832: Pim Techamuanvivit’s First Restaurant Job Was Opening a Now Legendary Restaurant

26:46Pim Techamuanvivit:We, you know, it's the edit is down to like, do we set, like, what words do we use? It's really, it was really fun. And also the fact that she's known me for so long and she's, you know, one of the few people who are not afraid of me. Joking. But like, she really can. She's like, all right, miss, chop, chop. Let's get this, you know, let's give me this. We need to work on this. And she kept us really, really on task. And I feel like it's amazing. It's amazing. And absolutely, you know, I trust her. She trusts, you know, it's really, I think it's great. And the book is much better with her hands in it, for sure.

27:29It really is terrific. Well, I have some specific recipe questions. And one was miang. Like this style of cooking, it led to several recipes in the book. And I just really enjoy it myself at restaurants. And now that I can see it in cookbook form, it seems something that I can make at home.

27:48Pim Techamuanvivit:Yeah, no, you absolutely can. And you can freestyle it very easily. Because it's funny because you said like this style of cooking, miang, right? But miang is almost, if you ask Thai people, it's almost like it's a style of eating. You eat things on leaves. Yeah, better said for sure. Yeah, so. It's really fun. It's, of course, I mean, there's a particular, in Thailand, traditionally, there are two types of leaf that we use. One is this beetle leaf, which is like a wild pepper plant. It has this a little bit medicinal green kind of herbaceous flavor in it. And another one is this leaf that's from this plant that you can't even get outside of Thailand.

28:33Pim Techamuanvivit:But beetle leaf you can get. But also, like, you could freestyle it. use radicchio, whatever, something a little bitter. But, and then what you do is you make a little mixture that, that, you know, can just usually ginger, shallots, peanuts are the base. And then you could use, you can add protein, you can add fish, you can add shrimp, you can use some fruits. And it's tied together with this very kind of classic Thai flavor of a little sweet, a little salty, a little tart, and, you know, finish with a few pieces of chili. So it gives a little bit of a chili flavor and spicy flavor, and then you mix it all together.

29:13And it's just, it's so fun. Absolutely.

29:16Pim Techamuanvivit:And there's a bunch of recipes in the book. Absolutely. Lots of riffs and you can add different proteins. You can use tofu, you can use meat. There's like lots of different ways to do it. And I like that style. I mean, the sauce originally is made with fish sauce and palm sugar, but you can also use like light soy sauce or just salt if you're vegan or vegetarian and that still. And there's a recipe for that, too, in the book. Another recipe that struck me was the quickie roast duck with red curry and stone fruit. It looks really good and looks like the kind of dish that is definitely could be for a dinner party or even a weeknight.

29:55I loved it.

29:56Pim Techamuanvivit:Yes, it's, it's, um, and that duck is from the Morris, by the way. Oh, cool. Back to the Morris. I love it. Back to the Morris. My brother Paul sent me a duck for the photo shoot, but you can use duck from, um, the Chinese barbecue places, which is like how this recipe started really. And if you ask any Thai students who like have been here in grad school or whatever, what, what, what's their first curry that they cook, it's probably this one because you could, you know, buy bread curry paste very easily. But of course, if you have my book, you can make and should make it yourself. But then you can make a batch and then save it for later.

30:35Pim Techamuanvivit:And then you go to the Chinese store, Chinese barbecue restaurant or market, get a roast duck. And then usually when we're kids, it was like these rings of pineapple from the can. And that's your first curry. But of course, you can make it as nice as you want you can get the if because in san francisco you know book was shot during the summer last summer and we have beautiful stone fruit so i substitute stone fruits um if you have if you're in hawaii and you have great fresh pineapples use those if you know in the in the winter you can use some pears um and it's so easy and so flavorful and it's it's a you know it it teaches people that you can do it with things that you have on hand too because we just did this recipe for food and wine magazine and they go well if you can do it with um with like chinese roast duck can we do it with rotisserie chicken and i was like why not so we did it with rotisserie chicken and it's it's a delicious curry yeah and if you're making that red curry too you can definitely make a larger batch because i think you can scale up with the way you've gridded it out, which I think is smart.

31:46And you can definitely freeze that, right?

31:49Pim Techamuanvivit:Yes, you can freeze it. And I really want to encourage people to try their hands at making the curry paste. Because one thing I always say is when you use store-bought curry paste, not only that the spices and the aromatics is not going to be as lively as something that you make yourself, you lose another control, which is the level of heat, of spiciness, right? If you use it from a can, your only control is how much of it are you going to use? If you're afraid of chili heat, maybe you end up using like a tablespoon instead of like the small, you know, instead of the amounts that you need. And then, yeah, you get less heat, less chili heat.

32:27Pim Techamuanvivit:But what you're also missing is all these, you know, all these aromatic and other flavors that are going to be muted because you didn't use enough curry paste. When you make it yourself, if you learn different types of chilies, which of course we teach you in the book. You learn how to use different type of chilies and create different blends that will still give you the chili flavor, the chili pepper flavor, but not so much of the, you know, the ripping your face off kind of spicy, spiciness. And then you keep all the other aromatics the same. And when you make a curry from that, you have all of these, you're not missing any of the other elements.

