Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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david rubenstein
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jose andres
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Why Food Transforms Goodness00:15:04
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on C-SPAN.
C-SPAN's Washington Journal, a live forum inviting you to discuss the latest issues in government, politics, and public policy from Washington, D.C. and across the country.
Coming up this morning, syndicated columnist Cal Thomas discusses Trump administration policies and the state of U.S. politics.
And then Shondell Newsome, Small Business for America's Future co-chair, on topics related to the state of small businesses in the U.S. C-SPAN's Washington Journal joined the conversation live at 7 Eastern this morning on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, or online at c-SPAN.org.
America's Book Club is brought to you by these television companies and is supported by the Ford Foundation.
From the nation's iconic libraries and institutions, America's Book Club takes you on a powerful journey of ideas, exploring the lives and inspiration of writers who have defined the country in conversation with civic leader and author David Rubinstein.
As a young boy growing up in Baltimore, I went to my local library and was inspired to read as many books as I could.
Hopefully people will enjoy hearing from these authors and hopefully they'll want to read more.
unidentified
Now, from Catholic University in Washington, D.C., famed chef, humanitarian, and global relief entrepreneur whose books include Feeding Dangerously, Change the Recipe, and We Fed an Island.
One of the smartest minds in the history of mankind, right here.
Yeah, you can clap.
Yeah, but so what I give them, I give them all over the place.
Some of them are fairly old.
My wife always wonders why I keep them sometimes with me in a backpack.
It's only because I like to travel with them, because sometimes I don't know when I have free time to read them, because I like to be part of the life of those books.
And they say, yeah, but it's a 200-year-old book.
I'm like, yeah, so the guy that owned the book 200 years ago, he could read the book, but I own the book now and I cannot read the book.
So I like to be part of the life of my books.
So I began collecting them because, I don't know, I am fascinated, thanks to people like you, to understanding where I come from, to understand the things that happened before us, before me.
And the old books are only the moment you get the book, just by touching the book, by bringing them and smelling the book.
I mean, all the time it's great smell, but overall, especially cookbooks, they smell.
Only those two things are already telling you things.
The letter in the cover in the.
But then you open the book in any page.
And for me, those recipes, when they are recipe books, no, all the cookbooks are only about recipes, they are about history and other things.
You see a recipe, and all of a sudden it's like, oh my God, take a look what they were cooking in the 1800s, you know, late 1700s, only by seeing an ingredient.
Already my brain begins going crazy of saying, wow, they were already using this in such and such place at that time.
Usually they're among the most popular books you always see at a bookstore.
When you write a cookbook, do you actually try the recipe out for the first time when you're putting the book together, or you've already done the recipe and you already know it will work?
I hope you watch my show on NBC, just share with her.
But before, I remember one time I was cooking with Martha Stewart, and Amia was like, but how many teaspoons?
I'm like, I don't know, two teaspoons and shit.
But you put three cups already.
I'm like, wow, who cares?
It's alcohol.
It evaporates.
So, yeah, I mean, listen, for home cooks, precision is important.
And I want to say that the team that works, and many of them are present here today, and I think some, so I love you guys, but they work very hard to make the recipes really, really precise.
But that's a matter of how well you write the recipes.
Every time anybody reads through a recipe, if I give you a recipe, all of you, and I put you in different kitchens, the outcome of the recipe is going to be so different from each one of you.
I've been over your house for dinner, and it's an unusual experience because you cook each of the, sometimes I've thought chefs, when they go home, they don't want to cook.
They have somebody else might cook for them, but you like to cook at home.
So you go cook the course and then you serve it, and then you go cook another course.
You never actually, it's hard to have dinner with you because you're cooking the whole time, right?
When I cook, you know, the only moment I have to show love, respect, and appreciation to people is when I share maybe one of the only gifts I may have, which is transform the goodness of the earth in something good and magical.
And the best way I have to show respect to people is I'm cooking for you right now, in this moment, and I'm going to make you the best dish anybody is going to eat on planet Earth right now.
The sad part is that then it's true.
I don't spend the time with the people because I'm cooking.
But this is the best way I have to show you respect of my family.
