Naughty Kid Food Fantasies With Andy Hearnden

Recipe Club

Host Chris Ying and chef Andy Hearnden explore the intersection of childhood food fantasies and cinematic hunger. They analyze iconic food s

Key takeaways

• Andy Hearnden utilizes 'deep YouTube' research to find authentic cultural recipes from non-English speaking creators.
• A 1995 University of Sydney study found that boiled potatoes are the most satiating food by calorie, while croissants are the least.

Main topics

• Cinematic food fantasies
• Culinary authenticity and research

Notable quotes

Hunger is the best sauce.

Conclusion

A nostalgic and flavorful exploration of how hunger and imagination sh

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:01) In today's episode, we are entering a world of pure imagination. We are going to be talking about fantasies. We're going to be talking about being hungry. We're going to be eating a hot cabbage soup. It is, if you've been watching Recipe Club this season, it continues to be a thousand degrees in this room. This is Recipe Club. My name is Chris Ying. I am joined by literally one of the world's most beloved chefs, Andy Herndon. Welcome to the clubhouse, man. Chris, Speaker 2 (0:36) thanks for having me, bro. So good to be here. Speaker 3 (0:38) Is it, though? It's really hot. Let's get into it. This episode of Recipe Club is presented to you by Olive Oils from Spain. Welcome to a world of flavor. Pull up a chair and discover the recipes, traditions, and centuries of craft behind every golden drop. From two-hour lunches to dinners at midnight when Spain is at the table, it's something to experience. So the next time you're reaching for extra virgin olive oil, reach for Spain. Taste the flavor of a country all in a drop. Learn more at oliveoilsfromspain.org slash all in a drop. Speaker 3 (1:20) All right, so today's episode, Andy. Yes. I'm calling bad Speaker 2 (1:25) kids. Naughty kids. Yeah, that seems appropriate. Speaker 3 (1:29) Because you came with a scene for today's show that I think a lot of people think of when they think of food scenes in movies. Yeah. It is the Willy Wonka, the original. Yes, very important. 1971. Yes. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory when the kids first walk in and see the magnificent chocolate river. Pure imagination. Pure imagination. Speaker 2 (1:55) As the Speaker 3 (1:55) song says. I thought it was appropriate for you to pick this scene because most people will have gotten to know you first for a series of videos you were doing where you would shout to your partner. Yeah. Babe, what do you want to eat? What do you want to eat? And she would say something, just anything. Anything. Hey Speaker 2 (2:20) babe, what do you want for lunch? A cheeseburger. Alright. Actually, no, a toasty. Speaker 3 (2:31) Yeah, love cheeseburger toast. Thanks Speaker 1 (2:33) love anything Speaker 3 (2:34) in the world. Yeah, and then you would prepare it. Yeah, and these videos became insanely popular You know, I think what obviously like separates you and why Dave and I have such affection for what you do is you're not just Saying babe, what do you want to eat and then go and just like looking up some recipe and copying somebody's thing? Like, you know what you're doing? Speaker 2 (2:55) Yeah Speaker 3 (2:55) Yeah. Like you come from professional kitchens. You're from New Zealand. Yes. But are based in Australia, much like our mutual friend, Ben Shuri. Love that man. So there's like a certain element of kind of like fantasy fulfillment that you were already doing in your work. Speaker 2 (3:12) Yeah. Speaker 3 (3:12) Yeah, Speaker 2 (3:13) I Speaker 3 (3:13) think so. Like how. Speaker 2 (3:18) Is that do you think like that is the appeal of those videos in particular to people? I think it's the it's the two-prong effect, right? I think in every household there's always someone that asks that question and most of the time they get the response of I don't know You know, which is like the most infuriating response ever. Speaker 3 (3:37) My personal fantasy would be just one time if I said to my wife, hey, what do you feel like having for dinner? She would give me an answer. A clear answer. Exactly right. That's my fantasy. Yeah. Speaker 2 (3:48) It would be a wonderful thing. And the other prong is the fact that if you're the person that's not the chef in the house or the cook in the house, that to have the ability to ask for anything in the world and it just appear an hour later is... Pretty appealing. Speaker 3 (4:04) Literally yesterday, my daughter said, we were driving home and she said, what's for dinner? And I was like, what do you feel like? And she said, I don't know. Why would you ask me if you didn't have an opinion? You know what I mean? Like, are you