Cappelletti at Osteria Morini (photo copyright by Nick Solares, courtesy Altamarea Group)

Tonight, Michael White’s Osteria Morini (218 Lafayette Street) will kick off what the chef hopes will become a regular stop on the late-night culinary circuit: “Industry” pasta nights. The restaurant is offering all its pastas for $10 from 9:30pm until closing every Monday night. You’re supposed to mention that you’re in “the industry” but nobody’ll check your working papers or ask you for the secret handshake. So if you’re a toque on a night off, or enjoying an early push-off time on one of the quieter nights of the week, or just a pasta-loving New Yorker or visitor to our fair city who enjoys pasta, you might want to stop in and end your day with a bargain bowl of top-notch noodles, or carbo load for the long bar crawl ahead.

I spoke to Michael about this new promotion over the weekend and he says he started it in hopes of conjuring a little of the community he enjoyed as a young cook–he has especially fond memories of  late nights at Blue Ribbon–but which he feels has gone out of the biz in recent years. He’ll be on hand this evening, and I plan to drop in myself.

- Andrew

[Editor's Note: In this post, the second of a two-part series about working on a cookbook proposal for Harold Dieterle's Kitchen Notebook, we take you inside a working session. - A.F.]

Harold Dieterle, left, and Andrew Friedman, at Morandi restaurant, NYC

The other day, I shared a little about how the idea for my next collaboration, Harold Dieterle’s Kitchen Notebook, came about. If you haven’t already, I suggest you read that post before reading this one, to familiarize yourself with the book’s concept and structure.

Today, I thought it might be interesting to take you inside an actual working session, for two reasons: (a) to demonstrate how a cookbook takes shape, from inception to publication; this is the first collaboration I’ve taken on since relaunching Toqueland earlier this year, and I plan to track its every development here, and (b) after the confusion left in the wake of some recent newspaper stories about collaborating, I thought there’d be nothing like pulling back the curtain on the process to help clear up how things actually work, at least between one chef and one collaborator.

Two of the most important components of a cookbook proposal are the sample recipes and text. Herewith, the genesis of some material, in three steps:

STEP 1:

Harold emails me a recipe for a dish.

Here is the recipe for Ricotta Cheese, Acorn Squash Tempura, Truffle Honey, Sunflower Seeds, and Grilled Bread, exactly as it was received:

Tempura

All Purpose Flour 1 cup

Soda Water 1 pint

Put the flour & soda water in a bowl; mix vigorously with a whisk, then strain & reserve.

Acorn Squash- peeled, sliced 1/4in thick 1ea. / about 16 slices

Truffle Honey 2T

Sunflower Seeds-toasted 3T

Grilled/toasted Sourdough Bread- ¼ inch thick 8 slices

S&P tt **

Extra Virgin Olive oil 4 T

[** "tt" = "to taste"]

Preheat deep fry or large pot of oil to 350f. Coat the acorn squash slices in tempura batter. Remove excess batter and place in the oil for about 2 minutes or till golden brown. Remove from oil, season generously with salt & pepper and lay on paper towel.

To The plate;

Place 2 slices of bread on each plate drizzle each slice with olive oil, place ricotta cheese on each slice. Next drizzle truffle honey over the cheese, sprinkle sunflower seeds over the top. Finish by laying squash tempura over the top.

[NOTE: Harold also sent along his recipe for homemade ricotta and ways to vary/use it, all of which has been edited below. In the interest of space, I'm not including his version here; suffice it to say the level of detail and description was comparable to what you see above.]

STEP 2:

We conduct an interview based on the recipe.

Here’s the audio of our interview about both the dish and the ricotta cheese. I’m presenting the full, 7-minute dialog here for those interested in how all elements find their way into the text that follows, but you might well get the gist after a minute or two.

Harold Dieterle Interview – ricotta (April 13, 2012)

STEP 3:

I go off and write.

As you can see below, I’ve fashioned a headnote and other text in Harold’s voice, and tweaked/expanded the recipe, weaving in information from the interview and my own knowledge of what’s required for a cookbook recipe. Ingredient details and recipe instructions have been fleshed out, and some decisions have been made to address the restrictions of a home cook; for example, explaining how to be sure multiple components are hot at the time of serving.  When necessary, I contacted Harold for clarification and/or approval. The result looks something like this:

The Recipe

Ricotta Cheese, Acorn Squash Tempura, Truffle Honey, Sunflower Seeds, and Toasted Bread

Serves 4

I grew up eating a lot of pastas, and many of them, such as  manicotti, lasagna, baked ziti, and cannelloni, featured, or were topped with, ricotta cheese. I always loved that soft, smooth cheese, and in time became something of a ricotta fiend. I’d raid the refrigerator, taking a spoon to the plastic tubs of supermarket brands like Polly-O or Sorrento that we always had on hand. In time, I began to experiment with it, garnishing bowls of ricotta with fruit from our garden, and drizzling honey over it, for breakfast.

Today, I make my own ricotta (it’s actually very easy as you can see from the Notebook feature on the facing page) and have developed a number of ways to serve it. This is one of my favorite ricotta-centric dishes: the honey really activates the taste buds, the sunflower seeds add texture, and the tempura squash offer substance and a surprising, subtle sweetness. This is presented as an appetizer, but can also be a small meal, especially if you pair it with a quick salad of frisee lettuce dressed with lemon juice and olive oil.

1 cup all purpose flour

2 cups soda water

Canola oil, or other neutral oil, for frying

3 tablespoons sunflower seeds

Eight 1/4-inch-thick slices sourdough bread

About 1 cup ricotta cheese, preferably homemade (see Notebook)

1 acorn squash, peeled, halved, de-seeded  and cut crosswise into sixteen 1/4-inch-thick slices (Butternut or Hubbard squash may be substituted)

2 tablespoons truffle honey (other honeys, such as clover or elderflower, may be substituted)

Kosher salt

Freshly ground black pepper

1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

1.  Position a rack in the center of the oven. Preheat the oven to 400°F.

2. Preheat the Fryer and Prepare the Tempura Batter:

• Make the tempura batter: Put the flour and soda water in a bowl and whisk vigorously just until integrated. Strain through a fine-mesh strainer into shallow bowl wide and deep enough to accommodate a squash slice.
• Pour oil into a deep fryer, or wide, deep, heavy pot, to a depth of 4 inches.  (If using a pot rather than a deep fryer, you will need a clip-on thermometer.) Heat the oil to 350°F.
• Line a large plate with paper towels.
• As the oil continues to warm, toast the sunflower seeds and the bread (Steps 3 and 4).

3. Toast the Sunflower Seeds:

• Put the sunflower seeds in a heavy sauté pan and toast over medium heat, shaking the pan to prevent scorching, until lightly toasted and fragrant, about 3 minutes.
• Remove the pan from the heat and set aside to let the seeds cool.

