Think Like a Chef PDF
Preview Think Like a Chef
Copyright © 2000 by Tom Colicchio Photographs copyright © 2000 by Bill Bettencourt Foreword copyright © 2000 by Danny Meyer All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Published by Clarkson Potter/Publishers, New York, New York Member of the Crown Publishing Group. Random House, Inc. New York, Toronto, London, Sydney, Auckland www.randomhouse.com CLARKSON N. POTTER is a trademark and Potter and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Colicchio, Tom. Think like a chef / Tom Colicchio with Cathy Young, Lori Silverbush and Sean Fri; photographs by Bill Bettencourt.— 1st ed. p. cm. 1. Cookery. I. Young, Cathy. II. Silverbush, Lori. III. Title. TX651.C64 2000 641.5—dc21 00-022983 eISBN: 978-0-77043389-5 v3.1 To the memory of my father, Thomas, and for my mother, Beverly contents Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication Foreword by Danny Meyer Preface Introduction techniques ROASTING BRAISING BLANCHING STOCK-MAKING SAUCE-MAKING studies ROASTED TOMATOES MUSHROOMS BRAISED ARTICHOKES trilogies ASPARAGUS, RAMPS, AND MORELS LOBSTER, PEAS, AND PASTA DUCK, ROOT VEGETABLES, AND APPLES component cooking SPRING VEGETABLES SUMMER VEGETABLES FALL VEGETABLES a few favorites Resources Acknowledgments Index foreword by danny meyer I first encountered Tom Colicchio’s food in 1991, not at his restaurant, Mondrian, but at Share Our Strength’s Taste of the Nation—the New York restaurant community’s annual charity event to fight hunger. Thirty-six of the city’s very best chefs had volunteered to prepare seven hundred tasting portions apiece of their signature dish for a discriminating crowd of foodies. As the event’s organizer that year, I learned a lot about the three-dozen chef participants. It’s a challenging, hectic night for a chef and the style with which they each approached the evening spoke volumes about them not just as cooks, but also as professionals and human beings. Many were nervous or disorganized, some chose to prepare very simple dishes they knew would be crowd pleasers, and a handful seemed to view the event as a monumental pain in the neck. Then there were the chefs like Tom—who wholeheartedly embraced the anti- hunger mission, and who calmly viewed the event as an opportunity to display his culinary prowess to a group of appreciative gourmets. Taste of the Nation was a sell-out that evening, keeping me too busy to sample food at many of the chefs’ tasting tables. But sensing that I’d be well rewarded, I did make a beeline for Tom Colicchio’s table. There I saw a smiling, confident chef plating and serving something that looked odd, yet compelling. Into spiny sea urchin shells he was spooning a fondue of sea urchin, crabmeat, and pureed potatoes, and then sprinkling the rim of each tasting plate with an aromatic curry powder. A few of the less-adventurous guests moved politely along to the next table when they saw what it was. Many others, however, clamored for more. I was salivating. Tom spotted me toward the back of the line and slipped me an urchin when no one was looking. I can remember the magic perfection of that dish to this day. Just as it is with winemakers and the wine they produce, you can gauge a lot about the personality of a chef by the style of his food—and vice versa. Watching Tom work that night, and tasting just that one dish, I learned a tremendous amount about him as a chef. Tom is a unique man with a refreshingly personal style of cooking. He cooks like who he is. Tom’s food is intelligent and clean; any ingredient on the plate belongs there—period. His dishes have both a tasteful elegance and an un-fussy and uncontrived appearance. His flavor combinations are highly seasonal, of-the-moment ideas that are more instinctive and personal than premeditated and overly intellectualized. He is generous in cooking for your pleasure, not just for his sense of ego. His food is provocative, but it provokes you to think, “Oh yeah, that makes sense.” A more recent dish of Tom’s reminded me of my first taste of that sea urchin dish: Who else could get you to eat Braised Beef Cheeks with Poached Foie Gras and Marrow? You may have never imagined that combination, but knowing Tom, you are confident that he will pull it off, and so you order it and are profoundly happy that you did. Nearly a decade has passed since I first tasted Tom’s food, and were it not for this book, I’d still be wondering how it was conceived. Tom has never been one to talk about why he cooks what he does, and until now the best (and only) way to get inside his chef’s mind has been to sit down and eat his food. In Think Like a Chef, Tom has opened the door to his culinary process and explained—in straight terms—how his very personal style is actually based on a simple logic that can be employed successfully by anyone who simply loves great food. Danny Meyer New York City preface I never intended to write a cookbook. I’ve had numerous requests over the years, but I never wanted to, mostly because for me recipes have never been the point. Frankly, I learned to cook in order to get away from recipes. I couldn’t fathom how to capture on the page what inspires me about cooking—the immediacy, the creative process, the integrity of good food. I was often asked to teach classes, and a similar challenge arose there: I couldn’t get interested in the mere demonstration of an appetizer, entrée, and dessert, and I was convinced that my students wanted more than that, anyway, based on the questions they asked. Questions like, “Where do you get your ideas?” and “How do you know what goes together?” Instead I hit on the idea of showing how a basic ingredient—roast tomatoes, say, or braised artichokes—can start the chain of creative thought in motion. The class was a hit, and I’ve been asked to repeat it time and again. Slowly, it got me thinking how to channel the idea—how a chef thinks about food—into a book. The result is in your hand. But in order to fully grasp the concepts I lay out in this book, it might be helpful to understand how I got here in the first place. My first job, when I was ten, was at the open-air food market in the Italian neighborhood of Elizabeth, New Jersey, where my Uncle George sold vegetables. This was in the days before greenmarkets came into vogue, and we were selling pretty mundane stuff: potatoes and cauliflower, I think. I watched Italian immigrants of my grandparents’ generation hovering over each purchase, touching the food, smelling it, picking the perfect chicken to be killed and plucked out back. Each choice was of monumental importance, and it was here that I first
Description:The list of books you might like
