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The Current Transcript for May 7, 2018

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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SOUNDCLIP

My staff they're saying you know what I was going to think you're nuts because we're mothballing these things I said I don't care if they're mothballed or not I need a tank. If you go to a knife fight, come with a gun. You go to a gunfight, come with a tank.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: At the height of Operation Medusa in Afghanistan, the biggest battle Canadian soldiers had fought since the Korean War, General David Fraser realized he needed the power and heft of tanks. Problem was, they were being decommissioned back home and to get what he needed, they literally had to pull one off a monument. Operation Medusa in September of 2006 saw Canada take the lead in trying to rout Taliban fighters from a strategic area known as The Panjwaii. It was brutal for an entire fighting company of Canadians that was strafed by the Americans and hundreds of Taliban were killed in fierce combat. Much has been written about what went right and what went wrong. But for the first time the Canadian in charge of the mission has written his account. Major General David Fraser opens up on Operation Medusa in half an hour. Also today, rethinking recipes and tinkering with tastes.

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It's actually kind of good. It's got like a tank taste I can actually smell, like, it's — I can smell it from about a foot away.

Have you ever thought of mixing coffee with your carrots and bananas with your jalapenos? The science of flavours suggests that’s what you should be doing. In an hour we'll hear from James Briscione, a chef who's spent years combing through data on the chemical compounds of food to find new ways to enhance what we eat. Hear him in an hour. Before we get to any of that we're in Saint. John, New Brunswick today where the waters of the Saint John River have been rising for a-week-and-a-half.

SOUNDCLIP

Every day gets a little harder to look at when you wake up and hope that it is going the other way and it never is. There’s only a couple of us on the street hanging in.

AMT: I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

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Segment 1: How severe flooding is affecting lives in New Brunswick

How severe flooding is affecting lives in New Brunswick

Guests: Mary-Catherine McIntosh, Joyce Cochrane, Mayor Don Darling

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VOICE 1: The water's gotten so high with the high winds that we've got buildings that are starting to go off their foundation and float down the river.

VOICE 2: You live your whole life to work and create a place where you can come home and rest and be safe. Just looking at the water you just feel like you’re losing that.

VOICE 3: The craziest thing is how fast it came up and cut people off. That's the unbelievable thing. A lot of people are chastising those that decided to stay. Well, there wasn't much of a decision because I saw it come up in just a matter of hours to a half-a-day and then people started getting cut off, couldn't get away and stranded. That's crazy.

AMT: Well, people living along New Brunswick’s Saint John River continue to battle historic floodwaters. The Coast Guard has mobilized along the river as residents wait anxiously to see how much higher those waters will rise. The newest threat, emergency officials are warning the floodwaters could be contaminated with sewage posing health risks. An estimated 80 roads and bridges are closed, even parts of the TransCanada Highway between Moncton and Fredericton are blocked off, and that means many people can only leave their homes by boat. And while at least 1,000 people have chosen to get out, many others refuse to go. CBC producer Mary-Catherine McIntosh is in Saint John today. Hi, Mary-Catherine.

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: Good morning.

AMT: What have you seen?

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: I have seen houses that looked like they were actually built in a flowing wild river. It's been a really windy weekend and that certainly hasn't helped, and in some places waves were actually crashing against houses. Listen to this water.

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SOUNDS OF FLOWING WATER

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: So, I actually recorded this standing in a person's driveway. And just to give you an idea of the strength of that flow, The fire chief in Oromocto said that there had been a huge motor home floating down the St. John River.

AMT: That rushing water sounds dangerous. How much of a threat is that to people's safety?

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: Aside from the current, there's also the possibility that the water is contaminated. And I was wading through waist deep water and my foot got caught. You can't see what's underneath you. So it seems very dangerous.

AMT: Now, we're going to talk to the mayor of St. John in a few minutes. But with all of that water and concerns over contamination in the water, what's your understanding of why there has not been a mandatory evacuation?

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: A lot of people have been wondering that because, again, it does seem very dangerous. But one thing that we have been told is that people really don't want to leave. So officials are reluctant to make them. On Friday night a local company sent a train in to rescue people in some communities and hardly anyone got on it.

AMT: OK, so what are people trying to do to save their homes?

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: Well, a lot of people are fighting very hard to save their homes with sandbags. And I saw a number of sites where people — and many of them were strangers — worked in a line, like factory workers, filling these bags, these are very heavy bags, and loading them onto trucks.

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FLOOD VICTIM: We're continuing to build them in case we have an issue with the causeway and the wind because we're getting kind of high water-wise.

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: It's totally backbreaking work and they are doing this for hours and hours. One house that I went to along the river in Burton, if you can just picture this, there was a wall about three sandbags high that was keeping that wild river from storming the house. And in some places that wall was just like a foot from their house. So there was like a narrow trench between the house and the sandbags blocking out that roaring river.

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: It sounds like everyone is in emergency mode.

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: Well, yes for sure. But also, something else really struck me, and that is that the flooding is isolated to certain low areas along the river. So while there is a desperate fight to save a house here, or a devastating scene of a home with really high water right up to the windows, just like two blocks away you wouldn't even know there was a problem if you didn't know where to look. On Saturday for instance, it was a beautiful day. It was very windy, but a really nice spring day. And I saw a realtor holding an open house just really close to that sandbag centre that we just heard. And I even saw a man watering his grass at a place where I think you could probably see flooded houses.

AMT: That's incredible.

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: Very striking.

AMT: Well, at the same time there are many houses destroyed despite all the sandbagging. What have you seen of that?

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: There are so many houses so badly damaged, and I imagine many are beyond repair. And that's what really struck me when I was with Tony as we waded through his yard waist deep. He and his neighbour were collecting as much as they could from the yard — things like a dog house or an exercise bike — so it wouldn’t flow into the river and crash into something. So Tony’s 76, he has a beard and a lot of the time he has a little cigar hanging out the side of his mouth. And he lives in this little white cottage right on the river. Just a beautiful spot that he's been tinkering with for 29 years. And his wife Dot left when the flood hit, she's staying with her sister and she saw their home in water on the television news. Here I am with Tony.

SOUNDCLIP

TONY: Actually it's hard to believe. The first thing that has to be done is the water has to go down and then you can start putting things back together. But until then there's not much you can do. We get we get the eagles, all kinds of eagles, the beavers breed over there, in the springtime you'll see them coming by. I finished the deck out there, it was just as it started to snow in December. I was just going to start it but then the weather stayed nice. It was raining that morning, Dot comes out and she’s sitting in the chair with her bathrobe on and an umbrella having her tea. And that was the one thing we really like.

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: So that was Tony in Saint John and he is not sure that he'll ever be able to live in this house again. And the saddest thing is just moments after he was reminiscing about all those hours spent out on the deck with a Dot, the deck started bobbing in the current and then broke away from the house and floated in the yard.