4. Toast the Bread:

• Set the bread slices directly on the uppermost rack of the oven and toast until golden-brown and crispy, about 5 minutes. Transfer the toast to a baking sheet, lower the oven to 200°F, prop the oven open slightly (a wine cork is the perfect implement for this), and keep the toast warm on a lower rack while you prepare and cook the squash.

5. Batter and Fry the Tempura Squash:

• When the oil reaches 350°F, working with 1 squash slice at a time, dip it in the batter to coat it on both sides, letting any excess batter drip back into the bowl. Carefully lower the squash into the oil, coating and adding another slice or two as quickly as possible so they all fry at the same rate and fry until golden-brown, about 2 minutes.
• Use tongs or a slotted spoon to transfer the squash slices to the paper-towel-lined plate and season immediately with salt and pepper, then transfer to a baking tray and keep warm on the center rack in the oven.
• Repeat with the remaining squash slices and batter, letting the oil return to 350°F between batches.

6. Plate the Dish:

• Put 2 slices of toast on each of 4 salad plates.
• Drizzle each slice with olive oil, spread some ricotta cheese on each one, drizzle with honey, and sprinkle sunflower seeds over the top.
• Set a piece of tempura squash on top of each slice and serve.

And here’s the “Notebook” accompaniment to the dish, in which we focus on a component of it, in this case ricotta cheese, offering a recipe and multiple variations and uses:

The Notebook

Homemade Ricotta Cheese

Makes about 2 cups

There are different schools of ricotta-making that break down according to fat content. Some recipes use milk, or milk and cream, with a little lemon juice added to cut the richness. Personally, I like a pure, un-apologetically high fat content, with no acid added, although I’ll sometimes add acid to the finished ricotta in certain recipes.

There a bit of a hurry-up-and-wait required when making ricotta: You have to put a little sweat-equity into it at the outset, whisking vigorously until curds form, then patiently let it finish cooking.

When making ricotta cheese, it’s essential that you stop cooking as soon as the temperature reaches 170°F, and be careful to not let all the moisture strain out, or it’ll be too dry.

2 quarts whole milk

2 cups buttermilk

1 cup heavy cream

Fine Sea Salt

Freshly ground white pepper

Clip a kitchen thermometer onto the side of heavy, stainless-steel pot. Pour the milk, buttermilk, and heavy cream into the pot and set over medium-high heat. Cook, whisking constantly, until cheese curds begin to form, about 10 minutes. Stop whisking but continue to let cook until the temperature reaches 170°F, about 5 more minutes.

Remove the pot from the heat and let rest until it cools to room temperature, about 20 minutes. Suspend a fine-mesh strainer over a bowl and use a slotted spoon to transfer the ricotta curds to the sieve. Let strain until well-drained but still moist, about 30 minutes. Transfer the curds to a bowl, season generously with salt and pepper, and mix gently and briefly with a rubber spatula.

Serve the ricotta cheese right away or refrigerate in an airtight container for up to 3 days. Let come to room temperature and stir to reincorporate any liquid before serving.

Ways to Use and Serve Ricotta Cheese:

Ravioli filling:

In a mixing bowl, mix together 2 cups fresh ricotta cheese, 1 cup grated pecorino cheese, 1 egg and 1 tablespoon finely grated lemon zest. (The zest cuts the richness of the cheese.) Fill ravioli following the instructions on page 000.

Topping for pasta with red sauce:

Top a serving of your favorite pasta with 1 tablespoon of fresh ricotta, a teaspoon of grated pecorino Romano cheese, 1 teaspoon of extra-virgin olive oil, and a few grinds of black pepper. As the ricotta and sauce meld, a lasagna-like effect takes hold. Where I grew up, different families used different grating cheeses. Ours was a pecorino home, so I use pecorino, but you could also use Parmigiano Reggiano here.

Cannoli filling:

Here’s my family’s recipe for cannoli filling, which uses confectioner’s sugar to ensure it dissolves quickly, helping you avoid over-processing the cheese:  Put 2 cups of ricotta cheese in the bowl of a food processor fit with the steel blade.  Add 3/4 cup confectioner’s sugar, 2 tablespoons pure vanilla extract, and a pinch of ground cinnamon. Pulse just to combine. If desired, fold in 1 tablespoon of chopped, dried fruit, or small chocolate chips. Spoon or pipe the filling into store-bought cannoli shells.

“Breakfast of Champions”

This one comes straight from my childhood. If you have ricotta cheese on hand, it always feels a little harmlessly indulgent to call on it for breakfast: Put 1/2 cup of ricotta cheese in a bowl, top with 1 cup of your favorite fresh seasonal fruit, and 1/4 cup of granola. Drizzle with 1 tablespoon of honey or maple syrup.

… and that’s it. Typically, I include 8 to 10 recipes in a proposal, so we’re well on our way. We’ll keep you posed on this project as it continues to develop.

- Andrew

[Editor's Note: In this post, the first of a two-part series, we take you inside the process of developing of a new book project. This piece describes how a concept is devised; the follow-up, which I'll run on Friday, will take you inside a working session, complete with audio of an interview and an illustration of how a chef-collaborator relationship works. - A.F.]

Right in Front of Our Noses: Everything We Needed to Know was Locked in Here (photo copyright by Andrew Friedman)

Every so often, somebody pondering a book idea asks me for advice. One of the questions that inevitably arises is how long it takes to write a book proposal, the document that literary agents circulate to editors and publishers in hopes of setting the project up with a publishing house.

“Writing a proposal only takes a few weeks,” I say. “The variable is how long it takes to come up with a concept.”

With very few exceptions, even the most well-known culinary celebrities need a solid concept to convince a publisher that their book is viable. Oh, sure, if you’re a big enough television star, you might be able to sell the flimsiest of ideas, or even enter into a blind book deal, with the idea to come at a later date. Generally speaking, though, a concept will make or break one’s publishing prospects.

I’ve collaborated on projects where the concept was evident from the get-go, restaurant books being the most obvious examples, along with those that grew directly out of a chef’s area of specialization, such as Go Fish, which Laurent Tourondel and I conceived while he was the chef of the posh seafood temple Cello. In cases where the concept isn’t as turnkey, my main goal is to come up with a concept that bridges what a particular chef does in his or her restaurant kitchen(s) with what home cooks do in theirs. Sometimes the answer reveals itself quickly; others it can take several frustrating months

As mentioned a few months back on this site, Harold Dieterle and I have been engaged in a sporadic dialogue about a possible cookbook project since last fall. It’s been a long and winding road: At first, we were going to write a Thai book since Harold has such a passion for it. But we succumbed to the commercial limitations of that notion, switched gears, and decided to write a more general cookbook. To put it in restaurant terms, we went from focusing on what Harold does at Kin Shop to what he does at Perilla.

After that resolution, the burning question was how to capture what Harold does at Perilla in a book that wasn’t simply The Perilla Cookbook (with very few exceptions publishers don’t want restaurant cookbooks anymore), and wasn’t what I think of as a “default” concept, such as Harold Dieterle Cooks at Home, that evoked images of Harold on the cover, dressed in a plaid shirt, perhaps standing over a backyard grill, or hoisting a Le Creuset pot up at the camera.

