196 Flavors Of The World

196 Flavors Of The World with Mike Benayoun

What is 196 flavors?

196 flavors was founded in 2012. What started as a fun project to prepare and document a dish from every country in the world, eventually led us to a much bigger venture with the lofty goal to become the “Wikipedia of authentic and traditional recipes” with a focus on culinary history. With the help of chefs and experts from the local country or region, we thoroughly research and validate our recipes and articles to ensure people now have one place online to access a legit representation of any authentic recipe from the 196 countries that cover our planet. We now feature more than 1100 recipes and articles in 3 languages (English, French and Spanish) with a traffic that will surpass 15 million page views in 2020

196 flavors - 196 countries. A world of flavors. - World Cuisine Blog

www.feedingfatty.com

 

Full Transcript Below

Roy - Feeding Fatty (00:02):

Hello, and welcome to another episode of feeding fatty on Roy and Perry. So, you know, we try to bring, uh, guests that can help us with our, uh, not only our nutrition eating, uh, but also exercise anything that's on the spectrum. You know, we believed in a bounce approach in a, we found a very interesting, uh, gentleman to have on with us today. His name is Mike Ben, a Yoon. He is with 196 flavors. First off, Mike, welcome. Thanks for taking time to be with us. Uh, a hundred, 196 flavors was founded in 2012. Uh, it started as a fun project to prepare and document a dish from every country in the world. And that eventually led them to a much bigger venture with the lofty goal of becoming the Wikipedia of authentic and traditional recipes with the focus on culinary history, with the help of chefs and experts from the local country or region they've thoroughly researched and validated their recipes and articles to ensure people have one place online to access legit representation of authentic recipes and, uh, from 196 countries that cover our planet. So they now feature 1100 recipes and articles in three languages, English, French, Spanish with traffic that will surprise 15 million page views in 2020 Mike. That is awesome. Glad to have you to the show

Mike (01:39):

Okay. Thank you so much for having me, Ryan Terry really, really appreciate it. Um, yeah, very excited to, uh, to talk about, uh, how we, how we got started and kind of where we are and what, uh, what our goals are, but you kind of summarize what we're all about. Yeah.

Roy - Feeding Fatty (01:54):

Know, I mean, what an amazing project that some you thought to try recipe from, you know, every country and then of course making it authentic, getting the chefs and some local people involved. I mean, it's just a water project. I bet it's been, Oh my God. Yeah.

Mike (02:13):

Yeah. So it's funny because when we started, like you said, I mean, it was really a hobby and it was really nothing more than a, from an idea that, that had in the back of my mind for two years. And I suggested it to my best friend. Uh, there are who, who is my business partner now and, uh, and she jumped on it. She was like, you know, let's do it. So it took her, it took us about a year and a half to finish the dish from every country. Uh, the thing is at the time we were probably not as thorough in our research as we are now, because again, it was just a fun and we're like, all right, if it's not the exact, uh, authentic recipe, the big deal, but now we have other ambitions and we are much more thorough. And, you know, if, uh, if it's interesting, I can tell you kind of our, our process in terms of research and, and kind of how we go about it. So have you all started

Terry (03:02):

Was that, Oh, so is your background in, uh, as a chef chef, is that what you did or what, what did you do as work?

Mike (03:12):

Absolutely not. My background is in cooking and eating since I, my background, like another two goals. Now my background is more in the software industry, so, um, I studied more on the technical side and then over time I morphed more into, uh, uh, this dev and sales and marketing. Uh, so my day job is actually a VP of this dev for software startup. Um, and my night job on a weekend job is the blog or the website.

Roy - Feeding Fatty (03:46):

Well, that's cool. Have y'all sir. Have you surpassed one, a recipe from each country are, y'all gonna like build on that once you get that initial while y'all already got the initial one, but are you just going to keep building that out?

