Coastal Cooking with Chef Michael Hutchings

Canapés - Those Little Bites

Gruyére Cheese Soufflé on a Spoon

Sometimes I feel like the canapé king. We often do large parties that are entirely composed of canapés. As a result, I am always adding to the repertoire. Here is my latest for the fall catering season.

Tastefully yours®

Chef Michael Hutchings

Canapé Parties

 

Abalone Baked in the Style of Escargot

 Blue Cheese Sables with Walnuts

 Chicken and Peanut Cakes with Thai Chili Sauce

 Citrus Cured Salmon in Radish Slices with Avocado and Tobiko Caviar

 Crab Salad Crustade with Fried Capers

 Duck Breast with Orange Confit on Brioche

 Enoki Bundles Rolled in Prosciutto with Lime

 Golden Shrimp Balls – Sweet and Sour Sauce

 Lobster Sausage Corndogs

 Macaroni and Cheese with Truffle Oil and Black Chanterelles

 New Zealand Mussels with Green Curry Glaze

 NY Steak with Arugula Pesto and Parmesan

 Parmesan Crisp with Goat Cheese Mousse

 Potato Latkes with Red Onion and Pepper Confit

 Seared Filet of Beef on Potato Coins with Horseradish

 Sesame Seared Scallops on Wasabi Mayonnaise

 Shiitake Mushroom Fritter with Aioli

 Squid Stir Fried with Chili

Soufflé on a Spoon

Sushi Rolls with Topping Assortment – Spicy Tuna, Crab Salad, Shrimp,

 Thick Slice Maple Glazed Bacon Skewer – BBQ Sauce

 Various Crusted Salmon Bites: Sesame, BBQ Spice, Curry

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Panzanella - an Italian rustic Salad Revisited

Modern Panznella Salad

It seems I can never leave well enough alone. I like to tinker with recipes and update them to a more modern flavor and taste presentation. The panzanella is typically a rustic Italian salad with day old crusty bread, tomatoes, olive, peppers, cucumbers and some sort of vinaigrette dressing. I first ran into this salad when I was interviewing for a corporate chef position at a restaurant called Bandera in Phoenix.They had their own version that included fresh corn and a rotisserie chicken. It was delicious by not true to the original.

With my version, I wrapped lettuce into bundles using a cucumber strip and set that on a colorful array of red pepper julienne, heirloom cherry tomatoes, hot house cucumber triangles, kalmata olives, tiny brioche croutons, a parmesan "tuile" and a drizzle of reduced balsamic vinegar and basil oil. It was a busy salad and plating for 75 guests took about 15 minutes.

Tastefully yours®

Chef Michael Hutchings

Plating for 75 Guests

Guaje at Farmers Market

Guaje - Leucaena leucocephala Mimosoideae

I found this interesting seed pod at the local farmers market. My cook, Hugo, tell me that he eats them raw like a snack. They are something like raw pumpkin seeds. My research turned up a few cooked preparation using the seeds in sauces. Mind you, it takes a lot of shelling to net enough seeds to make a sauce.

Excerpts from Wikipedia:

This tree can live about 50 years and grows wild in warm between 800 and 1700 meters. It is originally from Mexico, is found mostly in southern states such as Guerrero, Morelos, Oaxaca and Chiapas, but has been introduced from Central America to northern South America. The name derives from the Nahuatl Huaxyacac Oaxaca, which means "in the nose or the tips of gourds."

Guajes or huajes are the flat, green pods of an acacia tree. The pods are sometimes light green or deep red in color -- both taste the same. Guaje seeds are about the size of a small lima bean and are eaten raw with guacamole, sometimes cooked and made into a sauce. They can also be made into fritters. The ground seeds are used to impart a slightly garlicky flavor to a mole called guaxmole (huaxmole). The dried seeds may be toasted and salted and eaten as a snack referred to as "cacalas". Purchase whole long pods fresh or dried at Mexican specialty markets.

