IDEAS IN FOOD

On My Mind

I was recently intervied by Jeremy over at Stir the Pots.  We first met Jeremy in one of our cooking classes.  He is passionate about cooking and equally excited about what makes chefs tick.  During our conversation he was kind enough to allow me to speak for both Aki and myself.  You can hear the entire interview here.

Behind the Blog

For anyone interested in a glimpse of Alex uncensored and off the cuff, check out the interview with Christy Harrison over at Gourmet.com.  Personally, I found it very entertaining.

Corn Skin

We have discussed the myriad possibilities and uses for our new skins. While Aki enjoyed the chocolate pudding, I wanted something a bit more savory. Today during our class we decided to try something new.  We had a corn puree on hand with which we were planning to turn into a hot custard when inspiration took over. We added Ticagel to the corn puree and heated the mixture to hydrate the hydrocolloids in the blend. Unfortunately, my liberal usage of butter in the mixture caused the corn puree to separate. Thankfully, the corn puree and the Ticagel were forgiving. We put the mixture into the blender and sheared it back together. We rolled out the resulting emulsion between two sil pats to create a thin corn skin. The additional butter in the corn base altered the texture of the skin just a bit. This skin is softer and more tender than the chocolate pudding skin. 

This corn skin opens up many new opportunities for us. We tested the thermal nature of the pudding skin (thanks to yesterday's class) using a heat gun, so we know we will be able to use the skins in both hot and cold environments. Now that we have jumped into the savory realm we can use the skins as the pasta sheets for cannelloni or to drape over other ingredients thus creating hidden gems on the plate. Again we are just beginning. Ideas from parsnip to pear and miso to mango are popping up in our brains.  And is a skin or a sheet our only option?  Of course not, it's simply a question of figuring out how else to utilize this particular texture to its best advantage. 

Ed Bilicki

Ed is another who we have met through Ideas in Food.  He was actually pointed in our direction by our friend and chef Victor LaPlaca.  Ed first asks questions.  It is with these questions that we have built a relationship and stumbled upon many inspirations in the kitchen.  Ed is currently heading up a new restaurant, and with that on his mind has a fair amount to say and share. 

By Ed Bilicki

Looking Back, Moving Forward

November 7th was my last night at bluezoo, a last hurrah of sorts, which was highlighted by the opportunity to work with Michael Mina and Todd English.  I have spent the better part of eight years with the latter chef…from prep guy to chef de cuisine, from Westport CT to Orlando FL; it has been an interesting path.  The pictures you see are from my tenure there, a little bit of what we were able to do as a team.  We served all of these dishes on some level, from two to more than a thousand and in the process provided a lot of people their first experiences with modern technical cooking. I hope that they demonstrate a point of view. I hope that they speak to our approach there and to my approach in the future.

To the point, I am currently working on a new restaurant called Satava.  Our broad focus will be on coastal cuisine, drawing inspiration from the intersections of water and land wherever they may occur. Not a new idea to be sure, but my purpose and passion is to do it in a way that has not been done before.  Looking back, my life has been intrinsically linked with the water; from surfing at age four in Coca Beach to fly fishing the Rouge last fall for wild steelhead, interaction with water rejuvenates my soul. Cooking replenishes my body and mind, a marriage of the two is only logical.

I mentioned the fact that we served these items in bluezoo not to say “hey look at me,” but to highlight an important aspect of my vision for this endeavor, accessibility. I presume that the majority of regulars here at Ideas in Food are either likeminded professionals or very passionate patrons of the culinary arts. While we at Satava will look forward to serving this constituency, I want to address the issue of the dining public at large, how do we bring them into the fold?  For me, this is the crux of this conversation.

The problem with modern technical cooking, hyper-modern cuisine, molecular gastronomy, nueva nouvelle cuisine, cocina de autor (insert your favorite name for the movement) is that, despite being in vogue with the food press, a good number of people don’t initially see the appeal. If we can’t find a way to reach those people, then the movement loses momentum, becomes a fad and fades away.  Given this reality, we must consider modernism for the masses.  If we confine our growing knowledge of technique to elite temples of gastronomy and force people to consume 10-30 courses, we are limiting our potential audience and potentially limiting ourselves.

