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Life Lessons in Gardening

Brent Ridge discusses gentleman farming at Beekman 1802

How did you start the Beekman 1802 project?

We [both] grew up in rural parts of the country with backyard gardens, but we had been living in the city for a decade. We frequented the farmers’ market, and one summer about five years ago, we were craving heirloom tomatoes. They finally showed up [at the market], and we were so excited; we filled up a flat and it ended up costing $80. The next summer we grew tomatoes on the rooftop in the city, and it was very successful. Then we started looking for a country place upstate. We found the property, and it just so happened that our next-door neighbors were Landreth Seeds, the oldest seed company in America.

The idea of leaving the city to start a farm seems to be more and more romanticized lately. What is the reality of it?

Right now, [Josh] is still living and working in the city while I’m up here full time trying to get this running. It’s very expensive to start a farm; there are lots of regulations to go through. You can make a living off it, but you need to adjust what you think a living is. You may not be able to take time away from the farm, or have the money to go on vacation.

Are you happier with this lifestyle?

I would say that I feel more energized. With my careers practicing medicine and working in media there was always something driving me, a purpose. But I’ve never felt as energized as I do now. My day starts at 5:30 a.m. with feeding the pigs, and I literally work from sunup to sundown, and by 9 p.m. I’m in bed. I wake up every morning and even though I know I’ll be working all day, there is not an ounce of dread.

Have you sacrificed anything from your old lifestyle?

The one thing I’ve sacrificed the most is my grooming habits. I’m not nearly as polished as when I was working in media. We always take our shoes off before we come in the house, and the other day I happened to look down at the bottom of my feet and they were just black from working in the garden all day. Even if I have people coming over … I don’t have time to worry about how great I look.

How has the garden been this year?

In the Northeast, it’s been a terrible gardening season because we’ve had so much rain and only recently had some heat, so the garden is really delayed. That’s part of the joy of gardening and the learning experience. Our philosophy is seasonal living: If you have a tomato available 52 weeks a year, you don’t really appreciate it. So this year if the tomatoes don’t come, next year we’ll be ecstatic when they do.

How big is the garden?

The garden is about 52 raised beds, a little over half an acre. We feed ourselves off of that, and also have a partnership with a restaurant in town that uses our produce.

Why did you choose raised beds?

With raised beds you can get better soil, and you can cut down on maintenance because of less weeding. For us too, when the growing season is so short, they also help extend it a little, because that dirt will warm up faster than dirt in the ground.

How did you pick out which heirloom fruits and vegetables to plant?

We broke it down a couple of ways. We usually group by variety, and the beds are rotated each year. We also look at origin, which part of country they came from, to make sure we got varieties that came from nearby so we knew they’d do better.

How can you tell if an heirloom variety came from near you?

You have to do your research. It’s not like if you just go to the store and look at the rack you can tell. Ask your seed supplier, or get in touch with Seed Savers.

What are some of the varieties you recommend?

I would say go for the black cherry tomato. It’s easy to grow, and it’s very prolific. It makes a fruit about the size of a quarter in diameter, and is delicious. I think the purple pod bean is really nice. It’s a green bean, but when you first pick it, it’s got the most purple color, and makes beautiful purple flowers. I like the cosmo carrot; it’s purple on the outside and orange on the inside. I also love Chiogga beets. I never thought I liked beets because all I had known was pickled beets. Last year I started roasting them, and they are so delicious. There is also a wonderful icicle radish: It’s long and white, and it tastes just like a radish but has an unusual look.

Have you grown any really strange or interesting fruits or vegetables?

We grew this melon—you don’t eat it, it’s very tiny—called the Queen Anne’s pocket melon. It comes from Victorian England, and people would carry it around in their pocket as perfume. It smells very sweet and fruity.

What are some gardening books you’d recommend for people who are just getting started?

The Natural Garden Book by Peter Harper, Complete Vegetable & Herb Gardener by Burpee, and Jerry Baker’s Backyard Problem Solver. There’s also one called The Gardener’s Handbook and Dictionary, by Jack Kramer.

What are some mistakes you’ve made?

This happens to us every year: We get overanxious and start our seeds indoors, think the frost is over and put the plants out, and then it comes. The first year we installed [the raised beds] we paid to have this “clean” dirt put in, then made the mistake of putting hay from the fields around the plants to protect them, and it just brought in all the weeds.

You have a herd of 100 goats. The notion of having a milk goat has also been romanticized lately. Is it realistic?

We are a certified Grade A dairy. Our caretaker, Farmer John, works hard. We do all of the gardening, and John is in charge of all of the animal husbandry. From February to autumn, they milk twice a day, and you have to take care of the animals, store hay, etc. That said, if you had one goat and wanted milk, you could milk it very easily yourself. You’d get maybe a gallon of milk a day at its peak. Even if you only had the one goat, you’d still have to breed it each year to “freshen” it [keep her producing milk].

Over the past year, raising chickens has become very trendy too. What should people know if they want to get into it?

It’s not cheaper to raise chickens for eggs. It’s much cheaper, even if you go to the farmers’ market, to buy eggs than to raise the chickens yourself. But they are fairly low-maintenance animals. Our chickens love when we feed them weeds from weeding the garden, so think about that too—it becomes very expensive if you are going to buy organic chicken feed.

What is the goal of your Beekman 1802 website?

We’re trying to highlight the importance of supporting local economies and each one of us becoming more sustainable. The more you can do in your own backyard the better. The reason we first put [the site up] was to sell soap [one thing they do with the 500 gallons a week of milk their goats produce], but [selling] was always sort of secondary.

What was your motivation for putting on the Harvest Festival in September?

When we moved up here, we knew virtually nothing about starting a farm, so we had to go get advice from our neighbors, and we really saw how our local farmers were struggling. We conceptualized the Harvest Festival as an opportunity to showcase all the local food producers in Schoharie County. Upstate New York has historically been really big in agriculture, but in the last 30 years a lot of [agriculture moved to] the Midwest. That’s sort of why it’s impoverished now, because it doesn’t have the agriculture to rely on anymore. The soil in Schoharie County is actually considered some of the most fertile in the world—the county supplied almost all the rations for the American Army during the Revolutionary War.