For the next several months, Harold and I met periodically for coffee and talked about his food. He fashioned a list of dishes he’d like to feature in a book. I came in for a tasting dinner at the bar at Perilla. We talked about his food some more. We drank some more coffee. I tasted some more food. We checked our iPhones. We shook hands and said, “See you next week.”

Although Harold’s food has a definite and delicious point of view, as far as a cookbook concept that gave possible publishers, and by extension book buyers, something to latch on to, we were getting nowhere, and it was growing awkward.

And then, one night, while poring over Harold’s recipe lists at home, something hit me, a series of related ideas that followed one after the other in quick succession, like a line of mental dominoes tipping each other over: Each of Harold’s dishes has one or two elements that really put it over the top, and (this was the key observation) might have multiple applications in other dishes. What if, I thought, we wrote a book in which we presented recipes for fully formed dishes on one page, and on the facing (opposite) page isolated the most potent and/or versatile element of the dish, wrote an essay about its charms, and offered a number of ways to deploy it?

I texted Harold that I thought I had something and the next morning we met so I could pitch it to him. He loved it, and felt it keyed into something essential about how he thinks about food. Best of all, for just about every dish on our working list, he was able to isolate a component and rattle off the myriad ways he used or adapted it in other contexts. We were suddenly synched up and working off a shared vision, now with illustrative examples that brought it to life.

For example, alongside the recipe for Harold’s Crispy Softshell Crab with Ramp Kim Chee and Spicy Passionfruit Sauce, we’d provide his kim chee base, explaining how to vary it to produce ramp kim chee, cabbage and apple kim chee, mustard green kim chee, and asparagus kim chee, along with ideal uses for each one; next to his Roasted Whole Chicken with Spaetzle, Chestnuts, and Persimmons we’d give a recipe for spaetzle, explaining how to vary it with quark, chestnut, caraway, and porcini mushrooms, and which proteins each might get along best with; and from his Braised Beef Braciole with Pesto, Prosciutto, Tomato, and Polenta, we’d focus on polenta, describing how to use the base recipe to make grits, polenta cakes, polenta fries, and even how to braise meat in polenta.

As we brainstormed, we also quickly realized that this new structure and content promised irresistible value to readers: While there would be about 100 fully formed dish recipes in the book (the more-or-less standard number), the component recipes and notes for how to apply them would arm readers with enough information and guidance to produce close to 1,000 different plates of food.

Over the ensuing weeks, as we honed the idea further, we also decided that, in some cases, the element we focus on won’t be a recipe, but a high-impact raw ingredient. For example, alongside the recipe for Raw Yellowtail with Avocado-Cucumber Salad, Cilantro, and Smoked Ponzu, will be a page devoted to cilantro that sings its praises and offers ideal ways to deploy leaves or chiffonade, as well as simple techniques such as frying cilantro leaves as a garnish for fish; infusing an old-school cilantro oil; and grinding up a pesto-like puree. (Harold also has a nifty alternative to frying cilantro for those who lack a deft touch with hot oil: brushing the leaves with a sugar syrup and baking them between two Silpats.)

Somewhere during this dialogue, it occurred to me that these component recipes and notes are precisely the kind of information that every chef I know records in his or her notebook. Most toques keep a notebook, or notebooks, that they’ve been adding to since their line-cook days where they house, among other things, recipes for dish components such as combinations, condiments, purees, and sauces. Harold is no exception, and he agreed that this was the perfect bow to tie around our new idea.

And so, finally, after months of having nothing, we had everything, or at least everything we needed to move forward to the next stage. In other words, we had our concept, and our title: Harold Dieterle’s Kitchen Notebook.

Treasure Trove: Two pages of Harold's notebook, jam packed with notes and recipes. (photo copyright by Andrew Friedman)

The thing I like most about this direction is that, like many of the best ideas, it’s a simple one that, in retrospect, has always been there for the taking but which nobody had snapped up yet. (Reminds me of George Carlin’s old line that observational comedy is about things the audience already knew but forgot to laugh at.)  My favorite concept along these lines, the one that filled me with good, old fashioned envy, was Staff Meals from Chanterelle. When I heard that somebody was doing a staff meals book, I literally smacked myself, open palm, on the forehead.

With our idea in hand, things have been moving ahead swiftly. Harold and I have been passing a list of dishes back and forth by email to select the best, broadest collection of recipes and sub-recipes, and Harold’s tested a few, sending his notes to me for fleshing out and sprucing up. In a follow-up to this post, coming this Friday, I’ll share a look at that part of the process, including some audio from one of our interview sessions and the sample book text that came out of it.

In the meantime, by coincidence, Harold and I are having dinner tonight. There shouldn’t be any awkward pauses or “what did he mean by that?” exchanges. Things are good.

- Andrew

Alan Harding, photographed outside Littleneck Restaurant, March 2012

Back in 1997, Alan Harding, who first garnered attention at Nosmo King in Tribeca, stunned New York diners when he crossed the East River and opened Patois on a desolate stretch of Smith Street in Brooklyn. The space that housed Patois is now home to red-hot Battersby and Smith is, of course, one of the premiere thoroughfares of the modern Brooklyn dining scene. Harding and his Patois partners Jim Mamary and Mamary’s brother Paul, collectively and individually, would go on to have a hand, if not necessarily a stake, in more than a dozen Brooklyn restaurants including Uncle Pho, Schnäck, and Pacifico.

Though widely acknowledged as Brooklyn’s culinary Pied Piper, Harding is no longer associated with past projects other than the Gowanus Yacht Club, a seasonal, open-air MASH unit of a watering hole in Carroll Gardens. But he’s still very much a factor out here in Kings County, currently as the chef (though not a partner) at Littleneck, a fish house on Third Avenue, between President and Carroll.

Last spring, while pondering a possible book about Brooklyn, I sat down with Harding in the open air of the Gowanus Yacht Club, which happens to be Toqueland’s favorite place to knock off early in the summer, and as he puffed on a stogie (a habit he’s since quit), discussed his pioneering of Smith Street and what’s transpired in these parts since those days. The book never happened, but I recently came across the dialogue and, with Harding’s consent, decided to share it here.

TOQUELAND: Let’s contextualize: I remember, when I lived in Park Slope twenty years ago, if we made plans with people in Manhattan, there wasn’t even a discussion about venue; the assumption was that the Brooklyn people came into “the city.”

HARDING: Correct.

TOQUELAND: And now, Manhattan people might come to Brooklyn.

HARDING: Well, you know, we decided to do a project in Brooklyn because we all lived in Brooklyn and because the city at that time was hard. It’s always been hard.

TOQUELAND: You don’t just mean financially?

HARDING: Financially and logistically and entrepreneurially and bureaucratically. For a long time, Brooklyn was off the radar as a place that the city could generate revenue from the entrepreneurship. The Board of Health never came to Brooklyn because they were so busy doing places in Manhattan. For a long time it was like this like secret little place that had people that enjoyed good food that were sick of going to Manhattan.

