Think Like a Chef

468 Pages·2000·20.23 MB·English

by  Tom Colicchio

Copyright © 2000 by Tom Colicchio
Photographs copyright © 2000 by Bill Bettencourt
Foreword copyright © 2000 by Danny Meyer All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage
and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Published by Clarkson Potter/Publishers, New York, New York
Member of the Crown Publishing Group.
Random House, Inc. New York, Toronto, London, Sydney, Auckland www.randomhouse.com
CLARKSON N. POTTER is a trademark and Potter and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Colicchio, Tom.
Think like a chef / Tom Colicchio with Cathy Young, Lori Silverbush and Sean Fri; photographs by Bill Bettencourt.—
1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Cookery. I. Young, Cathy. II. Silverbush, Lori. III. Title.
TX651.C64 2000
641.5—dc21 00-022983
eISBN: 978-0-77043389-5
v3.1
To the memory of my father, Thomas,
and
for my mother, Beverly
contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Foreword by Danny Meyer
Preface
Introduction
techniques
ROASTING
BRAISING
BLANCHING
STOCK-MAKING
SAUCE-MAKING
studies
ROASTED TOMATOES
MUSHROOMS
BRAISED ARTICHOKES
trilogies
ASPARAGUS, RAMPS, AND MORELS
LOBSTER, PEAS, AND PASTA
DUCK, ROOT VEGETABLES, AND APPLES
component cooking
SPRING VEGETABLES
SUMMER VEGETABLES
FALL VEGETABLES
a few favorites
Resources
Acknowledgments
Index
foreword by danny meyer
I first encountered Tom Colicchio’s food in 1991, not at his
restaurant, Mondrian, but at Share Our Strength’s Taste of the
Nation—the New York restaurant community’s annual charity
event to fight hunger. Thirty-six of the city’s very best chefs
had volunteered to prepare seven hundred tasting portions
apiece of their signature dish for a discriminating crowd of
foodies. As the event’s organizer that year, I learned a lot about
the three-dozen chef participants. It’s a challenging, hectic
night for a chef and the style with which they each approached
the evening spoke volumes about them not just as cooks, but
also as professionals and human beings. Many were nervous or
disorganized, some chose to prepare very simple dishes they
knew would be crowd pleasers, and a handful seemed to view
the event as a monumental pain in the neck. Then there were
the chefs like Tom—who wholeheartedly embraced the anti-
hunger mission, and who calmly viewed the event as an
opportunity to display his culinary prowess to a group of
appreciative gourmets.
Taste of the Nation was a sell-out that evening, keeping me too busy
to sample food at many of the chefs’ tasting tables. But sensing that I’d
be well rewarded, I did make a beeline for Tom Colicchio’s table. There I
saw a smiling, confident chef plating and serving something that looked
odd, yet compelling. Into spiny sea urchin shells he was spooning a
fondue of sea urchin, crabmeat, and pureed potatoes, and then
sprinkling the rim of each tasting plate with an aromatic curry powder.
A few of the less-adventurous guests moved politely along to the next
table when they saw what it was. Many others, however, clamored for
more. I was salivating. Tom spotted me toward the back of the line and
slipped me an urchin when no one was looking.
I can remember the magic perfection of that dish to this day.
Just as it is with winemakers and the wine they produce, you can
gauge a lot about the personality of a chef by the style of his food—and
vice versa. Watching Tom work that night, and tasting just that one dish,
I learned a tremendous amount about him as a chef. Tom is a unique
man with a refreshingly personal style of cooking. He cooks like who he
is. Tom’s food is intelligent and clean; any ingredient on the plate
belongs there—period. His dishes have both a tasteful elegance and an
un-fussy and uncontrived appearance. His flavor combinations are highly
seasonal, of-the-moment ideas that are more instinctive and personal
than premeditated and overly intellectualized. He is generous in cooking
for your pleasure, not just for his sense of ego. His food is provocative,
but it provokes you to think, “Oh yeah, that makes sense.” A more recent
dish of Tom’s reminded me of my first taste of that sea urchin dish: Who
else could get you to eat Braised Beef Cheeks with Poached Foie Gras
and Marrow? You may have never imagined that combination, but
knowing Tom, you are confident that he will pull it off, and so you order
it and are profoundly happy that you did.
Nearly a decade has passed since I first tasted Tom’s food, and were it
not for this book, I’d still be wondering how it was conceived. Tom has
never been one to talk about why he cooks what he does, and until now
the best (and only) way to get inside his chef’s mind has been to sit
down and eat his food. In Think Like a Chef, Tom has opened the door to
his culinary process and explained—in straight terms—how his very
personal style is actually based on a simple logic that can be employed
successfully by anyone who simply loves great food.
Danny Meyer
New York City
preface
I never intended to write a cookbook. I’ve had numerous
requests over the years, but I never wanted to, mostly because
for me recipes have never been the point. Frankly, I learned to
cook in order to get away from recipes. I couldn’t fathom how
to capture on the page what inspires me about cooking—the
immediacy, the creative process, the integrity of good food. I
was often asked to teach classes, and a similar challenge arose
there: I couldn’t get interested in the mere demonstration of an
appetizer, entrée, and dessert, and I was convinced that my
students wanted more than that, anyway, based on the
questions they asked. Questions like, “Where do you get your
ideas?” and “How do you know what goes together?” Instead I
hit on the idea of showing how a basic ingredient—roast
tomatoes, say, or braised artichokes—can start the chain of
creative thought in motion. The class was a hit, and I’ve been
asked to repeat it time and again. Slowly, it got me thinking
how to channel the idea—how a chef thinks about food—into a
book. The result is in your hand. But in order to fully grasp the
concepts I lay out in this book, it might be helpful to
understand how I got here in the first place.
My first job, when I was ten, was at the open-air food market in the
Italian neighborhood of Elizabeth, New Jersey, where my Uncle George
sold vegetables. This was in the days before greenmarkets came into
vogue, and we were selling pretty mundane stuff: potatoes and
cauliflower, I think. I watched Italian immigrants of my grandparents’
generation hovering over each purchase, touching the food, smelling it,
picking the perfect chicken to be killed and plucked out back. Each
choice was of monumental importance, and it was here that I first