What can we learn from gardening?

I just think people should have in mind going into it that it’s not only great exercise physically and mentally, but it’s also a great exercise in delayed gratification. We really are a society based on instant gratification, and it has been really ruinous to us as a culture. And the thing with the whole financial meltdown was based on wanting everything we wanted when we wanted it. We didn’t want to wait and save up for the flat-screen TV, we wanted to buy it on credit. Waiting for things that work on a cycle really teaches you patience. We try to preach seasonal living and appreciating what you have when you have it. That’s really the core: delaying gratification and earning and working towards what you want. There are lots of life lessons to be learned in gardening.

Roxanne Webber is an associate editor at CHOW.

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On the Hunt for Wild Yeast

Chatting with home fermentation expert Sandor Ellix Katz

What are you fermenting right now?

I created a dedicated tempeh incubator from a defunct commercial fridge and an incandescent light bulb. The mold that creates tempeh thrives at 85 degrees. The fixture the light bulb is plugged into is on a thermostat, so when the temperature inside reaches 85 degrees it turns off the light bulb, and when it gets colder, it turns it on again. Now I can make 30-pound batches and experimental flavors, and that’s been really fun. I’m also curing the leg of an old dairy goat in a prosciutto style.

Can you say a little about the environmental reasons for doing home fermentation?

When we hear people talk about the carbon footprint of food, it’s always in the context of the transport of food. You don’t have people talking about the sustainability of these supermarkets with their giant footprints of refrigeration. I think it’s important that we retain this knowledge [of fermentation], and continue to pass it along and develop it. You never know—energy costs may continue to go up, and the wealthy may be the only ones who have refrigerators.

If somebody wanted to try their own wild-fermentation project—that is, fermenting something using the native yeasts and bacteria from the air—what’s one of the easiest things to ferment?

I’d start with vegetables, rather than meat, because it’s easier and essentially safe. The vegetables can get mushy or you could get surface mold [if things go wrong], but you could scrape it away and it would be safe to taste.

What would you recommend making?

Sauerkrauts made from cabbage and root vegetables are my favorites, but you really can use pretty much any kind of vegetable. Chop or grate the vegetables, salt them, do a little squeezing or pounding to get the water out [to create the brine], pack [the water and vegetables] into a jar or crock—hard enough so [the vegetable] gets submerged under its own juices—then it’s a matter of waiting a few days, or longer, depending on the flavor and texture you want.

You talk in your book about a South American beer that’s made of chewed-up corn. What’s that about, and have you tried making it?

That’s called chicha, and it’s a traditional drink from the Andes. Unlike honey or fruit juice, both of which pretty much spontaneously ferment into alcohol, grains need a preliminary step that converts the starch into sugar. There are three ways to do this, including malting (soaking and sprouting the grains) as in the Western tradition of making beer. But another way people do it involves chewing. Enzymes in our saliva convert starches into sugars. With chicha, the corn is chewed and spit out, and when you accumulate enough of these chewed corn balls, you heat them up and then ferment them. Any kinds of germs people might be freaked out about get destroyed by the heat.

I want to throw a chicha-making party and invite people via Evite. I think that would be a crack-up.

Yeah, you could do that. I’ve had some great experiments with people making chicha. Many people refused to try chewing corn for the chicha and were disgusted by the idea of it. Others watched and gawked. But a self-selected group totally got into it.

Do you think the home fermentation movement is on the rise?

I think that we’re in a moment where there’s a huge interest in food in general, and in reviving local food systems in particular, and fermentation is a really important part of the picture. If people living in temperate climates want to eat local, fermentation has to be a part of it, because some produce isn’t available year-round.

Kombucha has come back in a major way, particularly among faddish Hollywood types. Has that had an impact on the interest in fermented foods do you think?

I would see the popularity of Kombucha as being a reflection of it, not the cause. I have ambivalent feelings about Kombucha. I love it, but I think it’s sort of overemphasized or fetishized. Really, if you are going to incorporate ferments into your daily diet, I don’t think that tea and sugar—what Kombucha is based on—is the best one. Ferments that are based on vegetables and/or milk are a lot more nutritious.

What are some uses for sauerkraut, kimchee, pickles, and fermented vegetables we might not have thought of?

Most every sandwich is improved by sauerkraut. Sometimes I’ll make little hors d’oeuvres with pickled radishes or fermented leaves of cabbage, put sauerkraut in them, maybe put a little bit of cheese in there, and wrap them up with a toothpick.

You can also marinate meat in sauerkraut juice. You’ll find this in Poland; it’s called bigos. Juice of sauerkraut to me is one of the great delicacies and digestive tonics. I like to incorporate the juice into salad dressings.

Check out CHOW’s home fermentation projects:
Make your own wild-fermented ginger beer
Make your own pancetta
Make your own yogurt

Lessley Anderson is senior editor at CHOW.

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King Cocktail Speaks

Dale DeGroff on his new book and the perils of mixology

Your new book is full of interesting anecdotes about cocktail history. What’s one of your favorites?

The drink we served at the party the other night, Monkey Gland [absinthe, gin, orange juice, grenadine], has an interesting story. It was served at Harry’s New York Bar in Paris as a novelty drink. It was named after what was essentially Victorian Viagra: This quack doctor was implanting monkey glands in men.

Will people stop drinking absinthe now that it’s legal and they realize it’s kind of gross?

The good stuff, like what’s being made by Ted Breaux right now in France, is really good. I think it’s going to race through the Hollywood community. Absinthe bars are opening everywhere. Dig this: Morton’s called me, and they want me to do absinthe fountains in their steakhouses! And cocktails made with real absinthe, like the Sazerac, taste better than ones made with a substitute. It’s like night and day.

