Adam Roberts - Secrets of the Best Chefs

RECIPES, TECHNIQUES, AND TRICKS FROM AMERICAS GREATEST COOKS

Adam Roberts

Copyright 2012 by Adam Roberts
Location photography copyright 2012 by Elizabeth Leitzell
Styled food photography copyright 2012 by Johnny Miller

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproducedmechanically, electronically, or by any other means, including photocopyingwithout written permission of the publisher.

Published by Artisan
A division of Workman Publishing Company, Inc.
225 Varick Street
New York, NY 10014-4381
www.artisanbooks.com

Published simultaneously in Canada by Thomas Allen & Son, Limited

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

eISBN 9781579655297

To all of the chefs and home cooks who let me into their kitchens and into their lives

When I was twelve years old, my parents moved us from Oceanside, New York, to Boca Raton, Florida, into a coral-colored house that had four ovens. I like to joke that my mom, a graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology, used two of those ovens to store her handbags and the other two to store her shoes. Suffice it to say, my family didnt cook.

When people ask me, then, how I came to be a food writer, I have a simple answer: I went to law school.

It was in law school, after long, dull days discussing promissory estoppel and res ipsa loquitur, that I found myself standing in my kitchen, craving some sort of visceral release. That release came when I chopped my first onion, threw it into a pot with ground beef, cumin, chili powder, and a can of tomatoes, and made chili from a Betty Crocker cookbook. My roommate at the time told me that it looked like dog food, but that didnt matter: I was hooked on cooking.

Ten years later, Im still hooked. And the lifeline I threw myself in my third year of law schoola food blog that I started called The Amateur Gourmetis now my full-time profession, a way to document my adventures as an enthusiastic eater and a passionate home cook.

Since starting my blog (and despite my upbringing), Ive discovered that I have some talent in the kitchen. Friends clamor for a seat at my table, where I serve them piles of super-garlicky Caesar salad, steaming bowls of pasta, and hacked-apart pieces of aggressively seasoned roast chicken. Homemade chocolate-chip cookies are de rigueur in my house, and every so often, I try my hand at an apple pie. (Im better at cookies.)

As much as I enjoy making these comfort foods, more often than not Im stumped in the kitchen when it comes to taking everything to the next levelmaking the pasta from scratch, for example, or knowing (and understanding) the proper way to truss a chicken. Luckily for me, over the course of writing my blog, Ive had the chance to meet a wide variety of chefs, many of whom are incredibly generous when it comes to answering my cooking questions.

Which is how I got the idea for this book.

What if I spent a year of my life traveling the country, cooking shoulder-to-shoulder with the best chefs and home cooks all over, gleaning as much knowledge, experience, and inspiration as I could in the process? Why, such an adventure might be instructive, edifying, and empowering not only for me, but also for you, the reader. A project like that could make all of us better cooks.

You are now holding the result: this book. Here in these pages, Ive attempted to distill the breathtaking amount of culinary wisdom that these giants in the kitchen have to share. Once you start reading these essays and cooking these recipes, youll throw out your old bag of tricks and start thinking about color and texture, where your ingredients come from, how best to combine them, and how, once theyre combined, to present everything in the most beautiful way possible. But were getting ahead of ourselves.

The point is: the child of a noncooking, shoes-in-the-oven family went on an epic cooking odyssey and now gets to share this wealth of culinary knowledge with you. Come along with me, then, as we learn to cook like the chefs in this book do. Some of the recipes may be intimidating, but just remember where I started. If an amateur like me can make this extraordinary food, you can make it too!

In every cooks life, there comes a moment. Its not a moment you can anticipate, but its certainly one you can prepare for. Its the moment when you stop following recipes to the letter and start cooking based on what you know.

Maybe its because of all those cooking shows where angry chefs rail against kitchen rookies for oversalting the cod or underseasoning the touffe, but weve become a nation of nervous Nellies in the kitchen. Most people deal with their kitchen nerves by slavishly following recipes to the point where if a recipe calls for a half teaspoon of paprika and they only have a quarter teaspoon, theyll turn off the oven and order a pizza.

Thats no way to cook.

This book is an attempt to change all that. Consider this book an insecurity killer, a confidence booster of epic proportions. For a year, I cooked with the best chefs and home cooks in America. In the process of visiting eleven cities and fifty kitchens, I learned a thing or two about producing quality food at home. It has nothing to do with recipes and everything to do with trusting yourself in the kitchen.

Great cooks are confident people. In a restaurant setting, chefs are leaders: they command roomfuls of fellow chefs and, through their leadership, feed hordes of hungry masses night after night. Great home cooks also project great confidence, as they often face an even tougher crowd: picky spouses and cranky children.

And though Im becoming more confident in the kitchen, my status as a self-taught, amateur home cook with no formal training makes me an ideal candidate to soak up all the knowledge and wisdom that these chefs and cooks have to offer. Because, like you, Im just a normal home cooknot a noteworthy chef redefining the face of gastronomyI notice things most cooks and chefs do and take for granted. And Ive distilled it all for you in these pages.

Ive cooked with chefs from a wide variety of cultural backgrounds (French, Jamaican, and Chinese, to name a few), with varying degrees of experience (from young chefs to chefs in their sixties), and who cook for unusual reasons (like , who gave up a career in music to make pizza).

Some of the chefs use old-fashioned cooking gear (food mills, copper bowls); others use more futuristic devices (immersion circulators, Cryovac sealers). Some chefs have ingredients delivered to their restaurants; others grow the produce that they use themselves. Some chefs work hard to make everything new (carrots cooked in hay stock, corn soup with a coconut dome made with liquid nitrogen); others work hard to properly execute and improve upon classic dishes (potato gnocchi, pasta fagioli, chicken liver mousse).

In all these cases, one thing is very clear: all of these cooks and chefs who are so notable for their food are also notable for their personalities. I was surprised to discover that its a strong sense of self more than anything else that allows you to make extraordinary food at home. To put it simply: if you make the food that you like to eat, youll make food that others like to eat. You just have to trust that the food that you like to eat is food worth eating.