The curent season of Hell’s Kitchen ended last night, but not in the way I expected it to. After enduring many weeks of seriously delusional boasting (“I’m the best cook here.”) from everyone but Jay and Holli, it was no surprise that they would be the two finalists. I figured Jay had it in the bag: he had experience, confidence, and was a good cook. I had even eaten his food on more than one occasion at Gargoyle’s on the Square in my town. He had a decent final dinner service, managing to keep his two least talented cooks from melting down, which is usually the downfall of the losing finalist. Holli, by comparison, barely held her crew together.
So how did Holli wind up the winner? According to Gordaon Ramsay, she was the contestant that grew thew most, “and once she emerged, there was no holding her back.” I think he chose her because he’d have more success molding her into the chef he wanted in his restaurant empire than he would with Jay, who had already developed his own style.
So, a begrudging congratulations to Holli Ugalde, soon to be the new chef at Ramsay’s remodeled Savoy Grill in London. I hope she doesn’t get eaten alive. In the meantime, I’ll take comfort in knowing there’s still a killer chef in Davis Square.
Update:
Kurt, who enjoys fueling my rage about this isue, sent me the following update on all former HK contestants:
Not to mention that they’ll just quietly bury her if she doesn’t work out.
Michael Wray
Accepted an offer to work with Ramsay in London, but returned to US after a few days
Heather West
Former senior chef of Terra Rossa at the Red Rock Resort Spa and Casino (contract has since expired); currently the executive chef at the Monterey Restaurant in Long Beach, NY
Rahman “Rock” Harper
Head chef of Green Valley Ranch’s Terra Verde; served as the executive chef at Ben’s Next Door in Washington D.C. in early 2009
Christina Machamer
Senior sous chef under Gordon Ramsay at the London in West Hollywood
Danny Veltri
Chef working under head chef Stephen Kalt at the Italian restaurant Fornelletto in the Borgata Hotel Casino and Spa in Atlantic City, New Jersey
Dave Levey
Chef at the Araxi Restaurant, under Executive Chef James Walt, in Whistler, BC. Later departed due to other commitments.
With a head full of ideas from the classes taught by Ideas in Food, I realized it was time to turn theory into practice. I thought it would be prudent to try one of the simpler recipes, and the bacon-wraped skirt steak fit the bill, with a straightforward preparation and only four ingredients: steak, bacon, water, and transglutaminase.
But first, a brief digression.
I Am Mistaken for a Drug Dealer
In May I had purchased the smallest available amount of Activa RM transglutaminase – one kilogram – in order to prepare one of the courses for She Who Must Be Obeyed’s birthday dinner.
I learned that transglutaminase has a limited shelf life; after all, it’s an enzyme that acts on proteins at temperatures above freezing. If I wanted to protect my investment, I had to divide the kilo into smaller amounts that I could store in the Deep Storage Facility and retrieve when needed. I labeled ten zip-lock sous vide bags,  placed a silica gel desiccant pack (courtesy of She Who Must Be Obeyed’s lab) in each, then proceeded to weigh out 100 gram batches of the Activa. It’s fluffy stuff, so I used a paper plate on top of my scale to make pouring into the bags easier.
I had filled and vacuum-sealed nine out of the ten bags when the doorbell rang. The chimney sweep had arrived and needed access to the basement, which would take him right by the kitchen table where I was working. He saw bags full of white powder and a heaping pile sitting on a scale, gave me a look, and walked downstairs. I felt I had to say something, so I waved the now-empty Activa bag at him, saying “It’s a cooking ingredient.”
“Whatever you say, sir.”
At that point I should have told him not to disturb the meth lab in the basement, but I didn’t know how for his good will extended. I haven’t been arrested, so maybe he’s seen a lot worse.
Back to the Recipe
I cut the steak into two equal lengths, trimmed off the silverskin and most of the fat, and saved the scraps.