How important is good ice to a cocktail, and what should people be using at home?

It’s very important, particularly if you’re doing, say, a Derby party and serving Mint Juleps. You’ll want crushed ice that is very powdered and dry, so the ice will freeze on the outside. The best thing to do is to go online and buy some coin sacks. Then go to an icehouse and get a chunk of ice. Chip some off, put it in the bags, and hit it with a wooden mallet until it’s really dry and fine.

Let’s talk about the mixology trend.

I have to take the rap for that thing. When I’d hire bartenders at the Rainbow Room, they’d come in and not have any tools or skills or anything, unlike the CIA-graduated chefs, who came in with their knife rolls and were professionals. The bartenders, all they’d think about was meeting women and making money. I went back to old newspapers and cocktail books and found this word, mixologist, that was sometimes used as a term of sarcasm, like for a phony chemist. I revived it, and got flack from older bartenders. But I told the younger people coming up: Take a cooking course and learn how to make a sauce, learn about ingredients. I wanted the profession of being a bartender to be professional.

But now that there are all these professional bartenders out there charging a lot of money for their handmade concoctions, do you think there will be enough people who want to drink them, especially in a recession?

A culinary cocktail doesn’t have to be any more expensive than a regular cocktail; you just have to be vigilant and watch your fresh ingredients. Learn how to juice properly, so you don’t lose any. Look to the kitchen and act like a chef to know how to manage things properly.

But what about on the consumer side: Will it be worth it for customers to continue to pay upward of $12 for a cocktail?

People are not going to go to the geeky bars unless they can get a goddamn drink. [Mixologists] are going to have to do what the sports bars do—make drinks in one to one and a half minutes—or people are not going to go there. If they want it to be mainstream, they’re going to have to get over it and learn how to free-pour.

How do you measure a free-poured cocktail?

It just takes practice. Practice it with different-sized glasses. When building a cocktail, never build in the metal part of your shaker, always the glass so you can see what you’re doing. Always start with the sour, then sweet, and then strong, pre-ice. Too much sour can ruin your drink. Sour mixes were invented because sours are the hardest drinks to make.

What are some of the most common mistakes that bars make when they’re trying to do real drinks with real juice and stuff?

They let the juice turn. Juice doesn’t last more than one day. And they don’t batch stuff. If you’re making 200 of a certain drink at cocktail hour, mix four things as a base, then grab the juice and bitter at the last minute. If it’s not busy, you can be leisurely. Also, bars are poorly designed, with very little refrigeration space. We need them to be redesigned for the 21st century. And most places are serving drinks in glasses that are too big. Glasses should not be big. Cocktails are meant to be 12 to 15 cold sips as a stimulant to a meal, five ounces max. Be smart and go back to the retro glass.

Lessley Anderson is senior editor at CHOW.
Photo-illustration by Sean McCabe

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Vinnie Cilurzo Gets Funky

The daring beers of Russian River Brewing Company

How did you get into brewing, and how did you come up with the Double IPA?

I went into it after working in my parents’ wine business. I guess you could say I’ve been around yeasts all my life. I kind of invented the Double IPA at the [now-defunct] Blind Pig in San Diego, where I worked prior to Russian River [Brewing Company]. I did it mainly because the equipment we had there was so rustic that if there were off flavors, the hops would cover them up.

What’s the story behind the names of your Belgian beers: Damnation, Salvation, Redemption, etc.?

The classic strong golden Belgian ale is Duvel [Flemish for “devil”]. A lot of beers of this style pay homage to it by having a devilish Satan/hell-type [name], like Delirium Tremens, PranQster, Judas, Lucifer. You know how people always talk about where they were when John Lennon died? I’ll always remember where I was when I came up with the name for Damnation. I had been home-brewing that beer for about three years, and I was on my way home when this Squirrel Nut Zippers song came on the radio in my car called “Hell.” In the song, they spell out the word damnation, and I knew that was going to be the name. By the time I got home I figured I had to also make a beer called Redemption, and then my buddy suggested Salvation and Temptation as well.

What’s up with the labels? Are those drawings all of pitchforks?

No, they’re antique gardening tools. Damnation has a trident. Supplication has a grass aerator. Temptation has a scythe. I like to garden.

You’re known in the brewing world for being adept at using this challenging type of yeast, Brettanomyces, that’s used in many Belgian ales. What’s the appeal?

Brett creates a rustic, unique flavor, like leather or barnyard. It’s really distinctive. But it’s extremely aggressive. Some winemakers won’t even come in here because they’re afraid to get it on them. I’ve had brewery owners call me and say, “My brewer wants to start brewing with this yeast; what do you think?” Then I tell them all the risks—the wild yeasts, bacteria floating around your brewery, and it’s dangerous from a brewing standpoint [because it can infect other beers]. Then usually the brewer calls me up all mad, because I’ve talked the owner out of it.

But you use it successfully.

But it’s like a dog: It’ll bite you if you show you’re afraid of it. You have to understand the science and art of it. We have to be very careful that it doesn’t get into the other beers we make here. We had a couple batches of Damnation, early on, where we accidentally got a little Brett in them, and they were ruined. Well, they didn’t taste like Damnation anymore.

This brewery is not that large. How do you keep the yeast from spreading into the other beers?

We keep two of everything, if not more. And what I mean by that is, we have a separate pump just for the funky beers. Different hoses, different valves, different gaskets for hoses and doors, and even the rubber gloves we use for cleaning and handling. And we keep the barrels of aged beer in a separate room.

How did you first decide to start experimenting with aging beers like wine, in barrels?

The first beer we made with Brett, Temptation, was also our first aged beer. It was made in 1999 and released in 2000. It’s a blond ale aged in Chardonnay barrels. You don’t have to ferment in barrels if you use Brett; you can do it in stainless steel. In fact, my very, very favorite beer, [the Belgian] Orval, is made that way. But I wanted to put Temptation in wood, because Brett is a yeast that’s so strong, it just wants to keep on eating. If it runs out of sugars in the beer to keep eating, it won’t die. It’s almost impossible to kill. But if you give it a place to live in the porousness of the barrel, it can keep eating the sugars in the wood, and keep kicking out all these interesting flavors while it’s doing it.

