Category — Chef Interviews

courtesy of Stephanie Izard

You may know Stephanie Izard as the first — and still the only — woman ever to win Top Chef. On the show, she wowed the judges with bold, inventive flavors like lamb medallions topped with pistachio, blackberry and mushrooms.

But she’s taken that experience and pushed it even further, mixing and matching the biggest, baddest flavors she can find from cultures across the world. The award winning Fergus Henderson-meets-Zak Pelaccio cuisine she turns out at her Chicago hot spot Girl and the Goat features items like yuzu harissa, fish sauce vinaigrette and escargot with tamarind and miso.

“We always want people to come in take a bite and go ‘Holy crap that’s flavorful,’” Izard says. Please check out her story in this piece I did for AP.

Jamie Oliver criss-crossed the US discovering the heart of "American" food

Once famous for being “naked,” chef Jamie Oliver most recently crusaded to reform American and European eating habits. But in his newest cookbook, “Jamie’s America,” the British chef extols the rich diversity of America and its food, concluding that the American dream resides in dishes from Chinese dan dan noodles to Jewish latkes, Egyptian flatbread, and Mexican chicken mole.

Hyphenated Chef: What are the defining characteristics of American food?

Jamie Oliver: It’s the most incredible melting pot of cultures. There are very defined areas, but there are always two or three elements that collide, like you’ve got slave trade meets Anglo-French in Louisiana, Dutch and German meet cattle ranchers in Wyoming.

It’s so new and fresh and vibrant and every day there’s new waves of immigrants coming in. I’m a great believer that people are American before they even get here. Just the fact that they’re trying to do it makes them American. I totally believe in the American dream.

HC: What have you identified as core American values and how are these reflected in the food?

JO: I love Tupperware parties. It’s quite Italian, really, where people all contribute something to a party. In a lot of countries that doesn’t happen.

And you have the holidays over here, Thanksgiving, and there’s a real conscious effort to make it inclusive.  Whether you’re Jewish, black, white, Muslim, Hindu, every religion can get involved in the holidays. That’s quite generous really. [Read more →]

Me, minus my Chinese New Year 2010 "good luck" oyster

Resolutions already shot? Still haven’t mastered the guitar? And…oh my goodness…. you’ve actually gained weight?

Here comes a second chance.

Chinese New Year begins Feb. 3  and you can start all over. Deliciously.

Most of you reading probably know that the Chinese assign auspicious qualities to many different foods. At your New Year feast, be sure to include pot stickers, which are shaped like gold ingots and therefore represent prosperity (ditto for kumquats and oranges, which have a “golden” hue.) Noodles signify long life, oysters represent good luck, and items that remain whole — fish, chicken, duck — usher in wholeness, oneness (fish is the best choice here because the Chinese word for fish is similar to the word for “abundance.” So double whammy.)

And just in case one of your Chinese New Year resolutions is to begin exploring this great cuisine, I’ve polled the experts and assembled a few basic principles for you.

Balance, texture and presentation are the building blocks of Chinese cuisine. Balance means hitting notes of sweet, sour, salty, and yes, umami (the word is Japanese, but the concept is universal.) That means you want to pair sweet hoisin with something salty like soy sauce.

For texture, you want to feature pliant tofu with crisp cabbage. ”Good Chinese food always has smooth and crunchy,” East-West master Ming Tsai told me. [Read more →]