33:06Pim Techamuanvivit:And it's going to be worth it. I promise you. I can't wait. I really, I can't wait to try it in my own kitchen. Why is your recipe the best Thai grilled chicken ever? Which is the title of the recipe. I love it. I love it. That was actually, that's funny because when we were making this recipe, I think I was grilling this recipe when I was, you know, spending the summer in New Zealand, which was winter here. and I was working on multiple, you know, multiple iterations of it. And then I sent it to Andrea and just go like, make this. And she made it, you know, we kind of went back and forth and jiggered some things.

33:52Pim Techamuanvivit:And then she made it for her husband, Rory, who ate it. And Rory went, oh my God, this is the best, this is the best grilled chicken I've ever tasted. and so andrew and i andrew was like huh rory said this is the best grilled chicken ever should we just call that if that in the book like is that too cheeky and i was like too cheeky have you met us so of course we had to call it the best high damn Thai grilled chicken ever it looks really good i mean it and it is really good i mean you know i'm i'm not promising you that it's going to be the well you can promise that it's okay it's really good it's really good and that photo that whole spread in the book i love it so much and it was also really meaningful because that's like the very last shot that we did from the the two two weeks of of photo shoots for the the hero shots of the food yeah in san francisco last shots and you shot with that anderson where who I've done a book with myself and enjoy his energy and just his style.

35:04There's no one like it. Love it.

35:06Pim Techamuanvivit:It is so great. It is so great. And it's just Ed and camera. Exactly, just Ed and camera. Traveling light. I like that. You close the book with a Thai iced tea recipe with a perfect ratio, but you use a mix, which I think is kind of the only time you're really using a mix. Well, it's a Thai tea. Well, I mean, you know, Thai tea is Thai tea. You don't go buy Darjeeling from Mariash Freya and try to make Thai tea from it. And I grew up with this one particular brand in Thailand, the Han brand, Chhat Ramu. So, of course, I had to use that one. And back in Thailand, when you make Thai iced tea, you use condensed milk and sometimes some evaporated milk.

36:02Pim Techamuanvivit:But of course, like a lot of Thai restaurants, when they make it, when you see in most places, they'll just make the tea and then just add like some coffee creamer to it at the end. because that way when you don't mix the dairy in, the tea keeps longer, right? But to me, that's not really the right flavor. So when we opened Ginkau, I really wanted to make it to be the flavor I grew up with, with slightly less sweet because it shows the tea a little bit better, I think. Yeah, definitely. Love that recipe. What a beautiful book. I'm thrilled to cook from it. last question the Sunday lunches at your grandfather's house are mentioned in the book and it leads into the noodles chapter talk about those meals and how that inspired this chapter it's I grew up in you know with lots of cousins and aunts and uncles and we all you know we get together on weekends at my grandfather's house and And the center of it is always food.

37:12Pim Techamuanvivit:We're Thai after all. So I have such fond memories of all those fun lunches. And lunch are always, you know, it's less formal than dinner. It's more fun. You get to kind of put together your own lunch almost. So it's almost like my first experience of like quote unquote cooking, right? Because usually it's some sort of noodles or some, and you get to mix it yourself. You get to, you know, grab a little bit of kanumti rice noodle and pick, you know, whatever toppings you want and put the sauce on it. And it's actually this particular dish called kanumti namprik that's in the book that is really literally my Sunday lunch.

37:58Pim Techamuanvivit:I have the dish at my restaurant Nam in Bangkok and the staff basically calls it my Sunday lunch because it's the flavor that I love so much. and it's served with rice noodle and this beautiful kind of prawn, coconutty, a little smoky, not super spicy sauce. And then you get to put your own, you get, you know, these kind of tempura fried leaves and some fresh vegetables and some fried shrimp and you get to make your own lunch. And of course, when I was a kid, I loaded it with like the fried shrimp and noodles and the sauce and pretend I didn't see any of the vegetables. And it was so much fun.

38:42Pim Techamuanvivit:And it really, to me, Thai food is the flavors I grew up with. Thai food is my heritage. And this book is talking about so much of that. It's, you know, it's not really just some, it's not a memoir, but it's almost like these are the flavors that have raised me, that, you know, developed me as a cook and as an eater. And I feel like I've learned so much from being able to eat all of those delicious things and have spent time learning and studying to recreate those flavors. And this book is my chance to be a link in that chain to pass on what I've learned and help preserve some of those cultural knowledge and some of those heritage.

39:30Pim, on This Is Taste, we ask us about the discerning taste. So to close this interview, here's a little rapid fire, fast and furious taste check. Are you ready?

39:40Pim Techamuanvivit:Sure. The best fruit? Baby Crawford peach from Andy Mariani's farm. I have not had one and I am very jealous that you have those. The worst vegetable? Beet roots. Why so? I, probably the one thing in the world that I don't eat and so many chefs have tried. Like, oh, you don't like beets, but you have to try my dish. And I'm like, Alain Passard cannot make a beetroot that I will eat. You have no chance. What is your typical breakfast? Typical breakfast is toast and good butter and jam, preferably mine. Yeah. The best dessert? The best dessert is canong croc. the photo in the book leading to the dessert chapter is that dessert a restaurant you wish you could bring back from the dead oh that's hard that is really hard I think the original Lombosi it's not dead really but the chef is not there anymore he doesn't cook anymore I don't think so Well, it's a version.