How long do you age your beers?

Consecration is aged 6 to 9 months, Temptation 9 to 15 months, Supplication 12 to 18 months. The average brewery is on a 24- to 25-day cycle. It’s a pretty big financial hardship for us to make beer this way. Our biggest-selling beer, accounting for over 50 percent of our sales, is the [unaged Double IPA] Pliny the Elder. We could make a lot more [unaged] beer in here if we didn’t commit this much space to funky beers, but that’s my passion.

And you’ve recently been getting even more funky by adding bacteria to some of your aged beers that are typically used in sour Belgian styles like lambics and gueuzes.

Yes. Back then, Temptation wasn’t as acidic and sour as it is now, because it wasn’t until recently that we introduced lactobacillus and pediococcus into the beer.

Right now your beers are mainly available on the West Coast. How important is it to you to go national?

Not at all. We expanded three months ago into this new brewery space, so now we’re brewing in both our brewpub and in this brewery. And we started bottling Pliny the Elder, which until six weeks ago we had never done before. It had only been available on draft. We could be [widely available] like Stone or Lagunitas, and I get calls from distributors all the time from all over the country. But we do this more for the lifestyle, my wife and I, and same with our employees. I can ride my bike to work. I live one to two miles from either brewery. I fill my gas tank once a week. I think you can get caught up way too much in growth. We don’t have any growth goals.

So what’s next for you?

A new beer called Consecration. We did a test batch at the pub, but it hasn’t been released yet. It’s aged in Cabernet Sauvignon barrels, with currants thrown in.

Lessley Anderson is senior editor at CHOW.
Photo-illustration by Sean McCabe

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Ask Aida

CHOW’s food editor on her Food Network show

How long did it take to tape the show?

We shot 13 episodes in eight working days, working 13 hours a day. I’d come in at seven, have breakfast while my hair and makeup were done, go over changes to the general outline of the show we were going to be filming, and by nine we’d start filming. I’d be done by seven or eight.

How did you come up with the theme for each show?

The producers and I would first look at the user-submitted content, then decide on three to four recipes to make per show. Like, there are all these Mexican questions, so let’s do a whole Mexican meal. From there it was a brainstorming session between the producers and myself for things that are doable but still fit with my style, which is California-influenced and using very fresh ingredients. (I try to open a can as infrequently as possible.) Then we’d come up with a general outline, no script.

Was everything planned out?

Before filming, we would run through every single move I’d make in my recipe for the producers, camera, and lighting people. It would be like, “The camera has to be here at this second, and lighting has to be here.” So if I forgot to pick something up with my left hand and used my right by accident, that would be a problem. A lot of precision goes into it.

What were the user questions like?

There was this woman who said she had a really trashed pot, and she wanted to find out how to get the stuff off. I called her, because I wanted to find out what she’d been cooking in it, to find out why it was so caked on with craziness. She’d been using a stainless steel pan under the broiler for years, and she just hadn’t been cleaning it. I said to soak it for a while, simmer over heat, and scrub it. Or use an oven cleaner as a last solution, because it’s not as green.

How did they want you to look on the show?

I was really clear that I have an opinion about my style. I have graphic T’s and wear jeans and Converse. We used a lot of the Brooklyn Industries T-shirts, and Rogan’s organic line, because I try my best to be sustainable when I can. I was really excited about WESC, which is a Swedish brand. As far as makeup went, they didn’t put heavy pancake on me. I could actually go out to dinner with it on.

How did the set look?

I like things that are kind of minimal yet warm, so there was a fair amount of stainless steel, but they had a window put in and a distressed wood table, and though I would never have admitted it before I walked on set, I really like stuff in the purple family. I realized it when I saw the wall they painted sort of mauve. As far as appliances and tools, it was what I was used to and prefer, like a Viking range, Wüsthof knives, and Emile Henry and Le Creuset cookware.

What were the hardest parts about doing the show?

I surprisingly wasn’t nervous. The one big challenge was that when I do videos for CHOW, they’re just a few minutes, and the idea is to disseminate the information as quickly as possible—with online, people find you because they’re already searching for something. But with TV, people are channel surfing, and the burden is on you to catch their attention in a millisecond. You’re really trying to sell what you’re showing the audience. The producers wanted me to delve into personal stories when I was talking about an ingredient so people can get excited about it. My mother was actually on set with me for a few days, and she would remind me of experiences from my life that would make good stories.

What was it like being “on” all the time?

Even though you think you’re being really, really obnoxiously boisterous, it’s as if the camera somehow sucks energy out of you. You have to be even more outgoing with your personality to convey how much energy you do have. You’re standing on your feet for many hours, cooking, being on the whole time, and it’s basically like an all-day party—very taxing. The lights were very hot. The executive producer told me that everybody has a breakdown on day three. It definitely was true. At the end of day three, I hit a wall and just said: “I think I’ve had too much.” But the next morning I was totally refreshed.

Did you get stage fright?

Not at all when I was filming. However, last week I was on a JetBlue flight, and as I flipped through the channels I saw a commercial for [the show], and all of a sudden I realized the whole world was going to see it. It’s really hard to watch or hear yourself.

Where will you be when Ask Aida premieres on August 2 at 12:30 p.m.?

I’m going to be at my friend’s wedding watching her walk down the aisle. Luckily my family will be recording it so I can watch it later.

Lessley Anderson is senior editor at CHOW.

Photo-illustration by Sean McCabe

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Food Econ 101

Paul Roberts, the author of The End of Food, dishes on the food system

Why has food been cheap for so long?

