I am a chef and I am a foodie. It's a great career to have if you love food. At our restaurants on Monday nights as we are closing we have been known to watch Anthony Bouridan and No Reservations on the Travel Channel. Recently he visited Washington D.C., the city I grew up in and the city I travel to frequently to visit my father. As in all the episodes we watch there is alot of food you wish you could eat, and in this show there were quite a few places I wished I could visit.
On my last trip a few weeks ago I had an opportunity to visit El Pollo Rico in Virginia a place I couldn't pass up. Bourbon Steak, or El Pollo Rico, the Four Seasons or a wherehouse type building on a side street in Arlington. Need I say more.
The chicken was moist, the skin was flavorful and if I had gotten there during the peek time I know I would have been rocked. But even on a Wednessday night after 8:30 it was still good enough to go again when I get the chance. Chicken, cole slaw, french fries, a spicy green sauce and a lemon dijon type aioli (mayonaise), some desserts and some sodas, that's it. But it was worth it-- It was a Zankou type experience, and I will do it again.
Monday, March 16, 2009
Monday, February 23, 2009
Gumbo
It's that time of year, Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday, a perfect excuse for making gumbo. We started our gumbo last week on our tasting menu at Eastbluff and have continued it this week at both restaurants. I love it and will eat it all day if I could erase my conscience. It tastes great and it represents the soul of the cook. It also has a little bit of butter, oil and flour.
A few years ago, before hurricane Katrina, even before Sage. I used to make a yearly pilgramage to New Orleans and the South for the Jazz Fest. It was a memorable week and for me as well as many other people the food was as important as the music. I had a chance encounter with Earl Palmer at a club, as well as a chance to meet Aaron Neville when I was hitch hiking home at an quite an early hour from a bar outside of the city.
I ate gumbo every chance I had as well as poorboys and muffaletas. There was barbecue and red beans and rice, crawfish and fried soft shell crabs and boy do I miss my trips to the South. It was the food and also the people.
But what I wanted to learn was the gumbo and what I realized was it was all about the roux. Some type of oil and flour cooked together until the flour mixture begins to cook and start turning brown. You have to keep stirring and you don't want to burn the roux but when you do it right the flavor of a chocolate colored roux imparts a nutty favor which is integral to a gumbo ( we also use this roux to finish our turkey gravy for Thanksgiving). It took me a long time to master my roux and now I have been able to teach it to some of the other cooks in the kitchen, but my quest for the perfect roux is something I will always remember and equate it with my trips to the South. ( Ask anyone who has tried about roux burns and they will tell you about the complexities of achieving the perfect roux.) Not the most healthy thing to use when cooking but the depth of flavor it adds as well as the texture is magical when done right.
A few years ago, before hurricane Katrina, even before Sage. I used to make a yearly pilgramage to New Orleans and the South for the Jazz Fest. It was a memorable week and for me as well as many other people the food was as important as the music. I had a chance encounter with Earl Palmer at a club, as well as a chance to meet Aaron Neville when I was hitch hiking home at an quite an early hour from a bar outside of the city.
I ate gumbo every chance I had as well as poorboys and muffaletas. There was barbecue and red beans and rice, crawfish and fried soft shell crabs and boy do I miss my trips to the South. It was the food and also the people.
But what I wanted to learn was the gumbo and what I realized was it was all about the roux. Some type of oil and flour cooked together until the flour mixture begins to cook and start turning brown. You have to keep stirring and you don't want to burn the roux but when you do it right the flavor of a chocolate colored roux imparts a nutty favor which is integral to a gumbo ( we also use this roux to finish our turkey gravy for Thanksgiving). It took me a long time to master my roux and now I have been able to teach it to some of the other cooks in the kitchen, but my quest for the perfect roux is something I will always remember and equate it with my trips to the South. ( Ask anyone who has tried about roux burns and they will tell you about the complexities of achieving the perfect roux.) Not the most healthy thing to use when cooking but the depth of flavor it adds as well as the texture is magical when done right.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Strawberries
February and Valentines Day tends to make people think of strawberries. Something about the holiday be it love, hearts or the color brings strawberries to the forefront. This week at the farmer's market we went on a hunt for strawberries.
Last week were the first strawberries I really started tasting this year and they were good for this time of year. There was some acid, a little sweetness and some real strawberry flavor. But this weekend it rained and I knew the berries were going to lose alot of their flavor yet I still needed them for our strawberry bruschetta at Sage on the Coast for our wine tasting Satgurday afternoon.