40:57That version is, so you want to see that version come back. Yes. The last thing you cooked at home for yourself?

41:06Pim Techamuanvivit:BLT. Yesterday lunch. What's the bread on the BLT? The bread is milk bread from Bread Belly. Yeah, I love that place. And tomatoes is dry farm dirty grilled tomato from my friend Joe's farm. lettuces from Annabelle's farm and bacon from Olivier's I was like wondering okay that's a great sandwich you just made for yourself wow last one your favorite sandwich BLT yeah I had to say that had to be the answer yes oh also I forgot BLT with with QP mayo that's it I'm gonna die on this hill yeah I mean there's lots of directions with the BLT the QP is definitely a cool direction you can die on that hill that's a good hill to die on Pim this has been such a pleasure speaking with you again I'm such a fan of Thai cooking thank you so much for joining this is Taste thank you so much

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44:33Star Wars The Mandalorian and Grogu is now streaming on Disney+. What are you waiting for? Hop on. The must-see galactic adventure comes home on Disney+. This is the way. Our only chance is to work together. I like this kid. Always wear your seatbelt. Star Wars The Mandalorian and Grogu, now streaming on Disney+. Raid PG-13. Good uncle. Welcome to This is Taste. How are you? Much appreciated. I'm grateful to be invited. I remember last fall, I went up to Ankram and visited your farm. It's part of the Hudson Valley Apple Project. And just absolutely blown away. And I was with that visit with you and just your knowledge and just how fun it is to walk your orchard and just taste so many unique apples only grown in this pretty small orchard.

45:35Just from the jump, tell us about Hudson Valley Apple Project. And I think you described it as a backyard project that got out of control. Take us there. Okay. So the orchard is planted on my family's old dairy farm. We had a registered dairy farm. We had bought in 1975. We had a dispersal in 1991. And just as a quick backstory of the region, And, you know, at the peak of in Columbia County, there might have been over 90 dairy farms and there's only about 11, 12 left. So I personally got interested in apples, you know, mainly because I'm in the cider industry, had the opportunity to visit orchards and cideries throughout this country as well internationally.

46:15And so enamored with the incredible depth of varieties that the first year I planted, I started to start a small orchard on the farm. I planted, you know, 57 varieties, like 75 trees the first year. And then each year we've kind of added onto that amount. And the 10 is to try to grow apples that I'm particularly fascinated with, which often means apples that sort of really push the envelope of what apples can be. You know, we have apples that taste like pears, the pitmast and pineapple. Apples that taste like black licorice, like sweet 16. apples that taste, you know, that, you know, just an incredible wide range.

46:55And the intent is when people come to the orchard to just show them that apples are just so much more interesting than what you get in the supermarkets. Absolutely. And I think when we're walking on these visits and I'll link to in the show notes where you can book your visit and we'll get into more of that. But it's like, I've never seen a black fleshed apple. I've never tasted pineapple on an apple. When you're thinking about growing apples, what drew you to this work, this labor of love? You know, I think just simply probably the real, if there was a superpower to apples, it's the genetics and this incredible diversity that can be the case with apples.

47:34And I think that's what originally fascinated me. But upon doing research, there is such an extraordinary history of apple growing in this country. And there was a golden age of homology in America, a fruit growing between 1805 and 1905. We're at the peak of the golden age around 1850. There was many as 20 ,000 named varieties and every town in this country had an apple that they grew a civic pride. And we've gone from that to now where 12 varieties represent 86 % of apples sold in supermarkets and the average Americans only had six varieties in their lifetime. So we've gone from this extraordinary diversity and the country, which is really, which as an agrarian nation was nothing more proud of than the fruit grown in this country to what's happened now in terms of making apples into monoculture as far as was available in supermarkets.

48:22It's a stunning stat that 86 % of Americans have only had six apples in their lives. What was it about the civic pride? Take us back to like the 1800s when every town had their own apple. I mean, there wasn't, you know, TikTok then. So like, clearly, maybe there was more going on in the fields, but I'm joking. There must have been something about the apple that America and Americans was so connected to. Yeah, the first settlers this country planted apples from seed, and every seed produces a whole new variety because the genetics of the seed is half the mother tree and half wherever the bee came to cross-pollinate it and produces a whole new variety.

49:01It said only one of every 10 ,000 seeds is worthy of propagation as far as eating, but the early settlers were looking to make cider. So by settlers planting apples for cider, they literally planted tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of apple trees throughout the landscape and frontier. And it's so doing, according to one expert, it was part of the greatest amateur genetic experiment in the history of Western world and created this amazing diversity. And over time, in the 1800s, they started to become familiar with any one community of the wonderful fresh-eating apples or good-cooking apples that were available.

49:39And so that's the point where apples in any specific region were sort of really potentially only popular in a specific region and grown in civic pride within that region. Yeah. So what happened around 1900? Why did this stop, and why did we get to this point where we've tasted so few apples? In order to propagate varieties, you need to graft apples, which you take a one-year-old signwood from a ranch and graft it into rootstock. There was no awareness of that. So in the beginning in this country, only people that knew how to graft were wealthy landowners. But in the 1800s, it started to become much more knowledge about growing apples.