Generally, what we’ve done is we’ve increased the scale that we produce at. Rather than raise corn and pigs and vegetables on the same farm, we’re just gonna raise corn there. And that means that the whole farm can be devoted to corn, all the labor and expertise can be devoted to corn, all the inputs, all the tools you buy, all the machines you buy. So your costs will be much cheaper, so your cost per bushel will be much cheaper. So you have the economies of scale.

Why isn’t that working now?

You fertilize with nitrogen fertilizers and you get great increases in yield, but then you start realizing that you have to fertilize more and more intensively to get the same yield. You keep using pesticides, but now it turns out that you’ve got [several] weed species that resist Roundup, and so you have to come up with a new pesticide, or you have to figure out some new pest management method. We have a food system that was designed at maximum output and low cost, and now many of the efficiencies aren’t so efficient anymore … and that [system] was built for oil at $15 a barrel.

Why don’t you believe that local food systems are going to answer the global food demand?

There’s a limit to how much land area we have to devote to local food production. Land is really expensive when it’s close to cities. And local farms are often smaller, and small farms, as wonderful as they are for some things, don’t have the efficiencies that larger ones have for their economies of scale. So it’s sort of tough to imagine [them] feeding large populations.

So globally, it’s just not realistic?

There are countries that can’t produce enough food for themselves. So we need to ask: How do we make trade more effective and equitable and efficient? I think that there’s a lot of ideology flying around here: Let’s do local, not global; free trade is bad. There’s a lot we have to reverse, but you have to separate the moral argument from the pragmatic argument, and that’s hard to do. People are starting with things like food miles, which is an important start, but I think what’s starting to emerge is this understanding that food miles is too narrow. The argument I use is if I was to take produce from the Salinas Valley, load it into a freight car, and ship it to Seattle near where I live, that would be much more fuel efficient and have a smaller carbon footprint than would taking 50 pickup trucks, loading them up in farms around Seattle, and driving them into the farmers’ market downtown.

What are some of the constraints the food system is dealing with?

Forty percent of the calories that we make worldwide are directly attributable to the availability of cheap, synthetically produced nitrogen fertilizer. You make nitrogen fertilizer from natural gas, and natural gas is a cousin of oil, and that’s getting more expensive. Fertilizer costs have more than tripled in the past year.

And we’ve also got this really aggressive policy on biofuels. We can argue over exactly how much impact biofuels are having on [the] price [of food], but it’s absurd to believe it’s having a negligible impact.

And then there’s water: It takes a lot of water to make grain. You can find alternatives for oil and alternatives for fertilizer, but there is no alternative for water.

The last thing, of course, is climate. We’ve focused mainly on Africa, because that’s where we can already see climate’s impact on food output, but I think we really need to focus on what climate will do [to] the big food powerhouses like the United States. Even conservative climate scenarios show more drought and more flooding like we’re seeing in the Midwest.

Is there anything we can do about it now?

People who deal with food security long term are saying, “OK, this isn’t insurmountable. We’ve had food shortages before, and always we have come through because we’ve come up with new technologies and new business practices.” And the expectation is we’ll keep doing it, and this time we’ll have genetically modified foods to help us; that will be the big silver bullet. But the first step is to recognize it’s bigger and more complex than the challenges we’ve faced in the past, and that it’s far more complex than our current food policy reflects.

What are some of the solutions?

Part of [the solution] will require us making farming a more attractive profession. Farmers are leaving the farm, not because they hate farming, but [because] it’s just too hard [to make a living]. … In many cases, they can’t afford health care, so they need to have an off-farm job. So if you’re looking for these weak links, and you’re looking for ways to strengthen these links, then maybe finding a way to offer affordable health care to farmers would be one of those tipping points. But it’s not romantic; it’s not dramatic like some breakthrough seed.

Do you have any tips for things we can we do in the U.S. to lessen our impact on the food supply?

If you want to go meatless one or two times a week, or just reduce the amount of meat you eat, or go completely vegetarian in a thoughtful way, then that would be great. Understanding where your food comes from and seeing where you can make local decisions [when] it makes sense, but also understanding that not all local food is equal in terms of its impacts and its benefits. But both of those sort of bespeak a greater understanding of food.

What I think consumers are really hungry for at this point, if you’ll excuse the pun, is an understanding of the economic forces that are shaping things. If you go into a grocery store, everything that’s there represents a business calculation. I think consumers need to begin to unpack and understand those business decisions: Why is that stuff here? You realize that all these decisions have massive consequences on the flavor and quality of our food, on the health impacts, the safety of the food supply, and, I think in the long term what we’re realizing is, on the sustainability of the food system.

So it sounds like you’re saying food can’t fit neatly into the capitalist model?

We definitely need markets and capitalism and free enterprise to do the things we need to do, especially going forward with all the new demands on the system, but we can’t just assume that the market by itself will do the right thing, because it won’t. And figuring out how to guide that market force, and how to manage and how to intrude where we have to, and how to regulate, that’s going to be one of the challenges going forward. And lawmakers won’t mess with it until they feel like consumers care.

How can we send that message?

If we started cooking again. We can’t all be farmers, but we can certainly start cooking again. Cooking is huge. It sounds really corny, but it’s not just about food and personal affirmation and sort of having a soul again, although it is all those things. Cooking was a way that households controlled the way that food came into the system, into the household, and the quality, and the cost. You controlled that by being the cook: You transformed raw ingredients, you planned menus, and you managed a sort of inventory, if you will—your pantry—all of which required us to be totally engaged with food, which we’re not now. If you just cooked, it would be this new signal. The market would say, “Wait a minute, I don’t have enough raw ingredients on the shelves now. I’ve got all this processed food, which suddenly you don’t want.” Not everyone’s going to suddenly start cooking every night, but if you cooked one or two more nights a week than you are cooking, it would be this massive signal that you sent up, and it’s the kind of signal that I think the market really needs to have.

Roxanne Webber is an associate editor at CHOW.

Photo-illustration by Sean McCabe

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Fishing with Rick Moonen

The chef and author talks about sustainable seafood

How did you first become concerned about overfishing?