I lined a sheet pan with plastic wrap, then laid out bacon slices to span the width of the steaks. I overlapped each slice on the previous one by about a quarter of an inch. I also flipped every other slice over to provide a more uniform distribution of fat and lean and to satisfy my behavioral compulsions.
Activa can be applied directly to meat surfaces like powdered sugar (mmm, sugared meat…), or it can be mixed with four parts of water and brushed on. The liquid application method is more consistent, so I weighed out 100 grams of water and twenty five grams of Activa. Check out the new scale, accurate to a hundredth of a gram:
I seasoned each side of the steak pieces, mixed the Activa and water in a blender, waited a minute or two for the foam to subside, then brushed the slurry on each surface.
I did the same with the exposed side of the bacon, then layered each piece of steak in the center of the bacon, turning the steaks end-to-end so that the thickness would be consistent across the length.
I wrapped the bacon around the steak by lifting each edge of the plastic wrap and draping it over the center.
I folded the plastic edges over each other, pulling tightly to close the gap between the bacon ends. I twisted one end and tied it off, then slowly pushed any trapped air toward the open end before twisting and tying it off.
I punched a series of pinholes along the length of the package, then vacuum sealed it in a sous vide bag. The bag went into a 53 °C water bath for two hours.
While the steak cooked, I started a sauce by browning the reserved steak scraps with some carrots and shallots before adding beef stock and red wine and simmering for an hour. I removed the vegetables, passed the sauce through a fine-mesh strainer, and then reduced it to a thick glaze.
When the steak was done I removed it from the water bath and dried it on paper towels.
I rolled the steak in a hot pan filmed with oil in order to crisp the bacon, then drained it again on paper towels and let the steak rest for fifteen minutes.
I cut the steak on the diagonal so that I wouldn’t have slices cut directly with the grain. I served a pair of slices on each dish and drizzled a line of the glaze across.
You can see that the slices are a perfect medium rare all the way out to the edges. They were tender but had a bit of chew that you’d expect from skirt steak, along with an intense beefy flavor. Add a little crunch and smoke from the bacon, and some sweetness from the glaze, and you have a simple but delicious dish.
I prepared this dish for my sister (the original She Who Will Not Be Ignored)Â and my niece who were in town for a softball tournament. When we attended one of the games the following day, I was greeted like an old friend by other parents I had never met. My sister had taken photos and showed them to the crowd, raving about the dinner I had cooked. The others had been living on fast food, the only option available in the middle of nowhere (Wrentham, MA) where the tournament was played. There will be another local tournament in September, maybe I’ll surprise them by bringing a few pre-cooked steaks to serve tailgate style.
What else was on the plate? Pan-roasted asparagus with miso butter and slow-poached egg. But that’s my next post.
I‘ve run out of clever (and not-so-clever) titles for these weekly market reports; next week’s may be “Market [noun]”. At least I was able to keep the upcoming week’s meal plan in my head long enough to buy what I needed: leeks, eggs, corn, granola, cherry tomatoes, purple potatoes, heirloom tomatoes, blackberries, yellow peaches, and banana bread. I’m thinking of making a bacon and leek tart, a corn and tomato salad, or perhaps another batch of the corn with miso butter.
It’s been a little more than a year since I last updated the appearance of the blog. It was beginning to feel cramped and claustrophobic, so I went for the look you see here. The gray background is gone, the outer and inner borders have been removed, and the text column has been widened. I think it looks cleaner, and it will allow me to use slightly larger photos. The challenge there, of course, is stepping up my photography skills to merit the increased real estate.
I’ll work with this new look for about a week, but will probably wind up making a few more tweaks until it feels right. Constructive criticism is welcome in the comments.
I love eating summer sweet corn, just heated through, with lots of butter and salt. But sometimes I want to serve it in an upscale setting, off the cob with some complex complimentary flavors. Enter this recipe from Momofuku, which is one of the best summer side dishes I have ever cooked.
