SPEAKER_02 0:00

In this episode of the Hospital Dojo podcast, I chat with Caitlin Cother, the fermentation mastermind behind Melbourne's Molly and Little Molly. We talk about her approach to food preservation and what it takes to build sustainability into a modern kitchen's DNA. This episode is proudly brought to you by Food and Hospitality Week, a major event in Australia's hospitality calendar connecting 15,000 chefs, owners, and industry professionals every year. So, Caitlin, you grew up in Connecticut. Yes. An hour outside of New York. Yep. One of my favourite cities in the world. Yep. New York, New York. I mean, like, no, I people get confused that New York isn't like a state, but there's New York and then there's New York, New York.

SPEAKER_01 0:47

You would fit into New York City so well.

SPEAKER_02 0:50

Oh, I I loved it. We Ben and I, uh funny story. Ben started with me a year ago. And a year and probably a couple years a year and a couple months ago. And he me and he went to school together, and I was hounding him for years. I'm like, bro, I want to make content, I want to make content, I need you with me, I need you with me. He's like, You're not serious with this shit. And I'm like, okay, tell me what I need to do to prove it. So I proved it to him that I could do it. So then I he goes, okay, now you proved it, I might want to work with you. And then I was like, fuck it. So then chasing him, chasing him, chasing him. Anyway, he ends up going, okay, man, we're down for it. I'm down for it. So he quits his job, joins me. Then, literally a day later, we're at an event supporting one of my buddies, and he wanted me to get up on stage to just like give more of a pitch for like a like a real punch to the show. Gave a punch. And uh nailed it, and then his head of media was like, You need to come to Miami. And I was like, What do you mean? He goes, We we have a we're literally talking in two weeks in Miami, you need to come to Miami. I looked at Ben, I said, Do you want to go to Miami? Because what? I said, Do you wanna go? And he's like, Okay. I was like, okay. So then two weeks later we're on a plane to Miami. And then we're talking on a stage in front of like 15,000 people.

SPEAKER_00 2:09

From Miami too.

SPEAKER_02 2:10

In Miami.

SPEAKER_00 2:10

Florida's insane.

SPEAKER_02 2:12

Yes, yes. So we're in Miami, crazy. Then we went up to New York. We did a tour in New York. I was in a Smalzburg in the in where was it? In Brooklyn. No, no, not World Trade Center. That was the one, no. The other one in in You weren't with me in Brooklyn. And this guy, his name's Chef Picky. His name's Chef Picky. He does the most amazing ox tongue I've ever had in my life. I'm there about to devour it, and he stops me and he goes, Paul Ayash, what are you doing here?

SPEAKER_00 2:48

Like he knew you.

SPEAKER_02 2:49

And I looked and I was like, what the fuck? I was like, bro, like leave me alone. Like, who are you? And he goes, I've been following you on Instagram. It's like how do you like I mean I I'm in Sydney, you're in Brooklyn, and I'm in Smallsburg devouring a lobster roll, and you're hitting me up, about to eat your oxtail, and you're like, I need a selfie. And at that point, that's when I looked at Ben and my wife was with me, and I was like, we need to go all in on this. This was like that was for me, that was a definitive moment of saying, I'm not stopping. This is like the days that I feel like I'm giving up. I remember that time of ox tongue and lobster roll in New York, in Brooklyn. So that's I think now we have a common grounding. They're an hour out of town, but New York City, New York, yeah. Definitely vibe it.

SPEAKER_01 3:36

Yeah, yeah. So I have lived all over. So my family's Italian American, so um that's my a bit of my yeah, really bleeds into my food even though I don't want it to.

SPEAKER_02 3:47

Man, we went to we had some amazing, we went to all the delis in um Hoboken. Oh my gosh. We went Vito's deli. We've got a private tour at the back.

SPEAKER_00 3:58

So good.

SPEAKER_02 3:58

We've got the Sinatra tour, we've got everything. Like everything was like phenomenal. Oh, there's one place called Prado Bakery. Hold on. Prado Bakery in Hoboken. They do the Kentucci.

SPEAKER_01 4:10

Like Hoboken, New Jersey.

