Chef's Manifesto from some of THE BEST Chefs in the World

In an effort to clarify what this crew is up to, and inspire the next generation of culinary professionals, Ferran Adria, Heston Blumenthal, Thomas Keller, & Harold McGee made a "Chefs Statement" that speaks to the principles, values, and techniques with which they attempt to give homage to and expand upon culinary tradition. I've only seen this on Heston Blumenthal's page at The Fat Duck site, and since it was in a flash format (thereby preventing me from directly linking to the content), I've decided to reprint it below in the hope that some young chef's read it. I take no credit for it's content, and am grateful for these great minds in the world of food for taking the time to give us a glimpse into their thinking. The original text can be found here under "Heston Blumenthal >> Chefs Statement". Although the fantastic four here are justifiably unwilling to be simply labeled under the tag "Molecular Gastronomy", I can think of only a few others (Herve This, Wylie Dufresne, Grant Achatz) who I'd put into my personal list of "who's who in molecular gastronomy", with a nod to the future of the up and coming Richard Blais from Bravo's Top Chef Chicago since he might be the most widely viewed example (in the U.S. anyway) of the potential for science in the preparation of great food.

Chefs Statement from Ferran Adria, Heston Blumenthal, Thomas Keller, Harold McGee


The world of food has changed a great deal in modern times. Change has come especially fast over the last decade. Along with many other developments, a new approach to cooking has emerged in restaurants around the globe, including our own. We feel that this approach has been widely misunderstood, both outside and inside our profession. Certain aspects of it are overemphasized and sensationalized, while others are ignored. We believe that this is an important time in the history of cooking, and wish to clarify the principles and thoughts that actually guide us. We hope that this statement will be useful to all people with an interest in food, but especially to our younger colleagues, the new generations of food professionals.

1. Three basic principles guide our cooking: excellence, openness, and integrity.

We are motivated above all by an aspiration to excellence. We wish to work with ingredients of the finest quality, and to realize the full potential of the food we choose to prepare, whether it is a single shot of espresso or a multicourse tasting menu.

We believe that today and in the future, a commitment to excellence requires openness to all resources that can help us give pleasure and meaning to people through the medium of food. In the past, cooks and their dishes were constrained by many factors: the limited availability of ingredients and ways of transforming them, limited understanding of cooking processes, and the necessarily narrow definitions and expectations embodied in local tradition. Today there are many fewer constraints, and tremendous potential for the progress of our craft. We can choose from the entire planet’s ingredients, cooking methods, and traditions, and draw on all of human knowledge, to explore what it is possible to do with food and the experience of eating. This is not a new idea, but a new opportunity. Nearly two centuries ago, Brillat-Savarin wrote that ‘the discovery of a new dish does more for human happiness than the discovery of a new star.”

Paramount in everything we do is integrity. Our beliefs and commitments are sincere and do not follow the latest trend.

2. Our cooking values tradition, builds on it, and along with tradition is part of the ongoing evolution of our craft .

The world’s culinary traditions are collective, cumulative inventions, a heritage created by hundreds of generations of cooks. Tradition is the base which all cooks who aspire to excellence must know and master. Our open approach builds on the best that tradition has to offer.

As with everything in life, our craft evolves, and has done so from the moment when man first realized the powers of fire. We embrace this natural process of evolution and aspire to influence it. We respect our rich history and at the same time attempt to play a small part in the history of tomorrow.

3. We embrace innovation—new ingredients, techniques, appliances, information, and ideas—whenever it can make a real contribution to our cooking.

We do not pursue novelty for its own sake. We may use modern thickeners, sugar substitutes, enzymes, liquid nitrogen, sous-vide, dehydration, and other nontraditional means, but these do not define our cooking. They are a few of the many tools that we are fortunate to have available as we strive to make delicious and stimulating dishes.

Similarly, the disciplines of food chemistry and food technology are valuable sources of information and ideas for all cooks. Even the most straightforward traditional preparation can be strengthened by an understanding of its ingredients and methods, and chemists have been helping cooks for hundreds of years. The fashionable term “molecular gastronomy” was introduced relatively recently, in 1992, to name a particular academic workshop for scientists and chefs on the basic food chemistry of traditional dishes. That workshop did not influence our approach, and the term “molecular gastronomy” does not describe our cooking, or indeed any style of cooking.

4. We believe that cooking can affect people in profound ways, and that a spirit of collaboration and sharing is essential to true progress in developing this potential.

The act of eating engages all the senses as well as the mind. Preparing and serving food could therefore be the most complex and comprehensive of the performing arts. To explore the full expressive potential of food and cooking, we collaborate with scientists, from food chemists to psychologists, with artisans and artists (from all walks of the performing arts), architects, designers, industrial engineers. We also believe in the importance of collaboration and generosity among cooks: a readiness to share ideas and information, together with full acknowledgment of those who invent new techniques and dishes.

Ferran Adria, Heston Blumenthal, Thomas Keller, Harold McGee

The Best Restaurants in the World, where are they taking us?

The new list for 2008 of the 50 Best Restaurants in the World is out from Restaurant Magazine. Topping the list for an unprecedented 3rd year in a row, 4th overall, is El Bulli. This restaurant is of such great distinction that it would be unfair to describe it without including these facts:

• El Bulli has held 3 Michelin Stars since 1997


• It takes reservations for the entire season on one day


• On that one day, it will have over 400 requests for each seating (800,000 requests, 8,000 guests per season


• It is only open for 6 months of the year, the other 6 months the chefs spend in preparation for the coming season


• It employs 42 chefs


• The tasting menus typically are 25-27 courses each


• A meal goes for about 250 euro


• The head chef Ferran Adria is so influential, many prominent chefs take sabbaticals from their own restaurant to learn his techniques


• The deconstructivist style, which many would say has heavily influenced the early incarnation of Molecular Gastronomy, is so sought after by culinary enthusiasts that their cookbooks retail for as much as $350 (yes, that a cool grand for the three books published in English)

I've been in the dark until recently on El Bulli, but looking forward to grabbing a used copy of the 94-97 book in English someday.