I began with four cups of corn kernels (cut from five cobs of fresh corn), a cup of sliced scallions, six slices of bacon cut into batons, a quarter cup of roasted onions, two tablespoons of shiro (white) miso, two tablespoons of room temperature unsalted butter, and a half cup of ramen broth.
I combined the miso with the butter in a small bowl, stirring thoroughly until the mixture was uniform and free of streaks. Next, I cooked the bacon over medium heat until it was brown but not too crisp, about four minutes. I drained the bacon on paper towels. You know what bacon looks like, but I haven’t included a gratuitous bacon shot in a while:
I poured off all but a tablespoon of the bacon fat, set the pan over high heat, and added the corn just as the fat started to smoke. I stired the corn untul it turned bright yellow and some of the kernels started to brown, about four minutes.
I added the bacon and roasted onions and stirred to combine.
Finally, I added the broth, miso butter, a pinch of salt, and a few grinds of black pepper. I glazed the corn with the butter and broth by stirring it slowly.
When there was no more broth left in the bottom of the pan, I transferred the corn to a serving bowl and garnished it with the scallions.
Sweet corn and onions, smoky bacon, nutty miso, sharp scallions — this dish had its flavors goin’ on. The balance was slightly off, due to the inexact measurement of an “ear” of corn. Next time I’ll measure out the four cups instead of relying on variable cob sizes.
The surprise ingredient was the miso butter, a combination I had not considered before but plan on using in the future to finish steamed vegetables. It added depth and complexity beyond my usual butter-and-salt accompaniment. You may consider making this corn dish, but you must make the miso butter.
I have been rooting through the fridge, making sure that I use all of the lovely vegetables I buy at the farmer’s market. When I discovered a bag of sugar snap peas I knew that I would combine them with the Japanese radishes to make this dish, another entry from Momofuku. The inspiration for the dish came from the wasabi peas snack:
I’m spacing out while staring at these wasabi peas, which people love, and I don’t get. They’re just dried peas covered in horseradish oil applied with some kind of space-age polymer. So I get to thinking: fresh horseradish is a great ingredient, it has a great flavor. (It’s also cheap and lasts forever.) That was it: peas with horseradish. Done. We made it and added radishes for crunch and texture and color.
It looked easy, I had all the ingredients, so it was time to cook. I prepped a pound of the peas by pulling off the strings, sliced three radishes into paper-thin discs on a mandoline, grated a quarter cup of fresh horseradish, measured out a half cup of ramen broth, three tablespoons of butter, and a tablespoon of light soy sauce.
I brought the broth to a boil in a skillet over high heat. The recipe calls for a cup of broth that is reduced by half in the pan, but since I concentrated my ramen broth to double strength for storage, all I had to do was heat it. While the broth cooked, I tossed the radish slices with a pinch of salt.
I added the peas and stirred frequently until they were bright green, about three minutes. I added the soy, turned the heat down to medium, added the butter, and spooned the pan juices over the peas until they were glazed.
I added the radishes and a few grinds of black pepper, gave everything a stir, spooned into bowls, and scattered the horseradish over the peas.
The peas had all of the tastes and textures of their snack food equivalent: sweet, salty, and crunchy, with the sinus-clearing bite of horseradish. The real surprise, however, was the sauce: the reduction of soy, broth, and butter added unexpected depth to the dish. I plan on using that reduction for other vegetables, in particular the batch of broad beans in the fridge. The radishes lost their color but not their crunch in the quick stir, so the next time I’ll add them to the peas during plating.
If these last few recipes haven’t convinced you to make some ramen broth, I urge you to do so. It’s become an indispensable ingredient in my fridge, rapidly replacing the omnipresent chicken stock in many of my standard recipes.
