312: Fly By Jing

0:28This episode is brought to you by Resi and American Express. And so I spent a really long time trying to figure out, like, can I put Chili Crisp in a squeezable bottle? But ultimately, I decided to put it in a jar, require a spoon, because, like I said, the magic of Chili Crisp is in its texture. Billions of Chinese people can do this, and Americans can as well.

0:52This is Taste. I'm your host, Matt Rodbart.

0:59fly by jing is one of the most exciting brands in food and we were lucky enough to have the company's founder jing gao live in conversation at risoli bookstore in new york city this conversation was part of our taste live at risoli author series and had jing speaking about her amazing new cookbook the book of szechuan chili crisp i hope you enjoy this conversation

1:28okay hello everyone welcome to Rizzoli Bookstore thank you all for joining us for another installment of Taste live at Rizzoli our event series with the wonderful podcast this is Taste and we're joined tonight by Jing Gao a chef founder of Fly by Jing and author of the new cookbook The Book of Sichuan Chili Crisp. And our host tonight is our friend, Matt Rodbar, the editor-in-chief and founder of Taste. So we're very lucky to have them here. And now let's give a very warm welcome to Jing and Matt.

2:01Thank you all for coming out. Appreciate it. I want to, for the recording, we're recording live for the Taste for our podcast. We have Ruth Roachal and Nancy Silverton here on December 5th. So I want to, you know, you should come out and see those guys. Hi. Hi. Thanks for doing this. Thank you so much for having me. I love your book. Thanks to everyone for coming. Yeah, no, really. Thanks for everyone coming out. Now, let's talk about, before we get to the book, NCPG Land, you know, you just released this new product and I was like surprised because I was like prepping for the interview and really tell me, how do you develop a new SKU?

2:39Because you've got, you know, a lot of these like trademark chili crisp, but you just dropped one on us. So how did that come about? Yes. It's sitting right there too, tempting me because I've not tried it. We did just launch a new product. It's called Chengdu Crunch. It just launched earlier this week, not last week, last week. Yeah. And I mean, I'm really lucky because, you know, my company Fly By Jing, we draw from the flavors of my hometowns in Chengdu. which is the flavor capital of China. Other cities might claim that, but I have said it. So it's flavor capital of China. And, you know, Chili Crisp is such a vast kind of diverse, you know, there's so many different types of Chili Crisp out there.

3:29And this, I think, is like sort of the next evolution of that for us.

3:37So I brought a jar. I want you to taste it. When? Like now? Right now. Okay. Cool. Let's do it. And so here, grab this. And I'm going to grab you a spoon. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not speaking to the microphone here. I want to hear from you. Okay. Live feedback. This is a privilege. I feel very privileged and honored. So make sure you mix it up. Oh, yeah. Definitely. So people always mess that up. They're like. Right. They think it's chili oil. I've seen people commit the sin of opening the jar and just pour it. And like, that's not how it works. You have to really dig in there with a spoon because there's the beauty of chili crisp is its flavor, but it's texture.

4:22And you got to make sure you get a little bit of everything. And also the flavors kind of settle because of gravity. So, you know, mix it up. Is this enough? This is a good amount. So this reminds me. So off of just looking at it, it has a bit of like fiddle faddle. Fiddle faddle. You know fiddle faddle? I like that so there's clearly a lot going on I brought a jar that doesn't have a label on it so if you guys can all see it there's a ton of texture it consists of numerous seeds, beans there's fava beans in here there's soybeans, yellow split peas sunflower seeds pumpkin seeds sesame seeds it's not free though but it's got more crunch than anything I mean you look at it they look like there's nuts in here I know watch out the oil I know this is an audio podcast oh can we get some ASMR yeah Pat how's that sounding okay Pat Stango everyone thank you for coming out it's hot oh no There's some water here for you.

5:38No. It's just that little bit of that rush, that initial rush that you get with it. So what are you getting flavor-wise? Absolutely. I'm getting peas. Peas. Yeah. I'm getting like – Yellow split peas. I'm getting the split peas are really heavier, which is awesome because, you know, with the previous products I've tried, it's more like seeds. Yeah. Like it feels a little less than peas. So it feels – Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, so this is a product that is sort of our interpretation of this type of chili crisp. There's so many different styles in Sichuan. And growing up, I would, you know, try this kind of very crunchy seeded version.

