chadzilla

down and out but feeling good

For the last 2 years at the ICC, we've made a point to eat at a 'nice' restaurant.  This year we decided to hit as much casual food as possible.  This wasn't due to any current industry trends, but more of a reflection of our finances and having to fund our entire journey out of our own pockets.  No matter how small or uncomfortable our hotel room was, no matter the fact that we became more subway savvy to avoid cab fares, and no matter what big name chef's food we didn't get to try... this was one of my best years ever.  I felt lucky, moreso than before, to be in attendance and for the chance to get the information firsthand.  The chefs that attend the ICC aren't full of ego.  The vibe is incredibly friendly and everyone seems happy to meet new chefs and make new friends.  I just wish we could have found that Will Goldfarb BBQ truck also.

Here were my 'down and out' casual food memories...

Best pizza ever in my life.  Guillermo at Motorino in Brooklyn gave us the hook-up, but for a short subway ride from Manhattan and a fair price, I highly recommend the visit.  We (our group of 6) dined out back with olives and amazingly fresh salads before moving onto Guillermo's brick oven baked flatbreads, calzones, and pizzas.  The best pizza was... brussel sprouts and speck.  The flavor of the char on the edges of each brussel sprout leaf balanced out the flavors perfectly.

The hands-down best way ever to make pizza.  There's something about a wood-burning brick oven.  I've been obsessing about building one for some time now.  Hopefully, I will have the time, motivation, and money to fulfill this destiny once we close on our house.  The backyard is screaming for one... ok, maybe I'm the only one who can hear it screaming, but it keeps me up at night.

The late-night subway crew (2 Argentinians & 3 gringos)... Guillermo, Zilla, Chef K, Fabian, Mark.  Guillermo used to be our friend Alberto's (with us but not in the picture) pastry chef in Miami.  He moved back to NY to become one bad-ass pizza-meister.  If you want to open a brick oven restaurant, it only makes sense to hire an Argentinian to run the oven.  These guys learn to manage a fire before they can walk.  Being a pastry chef on top of that just makes him even more perfect for the job.

BBQ at Fette Sau.  Although someone said it's been rated among the top 10 BBQ joints in the US which seems ridiculously outrageous to claim, it's not bad.  This place was fun.  Get your meat by the quarter pound on a half sheet pan, pick your drink up at the bar, and live the dream in Brooklyn.

Baoguette at the Congress.  Although I don't know where the original store is, the word in NY is that this place is hot.  $8 for a banh-mi seems like Vietnamese blasphemy, but I can say from experience that this slightly untraditional sandwich is the best banh mi I've ever eaten in my 15 years of banh mi-eating history.

Di Palo's Italian Market.  We met the coolest NY Italian behind the counter at Di Palo's.  Aside from the incredible porchetta, focaccia, and asiago that made for our last NY meal, he shared a few other tastes with us in his shop.  Check out this gigantic Swiss crucolo that we were lucky enough to watch being cut during our stop.

Here's a close-up of that rip.  The cheese is being crushed by it's own weight.

Golden King Bakery.  A Chinatown hole in the wall.  Being an early riser and having this place right across the street equals coffee and congee every morning.  After nights of heavy alcohol consumption, a light congee with pork and thousand year egg gets you ready for another run.  I'd love to stay in Chinatown again next year, but for a much cheaper room rate... thanks, UN convention!

Flying out to Venezuela on Thursday for 3 demos over 3 days.  Looking forward to every bit of the trip except for the kitchen we had to prep in last year... not ideal at all.  It's like some Top Chef nightmare.

mental digestion

Just got home from New York last night for the 4th annual (and my third) International Chefs Congress.  Many thanks to Antoinette, Will, and staff for putting on another greatly inspiring and motivational show.  Many thanks to all of the people out there who keep making me think.  I just want to run through some of the random things running through my head and basically shout out to so many cool people.  It's impossible (and probably boring) if I posted everything so if I forgot something or someone, it's just that my head is still spinning for many various reasons.  Here we go in no particular order...

Still after so many years being amazed at the insight and intelligence of Charlie Trotter.

4 mornings of coffee and congee to wake me up in a tiny Chinatown bakery... awesome.

4 nights of 4 guys crammed into the smallest hotel room in the world in Chinatown... not awesome.  Just more reason to sleep less and stay out more.

Seeing modern science and ancient tradition fused together through Japanese umami in Chef Yoshiro Murata's demonstration.

Still wondering why 'fusion' as a concept is still being debated when it already exists in 99% (or more) of the world's culinary dishes in some form or another.

Having Pierre Gagniare and Juan Mari Arzak remind me to always be humble.

Witnessing the organic genius of Pierre Gagniare.

Eating on a budget in NY is difficult.  Drinking on a budget is impossible.