50:21So at some point in the 1800s, probably about mid-1800s, apples were being planted by seed quite as much. You also had a bit of the temperaments movement where there's a movement against producing cider, apples for cider. And you also had probably even much more significantly, a couple, there's definitely a number of factors. About the 1870s, 1880s, there started becoming significant disease pressure. At the beginning of this country, there wasn't disease pressure and it became very unprofitable to grow apples. So basically, land-grant universities like Michigan State or Cornell took over recommending to farmers to continue making orcharding profitable, recommended ways to make streamlined farming and recommend specific varieties to grow that would be much more likely to be profitable.

51:09And by the time about 1910, there were only, you know, at that stage, you know, about 12 varieties represented maybe 70 percent of apples. What a stunning decline. But it must have been with these local small hold farms, you know, the yields must have varied greatly. So they weren't making as much money. And then when somebody at Michigan State says, well, you can actually make 10 X your profits, it's a pretty easy decision. Yeah. I mean, in the beginning, these were like homesteads. Every homestead had a little orchard. Yeah. There oftentimes were three to five acres. It was for subsidence. It was making cider.

51:43They had, you know, drying fruit to survive the winter. They were feeding their animals. But, you know, obviously that evolved over time as well. We'll talk about where you're located, you know, in relationship to like New York City and upstate New York, because I really think it's not that far of a drive from New York City. Like, how do you get there? And then what is a tour like to book a tour at the Hudson Valley Apple Project? What are you what are you providing? What are you what are you telling your audience? All right. So we, you know, as with this orchard that started at 75 trees, it's now about 650 trees.

52:16and at some point we were producing so much fruit that we started needing to sell them so we started going to the local farmers market in hillsdale copic hillsdale market and very interestingly with the market um in the beginning everyone came up looking for honey crisp or galas and after two or three years the uh community really bought in and no one was looking for honey crisp and galas anymore and i would say we probably grow 40 apples that are much better than anything you can get in the supermarket. So, you know, once again, because we have a fairly good amount of produce, even though it's only two acres, not only are we doing the market, but actually the orchard, the tours also help to sell the apples.

52:54And it's also really exciting to have people visit and just see, get a chance to taste the varieties. We walk through people through the rows. I say it's a 45 minute tour, but it's probably more likely, you know, hour and 15, hour and 30 minutes. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, as long as people want to stay. But I leave them down. I tell them specific apples that are interesting. And very importantly with apples, every apple has a point of origin and almost a story behind it. And those apples, especially in this country, are really tied to the history of this country. And so much of that history has been lost.

53:26So it's fun kind of telling those stories to people and just connecting them to these varieties. So it's about two hours north of New York City? It's probably a little more than two hours. A little more than two hours. Yeah, maybe 2.15, something like that. Really easy to get to. And I think when you go, I remember you were like, take as many apples as you want. Yeah. Which I think is a really - Doing me a favor. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So you can go home with a couple bags of apples if you're going with a couple friends. You brought me some apples. I'm going to taste through them. We're going to talk about these very distinct varieties.

53:57But I want to talk a little bit about the current season here in New York. I know we had a really difficult time in the spring where temperatures fluctuated like 50, 60 degrees in an overnight. And there was like crazy frost. And I was at my local market in Goshen talking to the apple farmer. And he said that they're at like a 20, 30 percent yield of last year. What are you seeing on your farm? I actually, the U.S. Apple Association just did a report. I can kind of give you the hard number. Yeah, sure. Thank you. New York State is down 10%, but Southern Hudson Valley was significantly impacted.

54:31In New York, much larger orchards are in Western New York, which is more significant in terms of the overall crop. But nationally, Pennsylvania, we're down 58%. Virginia's down 48%. Michigan's down 1%. And Washington State's down 2%. And nationally, we're down 7 % for the year and 3 % compared to the five-year average. Wow. all that. But, you know, it's, it's, you know, farming is tough. I know from our dairy farm, which obviously when we had to sell, farming's inherently difficult, you know, so you have to deal with many issues when you're growing apples. And obviously one of them is the weather.

55:07This year what happened is there was a great variability in the temperature. And it's the worst thing for orchardists is when you have really hot weather in the beginning of the year and the trees wake up at the point where apples get to blossom. If the temperature goes beyond below 27 degrees, for a few hours, you really kill the opportunity to have food for the year. So that's what happened this year. Yeah. And I know there's stories of farmers who had to start fires in their orchards to warm up the orchard. And yeah, Lower Hudson Valley is my area and really they're struggling. I said it once on Three Things or Maybe I Wrote in our newsletter, but like we have to pay our farmers at the farmer's markets, like especially in this time of great stress with these yields down, make a case for our listeners to not wince when they go to a farmer's market and maybe see some prices that are a little different than the grocery store.

55:59You know, I mean, I would say a few things on that. One, even nationally, there's a report from Washington State that, you know, because of the cost of labor out there, which is a very different situation out there because they have 1 ,000-acre orchards, literally farms are underwater. And even for them, it's hard to make a profit. And just talk about that for one second. And, you know, it's so important for like states like Washington State just came out with the Cosmic Crisp, right? And, you know, various different universities are producing apples with intent to produce apples for their state that could sell it at a higher price.

