The Mind of a Chef (2012) s04e16 Episode Script

Help everyone explore new worlds and ideas.
Support your PBS station.
When three things are on a plate, there's symmetry between the three.
A tasting menu is a sequence of carefully composed flavors and textures in optimal amounts intended to get from there to here.
The experience should be incremental, cumulative, balanced.
Do the foies after the bonita! Bound together by location, season To me this is what gives it the flavor.
Ingredient.
25 bites.
They have to be perfect.
Better than perfect.
Together, they need to say something the diner didn't know they needed to hear.
Enter The Mind of a Chef.
You can actually taste the sun.
I don't know how we're going to top that one.
This is the fun part in cooking.
Cheers.
Part of the beauty of the power of food is it creates memories.
Very important.
When a dish is set down in front of someone, what is a dish supposed to do? Pique interest? Surprise? You can go in with really great expectations.
Our job is to understand what they are, and not only to meet but to exceed.
25 bites.
I would be lying if I didn't say that the progression of a Japanese menu has a great influence on the Manresa menu.
Things start off with relatively unadorned, simple bites, pleasing to the eye.
The idea of bitterness early in a meal.
Something raw.
There's soup, perhaps something braised.
There's a diversity of courses, different tastes and textures being presented.
We want things to be three bites long.
One bite is the big surprise.
The second bite's kind of like a confirmation.
And the third bite is to finish it off and be ready to try the next sensation.
When someone comes in, the first thing they get are the petit fours, an item most people associate with the very end of a meal.
We've actually had people say, "There must be some sort of mistake.
" They look sweet but they are savory.
Red pepper, olives.
This period ends with a larger portion dish, perhaps a savory panna cotta.
Currently, we do salmon roe and peas.
Got transitional period, just denotes that you're going to move into the savory part of the menu, and the first dish of substance.
Into the vegetable garden, and all its bitter elements to stimulate the appetite.
After that, a raw dish, fish or shellfish.
Simply presented.
I think something served raw, especially early, there is no place to hide.
You know, what you're really showcasing is the pristine quality of the ingredient.
The beauty of it, the skill, is in the cuts.
This salad is very Californian, almost Central American in its theme, with a chili and avocado.
The fish is Japanese style, but I think once it all comes together, it's almost ceviche-like.
The first thing I'm going to do, prepare the cucumber for the salad.
So, bias cuts.
Attractive, bite-size pieces.
Cucumbers have a lot of water in them.
Salt is going to draw out the moisture.
A lot of that water is a little bit bitter tasting, so I'll take out a little bit of the bitterness.
This is jalapeño, I mean, it's spicy, but in the grand scheme of the pepper world, it's not that hot.
This is just going to add a little picante.
Get to the heart of the matter.
And this is where the fun part comes in.
Throw in a dash of rice vinegar, pinch of salt, ahumado in extra-virgin olive oil that had tangerines thrown into the press.
Lot of bitterness in it because of the pith in the peel, but we like that.
You don't just mash it in.
Stir it, let it break down a little bit, we'll do some other things, come back to it and keep stirring it, until the avocado comes into this half-creamy, half-chunky state.
Now, sea bream.
Like a gentle snowstorm, the salt rains down out of the sky.
With a little cure for eight minutes.
Wash the fish.
It's made the skin just a little bit translucent, gets rid of a little bit of the flabbiness.
Cut against the grain.
See how shiny that is? Most of that is because of the quality of my left-handed blue steel, and the confidence of the stroke.
Sushi guy can tell if it's been sliced confidently or not.
With some great citrus: Meyer lemon and one of my favorites of all, the wekiwa tangelo.
I like it so much I even just like saying it.
Acidity keeps things fresh and lively.
A couple drops each of both the wekiwa tangelo juice and the Meyer lemon juice.
The avocado is still chunky, but it's starting to get really shiny, and it's coating everything really nicely.
It's the exact consistency that I've been patient and waiting for.
Lastly, some toasted black sesame seeds.
Plate the dish.
The raw onions have wilted.
My three pieces of fish.
Juiced cucumbers, marinated with jalapeño, mint, and basil.
My citrus segments, wekiwa, Meyer lemon.
Little balls of cucumber, pickled in rice vinegar and white wine.
Couple of drops of tangerine-flavored oil to pearl on the surface, effectively making a vinaigrette.
Bachelor button flowers, tie the dish in with the blueness of the bowl.
Sea bream with spicy cucumber and avocado, citrus.
You have to start with something great to make something great.
David, you got to come try this red shadow.
Smell the bottom.
Okay, looks like a pear.
Oh! Vanilla flavor.
Does it taste like vanilla? No.
All right, let's go find the finger limes.
Gene Lester is a cranky, cantankerous old guy.
There's some clementinas left I wouldn't describe Gene as a farmer, he's like a fruit hobbyist.
This one is Yosemite Gold.
He's just got these amazing trees.
First thing I asked Gene was if he had yuzu.
He says, "yes, I do, but I got many other things, too.