In the Top 10, only 2 American restaurants made the grade, both of these owned by Thomas Keller: The French Laundry in Napa, and Per Se in New York. Other notables in the top 10 include Heston Bloomenthal's Fat Duck, and the Chef's Choice for best restaurant Mugaritz where the menu shys away from molecular gastronomy, but yet emphasizes natural preparations informed by scientific methods, and presented as a parody on nouvelle cuisine.

In reading through the list and pondering my recent research into El Bulli, it is apparent that the science of cooking has inextricably rooted itself in the future of haute cuisine. It is equally apparent that there are divergent forces at work to define the future of haute cuisine. Food science and molecular gastronomy seem to have grown of as an unintended consequence of all the processed food innovations that scare many of us (twinkies are not baked by the way, they cook in a chemical bath), the same ones that drive me to cook fresh food for my family using organic and all natural ingredients. But undoubtedly, some of the food chemistry out there has proven useful, and in no way would I say that all food chemistry is bad. As molecular gastronomy deconstructivism in the kitchen has gained steam, so too has the slow food movement. It might seem ironic that these two forces are both gaining momentum at the same time, though I'm not sure there is really philosophic opposition by the leading figures in each movement. From Slate in 2004:

Ironically, such tech-y gastronomy has reached its apogee at the same moment as has its near opposite, the preservationist Slow Food movement, which seeks to preserve the oldest, most traditional methods of cooking. Each culinary movement is reacting to the mass food culture: One rejects industrial food in favor of culinary authenticity; the other uses industrial food techniques to ruffle up the rarified realm of haute cuisine.

Historically the French have had a monopoly on the definition of haute cuisine, as is evident from the Michelin Guide to France, a 2000+ page tome, whereas the culinary epicenter of the US, New York City, garners a mere 469 pages. So what are the French up to amidst the possibly conflicted paths of food science and slow eating? In a recent episode of Gourmet's Diary of a Foodie, the New Guarde of France was covered, which featured very sophisticated flavor pairings (likely inspired by food science), simple preparations, fresh off the vine ingredients, and relatively small / healthy portions. The chefs featured on the program echoed the seeming paradox of slow food and food science as dishes displayed accouterments as diverse as green tabasco gelee cubes and fresh picked green zebra heirloom tomatoes. The tabasco gelee came from Chef Inaki Aizpitarte who's Paris Bistro Le Chateubriand incidentally garnered the "Breakthrough Restaurant" award (on the same top 50 list from above).

So where are we going? That's one of those questions like where is music going ... it's artistic, and our ability to describe the present is probably as limited as our ability to predict the future. Why? It's just too complex, anybody at the highest levels likely either has an agenda or a history that influences their view of the problem, and there are obviously a lot of diverse views. What trend can be derived of the simultaneous musical successes of Tiesto, Fifty Cent, Britney Spears, Herbie Hancock, and the White Stripes? Maybe it's that food has become multi-genre, even at the levels of haute cuisine. I'm not a professional chef, food scientist, or nutritional anthropologist. I know there's a lot to learn from the classics, the rebellion from the cuisine classique to cuisine nouvelle, regional traditions, food science, and the bleeding edge of deconstructivism at El Bulli. I'm not sure where we'll end up next, but I'm looking forward to cooking, tasting, and learning from the stops along the way.

Finger Food Italian Style

Here is the spread we had out on the deck to welcome the warm weather this weekend.



Just some antipasti ... grilled zucchini and squash, roasted roma tomatoes stuffed with panko, garlic and parmigiano, sopresatta dry sausage, mozzarella balls tossed in artisan olive oil and balsamico, marinated artichoke hearts, grilled scallions, kalamata olives and shaved parmigino. With a little bread, a lot of good tastes here.

Bistecca e Gnocchi Piedmontese

Just felt like doing a little dinner with a nod to the flavors of Piedmont, Italy. A simple rustic meal ... grilled steak, a reduced Nebbiolo wine sauce in the style of bordelaise, homemade gnocchi tossed in butter and parmigiano reggiano. For the gnocchi, boil 1 1/2 pound of russet potatoes in their skins. Start in cool water and bring to a boil for about 30 minutes, then start testing. You're looking for a little more resistance than when you're boiling to make mashed potatoes. Use a paring knife to test and drain when the knife goes in with just a bit of a push. Drain and let rest for about 5 minutes to slightly cool. Peel the potatoes while still hot, the carryover temperature should cook the potatoes sufficiently, but you're looking to retain a bit of gumminess to allow the gnocchi to hold together. Light gnocchi is ideal, and results are supposed to be best with waxy potatoes according to some of the traditional italian recipes, but I've found good results with russets. Mash coursely and add a cup of all purpose flour, combine in a food processor. The resultant mixture will be really tacky. Work the mixture on a floured surface and knead in flour to form a dough that is still slightly tacky. Form a few 1 inch logs, slice down the middle and slice 1/3 inche slices. Take the piece and press one finger into a piece into a fork held perpendicular to your work surface, and flick the piece along the teeth of the fork. The pieces should have a little indentation in the back and ridges about 1/16 - 1/8 of inch from being slightly pressed through the gaps in the fork teeth. To prepare the gnocchi, add to nearly boiling salted water a handful or two at a time. Bring to a boil and remove the gnocchi after 10-20 seconds after they have risen to the top. It may take as long as 30 seconds at high altitudes like here in Denver. For best results, test a couple gnocchi at first and taste. There should be no flour taste, and they shouldn't be flimsy to the point of falling apart when you bite into one. Take the gnocchi right from the water with a spider or strainer and into a pan with hot melted butter, not smoking or browned but hot (medium to medium low gas heat for a couple minutes in a copper pan worked for me). As you add the gnocchi, shake the pan to avoid sticking, and coat the gnocchi in butter, flipping them repeatedly in the pan with a quick wrist motion (don't burn yourself by splashing the butter, you'll just need a tablespoon or two per batch). Plate and sprinkle on freshly grated parmigiano reggiano and black pepper.