Mike (04:01):

Yeah, so we, um, we do have, uh, that was our initial goal, right? So to have one recipe from each country in the world, which we finished in a year and a half since then, what we have done is initially we had one, we were focusing on one country per week. Uh, for the past four years, we've been doing one country or one region per month. So this, this month, for example, we're doing the Nordic region, which encompasses five countries, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, and Iceland. Uh, but typically we focus on one country and what we typically do is we're going to have, so now we actually work with contributors. So it's not just Vera on my staff. We have, uh, depending on the time of the year we have between five and 10 contributors who help us. And what would that, what I mean by that is they actually, um, what we do is we source the recipes.

Mike (04:58):

Uh, so typically what we do is we source the recipes in the local language. So we go to the source, you know, we try to find, uh, authentic recipes from credible sources. Sometimes chefs, sometimes cookbook authors, a lot of times in the local language, not only, but a lot of times [inaudible]. So that's what we're, um, uh, trying to do is we're trying to look at different representations of the same recipe, authentic recipe. And we come up with our own version, which we try are, is going to work. We're trying to do is trying to capture the essence of the authentic recipe. And as you know, we can never say there's one version of every authentic recipe, right? It doesn't, it doesn't go like this. There's an evolution of recipes. Every chef is going to have their own twist, uh, over time. Uh, but you know, obviously there are some rules to follow some guidelines in terms of ingredients and so on.

Mike (05:51):

So that's what we're trying to do in capturing the essence of the recipe. Once we done that, we actually give those recipes to our contributors. So we store the recipe, we have our own research process and we give those recipes to our contributors who have to follow to the letter, those recipes. But in addition to that, because our contributors are like us, right? They're not really trained chefs, or they're not for like, for this month, they're not necessarily from the region or country. So in addition to that, we have one additional layer of validation. We actually do collaborate with chefs. We known chefs from the region or from the country that adds another layer layer of validation and credibility to our project. Because now we have somebody, for example, from Sweden, uh, who is going to, um, can you hold on, I'm sorry about that. Somebody's knocking on my door. Yeah,

Terry (06:45):

Yeah, yeah. I've been,

Mike (06:51):

Oh

Terry (06:52):

Man. That is so, I mean, that is an amazing task in 96. Yes. And I mean, and so many, you know, just different regions, you know, you think about our, our low world where we're in Texas, but you know, the United States, there are just so many different, uh, you know, just the read the difference in the recipes, in their different regions and everything, you know? Yeah.

Roy - Feeding Fatty (07:20):

Yeah. And even in families, I just think about our family, you know, we've got the faction that is the, uh, Manet's in the potato salad and the one that's the mustard in a potato salad. So it's like, you know what a project, no, we were just talking about,

Terry (07:34):

Yeah, we were just talking about the, Oh, go ahead, go ahead. Sorry.

Roy - Feeding Fatty (07:38):

And I was just like, we were talking about the geography involved, number one, uh, you know what, uh,

Mike (07:45):

I guess

Terry (07:46):

Not the country, you know, the individual countries, but the different regions of the countries and how it all evolves there, you know,

Mike (07:57):

Are you going to, are you going to able to

Roy - Feeding Fatty (08:00):

Fine? We're just, we're, we're just keep it all moving.

Terry (08:04):

Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Mike (08:07):

Um, so we, yeah, we, I was talking about the research process and the fact that we, we do the research on the recipes. We provide those recipes to our contributors. There's an additional layer of validation, not just for the recipe, but also for the article about the recipe, because, um, we, don't just, we're not just the recipe website right. At the end of the day, like I said earlier, like you mentioned, right. We really want to become the Wikipedia, the source of truth, more like an encyclopedia of authentic recipes. Right. So what we discussed to be clean or Arctic origin of the recipe, the original, the name sometimes how it has evolved over time, because recipes, you know, evolve over time. Um, and any kind of stories on the, on the recipe side, but also sometimes on ingredients that compose the recipe, uh, some of them might be unique in nature, uh, every representative of the region. Um, but a lot of times what you, what, what we have found over the, the past eight years that we've been doing, this is ideally they, yes, there might be some local ingredients here and there, but a chicken is a chicken. So whether it's in the Nordics or in France or in the U S the chicken, the chicken, what you make of the chicken is what's going to be representative of the cuisine of the region, whether it's spices, cooking techniques, combination of ingredients and so on.