Chef Michael

Recipe from Gourmet Sleuth

For the Guaje Sauce aka Guasmole (huaxmole):

1 cup canned tomatoes

2-4 sun-dried tomatoes (not packed in oil)

2 dry ancho-pasilla chillies

4-6 dry red chilies

4 garlic cloves

½ cup guaje seeds, lightly toasted

Preparation

   1. Sauce: Soak the sun-dried tomatoes and the ancho-pasilla chilies in just enough hot water to immerse them; allow to reconstitute for about 5 minutes; then combine all the sauce ingredients in a blender or food processor and grind to a fine paste
   2. Use about one-third (or just enough) of the sauce to marinate the chicken chunks for about ½ to 1 hour
   3. Heat oil in a pan sauté the tomato paste till dark red and aromatic, add the chicken pieces and sauté to brown the outsides, then add the sauce and broth and cover and cook for about 30 minutes over medium-low heat, checking to make sure there is enough liquid; cook the sauce to desired thickness
   4. Stir in the brown sugar and adjust salt to taste

   5. Garnish with cilantro and chopped spring onions

Serve with Chicken or Pork

Devilishly Good

Here is a delicious devil's food cake with chocolate mousse filing. It was for an 85th birthday celebration. Pastry chef Christine Dahl prepared the cake for my catering client. Chef Michael

Anatomy of a Dinner

From time to time we are asked to prepare a no-holds-barred dinner. Last night we executed an eight course dinner for eight guests at an elegant hilltop home in Santa Barbara. The menu was decidedly French Classic with a few Santa Barbara touches.

Any menu is ingredient driven. Shopping is the first and most important task closely followed by getting the mise en place ready; i.e., preparations are ready up to the point of final cooking. With that being done, the final cooking and plating is relatively easy.

Caviar set the tone for an upscale evening. We did the usual suspects for garnishing the caviar, chopped hardboiled eggs, brioche, capers, chopped onions (rinsed), creme fraiche, potato latkes, chives. The ahi was a change from my choice of local cultured abalone. The unusual side was a medley of seaweed and mugwart (salicornia, glasswart, sea beans, sea asparagus). The plant grows wild in the costal marshes around Santa Barbara. The squab featured a tarragon vinaigrette, squash demi glace and a thick slice of seared Hudson Valley foie gras. The ravioli was filled with a lobster mousse and diced lobster, floated on a reduced lobster jus. The lemon sorbet, served in a frozen lemon shell, was dosed at the table with my own limoncello (see earlier blog on that subject). The sea bass, poached and set on a pearl pasta and vegetable pearl ragout, was glazed with a Dijon mustard dressing mixed with fines herbs (chives, chervil, parsley). The veal loin was roasted, sauced with a truffled demi glace and garnished with local filet beans ·thin haricot vert), "turned carrots" and potatoes fondant. Dessert was prepared by my pastry chef wife, Christine Dahl and was composed of an assortment on mini desserts.

Wish you could have been there!

Tastefully yours®,

Chef Michael Hutchings

Kitchen Copy of Menu

Caviar Service

Seared Ahi with Sea Vegetables

Squab and Foie Gras on Micro Greens

Lobster Ravioli in a Lobster Broth

Lemon Sorbet with Chef's Limoncello

Seabass on Pearl Pasta, Herb Vinaigrette

Roasted Veal Loin with Truffled Demi Glace

Chef's Dessert Plate

French Wedding Cake - Croquembouche

Croquembouche by Chef Christine Dahl

Chef Christine Dahl is a master of the pastry craft. Here is a photograph of a small croquembouche that she prepared for a wedding celebration. The design features the classic elements of choux pastries filled with pastry cream and the caramel to hold it all together. The decorative floral elements are made from fondant icing.

Tastefully yours®, 

Chef Michael Hutchings

From Wikiedia:

A croquembouche or croquenbouche is a French dessert, a kind of pièce montée often served at weddings, baptisms, and first communions. It is a high cone of profiteroles (choux filled with pastry cream) bound with caramel, and usually decorated with threads of caramel, sugared almonds, chocolate, flowers, or ribbons.

The name comes from the French words 'Croque en bouche' meaning 'crunch in the mouth'.