At Patois, there was a line out the door and they had to wait in the backyard in a tent where there was a wood-burning stove. Nowadays, if someone said, “There’s a tent in the back with a wood burning stove,” probably the first five calls would be to 311.

TOQUELAND: Was there a break point where you said, “Screw this, I’m going to take my act to Brooklyn?”

HARDING: I was living in a loft on Broadway in Tribeca and the owner sold it for, like, half a million dollars, and I had to leave. And I was: “Where am I going to go and find rent for $800 a month? Brooklyn.” I drove my car to Brooklyn and I discovered Fort Greene and Fort Greene Park and all those beautiful brownstones, and I realized that it was seven minutes away. And I’m, like, “I’m done. This is it. I like it here. There’s trees. You can fucking park your car in front of your house every day.” I mean . .. you don’t realize what that does to your general well being.

TOQUELAND: Where in Fort Greene were you?

HARDING: I lived in a loft at the Navy Yard. It was a 1,500 square-foot loft. It was $800 a month.

TOQUELAND: Were you neighbors with [Tom] Valenti back then?

HARDING: Valenti lived on Carlton and it was our little secret. And then I got turned on to Smith Street by someone who was looking at some spaces on Court Street. Court Street at that point was a no-man’s land as well, but the rents were always higher on Court Street. And this was like a little secret street that was parallel to Court that went to Atlantic Avenue where all the stores were shuttered and there were people living in the stores. Because in 1996, the city decided to dig up the whole street and then kind of lost interest, so it was in ruins.

TOQUELAND: How did Patois come about?

HARDING: Patois came from many dinners at a somewhat seminal French bistro on Sullivan Street in the early 1990s called Jean Claude. First simple French paradigm bistro with entrees all under $15 in Manhattan.

TOQUELAND: This was the place you used to hang?

HARDING: That was the place that I stole to open in Brooklyn. I was, like, “This is great. Everything’s under $15. All the wines were $15.” You know, wines were $5 a glass, $4 a glass. It was cheap. It was bonhomie in the air. It was a great place to eat. And that was the business model that we riffed on to create Patois. And that was good.

TOQUELAND: When you decided to come and do that here, what was the reaction?

HARDING: I remember being at Blue Ribbon with Mario [Batali] and Bobby [Flay] and telling them that I was looking at places in Brooklyn and they’re, like . .. I remember probably 50 percent of the comments were, “Yeah, good luck with that,” or “Make sure you have your gun.” On the other hand, [some people said], “Yeah, Brooklyn’s wide open. Why not?”

After it was successful and we started getting some press and business really took off, that’s when people in the industry really notice what you’re doing because they’re looking at revenue that they could be possibly garnering. We were open six months and Peter Hoffman and Charlie Kiley show up for dinner and then, six months after that, Charlie signs the lease on the Grocery to do his thing.

It was a good place to open a place for $40,000.

TOQUELAND: When you say $40K, that was all it took to get in the place?

HARDING: That’s all it took to open it up.

TOQUELAND: Sign the lease, do whatever you had to do there?

HARDING: The rent was $900 a month, and the furniture was all picked out of the garbage.

TOQUELAND: What do you mean “picked out of the garbage?”

HARDING: It was all trash picked. The banquettes from Patois came from David Page’s renovation of the 9 Jones space, which became Drovers. He was throwing those away; I took them. I got the chairs for Patois from Joe Bastianich who was getting new chairs at Becco. And Mario made me bring all of the chairs that I got at Becco and bring them to Po and then he took all the good ones and he said, “You can have the rest.” And I put them in my truck and I brought them to Patois. You know, Mario is a pretty big influence on a small guy in the kitchen doing everything, low cost, DIY kind of restaurant.

TOQUELAND: You mean at Po?

HARDING: Yeah, he was a big inspiration.

TOQUELAND: Was Smith Street, or something close to it, on the route of the purveyors you needed at that time?

HARDING: A lot of purveyors were happy to come to Brooklyn because there was no traffic. We never had any problem getting any food.

TOQUELAND: Did you do anything deliberately different here than you would have done in Manhattan?

HARDING: Cash only.

TOQUELAND: But what did that have to do with being here? That you could get away with it?

HARDING: Yeah, we could get away it. And we also didn’t have to give the credit card company three points. That and no reservations. We didn’t take reservations for the longest time. It was, like, come in and wait, put your name on the list. We were the only game in town. It was kind of cool.

We had a deck and it was 20 seats when we first opened. And pretty soon, on Wednesdays when you’re full, you’re looking at an hour and a half to turn a table. Where are they going to go? They’re not going to go to [current Smith Street bars] Angry Wade’s or the Zombie Hut. There was no Zombie Hut or Angry Wade’s. They’d have to go home. And then how do you get them back? So we built the deck and then we put a tent on the deck, and then people were waiting in the tent and it was freezing, so we bought a wood burning stove, vented it through the tent and just –

TOQUELAND: Just a wood stove like someone would have in their cabin?

HARDING: In their camp, yeah. And we would burn logs and people would drink wine and wait for the table and huddle together.

TOQUELAND: That’s the kind of thing that today –

HARDING: Wouldn’t fly.

TOQUELAND: Did you have any hesitation to do something like that here, or you just knew it’d be no harm, no foul?

HARDING: I’ve always, and I believe it to this day, although it sometimes bites me in the ass, that it’s usually better to ask forgiveness than permission. And nobody ever said anything. Nobody cared. Every backyard on the whole strip had people barbecuing and their pools and stuff and nobody ever said anything. It was a much kinder, gentler atmosphere back then. But you know, if a guy did it tomorrow: 311.

TOQUELAND: What was the reception like right off the bat? Did it take a while?

HARDING: It took about a month and then it just exploded, and then it was full every day. And, you know, we were up to, like, $22,000 a week with an overhead of less than five percent. I bought a house. We opened Uncle Pho. We just did very well. In the beginning, the first three years, we were closing down for two weeks in the summer so everyone would go on vacation at once. I always thought that was a very European way of doing business.

TOQUELAND: At that time, did you have any idea what was going to happen here, or what might happen here?

HARDING: No. I had no idea this street was going to turn into …

TOQUELAND: You were just a guy trying to open a successful restaurant?

HARDING: Yeah, pretty much. I was like, wow, I found my neighborhood. I found my thing. And every time a restaurant opened I was, like, “Oh, great, there’ll be more people coming into the neighborhood.” It wasn’t “Oh, that guy’s going to get a part of my pie.”

TOQUELAND: So you didn’t think of yourself as the Moe Greene of Brooklyn?

HARDING: No. I was happy that it was wide open.

TOQUELAND: Did you know Charles Kiley and Sharon Pachter before Charles came in that time, then opened the Grocery?

HARDING: I worked for Charlie. In between jobs, Charlie was the chef at the Knickerbocker. You remember that place?

