KAYTE YOUNG:  From WFIU in Bloomington, Indiana, I'm Kayte Young, and this is Earth Eats.

FERNANDO CARVAJAL:  You know, you'd wake up the day before, in the morning, and there was grandma already in the kitchen. You'd just get the smells, the aromas of the garlic and citrus from the mojo, and it just kind of ingrained in the memory of sitting there with my grandma while she was preparing it, and just talking.

KAYTE YOUNG:  This week on the show, we dive into a family recipe from Cuba, with producer Alexis Carvajal. And producer Daniella Richardson reviews the critically acclaimed show, all about kitchen culture, "The Bear." Plus, are you wondering what to bring to your solar eclipse viewing picnic? We've got ideas and an original recipe for some special eclipse cookies. All that and more is just ahead, so stay with us.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Earth Eats producer Alexis Carvajal grew up in Fort Wayne, Indiana, but her family's roots on her dad's side reach back to Cuba. She recently set out to learn how to make a traditional family meal, and she put together this story.

ALEXIS CARVAJAL:  Food is one of the strongest ties to our culture. For most families, there's a recipe that's been passed down through generations. A recipe that's made its way from one country to another, against all odds. My grandma emigrated to the U.S. from Cuba when she was young, and with her came a recipe, steeped in family tradition.

ALEXIS CARVAJAL:  Pernil is a slow roasted pork shoulder dish that's typically made during Noche Buena, Christmas Eve, or any time you have your whole family gathered together. Although I've never had a family gathering with my dad's side, I know I wanted to learn this recipe. I may have never been to Cuba, or sat at table with my ancestors, but I can cook the same food they have enjoyed, and I can make that meal with the help of my family. There's a recipe I'm going to be preparing with my dad. A recipe that's traveled from Cuba to New Jersey, to Florida, and now to a tiny kitchen in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

ALEXIS CARVAJAL:  But neither me nor my dad had ever made Pernil before, so I called up my grandma, she lives in Florida, and asked her how to make Pernil. Turns out, the process takes two days and five hours.

RACHEL CARVAJAL:  The first thing you do is, you salt it all over, and then, you're going to prepare a mixture. You can use the blender, pulse it three or four times, and that mixture's going to be, cumin, a lot of cumin, black pepper also. It's very important. To mix that with all the stuff you're going to put in, you're going to need a little bit of olive oil and two bunches of green onions and one bunch of cilantro. This next item, I always have in my cupboard, because I use it all the time, and it's called Sazon Goya, it comes with or without asafran, but you want the one with the asafran, and you're going to be using two packages.

ALEXIS CARVAJAL:  Sazon Goya is a seasoning which contains garlic, cumin, salt and turmeric, and importantly, asafran, which means saffron.

ALEXIS CARVAJAL:  Once we have the mixture blended, it was time to prepare the marinade for Pernil.

RACHEL CARVAJAL:  And also, for the Mojo, there is the liquid marinade, which is called goya marinade.

ALEXIS CARVAJAL:  Mojo criollo or mojo for short, is a staple of Cuban cuisine. It's made from the juice of sour oranges and lime, garlic, oregano, cumin, salt and pepper. If you're feeling ambitious, you can make it from scratch, or you can buy it from the store. The word criollo refers back to Spaniards who sailed in Latin America and their descendants. A lot of Cuban cuisine has Spanish roots, like a lot of Cubans do, but with the added Cuban flare.

ALEXIS CARVAJAL:  Right now, the garlic aroma is very strong.

FERNANDO CARVAJAL:  Very.

ALEXIS CARVAJAL:  That garlic and the bit of citrus from the mojo, definitely.

FERNANDO CARVAJAL:  Yep. Yes, the sour orange. Now, when I was a kid, grandma used to make it from scratch, we didn't buy it in the grocery, the mojo part because we had a sour orange tree. The citrus base of mojo is actually sour orange, it's not lemon, which makes a pretty big difference when you're cooking with it. But we had a sour orange tree in the backyard and grandma would go out there, pick however many sour oranges she needed, five or six, or whatever, go inside and make the mojo dead from scratch, which is all the seasonings and the garlic and the sour orange juice.

ALEXIS CARVAJAL:  Is there a little bit of lime juice in it as well?

FERNANDO CARVAJAL:  Yes.

ALEXIS CARVAJAL:  Okay. That's what I thought.

