacon either, because I'm going to puree all this stuff.

>> ORKIN: Want it to be more like a rillette.

>> LEE: Yeah.

These are just sun-dried tomatoes.

So, again, this is a BLT sandwich, so... >> ORKIN: Sure.

>> LEE: You've got your bacon, this is your tomato.

This is just a little red wine.

This is Dijon mustard.

>> ORKIN: Right.

>> LEE: I'm not as Coney Island as you, so I use the Dijon.

>> ORKIN: Right.

>> LEE: But I like the spice in here.

And I've got some sherry vinegar.

I'm going to just throw, like... Two squirts.

And again, I'm just going to keep going with that until that liquid sort of evaporates, just real slow.

All right, I'm going to leave that alone now for a little bit.

I'm going to chop up a couple scallion, maybe, like, three scallions.

The one thing I don't put into the sandwich is the lettuce.

We thought that it would be fun to do something with the letter L in it, because after all, it's a BLT.

So the L in the BLT stands for liver.

>> ORKIN: Uh-huh.

>> LEE: We actually use a little bit of foie gras.

So I'm going to take a little black pepper.

>> ORKIN: Okay.

>> LEE: A good chunk of black pepper.

And the scallions.

Pop that in there.

And if you want to now get the machine running, I'm just going to drop the foie as we go.

And then basically the foie is just going to sort of emulsify everything together.

I'm almost using it like you would butter.

>> LEE: Very expensive butter.

>> ORKIN: Very expensive butter.

>> LEE: All right, I'm just going to transfer it into a cold bowl.

It's really important to kind of pull it down, because you don't want that foie to melt.

I don't know if you...

I used to be in love with, like, diner culture.

>> ORKIN: Right.

>> LEE: And all the language they used to have, and the cooks and the waiters, they all had a secret language and a code that they talked to each other.

I always knew that I wanted to sort of be a part of it somehow.

This is Gruyere cheese.

So it's kind of like a BLT meets a grilled cheese sandwich.

This stuff's cooled down now, and it almost turned... it's almost like Play-Doh.

>> ORKIN: Right.

>> LEE: So you can sort of just build it, and just press it right on there.

It's kind of fun to make.

It shouldn't take that long just to get a little color on each side.

Warm up the middle.

When we started doing it we had all these fancy breads that we used.

>> ORKIN: Right.

>> LEE: We did it once, and we didn't have any bread, so we had some leftover boule.

>> ORKIN: Uh-huh.

>> LEE: And it was just really stale and hard.

And it turned out it worked perfectly.

>> ORKIN: Right.

>> LEE: So we actually now buy bread in advance, and just, like, unwrap it and leave it in our walk-in to get stale for, like, three days.

That's nice.

And that's it.

BLT sandwich.

I'm always attracted to things that are vastly different from me, things that are outside of my comfort zone.

So I was 13, and there was a kid in school named Eric.

He was a graffiti artist.

So, of course the other kids were scared of him, and they stayed away from him.

I was drawn to him.

For some reason he took to me.

And so I became his kind of lookout.

The first time I put up a tag, it was like one night he just threw me a can, and was like, "Put up a tag."

I was, like, so nervous, I didn't know what to write.

So I wrote, "Eddie."

And he laughed-- "You can't put your name up.

Defeats the whole point."

For a kid in Brooklyn, you put up a tag on a train, that train is going out to Manhattan.

That train is going all the way to the Upper West Side, and maybe up to the Bronx.

It's an amazing thing to think about for a little kid, to say, "If I put something on here, hundreds, maybe thousands of people are going to see it."

It's a very powerful thing.

Even if it's one week on a subway, I want to yell my name at the top of my lungs and have someone notice me.

Many years later I look back on it, and I find a very similar thing with cuisine.

That tag, it's your one signature mark.

It's the same line, it's the same diagonal, it's round, and you fill it in.

But it's never the same, because there is the human element involved.

I make the same dish every night.

It's the same recipe.

But every day it's going to be a little bit different.

The tags will evolve over time.

But you never have a record of what you did six months ago to compare it against.

It's just gone.

The only thing that's left is what's in your head.

There's something so beautiful about that, and yet so crushingly tragic.

Of all the things you could have done, why Mexican food?

>> ALEX STUPAK: For me, it was really just about... about new.

If we're doing Mexican cooking in New York City, it's like, "Well, why can't I make a tamale with schmaltz," or, "Why can't I put pastrami on a taco?"