AMT: I should just say you can see some of Mary-Catherine's pictures on our website: www.cbc.ca/thecurrent. We've seen a lot of astonishing pictures from this flood, including of people traveling the roads in boats because they can't get in there any other way. Have you seen much of that Mary-Catherine?

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: I did. And I actually, like a lot of people, hitched a ride on one. And my tour guide 16-years-old AB A Boy Named Emeric Bonville, and he actually clipped a little motor to the side of his canoe to take me down to his neighbour's place.

SOUNDCLIP

EMERIC BONVILLE: We're looking at a road which is a driveway, a man's driveway, and it's about three feet underwater right now. If you look to your right we see houses in our subdivision.

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: What do you think when you see all this.

EMERIC BONVILLE: I'm thinking that's what it is. You know, we live close to flood zones, we live close to a river. I was kind of expecting it to do this, but not this bad. It’s quite insane honestly.

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: When we got there his neighbuor told us that we had just missed a beaver who had walked across his yard. So maybe that poor guy was a little confused. And I think other wildlife too, because when I was in another community I saw a duck floating in a woman's yard as she was watching her garage fill with water.

AMT: And what about Emeric, who was taking you around in the boat, has his home been spared?

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: No. His house was flooded and his dad, whose name is Simon, took me through the basement where there was eight inches of water. And for him the worst part is that he had just finished renovating it weeks ago. But you know what, amazingly, he said to me something that other people have said to me. These are people who are in the middle of a mess, like literally up to their elbows in this, and they've said to me that life could be worse.

AMT: That’s an amazing attitude in the middle of this, especially because it's going on for so long, a week-and-a-half the water keeps rising.

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: It's incredibly resilient and that's really struck me.

AMT: Mary-Catherine, thank you.

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: You're welcome.

AMT: CBC Radio producer Mary-Catherine McIntosh in Saint John today. Well in a few moments we'll hear from the mayor of Saint John, but first to another part of New Brunswick hit hard. Joyce Cochrane has lived on the shores of the Saint John River for more than four decades. She joins me from her home in Maugerville, which is southeast of Fredericton. Hi.

JOYCE COCHRANE: Hi. How are you today?

AMT: Well, I'm wondering how you are. What do things look like from where you are right now?

JOYCE COCHRANE: Well, the only way we can get to our house, we have a boat tied to our back steps. We can't get out, there's water all around us, but our main level is still good but we have a full basement of water and it's just like the Saint John River has produced on beyond our homes and everything like it's a big river now. The roads are all covered. You can't get through with vehicles or anything — it's all by boat now.

AMT: So when you when you look out your window what do you see?

JOYCE COCHRANE: All kinds of water. And the amount, like it's quite deep. I mean, we had a boat come into our dooryard yesterday right through the river. It came right to our front door brought us a Tim’s coffee. A young gentleman that lives in the area he brought — because there's three houses along here, there's people still living in them —myself and my husband and we have a neighbour in between us and my daughter lives on the other side, she's in her home. And they came in with Tim Hortons coffee for us, so we were quite pleased with that.

AMT: Well that sounds very nice. Your daughter is there with her kids?

JOYCE COCHRANE: Yes.

AMT: And none of you think you should leave?

JOYCE COCHRANE: No. We have a boat so we can get out if we have to. So there's no problem there.

AMT: So where is it in your basement?

JOYCE COCHRANE: It's about six inches from our floors.

AMT: And you've been watching it just slowly rise and rise?

JOYCE COCHRANE: Yes, it dropped a little bit overnight. It's down about two inches in our basement compared to what it was yesterday. But they're still saying we still could have a rise, yes. You know, it could be tomorrow before it peaks. I'm not sure, like we keep getting different information, but we don't have the fire department that stops in every day to check to make sure everyone's OK. And they've been phenomenal. I mean, they're wonderful, I mean, they've done so much for the people along here. They keep checking in and that, which is good, you know, because they keep an eye on everything and we're not that far from the ground that we can't go to dry ground.

AMT: That area Joyce, of Maugerville, was flooded in ‘73 in 2008. Again, how does this compare?

JOYCE COCHRANE: This is a totally different flood altogether. In ‘73 the water was up and back down again. ’08, it was up and down within 48 hours. This one here, this is ten days that the water has been over and had us barricaded in and we haven't been able to get out. And there's no reprieve, there's no going down, the water hasn’t dropped any — if anything it's risen. There's a lot of people that get water in their homes. In ‘73 we put our house up higher so we would not be in the water.

AMT: You actually moved it higher?

JOYCE COCHRANE: Yes. We had jacket it up and put it higher in the air. And it's the same with the two houses beside me. Their houses were up high in the air and it's going to take more water than what we've got now to force out because we can still live in it. We prepare every year for this, like we go out we buy bottled water, we buy groceries. When we think there's going to be a flood we just go and we get stocked up and we ready to hunker down because we just don't want to leave our homes because of an episode that happened here yesterday. There’s three guys that are going to court today. You had a house down the road, about six houses down, and he was in bed in some men came into his home, they thought it was vacant. We have looters trying to go through and steal and they caught them and they’re going to court for it. But things like that, you know, you don't want to leave your home because in ‘73 there was a lot of looting down through here — people losing stuff out of their homes. So a lot of people stay. The hardcore people are still here, the ones that have gone through all floods. Like my husband's parents was here in 1936, they lived here, this is the homestead. And that was a bigger storm than ‘73 like, you know, there was more water in ‘36 than there was ‘73. And this has surpassed ‘73 right now what we have. So it's quite a devastation but we'll get through it, we always do. We'll bounce back on our feet.

AMT: Well, I hope that happens fast. Thanks for speaking with me today.

JOYCE COCHRANE: OK then. And thank you so much.

AMT: Yeah. Well, you take care. Joyce Cochrane, long-time resident of Maugerville, New Brunswick and that's where she is not leaving, as you heard. For more on what to expect in the days ahead I'm joined by Don Darling, he is the mayor of Saint John, he's on the line with us. Hello, Mr. Mayor.

DON DARLING: Good morning, Anna Maria.

AMT: So what's the biggest challenge facing your city right now based on everything you've been seeing for the last week-and-a-half?

DON DARLING: Yeah, I think the biggest challenge is just expectations around, as your last caller said, this is not what we've experienced in the past where the floodwaters have come and gone and in a period of a few days. So we’re many days through the head of our EMO chief Kevin Clifford has been talking for many days now on if we're even halfway through. So we're expecting waters now to peak on Wednesday and they'll likely stay at the heightened level for a day or two and then there will be time for them to go back down and below the flood level. So resiliency, I guess, would be it would be the concern.

AMT: That's really unusual, huh? That it just keeps rising and rising?

DON DARLING: Right. Yeah, you know, look I've spent my whole life on the river and I've not seen anything like this. It has been a huge challenge for us, but what an incredible response, Anna-Maria. Our EMO folks have been working 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week, for the last while here under the leadership of Chief Clifford, all of our first responders. No one's been hurt, no one's been killed. The community has rallied like I've never seen. So it's been it's been very emotional. It's a strange clash between hope and grief.