For the sauce, sweat a couple minced shallots and one minced clove of garlic in a very small amount of butter and olive oil, lightly salt. Add a cup of nebbiolo wine (don't waste that precious barbaresco, just something around $10-12 will work fine) and reduce by 1/2. Thicken with a couple pats of butter. A little sea salt and pepper for the steak, and plate the sauce on the side for dipping. This is a hearty meal that dresses up your average meat and potatoes meal. The girls and I couldn't get enough gnocchi, simple, homemade, way better than the frozen stuff, just no comparison.

Chicken Giambrocca (vengence and cure exacted upon TBSCBs)

Tasteless boneless skinless chicken breasts (TBSCB) do have a place, and one of the better ones is chicken giambrocca, a recipe I learned from some cookbook I bought from the clearance shelves at Barne's and Noble when I was first trying to not be another bachelor who can't cook. I don't know what the heck the name means, I remember researching that in the past and verifying it in that sad little cookbook that has since gone the way books go when 1 year old twins find them.

This is a pretty quick dish with very predictable and delicious results. Predictability is an important consideration when working with TBSCBs, as breasts dry out easily.

Take a few TBSCBs and either pound them with a mallet to take out your distaste for them, or stab them repeatedly with the many blades in a tenderizer for cube steaks, or if you're as big a fan as me of TBSCBs, you do both. The point of all this violence is to flatten the buggers for rolling. Sprinkle and rub on some rubbed sage, a very little kosher salt, some grated parmagiano reggiano, and cover with a slice of prociutto. Next prepare a mixture of panko bread crumbs and grated parmagiano reggiano, and a small bowl of melted butter that's about room temperature. Roll the now potentially tasty TBSCBs, gore them each with a toothpick to keep everything in place, dunk them in the butter to coat, then suffocate them with the breadcrumb mixture. Into the over at 400 for 20-25 minutes, rotating once.



The finished product is a very close relative of saltimbocca, but I prefer this to any other version I've eaten. The rolling and coating ensure predictability as the butter and crust insulate the breast, and the prosciutto helps to lock in juices, or maybe it just makes TBSCBs palatable. Really this has always seemed to me to be the Italian equivalent of chicken cordon bleu. Tasty, and an excuse for you to at once pummel and exalt the TBSCB (Tasteless is what the "T" stands for in case you forgot, but hopefully this recipe will rectify that).

Jing Restaurant in Denver - Round 2

Last Friday I entertained a guest at work with a dinner at Jing. My second visit was mostly business conversation, but we managed to do a little eating. Notably was the Kobe on a Rock, as this was a fun presentation and a good representation of why Wagu beef costs more, yum. This dish comes out with all the wagu sliced thinly and arranged around a smooth hot stone in the center. Dip the beef in the sauce, toss it on the rock for about 5 seconds, turn and then enjoy.

The duck this time didn't impress as much, I think the sauce was sweeter, almost cloyingly so; the skin wasn't as flavorful or crisp which might have made the sauce out of balance in the dish. I'll chock this one up as a near miss on a busy Friday night. One very interesting thing was the drink I had that had a "Buddha drop" in it, which is the head of this little flour which you eat to cleanse and enhance your palette. It was interesting, and worth it once just to experience the weird sensations that occur in your mouth during and after consuming the flower. But in the end, I'd have to say the flower was more gimmick than gourmet. Still, Jing seems to have some staying power with its food, even if buzz about drinks with flowers is now putting butts in seats.

Penne in Mornay Sauce, and a little bit about Béchamel

Béchamel is the mother of white sauces, just grab a copy of the definitive "Sauces" book, turn to the chapter on white sauces and you'll find béchamel front and center. Moreover, it's one of the mother sauces of classic French cuisine, meaning it's a prerequisite for many other sauces that are build upon it. A great béchamel sauce is a thing of beauty, and serious investment of time. You see, a béchamel that qualifies in terms of texture can take 20 minutes, or maybe less if you have an induction cooktop. But a béchamel that lives up to its French pedigree can take several hours to achieve. I've made quite a few and really the fundamental difference is just the extent to which you allow whole milk to simmer slowly, thereby reducing water content and absorbing the essence of white onions & cloves. Pasteurization is the enemy here as different techniques can create very different protein & fat characteristics, causing different scalding and skinning behavior. For a detailed treatment of the subject, check out Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking. What you need to know is that unless you have access to unpasteurized milk, you'll want to keep the milk at a bare simmer. To the milk, when you're ready to thicken, incorporate a white roux or just incorporate even parts by volume butter and flour that you've evenly combined. In my experience, you can go all the way up to even parts flour and butter by weight, but if you lack the patience to weigh butter in a bowl on the scale that's been zeroed out, and repeating the process with the flour, I'd say start with even part by volume and you can safely incorporate 1/3 more flour. If you're cooking a serious béchamel, you'll want to separately and briefly cook this mixture before adding it to the milk, thus a white roux is superior to flour butter, but a little more work. For the milk, you'll halve two white onions per gallon, up to 3 per gallon if you're pressed for time. Take the onion half and stab 3 cloves into the outside. The cloves are a key flavor element and will help to keep the onions together for later removal. You'll want to periodically stir throughout the process of simmering the milk, only adding the roux / flour butter when ready to finish the sauce Béchamel. Upon introducing the thickening agent, whisk until fully incorporated, then simmer another 5-10 minutes. Your Béchamel is complete when it evenly coats the back of a spoon and you can draw your finger down the center without the sauce running into the clear path you've drawn. So enough about béchamel, on to Mornay. To make mornay sauce, you just add cheese.