When I was executive chef at [New York’s] Oceana, the National Resources Defense Council and SeaWeb asked us to take part in the Give Swordfish a Break campaign. I had been going to the Fulton Fish Market for years, and had seen a lot of changes in terms of size of fish and quality on the market, so I was like, “Yeah, I’ll do it.” I became the spokesperson, and it ended up being a historic campaign that actually forced the government to take action.

What were you seeing at the Fulton Fish Market that scared you into action?

Well, in 1988 I could buy a swordfish for large banquets that was 200 pounds or larger, and it was still fairly local. As the years passed by, there were fewer of those, and today, they are more frequently below 100 pounds. The reason the quality was [lower] is [the fishermen] had to go farther and farther out to catch a certain amount of biomass to make it worth their while. So the first ones they caught could be 20 days on ice and frozen by the time you got it.

That sounds like a really dramatic shift in a short period of time.

Trust me, we’re in big, big trouble. The wild Atlantic salmon is commercially extinct. An entire fishery—Oregon and California—got shut down this year. We think we have a God-given right to take as much as we like, tearing up the ocean floors, throwing pollutants everywhere, and the technology has advanced so far that we’re capable of going out farther, deeper, and more efficiently than ever before. If nothing’s done to change the way we’re purchasing, consuming, and removing biomass from the ocean, all commercially available fish will be extinct in the next 35 to 40 years. That was reported by [biologist] Boris Worm in Science in 2006 [free registration required]. It’s scaring the hell out of me.

How should we be shopping for seafood?

Use the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch website [which has up-to-date info on which fish are sustainable and which aren’t]. Ask your purveyor questions like “Is this line-caught or is this farm-raised?” Ask where it’s from. Eat smaller fish: They’re lower on the food chain, and better for the environment and your health.

You spoke recently at the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s sustainable seafood conference Cooking for Solutions about America’s favorite seafood: salmon, shrimp, and tuna, a.k.a. “the big three.” Despite their enduring popularity, they’re some of the hardest to source sustainably. How do you provide Vegas diners with the big three responsibly?

I do not serve farm-raised Atlantic salmon. Wild salmon is the only [kind] I’ll serve when I can get it, and this year it’ll be extremely expensive. When it’s not in season, I’ll serve arctic char to satisfy people’s pink, Omega-3 fish jones. I have a sushi bar in my restaurant, and tuna is very difficult not to serve. I get line-caught from Hawaii, which is a naturally smaller fish, so there’s less concentration of mercury. I don’t buy bigeye, bluefin, and yellowfin, to be honest with you. There’s albacore, which is OK, but from a culinary standpoint I think it’s damn boring. Shrimp is a category I like to avoid, because there is no wonderful example here. The Asian-country farm-raised shrimp should be avoided. Generally speaking, they’re destroying the environment, ripping out mangroves to farm shrimp, throwing chemicals all over the place, and it’s not regulated correctly. The best alternative is farm-raised or wild from the Gulf of Mexico. I get them, but it’s not easy for your average person.

What’s the deal with farm-raised? Why is it bad? It seems like it would be better for the environment.

Open-net carnivorous fish, like farm-raised Atlantic salmon, are bad. Fish escape and cause genetic pollution when they mate with the wild population. They compete for food. The feces and dead fish from the nets create a mucky goo on the base of the natural environment: a suffocating blanket of death. In some cases, antibiotics and chemical pesticide use make it so if one fish gets sick, they all do. What’s good? Farmed fish that are not carnivores, like tilapia and catfish. There are a few good new aquaculture operations I’m working with: Kona Kampachi is a fish from Hawaii that’s a carnivore, but it’s more responsibly farmed. Cobia: Keep your eye out for that. It’s being raised in a responsible, cutting-edge farm in southwest Virginia, and it’s a fantastic fish.

Isn’t it hard for the average person to buy a weird fish they’ve never heard of and figure out what to do with it?

Fish are pretty interchangeable in many, many ways. We’re creatures of habit, and think, “Finally, I found a fish I like, and it’s good for me, and then I order it wherever I go.” That mentality coupled with [the influence of] celebrity chefs … and the media telling you something’s good for you, then everybody jumping on the bandwagon, is hurting us. In my book, I’m going to give you a recipe for arctic char. But guess what? It works well with halibut, tilapia, catfish, and cobia. Be flexible!

Lessley Anderson is senior editor at CHOW.

Photo-illustration by Sean McCabe

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Crushing Bones with Alton Brown

The host of Good Eats divulges his next big career moves

I’ve heard that the next Feasting on Asphalt is not going to be on asphalt at all, but that it’s now Feasting on Waves. Where are you going and how?

We’re going to be down in the Caribbean on catamarans and scuba diving, too. I’m fascinated by the convergence of cultures there. It really can be considered the birthplace of American cuisine.

Your new book, Feasting on Asphalt: The River Run, looks like it was actually your personal journal of the road trip from the TV show. How much of it was really things you collected on the road?

It really was my journal. I was hoping to scan a lot of the notes I’d taken, but they were just too worn or faded to be legible. Instead they just created a font out of my handwriting and used that instead.

Are you serious about Feasting in Air and Space?

It is my sincere hope to do a Feasting in Air and Space. I’m currently working on getting my pilot’s license. I could have had it by now, but I’m busy doing all this other stuff. And we have Good Eats fans in NASA, so I do believe this is a distinct possibility. The [Food] Network just loves it when I talk about doing stuff like this.

Congratulations on re-signing with Food Network for three more years. What’s going on with Good Eats?

I’m just happy to be employed. I don’t take anything for granted. We just finished shooting some episodes in February. Then we’ll go back to shoot more later this year.

Are you going to be involved in the new Iron Chef America: Supreme Cuisine game for Wii and Nintendo DS?

Yes! I’m going in to record for it in July. I’ll be playing myself.

