Chiarello Blog

I’ve been reading Foodrepublic.com, and it hits on a point that I’ve thought for a long time: Men and women come at food a little differently. Marcus Samuelsson, who’s behind Food Republic, is bringing to the table a different conversation about food. He’s starting a male dialect that’s inclusive of women.

Marcus is one of the most articulate chefs I’ve had the pleasure to know and to cook with. Bringing Red Rooster to Harlem was revolutionary. Marcus says connecting with his neighborhood and his community is what he was meant to do. He says, “through business, you can take care of the corner.” I like that Marcus tries to solve neighborhood issues by being engaged, by working in the community that matters to him. That his neighborhood enjoys and is part of Red Rooster is most important to Marcus. That’s not to say he doesn’t enjoy it when President Obama comes for dinner.

Marcus is as smart with the web site as he is with his food. The web site starts with the idea that men are underserved in today’s conversations about food.

I talked to Marcus about this. He said,” Twenty years ago men had Esquire and GQ to help us into our own style. I thought there was a space for chefs-myself included-to help guide men into having a better relationship with their food.”

Marcus says, “We share expertise from professionals and edit our content so it resonates with our readers. We’re thinking about the evolving dynamics of modern families and we want to address those needs. That includes articles about food, wine and beverages, cocktails, and equipment. The site is inspired by men but inclusive of women.”

When I posted this on Facebook, women questioned it, some commenting that they didn’t see how the site was “male” or asking if women were welcome there too. Women are always welcome as far as I’m concerned but I like the idea of writing for a group of people who want to develop better skills and a greater sense of comfort in the kitchen, but aren’t sure where to start. Women have places where they can go to learn from each other about cooking; for men, it’s not as obvious.

Marcus says that one of the ideas behind Food Republic is that he believes anyone can make an amazing meal even if the only tools they have are a pan and a spatula. I like that concept, and the idea of opening the kitchen door for someone who just needs a little confidence.

How about you? Do you see a difference in how men and women approach food and cooking? Does a site like Food Republic get your attention?

-Michael

People ask me, “Did you see that article in the Wall Street Journal?” or “Notice that review in the New York Times?” and I usually have to answer no. I get my news online but the two things I pay to read about are food and cycling. (And when I’m cycling, I’m thinking about food. If you drive through the wine country in the early mornings, you’ll see me by the side of the road, pulled over to talk to my fish vendor or my produce guy on my cell phone because I’ve just thought up a new idea for a dish.

I once told a group of young chefs that if they didn’t have cookbooks on their nightstand and cooking magazines in their bathrooms, they might want to rethink their careers. Cookbooks are how I wind down, late at night after work. Right now I have Frances Mallman’s book Seven Fires on my nightstand as well as a few old favorites by Alice Waters. I had The Big Fat Duck Cookbook beside my bed for a while but almost beaned myself when it fell on my face – that book is too massive for late-night in-bed reading. It’s so well done in how it shows the evolution of one person’s style of cooking.

Cooking magazines flash in and out of my office. I flip through them very, very quickly, tear out and file anything that catches my eye. I find that books seem to inspire thought, maybe because they’re more cohesive, while cooking magazines act as triggers to memories. I’ll see an article on grilled escarole salad, say, and remember escarole that I had in Italy, and then I’ll be thinking about what I can do with escarole. Books let me see the cooking style of one person, and find new techniques that I want to try.

I tend to use the internet to fill in an idea on a dish in the making; my problem is I see other interesting articles and end up in faraway places, reading about a topic that’s not related to what I was searching for.

How about you? Do you find that you buy fewer cookbooks since the recipe goldrush on the internet? Do you still subscribe to cooking magazines or are you more inclined to search for what you need online?

-Michael

People ask me all the time for my favorite recipe. For me, the person who taught me the recipe is the driving force, the memory behind the dish. When I miss my Mom, I make gnocchi. Every year for the seventeen years I lived at home, she would ask what I wanted for my birthday and the answer was always the same: gnocchi. When I make gnocchi, I can’t help but feel my Mom’s arm over my shoulder, the smoothness of the gnocchi paddle, her fingers guiding mine. In spite of the many thousands of pounds of gnocchi I have made since my Mom passed, my gnocchi are not as perfect as hers. My gnocchi are very good, but they will never taste quite as good to me as the gnocchi my Mom made on my birthdays.

To not have that – to not have a birthday dish or a holiday dish that was part of your family’s history – that’s horrible. To me, these recipes are like names in a family tree: without them, the tree has awful spaces and can’t ever be complete.

