Ouellette - A private chef: four-star cooking in your home

A PRIVATE CHEF

Four-star Cooking in Your Home

by JOE OUELLETTE

Copyright 2003 Joseph Ouellette. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Ouellette, Joseph, 1963

A private chef four star cooking in your home / Joseph Ouellette.

Includes index.

ISBN 1-55395-372-X

ISBN 978-1-4269-7737-4 (ebook)

I. Title.

TX739 O93 2003 641.5 C2002-905564-4

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CONTENTS

This book exists because of my gracious boss Chris Browne. I am obliged for the time he gave me to do this book, as well as the resources he made available. Chris, from the bottom of my heart (and stomach), thank you.

I would like to thank Alex Browne for shedding light on my ideas.

Thanks to Pam Bernstein for humoring me and showing my manuscript to the big boys of publishing. Oh, well. Thanks anyway, Pam.

Thank you Laura Jereski for the impeccably thorough proofreading. Ethan Trask, for his handsome and elegant book design. Thanks to Tom South for his bottle of 75 Petrus.

We all need to thank Heather Laszlo for capturing my spirit on the cover.

I was very fortunate to work with a very talented and experienced Ghost Editor to whom I owe any accolades I receive from this book.

I salute with deep gratitude, Josephine and Dick Ouellette, Helen Pietras, Irene Verrier, Margot Zanardo, Ann Catania and Aneesa Waheed.

To my French resource and brutally honest and harsh advisor, my wife, Marie. Merci bb, je taime.

JOE OUELLETTE

New York, New York

Fall, 2002 v6

Over a decade ago, I became a private chef, after five years of restaurant workhard work, in the kitchens of such fine New York restaurants as Park Bistro and Bouley. I work in Manhattanand, in the summers, the Hamptonsfor Christopher Browne, who owns and manages value funds for Tweedy Browne & Co.

The demands (and opportunities) of the job keep me on my toes. Ive done everything from familiar weekday meals, like a sage-roasted chicken and baked potatoes for two, to roasted racks of veal for a fundraiser of sixty-five people.

Whats a private chef? Just what it sounds like: A chef who works exclusively for one household. This differs from a cook, mostly in whats expected of you. Im expected to deliver the quality of food every day that my boss would get in a fine restaurant. It also differs from a personal chef, wholike a personal trainerhas many clients. A personal chef is basically a caterersomeone who makes meals for a bunch of people and delivers them. A private chef serves the needs and tastes of just one client.

So what does that have to do with you?

I produce four-star meals in a private kitchenusually without legions of helpers and tons of extraordinary equipment. This book is for anyone whod like to do the same.

When I first took this job, I knew nothing about cooking in a private home. I looked for a book on how to be a private chef but couldnt find one. I needed some advice but searched to no avail. Left to my own resources, I just cooked.

The book you hold in your hands is the sort of book I wish Id found back then. This book isnt just for private chefs to the wealthy, though. Its for anyone who wants to cook extraordinary meals. Not fancied-up ordinary mealsas in the quick and easy approach to gourmet cooking. Extraordinary meals. Meals where quality, not speed, is the point.

If you want to gussie-up ordinary cooking to make it seem elegant, thats fine. A nice slipcover can make a ratty old couch more pleasant, and a few spices and a simple sauce can make a piece of chicken less boring. Wonderful. But thats not what this book is about.

This book serves true excellence.

For most readers, this will be a special occasion cookbook.

This book will make those special occasions what you always intended them to be. How many times have you planned a special dinner party, shopped for a couple of days for the ingredients, lovingly put together a beautiful menu, and carefully put it all together in the kitchenonly to feel, at the end of the night, that the food really didnt measure up to your dreams? More show than substance? Lovelybut at its heart, under the sauce and spice, just sort of plain? With this cookbook, that wont happen.

If youre the sort of host or hostess who loves the planning, shopping, and cooking, who loves feeding others and watching delight spread to the depths of their souls, you need recipes and techniques as fine as your intentions. Thats what youll find here.

You dont have to be rich to serve four-star meals at home. Though Ive included a couple of pull-out-all-the-stops-and-break-the-bank menus, most of these recipes fall well within an ordinary budget.

You dont have to be some kind of gourmet prodigy, either. Im certainly not. Im a former actor and computer geek who loves food. I trained at the French Culinary Institute, then apprenticed at Chanterelle in New York and, in France, under chefs Antoine Cadinu, Roger Verg, and Georges Blanc. In this cookbook, I give you a quick course on what I have learnedthough executing these recipes demands that you take no shortcuts.

What you have to be to use this book is an amateur of cooking, in the literal sense of the wordamateur is Latin for lover. As the Romans understood it, love serves a higher purpose. If your cooking serves a purpose greater than making a good impression with minimal effortthe purpose, say, of turning a meal into one of those moments when you feel privileged to be alive, just to have partakenthis book is for you.

If this book is right for you, youre a craftsman, not necessarily (yet) an artist. Those of us who love four-star cooking are crafts people working out of passion. Even David Bouley, as we were working shoulder-to-shoulder one day, whispered to me that he is not a chef but a craftsman.

All you need to cook four-star meals is a love of food and a willingness to serve its demands. You cant force food to be great. You have to do what the ingredients demand. If you love the ingredients and the process, though, and do what they want of you, cooking rewards you with some of lifes finest pleasures. Great food is, well, great food. I dont care if it comes out of a box or a can. Four-star eating is about quality, not bragging rightsmuch less martyrdom.

My techniques and recipes come from my professional training, cookbooks, my boss, his friends who have eaten my food, and fellow chefs. Some of these recipes I created myself. Some are probably 300 years old. I cant, and dont want to, reinvent the wheel, but to interpret recipes with my experiences, soul, and palate.

Im always talking to people who love to cook. We talk about experiments and ideas. Of course, my biggest influences come from the kitchens where Ive apprenticed and worked hard. These days, my job with Chris gives me plenty of time to help in other kitchensfor instance, The Quilted Giraffe, Le Bernardin, Daniel, and Danube.