56:31But if an orchard in Washington State at the break even point is about$30 per bushel. Washington State at some point had 75 % of their apples were red delicious. And today they're getting$18 to$22 a bushel. So they're losing money on that fruit. But the most important thing for the large commercial orchards are to grow apples where they can get a reasonable price. And obviously, like the Honeycrisp, even though there's a lot of issues with the Honeycrisp, that would be a perfect example that has been a profitable apple, apples for farmers. But I think people going to farmers markets have to understand that orchards, you know, it's particularly challenging.

57:02You know, for farms that have heirloom apples, the one thing different with heirloom apples, which is often the case, unfortunately, is they aren't necessarily as productive per tree. It might be a little more challenging to grow. And so, yeah, if people come in, any orchard that's out there, you know, yeah, business is just simply challenging. And also, like for us, we're picking the apples the day before we're selling them. So the apples, these are freshly picked apples and they're fresh. Great point. FYI, if you didn't know, those apples in the grocery store have been in cold storage sometimes six months, sometimes longer.

57:37When you're going to a farmer's market, like you said, they're freshly picked. They have a very special kind of snap to them and just deep flavor that you're not going to get with a grocery store. So pay a little more, I would say. I agree with you. I want to hear about the russet because a lot of your apples are russets. And Americans don't really connect with russet. So what is the russet? You know, russeted skin is sort of a tough skin. Oftentimes it leads to apples potentially inner core can be dry. It's very particular per specific variety. I'm right. The one near you is the pit mass and pineapple.

58:13This is the one that tastes a little bit like a pineapple. The average apple is 12 % sugar. This is early. So it's a couple of weeks early. Yeah. We're a little early recording on September 1st. And so you're, there's always an optimal level for every apple when it's at its peak flavor and it's definitely early for that one, but that apple at its peak has 25 % sugar. So 25 % for 12%. So it's this incredibly sweet apple that's got a lot of rich flavor that's people say it's tropical flavor or yeah or also sense of pineapple as well but just a fascinating fruit that once again pushes the boundaries of what people think apples can be yeah and like russets aesthetically are just they're they look different i mean they look more like pears and i think consumers uh may not connect with them on a on a wide scale they don't look like this shiny apple you're going to bring to your teacher yeah One note on that, sorry, if you don't mind.

59:03There's an apple called Hudson's Golden Jam, which originates as a wild seedling in a hedgerow in Oregon about 1900. And it looks like a pear. It tastes like a pear, but it's actually an apple. And some people may go to the farmers, markets are familiar with it. That's, for us, one of the most popular apples we sell at the market. It's this wild-looking, elongated, russeted variety. Right. And which market are you at? Remind us again. The Copac Hillsdale Market. And that's on Fridays, right? That's on Saturdays. Oh, Saturdays. Great. Yeah, Saturdays between 9 and 1. Okay, great. Saturdays. Great market.

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1:01:03All right, you brought me a bunch of apples, but we're going to taste three. Apologies to listeners, particularly my wife, Tamara, who I am crunching on apples all fall, and she isn't a huge fan of that sound. So apologies to everybody. I'm just going to go in. Okay, sure.

1:01:22Tell us about this apple one more time. Okay, so it originates in England. It's a small russeted apple, pit-mouse and pineapple. that can have extraordinary sugar, but it has a lot of complexity. It was once very popular in England, but these things tend to fall out for numerous reasons. And as such, it was the case. And it's an apple that's hard to find today, but I think more and more heirloom orchards are growing it. Took me a little while to eat that. Again, it's a couple weeks earlier for that apple. It's fresh. Yeah, I could see the maturity is not quite there, but I think the best apples present a balance of sweetness and acidity in the best possible way.

1:02:05Think about the best lemonade that you're ever going to have. You want to have that balance. It isn't a sugar bomb. This is my take in particular, but I get a lot of that balance there. Actually, one little note about that apple. If you see, it's kind of green inside. There's something called a starch, iodine starch test, that if you spray iodine on the apple, it binds to starch, and that gives you a sense of when's the ideal time to pick. So when I go up to the orchard and I'm not so sure if an apple is ripe or not, I'll do this iodine starch test to make sure the apple is getting close to its peak flavor.

1:02:35I always wondered that. Yeah. Thank you for that reminder. All right. I'm picking up another one. And this is an apple that's the size of a Bing cherry. Yeah. It's beautiful. Tell me about it. So that's called cranberry. Michigan State wanted to, because cider is big in Michigan nationally, but specifically in the big apple growing regions in this country. And Michigan is the third biggest apple producing state. A professor at Michigan State wanted to develop red flesh apples that would be good for cider and would have good growing habits. So they did a lot of research and they came up with three apples to recommend to orchardists.

1:03:09One was Otterson, one is this cranberry, another one's Irene. One of the graduate students at Michigan State took the cider apples from one of the ciders, entered in a competition called Glencap in Grand Rapids, Michigan, which is the largest U.S. cider competition, and won a gold medal for the cider. proof that it makes really good cider. Isn't that beautiful inner color? What a gorgeous color. I mean, it is a red, a deep red, crimson red. And it's presenting quite tart, but also there's a finish of fruit. I love it. I love it. And this is really great for cider. Before we get to our next one, how do you tell your customers at the market to use these apples, particularly the cider apples?