As we walked the market I saw strawberries both on the tables and in customers bags and baskets. Many of the berries we saw looked great but when I tasted them and talked to the farmers I realized that just as I expected the rain had robbed them of much of their flavor. Even the venerable Harry"s Berries were washed out. That is of course until I tasted the gnarly little ones that Gloria had grown.There in lay the problem. There were lots of big beautiful strawberries available without the flavor that makes a great strawberry or I could buy a strawberry that didn't look so great but had flavor, not the greatest flavor, but much better than the others.
I bought the ones with flavor. Thats me. It happens with tangerines, with tomatoes, with so many other fruits and vegetables. It is something I try to teach my chefs, and it is something I preach to anyone who will listen, the best looking produce doesn't always taste the best and that is why we go to the market. Of course there are lessons to learn in life reflected in our produce.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Riva
I went to LAX last night to pick up my brother and of course we were going to get something to eat. It was the start of Chinese New Year so of course a seat at the counter of Chinois, a place we had been to a few years ago and a place I used to go to sit at the counter and steal ideas, watch techniques (Kazuto splitting the live lobster and then putting it in the wok), and of course eat great food. However, Gung Hay Fa Choy, the menu was a special tasting menu for $95.00 and while a few years ago we would have dived right in we have gotten a little too old to eat that much too late. So we got the car back from the valet and went to Joe's Restaurant in Venice. He is a dear friend for years and I see him at the Farmer's Market most every week and I had been wanting to go there for quite a while. We'll sit at the counter and eat some appetizers, maybe split an entree I told my brother, but alas by 8:15 on Sunday they could no longer take walk ins because they were running out of food and they wanted to make sure they had enough for their reservations. So what's next.
Riva, just reviewed in the L.A. Times and in a space I new well. Formerly owned by my former friend Bruce Beach. It used to be a dark and almost dirty space but Jason( an aquaintance from the farmer's market and owner and chef at Fraiche in Culver City) has turned it into an inviting place completely different from before ( I never did see it in its past incarnation as Scarbonis(?)) with space and windows.And most of all pizza.Great crust, not too expensive and a nice place to sit and eat and talk. Now a days its all about the crust and with the wood burning oven this crust is great( of course my crust turned out great on New Years day with the oven at my friend's house but I use cheese like I'm from New York not Italy).
So if you have a chance enjoy the pizza and remember that the Sage and Sage on the Coast Chinese New Years tasting menus are only $35.00 and they include a fortune cookie after dessert.
Riva, just reviewed in the L.A. Times and in a space I new well. Formerly owned by my former friend Bruce Beach. It used to be a dark and almost dirty space but Jason( an aquaintance from the farmer's market and owner and chef at Fraiche in Culver City) has turned it into an inviting place completely different from before ( I never did see it in its past incarnation as Scarbonis(?)) with space and windows.And most of all pizza.Great crust, not too expensive and a nice place to sit and eat and talk. Now a days its all about the crust and with the wood burning oven this crust is great( of course my crust turned out great on New Years day with the oven at my friend's house but I use cheese like I'm from New York not Italy).
So if you have a chance enjoy the pizza and remember that the Sage and Sage on the Coast Chinese New Years tasting menus are only $35.00 and they include a fortune cookie after dessert.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
The evolution of a dish
The new year has started, we have a new president and as a restaurant guy I'm trying to come up with ideas to get new customers and keep my existing ones with new dishes or new ideas. Sometimes you create dishes because of something you read, or maybe something you saw on television or you tasted something. Many times it is an idea which might have hit me while walking through the farmer's market or talking with other chefs. Seasonal be it produce or proteins, sometimes traditional food combinations sometimes combinations based on the land where the food was raised and the grapes were grown. These ideas start and sometimes sit with you for a long time before the right time comes along and you can use it. The sweet corn tamales morphed into a side dish of grits with corn and asiago cheese served with pork and a pinot sauce.
You hang out with friends and experience different cultures and foods and you store that and along the way something comes up and a dish materializes. New Years Day I was lucky enough to tag along with my friends Abe and his wife Sarah and got to experience the foods of a traditional Japanese New Year's Day with their friends in the hills above Beverly Hills. The wood burning oven on the patio allowed me to experiment with our pizza dough as well as beets and duck confit. Hopefully the ideas which I have been kicking around will grow into a dish.
A recent trip to Washington D.C. and a visit to an Indian Restaurant called Risakka introduced me to a great bar snack-- popcorn. Of course this one was seasoned with cumin, chile powder, coriander and fried curry leaves, a little spicy, great and unusual.
Which brings us to Fried Chicken. We were searching for a dish to serve Sunday nights at Sage on the Coast ( Eastbluff has Stroganoff). Something along the lines of the barbecue rib dinners we served during the summer. Comfort food for hard times.
