A fabulous film, and of course it doesn’t hurt that it’s about Italians…
For those of you who don’t understand, “Big Night” is simply the best film ever made about what it is to be a chef. (Yes, even better than “Ratatouille”) Perhaps I am slightly biased in that it has to deal with Italian chefs, but regardless, it is still amazing. (Definitely better than “No Reservations”.) If you haven’t seen it yet, and have any interest in the culinary world, you must go rent it now. It is exactly what all chefs have to go through several times in their career.
To briefly explain for the poor souls out there who have not seen this film, it is about two brothers, one who is a fantastic chef who is unwilling to alter his cooking styles to match public tastes, and the other who wants to be a success with the public - even if it means making compromises on the food to sell people what they want. Simply put, it is about artistic integrity vs. selling out - from a culinary point of view.
At least I had been presented with the reality that this dichotomy existed before I was recently presented with it. I guess it helped me prepare for it on some level, but still it was amazing how it tore me in two directions so strongly.
Another cooking class up in Bedford, PA was coming up at LifeStyle and I knew exactly what I wanted to do. With the approach of spring, I wanted to teach a class on “Springtime in Tuscany”. It was going to feature lamb chops and grilled asparagus and a whole host of wonderful dishes prepared with the simple, straightforward style of Tuscan cooking. But the owners wrote back to me saying that while the class sounded great, they didn’t like how it used so few products from their store. Simply put, if they were going to pay me to teach a class in their store, I had to involve (read: “sell”) more of their merchandise.
So here it was, the integrity of my recipes and vision versus the need to follow the requests of those footing the bill. I was torn. On the one hand, it hurts to have a menu rejected like that. On the other hand, they had every right to make such a reasonable request of me since it is, after all, their store. I was not sure what I was going to do. Give up and tell them to find some trained monkey to hock their wares? Or maybe I should be more flexible in my menu seeing as how this is a great gig, and I don’t want to lose it just for the sake of my stubborn pride.
Cooking in the class with generous amounts of vinegar. As you can see, it makes me happy.
Photo by Ken Sepeda
Suddenly it hit me. I have always been a big fan of their selection of olive oils and vinegars, so I decided to alter my menu just a little bit, and turn the class into a lesson on how to cook with different vinegars. My menu was changed only slightly in the long run (lamb chops and asparagus remained) but now the owners were very happy that I was showing the class how to use so many of their products. Compromise wins again!
The class was an enormous success as the food was awesome and my students loved it all. It was such a hit, we have decided to re-run the class again later next month. Here is the menu of dishes I presented (and the vinegars I used):
Marinated Artichoke Hearts with Hazelnut Gastrique (white wine vinegar with cinnamon and nutmeg)
Italian Bean and Tuna Salad with White Balsamic Vinegar (white balsamic vinegar obviously)
Asparagus Vinaigrette (orange balsamic)
Candied Cranberries (red wine vinegar) (These were placed on the asparagus vinaigrette)
Lamb Chops Aceto (marinated in white wine vinegar with mint and lime, drizzled with fig balsamic after cooking)
Strawberries in Balsamic (chocolate balsamic vinegar)
It all turned out fabulously, and every dish had at least one person decree as the best on the list, which to me is the sign of a successful class. (And to tell the truth, I was more than a bit worried about the first one since it was my most avant-garde attempt by a long shot.) But because it turned out so well, I will share the recipe with you here:
Artichokes with Hazelnut Gastrique
What may at first seem like an odd combination, this dish works well as an appetizer to surprise your friends and family with. The sweetness of the gastrique plays well with the tartness of the artichokes and the vinegar flavors blend in with the naturally good flavor pairing of hazelnut and artichokes.
2 Tbsp water
2 Tbsp sugar
½ cup sherry
½ cup sherry or flavored wine vinegar
½ cup halved hazelnuts
¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
1 can marinated artichoke hearts - drained
1 loaf Italian bread - optional
Combine water and sugar, and boil until sugar begins to take on an amber hue.
Add sherry, reduce until almost all liquid has evaporated.
Add vinegar, reduce by a little more than half
Pour mixture over hazelnuts, stir to cool.
Whisk in olive oil to form emulsion with liquid in bowl.
Pour mixture over artichoke hearts, serve on thinly sliced bread if you like.
This will teach my wife to go out of town and leave me alone for two weeks…
Some of my longer-term readers will remember the article I wrote on chef’s tattoos, and how I was interested in getting one myself after my boss had used a lunch break one day for the purpose of inking his forearm. Well, allow me to fill you in on all that has happened behind the scenes since then.
I went to my local tattoo parlor and showed them my original tattoo idea which had all of the modern cuts of pork listed on it, but I wanted the base of the design to be the old-style pig. They told me that this idea wouldn’t actually work, since there was so much writing and so many fine lines. The tattoo would bleed with time, and in a year or two would look like crap. My only choices for this tattoo were either to make it large enough to spread across my whole back, or to go back to the drawing board. I chose the drawing board.