The choux buns can also be made with savory fillings.

Mini Tart Tatin

These little gems are individual cara

Mini Tart Tatin

This is my all time favorite dessert, caramelized apple tart. Serve it with a little creme fraiche and it is perfection on a plate. For this presentation, I caramelize apples in sugar and butter until they are lightly golden and translucent. I then place them in muffin tins, spoon over some of the caramel, top with a puff pastry lid and then bake until the pastry is light and golden. This method works well for plated desserts in banquet situations.

Tastefully yours®, 

Chef Michael Hutchings

What a deal

Ruby's on Montecito street has a lunch special of three soft tacos. It us is great value at $6.50. Tasty salsa bar and chips on the side.

Harlequin Pear Tart

Harlequin Pear Tart by Chef Christine Dahl

Here is another terrific fall dessert creation from pastry chef Christine Dahl, Christine Dahl Pastries.

This is her version of the French classic Poire Bourdaloue. Chef Christine's version features pears poached in pinot noir and chardonnay. The pears are set into a pate sucrée tart shell filled with fragipane cream, a sort of almond pastry cream. The tart is then baked until golden and the fragipane is set. A light glaze from the poaching syrup is then brushed over the pear. Marry this with a late harvest wine for an ethereal experience.

Tastefully yours®,

Chef Michael Hutchings

Fall Wedding Cake

Wedding Cake by Christine Dahl

Photo by Melissa Musgrove

Pastry chef Christine Dahl makes great wedding and special occasion cakes. Above is a cake designed for the fall season that features a chiffon cake with a passion fruit curd. The cake is draped with fondant icing and decorated with leaf patterns. I invite you to visit her web page to see other delightful designs.

The wedding cake is truly the showpiece of the reception. Cakes have become more creative, and also follow trends in design and fashion like never before. These are some of the hottest trends for wedding cakes in 2009.

Clean lines with smooth-as-glass finish of fondant icing is still all the rage at most weddings, and one stand-out design feature is more popular than a busy cake with a pattern all over it. Cake layering add dimension to the designs. The three stacked round layers is still the most common, but you are also seeing a lot more of cakes that are square, octagonal, hexagonal, or a combination of round and shaped layers. Offset layers, which are stacked slightly off-kilter are also a hot look for wedding cakes right now.

The most minimalist cakes consist of three to five round layers covered in smooth white fondant. The only decoration is a colored ribbon around the base of each layer and perhaps a monogrammed medallion on the side of the center layer. These cakes are kept very simple, with no cake topper. Toppers, even a classic Lladro, seem out of place with the clean lines of modern cakes.

Modern design is also something that is being seen in wedding cakes these days. Round circles layered over fondant is one cool effect. Simple sugar flowers are another big trend. They are often scattered over the cake in varying density, such as many flowers clustered near the top of the cake, gradually thinning out to just a few blossoms scattered at the base of the cake. Chef Christine did a cake with this design feature that used several hundred sugar flowers.

A vine of sugar flowers draped down one side of the cake is another classic revival. The flowers can be large or small, subtle or colorful or pearlescent, but they are usually done in only one branch, leaving the rest of the cake plain. This also saves in the cost.  Fresh flowers, especially roses and orchids, continue to be popular and very effective design elements. The flowers are best placed by the cake designer to insure continuity. Often the florals or cake design is integrated into the theme of the wedding. The cake can have icing pearls to mirror the brides string of pearls.

With a wedding cake, you can have whatever you want. Look at the trends, consult with your cake designer and make in meaningful. Ultimately, you can have the cake of your dreams and eat it too!

Tastefully yours®,

Chef Michael Hutchings

Culinary Rouge's Gallery

Chef Norbert Schultz, Fred Brander, Norbert Furnee

The Taste of the Town was on last Sunday at the Riviera Park in Santa Barbara. The event raises funds for the Arthritis Association. Some 20 wineries and 25 restaurants offer samples of their respective crafts for the public to sample. It is often the case that fellow professionals only see each other at events such as this.

This above fellows are players in the Santa Barbara food scene.