" He's got a whole ridge, there's a whole ridge up there.
Each tree is a different fruit.
It's just amazing.
250 different kinds of acidity.
There it is.
This variety is a little bitter, sort of like a grapefruit.
I think there's a little bit of vanilla in the flesh, too.
Could be.
You could put vanilla with this.
You could.
Spiny lobster.
We can go up there, and taste something and be really inspired by it.
Mmm! And have it on the menu the next day.
Here we are at the finger limes.
Look how many of them there are.
Looks like they, somebody scotch taped 'em on.
I knew what a grapefruit was.
The grounders are probably the best But this whole world just opened up walking around, pulling things off trees and tasting it.
And him explaining Now you ready for this? Caviar.
You can eat the skin on this, and this one doesn't have seeds, but this one has the best acid-to-sugar ratio, but it's really difficult to peel, so you're going to have to figure out a way to peel it, you know, and just like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
It's better to cut down to the flesh and then tear.
His love and passion for what he does is a big guiding principle in what we do.
After that raw dish, we usually do a vegetable centric dish.
Something very delicate.
The chawanmushi, which is a Japanese-style custard that is steamed, and a very light broth that has been infused with a spring garlic.
Very pungent, very aromatic.
Green garlic is an iconic California ingredient.
It is fresh garlic in the springtime, before it actually starts to bulb.
And I mince finely, mostly just the white.
The white tends to be more delicate and as I cut this, it becomes very obvious to everyone around you, that is in fact not a leek, but garlic, because of the smell.
Buerre noisette.
Add half the garlic.
We just want it to soften.
We're not going to put any color on the green garlic.
That would make it too strong.
Vegetable broth, classic mirepoix, has fennel in it.
The weird things I like to add to it is a pinch of sugar, and a star anise.
Just as it's coming to a simmer, I'm going to add the last bit of the raw garlic, hopefully adding some complexity from the two different states of the garlic, softened and raw.
It's delicious.
Most "egg-cellent.
" I've strained the broth.
Put it on low.
I am not trying to incorporate air into it.
I'm going to add the eggs one at a time.
You can see that the custard is very, very light.
Shirodashi, white soy sauce that had katsuobushi as part of the fermentation process.
One of our secret weapons here.
I'm going to just kiss the surface of each one to get rid of the air bubbles, but not enough to cook it.
Time to steam the custards.
We're going to use broccoli to top the custard, and all I'm trying to get are those little florets.
Basically just giving the broccoli a trim.
Supercuts.
Seaweed vinegar is going to add the acidic element to the dish, along with a really good, strong dose of umami.
Sake.
Rice wine vinegar.
Sugar.
Soy sauce.
Little bit of water.
Simmer.
Bonito flakes Pretty.
And then three different kinds of seaweed: fresh nori, kombu, and laitue de mer, sea lettuce, a very common dried seaweed on the Pacific.
And then I'll wrap it and let it cool 'till it's infused.
It's time to plate the custard.
Some fusion, it's completely cool.
Lovely smell, it's like a tisane.
We will strain this off.
Put it on very delicate, just a little bit sweet.
The stems from the broccoli, that have been blanched.
The fried florets from the broccoli, hiding the custard and the stems, but you can see the little bits of the color poking out.
Some beautiful broccoli flowers, yet more broccoli to the dish, and the color mimicking the color of the bowl.
Broccoli flowers do taste of the plant, of broccoli.
And this completes the dish: green garlic custard with seaweed vinegar, broccoli.
Of course one eats with the eyes.
All five senses are involved.
The fifth sense, of course, being umami.
The sense that is an intangible, you can't quite put your finger on what it is, that is the job of the chef making that happen.
Warm salmon with saffron and potato.
And now, the menu is advancing, now it's going from lighter to heavier.
A more substantial fish dish, sometimes it will involve grilling.
Much more centered on the protein than the previous dish.
After that, we do a rice dish, which is really the first sort of carbs, heavier.
This is a great time for us to introduce people to abalone.
Rice porridge has abalone and emulsified with chicken fat.
After this, we do red meat.
Lately we've been doing spring lamb.
What we're trying to project with Manresa is coastal California.
So we are, in a food sense, a reflection not only of how it's made but where it's from.
Oh, my God, he's massive! The obvious answer would be that you use local products.
Or use a purveyor and a source that an area's famed for.
Monterey abalone.
Jo at Dirty Girl.
You know, Castroville artichokes.
So, people who've eaten artichokes all their life, when they have it at the restaurant, they realize the specialness of what they're tasting.
These are called negi onions.
It's a Japanese cultivar.
People will come to the garden and I'll show them something weird or different, and they'll ask me, "Well, what does David do with it?" And I'll say, "Anything he wants.
" We have this exclusive relationship with Love Apple Farms.
We work in collaboration with them.
And I'm always trying to pique his interest and add something new, whether it's a new variety of tomato, a new variety of bean nobody else has.
When I decided that I wanted to have a garden, I thought that I was going to do this myself.
I don't know what I was thinking.