Roy - Feeding Fatty (09:33):

So do y'all give guidance on, uh, on the particular spices. It may not be something readily available here in the States, but do y'all give guidance on where somebody may be able to obtain that.

Mike (09:47):

So we, we don't, we're not the biggest fan of substitutions because we are all about authenticity, right. So I'm going to say that nowadays in 2020, especially with the internet, you can pretty much find anything you want online. So it's, um, yeah, it's, it's very easy to source ingredients. Um, and yeah, I've never had any problems sourcing.

Roy - Feeding Fatty (10:11):

Yeah. So what about cooking styles? I mean, you know, we're used to the States, we have kitchen, we have ovens, but, um, you know, I'd read not too long ago that, uh, probably still 75% of the population cooks outside or something wildly high number like that. So I guess the, the differences in, you know, like maybe what we think about a Dutch oven versus outside on an open flame versus on a stove top, how has that worked out?

Mike (10:43):

Yeah, that's a good quote. That's a good point. Um, so in most cases, you're right. We may change, uh, sometimes the cooking methods. So you cook inside as opposed to outside. Yeah. Um, yeah, there are some nuances. We always try to stay as close as possible to the authentic recipe, but there's been occasions where, uh, you know, you could get the same results and by the way, the, the recipe has evolved from points. I can mention one example. There's a recipe called koozie, Q U I N from Iraq. And this is supposed to be initially originally the it's a centuries old recipe of typically an entire land that is, uh, open and stuffed. Like the entire land is actually stuffed, uh, obviously cooked outdoors on an open flame. Um, Mississippi has evolved to a point where I'm not cooking an entire lamb anymore. They're actually cooking pieces of lamb in a Dutch oven or a larger, um, pot. Uh, but you know, everything is cooked together. So it's still kind of cozy. It's just, the recipe has evolved to, um, to make it easier for modern chefs to cook any story acceptable time.

Terry (12:05):

Okay. And so what was one of the, uh, what's one of the most unique regions or unique countries that you got? I, I, I can't even think 196. I mean, that's kind of, um, Oh my gosh.

Mike (12:20):

Yeah. So I'm going to spend the most, not necessarily, uh, my favorite, but the most unique in terms of is in that I was not familiar with. Um, and I think most people are not familiar with is the prism of West Africa. Um, and our Western pallets are probably not that used to the flavors. And, uh, and then some of the ingredients of, uh, of Western African presents, there are some really, really good dishes. Um, one of my favorites actually on the site is all the achievement [inaudible] or chap from Senegal, which is typically fish, whole fish with a bunch of vegetables, some specific spices, um, one very pungent spice that, um, think it's called Neta too, when you smell it, it's really, really pungent. But when you use it in cooking, like a lot of ingredients, it's actually stained, uh, as you cook it as you simmer it.

Mike (13:14):

Um, so there are some really, really good, um, dishes like this one, however, I think in general where our pallets and I popped this right about it. Um, you know, our pallets are probably not that used to it. It's interesting because it's years ago, uh, four or five years ago, um, for one year I, I actually posted cooking classes here in Los Angeles. And the first cooking class that I decided to host was, um, a class of a Western African cuisine, um, with a friend of mine and some sending gala as well. Uh, so she helped me, uh, host. We had like 35 people. It was a pretty successful picking class. Um, and again, trying to, uh, next this cuisine more, um, popular in, uh, in here in LA, but, you know, in the Western world in general was, uh, was very excited.

Terry (14:05):

Wow. Do you find, um, do you find like United States, do we use a lot of salt maybe trained to make up for lack of knowing about the different devices and how to use them? I mean,

Mike (14:23):

It's possible, I'm not really exposed to that. I think in processed food. Definitely. Yes, but I'm going to say in general, at least my friends, my entourage, my family here, not really. I haven't really, what I have noticed though is yes, there's probably less use of spices in general or probably the same over and over. It's interesting because I'm really not a picky person. I'm really, you know, I really love to eat and, and I'm really not picky, but there is one spice that is way overused in the U S that I really can stay on it's cinnamon

Terry (14:59):

Really. Oh, okay.

