March 20, 2008

Why In-N-Out is Amazing

Let me just say, to qualify my proceeding remarks, I have been to several three star Michelin restaurants, I have been cooking professionally for over a decade. It is safe to say I have experienced some of the finest food in the world and I have to say that In-n Out amazes me. They are the most consistent restaurant chain I have ever been to. I personally have a devotion to the Napa branch off of Soscol Avenue. That was the first In-n-Out that I went to and it will always hold a special place in my heart. Having tried multiple locations I can say without great bias that the Napa location for some reason is the best. Unlike other restaurants where a single line cook can make all the difference, these restaurants circulate staff more than any other restaurant I have been. Yet still, the quality remains, I had a burger recently than convinced me of that fact most poignantly. The burger is the one that you see below and I can tell you it is the single greatest hamburger experience of my life.

I am not the first to be seduced by In-n-Out, just a few years ago, Thomas Keller did a photoshoot at In-n-Out and he wore the trademark paper hat as all the employees do there. What this restaurant most reminds me of are the food stalls in in many Asian countries where you have one stall and one particularly good dish. One man may work there and only make chicken skewers for forty or fifty years, but you can be assured that those chicken skewers are completely amazing. That level of specialization and devotion to a single dish may seem monotonous to some attention-deficit Americans, but it is much more common there, especially in Japan. This follows the Zen philosophy of taking a particular task to it's ultimate completion and perfection which of course is unattainable, (another philosophy of Thomas Keller). Now I do not for a moment believe that the Board of Directors of In-n-Out all practice some form of Buddhism, merely that they decided to do just a couple things really, really well, and that seems to be something pretty rare.

February 21, 2008

In Defense of Carbonara

So, unlike most of my articles this will resemble a rant rather than a "newsworthy" article. Not that many of my articles are particularly newsworthy anyway. Few things boil my blood more than the names foods that I care about being used incorrectly. Carbonara has become one of the most misused words in the culinary world. Quiznos has a chicken carbonara sandwich on the menu now; why is it Carbonara? It contains no pancetta, eggs or pasta. It has become a determining factor for me when considering an Italian restaurant in the United States. If a menu says Carbonara and contains cream, peas, chicken, sausage or really anything other than what the ingredients truly are, I stay far away from that establishment. So what is Carbonara really? What does it mean? Carbonara means "coal miner style." There are many stories about where the name comes from or who invented it, but what is almost universally agreed upon in Italy are the ingredients. These include: Pancetta(cured pork belly with black pepper), Bacon or Guanciale, (cured pork jowls and my personal preference), whole eggs, black pepper, olive oil, some kind of grating cheese such as Parmigiano-Reggiano or Grana Padano and some kind of long dried pasta, usually spaghetti. That is it. There is no cream, nor carrots, nor peas, nor saffron. It is a beautiful, hedonistic dish with subtle flavors and a grand tradition. Seriously, can we stop screwing with this classic? Are we so bereft of creativity that we cannot think of another name to call all our clumsy, creamy pasta dishes that every idiot with a culinary degree seems to feel the need to make? And while I am taking the time to rant, what is the deal with parmesan cheese? Parmesan? That does not spell anything. We don't spell Brie Bree or Roquefort Rockfort. It is Parmigiano-Reggiano and it does not come in a can with a shaker on top.

February 10, 2008

This is a dish I made for a private party recently. It is a large Japanese sweet prawn, or Amaebi. As is the custom there, it is served in it's entirety. The tail is raw and peeled and the head is removed and fried until crunchy enough to eat the bones. It is a great example of taking an ingredient and not chopping it to bits, taking what nature made it and letting it be itself. It is dressed with a Meyer lemon vinaigrette and a bit of fried parsley.

February 8, 2008

Molecular Gastronomy

Beginning or Ending?

I knew that Molecular Gastronomy had hit mainstream in America when a contestant, Marcel on Bravo’s Top Chef introduced himself as a "Molecular Gastronomist" and Bravo did not feel the need to explain it to us. As a chef and writer, I had been aware of this new sect of cooking for a couple of years before, but now so-called “scientific cooking” has become a part of casual conversation. But is it another step in the evolution of cooking or just a temporary diversion? As many proponents of the theories love to tell us, Molecular Gastronomy is not really new. At one point in culinary history it was cutting edge to use a stove or more recently a blender in the kitchen. The real difference from previous kitchen technology is that were are no longer using the minimum, but rather the maximum technology to make food. Once the average person became comfortable using a microwave emitter to agitate water molecules in food, it was only a matter of time before this would happen. Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking is now a must for any chef in the industry not just a science book for a curious few.

The question has been posed lately by more than a few skeptical chefs, “Should we be doing this?” The Michelin Guide certainly seems to think so,awarding their highest rating of three stars to more than a few Molecular Gastronomists. Most notably Ferran Adria in Spain, considered by many to be the father of practical Molecular Gastronomy. My father, also a chef, put it best to me upon reading a sample menu of Adria’s food, “How do you order wine for that?” A common practice in Molecular Gastronomy is to serve very simple ingredients and combinations of flavor in their new cutting edge way. A good example of this is the American classic peanut butter and jelly, when served at Moto in Chicago it consists of an orb of “jelly” filled with peanut butter liquid set atop mascarpone cheese and French toast.