SPEAKER_02 4:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:12

Why are we in New Jersey?

SPEAKER_02 4:14

We just went across because I was like, New Jersey's a shithole. Man, not Hoboken. Hoboken's got amazing food. There's a pizza place. What's that slice? What's it?

SPEAKER_01 4:22

Um pizza in New York is good. Or it's in New Jersey's good. And Connecticut. The little trifecta.

SPEAKER_02 4:27

What do you think? It's the water.

SPEAKER_01 4:30

I mean, you can say a lot about San Francisco sourdough. Nah, it's just about no, it's about the Italian immigrants. Yeah. Absolutely. That's what it is. Because you can see it in, because you get to Boston, and that's where the Irish immigrants are, and the pizza there sucks.

SPEAKER_02 4:43

But then there's a half-cast, like half Irish, half Italian, but there's been a bit of a mix. Yeah, I watched some of the oh, hilarious. But yeah, so Italian American, flown all over the world, you've had stints everywhere. Yep. San Francisco Bar Tatine. Bar Tatine, sorry. Relay in Copenhagen?

SPEAKER_01 5:03

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 5:04

Like really?

SPEAKER_01 5:05

Yeah, for a year. So I'll tell you how I ended up in Australia. So I actually I'll start with why I ended up in uh in San Francisco. When I was 21, I wanted to go work in a different country, and the chef that I had at that time had worked at Gavroche, and he was like, you gotta go work in London. So it was during the Olympics. This was during the time when nobody went was on working visas. You could just fly around and bump into a country, stay there for a little while, and then leave. Went over without a working visa, on a tourist visa, was gonna work, do a stage for three months, uh, got to the airport and then got kicked out. Got detained at customs and turned around and sent home. Oh yeah. It like, so to be fair, I didn't plan it well enough. And because it was during the Olympics in the third largest airport in the world, like I did it. I did it wrong. I did it all wrong. So when I got kicked out, I was like, well, I can't go across the ocean, so I'm gonna go across the country and move from Connecticut to San Francisco, and it really just launched my fermentation career. And then when I tried again to go and work properly in another country, uh that's when I went over to Relay. But Copenhagen didn't do it for me. It's the long days are really the summer has really long days. Sunrises at 4 a.m. sets at 10 p.m. And you think it's great until you're working hospitals and you want to just stay awake for 48 hours at a time partying, and then you have to go back and work your fine dining job.

SPEAKER_02 6:30

It's like all bright sunshine.

SPEAKER_01 6:31

Yeah, exactly. You can't sleep too sunny all the time, and then winter is super depressing. Sun that's the opposite of that. Sunrises at nine, sets at five. It kind of is gray. But I met up I met a bunch of Australians over there and loved them.

SPEAKER_02 6:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:44

It's like I think I want to move to Australia. Went back, ran a started my firm first fermentation lab in San Francisco at the manufactory, and then was about to hit 30 and was like, well, it's my time to go to Australia, and ended up here for six years.

SPEAKER_02 6:58

That's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 6:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:59

And now you're with the Mulberry group, and you're the head of fermentation.

SPEAKER_01 7:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:03

Not many people have that title in the world.

SPEAKER_01 7:05

No, so this actually came about because I uh I didn't talk about it for a while, but I interviewed for the head of fermentation of NOMA and went through that entire process, 300 candidates down to five, and then down to two. So I was one of the last two. Um I interviewed, I think, every every week for like six weeks, tons of interviews. Took a personality test.

SPEAKER_02 7:26

Did you met Ben Liebman? Did you meet Ben? No.

SPEAKER_01 7:30

Um no, but they did flow flow me, they flew me over to do a week-long uh trial basically, and then do a presentation, and then it culminated by Renee saying, We're actually not gonna hire anyone. So when I came back, it was like super fiery. I had all of these opinions and ideas around how I wanted to implement a preservation uh approach as opposed to fermentation, which if you break it down, fermentation is this one trendy technique over under this overarching umbrella of preservation, which uses like all these ancient techniques, techniques, salt, sugar, dehydration, mired reaction, all that stuff. Um sat down with the mulberry group, was super like spirited, gave them all my ideas, and then from there we basically established the role of head of fermentation, which is really beneficial for them because they have a farm, so it just closes the loop.

