Chef's Favorites: Childhood Foods

For the final chapter in Chef's Favorites, we ask our culinary team the evocative question: What food most brings you back to your childhood and why?

Chef Kevin:

Egg and Cheese on a fresh baked roll ( It's a Jersey thing).

 Chef Bryan
Grits, This was a Sunday  morning tradition at my house. sometimes they had bacon, other times cheese, but always in one form or another.

Chef Ingreth:
Mashed Potatoes with ground meat, my mother prepares it like nobody else.

Chef David:
Tinfoil wrapped dinners.  This consists of ground beef, onions, carrots, and potatoes heavily seasoned, then wrapped in foil. The foil wrapped food is then tossed onto the hot coals to cook for about 30 minutes. A must-have for camping, something we did often growing up in the Rocky Mountains.

Chef Michael:
Scots Broth (Lamb) (in pressure cooker) cooked by my mother.

Chef Jenny:
I always seem to make a version of Bibim Bop once a week mainly for my son which is a Korean
rice dish traditionally made with rice, bulgogi beef, mushrooms, spinach, bok choy and flavored with a red bean paste, sesame oil and soy sauce topped with a fried egg.  I make variations of this depending on what leftovers I have.  This dish particularly reminds me of my Korean roots.

Chef Sarah:
 I think Autumn comfort foods, like apple pie, cold and mulled cider, candy apples.... I am biased but you can't beat upstate NY for that stuff.

Chef Florian:
Pancake with wild cranberries marmalade.
When I was a child and came back from school I smelt the pancake made by my
mother.  The great smell from brown butter, caramelized sugar, a little vanilla andthe fruity note from the cranberries, flavored with cinnamon was really a big treat for me. At that time I did not realize that the flavor pairing with sweet from the pancake and sour from the cranberries fits so well.
http://www.foodpairing.be/

Chef's Favorites - Cookbooks!

Today, we asked our team the burning question:
What is your favorite cookbook and why?
Chef Florian:
 Grand livre de Cuisine, written by Alain Ducasse.

It is a fantastic cookbook with the most traditional Authentic and contemporary recipes, completed by clear description how to finish and how to present



Chef Sarah
For everyday at-home meals, I like Elie Krieger's The Food You Crave, because she uses a minimal amount of fresh ingredients that pack a lot of punch, nutritionally and organoleptically. I also like The Professional Pastry Chef by Bo Friberg for helping me to get through pastry school, and as a continuing resource for all things baking-related.



Chef Jenny:
I always go back to the first cookbooks I looked at when I was growing up that sparked my interest in cooking and helping out my mother in the kitchen which are Craig Claiborne's New York Times Cook Book and Joy of Cooking.



Chef Michael:

Nose to Tail Eating by Fergus Henderson. I love it's simplicity and indepth look at meat recipes and cooking tips. It shows you how to extract every bit of flavour out of an animal ....... Not for vegetarians



Chef David:

On Cooking - all of the recipes inside the book are spot on, restaurant tested, and reliably good. It's recipes have always been a great place to start to find something to work off of.



Chef Ingreth:
The History of Alimentation, is a book that talks about recipes and cooking methods from the ancestors until current day and many times i use as a guide .. 1001 Foods You Must Try Before you Died. Both are good to take ideas of ingredients and cooking methods.



Chef Bryan:
Culinary Artistry. I received this book when I was 16 it was the first time I really started to think about flavor combinations.



Chef Kevin:
Tough one, so many good ones. For technique, Jacques Pepin's, The Art of Cooking (Much of what I learned in my apprenticeship is in here). For food and recipe, Thomas Keller Bouchon or Ad Hoc for the home cook.