In the context of these considerations, Shola’s inaugural piece had considerable resonance with me.  After eating out at most of the major restaurants here in Orlando over the last few weeks, it ultimately all boils down to variations on fried calamari, Caesar salad and meat and potatoes. While it would be easy to become disheartened by this reality, I choose to look at it as a challenge and as an opportunity.  Regardless of the outlook a restaurant espouses, its price point, its targeted audience, its style of service…someone will always ask for a Caesar salad eventually.  I struggled with and even resented this reality for years, but recently I have made peace with it and have even embraced it.  After all, I actually really enjoy a good Caesar salad and my mouth waters at the prospect of Point Judith style fried calamari.
Is there a way to serve our guest’s (often) simultaneous desires for familiarity, comfort and novelty, and innovation?  While these sets of impulses are seemingly opposed to one another, our understanding of product, modern technique, and presentation provides us with the opportunity to explore integrating these disparate desires.  At this point, perhaps an example is in order, so let us return to the (formerly frustratingly) ubiquitous fried calamari. 

The classic dish I grew to love while living in Rhode Island is comprised of fried semolina dusted calamari rings tossed with hot cherry peppers, lemon, parsley, and in the best versions a little brown butter.  A very simple dish to be sure, but for me it is the quintessential preparation.   It does, however, have its limitations.  The moisture introduced from the lemon and brown butter in particular, ultimately lead to the loss of the subtle crispness of the calamari.  The last few bites of the dish are still delicious, but texture is clearly compromised.  How can we improve this aspect of the dish through the application of modern technique? 

My approach would involve removing active moisture (items that are physically “wet”) and replace them with elements that supply more passive moisture, but let us first consider the squid itself.  If we start with calamari “scaloppini” instead of rings we gain greater control of the application of garniture (and therefore moisture) because we have easy access to its entire surface area.  We can then dehydrate the cherry peppers and grind them into a dust which can then be integrated with the semolina.  To this we can add a little tapioca starch to enhance the crispness without excessive breading.  The brown butter can be turned into a powder with N-Zorbit and the lemon can be mixed with cherry pepper vinegar and lecithin and be aerated.  Add a few lightly dressed leaves of parsley and we have a dish that has all of the flavors of the classic, but in more functional and interactive forms. 

While we have all likely riffed on classic dishes, my aim is to do so in a way that is distinctly modern while remaining true to the identity of the inspiration, to provide the opportunity to experience new culinary paradigms in an a la carte setting.  Beyond this, I intend to be sure each item speaks to a point of view and highlights the ingredients at hand through the combined contexts of flavor, texture, aroma, visual appeal, intellectual stimulation, responsible provenance and historical connection. If we can do this, then we can provide an experience that is meaningful to a broad swath of the dining public.  In moving forward, I want to present a cuisine at Satava that is inclusive, not exclusive, one that appeals to the epicurean and the everyman.  Who says you can’t do both?

Sean Brock

I wish to introduce Sean Brock, the chef at McCrady's Restaurant in Charleston, South Carolina.  We first met Sean through this website.  It began with questions which have only blossomed into more questions.  Sean is driven in his quest for answers and his approach to ingredients and cooking in general.  Our interaction and open forum with ideas has helped develop, refine and spark numerous breakthroughs in our cooking.  Here Sean has shared a few pictures from his kitchen which capture his process.  The rest of his conversation will come when technology permits it (computer problems).  For now, check out these pictures and for a bit more on Sean and his world, his website.

by Sean Brock

First of all thank you to Aki and Alex for including us in their brilliant new ”idea”, Culinary Conversations.

We have for some time admired, been inspired by, and jealous of, what
Alex and Aki are able to produce on a daily basis.  They are truly paving the way for the next generation of forward thinking chefs. Their generosity in sharing ideas is beyond conception, especially in the beginning stages of such an important time in gastronomy. 

I was first introduced to Ideas in Food through a purveyor that we share, Mikuni Mushrooms.  They were trying to sell me the now famous smoked steelehead roe from Steve Stallard and directed us to the Ideas in Food website.  I have to be honest; since then I have checked their site nearly everyday.  It is amazing how creative and passionate these two chefs are.  Through their efforts we are constantly reminded of why we cook for a living.  The constant pursuit of knowledge and excellence.

