Putting some Chang Shui in my cooking and other strange Kombu-nations

I recently borrowed this book from work and have been enjoying it completely.  First of all it is a very fun read. I especially like the part where he talks about how he came up with the name of his restaurant “It is no accident that Momofuku sounds like motherfucker” he states.

Don’t Ha ve a Gao, it’s just the inspiration for the March Deep Plate entry

Terrible puns aside,  I have been wanting to make these little shrimp Dim Sum treasures for over 6 years now.  Chinese New Year issuing the year of the Tiger seems an appropriate time.  Ha Gao are made from a wheat starch dough and can sometimes be cut with tapioca flour. One of my must stops [...]

Summary of 2009

2009 was actually an amazing year for me, even if it was not for the rest of the United States and the rest of the world.  It was a year of extreme growth and I entered uncharted territory on numerous occasions.  I had a lot of successes and faced many challenges.  It was also a [...]

Natural Foie Gras

Watch this presentation on natural foie gras by Dan Barber.  Dan just recently made this same presentation in Denver for the IACP conference in April.  Natural foie gras, what a concept.  It kind of takes the wind out of the activists’ sails. What is worse?  Naturally raised foie gras or industrially raised chicken?

Final Day of the IACP conference

Up at 6am and back to the Sheraton.  My body is wrecked and the cumulative exhaustion is taking its toll.  This is the last day and fortunately there should be very little that could go wrong.  Everyone has their food and the volunteers are all lined up.  The events taking place at JWU are in [...]

Day 3: The storm takes a new direction across town, Wild and Rare

There was only one scheduled class on Friday and that was Extreme Cooking with Andrew Dwyer from Australia.  I had taken care of every major detail the day before so I was fairly confident it would run smoothly.  He had a group of Johnson & Wales students to assist him and some of them were [...]

IACP Conference: Day 2 the storm drops to category 3

They provided me a room in the hotel.  I go to sleep at around 11pm after the round of drinks with Rick Moonen, Barry Estabrook and Adam Sobel.  The room is tiny, has a huge flat screen but no remote so I just go to bed.  I have a hard time sleeping because H-Vac doesn’t [...]

Day 1 of the IACP conference: Andoni Aduriz

After the David Arnold and Nils Noren presentation, I grabbed a bite to eat (the food at the Sheraton was dismal and not worthy of such a foodie organization).  Patricia was still getting the rest of the food for later presentations and I told her to meet me at Johnson & Wales University to catch [...]

Day 1 of the IACP Conference: Nils Noren and David Arnold

I drive to Denver early to get to the Sheraton by 8 am.  I forgot to mention that the night before I received a call from Terry our C.O.O.  saying that Ian Kleinman was coming by the school by 7:45 to pick up some liquid nitrogen to take to a TV shoot that Terry had [...]

Just a quick note

I have too much to write about in order to give my readers an inside view of the IACP Conference n Denver.  Once it is over and the dust settles I will attempt to do a comprehensive review of the events I witnessed and the people I met and worked with. Generally it has been [...]