AMT: Talk to me a little bit about water contamination, because you do have sewage now in that water do you not?

DON DARLING: We do, yes. So all along the river valley, Anna-Maria, we're having, as you can imagine, septic systems flooded. We're having, in some cases, municipal systems flooded. So the water is definitely a health risk. I was, this morning, chatting with someone who told me that they saw children playing in the water over the weekend. And I'm reminded of Mayor Nenshi’s comments, you know, I shouldn't have to tell people to stay out of the river. And so this is very serious, not only is the water extremely cold, it's running very quickly. It's very high. So in other words we have no idea what's happening underneath the water in terms of roads and infrastructure but we certainly should not be in the water exposing our skin to the water and so on.

AMT: And given all of that why hasn't there been an order of mandatory evacuation in any part?

DON DARLING: Yeah, look it's a great question. You know, all I'm going to tell you, Anna Maria, is when the head of our EMO, Chief Clifford, is a third generation fire chief who's got 40 years of experience and he's the man that I trust with his staff, his team, to make those calls. And he takes, very seriously, a mandatory evacuation, where you're going in and you're forcing people out of their homes. Now that doesn't mean, you know, the number one priority for us is public safety, that is really the focus — public safety. And we've been monitoring very, very carefully where we are and what risks exist on a really minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour basis. And the Chief feels that people should retain that right. What we've been doing, he's been setting the tone on messaging, I've been playing a role of repeating over and over and over again. And our message has been very consistent that the water is coming, the water is going to continue to rise, it's going to cause a lot of challenges for us and that people need to take that information and make the best decisions.

AMT: And for those who have chosen to stay, how quickly can they get out if they need help? How much help is there for them?

DON DARLING: We've done — our teams have been just absolutely incredible, Anna-Maria. In terms of innovation, we've built berms to protect, you know, sewage lagoons and key infrastructure. We built a road, we built up a road, which kept 800 people — kept the access open to their homes here we built that in an afternoon here a few days back. So the teams have been incredibly responsive, coming together like I have never seen, and not just our own teams, but the community has rallied. Again, as I say, that clash between crying with a homeowner in their yard and seeing a three-year-old, Anna-Maria, three-year-old Logan, who begged his mother for an entire day to bring him out to fill sandbags. So I think we're in pretty good shape if folks need to go out. You heard earlier about train evacuations. We have ATVs, we have multiple boats on the river. So I'm feeling pretty confident and I've not been told that we're pressured — if everyone wanted to come out at the same time that would cause a bit of pressure for us — but I'm feeling like we're in pretty good shape right now.

AMT: And are you getting enough help from the province and the federal government? I'm guessing you're already thinking about what needs cleaning up.

DON DARLING: So I break this down into three stages. You know, this is an unprecedented event for Saint John, for all of New Brunswick. The community has rallied. Yesterday we had probably more supplies and more volunteers than we could use. And then there's going to be a massive recovery stage. The province has been hand-in-hand with us, they’re a phone call away. And there has been a little bit of concern and I understand Anna Maria, it's a very, very emotional time fighting back this river with sandbag walls and trying to save one's home. There's been a tremendous devastation, I'm sure you've seen some of the pictures.

AMT: We have indeed. Mr. Mayor, we have to leave it there, we're out of time, but thank you for taking the time for us today.

DON DARLING: Thank you Anna Maria. Take care.

AMT: You too. Don Darling, mayor of Saint John, New Brunswick speaking to us from his city. As part of a project of adaptation on the current we've been looking at stories about flooding and adapting and how other cities are dealing with it. You can find links to those stories on our site: www.cbc.ca/thecurrent. Stay with us. This is The Current.

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Segment 2: The inside story of Operation Medusa, a pivotal moment for the Canadian military

The inside story of Operation Medusa, a pivotal moment for the Canadian military

Guest: Major General David Fraser

AMT: Hello, I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current. Still to come, you may know the combination of peanut butter and jelly, but would you believe there are a number of people out there who love peanut butter and pickle sandwiches. It all comes down to the science behind pairing certain ingredients. In half-an-hour chef James Briscione joins me for a crash course in the chemistry of putting ingredients together. But first, looking Operation Medusa in the face.

SOUNDCLIP

GENERAL DAVID FRASER: I am saddened to announce that four Canadian soldiers were killed today during today's operations and a number of others were wounded.

AMT: That was Canadian Brigadier General David Fraser on September 3rd of 2006, with some of the waitressed words a military commander ever has to utter. He was in the midst of leading Operation Medusa, the largest battle fought by Canadian troops since the Korean War. General Fraser was in direct command of some 2,000 coalition troops facing off against the Taliban in Afghanistan's volatile southern Kandahar province. He is a retired Major General now and looking back on that decisive battle in the Afghanistan war and some of the crucial lessons it can teach. General David Fraser has coauthored a new book entitled: Operation Medusa: The Furious Battle That Saved Afghanistan from the Taliban. And he's with me in Toronto. Hello.

DAVID FRASER: Great to be with you today. Thank you.

AMT: Take us back to the summer of 2006. What was the goal of Operation Medusa?

DAVID FRASER: The actual goal of Operation Medusa was not to lose. Because there is no such thing as a military solution in operations today, the only solution that there is is called a political settlement. So our job was not to lose, our job was to fight and to buy time. Kandahar is a historically significant part of the society. Panjwaii is a historically significant piece of ground that Afghans have been fighting on since Alexander the Great.

AMT: Now at the time the Canadian Forces were nearly two generations removed from combat experience. How did that fact shape your political and military thinking about Operation Medusa?

DAVID FRASER: Well, the challenge was the First Battalion Royal Canadian Regiment were combat inexperienced, this was going to be their first fight. But they worked their way through it, they established their reputation as fighters and we established the credibility with the Americans, we established credibility with NATO that Canada was back and Canada was capable of doing missions. And this was the most complex operation we had in our tour. And it was a seminal point in this campaign because the Taliban's behaviour changed for this battle and it changed after this battle.

AMT: You also allude, though, to an unwillingness of some coalition partners to fight.

DAVID FRASER: That was probably the biggest surprise and the biggest lesson out of NATO. So the Americans, I can only say great things about the Americans because they're very business-like, they will do their due diligence on you as they did on us. But in the end they are very business-like, they want to make sure that they win and we win together and we got the resources there. Great Britain was there when we needed them. There were other nations that were very reticent to come down.

AMT: Do you want to name who won't fight?

DAVID FRASER: I'll let politicians deal with that. But I would say that in the book you'll read what nations did come and fight, Great Britain, Canada, United States the Netherlands, the Dutch, the Danes — and who else wasn't there, well you can figure out who didn't show up and participate.

AMT: That grates, huh?