Mike (15:02):

So right now it's not my favorite season. I like cinnamon. The problem here is it's not the same cinema as it's used in other parts of the world. So there's two types are the Salem and Garcia. And the one that is used here, which is typically used a lot in powder form, uh, where we do use it in ground form in other regions, right. I'm not saying it's specific to the U S uh, but there's a lot of dishes where you just use one stick and you remove it and it's fine. But when you use, um, the ground forum of, of cinema, and I think it's way over powering, and I always joke with our friends and by saying that I think cinema grows inside apples in this country. It goes, there's no dessert that has apples that doesn't have cinnamon just goes in there.

Roy - Feeding Fatty (15:59):

Right. Exactly.

Terry (16:02):

That's true. Yeah. So, um, you

Mike (16:06):

Know, go ahead.

Roy - Feeding Fatty (16:08):

No, I was just going to say, so I'm not a big vegetable person, so I, you know, I know the main categories, like a potato and a, uh, broccoli and some things, but I guess as you go across the world, are there different vegetables and, uh, that you run into that may be some other countries use a lot more of,

Mike (16:29):

Yeah. I mean, there's, uh, obviously I have been exposed to different fruits and vegetables alike. Um, over the course of the past eight years, one that comes to mind, um, is one called banana flour, uh, which is used in a lot of Asian dishes. I can think of one soup from Laois, uh, very popular, actually. I think it's one of the national dishes over there called [inaudible], uh, which is made with different types of vegetables, but one of them being the benefit of flour, it's kind of hard to describe, but it's, um, I think it's more about the texture than the, than the taste itself to be very Frank. Okay. Um, have you, has any of you to have it or

Terry (17:05):

Never? No, not that I know I'm aware of.

Mike (17:12):

Um, when you open the, the better than a flower, you're not supposed to be the out outer scaler, but the inside is very similar to, um, I'm going to say like soybeans sprouts, but a little stiffer and kind of straight as opposed to, you know, um, subtle. Yeah.

Terry (17:31):

Interesting. I have to check that out. I, Roy, can't wait to try it. I'm sure.

Mike (17:38):

Um, but the cashew fruits, I don't know if you've had it, so they're all aware of, but there's the, um, cashew, Apple or cashew fruit as it's called. Um, it's interesting. It's, it's kind of, um, you know, sweeter fruit of course, but you can, you can taste the after taste of the cashew nuts. Definitely. You know, you can take anything. Fruit comes from the same plant.

Roy - Feeding Fatty (18:01):

Oh, I would like that. So how did you go about sourcing this? I mean, Canada and, uh, you know, Mexico are both our neighbors here, but if I wanted to call down there to figure out a dish, I wouldn't even know who to, you know, who to dial first. So how did y'all go about, uh, you know, gathering the resources and all the different countries?

Mike (18:25):

So it's fairly easy to find, uh, cookbooks, um, know credible sources online nowadays, I think in the past we would have had to go to the library, but it's pretty easy to find credible sources, um, you know, good books like of Reno authors, um, most of the time from the country, you know, and obviously we hope we put the ability and, um, and then, like I said, we have those recipes validated by our chefs when we have a chef. So w w by doing this research there easily, we can find at least, um, for Canada, it may be a little more difficult. I don't think we have as many, but Mexico is rich, has a rich cuisine. Um, and, uh, and there's quite a few, uh, resources for finding those recipes.

Roy - Feeding Fatty (19:12):

Okay. Interesting. And what, what recipes are the most popular on your site?

Mike (19:20):

So, good question. It's interesting because when you, when you look at any website at the end of the day, it's, uh, to be, to be popular in the internet world, it's a game you play with Google, it's called search engine optimization. So there are the, the, the recipes that are quote unquote more popular are the ones where we rent better than others, right? Uh, still when we search for that recipe, if we appear in the first three results, chances are, this recipe is going to be the most popular on our website. Now, having said that there are some recipes where we ranked pretty high. Um, one of them that I can think of, which is actually one that I became familiar with when I moved to Los Angeles from Paris 20 years ago. Because, um, as you may know, I don't know if you know, but, uh, while centralize has the largest Iranian population after Tara.