And I don't know if anybody appreciates it, but for me, it's the most important thing.
I'm going to, so yeah, I'll be in the kitchen.
I know it's weird.
I bring people home and then they leave.
I'm like, hey, bye, another day we'll talk.
I'm like, yeah, it was good to see you.
How was the meal?
Great.
Okay, bye.
Leave me alone.
But yeah, I like to cook.
That's why kitchens should be a table.
So the cook is in the kitchen and the people sit around the table and that's it.
We made it kind of chronological, but hopefully one day, not like anybody's interested, even if it's only for my daughters and maybe my wife, so they don't roll their eyes every time I tell the stories.
I'll write more, you know, more and more.
But this was just ideas, right?
But yes, one of the stories is where I'm born is I born in Asturias in the northern part of Spain.
He was studying medicine to become a doctor, but never made it.
So he stayed a nurse.
My mom then studied to be a nurse later on because we became four brothers and the salary of my father was not enough to maintain my other two brothers and I.
And a fourth brother was coming and then my wife, my mother, became a nurse in the process of being pregnant of my fourth brother.
Yeah, my mom was more the Monday through Friday cook.
My father was more the weekend cook.
My mom was more the leftover magic, multiplying fish and loaves kind of things, empty fridge, and then she'll make dishes out of an empty fridge, which requires a talent.
She'll make croquettas, which I cannot believe I charge at Jalejo for croquettas now, because literally, even you can make croquettas from scratch.
I don't remember any of the early dishes of the month.
You know, in Spain to this day, people get the paycheck at the end of the month or at the beginning of the month, and you could see the difference in your fridge at the beginning of the month, towards the end of the month.
It was very obvious by the photo.
If you got the paycheck, oh no, I mean, we are going through the same thing right now with the snaps, believe it or not.
But again, I don't remember the dishes when the fridge of my home was full.
I don't remember, wow, the steak, wow, the piece of fish.
We remember the dishes of the end of the month.
The croquettas, the migas, not confused with the Mexican migas, but migas that were literally sautéed breadcrumbs.
So I remember those dishes like, my God, I cannot wait to have that plate again.
I kept making the croquettes, my wife, to my daughters the same way my wife and the mother of my wife made for her and I.
And I keep trying to cook for everybody, friends, family, and if we are more, the merrier, as my father did.
So food-wise, if you think about it, I'm sure all of you right now, you're going through your memory lane, and we all have these memories that food somehow is involved.
Food has this unbelievable power to connect us to the past, to connect us to the people we love.
And that's why we have such fond memories of anything related to food and cooking.
And very early on, I was barely 15, 16, he put me in culinary school.
You had to be 18, 19.
You had to finish high school, but the good news was a private school.
They needed students that paid the fee.
I was tall, nice looking.
First year school, they put me in the school.
I didn't graduate from that school either.
Big.
Because it was very boring.
I mean, the school opened without the kitchen being finished.
And you know, when you talk about virtual reality and AI, I experienced the first virtual reality and AI because we had no kitchen and then cooking class will be, okay, people, so here we are going to cook gamba salajillo.
I'm like, okay.
Well, it was virtual.
You have this rim in front of you, check that they are good quality, and then we'll grab the imaginary shrimp.
And then I will get in trouble because I'll say, my shrimp is mel, teacher.
And they kick me out of class often.
And then I began going to restaurants because, you know, I kind of be like, you know, like, okay, Jose, you are born in the garlic.
I'm like, I didn't have the garlic yet.
What are you talking about?
And yeah, they kicked me out every single class out of class because they say I was making a mockery of the class.
But I'm like, well, the mockery is to be paying a fee and not having ingredients in a kitchen to cook in a cooking school.
I did because I already was young champion of Spain of a championship they did the Chain des Route Series, a French organization promoting cooking and I became champion of Spain.
I was barely 17th, 18th.
And I went to represent Spain to France in the finals and I ended second or third.
And so I already was a good cook.
I already was working in restaurants, one to Star Michelin, some of the best restaurants in Barcelona.
In El Buy, world famous best restaurant in the last hundred years of humanity with Ferran Adria.