For this recipe, I simply added about 4 oz each of mozzarella and dutch fontina which were both sliced to 1/8 inch thickness. You'll want to make sure you're at barely a simmer when bringing in the cheese; if the mixture is too hot the cheese will not incorporate and will become stringy. After blending in the cheese to 2 quarts béchamel (made in about 30 minutes, not outstanding but fine for making a little mac and cheese), I turned off the heat and covered. Next, cook a bag of penne to al dente, strain and into a glass baking dish. To the mornay I added a bit of cayenne, a little (be gentle) worcestershire sauce, black pepper and a dash of salt. I find cayenne gives a background heat that balances the richness of the sauce, and the worcestershire should be in the background, but adds an earthiness that's lacking when working with non-artisinal cheeses, as in this case. Cover the pasta with the mornay and top with bread crumbs and a few pats of butter. Bake at 300 for 10-15 minutes, and finish quickly under the broiler to softly brown the top. This was a hit with my wife and girls.



As long as this blog post was, this dish was being made as I was cooking a couple other things and only took about 15 minutes worth of effort. This is one of those Sunday afternoon dishes you cook up for the lunches in the coming week. Honestly after you've make a really good Béchamel, making a reasonable quick one becomes something you can do in your sleep.

Vitello di San Gimignano, Fettucine w/ Watercress Garlic Cream Sauce

Spring flavors have recently been on my mind, so please expect to see some serious experiments like this in the near future. Today watercress was the target ... how to do something interesting with this peculiar little herbacious leaf ... I pondered the problem a bit, and thought some Italian-influenced fusion might be a good route. Off to Whole Foods this afternoon, and what do I find but an amazing specimen still attached to its roots.

So my concept here was to blend down the watercress and add this at the last minute, along with cream, to a white wine sauce, and serve with pasta. While the starch really was intended to be a complement to the wonderful, nearly classic, veal inspired by my trip to San Gimignano, the pasta both complemented the vitello and somewhat upstaged it.

For the Vitello di San Gimignano, I prepared a little bath of 2 finely chopped shallots, 2 minced cloves of garlic, and a cup of 365 Chardonnay (cheap at $6, single dimensioned but unoaked, good enough to drink as table wine but more than sufficient for cooking purposes). I simmered the bath a bit, and added 2 veal scallopini which was previously gently salted on one side. The quick poaching in this liquid lasted a mere 30 seconds, then into a hot pan with olive oil for another 30 seconds per side. I removed the veal and let it rest in a small baking pan, and added a cleaned and destemmed bunch of spinach to the poaching liquid. I reduced the heat to low and covered for a few minutes, turning the spinach once. Then the spinach joined the veal on the baking pan. I added a few thin slices of fontina to the top of the veal (covering about 1/3 of it), some fresh black pepper and put everything into a 200F oven to keep it warm and gently melt the cheese.



For the pasta, I blended the lot of the watercress leaves with 1/2 cup of the chardonnay and 2 cloves of garlic, with a pinch of salt. I added 2 cups of heavy cream, another cup of wine, and a dash of white wine vinegar to balance the dish with a little acidity. Upon tasting, I knew I was missing something as the watercress was very aggressive and unbalanced, so I consulted the culinary artistry for flavor pairings with watercress.

One flavor pairing stood out to me, mustard. I had some great authentic dijon mustard from France, so decided to try it. After two spoonfuls and some stirring, the sauce came into a great harmony. Next I boiled some artisan fettucine in salted water for about 7-8 minutes until a very al dente consistency was achieved. Directly from the salted water I pulled the fettucine into the large saute pan with the sauce and coated.



The finished meal had all the components in synch, the veal was perfectly tender and flavorful, harkening back to the towers in San Gimignano, and the grapevine I saw that crawled up 4 stories of a building in the piazza to some lucky and patient soul's window. The spinach really is essentiall to the veal, and the pasta was wonderfully light, slightly bitter, but beckoned another bite. Kudos once again to the culinary artistry book for saving the day.

Beef Ribs rubbed with Ancho, Brown Sugar, and Cayenne

Those ribs used in the bollito had to go some place, and despite the mediocre results of the Tuscan boiled beef attempt, the ribs were more than salvaged with a simple rub.



After removing the ribs from the bollito liquid, I mixed a tablespoon of ancho chili powder, a teaspoon of salt, 1/2 tablespoon cayenne, and a 1/4 cup of brown sugar. I rubbed this on the wet ribs and added a cup of the bollito broth to a french oven / casserole pan to braise / glaze the ribs. Cover and into a 250 oven for 2 hours, glazing the ribs every 30 minutes. The ribs with the simplified BBQ rub turned out very tasty and made the memory of the bollito experiment quickly fade.

Bollito from Gourmet's Diary of a Foodie

So a show I've recently run across on PBS is Gourmet's Diary of a Foodie and I have to say it's a very good investment of 30 minutes. A recent episode entitled "Bovine Rhapsody" got me inspired to try something that I wouldn't otherwise think was good. They covered a ranch in central Italy with Maremmana, a Tuscan breed of cattle which apparently have been domesticated since the time of the Etruscans. The local cooking specialty is bollito, which really is just boiled beef. Being a fan of most all things Tuscan, this was something I thought that would push me out of my comfort zone in the hopes of discovering a "new to me" regional Italian treasure. Now generally, when I think of boiling anything I think of how rapidly the heat and density of the water can dry something out, much faster than the same time sauteing.

You see, liquids at high heat transfer much more heat due to increased coverage of surface area. This lesson I learned not through cooking experimentation, but inductively through the sommelier technique for chilling wine: the fastest way to chill wine is to place it in a bath with ice and water; literally, you can chill room temperature wine in about 5 minutes. Along with this basic problem of a high heat with high surface coverage for that which you're cooking, food that is simmered or boiled in liquid can be made very bland when it's ganged up on by a lot of less flavorful liquid. The proposition of boiled beef seemed like a no win proposition at first glance, so I decided at a minimum this effort would be calling bull on Gourmet.