This was one of the market days when I buy more fruit and baked goods than vegetables. It’s midsummer in New England, which means it’s corn and tomato season, so I bought corn and tomatoes, along with a few cucumbers, a bunch of scallions, and baby potatoes. The potatoes and scallions have already been made into potato salad, the corn gets cooked for dinner tonight, and the tomatoes and cucumbers will become a salad in a few days.
I also bought white peaches, raspberries, fresh mozzarella, rolls, focaccia buns, and shiro plums, enough to make both plum ice cream and plum-raspberry sorbet.
Today wad also a pickup day for the meat CSA share, which was an odd selection: pork ribs, a whole chicken breast, chicken leg quarters, beef cubes for kebabs, sweet italian sausage, a pork steak (which appears to be an uncured slice from the shoulder), and a few bags of pork neck bones from the freebie box, which will become the next batch of ramen broth.
I’m trying to maintain a zero-sum game in the Belm Utility Research Kitchen Deep Storage Facility, taking out at least as many ingredients as go in each month. I’m slightly ahead now, and hope to stay that way as long as I’m clever about planning meals.
I realized that I have been working my way through all of the recipes in the Noodle Bar section of the Momofuku cookbook. Although I haven’t committed to cooking every recipe (which gives me an out if I can’t bring myself to make kimchi), I suspect I will have finished the book by next spring. After making the ginger scallion noodles, I turned the page and knew the roasted rice cakes would be next.
As is the case with many of the book’s recipes, this one required components created from three separate sub-recipes. Fortunately, the most time-consuming of the three, ramen broth, was available in the Belm Utility Research Kitchen Deep Storage Facility. The other two — roasted onions and Korean red dragon sauce — were about an hour’s worth of work when prepared simultaneously.
Roasted Onions
This isn’t a difficult recipe, but it requires attention and patience. I started with six thinly-cliced onions (about eight loosely packed cups) in a cast iron pan over medium-high heat with two tablespoons of vegetable oil.
Once the onions began to release liquid I added big pinch of salt and turned the mass every three minutes or so until the volume reduced by half. I turned the heat to medium-low and turned the onions every ten minutes while they browned, making sure they didn’t burn. After fifty minutes I had a little over a cup and a half of roasetd onions, which I stored in the fridge until needed.
Korean Red Dragon Sauce
While the onions cooked, I assembled my ingredients for the sauce: three quarters of a cup of ssämjang (fermented bean and chile sauce), a half cup of sugar, a half cup of water, two tablespoons of light soy sauce, a teaspoon of xiaoxing wine, and a teaspoon of sesame oil.
I brought the water and sugar to a boil until the sugar dissolved, removed it from the heat, and stirred in the ssämjang, soy, wine, and sesame oil.
Roasted Rice Cakes
I assembled yet another set of ingredients for the rice cakes: rice cakes, a half cup of red dragon sauce, a quarter cup each of mirin, ramen broth, and roasted onions, a tablespoon of sesame seeds, and a half cup of sliced scallions.
To make the final sauce, I combined the mirin and ramen broth in a saucier and boiled for about three minutes until thickened.
I added the red dragon sauce, lowered the heat to medium, and cooked the mixture for six minutes until it was glossy.
I stirred in the roasted onions and kept the sauce warm.
While the sauce reduced, I set a cast-iron skillet over medium high heat until very hot. I added two tablespoons of vegetable oil until it was smoking, then added the rice cakes. (The recipe calls for long rice cake sticks which get cut after roasting, but I had to use pre-cut cakes.) I cooked them over medium heat until they were lightly browned.
I brought the sauce back up to a boil, tossed in the rice cakes until they were evenly coated, and then sprinkled in the sesame seeds.
I divided the cakes into bowls and garnished with the scallions.
The rice cakes were crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside. The sauce was sweet, smoky, spicy, all in perfect balance. I had prepared the dish to accompany a batch of korean fried chicken, but it completely stole the show. I have plenty of red dragon sauce left, and plan on trying the rice cakes topped with Korean short ribs, or even a simple fried egg.
