Jean-Georges Vongerichten - Home cooking with Jean-Georges: My favorite simple recipes

ALSO BY JEAN-GEORGES VONGERICHTEN

Asian Flavors WITH GENEVIEVE KO

Simple to Spectacular WITH MARK BITTMAN

Jean-Georges: Cooking at Home with a Four-Star Chef WITH MARK BITTMAN

Copyright 2011 by Jean-Georges Vongerichten
Photographs copyright 2011 by John Kernick

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Clarkson Potter/Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
www.clarksonpotter.com

CLARKSON POTTER is a trademark and POTTER with colophon is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Vongerichten, Jean-Georges.
Home cooking with Jean-Georges / Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Genevieve Ko. 1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index
1. Cooking. 2. Cookbooks. I. Ko, Genevieve. II. Title.
TX714.V658 2011
641.5dc22 2010053808

eISBN: 978-0-307-95328-5

Cover design by Stephanie Huntwork
Cover photography by John Kernick

v3.1

On my first drive up to Waccabuc, a rural town in upstate New York, I told my wife, Marja, that I probably wouldnt like the place. We had decided to buy a weekend home to spend unhurried time with our young daughter, Chloe; my older children, Cedric and Louise; and our extended family. I had assumed we would find a house in the Hamptons. I love the beach and looked forward to cooking the fresh seafood caught off the coast.

But as we wound through the grassy hills some fifty miles north of Manhattan, I began warming to the idea of being secluded. We pulled up a gravel drive and caught sight of two neat, white Cape Cod houses. As we walked through the airy main house, looking out the double-height windows at the lake below and the woods beyond, we realized we had found the perfect home away from home.

The walls of windows resembled our fishbowl city apartment in a modern glass tower, but here, the only gawkers were wide-eyed deer. From room to room, the color scheme of soft whites and elephant grays closely matched those of my flagship restaurant, where I spend more time than anywhere else. A fireplace at one end of the expansive kitchen reminded me of my childhood home in Alsace, as did the outside root cellar built of large, old stones. And the grassy hill that stretched down and out to the lake and woods beyond was like a deep exhalation. After more than thirty-five years of working nonstop to build a restaurant empire, I could finally let go and relax.

I started cooking the day we moved in. I found it incredibly relaxing. Almost immediately, I was struck by how long it had been since I had cooked at home. I grew up cooking at home with my mother and grandmother, but basically stopped when I left to apprentice. It felt so great to finally cook in my own home kitchen. I had really missed itthe simple acts of preparing a meal and then sitting down with my family to enjoy it.

I was born and raised in Alsace, France, in a small village not far from the gothic spires of the Strasbourg cathedral and its surrounding cobblestone streets and storybook shops. Nestled in the countryside, our family home was flanked by a river on one side and verdant fields on the other. In the distance, vineyards produced wines as white and crisp as snowy Alsatian mornings. Our nearest neighbors were more than a mile away, and we lived close enough to the steep slopes of the Vosges to ski every day in winter. Outside the kitchen door, our family kept a vast garden. Beyond that lay the woods, which served as a playground for me and my two younger brothers in the summer. My brothers and I lived with our older sister, our parents, and grandparents in the same home our great-grandfather had built in 1833.

I woke up to the smells of choucrouteonions, cabbage, porkand at the end of the day, my mom and grandma baked the most amazing tartsthe whole house smelled like butter and sugar. Even before I could reach the countertops, I eagerly helped my mom and grandma in the kitchen. They taught me the fundamentals of rustic country cooking and our familys culinary secrets, like how a splash of dark coffee cuts through the richness of goose stew, and how lightly crushed anise seeds release their fragrance into crumbly cookies.

It wasnt long before I had mastered the family repertoireand begun improving upon it. Even though I was only in grade school, I knew when to add a little more salt to the mustard vinaigrette, a little more pepper to the schnitzel. When I walked through our herb garden, I became inspired by its scents; I started tossing a little dill and parsley into the warm potato salad and creating bouquets garnis for braises. My family nicknamed me Palate and my mom and grandma regularly called on me to taste and adjust the seasonings of their dishes.

I was expected to take over the family coal business. My parents enrolled me in an engineering program; I hated it enough to get myself kicked out. The kitchen was my refuge.

To celebrate my sixteenth birthday, my parents took me to LAuberge de lIll, a Michelin three-star restaurant near our home. That meal changed my life. I had prepared foie gras terrines in my home but had never tasted foie gras wrapped around a whole Perigord truffle and baked in hand-rolled puff pastry. Nor had I tried saumon souffl or mousseline de grenouilles. Each dish thrilled me and renewed the passion for food that I had first discovered at my moms side.

My mom convinced chef Paul Haeberlin to take me on as an apprentice. On my first day at work, I was assigned the most tedious task in the entire kitchen: preparing pheasants. Anyone who has ever plucked a bird, still warm from the hunt, knows just how hard it is to pull the feathers cleanly from the skin. And I wasnt allowed to wet the birds first, which causes the feathers to release more easily, because Chef Haeberlin wanted the skins dry to enhance their texture and flavor. To remove any remaining bits of fuzz, I had to carefully singe the skin to keep it whole and further dry it. After a long day of inhaling the pheasants pungent scent, I stood knee-deep in feathers, reeking of game. That was when I knew I wanted to be a chef. I was assigned the worst task in the kitchen and yet I wanted to perfect it, to pluck faster and more cleanly, and eventually, to turn that pheasant into a beautiful dish.

The next day, I peeled what seemed like a ton of potatoes, carefully removing only the paper-thin skins to leave smooth rounds. My passion for perfection and a newfound desire to become a great chef kept me happy on my feet for sixteen hours straight. Whatever I had to give upparties with friends, afternoons skiing, a comfortable lifewas worth the sacrifice of pursuing my dream. That evening, I told my parents that I wouldnt be returning home to the family business after my apprenticeship. My father didnt speak to me for a year.