I’ve also read that you’re planning on addressing some of the big food issues. How are you going to do that?

One of the things I’ll be doing is hosting the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s sustainable seafood event [Cooking for Solutions] in May. It’s a challenge to address food issues and make it entertaining, but I’m looking forward to it. As my daughter [Zoey, eight years old] gets older it’s increasingly important to me to illuminate issues.

What’s your go-to meal?

The food I cook at home is very, very simple. I bought my wife a panini press. Don’t ask me which one. I just went in and asked for the most expensive one. Hey, it was a gift for my wife! I think it’s a Krups. So now we take Cornish hens and butterfly them. We lay them out flat and cook them in the panini press. It’s really fast, and there’s something very gratifying about crushing those bones. So now when we need a fast meal at home, it’s: “Quick, somebody get me some Cornish hens!”

In homage to James Lipton’s questionnaire on Inside the Actors Studio, what’s your favorite curse word?

“Oh bother.” I’m from the South.

Louisa Chu is a chef and food writer who’s cooked her way through the world’s hottest kitchens, from El Bulli to Alinea. And yeah, that’s her taking Anthony Bourdain on the Paris meat market tour in No Reservations on the Travel Channel. Louisa can currently be seen in Gourmet’s Diary of a Foodie on PBS—and always found on her own food blog, Movable Feast.

Photo-illustration by Sean McCabe

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Farewell to Hydrocolloids

Chef Alex Stupak’s Mexican food dreams

You were recently on Iron Chef competing against Cat Cora. What do you think about Village Voice food critic Robert Sietsema calling the show bogus?

I wouldn’t say bogus. It’s a jarring experience. You have, like, 10 minutes before you go out to check your pantry ingredients and then you’re pushed into the bright lights and smoke. You have one hour to cook all the food and have one portion plated. That’s why winning the coin toss is a big deal, because you can pick if you want to go first or second.

I thought it was so funny that you got Battle Chocolate, because of the face you made one night at Alinea when we were talking about how clients always want chocolate desserts.

I don’t hate chocolate, but it’s the only flavor on Earth that, if it’s not on the menu, heads will roll. It’s not that way with vanilla or coffee. It’s the shrimp of the pastry world. Why can’t we break free from that freaking format? The spring menu is going to be my first one where I’m not going to have any chocolate. Everything is delicious, so if people don’t like it they can go to hell.

What else is going on, besides work?

I’m in the March issue of Vogue. [Food critic Jeffrey] Steingarten came in for a day to work on desserts. And I’m going to have a website soon. I’ll have my stuff up there, and Martin Kastner [who designed Alinea’s website and sculptural tableware] is designing it. I’m also coming back to Chicago to do some photo shoots for the Alinea [cook] book because most of the desserts in it are mine. I’m also working on a business plan for my own restaurant in Manhattan, but that’s a good two years away.

What’s it going to be like?

I’m going in a completely new direction cooking-wise. We’re planning on opening the best Mexican restaurant in New York City and maybe the country.

Is it going to be experimental Mexican, like Enrique Olvera’s restaurant Pujol?

No, it’s going to be highly traditional and family style. It’s going to revolve around fresh, handmade tortillas, and everything will be brought to the table and passed. Lauren is Mexican on her mother’s side. I’m going to be the chef. Lauren’s title is the tough one to define. She’ll be the pastry chef, but she’ll also be the liaison between front and back of the house.

Are you serious?

It’s the food we really love to eat and cook and serve to each other at home. It’s going to be delicious food at lower prices. When we go out we don’t like to get dressed up and sit for four or five hours—I mean, sometimes we do. But that kind of restaurant is not in my heart right now. We’re going to take regional specialties and try to perfect them. My favorites are Yucatán and Oaxaca.

What’s your family background?

I’m a mutt: Italian, French, and Russian.

We’ve talked before about our mutual obsession with the Parisian pastry chef Pierre Hermé. How has his work influenced you?

I’ve read all his books back to front. I took his lemon cream [from Hermé’s famous Tarte au Citron] but changed it to yuzu. And I figured out a way to hydrate agar-agar into the yuzu juice so when my yuzu curd sets it’s sliceable; it almost becomes plasticized, which suits my style of plating, which is a lot more aggressive. It looks like it’s going to be stiff and rigid, but the texture is just as delicate as his lemon cream.

How do you serve it?

It’s on the menu now with pistachio, spruce yogurt, and shortbread, where the pâte sablée [classic French buttery, short crust] is puréed so it’s like eating cookie dough, because I like eating cookie dough.

You and Lauren recently got married. Who catered your wedding?

We got married October 27th in LA with a humongous Mexican wedding with 300 guests and a mariachi band. Patina catered, but Fantasy Frostings made the cake. It was four tiers: two German chocolate and two lemon/black currant. It was decorated in silver and black Jackson Pollock splatters with purple glitter. I didn’t have anything to do with it—I just showed up.

So getting back to your restaurant plans, do you think you’ll ever open a restaurant that’s more your own personal style of cuisine?

It is my dream someday to open a place where I can show off my parlor tricks, where other chefs come in and have no idea what I did. But for now we looked at what we think New York City needs, not what my ego needs. And we can’t spend $4 million on a restaurant, so we’re planning a place that’s smaller, a bit more humble. I’m planning to leave the liquid nitrogen and hydrocolloids for now.

Louisa Chu is a chef and food writer who’s cooked her way through the world’s hottest kitchens, from El Bulli to Alinea. And yeah, that’s her taking Anthony Bourdain on the Paris meat market tour in No Reservations on the Travel Channel. Louisa can currently be found in Gourmet’s Diary of a Foodie on PBS, Gourmet’s Choptalk, and her own food blog, Movable Feast.

Photo-illustration by Sean McCabe

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Stéphane Reynaud Says: Make a Terrine

He explains his love for the ultimate sharable meal

What made you want to do a whole book on terrines?