FERNANDO CARVAJAL:  Yes. But most of it is sour orange, which is important in the use because it's sour, it's just a different sourness, a different sour flavor profile than what a lemon would give. The sour orange is a little bit more subtle.

ALEXIS CARVAJAL:  Now that we have the mixture and our marinade prepared, we had to prep the meat.

RACHEL CARVAJAL:  And then, you're going to make slits on the Pernil, but you don't want to pierce it all the way down, you go halfway. When you have the mix, that you blended in the blender, you're going to fill it, just put a whole bunch of them in all those holes. After that, you are going to rub it all over the outside of the Pernil, you're going to rub, rub, rub. Get a Reynolds kitchen oven bag and look for the size that says, "Turkey," and that's the one you want. After you did all that, you're going to put it in that bag.

FERNANDO CARVAJAL:  So, what I'm doing now,... is something that, if memory serves correct, my grandma used to do, she used to use bigger pieces of garlic like I'm doing, to actually cap the holes in the meat, where you put the marinade. So, okay.

ALEXIS CARVAJAL:  Perfect.

FERNANDO CARVAJAL:  We're good. We'll wrap her up.

ALEXIS CARVAJAL:  Yes, put the mojo in.

RACHEL CARVAJAL:  Once it is in the bag, then you're going to pour the rest of the goya marinade mojo criollo inside that bag and tie it good, and you're going to leave it in the refrigerator for 48 hours.

ALEXIS CARVAJAL:  With that, we could leave the Pernil until it was finally time to cook it.

RACHEL CARVAJAL:  It needs to be cooked on 350, 30 minutes cooking time per pound. When it's cooking, once in a while, maybe an hour and a half, you take a look at it. After the three hours, if you still see that you want it more crispy, then you cook more, but don't let it burn. Thinking about it already, I'm hungry. [LAUGHS]

ALEXIS CARVAJAL:  [LAUGHS]

ALEXIS CARVAJAL:  Since Pernil takes five hours to cook, you can prepare some of your side dishes while you wait.

ALEXIS CARVAJAL:  So, what would you typically serve with it?

RACHEL CARVAJAL:  Rice. It could be any kind of rice you want. White rice is what we usually eat. We also have the beans. Cubans actually use a lot of black beans. There are different ways to make the beans from scratch. And that comes from Spain, my grandma used to be able to do those and I loved them. Besides that, you can also make tostones.

ALEXIS CARVAJAL:  Tostones are fried plantains, and one of my absolute favorites. They're perfectly crispy on the outside and just a little bit softer on the inside. I've only ever ordered them in restaurants, but making them is actually pretty easy.

RACHEL CARVAJAL:  To prepare the plantains, you cut the ends and then, with the point of the knife from one end to the other, slice down and go back and forth with the knife at one point, you'll just be able to peel them by hand that way. After you've got that, I usually cut it, maybe an inch, or less than an inch, but you cut it in pieces. If you don't have a plantain smasher, you can also do it with the back of a glass. First you fry it in chunks like that. The oil has got to be very hot.

ALEXIS CARVAJAL:  Yes.

RACHEL CARVAJAL:  You put them in, and when you put them in, they're not cooked, so they look more like pinkish, or something like that. To know that they're cooked, they've got to be yellow. When they turn yellow and you see the consistency, take them out, and that's when you're going to smash them one by one, just smash it down. Once they're smashed, then you have to put them back into that hot oil, but not for long. You can tell more or less how crispy you want them and then you take them out, and just salt them. I love those.

ALEXIS CARVAJAL:  By the time the tostones were perfectly fried, our rice and beans were done. Now that we had finished combining all those flavors, it was finally time to taste the fruits of our labor.

ALEXIS CARVAJAL:  All right.

FERNANDO CARVAJAL:  All right. Moment of truth. Let's see what we've got here.

ALEXIS CARVAJAL:  Time for the taste test.

FERNANDO CARVAJAL:  All right. Looking pretty good. Get her out of the oven here. All right. Oh, that smells proper.

ALEXIS CARVAJAL:  Yes?

FERNANDO CARVAJAL:  Yes, that smells like my childhood. [LAUGHS]

ALEXIS CARVAJAL:  Aw, that's good.

FERNANDO CARVAJAL:  Let's see. Let's taste test.

ALEXIS CARVAJAL:  Let's taste now.