guilty of it though? If I were, if somebody were to say, Hey, Andy, like I'm cooking, what do you feel like going? What do you feel like eating tonight? Yeah, Speaker 2 (4:27) but Speaker 3 (4:27) I'm allowed to be, you Speaker 2 (4:28) know, like, why are you allowed to be? Well, because I'm the person that makes that decision most of the time. And then even now, Speaker 2 (4:38) Candy's just Speaker 3 (4:39) falling off. Speaker 2 (4:41) This is Speaker 3 (4:42) all freshly opened candy. It's good. Speaker 2 (4:44) I like candy. I think the other thing is when I go to restaurants with my friends. Speaker 2 (4:51) And I'm starting to like not ordering anymore. So for like 20 years, I've always ordered all the food in restaurants. Speaker 1 (4:58) So Speaker 2 (4:58) then now I'm like, if I'm with my chef mates or someone I trust, I'm like, oh, you order, I'm done. I'm happy. That is true. Like when you eat with a chef and it comes to ordering, everyone's favorite movie should be like, well, I mean, Speaker 3 (5:09) Andy, you take care of this for us. My brother's the worst for it. He's Speaker 2 (5:12) like, I'm not even going to look at the menu. I'm like, bro, come on, have an opinion. I Speaker 3 (5:15) know, which like sometimes, sometimes I will say. I would prefer to do Speaker 2 (5:20) the ordering. If Speaker 3 (5:20) it's Speaker 2 (5:20) a Speaker 3 (5:20) restaurant I know and Speaker 2 (5:21) there's a bunch of yahoos with me, I'm thinking, let me do this. I got this. Speaker 3 (5:27) But then I'll go out to dinner with my family and my in-laws will always do this. We'll go to some place and they'll just be like, okay, Chris is just going to order. And I'll think like... What? I can't. I don't want to order. Also, these are individual entrees. You want me to order everybody an individual entree? What do you want me to do here? Speaker 2 (5:43) I got stitched up the other day. It was my partner Caitlin's birthday, and we went to one of my favorite restaurants in the world in the Sunshine Coast called Samila Gangs, a Thai restaurant. It's fantastic. And we go there with her family, and mom's not really into spice. This is like a very northern style Thai restaurant, right? Like very authentic. There's no pad thai on the menu. Right, right, right. And Caitlin's like, you do the ordering. And I'm like. And my poor mother-in-law was trying to eat this food and she's being very brave about it. But I'm like, why did we not go to the French restaurant? Come on, like. I'm Speaker 3 (6:16) just Speaker 2 (6:17) setting you Speaker 3 (6:17) up for failure. Literally. Speaker 2 (6:19) I'll just have the rice with a fried egg. I'm like, oh, I felt so bad. Just navigate this like Speaker 3 (6:23) Isan Thai menu and just order something Speaker 2 (6:25) not spicy for mom. Good luck. I don't know if people understand, first of all, that in Speaker 3 (6:29) Australia, Asian food. It's out of control delicious. So in I mean you explained right like so there's Thai food in Sydney. Yes More Chinese food Speaker 2 (6:42) in like Victoria and Speaker 3 (6:44) Melbourne. Speaker 2 (6:44) Yes, right Yeah, and lots of Vietnamese food in Sydney too. And it's like it's proper like it's not when I'm walking around here No, Speaker 3 (6:51) it is outrageously good. Yeah And so so often like the requests you get on your videos will be for like a pretty Asian thing Yeah, and you like, you know your way around it. Yeah. Speaker 2 (7:02) Yeah Speaker 3 (7:04) what is, for our recipe club audience, there are still some people watching this show that want to know how to cook things. What is like your approach to, okay, I generally know this dish. I've eaten it a million times. I'm not going to just consult the David Thompson book and copy it, but how do you approach recipes or how do you approach Speaker 2 (7:27) a new dish that you're going to figure out how to make? I take representation of other people's cultures really seriously. I think if I'm going to cook a dish from someone else's culture, I need to make sure that I'm doing the best I can to represent that culture correctly. And you're right, if someone says a Northern Thai dish, I'll have a fair idea of what goes into it. I'll kind of write those notes down and then I'll fact check it against someone else's recipe or not even someone else's recipe. Like love like David and you clearly knows his way around Thai food, but I'll go to like the deep ends of YouTube and find like some auntie making it who doesn't speak English. And I'll just kind of watch what she's doing and kind of verify it that way. A problem Speaker 3 (8:10) with YouTube is the first, like you said, you have to go the deepest recesses because the first. 