Happy In The Kitchen

Thought for the Day: “Strong feelings do not necessarily make a strong character. The strength of a man is to be measured by the power of the feelings he subdues not by the power of those which subdue him.” — Jesse

One of the best day’s of my life… Happy in the Kitchen

Chef d’Cuisine Christian Reber and I were having lunch at the chef’s table in the main kitchen. The long, wide white table that sits in the middle of CMC-Certified Master Chef Mr. Raimund Hofmeister trophy room, were all of his gold medals are, and photos of all the kings, presidents and world leaders he has served at the  YouTube - Westin Hotel Century Plaza Hotel History‏…and around the world. My favorite picture of all of the photos is a group photo of all the Westin Chef’s in the middle of that photo is Certified Master Chef Siegburt Wendler and Corporate Chef for Westin Flagship Hotel Arizona Biltmore Phoenix Az. The rest of them ranging from President Ronald Reagan to Britain’s Prince Philip, Queen Beatrix and Prince Klaus of the Netherlands, King Hussein of Jordan, Indira Ghandi of India, and the Premiers of Japan and China, just to name a few.

We begin our day there with one of the lunch’s that the apprentice’s make every day for Raimund and all the chefs, for part of there apprenticeship. We hold the day’s chef’s meeting there. Until this point, we have been lifting huge pans and tossing ingredients into cauldrons, all in preparation for dinnertime, when gallons of stocks and piles of vegetables will have been cooked, strained, chopped, and mixed into scores of small  vessels — awaiting a final recombination when an order comes in. But that is hours in the future. For now, lots of copping, steaming, and running back and forth with spoonfuls of this and small platefuls of that for CMC-Certified Master Chef Mr. Raimund Hofmeister to taste and pass judgment.

Certified Master Chef CMC Raimund Hofmeister.

Raimund takes a spoonful, closes his eyes, swallows, pauses, and thinks. If he takes anther mouthful, the recipe passes the muster. If he cleans the plate, which he often does, it’s a home run. If not, he’ll often get up, walk over to the stove, grab a pan, and try to fix it. Sometime he succeeds. Sometimes he files it away under “New Ideas to Come Bake To.”

In this way, every day is a day for new ideas. Raimund is always asking “what if?” questions about food and always trying to answer them in the kitchen. Sometimes a final recipe takes years of trips to the stove. Then, like a portion of a tune that sticks in a composer’s head until it finally resolves itself into a finished melody, there finally come a day when the Chesapeake Oyster Consommé or Napa Valley Squab with Lentils, Cabbage, Rye Turnover issues forth from the kitchen as a daily special.

Like a playwright waiting for a review, Raimund looks at the plates as they come into the chef table and then looks at all the plates the chefs are eating if they were gobbled up and the plates were wiped clean, it’s a winner. If just a little bit has been eaten and the rest politely rearranged so as not to insult the apprentice’s, Raimund is as crestfallen as a racing fan watching his horse fade in the final stretch. His horse, however, wins a lot more than loses…

And so we ate, most memorably, a double thick cut rib eye with a herbed brown crust, crisped, to my great surprise, in chicken fat. And we talked and we drank a bottle—make that two bottles—of Cabernet Sauvignon a noble California red grape. Rich in tannis, it produces a deep, full-bodied wine with intense aroma and flavor. A robust wine, perfect with red meat or wild game. Best when aged for several months…

Raimund, from time to time, would give you that look with his eyes, that would give you goose bumps in the back of our neck, and then talk in his German accent, calling to mind a holy man sharing a revelation. This one quickly notes, is his way of channeling his inner food gods.

I have had the good fortune to have worked with a number of superstar chefs. Only CMC-Certified Master Chef Mr. Raimund Hofmeister can give you those goose bumps in the back of our neck.

Working with Chefs like these is one of the great pleasures in life for me. We all learn from each other, we eat magnificently, and we’ve invariably had a wonderfully good times.

Christian Reber and I just had picked up the produce and meats and all what else we need for the kitchen of the La Chaumier. We start are 30 minute long walk up the hallway to the 30-story tower on the hotel’s south side. Just hoping that President Ronald Reagan does not fly in with Marine One yet, because if that happens the elevator will be shut down by the Secret Service and we will not be on time to open the restaurant for hours, the elevator is the only way up to the restaurant.