FERNANDO CARVAJAL:  Shall we?

ALEXIS CARVAJAL:  Mm-hmm.

FERNANDO CARVAJAL:  Mm! Yes, we definitely got the flavor right.

ALEXIS CARVAJAL:  Yes?

FERNANDO CARVAJAL:  Mm. Yes, good texture, we definitely got the citrusy. Yes. Yes, we got it. I don't know that it's quite up to the caliber of grandma's but it's pretty good. It's not bad.

ALEXIS CARVAJAL:  Yes?

FERNANDO CARVAJAL:  Yes. Here, try some.

ALEXIS CARVAJAL:  Okay. Mm.

FERNANDO CARVAJAL:  Yes?

ALEXIS CARVAJAL:  Yes, they're actually good.

FERNANDO CARVAJAL:  Okay. I'm going to grab our rice and our tostones, and we'll be good to go.

ALEXIS CARVAJAL:  But it's not just about the amazing taste of the Pernil, since it's such an old recipe, there's many precious memories that come with this meal.

ALEXIS CARVAJAL:  What is your fondest memory surrounding Pernil?

RACHEL CARVAJAL:  Probably Cuba when I was still little and we would go to the country, that's where most of my grandma's family lived. There would be more than 20 people gathered together.

FERNANDO CARVAJAL:  I can just remember being a little kid, and being excited whenever my grandma made this, because it was the process. You know, you'd wake up in the morning, the day before, and there was grandma already in the kitchen. Granted, this was a big family, we had seven people living in this house so, it was a big pig. It wasn't the whole pig, but it was a big Pernil, so she had to start that prep early. You'd go in the kitchen and you'd just get the smells, the aromas of the garlic and the citrus from mojo and it's just kind of ingrained in the memory of sitting there with my grandma while she was preparing it, and just talking. I guess it's something I associate with my family.

ALEXIS CARVAJAL:  And to me, this is the real power of food, not just the flavors on your tongue, but the memories that flood your mind with that first bite. And, of course, the moments you share with the people you love. For Earth Eats, I'm Alexis Carvajal You can find this recipe on our website, EarthEats.org.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Alexis Carvajal is a producer on our show.

KAYTE YOUNG:  The total solar eclipse is happening in a few short days, and where we're located in Bloomington, Indiana, is directly in the path of totality. This means that for about four minutes, our view of the sun will be completely covered by the moon. It is a rare and spectacular event, expected to draw huge crowds to locations along the path of totality. In 2017, actually the day before I started as host of Earth Eats, I traveled down to Kentucky to witness a total eclipse.

KAYTE YOUNG:  We gathered with a few other people in a public park, outside of a small town and, naturally, we had a picnic while we waited, which brings me to the burning question on everyone's mind right now... what to eat for the eclipse? Never fear, I've got lots of ideas. Since the eclipse will be happening around one in the afternoon, and we'll obviously be outside, picnic food makes sense to me. In terms of theme, anything round or crescent shape would work, but not everything needs to fit the eclipse theme, visually speaking. We can think about the season and what packs easily and holds up well in a picnic basket.

KAYTE YOUNG:  My basket will be filled with round crackers and slices of cheese. You could use round cookie cutters to make crescent shape slices of cheese, if you like. Deviled eggs, sprinkled with edible spring flowers, like, violet and redbud, that would be nice. Maybe some sliced oranges. Croissants or crescent rolls would be good. You could make you favorite sandwiches and cut them into rounds. Ooh, what about pita bread, that's round. And, humus is an excellent picnic food. I also love to make a savory tart for picnics, those can be round, and they taste great, even after they've cooled. Savory hand pies would hold up well. We have an Earth Eats video showing all the steps for making delicious hand pies, filled with greens, olives and cheese, there's a little paprika in the pie dough. They're really good and actually, I am now thinking that that is probably what I'm going to make for Monday.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Someone in the office mentioned moon pies. Oreos would also be good, you could separate them and play around with the white and black, do some little demonstrations about what you're about to see. If homemade is more your style, you're in luck, because I've been working on an eclipse cookie idea of my own. I'll walk you through the steps from my home kitchen. This recipe is adapted from Susan Spungen's Tahini Marbled Cookies, from the New York Times, which we made in an Earth Eats video for the holidays a couple of years ago. You can find it on our YouTube channel.