In August I cooked a dinner for my friend Joe Davis's birthday in the central coast wine country with Henry and Michele Salgado from the Spanish River Grill in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. Henry had worked with Edna Lewis in Atlanta and had learned to make her legendary fried chicken. We decided to make this chicken as one of the dishes for the party. I followed Henry discreetly notebook in hand and tried to write down as much as I could. The dish was a two day operation or maybe it just seemed that way. He brined the chicken overnight, rinsed it and soaked it in buttermilk. Meanwhile he seasoned some lard in a "rondo" with a ham hock, or maybe two. After the ham hock cooked through on low heat,he seasoned the chicken with the secret flour mixture-or was that potato flour?- and then began the frying process. Helped by our new found drinking buddy, Bradley Ogden, we were able to cook 50lbs.of chicken quarters successfully for some of the best fried chicken I've ever had. Better yet we shredded the ham hock and added it to our slow cooked greens.
So with this experience under my belt I set about with Chefs Kris and Adam to come up with our own fried chicken tradition. After a few false starts ( the beauty of this dish is even the mistakes still taste pretty good) we have begun the process and I think are on our way to a dish that, while not legendary will still be pretty darn good.So far we have studied brining and learned about the inticacies of buttermilk and when we have finished we will have created our own version of something similar to what I ate with Henry, though the ambiance of that occasion might never be recreated.
Some of the things we have been thinking about besides the process and the flavors is how we are going to cook the chicken, with bones( traditional) or without bones (due to our time constraints in the kitchen). How is the portion going to look, how big is our serving size? Who is resonsible for assembing the dish? What are the sides going to be? How will it look? What do we do with the leftovers besides employee meals. We after all are in a business and need to utilize as much of the dish as possible to sell to our customers. Our major concern is that it tastes great but all of these other thoughts go in to creating a dish. Timing in the kitchen and how many steps a dish takes is important when you are trying to create your menu. You need to balance the different stations in the kitchen so one section doesn't get "slammed" and force everyone else to lose their timing. Kitchens get out of synch and customers end up waiting for their food way longer than is desireable.
We are now working on our product figuring we will unveil the dish the Sunday after the Super Bowl. I will continue to update during the next few weeks and hopefully you will be able to come and taste the finished product.
You hang out with friends and experience different cultures and foods and you store that and along the way something comes up and a dish materializes. New Years Day I was lucky enough to tag along with my friends Abe and his wife Sarah and got to experience the foods of a traditional Japanese New Year's Day with their friends in the hills above Beverly Hills. The wood burning oven on the patio allowed me to experiment with our pizza dough as well as beets and duck confit. Hopefully the ideas which I have been kicking around will grow into a dish.
A recent trip to Washington D.C. and a visit to an Indian Restaurant called Risakka introduced me to a great bar snack-- popcorn. Of course this one was seasoned with cumin, chile powder, coriander and fried curry leaves, a little spicy, great and unusual.
Which brings us to Fried Chicken. We were searching for a dish to serve Sunday nights at Sage on the Coast ( Eastbluff has Stroganoff). Something along the lines of the barbecue rib dinners we served during the summer. Comfort food for hard times.
In August I cooked a dinner for my friend Joe Davis's birthday in the central coast wine country with Henry and Michele Salgado from the Spanish River Grill in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. Henry had worked with Edna Lewis in Atlanta and had learned to make her legendary fried chicken. We decided to make this chicken as one of the dishes for the party. I followed Henry discreetly notebook in hand and tried to write down as much as I could. The dish was a two day operation or maybe it just seemed that way. He brined the chicken overnight, rinsed it and soaked it in buttermilk. Meanwhile he seasoned some lard in a "rondo" with a ham hock, or maybe two. After the ham hock cooked through on low heat,he seasoned the chicken with the secret flour mixture-or was that potato flour?- and then began the frying process. Helped by our new found drinking buddy, Bradley Ogden, we were able to cook 50lbs.of chicken quarters successfully for some of the best fried chicken I've ever had. Better yet we shredded the ham hock and added it to our slow cooked greens.
So with this experience under my belt I set about with Chefs Kris and Adam to come up with our own fried chicken tradition. After a few false starts ( the beauty of this dish is even the mistakes still taste pretty good) we have begun the process and I think are on our way to a dish that, while not legendary will still be pretty darn good.So far we have studied brining and learned about the inticacies of buttermilk and when we have finished we will have created our own version of something similar to what I ate with Henry, though the ambiance of that occasion might never be recreated.
Some of the things we have been thinking about besides the process and the flavors is how we are going to cook the chicken, with bones( traditional) or without bones (due to our time constraints in the kitchen). How is the portion going to look, how big is our serving size? Who is resonsible for assembing the dish? What are the sides going to be? How will it look? What do we do with the leftovers besides employee meals. We after all are in a business and need to utilize as much of the dish as possible to sell to our customers. Our major concern is that it tastes great but all of these other thoughts go in to creating a dish. Timing in the kitchen and how many steps a dish takes is important when you are trying to create your menu. You need to balance the different stations in the kitchen so one section doesn't get "slammed" and force everyone else to lose their timing. Kitchens get out of synch and customers end up waiting for their food way longer than is desireable.