I go to the military service.
I land in the Navy.
And what they put me?
They put me to cook with the Admiral.
And I'm like, really?
And I had other ideas.
When I was young, I saw a boat in Barcelona.
The boat was the training ship of the midshipmen of the Spanish Navy, the Juan Sebastian del Cano, the first man that finalized the circumnavigation of planet Earth.
Magellan began as the commander.
He died halfway through.
Juan Sebastian del Cano ended.
They named this boat after this man, four mast sailing across the world.
I wanted to go on the boat.
The admiral didn't let me.
No, you're cooking for me.
I'm like, holy cow.
So at the end, kind of I was so persistent that at the end he rolled his eyes one day.
He's like, you're a good guy.
I'm going to send you to the boat, but don't tell my wife, okay?
Because we're really happy with you.
And so one day, you right before, I still remember the scream, what are you doing?
Who do you think who you are, the Admiral?
Well, he was the Admiral, but he put me in the boat and I joined the military.
First time I saw the world beyond Europe, first time I saw Africa, Canary Islands, Latin America, the Caribbean, the United States, Germany, England.
First time I saw the world was because I was able to join that boat and travel around the world during six months.
So this is Endra Kitchen for me was, obviously in my restaurant, I fed the few, was great, bringing tapas to America.
Not bringing them, they were already here, but helping popularize more tapas in America.
Washington was very important.
We had La Taverna de la Labardero, the other Spanish restaurant.
But very quickly, obviously, I began partnering, volunteering in something called Share Our Strength, SOS, Bill Shore and Debbie Shore.
Bill Short retired from Congress, and he saw that in relationship to food, lobby and Congress was very important, and this for me was...
So I began volunteering with them the same croquetas my mom taught me how to make and making things out of leftovers and feeding a family.
All of a sudden I couldn't imagine that that same legacy my mom gave me.
Even I never really had a very good relationship with her for different reasons of mother and so on, and my mom probably needed I wish I knew what I know now so I could be there more for her as the older son, versus not understanding what she was going through.
Still, my mom was very loving and very giving, but the biggest legacy I realized besides she was always giving her love to everybody around and more even sometimes will be Dr. Jagil and Mr. Hyde.
That legacy of her maximizing, giving love to my brothers and I through the dishes she'll make and out of the leftovers is what I began doing with SOS.
All across poor neighborhoods and low-income family neighborhoods in Washington, D.C., I was helping with this program of Share Our Strength, how to help families learn how to cook, what to do with leftover, or how to maximize anything they will buy to do more with less.
This for me was the moment I saw food. as an agent of change and then is when I joined this Eccentra Kitchen because my partner Rob Wilder, the same guy that hired me to bring me to Halejo, he was the chairman of this Eccentra Kitchen and he said, I think with the work you're doing with SOS, probably you're going to enjoy even more this Isentra Kitchen.
I arrived to this Isentra Kitchen again as one more volunteer to one of the ships and 33 years later, in one way or another, I'm still part of this Eccentra Kitchen.
That's why sometimes when we go through these moments in life, sometimes it's equally important what you may be doing, but equally important of what you may be dreaming about doing and going through the process of learning what you could do.
And then one day, execute on that dream.
In Katrina, we saw what happened at the Superdome.
I'm not talking only New Orleans, I'm not talking Louisiana, I'm talking the Superdome.
And we left 10,000, 20,000 Americans forgotten for over a week.
Even with the great people of FEMA and the great people of the state and Red Cross and others, we left 20,000 people without food and water for over a week.
That moment for me was kind of very shocking.
I watched out of the comfort of my home, but they didn't move a finger.
But my brain began thinking what a cook like me could do, activating the network of chefs and restaurants.
At the end, America is a food country.
10% of the people live for work around food.
Directly, indirectly, everybody has a relationship with food.
Everybody knows something about food, or knows where to buy the food, or knows where the kitchen is, or knows where the water is, or knows where the gas is.
Bring all these people together.
We can feed anybody.
So New Orleans, they didn't move a finger.
But then is when I learned many other stories.
Across the street from Hallejo, probably none of you has visited, and I forgive you.