DAVID FRASER: I was angry. I was disappointed. The intensity, I think, is what really scared a lot of the NATO partners away. The top ten Taliban commanders came from five different provinces including Pakistan. They brought in 500 fighters. This was a conventional Cold War battle over a salt-river crossing into a prepared defensive position. This is not what we went to Afghanistan to do. We went to build a nation and fight a counterinsurgency, but not to do a Cold War attack. We weren’t set up for that and I think it scared off a lot of nations.

AMT: Well, let's talk about those circumstances. You and your — team the group you refer to as ‘The Posse’ — you've been working up this plan for months. Can you describe the circumstances under which you learned the battle was on?

DAVID FRASER: We learned the battle was on when the First Battalion of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, the PPCLI, under Ian Hope — we had been doing a lot of fighting. He was coming back and Panjwaii, we had always gone through Panjwaii for the six months earlier, and it was just a dust up we always knew we'd go in there. He went there in August and something had changed. And he got his troops got attacked and hit an IED, which was covered by fire. And just as soon as we heard it was covered by fire, that's a big change in tactics by the Taliban, and we knew something was different.

AMT: And OK, so in civilian speak, basically, they had IEDs and then as soon as they hit they ambushed you?

DAVID FRASER: They had never ambushed us before.

AMT: So you knew that their tactics were changing?

DAVID FRASER: Yeah, we knew the tactics had changed. And before that, you always — it's always about judgment and it’s about experience. And this was where, having a lot of experience on operations and good judgment, we all knew that something in our stomach was wrong, we could feel it. The intelligence was telling us things were changing on the ground. Our relationships with the governor and the local tribal leaders, they were really concerned and antsy. We had worked with the Afghan security forces, so we were building a picture that something was changing significantly and it kind of culminated in August that that change was, we found out the Taliban had moved in and changed their behaviour.

AMT: So Medusa gets underway and there is an attack on a strategic area with a very strategic building across the Arghandab River. So take us back to that day, how this starts, what happens?

DAVID FRASER: So we put our forces on the side of the Arghandab River, specifically because everything on the north side was bad. Charles Company attacks across the Arghandab River and they start doing the fighting. And initially it goes well, no issues. But the Taliban are smart and they get to a certain point and then the Taliban opened up on Charles Company and Charles Company now all starts taking casualties. Tragically, four soldiers were killed when the Taliban came across a casualty collecting point and they killed the two NCOs and two soldiers. And so the attack by Charles Company on that third essentially stops, they come across the river and we have to regroup and get ready to do it again.

AMT: So after the initial aerial strikes everything goes quiet and you send Charles Company over the river. The Taliban waits and then they attack, and now they're closer and you can't call in air support because they're too close.

DAVID FRASER: And that's just how good the Taliban are. The closer they can get you to them it nullifies their ability to bring in fire because of the danger of bringing fire to our own troops. And that's just the nature of close combat.

AMT: In retrospect, would you have waited and done more aerial bombardment? Wasn't the initial plan to do more aerial bombardment before sending the troops over that river?

DAVID FRASER: The plan actually called for more bombardment. What we have all learned after the fact is the bombardment was having no effect.

AMT: Because?

DAVID FRASER: Because they were so hunkered down in their bunkers and in their buildings or whatnot, that it was moving dirt around but it wasn't having as much of effect as we thought it could have had when we planned it weeks earlier.

AMT: So they were dug deep underneath those buildings and you just didn't know how deep they were dug?

DAVID FRASER: We didn't know how deep they were. We didn't know where they were hiding.

AMT: So you end up with Charles Company having a bigger firefight than you expected. A couple of days later, now let's talk September 4^th, because many Canadians will remember this. A U.S. A-10 plane strafes Charles Company. They kill one person, they wound 30 others of your troops, that basically took the company out of battle. What did that day feel like for you?

DAVID FRASER: I can remember every piece of that day. The attack was going to be 6:00 in the morning. At 20 minutes to 6:00 I was just walking out of my cabin and the door knocked, and it was my chief of staff. And when the door knocks at 20 to six you know you didn't win the lottery. it's just really bad He said “One killed, 34 wounded.” And I was stunned. And I went “What?” And he repeated it “One killed, 34 wounded.” And he said “How did it happen? Who did it happen to?” Charles Company, which is just again, just devastating, because they had the crappiest day in their life the day before, they lost four great heroes and now they just got hit again. And I said “How did that happen?” He said it was an American A-10 and it fired into Charles Company. And I was astounded. What was astounding was we purposely put all the friendly folks south of the river that separated the good guys from the bad guys and everyone on the north side of the river were the bad guys. But unfortunately the pilot became disoriented, saw a fire burning and it was a garbage fire and Charles Company's lines, thought that that was the enemy, came in, unloaded. As soon as he unloaded his rounds heard on the radio that he immediately knew he had made a mistake. And it was the forward observation officer on the ground screaming into his radio and waving off the number two A-10 pilot coming in to finish off the attack. And it was if it was not for that forward observation officer on the ground screaming at the guy to wave off this disaster could have been even worse.

AMT: Because there was literally another American plane ready to strafe again.

DAVID FRASER: Two planes always come in. The first guy comes in and drops bombs, second guy comes in and finishes it off and drops even more. It was just absolutely a nightmare.

AMT: In his book The Savage War, Murray Brewster, now with CBC News, goes to the Pentagon for the transcripts. When that bomb hits your company the pilot says splash.

DAVID FRASER: It was the second major friendly fire incident we had over there. And, you know, friendly fire, we talked about it before we went over to Afghanistan and you can deal with it, but when it actually happens to you and it's that big, it just it just sends a shudder through the whole organization. So Charles Company was completely decimated, gone. You know, there was nobody left and there was one female medic, who was an absolute hero that day for providing first aid and saving all those wounded from even further damage or death. And after that that's when I called David Richards and I said “Look, I need a pause.”

AMT: So you wanted a pause?

DAVID FRASER: We got a pause after that incident.

AMT: And I just want to clarify you say they were decimated — 30 injured. How big was Charles Company?

DAVID FRASER: It's about 140 people but all of the commanders in Charles Company were gone.

AMT: Wounded.

DAVID FRASER: So the company commander was gone — everybody was gone. So we had to reconstitute that entire company and the company itself had been so shaken by two major incidents that they were no longer combat effective. So this was a major reset for Medusa.

AMT: And David Fraser, you are clearly still moved by what happened to Charles Company as you tell me this story.

DAVID FRASER: Who wouldn't be? I mean, these are my guys and gals. And it was just a tragic event. And at the same time, we had the biggest battle in our lives and we couldn't lose this battle. This is where you have to balance the mission and your people. And my people, at this stage the game, needed our full and undivided attention to take care of the people. So we're taking a pause, we're going to take care of our people. We're going to figure out what we're going to do next and then we're going to go back on to the mission.

AMT: Well, let's talk about as you continue the mission, at several points in the book you describe breakdowns in what seemed like basic military logistics. How is it possible that you ran out of artillery ammunition?