In the show they just used an onion, basil, and roma tomatoes with short ribs submersed in water and according to the show "the vegetables were not being put in to eat, but to give flavor to the broth". I just knew the broth was going to need some help beyond what they were saying, so I stepped my approach up a bit by including a little celery, more onions, and more tomatoes.



Along with a little salt, I also decided to improve upon the broth by starting with beef ribs and finishing with a small chuck roast. The idea here was to coax some of the collagen out of the ribs to make the broth I'd cook the roast in meatier.



For seasoning I added some black peppercorns, dried rosemary, and red pepper flake. I just covered everything with water and simmered for an hour. At this point, the liquid was tasting like the beginnings of a reasonable beef broth, so I pulled the ribs and added the roast. The roast simmered for another 2 hours (same as the specified time in the show).

In the end, the meat was more flavorful than I expected, but by no means was it as tender as butter like the show implied; you definitely needed a knife, but the well done meat was palatable, though far from a gastronomic wonder. I've subsequently researched bollito a little and found that one traditional practice is to do this with multiple different meats, and through this progression, presumably the flavor would reach some synergy and intensify in later steps.

So while I'd give the show the thumb's up so far, it's a soft thumbs down on the bollito. When I try this technique again, I will treat this more like a water-born mixed grill and entertain the multiple protein bent, likely starting with something full flavored like sausage in the hope that the most intense flavors in the early going will soup up the broth for later entries.

Project: Procuring Great Ingredients

While shopping last weekend and looking for a couple specialty items, what has been a growing anxiousness reached a zenith ... overall, I'm somewhat content with my options for ingredients, but there are big gaps, and I'm fairly unhappy, even perturbed at some of the grocers out there. So behold, here is my analysis on obtaining great ingredients, and my rant on stupid crap I'm seeing out there. Below is just a start, I'll probably be updating this post over the next several weeks, and reposting it as I'm able to more fully flesh out my thoughts and challenge my own opinions with some empirical evidence and some feedback from fellow cooking devotees. Please indulge me a little, this is intended to EVENTUALLY be partly a personal history with ingredients, and a detailed analysis on obtaining these. This is not going to be a short post with pretty pictures, but I hope it challenges you to think about how you shop, how you formed your palette with certain ingredients, and I hope you'll share your thoughts and rants with me as I'm hoping to learn something in this process.

To start, let's subjectively examine some of the categories of ingredients that myself and many foodies seek out.

Meat
When I think of really good meat, I immediately go back to my grandfather's farm in Iowa. I remember picking out a steer a few days before a 4th of July celebration back there when I was maybe 10, and then being treated to an amazing steak on the 4th. I'm not really sure if the one I picked out was the one we ate as I'm guessing my grandfather might have aged the beef, and truly I have no idea if there's some span of aging minimally necessary between the point of slaughter and consumption. What I do know is, my palette for beef was born of some very good beef, so I've always been extremely picky about it.

In my youth, I can't remember a time when I had a steak that was not cooked well done. This was just how my father wanted things prepared, after some apparently traumatic event with undercooked food, and him probably being a little over protective. This brings me to my first memory of eating beef carpaccio. It was served as part of prefixe menu at a prime steak house I was at with a friend. I remember this place served filets for half price if they seated you between 4:30 and 5:00pm on Saturdays. This deal was too good to pass up for me and my roommate, who in our early 20s were much more accustomed to eating ramen than beef tenderloin. After placing our drink orders the carpaccio arrived, we both were like, "Hey, it's raw, what's the deal?", but trying to act like we actually belonged at this place we started eating it. Wow was our reaction as we tasted the beef with capers, arugula, mustard and black pepper, I think this might have been the first time I tasted arugula as well. At this point the server came by to ask how we wanted our steak prepared, and newly inspired to be adventurous, I ordered my first steak medium rare and haven't gone back to cooking beef to a leathery doneness ever since (save hamburger, but that's a food safety issue for another post).

I think by this point, my palette was already pretty particular in terms of beef. I believe now there are precious few steakhouses that are worth a darn, and partially thanks to my consulting days, I've eaten at just about all of them (digging into steakhouse experiences will have to wait for another post).

Similarly to beef from Iowa, if anyone in this world has a knack for pork, it has to the be the Italians. The first time I had the real Prociutto di Parma, I was probably 26 and instantly thought to myself, how could I have waited this long to try something so good. It was as if I hadn't really eaten good food, and was immediately terrified as to how many other things I was missing out on. Heck, I remember pining for days just trying to figure out the correct pronunciation for this amazing delicacy. When I finally made it to Italy, it was the start of wild boar hunting season in Tuscany and at one point we were staying out in the middle of nowhere in the countryside. We had to keep the gate to the villa closed at night to keep the wild boar out, seriously. In the early morning we'd hear the shotguns in the distance. I'd had wild boar once before at Le Central in Denver, but it was in Tuscany at the Michelin rated Al Macereto where I had my first wild boar steak. Wow, unbelievably good, and very much a steak rather than a run of the mill pork chop. So it was that the Italians were really the people to first opened my eyes on the versatility of pork, and so too, doomed me to seeking out very good specimens for my ingredients.

My time in Italy also introduced me to sopresatta, prosciutto di friuli (which is amazingly sweet and nutty, as the friuli prosciutto pigs consume hazelnuts), and the Italian run of the mill prosciutto crudo which is still far better than any American imitation I've tasted. Subsequently I, like many other chefs and foodies, have found numerous winning incarnations of pork products and preparations, across all manner of cuisine.