Eating the best wood brick oven pizza I've ever had from our new friend, Guillermo, at Motorino in Brooklyn.  Great food, great company, and great hospitality!  That just built up my already burning brick oven fever.

Meeting up with new and old friends... our friend Chris Windus and his sous chef Danny, Linda from Food Player, Alberto Cabrera from here in Miami, Jeremiah Bullfrog, talking to Kevin Sousa who is always a step ahead of us, saying Hi to Alex from Ideas in Food (thanks for sharing your personal notes from the demo's with everyone), Kostas from Just Food, Tyler Teass of New Mountain Cookery, Chef Richard and Peggy in DC, Howard from Winston Industries along with Jill Conklin, meeting the guys from Elements restaurant, Dirk Flanigan from Gage, meeting Craig Deihl from Cypress in Charleston (awesome charcuterie!  thanks for sharing), having the privilege of meeting Jeremy Fox from Ubuntu, Scott Boswell from NOLA, Jacquimo from NOLA, meeting Judy Shertzer from Terra Spice in person instead of through many emails, talking to Akiko Katayama. 

Seeing Sean Brock blow it all out of the water with his highly theme-relevant demo on Low Country Cuisine.  Thank you for so much ecological and cultural insight and for reminding everyone that while America is crying over polar bears sitting on melting icebergs, we also need to focus on the many disappearing treasures right in front of our faces.  You rocked it like no one else did!

Getting to have an actual conversation with Grant Achatz.

Getting on the subway, getting off the subway, getting on the subway, getting off.... etc.

Seeing Alex Stupak constantly evolve his cuisine ahead of everyone else, and staying true to creativity.

Eating some surprisingly great BBQ in Brooklyn at Fette Sau.

Watching Charles Phan demonstrate how to make rice paper (and his assistant, Lien).

Hearing practically every chef for 3 days give recognition their chef teams and how it takes collaboration to make it happen.  There was definitely a lack of ego when it came to acknowledging the ones who make the wheels turn.

Meeting Asbel Reyes in person, and hopefully we will get to converse someday.

Paco Torreblanca... nothing else can be said about this genius except "Wow."

Seeing Michael Laiskonsis again, and having him invite us to help him again at the next SoBe W&F for Daniel Boulud's tribute dinner.  There is no chef out there with more class than Michael Laiskonsis.  It's always an honor.

Rick Tramonto might be known as a hard chef, but he comes across on stage as being humble and true to cuisine.  Chef K reminded us that he (more than any other well-known chef there) sat in the front row for every single demonstration and diligently took notes the entire time.  That's respect.

Watching Nathan Myhrvold and Chris Young put an entire crowd in anticipation over their upcoming book... and wondering how to employ a staff of 15 people for 4 years on a project that has not generated revenue.  Their efforts will more than pay off.

Jose Andres is like a culinary evangelist.  He really knows how to work a crowd.

Morimoto... the God of Thunder in the culinary world.

Seeing the incredible synergy of Dave Arnold and Nils Noren in action before me, and finally getting to skoal.  Hoping they will visit us in Miami sometime.

Witnessing countless evidence that the dirty south will rise up in the near future.

Meeting up with our old friend, Antulio.

Realizing that as great as New York city is to an outsider, it's not America.

Eating a brown bag lunch of porchetta, asiago, and focaccia that we bought at Di Palo's in Little Italy while waiting to go through security at LaGuardia.

Coming home to re-coop before work tomorrow.

Last but never least, hanging out for 4 days with our great friend, Mark Majorie.  It was a good run.

pump daddy

We love the strategic use of froths for plating... especially with intensely-flavored liquids that benefit from being dispersed lightly on the tongue such as high acid and high salt solutions.  Gael Greene may have referred to airs and foams as 'the current culinary trend least deserving of hype' (hope she doesn't like cappucinos or whipped cream), but they arguably perform the same function as a Reidel glass to wine (allowing the tastebuds on the tongue to receive the stimulus in a 'friendlier' fashion).  We do, however, understand critics of the 'froth' because they can become overused or used when unnecessary.

Sometimes the procedure of incorporating air with an immersion blender and scooping with spoons seems tedious (and also messy) during large plate-ups or busy moments on the line.  A few months back, we had the idea of putting a solution with lecithin into an air foam pump bottle (like the ones used for soap) to see if the liquid could hold the air forced into it by the patented pump system.  It didn't work, and after tweaking the viscosity with xanthan the experiment wasn't going anywhere and the idea was abandoned... temporarily.

Yesterday, I tried it again with sucro (from the Texturas line) in an empty soap bottle (which I flushed out 4 or 5 times) and the results were different.

This was soy sauce with 1% Sucro, and it foamed out evenly and nicely... remaining stable for a good period of time.