DAVID FRASER: It was 25 millimetre ammunition that we were running out of. My morning routine was my war cabinet would get together, my coalition partners, and we would have a talk. Then we’d get the intelligence briefing and then I have an operations briefing. Part of that operations briefing, the two pieces that took the most time to get through was A: The weather and B: Logistics. And ammunition expenditure reports are critical. There's no Wal-Mart. There's Canadian Tire, you just don't go out on the road when you need something to go buy it, you've got to go back to Canada to get it. And we had a problem with our reporting, that some people didn't put in the ammunition expenditure reports. And so I was getting false numbers every morning of how much ammunition that we thought we had. What I was getting was a false picture.

AMT: So you actually had to kind of pull back a little bit on the use of ammunition? You had to go all the way to New Zealand, you found ammunition in New Zealand?

DAVID FRASER: Yeah.

AMT: We didn't know that.

DAVID FRASER: There was a lot of people that didn't know that — it wasn't just the average Canadian. Tim Bishop, who was my head of operations, so he walked into my office and I can still recall and he said “We're 20 minutes away from running 25-millimetre ammunition.” I went “How can we be? Because this morning I had like three weeks of it and now you're telling me minutes away.” And he said “Garbage in, sir, garbage out. I apologize, but that's where it is.” So I went into the office and I got on the radio and I said “Slow down. We've got a problem with ammunition. I don't have anything to push to you.”

AMT: But you said slow down, like don't shoot?

DAVID FRASER: We had just to change all our plans slow down because we had to now start managing ammunition, which we thought we had a lot of, we didn't have a lot of. So here's the other part of the story. At the time were firing 25-millimetre ammunition and we went in theatre. The Americans were firing it, the Dutch were firing it — everybody in the world firing this ammunition either in Iraq or Afghanistan and it wasn't readily available. And again, this is where I go back to the men and women back in Ottawa, and I just can't say enough about the support we got back out of Ottawa. They found me ammunition — but it was in New Zealand.

AMT: You also come to the realization that tanks would have made a big difference in the battle. You asked for tanks, what happened?

DAVID FRASER: By the time we got to September of 2006, the Taliban had figured out ‘Hey we're going to nestle into buildings near civilians or occupy buildings with civilians.’ So I couldn't use bombs anymore.

AMT: So you needed a conventional piece of fighting machinery?

DAVID FRASER: I needed precision, I needed precision that had a small enough effect that would deal with the bad guys I wanted without destroying the livelihood of the Afghans where we would have disenfranchised and lost their support. So the only thing in their inventory that could do that was a tank.

AMT: But your bosses had started to mothball tanks?

DAVID FRASER: Yeah. And the other thing too, is if you go to a knife fight come with a gun. You go to a gunfight come with a tank. I used to tell him way team don't go in there to win 3-2 — go in there to win 15-nothing — overwhelm the enemy. The tank was a psychological weapon. It also provided me with the precision I needed. At the same time I'm thinking about this and talking to my staff, they're saying you know “Ottawa’s going to think you're nuts because we're mothballing these things.” And I said “I don't care if they're mothballed or not, I need a tank.”

AMT: You need how many tanks?

DAVID FRASER: I wrote a letter about it to Rick Hillier and I asked for a troop of tanks with some spares and whatnot. And he wrote back — it's kind of like “Dear Dad, send tanks.” And the letter metaphorically came back, “Dear Dave, you didn't ask for enough, and here’s a whole bunch more.” And just the fact that we did that sent a message through the entire coalition that Canada, we weren’t screwing around here, we’re dead serious.

AMT: Well, in your book Sergeant Bill Irving, the tactical commander of the operation, is quoted as saying “The forces resorted to pulling Leopard tanks from monuments that they'd been retired to.” Can we assume he's exaggerating?

DAVID FRASER: No, no, no.

AMT: You pulled tanks off monuments?

DAVID FRASER: Yeah.

AMT: How many?

DAVID FRASER: Oh, I know of one for sure, that they just put it on a pad and they pulled it off the pad. And they brought it back to serviceability and whatnot.

AMT: But let me ask you, you are retired from the Canadian military now, but what does it say about Canadian military planning that an essential need was not identified until the battle was almost over? And then that what you needed was on a monument?

DAVID FRASER: The Canadian Armed Forces are the best planners I know. But Medusa was the largest battle that NATO ever had, Canada's ever had. And it was not the mission or the battle that we thought we were in to go into when we went to Afghanistan. So the flexibility of mind, our planning capability, was flexible enough that we could actually adjust and win. And they adjustment was we need tanks. Canada sent tanks.

AMT: You don't talk about prisoners in the book. You took prisoners, didn't you?

DAVID FRASER: Detainees were something that consumed my daily routine throughout the whole mission. We had a detainee agreement that was signed between the Afghans and General Hillier. I had people specifically designed to do nothing else but track detainees. I had lawyers that only focused on detainees. It was a big issue, OK. The fact that is known in the book is not a function that it's not important. This consumed me every day. Every time somebody was detained the clock started. And the clock was, where were they detained? OK, We have to hand them over to the proper Afghan authority. We have to assure nothing bad is going to happen to them. They have to be medically taken care of. You know, our military police are involved. I had people supervising and watching this. We never turned them over to any of the other nations who had prisons over there. No, this was a Canadian to Afghan relationship.

AMT: Well, I'm asking because you know that since then — we know that some detainees who were turned over to the Afghan authorities were subjected to torture. We know that under international conventions, you handing them over to a third party can leave your own soldiers vulnerable to charges down the road, if those that other party does something. So you say it consumed you every day. How worried were you that you could be putting your soldiers in a position where something could come back and bite them?

DAVID FRASER: These are things that you have trouble sleeping with at night and making sure that have I done everything in my power to make sure that I never put one of my men or women into a position where they could actually end up being in front of a criminal trial, international tribunal or whatnot. When I was in Sarajevo in ’94-’95, I spent the next 11 years in the Hague testifying against war criminals.

AMT: So you knew the rules?

DAVID FRASER: I knew the rules. I mean, I never wanted to go and become a war criminal. I mean, I followed the rule of law. That's just what you have to do. So detainees are one of those slippery slopes that you've got to watch. And we're also not talking about you know a country, because Afghanistan of that time was only five years old, from a systemic institutional point of view. And let's go back, not everyone in the Afghan hierarchy was trustworthy and I wasn't going to give them to them. So I spent most of my time trying to find out who in the Afghan community I could trust that were not going to go and torture anyone. And I spent five days getting ready to go in front of a parliamentary committee where people were trying to accuse me of doing something wrong and I'm going “Stop. Let me just tell you. Everybody knows Dave Fraser, everybody knows anyone who was working with me, nobody was going to break the law on this one. There was nobody who is going to hand over an Afghan who we knew was going to get tortured. And any of those allegations we certainly would have run down and we did during my mandate. You know, no one's presented any evidence during my time I was there, any of my men or women or any of the detainees that we had were abused because we wouldn't have done it. And I'm on record of saying that and this is just one of those things that —you can be the best person over a 30-year career, and have the best track record on operations and whatnot —you screw up one detainee it's all gone.