I may need to invest in a second fridge to accommodate my slowly-expanding assortment of meal components — roasted onions, ramen broth, red dragon sauce, ginger scallion sauce, etc. — but it will be worth it to be able to pull these meals together on demand.
During my summer internships at General Foods, I worked with many industrial processing techniques and chemicals that I later dismissed as having no practical value for a home cook working on a much smaller scale. I was proven wrong years later when the collection of techniques lumped together under the name “molecular gastronomy” became standard tools in modern cooks’ kitchens. I have been experimenting with transglutaminase and maltodextrin as recipes have required, but was in need of some re-education.
As luck and timing would have it, chef Tony Maws of Craigie on Main restaurant was hosting chefs Aki Kamozawa & H. Alexander Talbot of Ideas in Food for a James Beard House benefit dinner. Since they would be in town for a while, they decided to offer a series of three workshops covering ingredients and techniques for cooks who were unfamiliar with some of the newer techniques. She Who Must Be Obeyed approved the expense, so off to class I went on Monday and Tuesday. What follows is a very brief summary of what I learned, most of which will appear in the Ideas in Food book to be published this fall.
Understanding Hydrocoloids
Although I knew quite a bit about working with gels from my GF days, I didn’t appreciate how many uses different uses hydrocolloids (substances that form gels in the presence of water) could have in my kitchen. And, as has been made clear to me previously, it’s all about the ratios. A simple vinaigrette with a 3:1 oil-to-water ratio is constructed to dilute the vinegar’s acidity and provide a specific mouthfeel, but it’s a waste of good oil. Alex demonstrated an alternative by making a vinaigrette with coffee, wine vinegar, agave nectar, salt (always in the 0.5% to 0.75% ratio in food), and 0.2% xanthan gum. After a quick spin in the blender, he had a dressing that didn’t separate, was perfectly balanced, and had the same mouthfeel from the xanthan as you wold expect from oil.
Similarly, he made a oil-free parsley puree with xantan that was bright and fresh, not dulled by added oil.
The section on agar-agar in combination with locust bean gum ended with the creation of “aero chocolate,” a dessert that looked like ordinary mousse but had the texture and consistency of soft sponge cake. The recipe was a variation of their aerated brie, which is described on their site. I won’t post it here until I can try it myself and report on the results. I have a few ideas…
The last section discussed the utility of various carrageenans, demonstrated by making a corn “cheesecake” from corn puree, ricotta cheese, and a combination of iota and kappa carrageenan. The class handout hinted at a “sliceable eggnogg” but didn’t provide a recipe, something else for me to investigate.
Liquid Nitrogen, Playing With Ice
I was on much more familiar ground in this class, since I had worked extensively with liquid nitrogen in the lab. I knew all about the safety and handling, and the basic deep-freezing effects the liquid had on food. What I was unprepared for was what could be done with a few basic techniques. Trim and peel whole beets, drop them in LN2, let them shatter along internal fracture lines, and then let them come up to room temperature. The end product, “broken beets,” are fresh tasting with a firm texture, just as if they had been blanched and shocked in water.
Similarly, you can drop whole raspberries in LN2 and shatter then into individual druplets.
But the real ideas come when you realize you can grind flash-frozen foods into powders, which can be treated as either unique preparations or ingredients. For example, you could add frozen powdered aromatics to a bread dough recipe to ensure even dispersal of the flavors without ending up with little chunks in the finished loaf.
The lecture veered dangerously close to a Will It Blend? video as other ingredients — brie, brioche, lemongrass — were frozen and then pulverized into powders. The powdered lemongrass suggested any possibilities, the least of which is being able to add it directly to a dish without having to worry about fibrous residue. Some of the powder was steeped in hot water, producing a very aromatic lemongrass infusion which could be added to broths or used in a cocktail.
The last two powder applications were dishes I’d happily pay to eat in any restaurant. The first was a powdered terrine served over brioche slices. The terrine was a slice of Craigie’s “five liver and bone marrow terrine” (Say it with me: five liver and bone marrow terrine.)