Then two years ago, I met an almost unconscionable pork product known as Lardo, at the amazing Portland restaurnat Higgins. In my quest for food knowledge, just prior to my visit to Higgins I had been reading about the methods of garde manger and charcuterie. So when I saw their house-made charcuterie platter, I just had to have it. So the plate arrives and it has several items that are immediately identifiable as cheese or sausage, and then there's this curious white stuff that at first looked a little spooky. After getting my courage up by sampling several of the sausage options and thoroughly relishing these, I took a little piece of the white stuff, put it on a tiny crostini, and popped it in my mouth. Ooooh decadent lardo, how I covet thee now. When I asked what this amazing delicacy was, I was informed that it was fat from the belly of select local pigs that had been cured. Since then I've learned a little more about lardo ... first, apparently it is about impossible to get here ... second, it is an extremely prized Italian delicacy that apparently is so often fraudulently copied, that a system equal to the DOC / DOCG wine classification system has been setup to protect consumers from being ripped off. The pinnacle example is found in lardo di colonnata from the Piedmont region of Italy. This stuff is so good, I'm planning to procure it from overseas and throw a little wine party just to have my foodie / cooking friends over to sample it. My love affair with pork I'd put like this ... there is simply no more versatile meat, nothing that compares to the number of preserved preparations, no meat more worldly and magical, and oh by the way ... we haven't even counted bacon.

Poultry
The most obvious example of poultry in the American diet is chicken. Most people will think fried chicken or chicken breasts when asked about chicken, and these were largely the example of chicken I remember growing up. Since then, I've come to almost detest skinless boneless chicken breasts as a healthy, yet flavorless canvass that I find does not naturally lend itself to create anything resembling cuisine. I recently read in the new Ruhlman book, The Elements of Cooking, how he echoes my detest in this area. In my experience, even the organic free range birds underwhelm me when we're talking boneless skinless breasts. Sure you can do many things to dress these up and alter the flavor profile. But really I don't view boneless skinless breasts as having flavor you are so much trying to enhance as much as you're trying to mask, and hopefully not totally dry out in the process. So you might be thinking that I'm not much of a chicken fan; not so fast. And I would say my palette in this area has a ways to go, but there are a few very good representations of chicken ... Roast / rotisserie chicken can be great (breasts and all), legs and thighs actually have a flavor I'd care to enhance, and chicken stock is a very useful base ingredient for many purposes. I'd venture to say learning how to make great chicken stock is one of the best things I've taught myself in the kitchen. So overall, I really like chicken, but apart from a few Italian and French classic preparations, I have almost no use for boneless skinless breasts. In the future I do hope to be able to make true coq au vin with a rooster / capon, and I've made what I'd consider to be some very good chicken recipes, but overall I guess I'm still waiting for that aha moment with chicken. Maybe you can enlighten me.

Another poultry ingredient with which I'm far less acquainted but very interested in is duck. Peking duck is one of those examples of world cuisine by which standards are set in terms of technique, flavor, and texture. On balance, my palette with duck has been largely formed through restaurant dining experiences. I'm still a newbie with it's preparation, but based on the cassoulets and duck confit I've enjoyed, I know already that I will love cooking with duck fat. I'm in the process of trying to discover a good local source to obtain duck fat for rendering, but hope to have an update on this soon.


Fish

Fresh Produce

Staples

Specialty Items

Where to Shop
Plan for this section is to cover the major players, the specialty shops, and the best of denver in terms of quality, selection, and price. Please send your comments to help me on my quest.

Should Iron Chef America Rotate Out the Weakest Chef?

The latest episode was "Iron Chef America - Battle Coffee", which paired Cat Cora against Ken Oringer who seems to be a prominent chef with 3 restaurants in the Boston area. After witnessing his finesse with layered flavors and molecular gastronomy techniques, I will most certainly have to visit one of Mr. Oringer's establishments.

So a couple of thoughts on this episode ... Within the first 15 minutes of cooking, I was really impressed with the base flavor pairings that Oringer was taking on, and I found myself strongly in the camp against Cora. After contemplating my emotion, I think by default I cheer against Cora because I think I can cook many of things she cooks, not boasting, just not very intrigued by her techniques and often not craving the courses she puts forth. My gut feel is that there's a bit of redundancy in her approach, like I swear I've seen her throw something on a brioche round with an egg and bacon a few times before, and I know I saw her do this in the last battle with the green eggs and ham. More generally, I think my default emotions are Pro Batali, Pro Morimoto, Very Pro Symon (probably because he's the new kid on the block ... oh and I sort of cook like him), on the fence with Flay each time (more negative when I see him whip up yet another Johnny Cake), and almost patently Con with Cora.

As I'm kibitzing with my wife on how I think she's about to get her ass kicked, we start talking about how cool it would be to see a "challenge test" where the show would forcibly rotate out the weakest chef each year by having a cookoff among say, the chefs with the three worst records for the season. It could be all in one day, like a 3 hour marathon with round robin (a food network special like the superbowl), and this time the guest judges wouldn't know who was presenting each course (i.e. blind tasting). If they really wanted to get bold, they could have the judges be the 2 chefs with the top record or point total for the season along with Jeffrey Steingarten (he's brutal, but he knows food inside and out). Granted, this sort of event would be a risk to the food network in that viewers loyal to the losing chef would likely be less likely to tune in, but it would be hard to argue if the losing chef got objectively stomped by his / her peers. On the upside, this would give food network the opportunity to concurrently add a new Iron Chef each season while maintaining 80% of the gauntlet of talent, and over time this would only further their influence on celebrity chefdom as they make or break a new crop of emerging and prominent chefs each year, thereby progressively exerting increasing influence on what "prominent chef" really means. Well given that the foodnetwork execs actually allowed McDonalds to sponsor one of their Iron Chef America battles last year (I kid you not), and there was even some commotion they were party to subliminal advertising for said insult to the culinary arts, I can't imagine this will happen, but it was a fun daydream anyway.