AMT: Operation Medusa happened nearly 12 years ago. How might that battle inform the upcoming Canadian mission to Mali?

DAVID FRASER: This was about talking, this was about building. What we brought to this conflict was a multicultural, multi-ethnic, whole of government, Team Canada approach. So when we go to Mali, let's take that whole of government approach, it's all of the stuff that we've done in Afghanistan. You can apply the same template to our U.N. mission.

AMT: So do you support the Trudeau government's choice to go to Mali?

DAVID FRASER: Yeah, absolutely. I think it could be a lot more coherent in its packaging, in its messaging, how we're going to go about it. Right now it seems very penny-packeted it seems very military and it's not in keeping with the totality of what Canadians are. Coming out of Afghanistan how we had a whole of government approach, why are we not deploying that in a more cohesive fashion where you take the helicopters the C-130 Hercules aircraft, put some CIDA in there put some foreign affairs in there. It's our number two bilateral relationship. We've got people that have been in this country for tens of years. There's an awful lot more we could probably do with this.

AMT: So you're telling me that in the planning for Mali, we're not learning yet from Afghanistan, in your view? We have more to learn.

DAVID FRASER: I'm just suggesting that we probably could look at the lessons what Operation Medusa and what we learned out of our 12-14 years in Afghanistan and we could actually apply that to every other mission that we go around the world including Mali.

AMT: David Fraser, we're going to leave it there. Thank you for your time.

DAVID FRASER: Thank you very much.

AMT: Canadian Forces retired Major General David Fraser. He was the commander of the multinational brigade for Regional Command South in Afghanistan's southern province in 2006. Major General Fraser is the author, along with Brian Hannington, of Operation Medusa: The Furious Battle That Saved Afghanistan from the Taliban. Let us know what you think of he had to say about that operation. Find us on Facebook. Tweet us at @TheCurrentCBC. Go to our website: www.cbc.ca/thecurrent. And stay with us in our next half-hour, big change of topic, better cooking through modern science. Chef James Briscione joins me to talk about unlocking the flavour matrix. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

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Segment 3: The molecular approach to cooking

The molecular approach to cooking

Guest: James Briscione

AMT: Hello, I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and this is The Current. Some flavors just go together. Think tomatoes and cheese with a little basil and garlic — a mainstay of Italian cuisine that makes the most water just thinking about it. Or that staple of English tea time strawberries and cream. It's not just centuries of tradition and fond memories that make certain ingredients pair so well. There is a happy marriage happening at the molecular level as well, because when it comes down to it everything we eat can be understood in terms of its chemical compounds. And understanding what those compounds are, and how they interact, may be just the key to unlocking great taste. Scientifically American chef James Briscione explores this idea in his cookbook called The Flavor Matrix: The Art and Science of Pairing Common Ingredients To Create Extraordinary Dishes. He shows why traditional combinations work. But he also finds all sorts of more unusual ways of putting foods together based on their underlying chemistry. Chef Briscione is standing by in New York City but we're going to start with a little taste test. Our producer Alison Masemann cooked up one of his recipes and tested it on some of our colleagues here at the CBC.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: It looks like a piece of chicken.

VOICE 2: With a sauce that looks, I suppose, not unlike a grainy maybe mustard, although not super mustardy in colour.

VOICE 3: So I'm going to try it now. I can actually smell, like it's — I can smell it from about a foot away. It's actually kind of good. It's got it's like a tangy taste.

VOICE 4: Mmm. Very nice texture. Not sure about the sauce. What it's made out of. Maybe some avocado.

VOICE 5: It's very, like, spicy like a goof tzatziki almost.

VOICE 6: I know I'm wrong on this. I'm thinking artichoke.

VOICE 7: Garlic. It's really it's a mystery. Is there cilantro? But I don't taste cilantro. I'm just trying to think what makes it green.

VOICE 8: It's got a garlicky flavour but it also has a savoury sweetness to it as well.

VOICE 9: Yeah roasted red pepper. It's kind of like mayonnaise based. I don't know what else it could be.

AMT: OK, well I have the very same dish in front of me. It is a pale green sauce on chicken and I'm going to try it. OK, James you know what I'm eating. Can you tell me what it is?

JAMES BRISCIONE: I know exactly what you’re eating. That was a lot of fun to listen to. Lots of great guesses. All just incredibly wrong. That is a hot sauce made with bananas.

AMT: Bananas?

JAMES BRISCIONE: Bananas and chili peppers.

AMT: That's an interesting combo. Is that a scientific combo?

JAMES BRISCIONE: It is. So when we are able to — you know I think you summed it up perfectly there in the introduction — in just that when we understand the chemical compounds that create flavours in foods, we can find all kinds of new and exciting ways to combine them. And one thing about chili peppers, these hot peppers in general, is that they have these really phenomenal fruit aromas, really really, big, powerful fruit aromas, but they're often just so lost because of the heat and because they're so hot or so spicy, they just kind of blow out your taste buds and you don't get the opportunity to really enjoy those flavours. But when we bring in some more fruit and something else and a little bit of sweetness to kind of mellow down that spiciness, then all of those fruity aromas really are able to come forward and they combine just incredibly well. So, as a chef, I want to land at that place where you go ‘Oh, wow that's really good. But what the heck is it? I don't know what that was but I like it.’

AMT: Well, let's listen to how our taste testers reacted when they heard about the ingredients in the sauce.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Bananas, get out? But yeah, that kind of makes sense.

VOICE 2: I don't taste bananas. I hate unripe bananas. I know the taste very well and I don't taste it.

VOICE 3: That explains everything. That explains it. That is what — that is the consistency.

JAMES BRISCIONE: We're putting together things that I would never have thought that would work.

AMT: So while they were talking I had more.

[LAUGHTER]

AMT: Is this something you would have tried as a chef before you started exploring the idea of how chemical compounds in foods go together?

JAMES BRISCIONE: No, I don't think so. I don't think I ever would of landed here at that specific combination. You know, there might be a recipe somewhere where yeah there's a banana and a chili pepper component, but making them kind of the focus of a recipe like this is never something I would have kind of landed at without being able to see that sort of invisible connection that the aromatic compounds make with those ingredients.

AMT: So explain it to me a little more. What is the science behind why those ingredients go so well together?

JAMES BRISCIONE: So every ingredient is — all the flavour in food comes from the chemical compounds in the food, the aromatic compounds. And it’s those compounds that dictate the flavour in all of our favorite ingredients. So when we find matches between those chemical compounds in different ingredients we can predict, pretty accurately, that they're going to taste good when we combine them in a dish. Often in so many ingredients here — we're talking about hundreds of different compounds that make up the flavour of a single ingredient. So only a few of those are you going to detect just by smelling it. The rest are there and making up the flavour and contributing to the flavour but they're not easily detectable just by the nose. So we use a little bit of science we find out what all of those compounds are, and it's really those underlying compounds that create some of the most interesting combinations.