Chef Norbert was a pioneer in modern food style as his several restaurant, namely Norbert's, Oysters, Brigitte's as well as helping finance Downey's. Chef Norbert now hangs his toque at the private Santa Barbara City Club.

Fred Brander of Brander Wines was an early vintner in the Santa Ynez Valley and produces notable wines that are perpetual award winners. He is generous with local events such as this. His winery is a must visit just off of highway 154 in the Los Olivos area.

Lastly, Norbert Furnee is pictured. He began foodservice at my restaurant, Michael's Waterside, back in the mid 1980s. He went on to have his own coffee cafe in Pasedena, help found Sage and Onion in Santa Barbara and then Decco in Ventura. He frequently can be seen service my food at private events around Santa Barbara. He is an avid wine collector and art connoisseur.

Tastefully yours®,

Chef Michael Hutchings

What a deal

Ruby's on Montecito street has a lunch special of three soft tacos. It us is great value at $6.50. Tasty salsa bar and chips on the side.

An Evening with Julia Child May 17, 1990

Menu From "An Evening with Julia Child"

After Julia Child's book, The Way to Cook, came out in 1989, I held a reception at my restaurant, Michael's Waterside. It was in association with The American Institute of Wine and Food, AIWF.
Chef James Sly, owner of Sly's in Carpinteria, collaborated with me on the dinner. The menu was right out of the book and geared toward a spring dinner.
The accompanying video was filed in a temporary studio next to my restaurant. It was great fun with the film crew and Julia next door.
Tastefully yours®,

Chef Michael Hutchings

Amazon review of The Way to Cook

With The Way to Cook, Julia Child creates a second culinary classic. Her first, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, introduced a generation of those used to preparing simple fare to what was then considered gourmet food, demystified classic techniques, and raised our culinary consciousness. In The Way to Cook, she also demystifies cooking techniques and does some consciousness-raising. This time, though, she speaks to everyone with little or no experience in the kitchen, which is most people these days. Always in tune with the moment, and ever the gracious realist, Child (although calling her Julia seems reasonable since she treats us with such open informality) explains in The Way to Cook how to boil an egg and stuff it, as well as how to make a perfect omelet and an elegant soufflé.
To help out readers who lack the most basic knowledge, she organizes the book by techniques rather than by ingredients. Soups are first, a relatively un-intimidating choice to build confidence through delicious results such as true French Onion Soup and a contemporary Black Bean Gazpacho. Next come breads, updated to use a food processor to cut the kneading time. The fish chapter covers broiling a salmon steak and creating a sophisticated Crown Mousse of Trout. Chapters on poultry, meats, vegetables, and desserts are equally ample and wide-ranging.

When The Way to Cook was published in 1989, it accompanied a television series. A related set of videotapes, the first to teach cooking comprehensively, was offered simultaneously. However, more than 600 color photos in this book make it fully complete on its own.

The Way to Cook is a good reference volume, a useful gift, and a handsome way to follow Julia's career as she transformed from a French classicist to the ever-evolving, always clear and reliable teacher we have come to adore. --Dana Jacobi --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Three Day Wonder

This is a fun piece of personal memorabilia. In 1978 I went to Paris to try and secure a summer job to learn more about French cooking. My wife and 9 moth old child were on this junket as well. I had a contact there whose name escapes me at the moment. She managed to get me a position at a hotel in Monte Carlo. Blindly, I accepted. The property was the Lowe's Monte Carlo Hotel located at the ocean's edge below the Hotel de Paris. I was delighted as my plans were to work in France for the summer and start at Le Gavroche in London when my work papers came through.

I made my way down to Monte Carlo by way of the Chateaux d'Artigny in Montebazon (great lobster stew in red wine), the Troisgros Restaurant in Roanne (ate lunch and came back for dinner) and ended up in Nice prior to reporting to work at the hotel. 

After reporting to work, registering with the police and getting the cheapest lodging possible just over the border, I reported to work. What a shock that was. I was put to work in a coffee shop cooking American style food. That lasted three days. I asked the director of the hotel if there was anything more akin to French cooking available but there was not. I resigned the position and spent a few more days in this very expensive principality taking in the sites.