The beauty of this for us will be using the foam pump bottles to apply to foams during large dish-ups and also for more ease and consistency on the line.  Good quality pumps offer a bit of control as well, possibly being dispensed right onto the plate bypassing the extra vessel.  Just to play around with the idea, I ordered a dozen 7.5oz bottles.  We'll see how it goes during our next wine dinner this month.  What would the reaction be if we applied foam via soap bottles to the guests' plates tableside?  "This is for sanitizing your hands before eating, sir."

Where can the foam pump bottle foam go from here?  Pre-packaged flavorful foam liquids that can be sold to chefs or home cooks (sorry, Mr. Ruhlman)... ready to apply to the plate?  Foam pump bottled tomato lime froth on the condiment table at your favorite taco joint?  Hot sauce froth ready to pump sitting on every guest's table in any restaurant?

n'duja means heaven

Frodesnor recently returned from a San Fransisco trip (to which he has been posting on his culinary destinations), and fortunately for us, brought back a much appreciated souvenir.  I'll admit that we're suckers for interesting pork products and Boccalone's n'duja is some really good salty pig parts.  The casing was molded from the trip, but carefully peeling it off revealed some beautiful spreadable meat.  A hint of piquante and a spectrum of spices made the n'duja best when tasted over lightly toasted bread... nothing else was necessary.  Why aren't any of our purveyors carrying this stuff?!?

Now if we could only get our hands on some of Cosentino's mortadello hot dogs.

turkey jive

When writing the menu for our Terraspania wine dinner, we opted for turkey as a first course.  This was partly because of the perception of turkey as a holiday or Thanksgiving dish (of course, not counting the ever-popular turkey sandwich... but is this really what turkey should be most represented as).  We were also frustrated over the fact that we could not locate any sources for heritage breed turkeys.  These would be anything but the Broad Breasted White which has been embraced by the corporate turkey guys.  There were a few websites up for growers boasting Bourbon Reds, Royal Palms, Narragansetts, Jersey Blues, Bronze, Spanish Black, and Slate, but all of them listed the breeds as 'out of stock.'  Frustrating!  

We ended up having to settle for Whites which were grown and raised under more humane conditions than your average Butterball... but, still the same breed as a Butterball.  It's time for a turkey revolution!  Let's start demanding ancestral breeds of the bird that Benjamin Franklin wanted on our dollars instead of the Bald Eagle.  The turkey deserves a place of respect on our menus.  The Spanish Black had it's moment of fame on the European continent.  Mexicans commonly serve theirs with mole in Oaxaca.  Should our most famous turkey dish be the club sandwich (which bacon steals all of the glory anyway)?

turkey confit

We chose to feature turkey in a confit preparation for this menu.  The poaching fat we have is now a beautiful mixture of duck, chicken, turkey, and bacon fat.  Turkey confit sure sold me.  When you think about it... turkey confit is really just a slow-fried turkey and since we have roots in New Orleans, this is totally appropriate.  Put that on your sandwich.

chopardy

What in the hell is Chopardy?  It is actually a competition (Chopped/Jeopardy) conceived by the culinary students at the Art Institute in Ft. Lauderdale where our good friend, Malka, teaches (who amazingly finds time to be the full-time pastry chef at a very popular restaurant, teach 2 pastry classes, and take classes on design herself while holding a masters degree under her belt... wow!)  The competition was divided into 2 parts.  The first was a Jeopardy-style culinary quiz bowl where 7 teams battled for 4 spots in the culinary half of the contest.  The actual cooking portion was an elimination process beginning with appetizers (1 member from each team, then eliminating 1 team), entree (2 members from each team, then eliminating 1 team), then pastry (where 1 member from the remaining 2 teams battled for the prize).  Chef K, Michael Bloise (formerly of Wish), and I stood in as judges along with one of the instructors.  The school staff was great, and I'd like to thank them for welcoming us in with professionalism.

Each round was a mystery basket, and the clock was ticking.  Criticism and mentoring are inseparable from each other.  It's easy to sometimes forget the long road behind you when you are in a profession that always finds a way to constantly humble you.  Being an observer of our culinary youth in action is like an involuntary mental reminder of that road passed... and a chance to cleanly adjust your footing for the road ahead.

It is also interesting to witness how each student handles criticism.  This is one of the most important lessons in humility for a chef.  We put ourselves up for criticism with every plate that goes out.  We are criticized for our cooking skills, for how we manage crisis and discipline employees, for our creativity, for our political and environmental choices, for our interaction with other departments, for our ability to balance food costs, for the words we put on menus to describe our food.  This list can go on and on.  On top of this, we personally put ourselves up for critique every Friday evening in front of ten scrutinous diners of the most discerning tastes.  Most of the time, there is no one out there telling us anything we do not already know or have already deduced.  Sometimes (every once in awhile) it is enlightening.  Sometimes we listen to people overly critique us because they have seemingly watched too many episodes of Iron Chef or Top Chef and assume that chefs are here for this sole purpose.  It's all interesting, and somewhere along the way you learn to critique the criticisms.  It's all part of learning... and there is still so much to learn.