We are now working on our product figuring we will unveil the dish the Sunday after the Super Bowl. I will continue to update during the next few weeks and hopefully you will be able to come and taste the finished product.
Monday, December 22, 2008
" Sweet Corn Tamales
Around the holidays the guys in the kitchen sometimes bring in tamales. They're always wonderful and usually a result of the efforts of the female members of their family. My tamales are relatively new age and while I wouldn't say they're ready for the menu, they're still pretty good.
If you ever wonder what it takes to develop a menu item or a special, first it takes an idea. Maybe you read a magazine, maybe the newspaper or the food network or maybe you talk to other chefs or even customers, but something gets you thinking. I've been thinking about this tamale idea for years. Occasionally I'll try it but then it goes back into the "archives" waiting until I have more time or help. However this year I stuck my foot in my mouth and I sold it to someone for a party-- a boat parade party. It is a perfect boat parade appetizer, it just needed to be fine tuned.
So now I'm going to share the research and development part of my job. I started with Cream Corn, Quick Grits and Dried Corn Husks, the kind I thought we used in my neighborhood in Washington D.C. when I was growing up. I mixed the cream corn with the grits and began cooking the two together. I started with 4 parts cream corn to 1 part Quick Grits( basically the recipe on the box).Then I added some more grilled fresh sweet corn and mixed them together. If you have eaten a tamale you know that the finished product is thick, almost bready. I continued to heat the mixture and then added some hot water. During this time period I seasoned the mixture with salt and white pepper. I finally added some grated pepper jack cheese (possibly overkill since it created a different consistency then I was aiming for but still tasted good). Anyway we decided to use fresh corn husks soaked in water and then after cooling the thickened mixture wrapped it in the corn husks, at least two to a tamale-- I would recomend seeing a finished product or having a skilled tamale technician show you how to fold one- I was lucky enough to have one of the guys show me how it was done at his house.
Anyway when it came time for the debut ( we micro waved them coverred with wet towels while we were perfecting the mix) I steamed them in a faux steamer. My assistants at the party laughed at me, but as the party wound down and we were getting ready to leave we tasted a few remaining tamales and there was a new found respect.
I think with a little more practice you might even find these on the menu, but of course it would be in the summer when corn is in season, or maybe not if they taste good. I served them with a little sour cream and pico de gallo. The Quick Grits are ground hominy so you are working with something similar to the masa used in a tamale. Anyway just thought I would share and wish everyone happy holidays and good luck.
If you ever wonder what it takes to develop a menu item or a special, first it takes an idea. Maybe you read a magazine, maybe the newspaper or the food network or maybe you talk to other chefs or even customers, but something gets you thinking. I've been thinking about this tamale idea for years. Occasionally I'll try it but then it goes back into the "archives" waiting until I have more time or help. However this year I stuck my foot in my mouth and I sold it to someone for a party-- a boat parade party. It is a perfect boat parade appetizer, it just needed to be fine tuned.
So now I'm going to share the research and development part of my job. I started with Cream Corn, Quick Grits and Dried Corn Husks, the kind I thought we used in my neighborhood in Washington D.C. when I was growing up. I mixed the cream corn with the grits and began cooking the two together. I started with 4 parts cream corn to 1 part Quick Grits( basically the recipe on the box).Then I added some more grilled fresh sweet corn and mixed them together. If you have eaten a tamale you know that the finished product is thick, almost bready. I continued to heat the mixture and then added some hot water. During this time period I seasoned the mixture with salt and white pepper. I finally added some grated pepper jack cheese (possibly overkill since it created a different consistency then I was aiming for but still tasted good). Anyway we decided to use fresh corn husks soaked in water and then after cooling the thickened mixture wrapped it in the corn husks, at least two to a tamale-- I would recomend seeing a finished product or having a skilled tamale technician show you how to fold one- I was lucky enough to have one of the guys show me how it was done at his house.
Anyway when it came time for the debut ( we micro waved them coverred with wet towels while we were perfecting the mix) I steamed them in a faux steamer. My assistants at the party laughed at me, but as the party wound down and we were getting ready to leave we tasted a few remaining tamales and there was a new found respect.
I think with a little more practice you might even find these on the menu, but of course it would be in the summer when corn is in season, or maybe not if they taste good. I served them with a little sour cream and pico de gallo. The Quick Grits are ground hominy so you are working with something similar to the masa used in a tamale. Anyway just thought I would share and wish everyone happy holidays and good luck.
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