Tastefully yours®, 

Chef Michael Hutchings

Sable aux Fraise

In the 1980s I placed an ad in a local magazine. It was my first time doing a professional food shot. We spent the better part of a day to get a single photograph for this ad. With the advent of personal computers and digital photography, it now seems like child's play.

This is a dessert that Chef Albert Roux created for his M.O.F. competition in France. Is has been on the menu at Le Gavroche forever. I have done a number of variations over the years such a using other fruits, making hazelnut sables, doing yin-yang chocolate and vanilla sable with buttercream, making ice cream sandwiches. It is a great pastry dough with lots of possibilities.

From Wikipedia:

“Un des Meilleurs Ouvriers de France” is a craftsmen competition, held every three years.

Created in 1924 and given to the best craftsmen competing in each field, it covers everything from chocolate making to specific building trades, including Window making and Cabinetry. Each competitor enters a masterpiece which demonstrates his craft, which is then evaluated against extremely stringent standards. Within each category anyone making the standard receives the award, so in any given year, there may be several people receiving the award for a given category or there may be none.

Merely to enter the competition requires significant commitment from the craftsman; the master piece being submitted will certainly require weeks and very likely months of work to create a showpiece that demonstrates technical excellence combined with artistic flair. However, the award carries such prestige that it is worth almost any effort. The winner will then proudly carry the title 'Un des Meilleurs Ouvriers de France' (literally translated 'One of the Best Workers of France', but a more meaningful translation would be 'One of the Best Craftsmen of France') for the rest of his or her life.

Tastefully yours®

Chef Michael

Restaurant Orsi, Lyon

In 1978, I was in Lyon, France, waiting for my work papers to enter England. I had made a few contacts while still in America in the hopes of getting a position at a restaurant in France. Pierre Orsi was one of those contacts that I had made through a restauranteur, Andreé Lyon de Lyon. He had a place in Encino named Mon Genier, My Attic. The owner, André Lyon de Lyon, had been very kind in trying to place me in a restaurant in France. He had introduced me to Paul Bocuse and Roger Vergé and other French chefs. Pierre Orsi was one of those contacts. André knew Pierre because Pierre was once the Food and Beverage manager at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel.

Chef Pierre did not have a position in his kitchen open at the time. I went by the restaurant in Lyon to make a courtesy call. I dinned there and ended up spending a few days observing in the kitchen. The restaurant had one Michelin star at the time. I did learn one interesting method for cooking fish. Chef Pierre did a simple sole that was cooked in white wine, fish stock and shallots. He used the microwave to "steam" the fish. I used that method to great effect when I had my place in Santa Barbara.

Here are menus from that time, 1978, and one of their current menus. Pardon the coffee stains. The kitchen crew had coffee, day old bread and jam for breakfast every day.

Chef Michael

L'Addition

Current Menu

Crab Cakes

While I was in Charlotte, North Carolina, I was the executive chef at a private dining room and private club. Crab cakes are a staple food in that part of the world. In fact, I would buy some 50 pounds of crab meat a week. We used only fresh, jumbo lump crab meat from the Chesapeake Bay area.

The Chesapeake Bay is a fairly degraded ecosystem but somehow still yields a crop of blue crabs. We were able to get the jumbo lump size of fresh crabs year round. Fresh jumbo lump crab meat is sweet and tasty giant nuggets of blue crab. Coming from the hind leg, these are the largest chunks of meat that you can get from the blue crab. Fresh jumbo lump crab meat can be used for crab cocktail or the ultimate crab cake. Retail price can exceed $40 per pound plus shipping.

My daughter, Beverly, spent the summer with us and must have remembered the crab cakes from out time in Charlotte. She asked for a cooking lesson on how to make then tasty treats. I demonstrated a lower cost version made with back-fin meat. This is less costly but has good flavor.

Here is a cut down version of the 50 pound recipe.

Tastefully yours®,

Chef Michael Hutchings

Breading the Crab cakes


Sauteing in Butter


Ready to Eat