Coastal Cooking with Chef Michael Hutchings

Thanksgiving Dinner

 

Dish-Up Team

This Thanksgiving we volunteered to help prepare a traditional dinner for close to 200 members of the less fortunate in our community. We worked with Wade Volk who is with Showers of Blessings who provide a portable showers service for the homeless community. The Unitarian Society of Santa Barbara provided the venue and dozens of volunteers to set up and serve food.

Producing the dinner reminded me of my banquet chef days in a hotel. My pastry-chef wife Christine Dahl and I provided most of the sides and sauces for the meal. We prepared 75 lbs. yams, 16 pans of stuffing, 8 gallons of gravy, 12 pans of green beans with homemade mushroom soup. 150 gingerbread 'turkey" cookies,  and 12 pans of apple cobbler.

It was a great group effort by all involved. My produce supplier The Berry Man donated all of the produce we needed and D'Angelo Breads donated bread for the stuffing.  The Organic Soup Kitchen provided the mashed potatoes, Ethnic Bread in Goleta supplied slices of bread. See the link to a local news story from KEYT news.

 

Chefs Michael Hutchings and Christine Dahl

 

Yams Ready To Bake

 

Traditional Gravy

 

Fresh Cranberry Sauce

 

Apple Cobbler in the Works

 

A Rice by Any Other Name is Not Risotto

Here is my favorite Risotto recipe. It is pretty simple. Be sure and get arborio or carnaroli rice, real Italian parmesan ( parmeggiano reggiano), quality saffron and so forth.

It's great on its own or as a foil with light meats or fowl such as veal scallopini, chicken breast picatta or pork tenderloins. Use the kitchen trick and cook the rice 3/4 the way done, leaving it very al dente. Pour it onto a buttered flat tray and cool. Just before serving, ad more stock and finish the cooking. By the way, leave out the cheese until the rice has cooked to your liking.

Veni Vidi Vici or Veni Vidi Ego Cocta

Ceasar De re Coquinaria 

Veni Vidi Ego Cocta - I Came I saw I Cooked

At a recent event for the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History were asked to prepare a dish from the classic Roman-era cookbook by Apicius. The title of the book is:

APICII • LIBRI • X

QVI DICVNTVR DE OBSONIIS

ET CONDIMENTIS SLUE ARTE

COQVINARIA QVA EXTANT

Keep in mind that the recipes in this book have ingredients that might be impossible to find as well as imprecise measurements and instructions. I avoided anything with a wild goat, African game animals, peacock, swans, and other exotica. After pouring through a number of the recipes I settled on a pork recipe. It appeared to be a darned good sweet and sour pork stew with dried fruits. I mostly followed the recipes with a few adjustments to proportions and thickened the broth with a little cornstarch slurry. The results were good and the crowds loved it. 

 

From Wikipedia

Apicius is a collection of Roman cookery recipes, usually thought to have been compiled in the 1st century AD and written in a language that is in many ways closer to Vulgar than to Classical Latin; later recipes using Vulgar Latin (such as ficatum, bullire) were added to earlier recipes using Classical Latin (such as iecur, fervere).

The name "Apicius" had long been associated with excessively refined love of food, from the habits of an early bearer of the name, Marcus Gavius Apicius, a Roman gourmet and lover of refined luxury, who lived sometime in the 1st century AD during the reign of Tiberius. He is sometimes erroneously asserted to be the author of the book that is pseudepigraphically attributed to him.

Apicius is a text to be used in the kitchen. In the earliest printed editions, it was usually called De re coquinaria (On the Subject of Cooking), and attributed to an otherwise unknown Caelius Apicius, an invention based on the fact that one of the two manuscripts is headed with the words "API CAE"^[1] or rather because there are a few recipes attributed to Apicius in the text: Patinam Apicianam sic facies (IV, 14) Ofellas Apicianas (VII, 2). It is also known as De re culinaria.

 

Apicius, De re culinaria (Lyon: Sebastianus Gryphium, 1541)

 

De opsoniis et condimentis (Amsterdam: J. Waesbergios), 1709. Frontispiece of the second edition of Martin Lister's privately printed version of Apicius

 

When Given Lots of Lemons Make Lemon Curd

Chef Christine Dahl "Curding"

Recently my friend Chef James Sly dropped off 50 pounds of lemons at our kitchen. It was a much-appreciated gift. My pastry chef, wife Christine Dahl makes a terrific lemon curd that she uses to fill cakes and fruit tarts. After a couple hours of zesting and juicing, we have the lemon component done and in the freezer awaiting transformation into curd.

I first learned to make lemon curd in 1977 when I was sous chef to James at a place called La Serre, the Greenhouse. The restaurant featured a lattice and plant decor the give it an indoor garden effect. It was the haunt for entertainment personalities working in the Burbank studios and environs. Pictured below is the table favored by Natalie Wood and it was known as Natalie's Nook.

Dining at the Paris Ritz

We used the curd at La Serre to fill a rolled cake called Roulade. It was simply a pliable sponge cake that was filled with lemon curd and rolled into a log, covered with powdered sugar and sliced for plating. After dusting the cake with powdered sugar, it was branded in a criss-cross pattern with a red-hot iron rod. The recipe below is the one Chef James used and I imagine he picked that up during his stint in France at the Ritz Hotel.

 History of the Ritz Hotel, from their web page.

It was back in the late 1800s that the Swiss hotelier, Cesar Ritz, purchased the former palace style mansion on the Place Vendome, which had originally been designed by Jules Hardouin Mansart, the royal architect for King Louis XIV and construction was started in 1705.

Having worked at The Savoy in London alongside the incredible French Chef, Auguste Escoffier, the hotel became an incredible success for wealthy clientele, yet Cesar Ritz had a vision to open the most luxurious hotel in the world fit for a prince, with his chosen destination being Paris.

So when the Ritz Hotel opened its doors in 1898 every room had its own bathroom, which was totally unheard of at that time, and decorated with top of the range fabrics, tapestries, gilding, etc, it was like an 18th-century gem attracting high society from the word go, (see this link for more).

 

Chef James Sly 1977 at La Serre

 

Natalie's Nook

 

The Moons of Jupiter

Up close it looks like an other-world encounter. The pitting mirrors the impact craters on some distant moon. The reality is much more delicious. This is the dough for a terrific and easy French style bread that my chef-friend James Sly developed. The key steps are getting great bread flour and allowing plenty of time for the fermentation to develop the flavors from the flour. I am happy to share the recipe. It's out of this world.

Chef Michael Hutchings

 

 

 

Master at Work

 

Pastry chef Christine Dahl of Christine Dahl Pastries is a master of her craft. Specializing in Wedding cakes, she produces some 150 unique designs every year. Here is a masterpiece she has done for a wedding this weekend. The pipping is done with buttercream on an overlay of fondant icing. The art of the art is that it is all done freehand without any pattern or template. The cake is a chiffon base with lemon curd and white chocolate mousse plus fresh raspberries.

What may not be as obvious is that the cakes are very symmetrical and the fondant topping smooth and wrinkle-free. That is the hallmark of a skilled artisan. It's no surprise that they also are delicious!