The second was a play on a traditional cheese plate: powdered brie, brioche, and raspberries, seen at the top of this post.
Moving away from powders, and in response to my question about making “spun” honey by drizzling it through LN2, we made maple syrup drops:
The lecture ended with a classic LN2 application: making ice cream. Not just any ice cream, mind you, but coconut-yuzu ice cream that was served with the remaining shattered raspberries.
I wond up filling two notebook pages with liquid nitrogen-facilitated ideas, but realized that they would be harder to realize than the previous gel-based concepts. Although She Who Must Be Obeyed assures me she has ready access to LN2, it’s difficult to transport and store, and evaporates quickly. I suspect I’ll be bringing my ingredents and blender to her lab and returning to the Belm Utility Research Kitchen with containers of frozen powders.
Transglutaminase
The commercially available versions of transglutaminase are all manufactured by Ajinomoto, the Japanese food conglomerate behind the current “umami” craze. They market it under the trade name Activa, which is what I bought when I made pork sirloin roulades. What I learned in the class was that Activa is available in four preparations, and what I used, Activa RM, can be sprinkled directly onto proteins. There are three other preparations: Activa Y-G, Activa TI, and Activa GS, each with specific formulations and applications.
Alex demonstrated the uses of RM with two recipes: shrimp “salumi” and bacon-wraped skirt steak. The first was made with a mix of rough chopped shrimp, spices, and 1% RM mixed together and formed into ring molds. When vacuum sealed and refrigerated, the shrimp bound together and could be cooked into cylindrical slabs that you could slice like cured meat. Imagine a thin slice of pink shrimp salumi draped over a seared scallop…
Activa GS is used in liquid form and can be brushed like glue on the surfaces you want to bond. Slice a skirt steak in half, brush each surface with liquid GS, lay one half on top of the other, then wrap the whole thing in GS-coated thin-sliced bacon. Wrap in plastic and place under vacuum to tighten, cook sous vide for an hour, and then drop the cooked steak in a deep fryer to crisp the bacon. What you wind up with is bacon-wrapped steak that doesn’t need to be tied to hold everything together. I plan on making this dish very soon.
We glossed over Activa TI, which can be used in vegetarian and emulsified food applications, and moved directly to Activa YG, which was designed specifically for dairy applications. We tasted a preparation of ricotta gnocchi that contained nothing but the cheese, some egg yolks, parmesan, spices, and YG – no flour was added to bind the ingredients. The mixture was piped out in tubes onto sheet trays and refrigerated. When chilled, the tubes were cut into dumplings and simply sauteed in butter. I regret every time I’ve used the phrase “melt in your mouth” to describe light gnocchi, from now on that term is reserved for this recipe.
The final demonstrations were making mozzarella “noodles” by spreading a mozzarella/ricotta/YG mixture over acetate sheets, chilling, and cutting the sheets into strips. They could be cooked exactly like pasta, tasted like fresh mozzarella, and maintained their integrity after cooking. Lastly we tried a bread pudding in which the soaked bread was bound together with Activa, compressed, chilled, and then sliced for frying just like french toast. In fact, you could dip the pudding slices in french toast batter, dredge with frozen brioche crumbs, fry in butter, and then garnish with frozen maple syrup drops: molecular brunch!
* * * * *
I’ve gone on here longer than I planned, but my inner biochemistry geek must occasionally be satisfied. I learned a lot. A lot. So much that I’m still processing my notes two days later and discovering more ideas. With any luck I’ll report on some of my experiments here. In the meantime I’ve added Ideas in Food to my must read food blog list. I suggest you do the same.