6:21There's one that they actually call five seeds because of the five different types of seeds that they put in it. And I've always wondered, like, how do they get it so crunchy? Right. It's like magic, you know. And so on the most recent R &D trip back to Chengdu, which was actually the first trip that we were able to take since COVID. So after two and a half years being away from Chengdu where we source and manufacture everything, which was really hard to do during the pandemic, by the way. But being there, again, really just like re-inspired me, reconnected me to our mission, what we're doing, what we're doing, and allowed me and my team to just, you know, work on the formulation for this.

7:03Think of this new formulation, this new product. Yeah. I'm getting the numbing, tingling finish, which I think we all love about your product so much. It's not just on the front. There's always a back and the finish, which makes it such a cool product. Yeah. So when you're walking Expo West in 2018, as you write in your book, you are observing that there is a lack of something. Expo West is a very prominent trade show for CPG and baby founders and bigger companies. But you write about it. I'd like to hear, and for our audience, what was missing at that moment? So Expo West is a giant trade show.

7:41It's like the biggest food trade show in America. it's held in a giant convention center in anaheim california um you just have and it's held for days so you go and typically stay there for like three or four days um there's rows and rows of thousands of vendors baby founders as you call them yeah young founders young founders and established founders like you know large companies also exhibit there um and everyone's just like sampling their wares and like you go around and you know for a novice to expo west which I was you're at risk of getting what's called expo belly which is like tasting too many different things and I just remember having gotten expo belly and also kind of after a few days all the flavors all the things I was tasting started blending together there was a lot of protein bars yeah there was a lot of alternative meats and you know just different types of keto this that and but not a lot of flavor and so a few days in I remember just having this insane craving for like Asian noodle soup wow and I was like why am I craving that and I realized it was because I didn't get anything really tasty or flavorful over the last like three or four days and that's when I like upon reflection i was like wait like there was only really three brands that were selling asian food products at expo west 2018 yeah that i remember yeah yeah one of them was mother-in-law kimchi which is still around um one of them was another you know chinese kind of noodle company that's no longer around and um i think there was maybe like one more but that's that's it that's amazing to think about that but you weren't you weren't working at fly by jing at that point you had another career.

9:32What were you there for? Well, I actually was doing Fly by Jing, but in a different iteration. So I started Fly by Jing back in 2017 as a underground supper club that was inspired by fly restaurants, which are these really wonderful hole in the wall restaurants in Chengdu, where I'm from. And they're known for being so delicious that they attract people like flies. And they're usually hidden down alleys. Like they're not, you know, easy to find, but people will find them because of the flavor. So I have to ask then, how did you know that this product would have such a wide appeal? This traditional food of Chengdu would become a product that you could find in Target and in Walmart and in Costco, and it would become this massively craveable product from all Americans and beyond?

10:25Well, chili crisp is the most popular form of hot sauce or condiment in China. And it's the most populous place on earth. So I thought if this was really taking on in China, then I think Americans might like it too. too. Also, when I, you know, I mentioned I started Fly by Jing as a supper club. So I was cooking and, you know, cooking for a lot of people. This was at the time I was based in Shanghai, but I traveled the world really, bringing my sauces, my ingredients with me in suitcases and, you know, cooking for people who had maybe never experienced Sichuan flavors and definitely never had access to these ingredients.

11:08And the feedback was unanimously amazing. People's eyes would light up when they would try these flavors for the first time. And so that was kind of like my market research. I knew that there was, you know, this, um, this gap basically in the market. And, um, and yeah, I mean, the, my biggest worry at the time was whether Americans would be willing to use a spoon for a condiment. For a hot sauce, because you know, there's ghost chilies happening at the time. We've got Frank's Red Hot and Tabasco and all the American brands. Everything is pourable or squeezable. And so I spent a really long time trying to figure out, like, can I put Chili Crisp in a squeezable bottle?

11:50Well, you know, you're... I mean, it's just not as fun. We all know that. There's a real fun... But Sriracha, back in 2018 and 17, was massive. It was huge, right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's why I was like, okay, people are so used to this format. Is it too much to ask them to grab a spoon? But ultimately, I decided to put it in a jar, require a spoon, because, like I said, the magic of Chili Crisp is in its texture. It's so true. And there's no way actually to do it in a way where, you know, it's uniform. So, and then I thought, yeah, if billions of Chinese people can do this, then Americans can as well.

