Ben Pollinger - School of Fish

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Gallery Books

A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

www.SimonandSchuster.com

Copyright 2014 by Ben Pollinger

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Gallery Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Gallery Books hardcover edition September 2014

GALLERY BOOKS and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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Designed by Jaime Putorti

Jacket design by Laywan Kwan

Jacket background and fish by Shutterstock

Author photograph Rjan Bertelsen Norwegian Seafood

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Pollinger, Ben.

School of fish / Ben Pollinger.

pages cm

1. Cooking (Seafood) I. Title.

TX747.P626 2014

641.6&92dc23

ISBN 978-1-4516-6513-0

ISBN 978-1-4516-6515-4 (ebook)

For Christine

Y OUR LOVE, FRIENDSHIP, PATIENCE, AND SACRIFICE HAVE MADE MY JOURNEY POSSIBLE .

In June, 1997, I boarded a plane at Kennedy Airport and flew to Monaco to work under Chef Alain Ducasse at Le Louis XV, which at the time was considered to be the best restaurant in the world. Id earned the yearlong apprenticeship in the final months of my education at The Culinary Institute of America. This extraordinarily expensive restaurant redefined my concept of perfection. The kitchen was as clean as an operating room, and rigorously ordered. The cooking was intensely professional and pressured. All of the work was surgically precise, including the use of a ruler to cut the food to an exact size and shape. Nothing ever went out of that kitchen that wasnt absolutely flawless. As the year went on, I felt grateful for the excruciating and exacting training Id received at the hands of chefs Jean-Jacques Rachou and Christian Delouvrier for whom Id worked in Manhattan. The experience in Monaco pushed me to my limit.

It also sparked my passion for fish. Picture the fish station in the kitchen at Le Louis XV. All of the seafood was pristine. Sometimes the locally caught bass was so fresh that I was pleading for it to get through rigor mortis just so I could get it filleted and into the pan on time. Shrimp from the Gulf of Genoa came in still quivering. There were mountains of tiny fresh squid called pistes to clean, live spider and tortoise crabs to cook and pick for their meat. In the course of that year, I experienced a quality and variety of seafood Id never seen before. And I really learned. By the time I returned home a year later, I had my culinary chops.

Now imagine me couple of years later, still fairly new to my career, at home in New Jersey. Its Friday night and Im in the kitchen because were having people over for dinner. My wife, Christinewho has married a chef, after allis expecting some good food on the table. Everyones been here since about 7:00 p.m., here I am at nine oclock, still cooking, and theres no way Ill get the food out before 10:00 p.m. The kitchen is a disaster. Im used to having staff to take care of this stuff. Every pot and pan is dirty, and the stovetops a mess.

The guests loved the food. But Christine was unhappy. This is how it always goes when you cook, she said later that evening. I dont understand how a guy whos worked at some of the best restaurants in the world cant get dinner on the table at home!

I didnt start out to be a chef. Growing up in New Jersey, I enjoyed my mothers cooking though it wasnt exactly haute cuisine. I definitely enjoyed eating, but I wasnt one of those guys who learned to cook at his grandmothers knee. In fact, I didnt learn to cook at home at all. When I went to college at Boston University, it was to be an economics major. But during my sophomore year, I got a job in the cafeteria kitchen in my dorm. Suddenly I was getting up early on Sundays to cook eggs to order for 600 students. And I realized that I liked it. I liked it a lot. Cooking was a lot of fun.

It was a tough conversation with the parents. I know what Im going to do after I graduate, I said. Great! they replied. Law school? Wall Street?

I want to cook.

The silence went on for a long time. We made it through that moment, and of course they agreed that what was most important was that I be happy. Then: And please be successful. Great. No pressure.

So as you can imagine, succeeding has been rewarding in a variety of ways. My apprenticeship in Europe was followed by jobs at several great restaurants in Manhattan. I worked again with Christian Delouvrier at Les Clbrits and Lespinasse; with Michael Romano at Union Square Cafe; and with Floyd Cardoz at Tabla. Experiences at Union Square Cafe and Tabla helped my French training evolve toward a more global repertoire. Fish became my specialty. And in 2006, I took my current job as executive chef at Oceana, an upscale fish restaurant in midtown Manhattan.

I love running my kitchen at Oceana, turning out great food in an orderly environment. But I like to cook for my family, too. So after that Friday night cooking for friends at home, I decided that it was important to make it work in my kitchen across the river. Adapting my restaurant training to the home kitchen turned out to be a discovery process. It was a School of Fish for me. I realized that there were certain things that you can do in a restaurant that just dont work at home. Like complicated garnishes and dishes that require twelve pans. And I appreciated that there are things to do at home that you wouldnt necessarily want to do in a restaurant. Nice things. At home it makes sense to serve things very simply. To do it all in one pan.

And that was the inspiration for this book.

What do I love about fish? Theres so much variety and there are so many things you can do with it. Compare a fish fillet with a New York strip steak. For the steak, youre going to grill it, broil it, or pan-roast it. But with seafood, youve got lots of choices. Techniques like poaching and steaming deliver the pure flavor of the fish. Saut for a rich, caramelized taste; grill for a pleasant char and smokiness. Bake with herbs, braise in a red pepper stew, or broil with an Asian-style glaze. And thats just the cooked preparations; raw fish is another fantastic universe. So once you know the techniques, you have a lot of options to play with. And thats the fun of it.