For example, every ingredient in our kitchen is put under a microscope.  How do we serve the best tasting carrot ever?  Common sense would say to buy it from a farmer who pulled it from the ground hours before it I served. But what we are trying to do is reevaluate the entire process from the ground to the plate. We try to think about every step in the cooking process before the costumer consumes it.

We first think about what we were taught in the early stages of our careers. Before service we were taught to clean the carrot, peel it, and blanch it in heavily salted water then shock it in an ice bath.  We would then heat it a la minute in a little vegetable stock and glaze it with some butter.  Delicious, but can we make it better?

What if we were able to make that energy source that most insanely flavored energy source available. What would that take?  My first thought a couple of years ago were to use a carrot-flavored liquid to slowly cook the carrots in.  Why use water when we could use carrot water?  So we began to cook carrots sous vide in carrot juice.   We reserved the liquid and heated the juice a la minute.   When we reheated the carrots in their own liquid, we were essentially making carrot-glazed carrots.  We became obsessed over discovering new techniques after we tasted the results.  We began to use the left over pulp from the carrot juicing process to make a carrot powder using the dehydrator.  In our minds we were taking the best carrot we could find and cooking it in a carrot flavored water, reducing that juice to a glace and adding butter to make carrot glazed carrots, we than garnished them with carrot powder. The result was a really intense carrot flavor.  Again this wasn’t enough for us, as we are never satisfied or maybe it’s just the ADD. What if we took our carrot juice to a new level?  What is we heated the carrot juice until the caratanoid separated from the water and all we were left with was 100 percent carrot and no water to dilute its flavor?  We could scoop the separated caratanoid from the juice and emulsify it into fresh carrot juice.  We have now begun to make the carrot juice taste better than it did in its original state.  We then use this to cook fresh carrots sous vide and eventually make an intense carrot glaze.  We then looked at the butter that was used to make the glaze.  Why not use carrot butter?  As you can see this process is endless.  For us it is the constant pursuit of making the best tasting carrot ever.  Now our next project is distilling carrot juice to use for our base liquid. Where does it end?  Who cares, the idea is to look at things in a different way. We have also found that sometimes this isn’t necessary.  Sometimes the ingredients are so unbelievable we leave them alone.  But we still feel that it is important to ask those questions and seek the answers before we bin the idea.

Over the years we have realized that we can’t remember everything or every idea that enters our mind unless we write it down.  We write everything down, no matter if it is during a busy service or having beers at the bar after a busy service. The process starts with notebooks that we keep in our pockets, we write everything down, no matter how ridiculous it is.  When our notebooks are full and there are no pages left to write on, we enter them into a computer program.  When we get a few pages we print them out and hang them on the wall.  The ideas are always in front of us, they are now constant reminders of our random thoughts.  We have now gone as far as using a highlighter to showcase the things we are most excited about and want to tackle first.  Keeping in mind that the ideas that aren’t highlighted are not dead, just on the back burner.  We may revisit them at any time.

The printed sheets of ideas are also designed to keep everyone in tune with where we are and what we are working on.  We have a lot of cooks (19 or so) and it is tough to have everyone together at one time to discuss ideas.  With this system a stranger could walk up to the wall and read an idea and begin to think about it.

We then have dry erase boards and chalk boards in the kitchen that are broken down into different categories.  The first is a random idea board, hopefully inspired by our idea sheets that are hanging in the kitchen.  Everyone is encouraged to contribute to this board (servers, dishwashers, guests, etc). When we get really excited about an idea it gets moved to the next board entitled “projects”.  Once it makes it to the project board it is then looked at more closely.  Each component of the dish is brainstormed and evaluated.  We then start cooking our ideas and tasting them.  Once everyone decides that it is a good dish we serve it to our guests.  This sounds like a lot of work, but we as a team are convinced that the dishes we serve are as good as we can make them.  Trying hard is everything.  Thanks again to Aki and Alex.