KAYTE YOUNG:  It involves a dough that's made with regular tahini, and a dough that's made with black tahini, which is sometimes called black sesame paste, it's basically tahini that's made from black sesame seeds. It's not too difficult to find. I mean, it's not going to be at your neighborhood Kroger, but I did find some at World Foods Market in Bloomington, and I also think you can find it at

B-Town International. Okay, so here goes.

KAYTE YOUNG:  It's a pretty straight forward recipe. Basically, we're making a cookie, kind of a shortbread type of cookie, featuring tahini, so it really has a great flavor that's reminiscent of maybe a halva and, if you love sesame, you love tahini, you are going to really love the taste of these. First thing we're going to do is assemble all of our ingredients. Three cups of all-purpose flour. One and a half teaspoons of kosher salt. A half teaspoon of baking powder. One cup, unsalted butter, that's two sticks, softened. One cup, unsifted confectioners sugar. One large egg. One teaspoon of vanilla extract. And one quarter cup plain tahini and three tablespoons of black tahini. You're not going to need as much of the black tahini because it's really intense. I think that's it.

KAYTE YOUNG:  I have assembled all of my ingredients and the butter has been softening in the bowl of my stand mixer. I'm going to go ahead and cream that together with the powdered sugar, also known as confectioner sugar.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Confectioner sugar is added to the butter now.

KAYTE YOUNG:  And, as always, we have to scrape down the sides of our bowl.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Okay. The mixture is light and fluffy, and now we're going to be adding the vanilla extract, one teaspoon, and one large egg. And I'm excited to get the chance to use this vanilla extract that was made by my friend, Michael, who passed away late last year. This is something that was crafted by him, that lives on and is going into these cookies. I know he would have been so excited about the eclipse this year.

KAYTE YOUNG:  One large egg.

KAYTE YOUNG:  In a separate bowl, mix together the all-purpose flour, the salt and the baking powder.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Three cups of flour.

KAYTE YOUNG:  One half teaspoon of baking powder.

KAYTE YOUNG:  And one and a half teaspoons of kosher salt.

KAYTE YOUNG:  And I'm using Diamond Crystal kosher salt.

KAYTE YOUNG:  I just want to whisk that together to combine it. And then we're going to add this flour mixture to the butter mixture and get that blended, just blended, just until it kind of holds together as a ball.

KAYTE YOUNG:  All right, that looks pretty good. I can really smell that tahini, which I haven't even added yet. [LAUGHS] Oh. It's because it's sitting over here, open. [LAUGHS]

KAYTE YOUNG:  Okay. Once you've mixed the basic dough together, it's going to be time to divide it. One part of the dough is going to get the white tahini, and one part of the dough is going to get the black tahini. Now, for the marbled cookie recipe, it was two-thirds white tahini and one-third black tahini, because the black tahini is sort of the accent. But I'm a little concerned that that ratio isn't going to be quite right for this application. I'm wondering if it should just be half and half.

KAYTE YOUNG:  So, right now what we want to do is, gather all of the dough together and form it into one ball, probably going to have to use my hands. So, I'm going to remove the dough from the bowl and put it out on the counter, and we're going to form it into sort of a fat log, that's the way they described it, which I think, makes sense. And then that just allows us to easily divide it in an even way. So, I am not going to cut it exactly in half, but pretty close. And then, the smaller portion is going to be the one that I add the black tahini to, and the larger portion is going to be the one that I add the white tahini.

KAYTE YOUNG:  I'm going to take the smaller portion of dough and set it aside. I'm going to put the larger portion of dough, and it's only slightly larger, back into the bowl and we're going to add the white tahini now. Quarter cup.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Oh my gosh, it totally smells like halva now. And now, once again, we're going to turn this out on to the counter top and form it into... a disc, and cover that and put it in the fridge for a bit. Now we're going to put the other piece of dough into the mixing bowl, and we're going to add the black tahini paste. I'm seeing right now, as I took the lid off, that the black tahini paste really needs to be mixed. I will warn you that this black tahini paste is a bit of a mess, so if at all possible, keep it contained in the jar. Once you get this blended, put it in the fridge, so you don't have to do this again. This is definitely the hardest part of this recipe, is blending the sesame seed paste.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Okay. Finally, it's starting to look it's getting blended. [LAUGHS] All right, I've got it mixed, it's looking smooth and well blended. And I think we're going to use three or four tablespoons, we definitely want it to have that rich, black color. Inky black, that's what we want this to look like. There's three, so I think I'll do just a little shy of four tablespoons. We can see how it looks, if I don't think it's dark enough, I might add a little more.

