This week was a lesson for me in letting the ingredients do all the work.
Last weekend, I spent a lot of time with a chef I very much admire cooking for a friend’s party in Upstate NY.
I was #nochill and followed him around like a puppy dog, watching his every move in the kitchen.
Food is my deepest curiosity, and it’s a rare opportunity to get to learn from someone in-person (I currently teach myself through cookbooks, the internet, and just trying it over and over and over again until it tastes good). I wanted to crawl into his brain - how did he think of that spice combo? What happens molecularly when you brine a bird for 24 hours? And how the hell are you making food for 100 in a home kitchen?
In the restaurant world, we call this experience a “stage.” Truly where one works with a chef (for free) just for the joy of the education. Traditionally, it comes with being their bitch for the day - doing things like cutting 1000 onions until your tears run dry or pulling thyme leaves for 5 hours- but in this experience, I was happy to be a part of the process of making what I knew was to be a beautiful meal *and* get the opportunity to watch and ask all of my annoying questions.
I was YES CHEFFING my heart out. Until he literally had to tell me “can you please just call me Bryan?”
The day before the weekend festivities were to begin, I asked him how he developed the menu for such a large scale event (I wasn’t exaggerating earlier when I said 100 people!) I asked this because I’m still fairly new to cooking professionally, and I take SO much time to diligently plan and research a menu before presenting it to a client.
And, let me tell you, at that point, he actually didn’t event have a menu planned yet. My Virgo rising was on the verge of a panic attack.
But he said calmly - “we’re lucky up here - these ingredients will do 90% of the work for us.”
And it fucking worked.
The food was so insanely fresh and vibrant and beautiful. He really didn’t *do* much to each dish - he let the local produce shine (well that, and a sprinkle of 20 years expertise and technique).
I went straight from this event up to Maine. IMO - Maine is food mecca. Everything is just so damn fresh and good and unpretentious here. It’s one of my favorite places to eat and cook.
So I went into a shop yesterday to pick up some groceries and was talking to the owner, remarking on how amazing his produce selection was.
And he said “we don’t do ‘farm-to-table’ as a concept here - it’s just what we do.”
So here you go - in one week, a NYC hot chef and a local Maine shopkeeper gave me an invaluable lesson: let the ingredients do the work for you.
This may seem obvious, but in my mind, cooking like a pro means constantly layering more and more ingredients, building more and more flavor, doing the *most* to impress.
David Chang, when referring to Bay Area Chefs, once notoriously said:
They don't manipulate food, they just put figs on a plate.
This, of course, pissed a lot of people off - and he meant to do that. But I honestly always related to what he meant, which is this pride that New Yorkers have in making the food WORK for us. We live in an area where produce comes in season for quick spurts of time, and we just can’t rely on fresh avocados or figs or tomatoes or whatever all year around to shine for us. Additionally, if you have ever been in a NYC restaurant before and really looked up close at the kitchen - you’ll see how truly insane it all is. I’m talking teeny tiny kitchen pumping out a whole intricate tasting menu.
But in many areas on the West Coast, they are gifted with fresh produce all the time. And when you have produce that good, of course you really can just put it on a plate and let it do the hard work.
So there is this sadistic pride and having to work SO much harder to make the dish work for us (such a classic New Yorker hustle mentality, which I, as an East Coast rat, have always taken pride in as well).
But after talking to Chef Bryan, a real NYC chef, my mentality on this subject shifted.
The reminder here is that if you’re working with amazing fresh ingredients, it can do the work for you. And that’s OKAY. Figs on a plate included. So I’m inspired to stay true to that. It’s always worth it to find the local and in-season produce. And keep it simple. Find the other ingredients that just enhance it to make it taste like the best version of itself.
Which leads us to this cherry salad.
I had this cherry salad during my trip to Israel this summer, created by the most amazing restaurant I ate at in Tel Aviv - Habasta.
You can’t imagine how much freaking food me and 30 other food professionals ate during this trip. But THIS salad was the talk of our group. We all talked about it the whole trip, we swapped ideas on how it was made, we all went home to make it and sent pictures of the finished dish to our Whataspp thread.
This cherry salad - that got us all googoo gaga is just….
Cherries, cilantro, garlic, jalapeno and sea salt.
That is IT!!!
And it sounds so weird and perhaps not delicious at all - but I’m telling you - it’s the best. The secret? Just use these bomb ass cherries that are in-season right now.
So here is your invitation to remember to look locally and let those ingredients guide you. Sometimes simple can shock and awe you.
Oh, and I made this salad for the Chef. And he said, “Good Salad, Tess.”
Yes, Chef!!!
Habasta Cherry Salad
Serves 2
Ingredients
1 pint cherries, Pitted and de-stemmed
1 bunch cilantro, roughly chopped (keep whole leaves)
1 clove garlic, minced
½-1 jalapeño, deseeded and thinly sliced (depends how spicy you like it)
Extra virgin olive oil (use the good stuff!)
Flaky sea salt
Do it!
Pit and de-stem your cherries. If you have a pitter, great for you! If you don’t (like me), just smash the cherry with the flat side of a knife and pull out the seed. Warning : don’t wear white which I had the audacity to do - there will be cherry juice squirting everywhere))
Mix together and chill until ready to serve.
That’s it.
Love you mucho,
Tessa