Perhaps it is fitting that at the same time, this culinary science phenomenon has been sweeping the world, many chefs, especially in America are going to a back to basics approach to cooking. Artisanal cheeses and traditional cured meats are being made and enjoyed more in America than ever. What I call the Alice Waters effect which was begun in the late seventies has finally become mainstream. Even the worst restaurants are making a concerted effort to buy and advertise that they have organic, local produce. With these two divergent views it may be easy to call both fads. However, the thing about fads is that even the worst ones are absorbed eventually will come around again. What I like to call the pink peppercorn and red bell pepper days of the trendy dining scene in the eighties were just another step of the evolving cuisine of the world. Much can be said of scientific cooking, some good, some bad. It seems though that chefs are spending a record amount of time thinking about food and that can never be bad.

February 4, 2008

Whenever traveling abroad and I introduce myself as a chef from America I am always greeted by quizzical looks. American food? You make McDonalds? This is because the rest of the world has had a five hundred year head start in originating a regional cuisine. My whole life I have cooked Italian and French food that was as authentic as we can possibly make it here but it makes me wonder, when are we going to get food of our own?

When you ask one of the new wave of American chefs they will point to ingredients like cranberries, sweet potatoes, turkey. Dishes like Gumbo, New England Clam Chowder, The Club Sandwich all have become classics here in America. There is nothing wrong with any of these and we should be proud of what we have given the world of gastronomy. But lets remember, we also gave the world the pop tart, the TV dinner and the fish stick. We have committed grave sins of gastronomy, we are still reeling from the 1950s notion of housewife cooking based on convenience and preferably nothing that remotely resembles an animal. To be fair technologies such as refrigeration and microwaves have given us many more options than Europeans had when they were developing their classics. People cured meat because if they did not it would spoil, they braised because if they didn’t their meat was impossibly tough. Technique was replaced by technology in the kitchen before we even had real technique here in America.

With the move toward fast food worldwide I also have to wonder is American food the way that everyone will be in fifty years. Fast food is our one true global culinary export, as such will convenience really win over what most chefs would call “cooking fundamentals”. Maybe down the road all sauce will be made in factories and served in packets, all fish will be “sticks”, vegetables will only be pureed and eaten from tubes. In a sense, sitting down and enjoying a meal is sort of antiquated, we don’t need to do it to survive it is usually not even healthy for us when we do. Perhaps life was so bad before a pleasant meal was all we had to bring joy to our lives and dining today is just a throwback to those days. If life ever gets so convenient and so easy will we really waste time eating? I sure hope so.

The future, I think, is a bright one, over the last ten years a real, “back to basics” approach has happened among American producers and restaurants. Now many Italian restaurants are making their own pastas and salumi, some truly exciting cheeses are being made by an increasing number of small producers. All of these are great signs of things to come, but I wonder if America will ever have the kind of national cuisine that France and Italy have developed and subsequently been copied around the world. I think the move toward scientific cooking or molecular gastronomy appeals to a great number of American chefs who are delighted to be really creating rather than just interpreting dishes from other countries. One thing can be said for sure, it is an exciting time to be a cook or a diner in America.

January 29, 2008

A few years ago I was cooking scallops with a Campari-cream sauce and osetra caviar as an experiment. I had just wanted to taste the bitter, sweet, creamy flavor I knew this combination would bring. A friend of mine stopped me mid-plating after I had explained how I could not ever recall quite this combination ever being printed on a menu, “You know everything has already been done.” I faltered for a moment, but continued plating thinking he had just gotten too old and too jaded. I ate my scallop quite happily and it truly was a unique taste, as far as my palate was concerned. Lately however, I have been thinking of those words again.

New techniques are always being created, faster and faster it seems now that most young chefs receive their inspiration from the internet. The recent rise and acclaim of “scientific” cooking has spurred many chefs to dabble in these “new” techniques. Leaders in this field have been lauded as creative geniuses, inventing things that have never been considered before. Maybe they are and indeed I have seen some interesting things, but what about the first time someone tourneed a carrot? Are we just tourneeing carrots in other shapes and not really inventing anything?

So called “scientific” cooking is just that, scientific. As much as chefs love to fancy themselves scientists, the vast majority of us are not. Most of the processes and chemicals being used are directly taken from the packaged food industry. Teams of scientists were paid good salaries to develop these processes over the years. They make our food solid or liquid at a desired temperature, melt smoothly, stay firm when heated, and while neat tricks all of them, they are still tricks.

The late Alain Chapel, one of France’s greatest and most inventive chefs told an interviewer that to taste a cepe sautéed with foie gras was to taste, “the truth.” That idea always stuck with me. I tend to think of cooking as a craft and occasionally a labor, but once in a while it is art, it is religion, it is the truth. Just as a painting done well can be beautiful, a master’s work can show the truth. Cepes and foie gras are not new, but when cooked by a master they created something new.

My main objection to any type of cooking that is too formulaic is that there is no room left for the chef. An old chef I used to work with told me, “If you add exactly one cup of cream, and a exactly a quarter cup of wine and exactly two shallots, where is there room for magic?” I am not suggesting we rely one magic for our cakes to rise, but think of the Italian grandmother in her kitchen with the door always shut, she will take the secrets therein to her grave and why shouldn’t she? She has spent years perfecting her cooking. She certainly believes recipes are not in a book, they are in the cook.