TOQUELAND: On Ninth Street in Manhattan.

HARDING: Yeah. After 9 Jones closed, or after I left, I needed work and I saw Charlie. Charlie had worked for me at Nosmo King. In between jobs, we’d always stay friendly. He called me up and said, “Do you want to be the pastry chef at the Knickerbocker?” Sure. $600 a week, you know? So I went in there and I worked three months.

And then [Peter] Kaminsky got me in touch with Neil at Bouillabaisse. You remember Neil [Ganic] at Bouillabaisse? Bouillabaisse was probably the first somewhat Manhattan-ified restaurant in Brooklyn as far as I’m concerned. He was opening up Petite Crevette next to Heights Chateau, who needed a chef. I went there and I was working in a fish market making crabcakes and stuff but also doing dinners. And people were really digging the food.

And then Jimmy [Mamary] came into Petite Crevette to eat with his wife and he said, “My chef just quit, do you want to come be the chef at 131 Duane Street until I sell it?” And he said, “I’ll give you $1,500 a week.” And I said, “That sounds good. It was double the money I was making.” So I gave Neil notice, and I went over there. And I said, “I’ll do this, but once this place is sold, you’ve got to promise to come back to Brooklyn with me because I’m looking to do . ..” I told him about Jean Claude, and he had been there as well and he knew that it was a good idea.

TOQUELAND: Right.

HARDING: So I sort of proved my worth to him at 131 Duane. And then we came back to Brooklyn and we found this spot. And I borrowed $10,000 from my mother, Jimmy put in the rest of the money, and we made it all back in six months.

TOQUELAND: What about the tone of the restaurant? The people who came in?

HARDING: Hipsters.

TOQUELAND: Did you feel different? Like you were in a different place from where you’d worked before in Manhattan?

HARDING: It was all people that just happened to live in Brooklyn and were tired of taking the train or a cab into the city to find someplace good to eat. We were pretty much welcomed with open arms.

TOQUELAND: What other influences do you think made it possible to succeed here?

HARDING: I think that Spike Lee branded Brooklyn. I think that people that lived in Brooklyn at that time suddenly realized that they’re living in a place that has cachet, you know?

TOQUELAND: You think Spike Lee made it okay to be from Brooklyn?

HARDING: Yeah, I think he really did. When I think of Tribeca, I immediately think of Drew Nieporent. When I think of Union Square, I think of Danny Meyer. When I think of Brooklyn, I don’t know, I don’t think of me. I think of it like a neighborhood that has finally realized that it is a great place to live and not a place where you would go out to your car and find broken glass and your car stereo missing.

TOQUELAND: Or that you don’t have to have a complex that you’re not in Manhattan.

HARDING: Right.

TOQUELAND: When I moved back here three years ago, I was surprised at how empty some supposedly hot restaurants could be, even on a Saturday night. Then one night, I panned up and realized the obvious: There aren’t high-rises on every block; it’s mostly two- and three-story buildings. There’s just not as big a population to draw on.

HARDING: Correct.

TOQUELAND: The metrics are drastically different than they are in the city. Do you think restaurateurs jump in out here without realizing that?

HARDING: Yes, I think they do. I mean, the turnover is massive.

TOQUELAND: Even Smith Street still.

HARDING: I mean, when we vacated Patois three years ago [Editor’s Note: now 4 years.] . .. that store sat vacant for almost a year because they were looking for $5,000 a month. That’s what the going rent is for a spot on this street. Which is a lot of money to spend. And if you rent, you don’t even really have any rights to seat people in your backyard anymore. I mean, that’s a whole ‘nother fucking coffee table book. The whole public assembly and certificate of occupancy debacle of rear yards on commercial establishments. C of Os are for buildings, not for outdoor space. Any first-year law student that knows how to work 311 and the DOB can get any yard on this street shut down.

That’s a very interesting sort of conundrum that comes with revenue and commerce and entrepreneurship and neighbors.  The neighbors were all very happy that, when grandpa died and they wanted to sell his house, they could list it for a million two and say that it was steps away from trendy Smith Street. But then when they sold it to the commodities broker who wanted to get out of Manhattan and come to Brooklyn, he was incensed that there was someone two doors away having people eating in his backyard.

TOQUELAND: When these other restaurants started opening along here, was there any kind of, I don’t want to be clichéd, but camaraderie or relationships. Did you guys hook up after service, that kind of thing?

HARDING: When you’re in the business, it is a very lonely, somewhat solitary existence because you work so hard and you try to keep as much money as you can, which means you have to do as much of the work as you can. And there wasn’t really much time to hang out. There was no businessman’s association. I mean, the only somewhat integral person between us all was the lady from the South Brooklyn Local Development Corp. Her name is Betty. She’s the one who basically got all of the store owners to kick out their ground-floor tenants that were living in stores and make the street more commercially viable.

TOQUELAND: This was really a rampant thing, people living in stores?

HARDING: Yeah, there’s still people.

TOQUELAND: As a newcomer at the time did you ever encounter any tension with neighborhood veterans?

HARDING: I can’t think of anyone offhand. I mean, with the influx of the businesses, you know, you go to the hardware store, you’re not just buying a light-switch cover: You’re buying four wrenches, rope, chain, bolt screws. It’s like we built five restaurants on this street with Tony’s Hardware Store. You know what I mean? I think everyone has enjoyed the largesse that the restaurants bring.

TOQUELAND: Then you started to expand and do all these different concepts. Did that just start to happen organically or –

HARDING: Well, I like to build things and I like to create things. I’ve never been like an Andre Soltner kind of guy, going in every day and making rabbit terrine.

TOQUELAND: As things have evolved out here, do you feel like you’re part of something?

HARDING: What would something be?

TOQUELAND: Do you feel like a part of this thing that’s going on here?

HARDING: A community scene?

TOQUELAND: I don’t know what. I’m just asking. Do you ever feel a part of something larger, or do you just feel like you’re going about your business?

HARDING: This is the only place on the street that I have an interest in anymore. It’s the only one that I’m really interested in. It’s the only thing that I think is kind of cool.

TOQUELAND: Does it depress you?

HARDING: It’s not depressing. It’s a sign of the times. And it’s a sign that I have to try to figure out what the next thing is going to be, you know? And I still haven’t found that out. I need something else. I need something new.

- Andrew

David Waltuck

Hi, all,

I’ll be wrapping up and publishing quite a few backlogged posts over the next week or two as I’m just digging out from a few short-term deadlines, as well as some travel, including a trip to Chicago for the El Bulli dinner at Next, about which I’ll be filing a report in a few days.

For the moment, however, I want to briefly mention that David Waltuck and I will re-telling the Chanterelle story in dialogue and dishes at De Gustibus in New York City Wednesday night (April 18). I’ve just learned that there are still some seats available, and encourage Toqueland readers to snap them up here.