Mike (20:15):

So it's as a joke, it's often called Terra Angeles because there's really a community here. Um, so I became familiar with Persian cuisine, which is really, really good. And one of the dishes, they have a lot of stews beside the Kaibab of course, but they have a lot of students that they serve with rice. One of them is called [inaudible] and homicides is this very unique stew, which is made with maybe five or six different herbs, fenugreek, parsley, cilantro, onion, like different herbs greens. And they are so stayed kind of reduced. A lot of the water is evaporated as you, um, as you would say, the herbs, and then you use it as a base for a stew that you, where you incorporate these red kidney beans, and then you another unique ingredients, more kind of a spice called limo, Amani, what it is, is a dried lime. It's almost black and it's like rock solid. It's dry, really, really dry. And you put a suit in the stew and it gives this kind of sour taste really, really good. Uh, that is very unique to this stew. Um, so for a few hours, and then you serve it over Persian rice. This is actually our one of our top three recipes on the site right now.

Terry (21:35):

Oh, my, that sounds lovely. Oh, I might have to try that.

Mike (21:39):

Good. So it's interesting because like I said, I discovered this this 20 years ago, however, I was born in France, but my background is from North Africa. So both my parents are Jewish from North Africa. My mother was Tunisian and my father is half Moroccan, half a Jerian. So I was more raised on my mother's side of the family. And there's a very, very typical dish, which is more like a Jewish Tunisian dish called Kayla. And I was raised on it and Kyla in concept, it's interesting because although it tastes completely different than from a sudsy. It is very, very similar in concept to homicides, because as opposed to the five or six herbs that I was talking about, we just use spinach and we use more oil and you actually sauteed spinach for probably at least three hours, believe it or not. Wow. I have a technique now, which is not, um, authentic, but you can cut down this time in 45 minutes in the microwave and it works, um, kind of reduce the spinach again, spinach is probably 95% water, right?

Mike (22:44):

So you reduce a form, uh, which is, uh, very, very black green. And again, use that spinach conceit, if you will, to, uh, to make a base for us to then thing we add this, we use, um, white beans as opposed to red beans in the homicides in, uh, there's no sour agents, but we add Harrison, if you know about how the chili paste is interesting. Not a lot of people know that, but it's original Tunisian and we put Korean cilantro mint and we serve it of a Cusco because our rice in North Africa is

Terry (23:24):

Oh, okay. Oh, very interesting.

Roy - Feeding Fatty (23:30):

So do you have any good,

Terry (23:32):

I'm sorry, go ahead. Go ahead. I was gonna, I was gonna ask,

Roy - Feeding Fatty (23:39):

Yeah. For those of you that don't, we'll go ahead and say for those, you don't know, we got a little bit of delay. Uh, Terry's actually in Hawaii. So, uh, have just a little bit of a audio difficulty, but go ahead. I'm gonna let you speak the whole sentence.

Terry (23:56):

No, I was just gonna ask, um, uh, what are your favorite, what are your favorite recipes on there? I mean,

Mike (24:06):

So the last one, I, the last recipe I just mentioned is obviously one of my favorites because I was raised on it. So I'm very biased towards this one. Uh, the discoveries I have made one cuisine, which I really didn't know anything about that. I discovered that, um, really, really, um, and I don't cook a lot, but, uh, but, uh, but I really like his program. So Caribbean cuisine was actually a discovery to me. I don't think I had had Caribbean food before and especially one dish, uh, which I made a few times recently. Um, for some reason it's called normal South Dubbo. And in Peru, the interesting thing is, as you may know, there's been a lot of Asian insurance with immigration from China, as well as from Japan. And there is, um, a cuisine within Peruvian cuisine, which is called chauffeur, is in C H U F E shows like cuisine is actually interesting.