1:03:54Like, you know, we're obviously snacking on some, but you must have some nice recipes. Yeah, well, about 30 % of the orchard are cider apples. So we actually have local cider makers as well as some small, either home cider makers or local cideries come, they oftentimes pick those apples. But we actually, at the market, we always cut up whatever apples we have available that week so people can taste the apple before they purchase it. That's great. So what about for recipes, like cooking with these apples? What do you recommend? You know, we have a lot of apples that are known to be great cooking apples.

1:04:28One of them, a couple grow quickly. One is Bramley Sealing, which is the most famous English cooking apple. And it's so fun to recommend it to people who are visiting the market and then come back and go, I have never made a cake that delicious. That is an amazing cooking apple. There's also an apple called Cavo Blanc from France. It said oftentimes some of the best restaurants in Paris will use it to make tartan. Tartan. Tartan, yeah. Love that. My French, that could be better. But it's a wonderful apple. And actually local, we have a wonderful store in Copac called the Copac General Store. Oh, yeah.

1:04:58And there's a wonderful owner there. And she loves getting that apple and making desserts with it as well. What about Calvados? Calvados, yeah, we have some apples. There definitely would be apples specifically ideal for that, which oftentimes basically for cider. would, but you know, France has their own culture of apple growing and they really have, it's just I had the opportunity to travel through Normandy and there, there is in every one region, there is apple specifically ideal for that part of the climate, which, and a result because they're specifically ideal for that part of the climate, they don't, they really, they, they really adverse to spraying.

1:05:38But when you say you take an apple from California, try to grow it in New York, you're likely to need to spray for it to do well. But if you're growing apples that are perfectly suited for your environment. You don't need to spray them as much. So that's one of the interesting things about there. But they have a huge tradition of growing these bittersweet apples that make this extraordinary cider as well in France. Yeah. Normandy, I've never been. I've always wanted to go and try those apples. All right. We have one final apple. Tell us about it while I crunch into the microphone. All right. It's small, but it's very significant apple.

1:06:04It's got a great story to it. Oh my God. Isn't that interesting? Oh my God. So it's an apple that almost tastes like molasses. And in about 1820, University of Minnesota, there's a long story about Minnesota, but let's just go from 1820 onwards. They developed this apple. It's very cold hardy. And so they wanted to use it in their breeding program. They didn't think anyone would like it because it's so strange. And they thought it was just sort of just way outside what people would expect from an apple. So they used the breeding program, ended up becoming the parent of an apple called keepsake and the grandparent of honeycrisp.

1:06:35So the most significant apple in one of the most significant apples today is a result of this apple, the University of Minnesota breeding program. Now, a lot of apple, it was the ancestor of a lot of their apples from University of Minnesota. So a bunch of apple geeks approached University of Minnesota and said, you got to tell us what MN, it was called MN447. They want to give it a name, that apple. So the bunch of apple experts, including a guy named John Bunker from Maine. And eventually the breeder in Minnesota decided to release the apple. They had a competition to name it. and it was called frostbite because it was so cold hardy.

1:07:09But that's the story of the apple. And it's really just a fascinating, cool apple, which is genetically really important. Actually, you mentioned about the devil's russet. We have a new apple that we developed on our farm that's crazy weird. And frostbite is the parent of that apple. And that's the devil's russet you're talking about? Yeah, that's the devil's russet. Yeah, which is something that you developed. Yeah. It's amazing that you've developed your own. I mean, this back to that apple, the flavor of frostbite, it's like a lot of umami in there. Yeah. It's amazing. Like how it's like the basis of other apples that I know, but like there's like a root there that totally is striking to me.

1:07:43Back to Devil's Rusted. How do you – like you developed an apple. That's pretty cool. Yeah. So, I mean, once again, I'm personally incredibly fascinated by genetics and developing. It's nothing more exciting than, you know, developing a great apple. Once again, you plant a seed and it's going to give you a whole new variety. There's one quick thing about genetics. 2010, they decoded the genome of the Golden Delicious, and they identified 57 ,000 genes, which is almost twice as much as humans and more than any plant species at the time. So you get to understand the incredible complexity of apple genetics.

1:08:16But that's one of the reasons, because the heterozygosity of apples, when you plant a seed, it can give you, more often than not, it gives you an apple that's a spitter. Good for cider. It's not going to taste good. But the process of breeding is so awesome. Yeah, yeah. And it was fun. That's something I'd love to do more of. How long did it take you to develop Devil's Russet? Devil's Russet, that tree is probably about 10 years old now. Wow, wow. And it started fruiting two years ago. And this year, we only have maybe six apples on it. And when you plant an apple from sea, the tree will go to 40 feet.

1:08:44So we have it in the corner of the orchard. It's going to outgrow that space at some point. So you only have six apples as of now. Like, that's it. Yeah, on that tree, there's only six apples. Yeah, it might take a little longer, hopefully, where it starts producing more. But we started topworking other trees to this variety. so that we're hopefully going to get more apples in the future. Once again, it's a really fascinating variety in terms of the color. It's like an orangey-red russeted. It looks like noelle apple, and it tastes delicious. We did a little taste test of one of them a couple years ago, and everybody thought it was one of the best apples in our orchard.