The class will be like most De Gustibus presentations in that David will be demonstrating a number of dishes that will also be served up to those in attendance, along with wine pairings. What will be unusual is that I’ll be on the stage with him, and we’ll be discussing quite a bit between the bites: We’ll put the dishes in the context of Chanterelle’s timeline, and talk about the ins and outs of collaboration (we penned the restaurant’s book together a few years back). And, as I’ve just begun working on my own tome about the chefs of the 1970s and 1980s, an era that David and his wife Karen helped define, we’ll also engage in some storytelling about those formative dining days in New York City.

Beyond all of that, this will be a rare opportunity for fans of Chanterelle to savor another taste of the restaurant (how often does that happen?) including David’s signature Seafood Sausage.  The evening will begin with a Chanterelle amuse and end the way meals at the restaurant did, with elegant little fruit gelees. The full menu is as follows:

Cold Beet Soup with Crème Fraîche and Caviar

Grilled Seafood Sausage with Beurre Blanc Sauce

Potato Risotto with Sautéed Foie Gras

Sautéed Turbot with Peas, Pearl Onions, and Pancetta

Roast Lamb Loin with Marjoram and Mini Moussaka

Chanterelle Fruit Gelees

I’ll be skipping lunch that day, and hope to see you there.

- Andrew

We’re delighted to announce the second edition of our fan contest, wherein we offer new followers a chance to win a suitably chef-related prize. This time around, one lucky Toquelander will win a copy of the beautiful Chanterelle cookbook, personalized by David Waltuck (and yours truly, who served as his coauthor).

This edition of the contest will run through June 30, 2012, at which point we’ll select a winning name at random. The winner will be contacted privately so you can tell us how you’d like the book inscribed and to where we should ship it. It’s that simple.

You can subscribe to us by email, follow us on Twitter, or like us on Facebook. (You can also follow our RSS feed, but we can’t track that, so it doesn’t count in the contest.) For each way you follow, you earn one more chance to win.

We hope this gives you an extra reason to keep up with Toqueland. In the meantime, we promise to keep the content coming and make you glad you chose to keep in touch.

- Andrew

[Editor's Note:  This piece was first published on April 9, 2010, on the original, 1.0 version of Toqueland. Thought I'd re-post it today for a few reasons: (1) The Jonathan Waxman interview referenced herein was the very first interview I conducted for what has become my just-announced book project, Chefs, Drugs, and Rock & Roll (although it didn't have a name or a shape at that time); (2) Food & Wine unveils its 2012 Best New Chefs class on Tuesday, with party to follow; and (3) if more than a dozen people read this during my first, halfhearted attempt to run my own site/blog, I'd be shocked (didn't realize what I was getting myself into that time). As the waiters say, "Enjoy."]

Here We Are Now: Entertain Us... Dancing Girls at the BNC Party (photo copyright by Sylvain Gaboury, FOOD & WINE Magazine)

APRIL 9, 2010; NEW YORK, NY – Food & Wine Magazine staged its 22nd annual Best New Chefs party Tuesday night at the Four Seasons restaurant in midtown Manhattan.  And I do mean staged:  Just before the recitation of the names (you can’t really call it an announcement as the news broke online earlier in the day), dancing girls decked out in hot pants, top hats, and feathered wings—getups worthy of a Bob Fosse fever dream—danced along the brink of the shallow fountain in the western dining room.  It was fabulously over the top – one of those moments that you sometimes see in movies about New York and think, “There aren’t really parties like that in New York.”  Only Tuesday night there was!

The event, as always, was one of the best food industry events of the year—almost comically packed with both top chefs and, owing to the magazine’s relationship with the show, Top Chefs (i.e., past cheftestants and winners from the Bravo TV production).

As I say, the BNC class of 2010 was announced earlier in the day Tuesday.  The inductees were:

Roy Choi, Kogi BBQ truck, Los Angeles, California
Matt Lightner, Castagna, Portland, Oregon
Clayton Miller, Trummer’s on Main, Clifton, Virginia
Missy Robbins,A Voce, New York, New York
Jonathon Sawyer, The Greenhouse Tavern, Cleveland, Ohio
Alex Seidel, Fruition, Denver, Colorado
Mike Sheerin, Blackbird, Chicago, Illinois
John Shields, Town House, Chilhowie, Virginia
Jason Stratton, Spinasse, Seattle, Washington
James Syhabout, Commis, Oakland, California

Christina Grdovic, Dana Cowin, and Gail Simmons, flanked by the BNC Class of 2010 (photo copyright by Sylvain Gaboury, FOOD & WINE Magazine)

The whole scene–peppered as it was with bloggers (many armed with digital still and video cameras) and tv stars (Sarah Jessica Parker plus food-world tv celebs such as Tom Colicchio and Kelly Choi)–got me to thinking about how much things have changed in toque-land over the past few decades, and made me want to take a moment here to reflect on Best New Chefs’ place in the relatively young history of the modern American restaurant chef as we understand that term today.  Because amidst all the glam and glitter Tuesday night, one might easily forget how very significant the awards were when they were first rolled out a little more than two decades ago.

I recently interviewed Jonathan Waxman of New York City’s Barbuto restaurant.  Jonathan started out at Chez Panisse back in the 1970s, then rose to prominence at Michael’s in Los Angeles, and then JAMS in New York City.  We were discussing the formative days of modern American restaurant food in general, and the California school in particular.  When I asked who he was following outside of his immediate circle (Alice Waters, Jeremiah Tower, Wolfgang Puck) back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, he floored me with his answer:  Almost nobody.

This had nothing to do with Jonathan’s curiosity about what was going on, which was considerable–he and Michael’s owner Michael McCarty would hang out after service in those days and talk about food until the wee hours–but rather with the fact that he had no idea there was much of anything going on Out There.  Oh, sure, he’d met his good buddy Larry Forgione, but only once or twice at that point, and he’d heard of Paul Prudhomme (one of our first celebrity chefs, really).  But, as he reminded me, in the late 1970s, there were no food sections in the papers (even the New York Times relegated its weekly restaurant review to a lonely page at the back of the Friday “Living” section until the mid 1990s), no coverage of chefs in major food magazines, and of course no such thing as Food Network (or cable television for that matter) and no food blogs (or the Internet for that matter).  In other words, there was virtually no way for chefs to learn about each other except by word of mouth, the way people once heard tell of gunslingers and bank robbers.

When McCarty tasked Jonathan with organizing a fundraising event for the American Institute of Wine and Food (AIWF) in 1983, the chef had to sleuth around to find enough chefs to fill the bill, and that was how he first discovered now legendary figures such as Bradley Ogden and Jimmy Schmidt.  When they all got together and prepared the sort of collaborative, multi-course benefit dinner that happens every night somewhere in America these days, it was galvanizing, one of the first such comings-together of chefs from around the country.  And when they all got to talking and cooking in tandem, Jonathan realized that as he and his colleagues had been forging a new style of food in California, others were doing the same thing in their cities and regions.  “We were all having the same acid flashback at the same time,” he said.