Back to the battle, so honestly I'll have to watch it again to figure out all the zany things that Oringer pulled off, but I was very surprised with how close the scoring was in the end. The key differentiator though, despite Oringer's utilization of molecular gastronomy, was taste as Oringer garnered a near perfect 29 of 30 points. We saw the same thing in the Cora battle with Alex Stupak, the molecular gastronomist made all these weird and amazing things, but still kicked ass on taste. I think this might mean there's a correlation with these people seeking out molecular gastronomy techniques and their broad spectrum understanding of taste, it's a new and semi-systematic approach that concentrates on new ways to present and concentrate flavor and texture, and to beguile the eater's assumptions about what something on a plate is and what it should or could be. In any case, with all the science that Cora's been blinded with so far this season, hopefully food network and Cora are taking note that molecular gastronomy can no longer be thought of as that science stuff, but as a very legitimate and significant trend in cooking. On Cora specifically, I think she might want to learn some new tricks, or maybe food network will just need to get her some easier opponents.

Fig Glazed Pork Chops w/ Toasted Goat Cheese & Bacon, Smashed Potatoes, Bechamel Poached Rainbow Chard

I'd describe this as a savory rich meal, with elegance and harmony. My wife described this as one of the most completely satisfying dinners she's had in some time.



Place the pork chops in a brine of hot water (140F), salt, and red pepper flake for 30 minutes. The brining tends to improve the flavor of the pork chop and the heat of the water will start the cooking process to ensure an even preparation to medium doneness.

Start the potatoes, quartered but not peeled, in boiling salted water.

Prepare a quick bechamel, by starting a blonde roux with 4 tablespoons of butter and 4-5 tablespoons of flour over low heat. Don't cook the roux beyond the blonde stage, then add 1 1/2 - 2 cups of milk. Add 4-5 cloves and bring to a simmer, then reduce heat to low. Add a teaspoon of ground blade mace, 3/4 teaspoon of chinese five spice, a little salt and white pepper; stir to an even consistency. Add the swiss / rainbow chard leaves, destemmed, and gently poach for 20 minutes.

Wrap the pork chops with smoked bacon and secure with toothpicks, covering the top and bottom of the chops. Place on medium high heat until the bacon begins to crisp on one side, then flip and repeat. Detach the bacon and finish the bacon and chops over medium heat. Remove from heat and coat the top of the chops with fig spread. Finish crisping the bacon and pat dry.

Cut goat cheese rounds about 1 inch in thickness. Place 1 tablespoon of butter in a non-stick pan and brown the butter. The trick is getting a thin toasted skin to form on the cheese rounds. Quickly sear the goat cheese in the butter flipping onces, 30 seconds per side.

Drain the potatoes and mash coarsely with a little butter and 2% milk, salt and pepper. Keep these light, preferring seasoning to fat.

Place the goat cheese on the chops and cover with crumbled bacon. Serve with a large spoonful of the potatoes and cradle to wrap a spoonful of the chard, like you're beginning to form a quenelle. The potatoes were just a simple complementary starch to the stars of the show. Pork on pork, how can you go wrong? Honestly, the chard was my favorite thing; the five spice, mace, and cloves made this really delicious.

Petit pain de l'Ermitage

This sandwich was an eclectic attempt (major gastronomic guesswork) at what I would imagine would be a great little sandwich to pair with the tour de force Hermitage wine from the Rhône Valley in France. Hermitage, and it's much lesser cousin Crozes Hermitage, are great examples of what wine geeks mean when they say "Terroir", you can taste the surrounding of the vines that grew the grapes, and Hermitage is very distinctive and among the best incarnations of Syrah in the world. Syrah is a favorite grape of mine personally that has inspired many meals, maybe because it was the first wine I made with grapes from California. This first winemaking experience had me sampling every syrah I could get my hands on for the year it took to turn grapes into wine. There is a stark contrast between new world and old world examples of syrah, and if you want to learn more about wine I'd strongly encourage you to work your palette with old world examples from the Rhône Valley, north and south, Châteauneuf-du-Pape, even some provencial wines. The wine turned out great, and along the way I found out what a chamelion this grape was and how evocative it was of the earth and weather that made it.

So back to the sandwich ...



Start by creating a brunois of a pink lady apple, and also peeling and slicing another apple. Prepare a mixture of 1 oz of brandy, 4 oz of cool water, 1/2 teaspoon of kosher salt and 1 tablespoon of sugar. Place the apple slices in the mixture to macerate in the fridge for 30 minuts.

Mince 1 medium shallot, and combine half the minced shallot with the apple brunois and 1 lb of spicy country sausage (hot). Form thin patties saute, adding a couple splashes of champagne vinegar just before flipping. Add the rest of the minced shallot to the pan and cook through over medium low heat, avoid scorching anything, adding a little more vinegar along the way or reducing heat as necessary.

Split two ciabatta rolls, or other simple crusty bread rolls, place a slice of swiss cheese on the bottom half of each and toast everything under the broiler for 5 minutes. Coat the top with a thin layer of quince paste, add a couple red lettuce leaves, spread a little high quality dijon mustard on the lettuce, add a few macerated apples, and place a patty on the bottom half of the roll.

This is a complex set of flavors, with many different tastes as you progress through the sandwich ... sweetness, bitterness, heat, richness and finally crispness. Overall, a very robust and yet refined experience. The macerated apples are key, but avoid over exposing these to the brandy mixture as a little goes a long way, and you definitely want to avoid directly exposing the apples to the brandy, otherwise you risk an overly pungent and offputting undertone of alcohol. What I like about this sandwich is that nothing dominates, it's balanced and was fun to eat. How many sausage sandwiches can you describe as having a clean crisp finish?

Current Currants

So apparently, commercially growing black currants was outlawed by congress in 1911, and the ban stayed mostly in effect until 2003 ... I think late summer of 2003 was the first year I bought black currants ... but based on this article I'm wondering if I've really ever had currants ... begs the question what all the wine geeks are actually tasting when they list "currant" in the flavor profile. I'm definitely guilty of this posting, but I've eaten what I *thought* were black currants, red as well, many times since 2003. They are great with some plain yogurt.