Steve Stallard, BLiS Caviar

Our relationship with Steve began with an idea. It was a moment of sychronicity when Alex and I had the same inspiration at about the same time, although it had come from two different sources. We had been getting this amazing caviar from some guy out in Michigan and we had been playing around with smoked salt in our kitchen. The idea? To cure caviar with smoked salt. Alex badgered our purveyor to try and talk the caviar guy into testing the idea. The purveyor in turn gave Alex Steve's phone number and said ask him yourself. Alex called him up and it was the beginning of a beautiful relationship and lots of great food. As with many of our friends and colleagues we have never met in person but I'm sure we'll get together eventually. In the meantime he has been a source of great products and inspirations over the years. We're pleased to introduce him to all of you. As with Shola, Steve will be checking on the comments periodically so if there are any questions for him, fire away...

I was just getting ready to do some fly-fishing for steelhead in northern Michigan. The real reason that I have located the BLiS facility here in Michigan is because of the short drive to the woods and waters.  I guess the reasons that I wanted to do this post are not only that we have maintained contact prior to the inception of the company, and the fact that you asked me to, but because we share some of the same styles of food concepts and contrasts, as well as having common interests. Your willingness to share and to be open with the knowledge pool is a real asset to maintaining the culinary arts. It is why success will be forthcoming always, but possibly not exactly if and when you expect it.

Our company, if you might call it that, is not big at all. It’s basically a chef trying to deliver cool things to other chefs to work with.  The retail end is not a driving force because the product seems to take a measurable amount of skill to use to their full advantage. There is a lot of dialogue and energy needed to explain how to be creative with Bourbon Aged Maple syrup or with a citrus and smoked Fleur de Sel roe. Fresh wild  infused and natural roes do not appear to work well with the beginner gourmet. Although they are not meant to be, we believe that the products can be intimidating for novices. They do not always understand how to utilize them, but if something tastes good, it tastes good.  It’s getting to the next stage of asking yourself what to do with what you’ve got, instead of just asking how do you eat the fresh roe, or can you put the bourbon aged syrup on pancakes? This knowledge is something that I have learned by watching the sales trends. I do not want to sound condescending, but the fact is that most of our retail customers seem happiest to use the products as they are instead of as the building blocks they are meant to be.

This is not at all the case with chefs, which has been fantastic!  I think we will state right here that we are a chef-driven company. Hey, that’s got a nice ring to it. Where would we be without you? BliS has grown fairly rapidly and keeping that growth in check is the top priority. We only want to sell enough of our products to be able to do it right. When we sell out, that’s it. Much like in the wine business only a finite amount of product per season or vintage is available and when it’s gone its gone.  Food and wine have basically consumed my professional life for many years, only second to my enjoyment of the outdoors. I created BLiS as something different, but still sort of in the business. It’s just enough to get my food and wine fix in. We all know that you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave. Now I’m off to go fishing. Later I’ll be back to rack barrels in the solera and then I’ll go pick up char at the Canadian border. It’s a great blend of all the things I love to do and it’s all in a day’s work.

-Steve

My Sister...over the years

This week our guest blogger, who shall remain nameless, succumbed to the pressures of their hectic daily routines. We'll be back next week with our regularly scheduled program and we are anticipating a post from Steve Stallard at BLiS Caviar. This week instead of a culinary conversation with someone new, we're going to talk about how we've been affected by our culinary conversations with someone near and dear, Alex's sister Meredith.

Over the years I have been able to take part in many converstations with my younger sister.  She has been known as a picky eater.  So much so that in her youth she subsisted on a diet of frozen tortellini in pink sauce and carrot sticks.  I was the one known to eat and try most anything. At the very first dinner where Aki met the family everyone talked about what a picky eater Meredith was. But from the point of view of a newcomer, it was clear that particular characterization was no longer strictly accurate.

After we moved back to New York after years of cooking on my own, I realized that she had grown up while I was gone.  We have been able to engage in conversations about food.  She began trying such things as calamari (albeit breaded and fried--actually not a bad way to eat it) and oysters.  This is my sister we are talking about, the carrot stick Queen.  And when she tried something new, she would invariably pick up the phone and give me a call or shoot me an email to fill me in on her revelations and explorations.  I have really enjoyed asking her about her meals and enjoyed watching her tastes evolve. 