If this is what it was like for chefs back then, imagine what it was like for food enthusiasts.  Only the most inside and most well traveled diners had a hope of having a clue as to the depth of what was transpiring across this republic of ours, and nobody really knew where it was all headed.

This was the backdrop against which Food & Wine Magazine introduced its Best New Chefs awards in 1988.  That’s two years before the James Beard Foundation began handing out prizes to chefs, and just one year after the first, prototypical modern Beard House dinner, cooked by Wolfgang Puck in 1987.  (The House now hosts about 250 such dinners a year, welcoming chefs from all over the country.)

In other words, the Food & Wine Best New Chefs awards were at the forefront of recognizing chefs in a way that had the power to connect rising figures in the industry and tip a growing and passionate fan base on to where to eat next.  The inaugural crop of BNC honorees was auspicious, to say the least, counting among its ranks a couple of crazy kids named Daniel Boulud and Thomas Keller.  It also recognized a few other chefs who would go on to do pretty well for themselves, including Rick Bayless of Chicago, Gordon Hamersley of Boston, and Joanne Killeen of Providence, Rhode Island.

Now, here’s an interesting footnote:  The following eligible whisks were not inducted in 1988:  Alfred Portale and Jean-Georges Vongerichten in New York City; Charlie Trotter in Chicago; and Judy Rodgers in San Francisco.  In fact none of them would ever make the list, although all were already making an impact on the industry.

That list of BNC also-rans points out the delicate balancing act the editors of Food & Wine have to pull off every year. There are surely—now, as there were then—deserving chefs in certain of our biggest cities who get bypassed in the name of geographic diversity when the BNC list is selected. But it’s all in the interest of the greater good: namely that chefs outside of major media markets get the kind of national exposure that, even in the Internet age, might othewise elude them.

“Two from Virginia?” exclaimed somebody standing behind me when the BNC roll call was read Tuesday night.

To which my answer is: “Damn stright.”  Those chefs have more to gain than a Manhattan chef who already turns up on national monring shows and Nightline‘s Platelist periodically.  In truth, for guys like Rocco Di Spirito, Scott Conant, David Chang, and Paul Liebrandt, to name just four Gotham-based BNC honorees of the past ten years or so, the award was more of a confirmation than a game changer.  But for chefs from markets outside our top media hubs, becoming a BNC can change your life overnight.  Case in point: the very day after he was named in 1998, Laurent Tourondel, then working in Las Vegas, began hearing from would-be investors, a game of telephone that eventually led to his return to NYC at Cello restaurant.

We diners have more to gain from the BNC representing all four corners (and the center) of the US, too.  I already knew where to eat in New York City, but now I know where to go in Clifton and Chilhowie, or the next time I fly into Oakland instead of SFO, or if some piece of business takes me to Cleveland or Portland.  That’s why I care about Best New Chefs.  That, and the party.  Gotta be honest.  Love the party.

- Andrew

Alright, enough with all the ghostwriter talk: A few days ago, after some interest that came straight out of the blue, I closed a deal to write my next nonfiction book: a dream project I’ve been working on sporadically for a few years but which I can now announce will be published by one of the top impresarios in the business. I’m still pinching myself.

The book, Chefs, Drugs, and Rock & Roll, will be an oral history of the coming of age of American chefs, American restaurants, and modern American restaurant cuisine in the 1970s and 1980s. It will be published by Dan Halpern’s Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins. Ecco is also home to Mario Batali and April Bloomfield, Zak Pelaccio and Andrew Carmellini, not to mention Tony Bourdain, both as an author and as overlord of his own imprint, Tony Bourdain Books. Ecco also boasts a  stable of non-culinary literary luminaries that’s simply mind-blowing. Where better to publish this book than this house? Did I mention that I was still pinching myself?

Of course, other books have touched on this subject and time period, but Chefs, Drugs, and Rock & Roll will be its own animal. It will focus only on the 1970s and 1980s, will be told (almost exclusively) in the voices of the chefs, restaurateurs, critics, and other principal characters, and it has a thesis all its own: that the same societal forces that produced punk rock and independent film, pop art and the sexual revolution, also drew a band of game changers into the kitchen, where they broke the rules and redefined what we eat and how we eat it.

In other words, the focus will be more on the people than on the food, although the food is obviously central to the story. Fortunately, one of the many remarkable things about that time was how very young the players were. With a few exceptions, the major characters are still with us today, and are still vital forces in the industry.

A word about the title: Lest anybody be confused, it’s meant to evoke a time and a mood, not to promise a litany of the favorite recreational substances of famous toques; my recent interview with Jeremiah Tower for this site, which also ended up doubling as an interview for the book, should give a sense of how seriously I’ll be approaching the subject. It also, I hope, conveys the incredible energy, spontaneity, purity, and utter lack of materialism that defined the chefs of that era, none of whom got into cooking with an eye toward book deals, television shows, product lines, or commercial pitchman gigs. All of those things were, to put it mildly, beyond imagining to a young man or woman sticking a toe in the water of professional cookery thirty or forty years ago. The chefs of the 1970s and 1980s got into the business for one reason and one reason only: to cook. Imagine that.

I’ve been obsessed with this era for some time, and so in love with this project that I was afraid to let it out the door, so I’ve been conducting interviews and starting to shape the material, on spec (i.e., without a publishing deal) for a few years now. Somewhere along the way, my friend Karen Rinaldi, who recently left Rodale and has resurfaced as a senior vice president/executive editor at HarperCollins, suggested the oral history route, which was a revelation for me. Around the time of her Harper announcement last week, Karen mentioned the project to Dan. The rest, as they say, is history.

Regarding my new publisher: I’ve known Dan Halpern for years, though not very well. We’ve done a funny little dance during that time: He’s been interested in projects I’ve been involved with, and we’ve discussed some of them in his office, on the phone, and in bars, but for one reason or another we never wound up in cahoots. This book, however, was right up his alley, and we both knew it. Once the dialogue began, the rest of it came together pretty quickly. The last few days have been a blast: as soon as the deal was done, we began talking and emailing a few times a day. He’s excited, and so am I.

As I continue to research and write the book, I’ll share bits of it here on Toqueland, both a taste of what interviewees have to say about that era, and about current events in the chef trade. (If you aren’t already following me in one way or another, this might be a good time to sign up.) A believer that interviews should be conducted, whenever possible, in person, I’ll be traveling to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, New Orleans, and other pivotal cities. This will also give me a chance to expand Toqueland’s reach, filing stories and dispatches from all of those destinations. It should be a grand adventure, for me and I hope for you.

And away we go…

- Andrew

Last week, when I found myself featured in the New York Times story on cookbook ghostwriting, I never could have imagined what was about to transpire: outrage from Rachel Ray and Gwyneth Paltrow, a confusing follow-up post, and then–this afternoon–mere moments after I posted a Huffington Post opinion piece about the politics of ghostwriting, a sudden request for me to rush into Manhattan to tape an interview for a Today Show segment set to run around 8:10am tomorrow (Wednesday) morning.