It’s friday night at the Century Plaza, about 5:30pm in the La Chaumiere restaurant, located in the tower which has received wide critical acclaim and is one of the premier restaurants in Los Angeles. Chef d’Cuisine Christian Reber and I were just talk about how the night was going to go and then we saw the maitre d’ walk into the kitchen we know right then and there something was up because he usually does not come into the kitchen that often.

Then I saw he was walking straight to me and with a serious look on his face then with a firm voice he said Al Pacino and two other men just walked into the La Chaumier dinning room and he was giving use heads up.

All of a sudden my heart dropped to the floor and with a blink of a eye my face had the biggest smile of it’s life on it, with a turn of my head goose bumps ran all over my body like I never had before in my life. Even at this very moment as I write this I’m getting those same goose bumps. Wow!

I was very worried, trying to think up something special to cook for him. The maitre d’ walk into the kitchen one more time and he said the dinner will be delayed for about one hour. We then served him a glass of Bordeaux, but he is too busy signing papers for his next movie scent of a woman. With all that said he was too busy walking around and taking pictures of  him and fans in the dinning room.

And I could understand his feelings. There were 20 different starters alone on the menu. At last Al Pacino, sat down to eat his dinner; he ate with gusto, trying not to destroy the intricate patterns of the food served on the plates. The waiter was serving his tea when I was getting ready to go home. It was after three hours when I went downstairs, where the duty vehicle was waiting to take me home.

The drivers were always hungry, so I came back upstairs to get a couple of sandwiches for them. When I entered the kitchen, Al Pacino was there and greeted me with: “Are you the chef?” in heavily accented voice. He shook my hand, gave me a hug and said: “Excellent, Jesse! Simply excellent!” You are a truly great Chef Jesse. I was so elated when I arrived home; I said to my girlfriend: “Can you imagine – Al Pacino my favorite actor he shook my hand.” — Jesse

Italian Cooking

Thought for the Day: “He who asks a question is a fool for a minute; he who does not remains a fool forever.” — Jesse

Recipes rely on simple, yet precise cooking techniques and exceptional ingredients. Eating is a serious matter in Italy. Cooking and food are among the finest expressions of Italian culture, vividly portraying the country’s history and traditions. Like all other arts, cooking is based on measures and proportions, on the balance and fusion of different elements. It blends ancient traditions with contemporary innovation and evolves constantly, even in the twenty- first century, as a result of its position at the center of Italian family life. At home with family or friends, for a special occasion, in a fancy restaurant or in a humble trattoria, or even when preparing a simple everyday meal, for Italians, cooking is synonymous with good food, good wine and good company.

Whether rustic or sophisticated, Italian cooking is traditionally based on excellent, fresh, seasonal ingredients. This is one of the main reasons why Italian food varies so much from region to region and even from village to village. In the north, where cattle and dairy farming are prevalent, we find a cuisine based on butter, meat  and Parmigiano, while travelling towards the south we encounter olive oil (extra virgin, of course), ripe tomatoes, gorgeous eggplants and fresh fish. Italian cooking is based on Italy’s rural traditions and depends very much on the vast variety of the country’s agricultural produce. Yet even if nowadays you can find almost any kind of food at any time of the year, Italians still follow the rhythm of the seasons and will wait until spring to enjoy asparagus, or the summer for a fresh Insalata caprese. But as soon as the temperature falls in the autumn, everyone is ready for a warming plate of Braised Beef with Barolo. In Italian families, special occasions are still celebrated at home with a five-course meal (antipasto, first course, main course with vegetables, cheese and dessert). But, when eating everyday, a one-meal dish such as lasagne, pizza or ribollita will satisfy even the most demanding of appetites. The country’s infinite variety of dishes allows Italians to create an excellent and healthy meal whether they choose to spend their entire day cooking, putting together a stunning Brodetto Marchigiano (a fish soup made using several varieties of fish and shellfish), or if, instead, they go home and make a simple but authentic dish of Spaghetti aglio olio e peperoncino, with its four ingredients never missing from any Italian kitchen.