But the founder of the American Red Cross is where she had her house, an office.
Even she had another house in Baltimore.
Clara Barton herself is a woman that worked as a nurse like my mom was in the flying hospitals during the Civil War.
With an important role, is the woman that created the office of the Mississippi Aldiers, bringing closing to the families that they didn't know what happened to the loved ones.
The woman that created the American Red Cross.
A nurse like my mom, she was taking care of the few, but she created organizations to take care of the wounded.
You put that moment that for me was like, man, Clara Barton, you live in front of Jaleo.
Visit that mini museum because they will love your support.
And it's a beautiful story of America.
But with that idea, Katrina, the lack of response, even when you know that everybody wants to help, but sometimes we are highly unorganized in knowing how we can be efficient in the help.
Haiti happened?
That moment I was with Anthony Bourdain and Eric Rippert in Cayman Island, not too far away, and I was watching again, like I saw in Katrina, what the people in Port-au-Prince after the 2010 earthquake was going through.
I said, you know what?
I'm not going to watch dreaming and thinking that I could do something.
I'm going to go not to help, but to start learning what I could do.
And very much the beginning of World Central Kitchen, thanks to this central kitchen in many ways and Robert Erger, is when World Central Kitchen began on January of 2010 in the streets of Puerto Prince.
But does the government of the United States or the local government say, look, you're a private citizen, we're going to handle the problems of feeding these people?
Do they say, get out of the way, or do they say, thank you?
I like to scuba die, but you know, the long story short, obviously, Wall Centra Kitchen has become, I'm very proud that that happened right here in Washington, D.C. Right now we are, I don't know how many locations.
We're in Jamaica.
I think we reach 100,000 meals a day today.
We're in the Philippines.
We're in Brazil.
I think we are still, I don't know if we're still in Texas.
After the flooding, I don't know if we're still in Alaska because it was a typhoon that hit many of the natives in the southern part of Alaska.
For all of this, the president of the president of the United States gave you the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and it's widely rumored that you were likely to get at some point the Nobel Peace Prize.
So, you know, it's incredible, and you're still running your restaurant business.
And you can travel all over the world saving people's lives or I have good people that manage kind of my time, but I try to do what I like the most or what I think I can be the most helpful.
My restaurants have great chefs, great managers.
I used to be the CEO of my company.
I'm now the executive chairman, which is okay.
But I cannot be doing TV and running 48 restaurants and doing podcasts and spending time with you, doing your TV show.
That was Orlando, one of the best comic guys around.
He's one of the main guys.
I mean, if you go to Comic Con, I mean, he has, you know, 100,000 people waiting in line.
And Steve Orlando, he's amazing.
And he approached me one day, hey, I would love to tell a story about what you do.
And he came to one of the missions.
And after that, he said, we are going to be doing a comic book about Bolshendra Kitchen.
And at the end, when I saw the cover, he added my name to his name and to the guy that did the drawings.
But it's not really my book.
It's a book that is helping tell the story of Wolsendra Kitchen.
And Steve Orlando was so generous, used to make me believe that I was kind of the co-writer of the comic book because he knows I love comics.
I really love comics.
And manga.
I love manga and comics and cookbooks.
And yeah, we had this book, which is amazing, tells the story of the many people that they've been part of, Wall Sandra Kitchen over the last 15 years.
So every page almost you can spend one hour looking at it because it's very beautiful and tells you the story really of what the people of Wall Central Kitchen and the people that Wall Central Kitchen is helping go through.
You know, I love food that goes beyond restaurants, goes beyond food TV shows, goes beyond recipe books.
But I believe food very much.
It's one of the great opportunities we have to make the world a better place.
And I believe in policy and in good policy that then becomes good politics.
We are seeing right now what bad politics can create for America.
Republican or Democrats leaving 42 million people almost on the edge of being hungry.
I would say that's bad politics.
So in Vice President Biden's presidential campaign during the pandemic, I was given the amazing opportunity to be one-on-one with then Vice President Biden.
And we had maybe what was the first town hall ever in a presidential election where the issue was food, which, you know, I'm very happy.
And yes, the White House kind of led and where I was part an amazing conference on food from every angle.