Taking into account the fabulous the suggestions on my previous post from Swan and Ed, I thought about the hilarious Simpson’s scene wherein Homer asks Lisa about her newly-announced vegetarianism:
The sketch I put together in Photoshop.
Taking that clip into consideration, I now had a refined tattoo idea. I still wanted to stick with the old-time butcher-block print of the pig, but now I figured I would work in the phrase “A Wonderful, Magical Animal” into the mix - since that is how I feel about pigs given the wonderful cuts of meat we collect from them. And to fix the problem of crowding the pig with all the cuts, I would only highlight the cuts Homer mentioned - which happen to be three of the best cuts from the pig anyway. A chef’s tattoo AND a Simpson’s reference to boot! My return to the drawing board had resulted in pure gold, and I was ready to go forward with the project.
All I needed now was to make sure I had the money to pay for the honor of permanently scarring myself. I assumed something like this would cost around $300. So once I achieved salary status at Rustico, I knew I had a steady enough job locked in, so I might as well go for it. It was just a matter of waiting for the wife to go away long enough for me to do something stupid. (Usually five or ten minutes is plenty of time for me to get into trouble, but this would take a little more time…)
With the birth of my new niece, and my wife out of town for two weeks, I had my window of opportunity. I called my good friend Boutros from Nookie Cookie to accompany me along - since she said she really wanted to see me in pain - and she acted as photographer for the ordeal.
After about an hour wait, my artist arrived on the scene, and it was somewhat comforting to see that she was a serious veteran of the tattoo chair herself. I would dare say that there was a greater percentage of her epidermis that had been colored in than not. She turned my sketch into a drawing, and said it would only cost $250 (I was saving money already!) so into the chair I went.
No sooner had I sat down, and right before the needle made its first mark - as if on cue - my phone rang. I apologized and went to turn it off, but noticed it was a call from my mom. As if she sensed a tremor in the force, she called me at the exact moment I was about to start feeling pain. I half expected the voice mail message she left to be along the lines of, “I don’t know why I called, I just suddenly had the urge to see if you were OK…” (She was just calling to say “Hi” as it turned out later.)
For the uninitiated, the pain of a tattoo needle feels pretty much the same as slowly cutting yourself with a razor blade. Non-stop for a half hour. There’s no denying that it kinda sucks, but on the other hand, the pain is hardly “unbearable.” I think the following photo montage will sum up how it went for me in the chair:
The needle goes in, and the work begins. I am glad I could not see this as it happened, or I probably would have freaked, as I am not a fan of needles.
Though I couldn’t see the needle, I could definately feel it as it made my whole shoulder blade vibrate.
The finished product.
So now that I have a tattoo, I join the ranks of, well, all other chefs it seems, as I don’t really know any chefs who aren’t inked in some way or another. This is just another rite of passage that I have gone through on my way to becomming a chef.
I think the next step is to get beaten up by one’s wife, which I fully expect when she returns on Saturday.
I am sure some of you are wondering about the title of this post, and let me assure you; all will be explained. And no, I have not performed any violence against my mom. (Hasn’t she suffered enough already?…)
A plate of fresh fried chicken. As much a sign of summer’s arrival as fireflies.
In recognition of my need to provide y’all with more recipes, I’m offering up my fried chicken recipe since it is definitely that time of year. That and I think this recipe is really something special. Would you like to make fried chicken with super-crispy skin and a moist, juicy inside that is bursting with flavor? If so, today is your lucky day. (If you said “no,” then there is really something wrong with you…)
This is a recipe I developed back in culinary school actually. I was taking a food science course, and the practical part of the final exam was that each of us was given a chicken. Using what we knew of food science and how it related to cooking meat, we had to provide the chef instructor with a fully-cooked chicken that had a crispy outside and moist inside. Any cooking method was allowed – provided it ended up as requested.
Basically stuff moves in all directions across the cell membranes. For more information, visit the nice people who made this diagram: www.exploratorium.edu
The answer to this style of cooking is brining. For those of you unfamiliar with the concept of brining birds, allow me to give you a crash course. (The rest of you can skip this paragraph.) Brining involves placing a bird in a salt/sugar water solution for a few hours before cooking it. While you may initially think this would dry out the bird (salt water draws water out of the bird) the result is actually the opposite. To get scientific about it, water is initially drawn out of the bird, and then the salt (and water) in the brine solution comes back into the bird. The salt then denatures the proteins in the bird meat slightly. This denaturing means that when the proteins are cooked, they can’t coil up as tightly - the action which squeezes water out of meat. If not as much water can be squeezed out, more stays in the bird. And with the extra water that came back into the bird in the brining process, the result is a much juicier end product. OK, lesson over.
Brining was obviously part of what I had to do for this exam, and I decided that a brined fried chicken would probably give me a super-crispy skin as well. (The fact that we had a large deep fryer on hand helped me make that decision as well…) But for this chicken, I wanted to add more flavor with my brine, so I brined it in buttermilk, which up until now I had only ever used in the coating. The result was a brine that stuck to the outside of the chicken as well - adding another layer of flavor under the crispy fried coating.