12:34Were you aware of salsa matcha from Mexico while you were developing? I, at the time, was not. This is great to admit that because, I mean, I'm pretty new to salsa matcha myself. I think I knew Chili Crisp before. Well, I actually, at the time, I was not because I hadn't traveled to Mexico yet. Yeah. But in 2018, the year I started Fly by Jing and moved to the U.S., I took a trip to Oaxaca. And I was really struck by the similarities between Sichuan and Oaxacan cuisine. Everything from China's baijiu to mezcal. Yeah. Yeah, baijiu has smokiness. Smokiness. It's kind of fermented in a similar way.

13:13It's using grains rather than corn and agave. But it's so striking. And also it's important to note that chili peppers came to China via Mexico a couple hundred years ago. And then the chilies were kind of adapted to Chinese tastes. And, you know, they started growing their own versions of chilies that, you know, suited Chinese taste. So like more fragrant, maybe more mild, more fruity. But then when I saw salsa matcha, it made a lot of sense. Let's talk about the book. When you started writing the proposal, like what were you thinking about? What did you want the book to be and what did you want the book not to be?

13:58So I didn't want the book to be like a single topic novelty book. Right. That you just like lay on your coffee table, even though this I think would look really nice on your coffee table. No, it's a – But I think, you know, my agent, book publishers, everyone was like, you know, Chili Crisp. It's having a moment. Like write a book about Chili Crisp. Name it the book of Chili Crisp. And the original book I've always wanted to write was much more involved. It's like this saga of like my story and like Sichuan flight restaurants. It would have required a lot of travel to China. but this was during COVID.

14:39So that, you know, was, wasn't possible. Um, so instead I started thinking about like my journey and sort of through the lens of this condiment, this condiment that really has provided a platform for me to tell a story, to try to evolve culture, to try to change the way that, you know, America eats because of my experience in 2018 at Expo West. So, yeah. So, you know, this book is full of those very personal stories and, you know, it gives you recipes for chili crisp and how to use chili crisp, but that's not all. There's a lot of recipes in here are actually inspired by my days of cooking in my supper club.

15:24So I would call it Sichuan Soul Food because it's very soulful, comforting. It's rooted in tradition, but also like sort of adapted for modern life. So very similar to the line of sauces. It's a remarkable book and I love it so much because you've thread that needle. It's very challenging to do a book that is single topic in essence, but it has narrative and has your story, but it's also not like all of the story. What I like a lot about it is the recipe writing, it simplifies things in a way that is very approachable because I think some listeners to the show may think that this is difficult cooking.

16:07And of course, there's plenty of dishes. We'll get to hot pot, which I think is a difficult, it's a series of steps you have to take. But I wanted to ask you about some of these dishes, like these one pan dishes, like the glazed salmon or the sheep pan mala chicken. How do you think about the recipe writing? How are you formulating the recipe writing in your head when you're going through it? Yeah, so a lot of the recipes, if you browse through, they kind of seem very simple because it calls for certain condiments that then you refer to like the back and then it tells you how to make the condiments.

16:41So if you have a lot of those condiments pre-prepared or if you buy Fly by Jing, just take the shortcut. It's really quick to make a lot of these recipes. The sheet pan recipes, it's definitely adapted to the way that I cook. There's no – people don't cook with ovens in China that much. There's baked goods and stuff, but usually in family homes, there's no ovens because I think this is like sort of a more traditional Chinese medicine kind of approach to food where they want to retain as much water content and food as possible. So you see steaming rather than baking. But here, I mean, I live in California here, everybody has ovens and people love to use their ovens because it's like a set it and forget it type thing.

17:29So that's kind of an example of like making it work for you. Yeah. Adapting it for the Western kitchen. Back to that water. I'm thinking about that. Is that a textural choice? It's a health thing. Interesting. Because I think it's, you know, if you remove all the water content by baking it, then it's not considered as healthy food. The water is part of the nutrients of the natural, like the vegetable or the protein. Yeah. Strange flavor sauce, it's across recipes and it's a name that is unique, strange flavor. But it works and you see it throughout the book. What is strange flavor sauce? Yeah, so one of the condiments in here is Strange Flavor.