1:09:13But actually, the other parent is Gold Rush. For anyone who's listening, it's a great apple developed by Purdue Rutgers, Illinois. So it has this really interesting genetics. But there's issues over the next few years. We need to decide whether it's disease-resistant, if it's productive, and it's an apple really worth propagating before you recommend it to anyone. That's part of the development process. You have to like give it the time and see if it actually is worth. And so once you have an apple that you want to like release, that you want to like drop, like it's like a kith drop, how does that have, how do you do that?

1:09:43You know, I mean, there's three universities that do most of the breeding in this country, Cornell, Minnesota, Washington State. They will trademark varieties. Like for example, you know, Honeycrisp was trademarked and every time you bought a Honeycrisp tree, you had to pay a dollar royalty. and they made the university of minnesota a lot of money um so people do trademark varieties and get royalties um there's actually a very interesting group actually your listeners will probably know some of these apples there's a group of ohio breeders called the maia breeding program which recently developed the ever crisp yeah an apple called ludicrisp um and then actually they have a they're really good with names they have a new apple which we planted called um red zeppelin which is an awesome name and we'll hopefully fruit that'll fruit from us for a few years But it's one of the first, a fairly significant group of orchards that is producing very unique apples outside those three big universities.

1:10:32But anyway, so that's kind of - The Ludacrisp, I have not come across that one. It's an interesting apple. It's a Honeycrisp offspring, and it's got a very interesting flavor profile. And it ripens probably about late October. Yeah. You'll start seeing the market. The Evercrisp has been one of the newer apples on the scene. Yeah. And same with the Cosmic Crisp. Yeah. That's pretty new, like in the last 10 years, right? Yeah. Cosmic Crisp? Yeah. So just with the Evercrisp, I actually like that apple as well. And in order to grow it in my orchard, I had to pay MAI breeding program$100 a year for 20 years.

1:11:07Wow. $2 ,000. And I have a tiny orchard where I may be ordering 10 or 15 trees a year. Yeah. Maybe 10 trees a year from them. When it comes to Cosmic Crisp, it was developed by Washington State. You know, as of a few years ago, 50 % of the new plantings in Washington State were Cosmic Crisp. So the amount of Cosmic Crisp that's going to come on the market is going to be quite extraordinary over the next few years. And obviously you already see it, you know, out there in significant numbers. When do you plant? For the seeds? Yeah, yeah. We collect seeds for the varieties we like. When apples are ripe, keep them in the refrigerator and then sprout them in the refrigerator and start growing them and planting them out about six months later.

1:11:52I see. I see. A few more questions. You just were at an apple camp every two years. Yeah. Gannon, what was that all about? It was way up in Maine. It was my first time going. This is the fifth one they had. It was an extraordinary experience. Maine has a very amazing culture of apples, really led by a fellow named John Bunker, who developed Mafka and also a really great nursery called Fedco. But they're actually there. They're trying to—actually, very funny with John Bunker. He puts up wanted signs in stores throughout Maine looking for old varieties that have been lost to history. Wow. And people, he's almost like, he's an apple hunter.

1:12:36These apple hunters that try to find these old apples and bring them back. Yeah. So they built an orchard where they're trying to revive this amazing heritage of apples in Maine. But going up there, they brought some of the leading geneticists throughout the country, including a geneticist from the Netherlands. And it was an amazing group. And for me, it's a lot of fun to talk apples for a couple. days so it was it was it was interesting it was great experience yeah and you tasted some cool things i mean i one amazing thing for me where there was a the guy who used to run the usda or uh pear or uh facility in um corvallis um oregon who had a red flesh pear and it does not for him it's very unusual to have pears that are red fleshed and it was actually incredibly delicious so it was fun to talk to him and uh and and also to get a chance to eat this amazing pear that i would never have got be able to got my hands on otherwise well you mentioned you've been doing this for 30 years and it wasn't always the farm it was the cider business and i wanted to close and talk a little bit about the 90s in 1996 you introduced cider to new york city what was it like then um trying to sell cider to to new yorkers yeah so i started i started a cider company in 1996 with no resources.

1:13:51I had no background in the industry. I really had no money. And I started making a product in Orange County and I brought a cheap load of stuff to the city, only to find no distributors in New York City thought there was a market for cider. There had been a cider that had been introduced about a year before me by someone who had a lot of resources. It was a lot of money behind them. It was featured in the New York Times and it still flopped. So then the craft distributor was the Brooklyn Brewery and they thought there just wasn't a market for cider. so I went out and hustled every day from day to night I knew literally I walked every street in the Lower East Side Village in Brooklyn literally a thousand times you know I could close my eyes and tell you every storefront in every street in New York that's how well I knew you were just hand selling your cider what was it called the brand original sin original sin which now you know we know that one I mean it's really good so um I got into like CBGB's and you know great bars like Max Fish and places like the beauty bar you know Rudy's just a wonderful all these names you're Tell me these are my bars.

1:14:48These are my spots. I have a very funny story. You know, Blind Tiger. Yes. But I tell you a really funny story. As hard it is to launch product in New York City and it is inherently brutal, an example would be Rudy's. I walked into Rudy's and I was not a salesperson, nervous about going in. There's a guy named Ernie sitting there. He asked me to give him a bottle. He cropped it open. He took a sip and he said, send me five cases. And I got out of that car. I brought him down to his basement. And for the next few years, I literally went there. I would check the depletions. He'd go, bring me five more, bring me five more.

