Entries Tagged 'chefs' ↓

Notes of a Gastronome in The New Yorker

Gordon Ramsay, the only chef in London honored with three stars by the Guide Michelin, is not a monster. Ramsay, who is also the host of three uniquely adversarial in-your-face television shows (“Hell’s Kitchen” in the United States; “The F Word” and “Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares” in the United Kingdom), is not the most abusive person running a restaurant. And although a British undercover documentary once captured him in mid-torrent, profanities flowing in a diatribe directed at a young intern, earning Ramsay the title of one of the country’s “most unbearable bosses,” the people who work for him show a tenacious, irrational-seeming loyalty verging on love. But he does get angry, helplessly and uncontrollably angry—not an earthly anger but something darker—and has trouble knowing how to stop.

via Epi Log: The latest in Food News, the Culinary Arts & Cooking

You obviously like food. And you must like reading. Hey, you’re just like me! But if you’re a true gastro-bibliophile, you’ll no doubt take issue with at least some of my picks below. Please, I invite you to beg to differ. What’s missing?

from the TV Review in the New York Times

Mr. Ramsay emerges as though he were Gwyneth Paltrow making an inspirational visit to a fat camp. Everyone around him just looks so shabby, seems to be so shabby. Peter’s, a family-run Italian restaurant in Babylon, is a mess because no one gets along. The eponymous Peter is a big clown of a guy who bleaches his teeth, squanders his money and seems to operate in an uninterrupted state of remorse over never having achieved his calling as an extra in “Goodfellas.”

in the washingtonpost.com

Chef Rock is already a brand name and a charitable foundation, in the rough draft of his dream. “I’m going to have a few cookbooks, hopefully. Definitely a product line. And my own culinary apparel: Food industry apparel will never be the same. There are definitely sauces and vinaigrettes I’d like to bottle. Knives, maybe. All chefs like their knives,” he says.

in the New York Times

“Food can be very transformational and it can be more than just about a dish,” she said. “That’s what happened to me when I first went to France. I fell in love. And if you fall in love, well, then everything is easy.”

CHOW’s molecular gastronomy cheat sheet

7. Eat the document. Arguably the biggest gee-whiz innovation in the genre has been the edible menus by Homaro Cantu of Moto. Using an ink-jet printer adapted for inks made from fruit and vegetables, and paper made of soybean and potato starch, he has created menus that taste like everything from sushi to steak.

Found on Wired.com

His team is using nuclear magnetic resonance to analyze carrot-based soup stocks and studying why green beans change color when cooked. But he says that the next big idea he wants to tackle is the role that love — of the cook for the diners, the diners for the cook, and of everyone for each other — plays in determining tastes. “Cooking for someone is a way of telling them, ‘I love you.’ This has to be understood, of course,” This says before pausing for a second. “But first, I do my job with the carrots.”

from sfweekly.com

Former admissions representatives at CCA say they preyed on students’ dreams of becoming celebrity chefs and glossed over the painful economic realities of the industry

A far cry from boil-in-a-bag, French sous vide technique mesmerizes Bay Area chefs

Chris Whaley, chef at Picco in Larkspur, vacuum-seals rhubarb in a heat-proof plastic bag with white wine-vanilla syrup, gently poaches it in a water bath, and spoons it atop individual almond tarts. At first bite, the rhubarb seems uncooked because it’s so pleasingly crunchy. But it’s not at all stringy or tough. It’s just a whole new, delicious rhubarb.

From SFGate.com

Insiders refer to him as “the guy who knows how to get things.” They frequent his store — hidden away on the fifth floor of an unmarked building off Union Square — to check out the high-tech wares he’s amassed from all over the world.

These insiders include some of the Bay Area’s best known chefs. The guy they’re referring to is Jing Tio, owner of Le Sanctuaire — a new specialized culinary store in San Francisco — who has made it his life’s mission to seek out the most interesting and cutting-edge kitchen goods, from sous-vide chamber vacuum sealers to ingredients like gelling agents and black cubeb peppercorns.