Cynthia Sandberg is a champion tomato grower.
She said, "Well, I'll do it.
" I said, "Well, I'm not just talking about tomatoes.
" And she goes, "Neither am I.
" These are cape gooseberries, and the flavor is phenomenal.
It's got a really wonderful acid, sweet balance to it.
He can do a lot with this.
She gave up life as a successful lawyer.
She dug up her lawn.
She dug up her swimming pool.
These are lychee tomatoes.
I got these from the gardener for Alain Passard in Paris, and I didn't speak any French and he didn't speak any English, but I could tell the seed was in the tomato family, so I cultivated it the same way and it thrived.
David loves it.
The stuff that grows at Love Apple has been fine-tuned over the years, specifically for the needs of the restaurant.
We had the opportunity to plant different cultivars of the same vegetable, so you can have a dish that is four different types of eggplant, four different types of tomatoes.
The complexity of the dish is in the diversity of cultivars.
That was a great tool to have.
Sometimes I will come across something that I think is unique and unusual, and I try to keep it a secret from him until we have it ready for him to taste.
He'll go, "that's fabulous, give me 100 more of them next week.
" And I go I can't do that, chef, 'cause I only put in a little test plot for you, so, next year we'll give you a lot more of those.
That's the fun part.
We use a various assortment of alliums, onions from the farm, for this broth, because there is an inherent sweetness to them.
It's a transitional course that helps, perhaps, settle the stomach and let the system know that you're going to be transitioning into sweets.
A white globe onion.
The bulb from a red torpedo onion.
And I think there might be a white torpedo in there as well.
Now we're going to make some dashi, which is the basis of the soup.
I have Rishiri-Kombu.
It's from an island called Rishiri off the north coast of Hokkaido.
It's considered the grand cru, the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti of kombus because of the elegance of flavor, the depth, the subtlety.
Research has shown that the glutomatic properties that makes dashi such an umami bomb and the basis and the foundation of all Japanese cuisine, that the greatest extraction happens at 60 degrees.
So it's going to hold it there for one hour.
Never coming to a boil.
When it reaches 60, we're going to use dried shiitakes.
Shiitakes have tremendous amounts of natural umami, and when they're dried, they're really amplified.
Three different kinds of lentils: green, orange, and the classic du Puy lentils, black-green, incredibly flavorful.
I soak these overnight.
Starts the germination process.
We'll toss 'em together.
Put 'em in a cool, dark, humid place.
In our case, it's the wine cellar.
Let them sit around from 24 to 36 hours, and we'll get these beautiful sprouted lentils.
Palatable and tender.
A little bit of a crunch.
You would be amazed that they're not cooked.
We have some beautiful pickled ramps.
Cut it into a nice mix about the white and the dark.
You can really smell how fabulous that kombu is.
Smell it.
So I'm going to strain it.
Now I'm going to add the onions.
It's going to be an infusion, just like we're making tea.
Now I'm going to start to season it.
It's always soy with a little bit of salt, and I think the synergy between the two, to balance out the onion flavor.
And the mirin.
I'm trying to find this right balance of aroma.
Sweet from the onion and the mirin.
And salt.
Exactly where I want it.
Strain off the onions, and now we're ready to play.
So the sprouting lentils, we add for color.
Puffed buckwheat, which adds a really great kind of cereal crunch to it, almost got the crunch of popcorn.
Some of our pickled ramps.
Some of our seasoned broth.
Two or three sips at the most.
Rendered beef wagyu fat, the secret ingredient on this particular dish.
It pearls, adds a certain richness.
We strongly encourage the guests to pick it up and just sip it.
And when they're close of course, they'll get the great fragrance.
I have raw, I have pickled, and I have hot, I have cooked, I have crunch.
Hopefully, this will be a nice backing away from the rich course that came before it in preparation for dessert.
Moving into desserts, we will do something really refreshing.
It will involve raw fruit of really great quality that we want to showcase.
There won't be a lot of added sugar.
There might be savory elements, such as herbs, chervil, basil, anise hyssop.
An arc from the savory to the sweet.
Rhubarb with fennel frond and Pernod.
The second dessert will be more substantial.
It will involve much more technique, more of a showy dessert, because you're nearing the end of the meal.
At this point there's going to be a lot of mignardises.
Coconut and passion fruit, Meyer lemon, vanilla bean.
Macaroon.
Chocolates someone has to have chocolate, like myself.
Finally, you will get the original petit four.
It will mimic the petit fours that you had at the beginning of the meal, but this time, you're original assumption would be correct, it would be sweet, in this case strawberry and chocolate.
We come around full circle during the course of your meal.
We don't cook for more than 60 people on any given night.
I don't know how responsible a business model that is, but I like to know the faces of the people I'm cooking for, as opposed to just table numbers.
I've always viewed cooking on a very personal level.
I don't do it by myself.
Thank you, everyone, thank you, thank you, that's it.
When a night goes smoothly, there's an intense feeling of accomplishment.
You feel alive.
Now you're walking on air.