It's also very interesting to see that every kitchen seems to still have it's loudmouths.  It's been that way throughout my entire career.  If you're trying that hard to be heard, you're obviously not listening or learning.  I was always the quiet guy in the kitchen.  Maybe I was the one you barely noticed who was working in the pantry meticulously building a salad or learning the sauté station while the grill cook ran his mouth the whole night.  Maybe that guy is still working grill, and bragging off to some other quiet guy next to him.  You can't learn if you already know everything.

terraspania tasting

We just tasted a flight of wines represented by Terraspania this week for an upcoming wine dinner on 27 August.  After our last dinner which focused mostly on shiraz, the diversity of this assortment had us excited about the range of possibilities.  All wines are from Spain.  Some of the grapes are 'not your average' selection, but they're all amazingly fun and friendly to drink.  You owe yourself an introduction to these well-balanced wines.  The dinner succession in the photo goes from right to left.

Conde de Subirats Brut n/v Rose, sparkling

Fuente Milano 2008

Albariño Nessa 2008

Abadal Chardonnay/Sauvignon Blanc/Picapoll 2008

Vina Honda Monastrell 2007

Prima 2007

Flare n/v

It took us the better part of a day to finish the menu on time, so here are some of the ideas bounced around...  hog snapper 'head cheese,' pine nut paella, turkey confit, shrimp & grits (might as well throw a version out there also), spiny lobster poached in goat butter, coconut braised shortrib, almond sponge.  We focused on Spanish flavors and seafood, but didn't hold back from packing in a range of other influences.  For more information, visit our website with a link to the full menu.  If you plan on being in the area, make your reservations!

soup & sandwich

Yes, it's been done to death (like everything else, but I didn't lose any sleep over it... this is home cookin').

This is my current home version of the soup & sandwich combo... alphabet pho ga & banh mi burger sliders.  I've been working on my banh mi burgers for years now (on and off), and these were the best yet.  If I had space to actually grill these suckers over some smoky charcoal I could take over the world (sorry, just a little Plankton complex)!  

The alphabet pho ga is simply a chicken pho broth with tri-color alphabets instead of rice noodles (mostly just improvising with what's available at home, but a fun idea nonetheless if I do say so).  Just didn't actually notice if the letters spelled out words in English or Vietnamese.  It also had me wondering if anyone manufactures Chinese Alphabet pasta or would you be limited to only pinyang spellings if you were doing a Chinese soup version.

transition

Lately, we have firmly locked into the 'transition' course from savory to sweet in our P-dime menus.  True that all courses are transitions or segways from one experience or sensation to another, but the structure of the transition course allows us to approach (at least one) plate in the succession under a different format.  This past week's menu led us to pair chicken liver pate (in the form of a sandwich) with celery sorbet and a simple sweet pea salad.  Frozen sweet celery sorbet is a great refresher in the heat down here.  We also combined this with hints of anise after recently tasting celery poached in anise syrup which also provided a great cleansing flavor platform.

chicken liver and anise cracker sandwiches, celery sorbet, pea shoot salad, white chocolate powder

fish ribs

We've had an inkling to somehow incorporate a fish rib dish on our menu.  Toying with the idea of mahi and other species gave us great flavored meat, but there was always the underlying question of customer acceptance... you know, with the bones and everything.

Chef K came across pacu one day, and we found a supplier.  Pacu is generally served 'on the rib' and looks surprisingly like a sparerib.  It's found in the Amazon and Orinoco rivers of South America.  The meat is fatty and delicious.  We've heard previous mixed reactions to the fish's goodness, but wanted to try it firsthand.  Besides, it's related to pirahna... so how cool is that?

korean kogi pacu ribs, honshemiji tempura, sesame leaf dolma, Frod's black garlic aioli, korean bacon powder

We found that the fish texture and flavor was greatly improved by giving it a 30 minute brine before grilling.  Although we initially entertained the thought of sous-vide cooking, a quick grilling with kogi sauce gave us great results.

The tempura batter was mixed with chopped cilantro (similar to a fried mushroom I enjoyed in the mountains of Taiwan).  The 'dolma' consisted of sushi rice wrapped in a marinated sesame leaf (there was some confusion over whether the leaf was actually perilla or sesame after questioning a few Koreans, but the leaf is actually more related to perilla and simply referred to as sesame).

Lastly, the aioli was taken from one of our friends who made a black garlic aioli after pondering what to do with some recently purchased black garlic.  Here's to you, Frodesnor.  You were officially on a P-dime menu.