SPEAKER_02 8:22

Yeah, so what like for for you with that, right? What does sustainability look like in in your kitchen on a daily basis right now, like in this world?

SPEAKER_01 8:31

Yeah, so uh there's two mindsets. One of them is creating, you always have to create something that's delicious. You can do fermentation and preservation, and it could be weird and esoterical, and all my food is weird and esoterical. But at the base of it, it has to be really interesting. So we do have a condiment line and a beverage line that um utilizes some waste, but they are cultivated for the average consumer. But it just gives the ability on the other side to then look at all of the waste that we're producing, all of the excess uh that the farm has in abundance and season and apply these different types of techniques. So we're creating really delicious things like black garlic HP and barrelage Worcestershire sauce, but I'm also you making cheese and then looking at the whey as a byproduct and finding ways to use that. So with that on the menu, it gets uh turned into a caramel or gets turned into Norwegian brown cheese and used on a dessert that tastes like so.

SPEAKER_02 9:22

That's how you reduce your waste, obviously, in the kitchen as well. Because a lot of the time people when they're doing fermentation in a lot of spaces, they they end up wasting a lot of stuff.

SPEAKER_01 9:30

A lot, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:31

So so what's the key, like if someone wants to play around, obviously trial and error is one thing, but you know, how do you build your menu with waste reduction in mind?

SPEAKER_01 9:41

Yeah, so this is the challenging part, but it's all about creating a like a cognitive restructuring and a and a mental um journey, basically, a a pathway that you know you're going to have methodical steps at each turn. So the first is identify waste. That's the first step. And the hardest part is uh teaching your younger staff to identify waste.

SPEAKER_02 10:01

A lot of people don't. Yeah. They don't even look at it.

SPEAKER_01 10:04

Yep. Yeah, exactly. So that it's it seems so simple, but it's not. So it to be able to be in a really high intense environment and go, I'm just gonna put this in the bin and not think about it is really easy. So you have to first change your mindset to go, I'm producing a lot of excess, what do I do with this? And how do I train the staff to not stop throwing it in the bin? And then from there you start to look at different techniques based on these ancient preservation techniques. You always have salt around, you always have sugar around, you always have vinegar around, there's always heat. So you apply these different techniques um to food and season or to excess, uh, and then you get really unique results and something that you can use as a condiment or use year-round or both.

SPEAKER_02 10:44

That's amazing. So, how can like a small cafe or a small business, right? Uh I want I would love to see a way that instead of their waste in the kitchen that happens from their general work, how could we then, you know, re-engineer the menu in a way that they could start fermenting things from have you ever like from normal kitchen waste? Have you then ever fermented from that? Like not when I mean kitchen waste, I mean like not your type of kitchen waste, I mean like chef waste. Like, is there anything that you've ever like repurposed? Like, how is there ever like a repurposing technique that you've ever gone through?

SPEAKER_01 11:20

Uh give me an example.

SPEAKER_02 11:22

Like, for example, if it's on the menu and then you then take it down the notch of then going into preservation.

SPEAKER_01 11:27

Oh yeah, yep, yep.

SPEAKER_02 11:29

So um so just imagine I don't want to I don't want to dial in on a specific thing because you and I are very alike. I get like that with numbers. I want you to take a 0.5 perspective.

SPEAKER_00 11:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:42

Imagine when you're designing a menu, we have a product.

SPEAKER_00 11:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:45

So let's just say, like, you know, an entree may not desert, whatever the case may be. But then you then are able to, if it's going to its like, okay, end of life, how do we then repurpose that?