37,000 Speaker 2 (8:17) recipes are like, here's my home version of this dish. Here's my own fun. I'll open a bottle of brown barf. I'm just like, I Speaker 3 (8:24) don't want this. I just Speaker 2 (8:25) want the surveillance footage Speaker 3 (8:27) from the restaurant of the Speaker 2 (8:28) person Speaker 3 (8:29) making it. I just want to see, just show me that thing. And figuring out the search terminology. Sometimes you search for it in the native Speaker 2 (8:38) language, I think helps. Speaker 3 (8:40) But it's also so regional, right? It's like, Speaker 2 (8:43) you know, the same, and it's the same with like Italian food and Indian food and people will make, you know, I mean, chicken tikka masala is Speaker 3 (8:50) a Speaker 2 (8:50) bad example because it's not actually Indian, but you know, like a dish will change from village to village, let alone different parts of the country. And so it doesn't matter. Sometimes you also got to resign yourself to the fact that if you make a biryani online, you're going to get, it doesn't matter how well you make it, you are going to get critiqued. It does not matter, you know? So. I think because Biryani is one of yours probably your most popular video. Yeah I think collectively that video has got like close to half a billion views. Speaker 3 (9:17) Hey Speaker 2 (9:17) babe what do you want for dinner? Speaker 1 (9:19) Chicken Biryani. Speaker 3 (9:20) What is it? It's like it's so interesting to me because like there are two things there like one if you make Biryani like you said people are the Biryani police are coming. Yeah. Like they are coming and a bunch of them are like self-appointed sheriffs and deputies like they're coming for you. Speaker 2 (9:37) but also half a billion people want to see. What is it about biryani you think? I think it's just comfort food for so many people in the world and for so many different parts. It's not just India, right? It's Pakistan, Bangladesh, and then I've eaten delicious biryanis in Thailand and all through Southeast Asia. So I think it's just that combination of rice cooked in broth. Yeah. It's pretty good. Speaker 2 (10:02) And I think that to see a white guy do it and, like, you know, do it really reasonably well, I think kind of impressed a lot of people, too. I think there is the same appeal of... I'm Speaker 3 (10:14) glad you said that, because it's the same thing. My mom will sometimes just send me videos of non-Asian people speaking Chinese. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just to be like, look at this guy. How cool is this? Mom, I don't know. Okay. It's cool, man. Yeah, yeah. I see it. All right. I want to, we're going to move into the scenes, but I want to do one last thing with you. Having a New Zealander slash Australian resident chef here. I wanted to play, I was going around the kitchen. Okay. And I just wanted to play a little game here of who is, who calls it best. Okay. Okay. In America. Yes. We call this. Ah. A bell pepper. Yes. It's not a bell pepper. What is this? That's a capsicum. A capsicum. Yeah. I'm going to just... That's a sad Speaker 2 (10:59) capsicum too. It's really bad. I was trying to Speaker 3 (11:02) hold it apart. I didn't think of Speaker 2 (11:04) this game, Andy, until like 15 minutes ago. It looks like... It's perfectly edible. It's perfectly edible. Yes, but it is... Don't waste food. Speaker 3 (11:12) This would be like an imperfect produce thing. I'm going to let off-camera mags tell me. What is the better name for this vegetable? A bell pepper or Speaker 2 (11:23) a capsicum? Speaker 3 (11:24) She's a woman of the world. She's going to be fine. She's not American biased. Speaker 2 (11:28) I don't know her, but she's clearly like growing up in America, I'm guessing. So Speaker 3 (11:31) just purely from a sound perspective, which one sounds cooler? Bell pepper or capsicum? Speaker 1 (11:37) Bell pepper. Speaker 3 (11:38) Oh, shit. That's one for me. Speaker 3 (11:43) These might all go my way. Speaker 2 (11:45) In Speaker 3 (11:45) America, Speaker 2 (11:46) this Speaker 3 (11:46) is Speaker 2 (11:47) known as good old ketchup. Yeah. It's tomato sauce where I'm from. Tomato sauce. Yeah, yeah. But I think there's a caveat to that. And it's not until you're like a food geek that you get this. But like tomato sauce and ketchup are kind of different things anyway. They're not exactly the same. Wait, so this product itself you would call tomato sauce? No. Tomato sauce. No, I would call that ketchup. Oh, so there's a separate condiment Speaker 3 (12:09) that's like this? Yeah, it's Speaker 2 (12:11) very very similar and we're really nitpicking. But I think tomato sauce, especially from New Zealand, the Wadi's one where I'm from, it's like sweeter. It's a bit different. Whereas that's like a bit more tangy. Speaker 1