These days I get emails about where to eat in NYC.  She wants to try food.  I think she is becoming a foodie.  Not a bad thing for a brother who is a chef.  Most recently she dined at 11 Madison Park for her birthday and had a tremendous time.  However this time her sights and palate are set on an upcoming dinner at wd-50. This is a restaurant we have talked about often and it has truly captured her attention.  I look forward to hearing about her culinary discoveries, about the new tastes she experiences and the new ingredients she will try.  She's even cooking meals at home with her partner in crime, Brian. They are experimenting with new ingredients, tasting different wines and stretching their culinary horizons. To her, each meal is not about a critique but rather an opening of the mind and the ability to try something new.  It is really a great way to look at food. Sometimes we get caught up in analyzing a meal and forget to sit back and enjoy what we're eating.  It's a great lesson from the girl who used to discuss the finer points of a carrot stick and the benefits of frozen tortellini.

Inspired by Others

Just because you hear something does not make it so.  I strongly believe and am continuously convinced that if something should not be, then it is a great place to launch an idea.

I received an email from Sean Brock yesterday asking if we had ever used transglutaminase with sweetbreads.  He had the idea of making a roulade of sweetbreads and was just beginning the process from idea to execution.  I had previously not tried cross linking sweetbreads before because I had heard that transglutaminase did not work with organ meats.  Well, upon hearing Sean's question I figured we should give it a shot, we had not actually tried to make a roulade or in our case a block of sweetbreads.  Guess what, it works.

Similarly, I was recently introduced to Johnny Iuzzini, pastry chef at restaurant Jean George.  Johnny has more energy than anyone I can recall.  His energy is contagious as are  his queries about food.  He is working on a new white chocolate sorbet which has a base of clear white chocolate.  Our discussions led me in the direction of white chocolate and toasted curry leaves.  As it turns out we made a sauce with those two ingredients last year, yet the spark today emerged from Johnny's idea of making clear white chocolate.  We have put together a clear white chocolate broth flavored with toasted curry leaves and brown butter.  My initial idea was to serve the broth with seared scallops, yet the sweetbreads end up being an equally natural fit.

In today's dish we serve the broth chilled with Asian pears and arugula with the crispy cube of sweetbreads on top.  Originally I wanted to serve the clear white chocolate hot, however the amount of dairy in my initial broth actually precipitates out of the clear liquid when it is heated.  Today we have adapted.  The dish is tasty and actually to two temperatures complement each other very well.

What is even more exciting is seeing what avenues these two chefs take with ideas which began as simple conversations.

Shola Olunloyo

Today we happily introduce a chef who drives to his own traffic rules.  He has also single handedly shown me that if you really put yourself out there you can do it your way.  We met Shola through this website and from his first introduction a culinary banter began.  The bouncing, sharing and dissection of ideas has allowed us to grow as chefs and people.  Shola's need to find the source, the reason, and the way inspires us and pushes us to just be better.  Along those lines, we have asked Shola to be the first of a number of individuals to open themselves up and share ideas.  Here is the what I can rightly call the beginning of our Culinary Conversations. Please feel free to leave questions and comments for Shola below. He doesn't have a current website but if you would like to get in contact with him, now's the time.

By Shola Olunloyo:

You are driving down a quiet scenic country road and suddenly you notice the scenery is going forward not backwards, that’s when it occurs to you that your career is going in the wrong direction. What do you do at a crossroads, when you question if you are doing what you are doing for the reasons you wanted to?
The answer is a profound change in direction, sublimated into the very essence of the art of in this case food and cookery. Philadelphia is a small town with lots of well meaning people who rarely exit their comfort zones, basically a meat and potatoes town. So many people who have rarely ventured into European Michelin Starred establishments have been convinced over the years that the delicious but cumbersome antiquated food at LBF is the best French food in the world. All the restaurants were serving variations of the same food, Pan-Asian was basically anything with the axis of evil, Soy, Ginger, Wasabi.
There was the requisite Tuna Tartare, calamari with a new novel crust, chipotle aioli, a copious use of truffle oil on everything, and umpteen variations of steamed mussels.