1:15:20And Rudy still sells my product today. But there's been an incredible number of owners and managers in the city who have been phenomenally supportive. Jimmy Carbone? Jimmy Carbone, yeah. Big supporter of cider for years. Yeah, 100%. So it's sort of, I owe a lot of the people. Obviously, Mike from Beauty Bar can go name after name. Obviously, a lot of places are no longer around, which is a shame. Yeah, Max Fish, RIP. But that was cool that you had that in there. I mean, did the gluten awareness kind of change the cider business? Because I think as a gluten-free product in bars, it's a pretty – there's an appeal there.

1:15:54Yeah, it did. It happened much more so in Oregon and Washington. Nationally in this country, cider represents 1.7 % of the beer category. In England, cider represents 17 % of the beer category. So we have a long way to go. But actually in Oregon and Washington, cider represents – I think what I heard, if this is accurate, second-hand formation, either 9 % or 11 % of beer. So it's much quite bigger out there. But there's definitely a lot of room to grow from where we are now. And New York State has 137 cideries, which is the most ciders in the country. And I think a lot of people – it's always tricky with cider because it's such a niche product to figure a model that works.

1:16:30But one thing that's really working, and you talk about supporting a local farmer in a farmer's market, agritourism. There's a lot of cideries have set up wonderful agritourism experiences, and that's turned to be a way to make it very sustainable to make cider. Aligning with the wine industry in America as well. Agritourism is huge. Clayton and I were in San Sebastian and went to a cider party, like the closing of the season. And it was, you know, the boss style ciders that, you know, they open up the taps and let it flow from large taps. And I feel I was like, this would be pretty great in New York.

1:17:09Like, do one of those experiences. Yeah, 100 percent. I had fortune to be able to get a chance to go to Astoria's and experience something very similar. Yeah, Astoria's too. And it's part of the fabric of the country to drink cider. Yeah. You know, really, there are statues in Hae-Hon, if I mispronounce it, of like cider bottles in the middle of the town. You know, so it's just so funny culturally to see the acceptance and traditions of cider in throughout the world as, you know, as different levels of it. Where do you like to drink cider in New York right now? Are there some bars that you really think are doing a good job?

1:17:43Cider, you know, overall cider, I would say there's an amazing place in the Chelsea market, Saksilba Cheese downstairs, which has an extraordinary, a wonderful selection of ciders. There are places in New York City that have cider. But to be honest with you, I think there's obviously a lot of pop-style ciders, which is obviously what I'm making. But when it comes to 750 milliliter ciders that have been made upstate in the Finger Lakes, some of these great products, these products just haven't necessarily connected. Obviously, some wonderful restaurants like Gramsley Tavern has made a real commitment to cider.

1:18:15But I think a lot of people really find it challenging to sell 750 milliliter format cider. yeah you know with our ciders if i can little plug the largest cider combination in the country happens every year in grand ropes michigan and we've won four gold medals so you know we're making you know cider with freshly pressed apples hopefully really good you know you know wonderful product and i'm once again i'm grateful for everybody supports the brand where are the apples coming from you know we get most of from western uh from western new york okay so they tend to be a lot of correlate empire max ida reds that sort of combination yeah so you're very involved in that business still oh yeah i'm fully involved yeah i'm fully involved and um yeah i'm actually proud to say I'm the only person in this country, maybe it was one more person, it's been to every National Cider Conference.

1:18:56You know, in 2011, there was a meeting in Salem, Oregon, to start a National Cider Conference. I'd already been being in the street for 15 years and I went out there very cynical, and these guys stood up and they, it was a really wonderful meeting about what cider could be. The next year, like 300 people showed up at the meeting, and it's grown to as many as 1 ,400 people. But it's been a really familiar privilege to witness just this extraordinary growth of the category from what it was. You know, when I started, there was almost no point of reference to what cider was in America. And now there's Cider Institute to help educate people about making cider and obviously the associations.

1:19:35And in different regions, there's a very significant New York Cider Association, Michigan Cider Association, Northwest Cider Association. And they all play a role in continuing to like educate people. Well, one more time, the Hudson Valley Apple Project is in Ankrum and you can book online, again, LinkedIn, the show notes. You're doing like about eight weekends this fall through November. Yeah. I feel like listeners go up there. It's like, it's so fun. I love it. I'm incredibly grateful, man. And, you know, when you come, you can pick, I'm going to walk you through the rows and you're going to sample apples.

1:20:10You can take five pounds of apples with you. And once again, you're helping to support us and hopefully we can break even with our project. Absolutely. Well, Gidon, thank you so much for joining us. All right. Thank you so much for having me.

1:20:25This is Taste is hosted and produced by Eliza Abarbanal and me, Matt Rodbar. The show is edited by lead producer Clayton Gumbert and supervised by Pat Stango, director of media production and development at Penguin Random House. Thanks to Shalia Harris and the production team at Penguin Random House. Theme music by Steve Rydell. Episode portraits by Louise Zergon Pomeroy. Logo design by Ellie Skirzat and Ian Dingham. Visit Taste Online at tastecooking.com and make sure to subscribe to our newsletter to keep updated on all cool things in the world of taste. Star Wars The Mandalorian and Grogu is now streaming on Disney+.

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