KAYTE YOUNG:  So honestly, this looks a little bit gray, which I'm not loving, so I'm going to add a little more of the tahini.

KAYTE YOUNG:  I think it does change color a bit once you bake it.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Okay, well I have already added about as much black tahini to this dough as I think I can get away with, so... we're just going to have to see how it turns out. And now I have patted down both of the dough into a disc, and covered them and put them in the fridge for a little bit, just to kind of get them to chill so they're going to be a little easier to roll out and make into our shapes.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Our dough has chilled. We have our oven pre-heating, and now we're going to roll the dough out and shape it into our circles, and our semi circles and eclipse looking shapes. I'm going to start with the white tahini dough, the light colored dough. Whenever you're rolling out dough of any kind, you want to keep moving it around, make sure it's not ever sticking to your surface. All right, so I'm going to roll this out to about a quarter of an inch, maybe just a little bit thinner than a quarter of an inch. This is going to basically represent our sun, this lighter colored dough, and so it is just going to be rounds. And I have a biscuit cutter, which is about two or three inches.

KAYTE YOUNG:  There's our timer, letting us know that the oven is pre-heated to 325. Once I have the circle shapes cut out, then I'm just placing them on a parchment lined baking sheet. As you're transferring the circles, you're just going to want to be as careful as possible not to distort the shape. The firmer your dough is, the easier that'll be, so make sure you do chill the dough thoroughly before you go to shaping them.

KAYTE YOUNG:  I am noticing that this is a pretty easy dough to handle, especially once you have it nice and chilled. And now it's time to roll out the black tahini cookie dough. And I'm happy to report, it is looking sufficiently dark. And this is a dough that freezes well, so you could make the dough ahead of time, try out a few just to make sure you know what you're doing making them, and then save it until the day of the eclipse, and then you can make them that morning and enjoy them on the actual day of the eclipse.

KAYTE YOUNG:  For the top layer, with the black tahini dough, I'm making it even thinner, so more like an eighth of an inch thick. And now it's time to cut the circles, and these are going to be partial circles. I'm going to do different variations on a circle with a little bite cut out of it. A circle that is complete and will completely cover it, to represent the totality. But then, just like the different stages of the eclipse and how it looks when the sun is being eclipsed. I'm basically going to start by cutting all circles, and these circles are just a little bit smaller than the one that I just cut with the white dough.

KAYTE YOUNG:  So, I've got the white tahini full circle base, and then I'm going to make a simple butter cream, powdered sugar, kind of icing, and I'm going to put that in-between the two, once they're both fully baked. I'm baking them separately. Baking the white tahini circles and then the black tahini partial circles, are all going to be bake separately and then, once they're cooled, we can assemble them with the icing, and at that point, if I want to play around with sugaring, I can. And I'm going to set the timer for nine minutes. I'll just check on them in nine minutes and see how they're looking.

KAYTE YOUNG:  I wanted to do the tahini cookie because I like the idea of something that's inherently dark, something that's actually black, but maybe unexpected in its flavor, and the tahini is really going to work well for that, it's like a peanut butter cookie, but instead of peanut butter, you've got the sesame flavor, and so it's really nice. I think it's interesting, it's unexpected, and just like the eclipse itself, a bit of a wonder.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Okay. The second batch it out of the oven. Looks pretty good. I'm going to assemble them into sandwich cookies and see how that works out. I will say, overall, these cookies are pretty fragile, and I think that's because of how much tahini is in there, there's just one egg in the whole thing, it's not really binding it that well.

KAYTE YOUNG:  So, for my sandwich cookies, I'm just going to whip up a really simple icing, I'm not even measuring. I've a couple of tablespoons of butter that softened. I've got some powdered sugar, dumping that in there. It always takes a little more than you think it's going to. And then, a little bit of vanilla for flavor. I'm just going to mix this up, if it needs a little more liquid, I'll just add a teeny bit of milk or water to that. I'm just going to mix that up until it's a good consistency for spreading and then I'm going to assemble the sandwich cookies.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Okay. So I got them iced. I put one thin layer of icing on the white tahini cookie, and I placed the black tahini cookie on top, and then I took my sanding sugar, the sparkly, glitter kind, and I sprinkled that on the exposed icing part on the cookie, and it looks really good. I like the way it turned out and, all right, let's give them a taste. Mm.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Okay, well,... that cookie really crumbles in your mouth. They have a very soft, sandy texture, and they are heavy on the tahini. I like them.