18:12Strange Flavor is probably one of the lesser known, but one of my all-time favorite flavor profiles in Sichuan cuisine. So Sichuan cuisine, you know, famous for mala, which is spicy and tingly, spicy and numbing. But aside from that, there's like 22 other flavor profiles. Strange Flavor is one of them. And it's characterized by this perfect balance of sweet, spicy, savory, tingly, and nutty. Nuttiness from the sesame paste. And it's really, I mean, it takes on a lot of forms, but the most common form is the type of sauce. It's like kind of a thick, you know, fragrant sesame type. Barbecue-ish, texture-wise?

18:55It's more like a sesame paste. Got it. It's thicker. And it's got chili oil in it. It's got black vinegar in it, sugar, Sichuan pepper, and then fragrant roasted sesame paste. And I love it in like any form, but most commonly you might see it in like a shredded chicken salad, cold noodles, even just like drenched over some blanched vegetables. Is there going to be a strange sauce in the line of flatbedging products eventually? We might be working on something. I would imagine. It sounds like it's really adaptable. I mean, seeing it in the book, repeat over and over. So when you say you're working on it, how does that, let's go back to your product.

19:39We'll leave the book for a second. I do have some questions, but I'd like to get back to Fly by Jing. Like sourcing these products that make your sauces and condiments fucking hard. It must be. Just like thinking about bringing it to your co-packers here, your facilities here, and finding them around Chengdu or wherever. Is that challenging? Yes, it was especially challenging during COVID. We actually don't produce anything in the States. We produce everything in my hometown. In your hometown? Yeah, in Chengdu. But the benefit of that is that, you know, all of our ingredients are sourced from the region.

20:18And that's key. That's like the number one key to what we do. because our food, the flavors, taste of Cheungdo and of nowhere else. And if you sub in, you can use the same exact recipe. Like I've given you the recipe for chili crispin here. But if you go and find Mexican chilies or Korean chilies, you're going to come up with a very different product. So the provenance of ingredients are key. And then also we're lucky we're able to leverage the expertise and know-how of our manufacturing partners who have been doing this for decades in China. You know, it's a huge industry in China. Like I said, it's the number one, you know, consumed sauce.

21:00But in addition to chili crisp type sauces, they also make like hot pot base. And hot pot is a huge industry in China, right? There's like millions of chains. Chains and then obviously there's a home adaptation. So there's a lot of home cooking. So there's constant innovation happening. We're able to like kind of lean on that. Is there like one product that's just more difficult than others that you just have a tough time sourcing? Well, because it's really important for us to keep everything all natural, like no preservatives, no artificial flavors and additives. It is challenging to get the right flavor profiles without having, you know, shortcuts.

21:42Yeah, like a chemical compound. Yeah, yeah. So it's sometimes challenging to kind of maintain the stability of a product. If it has too much water content, for example, then, you know, then it won't be as shelf stable. And we try to aim for shelf stable. So back to hot pot, I wanted to ask you about that because you have a pretty elaborate recipe in the book detailing hot pot. And as you mentioned, it's so foundational in Szechuan cooking. And we've all enjoyed it at restaurants. But for you, let's make the case that you should actually make hot pot at home and host a hot pot. Especially as it gets cooler out.

22:16It's a beautiful thing to have at home, like on a weekend night. Yeah. So there's a section in my book called Hot Pot is a Religion. I love that. That's so great. And it is, you know, not to be taken lightly in Chinese culture. It's popular everywhere in China, but I think the most well-known version is from Sichuan. and it's like a fiery bubbling red cauldron of hot broth that is like teeming with Sichuan pepper, chili peppers, all kinds of herbs and spices. And then really key in Sichuan hot pot is this golden beef tallow that is used instead of like soybean oil or something like that. And that beef tallow, it goes in solid, but then once it starts to bubble, it turns into this like beautiful shiny.

23:04It like streaks it kind of. A shiny streak. And it's so flavorful. And it really coats everything that you cook in it. So then the ingredients that you cook in hot pot is infinitely customizable, which is what's great. You can have something for everyone. And then the broth is so flavorful that the dipping sauce for Sichuan hot pot is only meant to be sesame oil and garlic and some cilantro. That's it. You know, it's not like a sauce bar that you might be used to here where you add like, you know, all kinds of other stuff. No, because the broth you're dipping in proteins, vegetables, and it's...