Mike (25:04):

It's a fusion cuisine of Caribbean and Chinese, and which is very popular and it, which is not part of the authentic Peruvian repertoire. You know, it's not like just something that is recent, it's actually something that is part totally part of Caribbean cuisine. Um, and Loma Santo is definitely one of those fusion dishes. It's interesting because it's a combination of, so Tate, um, beef typically see a lot sirloin and it's mixed with tomatoes, red onion, but also soy sauce. And, um, it's sauteed with garlic and so on, but then you add French fries to it because it's probably the, the biggest consumer of potatoes that I think they have like 2000 species of potatoes over there. Um, that's where particulars originated. So they're really big on potato dishes, but after that, they actually mix it with white rice rice, which is more the Asian instruments with obviously the sauteed stir fry and sizes. So you get this weird dish, you know, when you, when you think about it, you're like, okay, French fries, sauteed beef and vegetables, rice. Like, it sounds weird. It's actually one of my favorite dishes on the website.

Roy - Feeding Fatty (26:23):

Hmm. Interesting. So that brings up a couple of questions up first off, what is the, the mix between more of a vegetarian style versus the ma the dishes with protein and then kind of a followup to that is going to be, so what is the most, um, common protein that you found used in the dishes?

Mike (26:48):

Sure. So interestingly enough, um, you know, human humans have always been carnivores and omnivores, right. But interestingly enough, when you look at authentic cuisine, um, especially in the past 10 to 15 centuries, meat has always been an expensive produce, right? So when you think about it, a lot of those authentic recipes, not all of them, but a lot of them always had a vegetarian version, which was more for the poor people and then kind of a festive version with meat added to it. So what this means is even though there's obviously a lot of recipes that include meat on our website, uh, we also have a lot of vegan and vegetarian dishes depending on the country and region is going to be more or less difficult to find meatless, uh, or vegan or vegetarian dishes. For example, South America is very meat heavy. So I just talked about Peru. There are actually a judicious without meat, but, uh, it's, you would be hard pressed to find dishes with, without meat in Argentina, your wide Brazil, you know, those countries are very big meat, meat eaters, central and Eastern Europe, European countries, same thing, meat and potatoes.

Roy - Feeding Fatty (28:10):

Okay. Interesting. It's like support word. Yeah, exactly. Yes. So, uh, as you put these dishes together, what would you say is the most used protein from around the globe?

Mike (28:25):

Um, I'm probably gonna say, can you, again, um, it's probably the most pervasive pervasive, uh, yes, slowly, maybe shortly after it's this there's a lot of, uh, Muslim countries, of course. So I would have said port, but of course you're not going to have a lot of pork based dishes in most of the 30 to 35 Muslim countries. So, yeah.

Roy - Feeding Fatty (28:51):

Okay. Interesting. So what about a dish that has a fun story or fun fact, or that

Mike (29:01):

There's a lot actually, because we always try to find, um, stories behind the recipes. Um, so, you know, in preparation for, for, um, Tokyo, I prepared a, you know, kind of a few interesting stories and we can go through them, but one which I thought was interesting cause, uh, there's a, what is the, I'm gonna ask you a question. What is your, the most popular, um, get them? Is that the first one that would pop up in your mind?

Roy - Feeding Fatty (29:31):

Oh, okay.

Mike (29:34):

Yeah. It's very popular in the us, uh, Mesa

Roy - Feeding Fatty (29:42):

Soup or something.

Mike (29:43):

No, that would be okay. So the most on that is in every Vietnamese restaurants across the world, not just in the us is wrong anyway. Yeah. So interestingly enough, actually fo comes from a French, uh, where there's a very authentic traditional dish called puto food. Uh, P O T a U F U F U in front of the fire. So it's part under the, uh, on the fire and it's bunch of vegetables and meats kind of a, you know, a soup, but soup slash stew that is very popular. It's centuries, old centuries or recipe. Now, interestingly enough. So fo actually come comes from French. And even though it's, it's probably the first recipe that would come to mind when we think about Vietnamese is in, it's barely a hundred years old, you know, and it was really created, um, like I said, it has a French influence and, um, it's kind of a fusion dish, um, you know, with, with this it's. Um, and it's, it's funny because it's not as popular and as widely consumed in Vietnam, it's more of a dish that's consumed outside of Vietnam. And like I said, it's only barely a hundred years old, so it's not even an ancestral recipes. There's dozens of Vietnamese recipes that are way older than this world. However, this is the one that everybody knows around the world.