KAYTE YOUNG:  If you want to try something different, and impress your friends with black tahini cookies, these are the ones to make.

KAYTE YOUNG:  In the final version of this recipe, and the one I liked best, I added a bit of freshly squeezed lemon juice and some lemon zest to the butter cream. It adds a lot to the overall finished cookie, just that little acidic bite is really nice.

KAYTE YOUNG:  I'm happy with how these turned out, and we have the recipe posted on our website. You could also take this theme and try it with different flavors, so if sesame isn't your thing, you could make simple brown sugar cookies and then find a recipe for thin chocolate wafers and use those for the moon, then you could assemble them with the butter cream, as described here. Either way, I'd love to hear from you about your eclipse themed foods. You can send me a message through Instagram or Facebook at Earth Eats, or find our contact info on our website, eartheats.org, that is also where you will find the recipe for these cookies and hundreds more. Eartheats.org.

KAYTE YOUNG:  It's time for a quick break, and then we'll hear from Daniella Richardson, who has a review of the FX series, "The Bear." Stay with us.

KAYTE YOUNG:  Kayte Young here. This is Earth Eats. Daniella Richardson is a producer on our show. We've been talking lately about how cooking and kitchen culture show up in pop culture, and Daniella was thinking about the how the competitive cooking shows can be limited in what they present and explore about our relationships with food. She decided to take a look at another presentation of the power of food, through the FX television series, "The Bear." Here's Daniella.

DANIELLA RICHARDSON:  Warning. If you have not watched "The Bear," both seasons one and two, and you care about spoilers, you should probably cover your ears for this segment.

[CLIP FROM THE BEAR] CARMEN 'CARMY' BERZATTO:  Yo!

[CLIP FROM THE BEAR] RESTAURANT SUPPLIER:  Yo! 25 lbs?

[CLIP FROM THE BEAR] CARMEN 'CARMY' BERZATTO:  25? No, no. I ordered 200.

[CLIP FROM THE BEAR] RESTAURANT SUPPLIER:  Paid for 25. Take it up with Liv.

DANIELLA RICHARDSON:  Media portrayals of kitchen culture, tend to focus on sheer intensity, with plenty of $5 swear jar words at a cut-throat pace. We see this play out in popular reality cooking shows like, "Hell's Kitchen," and now in critically acclaimed comedy dramas like, "The Bear." The finely seasoned "dramady" places Carmen "Carmy" Berzatto in his late brother's failing restaurant, with a resistant crew, insurmountable debt, and a struggle to wade himself through grief and back to his love for food.

CARMEN 'CARMY' BERZATTO:  Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, no going this. That's, that's really nice of you. Uh-huh... Yeah, no, no, we're really grateful to still be open after everything. Yeah, so listen, I'm still trying to figure this place out, you know see how, how Michael was doing everything and I want to get you your money... Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I miss him, I miss him too.

DANIELLA RICHARDSON:  The healing and uniting powers of cooking and food have long been explored through media. Think movies like, "Eat, Pray, Love," "Chef" or even Disney's "Ratatouille." Like, all of these films, "The Bear" pinpoints tough inner relatable themes of family trauma and places it within a more digestible lens of main entrees and dessert, and yes, [LAUGHS] pun intended.

DANIELLA RICHARDSON:  Now, a recipe requires patience and effort. In most cases, you must follow the steps exactly as written, no skips allowed and definitely no shortcuts. It's a journey, an arc with many twists and turns and always a finale. Like a recipe, "The Bear's" main cast offers us a glimpse into parts of themselves that require patience and effort to understand. We get to witness these characters develop as individuals, as they also develop as chefs.

DANIELLA RICHARDSON:  Perhaps the character who embodies this change the most is Richie 'Cousin' Jerimovich.

[CLIP FROM THE BEAR] RITCHIE JERIMOVICH:  Yo, you ever think about purpose?

[CLIP FROM THE BEAR] CARMEN 'CARMY' BERZATTO:  I love you, but I do not have time for this, all right?