When we talk about food, seems it's only in America will be through the Department of Agriculture.
And we began pushing the idea that food is so much more.
Food is national security.
Food is immigration reform.
Food is health.
Food is science.
Food is history.
Food is culture.
Food is a science.
And for me, it was amazing just to see that it's been pushes to make food not work in a silo within government, not only in America, but governments around the world, but make sure that food becomes part of housing and urban development, veterans, et cetera, et cetera.
So if all the departments work around the issue of food together, more better policies and better ideas can make many of the problems we face go away.
Why America, the richest country in the world, is many places that don't have a supermarket for many people that can buy a head of broccoli or some spinach.
Today in America is many places that people don't have access to those fresh fruits and vegetables.
And I do believe when that happens, it's a role of the government to provide for those people.
All of the both, because I've been saying for years, immigration reform is broken.
And we had Republican presidents trying to pass, and they didn't got help even from Democrats.
And I have Democrats will get upset with me for saying this, but it's true.
We had President Bush try to pass immigration reform and we didn't do it.
President Obama had the opportunity.
I love Hibas Obama Kerr.
Perfect or imperfect was better than what we had.
But I wish he passed immigration reform too.
How is it possible that we have one million dreamers that maybe they aren't born here, but they arrived here when they were in diapers?
They are as American as any American.
And still that million people are still on the edge, not knowing if they are going to kick them out tomorrow.
You may be a Republican or Democrat, but we're going to waste one million children of America that they are contributing to America.
It's crazy.
So we have, as we all know, an economy that is running on the shoulders of 11, 12 million undocumented.
That we need to do something about it totally.
That we need to protect the border totally.
That we need to know who comes into America 100%.
That we need to bring people that are the people that we need to cover the jobs that we need.
If we need nurses, let's bring nurses.
If we need people to take care of the golf courses, bring people that are experts on grass and et cetera, et cetera.
But obviously, especially not only the restaurant industry, but we've seen in St. Michael's, Maryland, people that they didn't produce more shock oysters because they had the people to shock the oysters.
Or people that didn't clean more crabs because we didn't have the crap pickers to clean them.
We've seen wineries that they are not producing more wine because they don't have the people to have the harvest.
The same is happening with a lot of farms across America.
So immigration is not a problem for America to solve.
It's an opportunity for America to seize.
I'm disappointed that since I arrived here, we've talked numerous times about immigration reform, but only serves for a fight, one hitting each other.
And still we have over 12, 13, 14 million people living in America that they've given their lives to America, that they are making America better, that many of them, believe it or not, pay taxes, even if maybe their social securities are not the right ones, that that's the other conundrum.
But they are paying those taxes and contributing to America.
So it's about time we fix immigration reform for the American business, especially the small, the farmers of America that have not enough employees to fulfill, especially for those people that are helping us make a better America.
I'm only thankful to America because I was given that opportunity, but I remember how I came.
And technically, they could kick me out because I came with an ETU visa.
The ETU visa was not for an employee, was for the guy doing the investment to open a restaurant.
Why they were giving the employees of the guys doing the investments?
Because they didn't have the system to give to the employees.
So shit, let's fix immigration reform once and for all.
I'm a Catholic Christian.
Sunday will ask for forgiveness, so sorry.
So let's make sure that immigration and immigration reform becomes a plus to America as America has been the home of immigrants since very much its creation.
Let's make sure that this dream that began in 1776 keeps moving forward two, three more centuries ahead.
But you know, I have a friend that always, when he goes a country and he's super invited by people, I'm not going to say who he is, but he always said, I have some virus in my stomach and I have a lot of allergies, so don't worry for me.
And then when the food starts coming, and he sees, you know, actually, my daughter recommended this.
And that's a good way to do it, you know?
And at the end, if everything is right, he ends eating everything.
And the guy's like, man, I thought you had a virus of flu.
No, but I felt so much better.
So it's good to, no, but listen, when people cook with love for you, it's great, but, you know, the dry turkey in Thanksgiving is used unnegotiably.
It's always dry.
And we are all big liars because I never heard anybody telling me my turkey was dry.