23:43It's already got it all. It's got it all in that broth. Yeah, it's super intense and you're not meant to drink it. So that's the question. You're never supposed to drink the hot pot. You're not supposed to. Yeah. Unless you want the beef fat to congeal inside. I mean, yo, it sounds... You could. This could be pretty tasty, pretty delicious. But you're probably getting enough just by like dipping, you know? and eating it but um it's it's so good and i love hosting hot pot i'm actually doing one this weekend with some friends because it's like the ultimate easiest like hosting yeah you know dinner party because your guests cook their own food yeah and it's like yeah exactly so you the work is out of the way once they arrive yeah and then you can even like shortcut even further which is what i plan to do because there's a because you got to like prepare all the raw ingredients but um Heidi Lau, which is a popular hot pot chain, you can order delivery from them and it comes already prepared.

24:41Yeah. I was talking to somebody who did that with their boom-boom-boom-way at their like family gathering. They ordered it for 20 and they just like dumped it into the bowl and served it. Hey man, whatever works. What other food is religion in China? I want to follow up. You say hot pot is religion. There's got to be other foods that are religion. I love that you phrase it that way because I think some cultures have foods that are religions. Some don't. Yeah. I think in Sichuan, it would be street food. Got it. Yeah. Like a whole class of street food. There's so many different dishes from dumplings to noodles to, you know, different types of.

25:14Yeah. And then they, it's like a whole culture. There's restaurants that only serve street food dishes and they serve it in like little bowls so you can try a bit of everything. the term hot and sour i think is you know in american chinese restaurants we think of like a very narrow thing the hot and sour soup which is like a cantonese soup or it's not um it's not as pervasive as you write about in your book which is it is a predominant flavor combination in szechuan cooking i guess my question is is how do you think of hot and sour yeah so hot and sour I love hot and sour soup, like in the Chinese American style.

25:51But I think that the flavor kind of gets distracting or it gets distracted by all the components of the soup. In Sichuan cooking, hot and sour, I think, comes through a lot more pure. So my favorite iterations of that flavor profile is in like a stir fried julienne potato, like sort of like a matchstick potato. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So where you cut it into julienne like while it's raw and then just like stir fry it really high heat with chili peppers, Sichuan pepper and a splash of black vinegar. So then you get the heat and the vinegar. So that's the hot and sour part. And then the other my other favorite is hot and sour sweet potato noodle soup.

26:37and that is sweet potatoes starched noodles cooked in a really rich like sort of bone broth with a splash of chili oil and a splash of black vinegar and that's the hot and sour these are like the japchae noodles that are dry and you boil them yeah they're kind of different from Korean japchae japchae is usually a little bit more soft but the Sichuan version is really al dente and chewy that sounds so good oh my god so do you get the noodles and can you get them in like liquid like in those bags Yeah, you can find it. That's cool. If you can find like Sichuan style in 99 Ranch. Yeah. But Japshui is a good substitute as well.

27:14A few more questions. We'll get to the audience. Now, what have been some like unique ways you've seen Fly By Jing used by your fans? I feel my mom loves putting it in cottage cheese. That's her jam and sesame seeds. People are like, whoa, that's weird. Or is it good? I don't know. You guys think it's good? No? That sounds amazing. I get some thumbs up. She loves it. And I just think of her, and she's a huge fan of yours, and she's ordering it all the time. But yeah, what are some other unique ways? You should tell your mom to try Chundu Crunch on cottage cheese. It would blow her mind. Oh, yeah, the new product.

27:49She may be getting some for the holidays. Oh, okay, very good. Because that's how I encountered, I was gifted by my old boss, and I'm going to pay it forward and do that. Yeah, thank you. It makes a great gift. Thank you for that. Um, yeah, so I've seen it, uh, in all forms. I mean, when we first launched it, we wanted to show people just how versatile this condiment was. So when I launched it five years ago, I partnered with ice cream shops in New York and LA and, um, and it, you know, I think once people saw like, oh my God, it could work on ice cream, they kind of got permission to put it on whatever they want.