For me, the recipe I’m missing is for a cookie that my Aunt Isabelle used to make. It was an Easter cookie but we ate them every holiday. They were round, with a hole in the middle, like a thin donut and very buttery (Aunt Isabelle probably used lard) with pastel frosting on the top. It feels like I have been searching for that recipe forever. I can still taste that cookie even though I haven’t had one in years. Stella Bakery in North Beach makes an awesome Easter cookie, but they won’t give me their recipe. Are you searching for a recipe that your family lost when someone passed without writing it down?

- Michael

I’m thinking about cookbooks right now because my seventh book, Bottega, is out this month and we’re starting work on the next book, due out in 2012.

My Bottega book team gave me grief because I have a hard time cutting – we ended up dropping more than 30 recipes to leave a little room for the photographs. (And every one of those recipes is good, so it’s painful to leave them out.) For me, it’s never a question of what to put in a book; the trouble is figuring out what has to get left behind on the cutting room floor.

Which cookbooks am I reading right now? I’m head over heels for Seven Fires, the book by Argentine chef Frances Mallmann. I love that a Michelin-starred chef could turn his attention to something so primal, and be wildly innovative with very rustic foods. The River Café collection of cookbooks from London is always close by, on the table behind my desk.

I like Eat Ate by Australian chef Guy Mirabella. His book is beautiful and his recipes are simple and rustic – each one is a wonderful moment in time. When I need to feel Italian, I pick up Slow: Life in a Tuscan Town by Douglas Gayeton. Living in California, I sometimes feel very removed from Italy, and this book’s photos are exactly what I need to bring on an Italian frame of mind: I think about cooking for the people in the photos and suddenly all my creative sparks start firing.

That’s what cookbooks are for me: inspiration. Chefs seldom borrow a dish but we do borrow techniques. Frances Mallmann’s technique for roasting vegetables in a bed of dying coals inspired a velvety eggplant and onion puree that makes my Lamb Spiedini Agrodolce moist and smoky. When I look through cookbooks, I dog-ear the page when I find a technique I want to consider and write notes to myself in the margins. I might turn down 10 or 20 pages in a book I really like; Mallmann’s book has at least 50 dog-eared pages and I’m still finding new things in there.

How about you? Which books do you turn to year after year, and which cookbooks have most inspired you?

-Michael

In most restaurants the food comes to the table, the guests taste and then sit back in their chairs to savor. At José Andrés’ Minibar in Washington, D.C., you’re on the edge of your seat the entire meal: the food, the service, José’s imagination – it’s all theater. Every bite is unexpected and so is the setting, which is more laboratory than restaurant. Minibar is 100 percent molecular, 100 percent fun – like a drink that comes to your table hot but ends up icy cold, cotton candy eel, or dragon’s breath popcorn –take a bite of this and exhale, and you see a cloud of smoke (steam really) come out of your nose.

I was also blown away by Bazaar, José’s restaurant in Los Angeles, which serves side-by-side tastings of a traditional dish and then the same dish reinvented through José’s molecular skills. José knows my style is more traditional, so he bumped up that side of it a little, serving us about 60 percent traditional and 40 percent molecular dishes. For the Caesar, there was a true beautiful Caesar salad next to his organized Caesar, a packet made of thinly sliced jicama, filled with quail egg, anchovy, and romaine and served in what looked like a small zinc taco server so you didn’t need to use a fork but just lifted it to your mouth. I loved his “olives” that were actually delicate ovals in spoons – like small egg yolks – made of olive juice with liquid centers. These explode in your mouth and are fantastic.

What I liked best about Bazaar was the pacing – the meal’s syncopation was impeccable, every plate set in front of us at exactly the right moment.

The other side of the coin in Los Angeles is Animal, led by Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo. I love these guys – their style is very primal and carnivorous but still inventive and humorous. If Bazaar is very Beverly Hills, then Animal is definitely West Hollywood – edgy, cool, with a young hip crowd showing lots of piercings. I love the way Jon and Vinny seared foie gras and then slabbed it on a biscuit and poured a classic roadhouse gravy around it. Perfect. And I like seeing how they did their pork belly – barbecued and served on a bun – and comparing it to how we do our pork belly, in small little squares so it’s one intense bite served in place of bacon with our crispy eggs.

When we felt like we couldn’t eat one more bite, we were talked into the Bacon Chocolate Crunch Bar (okay, it wasn’t a hard sell). Dark ganache with just the right amount of bacon, this was the perfect last bite before we hauled ourselves out of our chairs and took our time getting back to the hotel. This is not food for the faint of heart.

I like what chef Michael White is doing at Marea in New York City, especially his White Fusilli with baby octopus and bone marrow. Jan Birnbaum is an old friend and one of those chefs that just keeps getting better and better. His tableside tartare at Epic Roasthouse is something I find myself craving in the middle of a workday.

I could write another six pages, but tell me your most exciting restaurant experiences and the chefs that inspire you right now.

-Michael