More on The Nibble.

Tuscan Bean Soup (Classic)

This recipe was brought back Tom & Nancy, our daughters' aunt and uncle, from their years living in Tuscany near the town of Lucca. This soup was one of the first things that my wife cooked for me when we were first dating.


View Larger Map

This is an extremely simple recipe, that on the surface might make you think, oh too simple, couldn't be good.

Trust me, this is a magical combination that evokes the essence of the food of Toscana. It's simple rich melded flavors are enhanced by great textures. This is a classic to me, a staple in our kitchen, and it's great reheated for up to 3 days.

Ingredients
1/4-1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil (365 brand at whole foods can't be beat for common uses)
1 - 1 1/2 teaspoons red pepper flakes
5-6 cloves of garlic, minced
3 cans navy beans or cannellini beans (navy perform best / quickest)
Thick Crostini from a baguette or small ciabbatta rolls toasted

Start with the olive oil, red pepper flakes, and garlic over medium heat.

Saute the garlic until it begins to slightly brown and the oil takes on a little redness from the flakes.

Add the cans of beans with the liquid it came with, this sounds weird but this is key. Bring to a simmer and stir occasionally. Keep the soup from boiling and continue stirring and mashing the beans a bit with a wooden spoon. What you're going for is a colloid suspension of the oil, bean liquid and bean starch. A pale beige with a little golden shimmer should take shape about 15-20 minutes into cooking.

This time I toasted a ciabatta roll under the broiler for about 10 minutes, flipping halfway through. Place the crostini or broken up roll into the bowl and ladle in the beans and some of the soup liquid.

The soup is sensuous and fiery, contrasting with semi-firm beans and the crispness of the bread. To my palette, this qualifies as exceptionally good eats that is extremely quick, cheap, and simple to prepare.

Halibut a la nege, Gruyere mac & cheese

Another post from the old cooking journal...

So here's something to give the knife skills a workout... the dish is
really simple though

basically, it's poached halibut in homemade vegetable broth
the "nege" part involves julienne of carrots, turnip, leeks, and celery
... cutting celery like that is time consuming and more than a little
dangerous, but the new knife gets the thumbs up, can't believe how
precise it is (shun 6" utility knife) ... anyway, simmer the veggies in a 2 to 1 water to wine
bath with a large bouquet garni and one crushed garlic clove for about
10-15 minutes ... strain the veggies and reserve, poach the halibut
below a simmer for 10-12 minutes ... finish the halibut with black
pepper and serve on a pretty arrangement of the nege with a little
broth

gruyere mac and cheese didn't work out too pretty but tasted good ...
any tricks to keeping the gruyere from clumping? I had it suspended in
a little milk over very low heat (sauce was milk gruyere & herb de
provence) but it clumped up when I combine with the pasta ... a little
frustrating as I was going to try it with queso fresco, but the guy at
whole foods steered me to the gruyere ... never had the same issue with
fontina

Desert Soup

Another old post from the food journal ...

hot & spicy

large white onion, coarse chop
2 qts chicken broth
1 habenero, finely diced (use gloves, don't touch it)
pinch chili powder
1/2 teaspoon cumin
6 cloves garlic, 4 chopped, 2 pressed / minced
1 red bell pepper, coarse chop
3 cans cannellini beans
5 yukon gold potatoes, thinly sliced
6 strips bacon, coarse chop
2 cups white wine
3 tablespoons olive oil
salt tt
white pepper tt
2 teaspoons dry oregano

In a medium stock pot, sweat the onion with the olive oil and a small
amount of salt over medium heat. Half sweated, add the bacon and
increase the heat to high, stir constantly until the bacon is cooked
through (not crisp) and the onion is beginning to carmelize / brown.
Add half the wine and 4 chopped cloves of garlic, reduce by half. Add
the red pepper and the rest of the wine, reduce. Add all other
ingrediants, save the last 2 garlic cloves. Bring to a boil and
reduce heat, simmer 1 hour. Add the last of the garlic and simmer 10
more minutes. Puree in the pot with a hand mixer. Serve with a big
spoonful of sour cream and garnish with thin slices of celery.

Guajillo Pork w/ Mango Salsa & Fried Fingerlings

This is an post from my former food journal, covering my first experience working with guajillo chiles.

This came of a new interest in finding out about traditional mexican flavors. From what I've read, there are two basic classes of mexican cooking styles, fresh or powdered (this is a gross simplification, so feel free to correct me, I'm a Rick Bayless novice). Anyway, Bayless contends on the powdered side, guajillo and ancho dominate the basic flavor profile. Anchos are on the sweeter side and guajillos have this fairly complex smokiness. I've worked with anchos, but really not toward trying to emulate traditional mexican flavors. With the guajillo, basically you
get a big bag of dried chiles, stem and seed them, toast them, then rehydrate. From there I blended them into a paste with some vinegar, salt, and garlic. This was used to marinate a pork roast for 2 days.

I baked the pork with the marinade at 350 for a little less than an
hour and finished it in a saute pan to give it a thin crust.

For the mango salsa..
1 ripe mango, chopped small
juice of 1 lime
small bunch of cilantro finely chopped
1 minced garlic clove
2 chopped anaheim chiles
1-2 minced jalepenos
1 teaspoon sugar
salt
1 tablespoon olive oil
combine &chill the salsa for an hour

fingerlings were just medium slices with skin on fried in 1/2 olive
oil and butter, liberally sprinkled with salt and pepper at the end
(sort of a very thick chip)

My wife loved it, the sweetness and acidity from the salsa balanced
the deep smokiness of the meat and richness of the potatoes.
Definitely looking forward to more time playing with traditional
mexican flavors, so please post any interesting experiences you have
in this area.