Roy - Feeding Fatty (31:18):

So that, yeah, that brings up kind of a good point too. Is there, um, you know, probably like the us, there are a lot of dishes and there are a lot of popular dishes. So how did you decide which the initial pick from each country?

Mike (31:35):

So at first in probably the first three or four years, we were just picking the dishes that we liked. Okay. So it was just Vera, my best friend and I, um, picking dishes. We're like, okay, this month we're going to do a room. Let's pick three dishes each. And there was no, no more research than this. Okay. Now, because we're more of a business and we're, you know, we work with contributors and so on. So we run it as a business. Now we do more research and typically we're going to find 40, 50, 60 recipes for each month. And we're going to pick the ones that are the most popular. And what we mean by the most popular is really the recipes that are the most searched by people online, because obviously we want people to find us and we want people to find the recipes that are the most searched. So now we do a little more research into what are the, really, the most popular recipes in the country.

Speaker 4 (32:31):

Okay. No doubt about traffic.

Mike (32:36):

It's exactly. Like I said, it's, it's a business too though. Yeah. Yeah.

Roy - Feeding Fatty (32:41):

So, um, I guess we, as we kind of wrap this up, my favorite dessert did y'all, did you highlight any, uh, dessert dishes

Mike (32:54):

In the desert? There's a lot. I have a sweet tooth. Yeah. Being French for me, a meal without a dessert at the end is not a meal bread is not Amelie either. Um, so there's quite a lot, I'm trying to think. So my favorite, which is very popular and I did not discover it with, uh, with a website of course, is Tremblay, which of course, you know, I have a, uh, middle bias towards French pastries and French desserts. Uh, but yeah, Kimberly is probably at the top of my list, which happens to be gluten-free. I know there's a lot of people nowadays that I've written free. Um, it's full of like those dogs and, uh, but I'm fairly easy to make, uh, not as complicated as long as you have a torch to caramelize the sugar on top. But, um, and with easy to find ingredients, it's pretty much eggs, sugar, milk, um, you know, heavy milk. And, um, and that's it. So for the, for the flavor,

Roy - Feeding Fatty (33:57):

What about drinks? Uh, did y'all look at the, you know, I know a lot of overseas, uh, wine is a natural drink with, with the dinner, but was there any, anything that came to lie on that?

Mike (34:13):

So my signature cocktail over the past few years has become peace Corps center. You've done it before. Um, and again, coming back to Caribbean cuisine, I discovered that when we traveled to Peru, uh, this is Pisco is kind of a Brandy, um, that is originally from Piru as well as Chile. Uh, it's probably the most consumer the core over there. And they have a cocktail called Pisco sour, which is made with Pisco, with lime, uh, simple syrup and egg whites. And then you shake it. So the trick here is like most cocktails that you make with egg whites, you have to shake it without ice. Otherwise it doesn't form as well. So you shake it first, then you add ice to chill it, you pour it. And then you add a few drops of [inaudible], which is the same bitters that is used in old fashion. For example, it has become my favorite cocktail slowly, um, shortly after it's public cafeteria and Marketo. How about a margarita? I like margarita as well. Interesting fact about margarita. Do you know what is the most popular cocktail in Mexico? [inaudible] it is the Peloma and I don't know if it's as popular here, but, um, it is the most popular in Mexico.

Terry (35:48):

Interesting. Yeah. You would think definitely margarita.

Roy - Feeding Fatty (35:55):

Well, uh, Mike, we appreciate, excuse me, we appreciate you taking time to be with us today. Uh, this is such a fascinating project. Um, I'm going to have to get on there and check it out a little bit more. And maybe when Terry gets home, she can, uh, whip me up one of these, uh, exotic recipes that y'all have on there.

Mike (36:13):

We have friends of ours who tell us that they don't even cook them, have just spent hours or they're on their bed at night before going to bed, just reading through the stories and they don't even cook the recipes.