They kept running around behind the segment producer while he interviewed me. Damn kids!

The invitation was so last minute that I had to suddenly cancel my son’s weekly tennis lesson to accommodate, then insist that the show’s booker let me bring the family along to make it up to them. She couldn’t have been nicer about it, sending a car to bring us in from Brooklyn, then letting the kids romp around the studio before, during, and after my camera time. To be honest, I loved every minute of it–nothing will keep you from taking things too seriously like having your son try to crack you up over the shoulder of a Today Show producer.

I have no idea who else is being interviewed for the story, or how many more legs this thing has, but it’s been an interesting week for anybody who engages in the craft of collaboration. Will be keen to see how long this particular beach ball keeps getting batted back up into the air.

- Andrew

David Burke (photo by Anthony Garito, courtesy David Burke Group)

The always entertaining David Burke rose to prominence at New York City’s River Cafe before moving on to Park Avenue Cafe, and then to the Smith & Wollensky Restaurant Group. These days, he’s at the helm of David Burke Group (visit their site, for a limited time they’re giving away snacks to Facebook fans, as well as a chance to sit down with Le Burke himself).

Via his namesake corporate entity, Burke lords over restaurants in New York City, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Chicago.  He’s also the restlessly inventive mind behind Flavor-Transfer Spice Sheets and Flavorsprays, to name just two of his unconventional concoctions. Given that buildup, the ingredients he chose below might seem anticlimactic, but his explanations are vintage Burke. We always enjoy catching up with David: he provided a hilarious story for Don’t Try This at Home, and can free-associate with the best of them. Accordingly, we didn’t ask too many questions during this interview; instead, we just let him go.

This is turning into quite a collection of Toqueland Tens–previous installments feature Harold Dieterle, Emily Luchetti, Michelle Bernstein, and Sean Baker. And, now, ten from David Burke:

1. BUTTER. “It’s delicious, it’s natural, it’s versatile. I was trained in France and butter was a key ingredient in sauces, pastries, mousses. I don’t use it as much as I used to because we don’t make as many sauces that are that enriched, but butter on bread, or butter on a good piece of toast is heaven.”

2. EGGS. “Eggs are the thing that, if I had to take one thing to an island, that’s what I would take. The versatility, the comfort of an egg. Egg is my go to. I know it’s not junk food, but it’s my guilty pleasure. When I’m not feeling good, I get the urge for eggs. I liked poached eggs, but I like them all ways: I like them whipped, like a whipped scramble. I could do an omelet. I like over easy, Jersey-diner style. At home I just microwave them: I throw them in a coffee cup, scramble them up, throw a pat of butter in, I microwave them and eat them right out of the cup. It’s a quick method for me; there’s no clean up. I have coffee and a coffee cup of eggs.”

3. CHICKEN STOCK. “Rich, rich chicken stock. [Editor’s note: Burke means a dark stock, made with roasted chicken bones.] For the addition of flavor to other meats, the moisture-added property, the brining that you can do with it, the fact that you can make vinaigrettes that are emulsified with the jelly from the stock. It’s a natural flavor that is just yummy, the closest thing to natural MSG.”

4. MAPLE SYRUP. “Maple is like every time I cross the bridge over to South Beach: When I eat it, I’m, like, ‘Why don’t I come here more often?’ That’s what maple syrup does. It just hits me in the nose; it hits me right in the nasal. There’s a comfort factor there: butter and maple. There’s an association that brings you back to pajamas.It takes me back to childhood, but it’s also just delicious. It doesn’t have to be pancakes and waffles: pork chops, foie gras, duck breast, vinaigrettes, vegetable applications, ravioli. Things like that.”

5. LEMON. “For the acid, the citrus, the zest more importantly than the juice. A good squirt of lemon in brown butter on a fish, or the zest of it on a tuna tartare. Candied lemon peel. Lemon oil. A lot of good stuff. And just the effervescence of it all.” Would Burke ever put lemon front and center? “Maybe in a dessert, yes. You know, lemon meringue type of things, lemon curds. Lemon segments are a little bit too harsh, especially with wine, you know? There used to be lemon garnishes like lemon supremes, but in general I’d rather eat the skin.”

6. TOMATO. “Fresh, red tomato is one of the best things you could ever eat. I eat it raw in salads, cooked, juiced. I love pizza. There’s all kinds of layers of flavors in tomatoes: just look at the range from a tomato to an uncooked tomato sauce down to a caramelized tomato sauce. Very few people don’t like tomato sauce.”

7. VANILLA. “Vanilla is another one of those things that I like to use like maple a little bit: with potatoes, in a butter sauce, in a vinaigrette, in a marinade. It’s not necessarily just for dessert. For dessert, vanilla ice cream will always be my favorite.” Does Burke, like many chefs, frown on the use of vanilla extract? “I like the bean, of course, but the extract can be pretty good as well. I think for cake batter the extract works a little bit better; I think it permeates and integrates a little faster. I think in a sauce or an ice cream you need the bean. Depends on the way you look at it as a professional chef and what you’re doing with time; you don’t have to do everything from scratch. It takes too long. But vanilla bean: We dry the sticks and use them for fruit kabobs. There’s a lot of cool things you can do with vanilla beans. If you haven’t seen a vanilla bean on a tree, it’s amazing: They’re green; they look like big fava beans, and then they get dried out.”

8. LEEKS. “I think they’re underused. They’re great for soup, great grilled, great to fry, and just a great flavor. Leeks are fantastic.” So why aren’t they more popular? “I think it’s the inconvenience. You know, you’ve got to prepare them. You’ve got to wash them. They’re full of dirt. When you bring dirt into a kitchen there’s a possibility of it getting into something else. That’s why people buy prepared spinach. They don’t want to risk having to clean it and making sure the dirt’s out of it. That could ruin a whole night.”

9. SALT AND PEPPER. “Not just as a seasoning:  salt as in preserving,  and as an architectural piece: We build walls out of bricks of salt. We build our bars out of salt. In the restaurant up at Foxwoods we build a lot of salt walls and we light it up. It’s beautiful.” [Editor's note: There are some pictures on the site for David Burke Prime at Foxwoods.] “And then pepper: Black pepper, white pepper, green peppercorn even though it’s a different family. And using that not just as a hint but crushed, using that as [the primary flavor in] marinades, using that fresh on the table.”

10. CHILE PEPPERS. “I’m not a chile expert by any means, but I’m getting more and more into smoked chiles and the heat of  chiles. When I write menus and I balance out a menu, I use heat as one of those [criteria]: You’ve got to have enough fish, enough meat. Do I have enough poultry? Do we have enough salad? Do we have enough female-friendly dishes? Do we have enough healthy? Do we have a pasta dish? Do we have enough dishes with heat? Chiles are taking the place of what salt and pepper were when I was trained; they add another level of flavor to a dish. It’s a finishing note usually, the heat, and that’s something that’s fantastic. It kind of lingers with you.”

- Andrew