From the day I read Kitchen Confidential (KC ) right through to today, Anthony Bourdain has been a huge influence on how I cook, eat, and think about cooking and eating. He motivated me to try new things, which has led to some amazing meals at Per Se, St. John, Au Pied de Cochon, and Lechonera Los Pinos. Just last night I cooked Hainan chicken rice, now a family favorite, inspired by his No Reservations Singapore episode. I gave the book to friends who were considering going back to cooking school, and frequently cited the “So You Want To Be a Chef?” chapter in response to being told I should consider a cooking career.
Reading KC was like having a nuclear bomb go off in my head, an event I rank on the level of hearing Ramones, seeing A Clockwork Orange, tasting truffles, or viewing Da Vinci’s Annunciation. I had no idea what the world of cooks was like, or that the stories could be told with such a level of anger, wit, and badassery (which has now been eclipsed by David Chang and the Momofuku cookbook, about which see later).
The book got Bourdain a TV show, A Cook’s Tour, which was criminally mismanaged by the Food Network. His current show, No Reservations, is what happens to the Cook’s Tour premise when produced by a sympathetic venue. There’s a A Cook’s Tour book which compiles the commentary from the episodes, and a No Reservations book which is an annotated photo essay collection. The Nasty Bits, released in 2006, collects Bourdain’s online and print essays written since KC. I’ve had to wait ten years for Medium Raw, the true sequel to KC, to be released.
I read the book in one sitting, thought about it for a week, and reread it with the intent of reviewing it here. That was seven weeks ago, a time span that has had me change my opinion of the book at least a dozen times. The “bloody valentine to the world of food and the people who cook” has resisted my efforts to characterize it as a mid-life crisis confessional, a meditation on the end of an active career as a chef, a bully pulpit from which to denounce crimes against food and cooking, or an rationalization for selling out. It is all of those things and none of them, but at its heart Medium Raw still shows how much Bourdain cares about food.
There’s expected but dismissible material about how his second marriage and his daughter have changed how he thinks about his career. He grapples with the “you’re no a chef anymore, you’re a TV host” accusation. He considers how jaded he’s becoming about his dining experiences, taking the time to point out the flaws in dinners at both Per Se and Alinea. More than once he asks “Am I helping to kill the things that I love?” What prevents these ruminations from becoming completely maudlin is his acute awareness that he is projecting a persona, one that is now expected of him when he goes on lecture and book tours. (And here’s what happens when you meet one of your heroes.)
The book finally picks up momentum at the halfway point with “Go Ask Alice,” a chapter-long excoriation of Alice Waters that rolls right into “Heroes and Vilains,” a hit-and-run roll call of the best (Fergus Henderson, Jamie Oliver!, Grant Achatz, Wylie Dufrense) and worst (Gael Greene, Broke Johnson, Alain Ducasse, the James Beard House) in the food business. The following chapter — an entire fifteen pages — is reserved for a the greatest villain of all, laid out in five words: “Alan Richman is a Douchebag.”
With the testosterone-and-snake-heart-wine-fueled ranting out of the way, Bourdain bares his soul in a pair of profiles of two people in the industry. The first, David Chang, of the Momofuku restaurants, is a study in what drives the wildly successful but conflicted chef (“I run on hate and anger”). The second is Justo Thomas, the man who butchers fish at Le Bernardin in a basement hallway. After watching him butcher and portion seven hundred pounds of fish in just five hours, Bourdain uses his long-standing friendship with chef Eric Ripert to arrange for Justo to eat a luch tasting menu at the restaurant, a major exception to staff policy.
In 1990 I finally managed to see the Ramones, but the incarnation with Marky instead of Tommy on drums. They played their hits, falling back in comfortable routine for most if the set. But when they dug into the obscure number or two, you could see a brief glimpse of what made them The Ramones. Like his favorite NYC musical institution, despite all of his ranting and posing, we still see Bourdain’s love for food and the people who cook. As long as he maintains that heart I’m willing to forgive him a few more years of shtick and bile.
, which is one of the best summer side dishes I have ever cooked.
book to be published this fall.