AMT: So how do we know what compounds are in a particular food in the first place?

JAMES BRISCIONE: It's all done through some pretty extensive research. The information exists a lot, it’s just never really kind of been in the world of chefs and it hasn't often crossed over into the kitchen. It's something that flavour scientists and the people who create a lot of different foods as scientist have studied forever from the very beginning; they've been doing this for many, many years. But we chefs, we haven't really had this information. It all comes from academic studies of different ingredients, gas chromatography is done, it breaks down the ingredient and then sort of distills out to find all of the different compounds that are present in a single ingredient. And then there's some databases of all that information that exist that are easily, not so easily, but are searchable and allow us to access that information.

AMT: Tell us a bit more about the database?

JAMES BRISCIONE: So there's actually two that I worked out of in creating the flavour matrix. The one is the Volatile Compounds in Food database, or the VCF, that's based in the Netherlands. It's a private site, so you have to pay to be a member to access all this information. There's also another one that's Canadian based. It's called The it's called the FooDB and that lists all of the components in common ingredients. Both the aromatic ones, the ones that are contributing to flavour, and the nutritional ones of the different proteins and sugars and carbohydrate and different things that exist.

AMT: You make a distinction between the flavour of a particular food and the taste of the food. Can you explain the difference?

JAMES BRISCIONE: Yeah, I think it's really important when we think about cooking and foods and how we combine them to have those differences in mind. And there are really two words that we, often, in kind of in common language used very interchangeably — taste- flavour — we don't make many distinctions between them but they actually come from different places. Taste comes from the tongue flavour comes from the nose. And when you take a bite of food about 80 per cent of what you're perceiving in that bite of food is actually coming from the nose — that's flavour. 20 per cent comes from the tongue and then all of your other senses sort of sort of kick in a little bit of information as well to round out the picture. But really when we talk about taste, taste this is only what's detected on the tongue and that's — right now, we only know really six things that are detected on the tongue: sweet, sour, salty, bitter and then savoury or umami and fat.

AMT: So flavour really is how something smells or it's a little more complicated?

JAMES BRISCIONE: It comes from aroma, yes, absolutely.

AMT: What does it mean if two foods contain the same flavour compound, do they taste similar?

JAMES BRISCIONE: Not necessarily. So there's lots of, I mean, obviously — through all my research we never found a definitive number, or even a good solid range on how many different compounds there are, but many thousands of compounds exist. So you're often going to find many different aromas that combine to make up the flavour of the food. I like to use the analogy of it's like pixels in a photograph. You know, you might have a picture of outer space and if you zoom in far enough right at the edge of the star you're going to see a little pink and green squares that are making the colouring of that star and then you zoom back out you would never know that there's any pink or green in that photo but then if you took those little pink and green squares away the larger photo wouldn't quite look right anymore, the image would have changed. So even though we don't necessarily perceive them there are lots of different compounds. Again, with the strawberry, you know, one of my favorite examples. Actually, one of the most prominent aromatic compounds in the strawberry, if we isolate it and smell it on its own, it smells like toasted bread. You would you would never smell that in a strawberry just by slicing into it and smelling it, but that is one of the key components of the flavour of the strawberry. If you took that away strawberries wouldn't taste the same.

AMT: So is that why is that why we like strawberry jam on toast?

JAMES BRISCIONE: Exactly. Or in a croissant, those buttery toasted aromas are actually there in the strawberry even though we don't necessarily recognise them, our bodies are still detecting them and it's something that leads to a great combination like strawberry jam on toast or a croissant.

AMT: So what are some of the more surprising examples of foods that share flavour compounds?

JAMES BRISCIONE: Well, I think, you know, the chili peppers bananas is a great one. Strawberries and mushrooms, blueberries and horseradish.

AMT: Blueberries and horseradish? OK.

JAMES BRISCIONE: That's actually a favorite of mine and we've played with that one a number of different ways. I had a friend who just recently made an incredible blueberry and horseradish cocktail, which was really delicious. Coconut and green vegetables in general, so coconut and asparagus, coconut and green peas. Coconut is not normally a flavour or an ingredient we think of in springtime. But as we go into spring here with asparagus and green peas coming out coconut’s a really nice match for those.

AMT: So if we think some of the classic combinations, such as tomatoes garlic and cheese, what does science tell us about why that works?

JAMES BRISCIONE: Well there are compounds that tie those ingredients together as well. So in the book when we first try to explain this idea of the flavour pairing theory and that when ingredients share compounds they tend to taste together, right. And I think a great place to start, one that everyone knows and loves, is a compound called 4-Methylpentanoic acid. On its own it smells slightly floral and it's not a super distinct smell on its own, but we find it in tomatoes and we find it in cheese and in baked wheat. So it's the compound of pizza.

AMT: So there you go. That tells us everything. How much of this has to do with what our taste buds get used to?

JAMES BRISCIONE: That kind of gets more into general perception and what we find pleasing and appealing. There is certainly familiarity and, I mean, I think we see that easily in different cultures. Hence there are certain foods that exist in different cultures that many people go ‘Oh my gosh how could anybody eat that?’ But when you've grown up with it and been sort of trained on it you certainly develop tastes for them. So taste and flavour preferences are certainly learned behaviours as well.

AMT: So some of the combinations you suggest in your cookbook might be unfamiliar to some people but more familiar to a particular culture? And so, in a way, as you do this are you trying to break down cultural biases?

JAMES BRISCIONE: Yeah, certainly and I think one thing you definitely see is so much of what we consider kind of the classic flavour combinations. They've been around for hundreds of years and they all started because that was just what people had around. In the research we found that the flavour of olive oil is actually more compatible with apples than butter is, but butter comes from climates where apples tend to grow well, they tend to produce in the same place. You're not going to find apples and olives growing anywhere near each other so they're not often found in recipes. But we did some dishes cooking apples and olive oil. They're absolutely phenomenal.

AMT: Well, I want to ask you about your early experimentation with flavour compounds. Tell me about your work with IBM’s Artificial Intelligence Program, Chef Watson. What were you doing?