[SILENT PAUSE, RESTAURANT SOUNDS IN BACKGROUND]

[CLIP FROM THE BEAR] CARMEN 'CARMY' BERZATTO:  I have time for this.

[CLIP FROM THE BEAR] CARMEN 'CARMY' BERZATTO:  Purpose.

[CLIP FROM THE BEAR] RITCHIE JERIMOVICH:  What's my purpose, homey? You know I'm trying really hard to be on board Cousin. I'm reading a lot, I'm trying to learn about who am I to my history. So, in one of these books there's this dude who's got like, no skills, no personality, nothing... All he does is watch his trains.

[CLIP FROM THE BEAR] CARMEN 'CARMY' BERZATTO:  Watches trains to what?

[CLIP FROM THE BEAR] RITCHIE JERIMOVICH:  Watches them be trains... And he's got this... group of friends that he's had since he's a little kid, and they're out-growing him. Like, one's like a sick athlete. One's a genius, so that one's nasty on the keys, and one day out of the blue, boom... they drop his ass. They just cut that motherfucker off.

[CLIP FROM THE BEAR] CARMEN 'CARMY' BERZATTO:  Why did they do that?

[CLIP FROM THE BEAR] RITCHIE JERIMOVICH:  'Cause he's got no purpose.

[CLIP FROM THE BEAR] CARMEN 'CARMY' BERZATTO:  Okay, so what, what does he do? [SNIFFS]

[CLIP FROM THE BEAR] RITCHIE JERIMOVICH:  I don't know, I haven't read that far. But I do know that... 45, we've been here a long time... You feel me?... I'm afraid one day, I'm going to wake up and you guys are all just going to cut,... just drop this ass.

[CLIP FROM THE BEAR] CARMEN 'CARMY' BERZATTO:  Richie, I'm not going to drop this ass.

DANIELLA RICHARDSON:  When we're first introduced to Richie, he comes off as loud, politically incorrect to a fault, and notably resistant to the new changes Carmy wants to bring to the Beef. He also butts heads with new sous chef Sydney, even finding himself quite literally stabbed in the back at one point. However, while we're met with his rough edges at first, we're slowly introduced to the additional layers of Richie that make him who he is, a father, a friend, and surprisingly, a visionary with many formidable goals.

DANIELLA RICHARDSON:  In season two of "The Bear," we are transported back in time with episode six, "Fishes." The Berzatto family and friends gather at Carmy's mother's house for Christmas, while she undertakes the arduous task of cooking a traditional Italian Feast of the Seven Fishes. Among those in attendance are Richie and his then pregnant wife, Tiffany. Here, we gain an understanding that Richie's longing for purpose began long before Carmy took hold of the restaurant. In the past, his primary purpose was to be an upstanding father and a provisional husband. To do so, he believes his best options lie outside of food and customer service. We see this with his pleading to Carmy's Uncle Cicero to give him a chance and offer his a job. He says he wants to do much more with his life than "just wrapping sandwiches."

[CLIP FROM THE BEAR] RITCHIE JERIMOVICH:  I'm about to have this kid. I don't want to be wrapping up sandwiches for the rest of my life. You know, I don't want to be coming home with my hands covered in grease, trying to change diapers and stuff, I need-- You're someone with a lot going on, you could probably use some help. I've been looking, there's not much going on out there... and you're somebody that knows something and...

[CLIP FROM THE BEAR] CARMEN 'CARMY' BERZATTO:  ...do you think you're fucking funny? Are you Bill fucking Murray? [INAUDIBLE] thinks that you're Bill Murray because he's funny? Bill Murray says, "No, no. That's my fault." Give me your phone.

[CLIP FROM THE BEAR] RICHIE:  [WHISPERS] I don't want to be at the Beef every day. That makes sense, right? I feel like I'm wasting potential.

[CLIP FROM THE BEAR] JAMES 'CICERO' KALINOWSKI:  What kind of potential?

[CLIP FROM THE BEAR] RITCHIE JERIMOVICH:  I don't know. I'm good with people and I haven't really been out therefor that though. And, I've never had a mentor, I've never had an uncle.

[CLIP FROM THE BEAR] JAMES 'CICERO' KALINOWSKI:  Oh, one thing, and I am neither of those things.