Roy - Feeding Fatty (36:25):

Right? Yeah. I mean that the food is, the food is one thing, but the stories behind it all have got to be, you know, the most amazing thing.

Mike (36:36):

Yeah. It's fun to learn. I mean, every day we learn something, even sometimes recipes that we have known all our lives and we're like, wow, I didn't know. You know, it was, that's how it was created or, you know, things like this. So

Roy - Feeding Fatty (36:49):

I'm sorry, Terry, I didn't mean to cut you off. You're a little bit delayed.

Terry (36:53):

That's okay. No, no, no. I was just, I just had this in the back of my head while we were talking to you. I was trying to work it in, but okay. So we are trying new things with tofu. So what's your favorite? Do you like tofu and what's your favorite dish if you do, and what would be easy and easy? It's not

Mike (37:11):

Right. We're not so much about easy recipes,

Mike (37:17):

But there's a lot of easy recipes, but not all of them are my favorite dish with the food may not be as easy, but it's, uh, uh, two from Korea, uh, which is called the silky. Uh, so keto from soup, which typically includes, um, some kind of meat, so it could be beef, but it's also made sometimes with, um, seafood. Um, and it's, um, the broth has to be made with seaweed and, uh, and anchovies. So it's kind of a fishy kind of broth. And then, um, it's piping hot, served in a stone ball and, uh, there's, uh, it's an egg drop soup as well. So you typically add an egg at the end, which, because it's piping hot, it's going to cook in a couple minutes. Um, but it's you add, use the silk to, for, you know, there's different types of from desk.

Mike (38:12):

So you would use the one that is the most silky, which is kind of, it's almost going to look like eggs in it, but it's going to be two food inside the soup. Like I said, piping hot. It is also very spicy. Um, and if any of your listeners is visiting LA, um, we have a chain of Korean restaurant called BCD tofu house, which is actually open 24 hours, like then is, it is kind of there dentists in Koreatown and, uh, in making their own true. And also their signature dish is this, uh, Sirki tofu soup.

Terry (38:49):

Okay. Thanks. I haven't tried to make any soup.

Roy - Feeding Fatty (38:57):

Well, again, Mike, thanks so much for taking time to come on and talk to us. It's been a fascinating and, uh, it's, uh, wish you much more luck in continuing this project. If you wouldn't mind, just tell people how they can reach out. If somebody wants to reach out and get ahold of you, uh, maybe make a recipe submission, how can they do that?

Mike (39:18):

Absolutely. So the website is one nine, six flavors.com. We are on pretty much all the social media channels. As you know, one nine, six flavors is our, um, handle. Um, you can contact us on any of those channels as well. We also, there's something we haven't talked about. We have started to, um, write good books eBooks. So we have four available right now and we intend to have, uh, we have a dozen more in the works for, um, that each of them is actually focusing on one region. So, so far we have one for the middle Eastern cuisine, uh, for North African cuisine, Southeast Asian. And we just released our Indian sub-continent cuisine book. And again, like I said, we, we add typically one a month, uh, and actually for the listeners of a feeding ferry, we, um, we are offering 25% of those, uh, those e-books. So if you use the code F F 25, uh, you will have access to 25%, any of our eBooks, like I said, right now we have four available that we have a dozen Lord in the works.

Terry (40:25):

Okay. Well, great. Thanks a lot. We appreciate that. I'm sure we'll, we'll reach out and take advantage of that ourself for sure. Yeah. Yes, I can do, I can do difficult. I don't have to do easy. I can do it. Yes.

Roy - Feeding Fatty (40:43):

All right. Well, thanks a lot. Uh, again, you can find us at www dot feeding, fatty.com. We are also on all the major social media networks, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram, and also this, a copy of this, um, interview, uh, video will be placed up on YouTube are also, you can find us on all the major podcast platforms, iTunes, Stitcher, Google play, and Spotify. Just to name a few, if we're not on one that you, uh, listened to your podcast on, please reach out. I'd be glad to get it added for you until next time. I'm Roy. Please take care of yourself.

Terry (41:25):

I'm Terry. Bye. Thanks.

www.feedingfatty.com