JAMES BRISCIONE: Yeah, and that is where this all began for me. Even really the introduction to this concept of flavour pairing, it's a very new idea, it's only been around you know first started with Heston Blumenthal about 20 years ago. So IBM had conquered how to answer any question with Watson on Jeopardy. And they're very proud of that and it’s very impressive and it was a great display of what their competing system could do. They decided next they wanted to see if a computer could help people be more creative. And they thought that cooking would be a great place to start that lots of people would be interested in and you could really kind of experience the results in an interesting way. So my role as director of culinary development at the Institute of Culinary Education here in New York City, IBM actually came to us at ICE and said “We've got this idea, what do you think about it? You want to throw some of your chef knowledge behind it?” And so we met with the team and I was very skeptical that a computer could possibly tell me something about cooking that I didn't already know, I'd been cooking for 15 years and it we're talking about a thing that doesn't have hands, doesn't have a nose, doesn't have a tongue. How could a computer possibly know more about cooking than I do? So I went in kind of with this attitude that I'm going to beat the computer in this. From day one in the kitchen Watson would give us just the lists of ingredients. Watson understood recipe structure and we would tell it what type of dish we wanted to make. And Watson knew from reading hundreds of recipes for that style of dish what ingredients were typical. And then it would combine flavours based on the flavour pairing theory and say “OK, here are the ingredients that can you can use to make this dish. If you do it right they will taste good together.” And Watson would kind of sort out those ingredients so that it was selecting ingredients that very rarely appeared together in other recipes. So often we were creating a dish with a set of ingredients that we could really pretty confidently say no one had ever made a dish like this before.

AMT: So you and Chef Watson concocted a fish and chips dish, which was served from a food truck at the South by Southwest festival. We have some tape. This is a clip from IBM of some of the customers.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: It seems like something really interesting.

VOICE 2: I really don't know.

VOICE 3: This appears to be tofu but let me see.

VOICE 4: Definitely fish.

VOICE 5: Coriander.

VOICE 6: Maybe a little fennel.

VOICE 7: Plantain chips.

VOICE 8: Other than that I'm not 100 per cent sure.

VOICE 9: I didn't expect that much flavour.

VOICE 10: Yeah potentially coconut.

VOICE 11: It’s paired really well. It’s also a really interesting take on fish and chips. Never would've thought that.

AMT: OK, they're kind of clueless like our first taste testers, they don't know what they're doing there. How did that fish dish come together?

JAMES BRISCIONE: So that was a collaboration with Watson. So Watson gave us a list of ingredients and, again, the interesting thing with working with Watson and one thing that really kind of changed the way I cook myself, and the way I approached the creative process, was Watson thought about ingredients in categories. It knew that for fish and chips recipe it needed a vegetable that was starchy that could be fried. It didn't have to be a potato. So that's how we landed with a plantain for the chip component of it. And then it knew you needed components for the sauce, it needed components for a batter, it needed components for seasoning of the fish. And we kind of wound up with this wildly tropical take on fish and chips that again, people often made the argument against working with Watson, like how could it be making you more creative, it's telling you what ingredients to use. It put you in this box with these ingredients and said this is it, now figure something out. So often for me as a chef kind of in the creative process you get lost in just trying to pick the ingredients and decide which ones and you have a oh I love this combination and then you start going down that road and then you go, oh well what about this ingredient I love that. And you run in circles for a while trying to find just the right ingredients to even use in the dish. And then often you can kind of land in that spot of decision fatigue where you spent so much time and mental energy picking the ingredients that you don't have a lot of creativity left for how to actually use those ingredients.

AMT: Well so science and cuisine has also brought us what is called molecular gastronomy, creating dishes with flavored foams and gels. How do you respond to critics who say that sort of thing is gimmicky?

JAMES BRISCIONE: Well, it can be. I'll agree with them. It can be, but it doesn't have to be. Molecular gastronomy really is just the study of food and the physical and chemical changes that happen during the cooking process, which, you know, understanding that can make anyone a better cook. But often you know lead us to a number of discoveries of things like spearification and making little gel pearls out of all kinds of different ingredients and making all different forms of foam. And there are a lot of people who did it very poorly and gave it a very bad name. And there are some people who did it really, really well, and I think some people who continue to do it really, really well. And when done right it truly enhance a dish. But I think many people have learned that technique and are like oh I can't wait to just show this off and put foam on everything — and foam doesn't belong on everything.

AMT: The French molecular physicist Hervé This has taken this idea a big step further than you have. He's proposing something called note-by-note cooking and he's suggesting that by using pure compounds, protein, starch, flavour compounds, we can make dishes that taste great. Listen to how he explains it.

SOUNDCLIP

HERVE THIS: you have a powder. This powder has all the nutrients to make food. So you have some solids and some liquids and now you make food by not cooking, no meat, no vegetables, no fruits, no fish, no eggs. Only compounds and you make the dish.

AMT: James Briscione, is that actually food?

JAMES BRISCIONE: I mean, it's something that you would eat that has flavour. It's a really it's a it's a fascinating idea. You know, putting it into practice could be challenging, but I've talked with Herve over this before and we talked about the database so we know all of the chemical compounds that create the flavour of any ingredient. So theoretically we could recombine just those compounds and then add the right water and protein and starches and carbohydrates to them and create something from just the base ingredients that taste just like the original.

AMT: You could use that on a trip to Mars when you don’t have a lot of space. Where does all the food science leave intuition or feel? What role does that play in our cooking or should it play?

JAMES BRISCIONE: It should play a big role. You know, my idea with the book The Flavor Matrix is to give chefs and cooks and anyone really, just sort of another tool, another way to think about ingredients. So much of what we know about flavour combinations or just learned from previous experience, but the science of it, looking at the actual compounds and learning that way is another way to find those connections between ingredients. So I think for chefs, for home cooks, for people who are sick of the same ingredients every week and are ready to try something new in The Flavor Matrix you can flip open to the page on zucchini and find all the ingredients that match well with zucchini and say oh well I've got that zucchini recipe I love but maybe I'll make it again and add this into it and get a whole new experience out of kind of an old favourite.

AMT: How has your foray into the world of flavour compounds changed the way you approach cooking day to day?

JAMES BRISCIONE: It's made me a lot more thoughtful about how about how I combine ingredients and really, how I approach the process of cooking. The creative process usually for a chef is sort of a word association. You know, you say it's spring right, so I think crawfish. And immediately I start thinking of all the other spring ingredients that go with crawfish and peas and asparagus and fresh farm eggs and then these types of things. But instead I think about the compounds or the flavours that make up the taste of the crawfish and what goes well with them and then the other ingredients that that contain them. In The Flavor Matrix you could look through and know that crawfish and lemon is a great combination. So we want to think about all of the ingredients that have citrus aromas in them. It's lemon grass and Szechuan peppercorns and coriander seeds and these all have big powerful citrus aromas that now I can start thinking about adding these ingredients that I would never necessarily make that primary connection if I were just thinking about them to say crawfish. You know, that's to me where things get really interesting.

AMT: Well, I think you've got us all hungry. So thank you for that.

JAMES: BRISCIONE: I hope so.

AMT: Thanks very much.

JAMES BRISCIONE: Thank you.

AMT: James Briscione, chef and culinary instructor based in New York City. With his wife Brooke Parkhurst, he is the author of a new cookbook. It is called The Flavor Matrix: The Art and Science of Pairing Common Ingredients To Create Extraordinary Dishes. That's our program for today stay with Radio 1 for q, with guests including Alan Doyle, Rose Cousins and Classified all fresh from the East Coast Music Awards in Halifax. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti, thanks for listening to The Current.

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May 7, 2018 episode transcript

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