SPEAKER_01 11:56

Ah right, okay. Yep. So um I because I've done this for so long, I can see the uh this like scientific interconnectivity of all of the food, and I understand that um if you remove just a little bit of moisture or add just a little bit of salt, salt is antimicrobial, moisture provides the life cycle the life uh the uh food for microbes, then you can very easily manipulate little things about the food to just extend the shelf life, let's say it's four days because you don't have time to prep it. So an example would be um you've ordered in fish and you haven't been able to utilize it, you haven't been able to prep it, um, or it just hasn't been cooked on the menu. How do you just extend the shelf life two days? You sprinkle it with salt. Or how do you extend the shelf life to be able to use it next week? Then you pack it in a 50% sugar, 50% salt cure. So when that the proteins are a little bit easier in that sense. Um but a better example is when you have all those wilted vegetables, like that's the that's I wanted to say that, but I was like, I don't want to get canceled. Because you order things, they sit around for ages. You your your younger chefs don't have to be.

SPEAKER_02 13:06

And then even like sometimes the first couple leaves, like they're yeah, you know, they might have been tarnished by just sitting in the cool room the wrong way.

SPEAKER_01 13:12

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 13:13

What do you do?

SPEAKER_01 13:14

So they you can do an you can do a lot of different things with veg. One of them, the the easiest one, and I can't take credit for this, is the silo technique, and I love it. Um the restaurant in uh London that is zero waste. They save all those that trim, and we have a giant bucket in the cool room where you put all the veg inside. Um and at the end of the week, I roast it and basically turn it into a stock. So that's phenomenal. Yeah, you introduce by roasting it, it goes through a mired reaction, it introduces sugars and makes them more available so that when you reduce it down, you're getting something that's similar to a vegan jus, and then it's thickened with brown rice, which has starch, and then you and then I use it to either lengthen my chicken stock or to use it on my vegan dishes.

SPEAKER_00 13:56

That's phenomenal.

SPEAKER_01 13:57

But you can also take those wilted leaves and use it as a weight for your ferments so you um create a natural barrier in which you are pushing down all those pickles that you like the pickled red onions that you've made or the lactofermented carrots that you've started. So, absolutely, all of those things, it does take a little bit of experience and a lot of failure to get there.

SPEAKER_02 14:18

Well, then this rounds up to my last question for you. What advice would you give to a young chef or novice operator who wants to cook more sustainably but doesn't know where to start?

SPEAKER_01 14:29

Yeah, absolutely. So it definitely starts with research, and this is uh the mindset in the younger chefs now is so different than when I started out 18 years ago because everybody was all in the books. Like now it's a little bit more instant gratification and internet. Um, but if you pick a topic and your attention span is limited for whatever reason, then you can still do your own research into uh the interests that you have and and that are really pointing for the techniques that you want to apply.

SPEAKER_02 15:00

But um Is there a particular book that like one book that could just get them started?

SPEAKER_01 15:04

Yeah, so I always recommend the Sandor Cat's Art of Fermentation. Um but even more than that, I read and it's a little bit uh it's pretty nerdy, but I read like scholarly, scholarly published articles.

SPEAKER_00 15:16

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 15:17

And even if you read blips of it, whatever material you read, you're gonna take a little bit of information from everything. It's amazing and start to collect it. And then this the second step to that, once you educate yourself a little bit, is just to do things. So it's one thing to uh want to start fermenting in the kitchen. Um, but if you don't understand, if you don't have the um intellectual capacity to understand why it's working, why it's not working, um then you're never gonna be able to build on those results. And to be able to build on those results just goes back to educating yourself about the process. So the way I usually operate, and it works really well for younger chefs, is um go in blind, have an idea, do it, do your research, understand the background of where it comes from and the history, because that will also give you insight. Do it again, do it again, and then try to uh understand that technique well enough where you can make a unique product out of it. So, example would be something like use a co show. Um, you take YuziScan, you take uh chilies, you ferment it together, um, but then you and then you have a successful product, then make kiwi kokosho.

SPEAKER_02 16:23

Wow. Yeah. That's so amazing.

SPEAKER_01 16:24

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 16:25

Well, thank you so much for your time on the podcast. Thanks for coming into our van, our bus instead of van. Um we loved having you here, and I've literally now got fermentation just running through my brains. I'm like now gonna go use some wilted vegetables at home. Thank you again. I hope you enjoyed it. Yeah, thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_00 16:45

This was great.