Everybody says, I had the best turkey ever.
And they're dying.
We are all lying.
But I guess, you know, it's fine.
I mean, especially Catholics, we're in good shape because we ask for forgiveness.
Sorry, I lied to everybody, but yeah, turkeys are so dry.
That's why gravy exists.
The issue is when the gravy is so thick, that it's so thick that it's drier than the breasts of turkey.
When they invite me one time to George Washington University to be the commencement speaker, and actually it was the first time anybody there to invite me to be a commencement speaker.
And was controversial because it's like, why?
Everybody has an actor and a president or a minister, a secretary.
So anyway, when I told my daughters, I was very happy.
Already the controversy was in the Washington Post.
And I was like, really?
I should do this?
But anyway, I was telling my daughters, yeah, they invite me to give this speech.
And my daughter said, my oldest daughter said, Daddy, are you sure that they invite you, they invite you to give the commencement speech or to cook for the graduates?
Well, Winston Churchill said that success was going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.
So yeah, my mom, my dad, so, you know, my daughters born and myself, whatever, doing event TV in Spain, which for them was.
So I think they're up there and they're proud.
I only wish I had much closer relationship after I left home.
But you know, I will keep going back, obviously, every year.
But I always felt like if anything, if any regret was not being even more connected.
Good thing is in the last years of the life, and in part, in a small part, thanks to my wife, I spent very good quality time as they already retired and they were getting older.
So at the end, you know, it's not so much what you read, but at the end, you hope that you ended in the best possible way anything, especially what has to do with your parents and relationships.
So yeah, I think they were annoyingly very proud.
Every time I went to visit, I will have to say hi to every single person they knew in the town they live 100 times.
Jose Andres and David Rubenstein viewed Catholic University's rare book collection.
This is actually from the papers of Bruce Moeller, who served in World War I with the U.S. forces and then worked with the American Red Cross to do aid relief in war-torn Eastern Europe at the end of the war, particularly doing food, but also heavily water relief in what's today Poland and what is Ukraine, particularly during the Polish-Soviet War of 1919, 1920.
So this is his passport and his Red Cross pass.
And this right here is his notebook where he was planning how to go about getting things like planning the logistical supplies.
He has drawings of his water pumps, all of that working throughout.
After the war, he actually then worked with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to found their Department of Immigration helping with refugees up through the 1960s.
So he continued to do a lot of this work for the next 40 years as well.
Welcome to the Oliveira Lima Library.
The home of Manuel and Flora.
And as I said, this library has been here 100 years.
It's 101 years old.
And then it's the collection of menus that I mentioned.
And here is one of my favorites.
It's actually the menu from 1915 that was on the boat that they came from England during First World War to Boston because he was a professor at Harvard.
And this is the dinner that they served on September 22nd, 1915.
It's really pretty and that's quite special.
The other one is that I thought you would enjoy seeing a chef from the time.
Yes, but you wouldn't guess when this is from.
This is from 1892 and that's the menu.
It's 31st of December, so it's New Year's Eve.
And I actually do not know where it is from.
So we would need to dig a little more about João d'Amata.
But it has some bad handwritten stuff.
I was excited and then Christmas dinner or something like that.
Yeah, so Janta is Portuguese, so it's a mix of languages.
Yeah, and then he said something about Natalino, which was Christmas.
So it's hard to tell, but it's really pretty.
The American Space Race Chronicles00:01:38
unidentified
See more with Jose Andres, including his historic cookbook collection on America's book club, The Treasures.
Available at c-span.org slash ABC and C-SPAN's YouTube page.
American History
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As the nation celebrates the 250th anniversary of its founding, join American History TV for its new series America 250 and discover the ideas and defining moments of the American story.
This week, watch reenactors in the American Battlefield Trust mark the anniversary of the Battle of Brandywine in Pennsylvania, a victory by British troops which led to the capture of the colonial capital of Philadelphia during the Revolutionary War.
We'll take a look at the history of the space program in Photos with Andy Saunders, author of Gemini and Mercury Remastered, which chronicles the Gemini, Mercury, and Apollo programs through the most famous photographs of that era.