Authentic Italian dishes are very often based on just a few, humble ingredients. What makes them so tasty and delicious is that, over the centuries, Italians have discovered exactly how to achieve the perfect mix of flavors. It sometimes seems that Italians learn to cook before they learn to talk and their skills are handed down from one generation to the next. The perfection of Italian cooking has been achieved through centuries of testing in family kitchens, with millions of dishes served to the most discerning of critics. The Silver Spoon is the result of a labor of love, with only the very best recipes from Italian families and cooks within its covers. This is the one cookbook every Italian passes on to their children, teaching them the skills of their parents and grandparents, and allowing them to understand what Italian cooking is really about. It shows them how to prepare a healthy and delicious meal by, firstly, choosing the right ingredients and then by following a variety of recipes that may be either simple or complicated, but always explained in the clearest and simplest of ways. For these reasons The Silver Spoon is the most successful cookbook in Italy, the book that has its place in every family kitchen, the one that many brides have received as a wedding gift.”

These Italian cooking recipes will help you learn how to make a classic Italian Basic Tomato Sauce, the perfect Chicken Saltimbocca, fresh Pizza 4 Ways,Spaghetti Aglio e Olioor even Mario Batali’s Lasagne alla Bolognese al Forn. — Jesse

Mexican Cooking

Thought for the Day: “Remember that wherever your heart is there you will find your treasure.”

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The history of Mexican… food is a long and diverse one. It is believed that authentic Mexican food might have been derived from the Mayan Indians. They were traditionally nomadic hunters and gatherers. Corn tortillas with bean paste were a common food item; but they also ate wild game, tropic fruits, and fish. In the mid 1300′s, The Aztec Empire was thriving, and though the Mayan food staples were still in use, chili peppers, honey, salt and chocolate found its way into their cooking. Some of the wild game, such as turkey and duck, had now become domesticated.

In 1521 Spain invaded Mexico. Spanish foods had the most influence on the Mexican cuisine. They introduced new livestock, such as sheep, pigs and cows. They brought with them dairy products, and garlic as well as many different herbs, wheat and spices. It was at this time that the Mexican people saw the assimilation of many other cuisines including Caribbean, South American, French, West African and Portuguese. Because of this Mexican foods today are diverse, yet dishes to vary from region to region.

The early natives of Mexico did not have ovens, instead they heated food over and open fire, using cast iron skillets and ceramic ware. Another method was steaming. They would suspend meat wrapped in cactus or banana leaves, over boiling water in a deep pit. Frying was also a popular method.

They used a metate y mano, which is a large tool made of lava rock or stone that they would use as a grinding stone or the molcaiete, which was smaller, to grind and smash ingredients. The molcaiete, or mortar and pestle, is a small bowl shaped container that can be made of stone, pottery, hard wood or marble, and the pestle is baseball bat shaped.

Salsa was sold in the Aztec market places. Salsa, the Spanish word for sauce, is uncooked and sometimes pureed until chunky, smooth, or chopped. Large red tomatoes, tomatillo, chipotle {a staple in the Aztec diet} and the avocado are found in the modern salsa, and are the same core ingredients used in the past. We can thank the Aztecs for Chocolate. It was through them that the Spaniards brought the product to Europe in 1657.

The term enchilada is first referenced in the US in 1885. Yet the concept of tortillas being used as a wrap can be clearly linked to the Aztecs. The word enchilada means “in chile.”

The tomatillo is a fruit that dates back to at least 800 BC, the word meaning round and plump. The Aztecs domesticated it, and when the Europeans came to Mexico, they documented the local foods and often confused the names by shortening the words.  Though never popular with Europeans, it thrived in Italy. Today a relative of the fruit is common in the US. Tomatillo, a member of the night shade family, provides tart flavor in many different green sauces.

The Portuguese aided the spread of the chili pepper plants. Thought the earliest mention was in 1542 when a German herbalist, Leonhart Fuchs, described and illustrated several types of peppers. Though for people of Europe, the history of the pepper began in the late 15th century, when Colombus brought the peppers home. There is archaeological evidence that peppers were in use since 5000 BC. Pre-Columbus is how far back the Tamale can be traced. The Friar Bernardino de Sahagun documented that the Spaniards were served tamales by the Aztecs in the 1550′s.

Other foods that we associate with Mexican cuisine, are not traditionally so. The Flan was discovered in Medieval Europe. And ceviche is an Inca discovery, eating their catch of the day raw with only a few seasonings. It wasn’t until the late 15th century when Native American chefs of Ecuador and Peru began to add the citrus fruits with the South American fish, and creating the dish that we know today. — Jesse