For the coating, my time in NC taught me that flour is the way to go. But there is no reason not to add some flavor in this step as well. I may not have a secret recipe of seven herbs and spices, but choosing flavors I like is not all that difficult, and of course you can adjust this to your preference as well.
In the class final exam, the recipe worked like a charm, and I presented my chicken to the chef instructor who agreed it was fabulous. (I received second place in the course behind what I personally thought was a horridly over-salted Guinness-brined chicken. But the guys who won were good friends of mine, so I was happy for them…) But after chef tried the chicken, there was another student from the class who took a bite as well. He loved it so much that after one bite he looked at me and said, “That’s so damn good, I gotta go home and slap my momma!”
The name of this chicken was immediately carved in stone for all eternity.
Slap My Momma Fried Chicken
Brine:
3 cups buttermilk
1/4 cup salt
2 Tbsp sugar
4 cloves garlic (chopped coarsely)
1 Tbsp paprika
2 bay leaves
1 tsp cayenne
1 Tbsp chopped fresh sage
1 chicken cut up into 8 pieces, or about 8 thighs and/or drumsticks
Coating:
1 egg
1 cup buttermilk
1 tsp baking powder
3 cups flour
1 Tbsp Old Bay seasoning
1 Tbsp chopped fresh thyme
1. Combine all the brine ingredients in a large non-reactive bowl, add the chicken pieces and allow chicken to soak in the brine for 3 hours in the fridge.
2. Take the chicken out of the brine, shake off excess brine (especially large pieces of garlic that may be sticking) and place on a rack on top of a sheet in the fridge, uncovered, for 2 more hours. (Don’t rinse or rub off the brine, you want that flavor to stick around.)
3. To coat, combine the egg, buttermilk and baking powder in one bowl, whisk well. Combine the flour, Old Bay and thyme in a large flat plate. Dredge the chicken in the liquid, coat with the flour and fry in a 350 degree deep fryer until done - about 3-5 minutes. (You can also fry it in a Dutch oven with about an inch or two of fat in there - you’ll just have to flip the chicken to cook both sides, and I would recommend a higher cooking temperature with this method - like 375 degrees.)
I doubt you will actually slap your momma as a result of eating this - in fact, I sincerely hope you don’t. But I’m sure you’ll want to call her to share this recipe. Because what good is a plate of fried chicken, if you can’t share it?
A few stories here that relate to other great blogs you should be reading. First off, to my good friends at the Rachael Ray Sucks Community I want to share this funny story. The other night in the kitchen, Dave (another chef) made a squirt bottle of extra virgin olive oil for use in dressing a new menu item. He is no fan of Rachael Ray’s either, but as a joke, he slapped a large piece of masking tape on the bottle and wrote “EVOO” on the bottle.
I took one look at that and was heard to proclaim, “Oh HELL no!”
Me with our newly-christened Extra Virgin Olive Oil bottle.
The offending piece of tape was quickly removed, and replaced by an even larger one that read: “EVOOMGSTFU!” In honor of the great acronym from on the RR Sux site, which of course stands for “EVOOh-My-God-Shut-The-Fuck-Up”! It is now the kitchen standard for our extra virgin olive oil bottle. (They also offer it on a T-shirt that I really need to buy…)
The funny part came as our dishwasher Greg saw the bottle last night and was looking at the label. He is not a chef of course, and I doubt he is a regular reader of anything to do with Rachael Ray - one way or the other - so this long acronym made little sense to him at first.
Finally he looked at Dave and asked, “So what does this mean? Does it stand for ‘Extra-Virgin-Olive-Oil-Mixed-Green-Sauce-Together-For-Us?‘”
It was quite some time before we all stopped laughing. Thank God it came during a quiet spell.
Any excuse to put a photo of bacon up is a good one!
Next, I want to give a big “Thank you!” shout-out to Heather of Bacon Unwrapped. She has been a fan of this blog for a while, and I have been a fan of hers as well, but she took the big step last night to come in to Restaurant Vero with some friends!
I should have recognized their order, as the three of them all ordered pork dishes…
But I was able to come out and meet her just before desserts, and it was great to finally put a face with the name. I shared one of my bacon band-aids (that I now carry on me at all times in the kitchen) with her as a gift to thank her for linking to me, and for making the trip all the way across the Potomac just to see me. Oh, and to enjoy our braised pork shank as well…
Thanks Heather! I hope dessert was great for you as well!
You ALL deserve this.
Thanks so much!
Finally, I also want to give a tremendous shout-out to all the great people out there - too many to name and count - who have been voting for me in the Best of Blogs Awards. There are just a few days left in the voting, and I would love to see your continued support. I wish I could list you all here, and give each and every one of you a gold star of your own. But I guess this one will just have to do as a collective one. Thanks everyone!