It was time to do something profound, a complete but temporary change in direction and the rallying cry, depending on how profound you wanted to be, was either…….FDR’s ”There is nothing to fear but fear itself” or the famous line from Risky Business with the young Tom Cruise “sometimes you just have to say what the ____ and take some chances”. Either way the message was the same and clear. I needed a forum to continue to cook, as it relates to income and on a different tangent, for creativity, exploration and opening up a conversation about food. That was Studiokitchen.
Thankfully there is no shortage of people in Manhattan who have no to time to cook and will gladly pay you upwards of $250 a person to cook a dinner party in their homes, however at that price point, the expectation was also of high level creativity, choice ingredients, lightness, modernism, and an intellectual component.

Buying really good food was and is still is expensive, Farmer Jones, Blue Moon Acres, Browne Trading for fish, D’artagnan the great meat negociant, driving to Lancaster and Bucks county to buy amazing vegetables. Even at the price point per person minimum of $150 in Philadelphia and $250 in NYC, there needed to be amortization or subsidization of expensive ingredients. This was when I recruited 8 very good friends and started SK as a weekly social dining experiment. It basically filled in all the blanks, a forum for the intellectual exchange and discussion of food and cookery but mathematically allowed me to bring down the cost of food for private chef work down by about 9%.
Anyone who works in the restaurant business knows that shaving 9 off your food cost is like winning the lottery.

It essentially started by trying to observe people’s expectations and the relationship between creativity and flavor. Every person involved in creativity needs an audience as a measure of feedback, SK provided that audience. Private chef work is highly lucrative but SK was fun. The premise was to have an atmosphere which encouraged a conversation about food, to get people to think about food differently, to expose them to ingredients, techniques or elements of various cuisines. It wasn’t always about new or cutting edge, there was a distinct attempt to clarify misperceptions about food and eliminate the proliferation of mediocrity. It is easy to come off sounding preachy or to alienate your audience so rather that force information on people, they were led to the water but not forced to drink.

The use of language to open up a discussion about multiple related subjects became quite effective while consuming food made with said items or techniques. Although attempts were made to make the food absolutely tasty, most walked away from the experience saying they loved the direct communication with the information source. Think about learning about wine varietals without drinking wine, it doesn’t quite work effectively.
Studiokitchen was like a restaurant with training wheels

How does one finance such a startup without having to answer to anyone? Good Credit. The answer is start with a significant chunk of cash, charge every single thing and pay it all off completely at the end of the month. The credit card companies, the idiots that they are continue to increase your limits and lower your interest rates in the hopes that you will go in debt. It was tough in the beginning doing it alone until it occurred to me to sell all of my bicycles. I was a serious cyclist for many years and I had amassed a collection of very expensive racing bicycles, mostly purchased at deep employee discounts.  At some point I decided to liquidate this into a windfall of slightly over 15 grand.
Initial emphasis was on good equipment. I like toys, but functional toys.
I guess was a bit spoiled because the batterie de cuisine currently includes….Vita Mix Blender, Thermomix, Imperia 220 electric pasta machine, 2 polyscience immersion circulators, Techne circulating waterbath, Achatz AntiGriddle, 20 quart mixer, Berkel Slicer, Bamix  Stick blender, Kitchen Aid Ice cream maker, Champion Juicer, Sodir deep fryer, Cooktek Induction Units, Oakton Thermocouple, Sper infrared thermometer, a ton of pots by Mauviel, multiple ISI canisters, Berkel Cryovac machine.

Respectable, but not quite Nathan Myhrvold’s home kitchen. As the private chef work expanded, I was always reinvesting about 40% back into equipment and other hardware such as china, the Pacojet fund and other technologies that come to be deemed requisite.
Even though I work mostly alone, I get a lot of offers from people interested in modern cooking who want to spend some time with me. I always ask them the same question, which came first?

