Brissman Paul - Marcus off duty : the recipes I cook at home

Copyright 2014 by Marcus Samuelsson Group LLC

Photographs 2014 Paul Brissman

Illustrations 2014 Rebekah Maysles

All rights reserved

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

www.hmhco.com

Samuelsson, Marcus.

Marcus off duty : the recipes I cook at home / Marcus Samuelsson with Roy Finamore ; photography by Paul Brissman.

p. cm.

A Rux Martin Book.

ISBN 978-0-470-94058-7 (paper over board); 978-0-544-30927-2 (ebk)

1. Cooking. 2. Samuelsson, Marcus. I. Finamore, Roy. II. Title.

TX714.S257 2014

641.5dc23 2014018169

Print book design by Endpaper Studio

Digital book design by Jessica Arnold

Typeset in Benton Sans

Hand lettering by Joel Holland

v1.1014

To my wife, Maya, thank you for your love, patience, and support of the book. Sorry we messed up the kitchen for a summer. I owe you a lot of dinners at home.

To Rux Martin, for keeping us honest.

To Kim Witherspoon, for staying with it and moving it forward.

To Roy Finamore, your knowledge and wit are unparalleled. We laughed a lot.

To Paul Brissman, five years into it and you didnt give up.

To Nils and Vicki, thank you for opening your home. Wheres my homemade ramen?

To Jeannette Park, you put in a lot of tears, love, and dedication to make the book great. I think youre in it four times.

To Eden Fesehaye, you got this started.

To Ashley Bode, for all your hard work.

To Meaghan Dillon and Ashley Beck, your contributions were invaluable.

To James Bowen, I think we made you smile one time.

To Rebekah Maysles, for your incredible illustrations and enthusiasm for the project.

To Joel, Mark, and the kitchen team at Red Rooster, thanks for always helping us at the last minute.

To Klancy Miller, your efforts paved the way.

To Veronica Chambers, thank you for all your help.

To Elvis Mitchell and Brian Duncan, who gave us context.

To the Samuelsson tribe: Helga, Anne-Marie, Edwin, Lennart, Anna, Linda, and Vanessa. I love you all. Lets eat together soon.

Special thanks to the St. Supry winery in Napa for their gracious hospitality.

And to the cowboy who held us up at gunpoint in Fort Worth, way to keep it real.

Ive come full circle. I started to learn about cooking in my grandmothers kitchen. But when I started my journey to the professional kitchen, cooking at home wasnt a priority.

I was fifteen when I applied for and was accepted at the local vocational school where my training began. The meals I learned to cook there were straight out of classic French sources like Larousse Gastronomique , but not quite as good. (A successful day at this public school was when one kid didnt throw food at another.) It wasnt long before I started wondering about mixing the foods of other cultureslike the Greek dishes my friends mother would makewith the French food I was learning. I graduated second in my class and set off to conquer the world of restaurants with a set of knivesthe gift of my sistersand the first of a library of journals where I kept notes on everything from the nutty taste of rougeta fish I had never heard ofto menu items written in French or German or Italian so I could translate them in my room at night (and not have to ask the chef I was working for what tafelspitz was).

My first apprenticeship, or stage , was in Switzerland at the Victoria-Jungfrau, a hotel with a large international clientele. Although our menu was mostly classic European, sticky rice and exotic mushrooms would appear with contingents of Japanese touristsmy first exposure to Japanese food. Then to Austria, for a short stint at a hotel that catered to locals where the menu was strictly regional. Heres where I learned to make tafelspitz aged sirloin braised with carrots and parsnips. Its rich and savory and delicious, but I couldnt help thinking how much better it would be if it was served with Swedish lingonberries. I returned to Switzerland, climbing a few steps up the ladder in the kitchen hierarchy.

Im constantly asked, Whats the most important tool in the kitchen? For me, its hands. They give us the authority to call any dish ours. Think of strudel dough stretched with the back of your hands, couscous rolled between your palms, Chinese noodles pulled to imperfect perfection. We use our hands to mix meatballs, to knead dough, to prod fish or meat, or tap a cake to determine doneness. Cooks on television always taste with a spoon, but at home we know our hands are clean and we taste with our fingers. My grandmother would always ladle her gravy into her palm and slurp it up. You have to taste a lot of gravy to get it, shed say.

Theres a Korean saying: sson maat . It translates as hand taste, but the meaning is that the food tastes so good because the cook has the taste in her fingertips.

Our hands are an elemental way of putting food into our mouths, too. Youre never closer to your food than when you lick the dripping juices from a burger off the side of your hand. Eating with your hands is also an indication of the greatest trust and sharing. In Ethiopia, eating with your hands is gursha , a sign of the utmost trust and sharing.

A stage at a three-star spot in France was my dream, but my next port was actually New York City, where I was to spend nine months at a now-famous Swedish restaurant called Aquavit. My chef was Christer Larsson, who showed me how to elevate regional Swedish classics to new levels. I worked long and hard to refine my craft, but as soon as I had time off Id put on my Rollerblades and explore the city. I discovered kimchi in Koreatown, found the spice stores in Little India, and got lost in the wonders of Chinatown. I like being lost in a food place. In Chinatown I wandered among dim sum palaces, sidewalk fish shops, and grocery stores whose crowded aisles were filled with ingredients I had never seen.