[CLIP FROM THE BEAR] RITCHIE JERIMOVICH:  Yeah, but you understand what I'm saying though, right?

[CLIP FROM THE BEAR] JAMES 'CICERO' KALINOWSKI:  No, I do not.

[CLIP FROM THE BEAR] RITCHIE JERIMOVICH:  I am not asking you for money, a loan. If you teach me, I will learn. And you can trust me.

DANIELLA RICHARDSON:  We then experience a 180 within the following episode, "Forks," there we witness present day Richie on a journey to become who he wants to be. Now divorced, lacking his lifelong best friend Michael, and begging for a meaningful reason to keep going, Rich is sent, against his will, [LAUGHS] mind you, by Carmy to intern at a high-end Chicago restaurant. This is a practice known in the industry as "staging." For his one week stint there, the majority of his time is spent with five am wake up calls, military-esque meetings and polishing forks. However, further in the week, Richie is given the chance to actively participate in the guest experience and see in real time why the little details of his actions matter. Said best by a member of the restaurant's crew during one of the aforementioned military-esque meetings.

[CLIP FROM THE BEAR] MALE RESTAURANT CREW MEMBER:  Last thing. Still, no-one is owning up to the smudge. I want to clarify that it's not so much the smudge, but rather the fact that no-one is taking responsibility for the smudge. We're not children, it's okay to make mistakes. We can smudge things, but we need to own up to them with immediacy, integrity, and honesty.

DANIELLA RICHARDSON:  Through this experience, Richie applied his same attitude when previously asking Cicero for a job.

[CLIP FROM THE BEAR]RITCHIE JERIMOVICH:  I want to learn. If you teach me, I will learn. And you can trust me.

DANIELLA RICHARDSON:  We see him develop significantly, from a man strongly resistant to change to someone wanting to know how to change. He takes the time to ask those he’s shadowing questions, pays attention to the customer’s desires, and actively takes control of changing his life. He shifts to a place where he has respect for not only the restaurant but also for himself. This comes from his newfound connection to the part of food service that is arguably the second most important aspect, coming second only to the food itself, and that is, acts of service and the guest experience. A realization that brings us to the conclusion that while Richie believed his purpose existed outside of the culinary industry, it had been there all along. He just needed direction to find his place within it.

DANIELLA RICHARDSON:  Richie’s story of personal and professional development is just one of many that we get to see unfold across the two seasons thus far. This is one of the aspects of "The Bear" that sets it apart from reality cooking shows like "Hell’s Kitchen." While I thoroughly enjoy a good Gordon Ramsay scolding, I also enjoy what "The Bear" provides, a deeper understanding and a window into the rewards and challenges that come from working in the food industry. When watching "Hell’s Kitchen" as a viewer with zero experience in that world, all I can feel and think about is the intensity of the environment and how personally unthinkable a career in this industry would be for me. However, shows like "The Bear" illustrate what happens after the chefs hang up their hats, and how the principles they carry with them in the kitchen can apply to all aspects of their lives. Like Richie must have enough respect to polish all the streaks from the forks, he must have enough respect to clean off the counter in his own kitchen at home.

DANIELLA RICHARDSON:  If you have not watched "The Bear" yet and made it to the end of this review, I would recommend you give it a try. It conveys exactly why food is a part of our hierarchy of needs; beyond basic nutrition, food feeds our emotions, our memories, our relationships, and if you find that you yourself are like Richie, it can become the fuel for your inspiration.

[CLIP FROM THE BEAR] CARMEN 'CARMY' BERZATTO:  Hey Chi-Chi, it's Carmy. You still got that meat connect?

KAYTE YOUNG:  That review of the series, "The Bear" on FX comes from Earth Eats producer, Daniella Richardson.

KAYTE YOUNG:  And that does it for this week's show. Thanks for listening, we'll see you next time.

KAYTE YOUNG:  The Earth Eats team includes Eoban Binder, Alexis Carvajal, Alex Chambers, Mark Chilla, Toby Foster, Daniella Richardson, Samantha Schemenaur, Payton Whaley and Harvest Public Media. Special thanks this week to Fernando Carvajal and Rachel Carvajal. Earth Eats is produced and edited by me, Kayte Young. Our theme music is composed by Erin Tobey and performed by Erin and Matt Tobey. Additional music on the show comes to us from Universal Production Music. Our executive producer is Eric Bolstridge.