Like, let's start to identify things that are truly New York City, and then inject those into it.

And it's always going to be something new.

So I think that's really exciting.

>> LEE: Alex Stupak is from Boston originally, then became the pastry chef at Alinea.

From there, went to New York to do something completely different.

He's cooking Mexican cuisine, and just kind of reinterpreting it through fresh eyes.

>> STUPAK: New York City is very much, I think, a shrimp cocktail city.

What we're going to do is we're going to do a play on the tostada.

All we've done is made a shrimp cocktail.

It's just instead of cocktail sauce, we use a salsa.

So we're going to do something with masa.

Masa is, arguably, the most important ingredient in Mexican cooking.

It's what's used for making tortillas and tamales.

As a background in pastry, I still think of it as a dough.

I think there's some interesting things you can do with it both texturally and in form.

We're going to form the crispy tortilla component in a new way.

What we're going to begin to do is kind of mimic the technique of making tamales.

The first thing you do is take lard, and you paddle it until it's light and fluffy.

Usually you use, like, a chicken stock or something like that.

In our case, we're using water.

And we're adding a little bit of xanthan gum to that water.

It gives us a little structure.

It makes the finished product a little stronger, allows it to hold up with what we're going to do with it.

So we're just kind of softening our masa in the lard, breaking it up.

A little bit of flour.

And that's just for structure.

And then, as you can see, super thick, and it's going to make something almost the consistency of a waffle batter.

So we're just going to spread this in a thin sheet.

If you had removed the flour, and you'd used chicken broth instead of water, and 86'd the xanthan gum, you have a tamale.

You'd just put that in corn husk and steam it.

>> LEE: So what's crazy is you're taking, like, thousands of years of culinary history from Mexican cuisine, turning it into something totally new.

>> STUPAK: When it came time to open my own restaurant, I knew that if I had continued to do what everyone thought I was going to do... >> LEE: Right.

>> STUPAK: ...I think I would have gotten lazy.

So by opening something completely different, you're actually forcing yourself to grow.

Now we're going to bake it.

300 degree oven, for about five minutes.

So it's kind of just set.

>> LEE: Yeah.

>> STUPAK: It's still pliable, it's kind of like a crepe.

So we can cut this in any shape we want.

We're just going to slice it.

So what we're going to do, I've got a cookie sheet, and we took copper pipes, and actually screwed them into... >> LEE: Right.

>> STUPAK: So now we have this nice crepe-like texture, but we're going to make it crispy.

And we're going to give it an interesting form.

And we're going to borrow this idea from Michel Bras.

So we have them like this.

>> LEE: Beautiful.

>> STUPAK: We're just going to go back in the oven for about another ten minutes.

>> LEE: That's pretty cool.

>> STUPAK: Yeah, just holds its form into a wave.

>> LEE: And you're going to fill these with something?

>> STUPAK: I think you've got to now, after all that trouble.

>> LEE: Let's do it.

>> STUPAK: This is a mousse, made out of sea urchin, mixed with a spicy salsa with some chipotle in it.

We're just going to pipe that in there.

What's most important for me is the technique.

And if it's a technique that allows you to apply new flavors to it, I think that's super liberating.

So we get this interesting form, and now we can kind of, rather than just have our shrimp lie flat on the plate, the whole thing can visually become a little bit more interesting.

These shrimp were just poached in a garlic oil called mojo de ajo in Mexico, bath of garlic.

So this is a salsa made from tomatillos and a little bit of chipotle.

>> LEE: What's crazy is this looks nothing like Mexican food, but it's smelling exactly like Mexican food.

>> STUPAK: Raw onion, super important.

I've got a little bit of queso fresco here, too.

I've got a little bit of jalapeno, and a little bit of radish.

And then the last thing, we just got some really beautiful hydroponic lettuces.

>> LEE: This is beautiful, man.

>> STUPAK: Thank you.

>> LEE: New York is the original melting pot.

So I think whenever you talk about someone who's going to do a cuisine that is not Americana, New Yorkers have a sensitivity and a history and a flavor for it.

More so, I think, than any other city in the world.

For me, New York was a place of possibility.

It's a place where someone with a crazy idea could go out there and succeed, so long as he or she was crazy enough to do it, and do it with enough courage and pluck.

I think New York is a place that not only embraces change, but expects it.

They don't mind controversy.

I mean, that's New York.

You can do whatever you want.