A. The Chicken.
B. The Egg.
C. The Carrots and Coconuts sunny side up.

The answer is NOT important as long as you don’t say C.
I am finding out the few are interested in the basic foundations of cuisine, certainly there is something to be said for innovation but innovators and forward thinkers are grounded in the classics. Modernism to me is more effective when transparent. I take a lot of cues from other “artists”, architects and musicians primarily because of the creative process.
Inter-disciplinary conversations and explorations were the best part of Studiokitchen  dinners. Inspiration is all around us and we just have to expand our minds and venture outside the world of food every now and then. People always ask me “how do you combine certain ingredients or layer flavors and textures”
You think intelligently and you experiment and tweak till you get to your end point.
Restraint is just as important and you need to know when you have gone too far. Just because it’s really good doesn’t mean it can’t get better and just because it got better doesn’t mean it still can. End points are critical.

A fairly easy illustration is to listen carefully to one of the greatest bands ever assembled.
As you think of your basic components of flavor, temperature, texture, color, think of Julian Adderly, Bill Evans, Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers, Jimmy Cobb, John Coltrane, Miles Davis. The album is “Kind of Blue” the 3rd track is “Blue in Green”, everything proceeds smoothly, perfectly, could not get better, Wynton Kelly and/or Bill Evans are smoothly rolling along on the Piano, the tune could pretty much finish unchanged satisfactorily but at exactly 2 minutes and 27 seconds into the song, either Coltrane on the tenor or Adderly on the Alto saxophone starts up and nails it, just nails it and as soon as he is in, he is gone and that quite frankly is how you have to think of everything you add to a plate of food.

I met Alex Talbot on E-gullet on a discussion pertaining to Paul Liebrandt’s cooking in New York City, which is how I became exposed to Ideasinfood. I have come to the conclusion that most of the chefs in America who talk about sharing ideas are full of it and that people actively practice the exact opposite of what they preach, in the sense of sharing sources, information and inspirations. Perhaps you need to be deemed worthy if you are outside the myopic tunnel vision (no pun intended) of NYC. I asked for some advice and information, which I expected to get no answers to and I was pleasantly surprised with a forthright response. He has greatly influenced the way I think about food not so much about new ideas but re-arranging your thought processes.

I met Alex and Aki at the worlds most prestigious dining mall outside Dubai, that would be the AOL/ Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle…hehe.
Though I had seen pictures of them on the site, he described himself as having a cowboy hat on. A cowboy hat ???????? like a Stetson, indeed. I could not reconcile the image of the food photography on the site with a cowboy hat and I kept thinking, why a cowboy hat? Maybe that’s his trademark,  I even almost convinced myself that it was because HAT stands for H.Alexander Talbot. My mother always said never to judge people by appearances alone and I asked myself what famous chef wears a cowboy hat, cooks complicated food, requires a special detour to go eat his food and whose cookbook everyone wants to buy…Marc Veyrat.

The exchange of ideas is more infectious in person, within 3 hours of running around Manhattan and talking about food, thoughts and ideas had sublimated into well over $500 in purchases ranging from Japanese charcoal, implements for making shrimp Spaetzle, and fata paper. Note to self, if you are in Korin or JB Prince with Alex leave your credit cards home. Meanwhile I think I scared them both half to death with my driving. Unlike cooking, driving for me is about getting from point A to B ASAP.
So there you have it, one chapter in a free exchange of ideas.



Current Inspirations :

Ideasinfood
http://www.ltlwork.net/
http://www.designboom.com/eng/interview/ito.html
http://www.arvopart.info/ 

Another Point of View

One of the reasons Aki and I work well together is because we can look at the same ingredient and see do different outcomes.  The blending of our styles and approaches to ingredients and techniques enables us to achieve an interesting and exciting balance in our cooking.  We have also noted that we are inspired by the world around us.  Walks in the woods are good for both of us as are reading books.  Yet, the interaction with other chefs, a quick phone call or a quizzical email to share ideas usually leads to great discoveries.  These are what we have referred to as our culinary conversations.  Over the next several weeks we will be publishing the thoughts and ideas of our contemporaries here, in hopes of furthering culinary thought and development.  Each Sunday morning we will upload their post as written.  We can use the comment section on the post to flesh ideas out further.  These individuals have been kind enough to take time out of their hectic schedules to share in the concept of culinary conversations and the importance they provide in developing and executing ideas.  If all goes well, we will have the first conversation next Sunday.