I like terrines because they’re for friends, for a big table. That’s why I wanted to write this book, because I like to share food with people I like. You can have the best food on your plate—if you are alone or if you are with bad people, it’s not so good. For me, cooking is to share with people.

What is a terrine?

Terrine. It’s very good. It’s hard to explain for me in English. To make a terrine you need to have an oven. You have to have lots of imagination. And to have a supermarket close to you, and then you can fix your terrine. You can make a very good terrine of vegetables, of fish, and it’s very, very, very easy to fix; people are often afraid, [but] it’s easy to cook.

Why do people think of terrines as being so hard to make?

I really don’t know. I think in the mind of people, it takes a long time to prepare it and you have to have a lot of ingredients. During Christmas I gave some lessons to people to make their own terrines, and they were very surprised, because they say, “But that’s very easy.” So you just have to start one time, and then you will see.

What makes all of these variations in your book a terrine?

For me terrine is in your mind. For me terrine is something that you can share. It’s something you can cut in 2 pieces or in 20 pieces. Terrine for me is a symbol. ... You can have terrine for [an] entrée, main course, dessert—for anything. It’s very good for a buffet.

Is there anything you can’t put in a terrine?

I think you can use anything you want; it’s why I wanted to have all these different recipes, to show to people that if you have an imagination, and you have the base to fix your terrine, that you can do anything you want. If you have eggs and cream, then you can start a terrine with that. If you have a meat, then you can use that.

That’s why I wanted to write this book too. If you do the recipe the way it’s written, then you will have a very good terrine. But I like when people use a recipe and they make their own recipe.

What is your favorite terrine?

I have a lot of favorite terrines. I love the terrine with foie gras, and all the terrines with fish. I think it’s very pure. You have the real taste of the fish, and I like that. It’s very important to use good ingredients. If you make a terrine with a bad fish, you’re going to have a bad terrine.

What should people know about making a terrine?

They have to buy good ingredients. I think it’s nice to start with a meat terrine; it’s always a good success. It’s the easiest terrine to make, because you mix everything and then you put it in the oven. Then after, try a terrine with fish, and then use the eggs and cream. It needs more precision with eggs and cream than with meat, so start with meat—it’s very easy.

Do you have any tips for making a good terrine?

Just put what you like in the terrine. It’s very important that when you cook something, [you put the ingredients you love in it].

Anything else you would like people to know about terrines?

I really would like for people to try and fix terrines, because when you start to fix one, you really want to do another one, and then you are going to start to [develop your signature terrine]. When you have your own terrine, you are going to be proud of it. I like that, when people are proud about their own terrine.

Photo Credit: Charlotte Lascève; photo-illustration by Sean McCabe

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Hot Spring in Paris

American chef Daniel Rose on his French restaurant

What’s on your menu tonight and what’s the schedule?

The concept should be done by 6 p.m. By then we should know what’s dinner. We’ll grind up the celery root soup, then taste it to make sure that’s done. The second course will be the St. Jacques [scallops] in kind of a tartare with radish, green apple, black radish, and this green sauce with watercress and a little apple cider vinegar and lime for something acidulated. There’s the rabbit with black olives and carrot purée, and maybe these panko things: Somebody who worked at Zuni Café told me how she likes to cook with dried breadcrumbs, then make a sludge with olive oil. And then I have this jus—everybody loves this jus. By 8 p.m. we should be chopping herbs and getting all that kind of stuff done. The first tables come in at 8:30 p.m. Things start getting going at 9 p.m. For dessert we’ll have orange salad with chocolate, chestnut cream, and fresh chestnut chips.

How has your cooking evolved since opening your own place?

I was going to add star anise with the butter to the soup as a beurre noisette, but I’m a little worried about it. I usually don’t cook with any strong spices. Clients are making reservations three months in advance, so I cannot do that. I have to do what they’ve imagined for three months that I’d deliver. When I first opened, it was much different. If you’d just come by, I’d put the star anise in there, but now I can’t do that. I think it’s time to close the restaurant. Or change it in some profound way.

Has the media, particularly the French media, portrayed Spring accurately?

They got it all wrong. They said it’s like coming to eat in some guy’s house, and I thought that was really bizarre. Except for the fact that I’m up close, I don’t know people who eat like this at home. In the beginning it was slightly different too. I’d write on the board outside “lamb, octopus, chocolate, foie gras,” and I made dinner for each table separately. I asked what they wanted to eat, how many courses. But it was a bit of theater. I’d suggest it like, “Maybe you’ll like it like this.” That went on for the first two weeks.

How do you think you became this phenomenon in Paris?

Because it’s a good deal and because the French sense a generosity from the person running it and that’s kind of rare. There’s a little bit more energy. This is a show—this is Broadway Danny Rose.

So what’s the real story about how you became a chef? Because, as the press tells it, you’re an overnight success: that you were an American student in Paris who lived upstairs from a restaurant, fell in love with the business, got a job at a Michelin three-star, then—voilà—opened your own place. I know it can’t have been easy.

It’s such crap. I’ve been cooking for seven years. In 1998 I was a student at the American University of Paris studying philosophy and art history. The first time I ever really noticed cooks was when I watched them smoke out back—I lived upstairs from Le Violon d’Ingres, and people say I worked there but I never did. They also say I’m self-taught, but I went to the Institut Paul Bocuse for a year after I graduated from university.

Where have you cooked then?

I staged at a Michelin three-star in Brussels, that’s no longer a three-star. Then I went to a restaurant in Brittany for a year where there were just three of us in the kitchen with a coal-burning stove. I came back to Paris and got a job at a small teahouse that no longer exists. Then I went to Spain to just eat for a while. After that I went to Avignon to work for about a year, then Italy for a little while. At the end of 2003 I saw an ad for a job in Guatemala looking for a chef. The money I put into the restaurant was almost all Guatemala money. I was really well paid and there were no taxes.

Have you ever cooked in the States?

Not really. I worked for one night at TRU, spent one day at Montrachet [currently closed for renovation], and one day at North Pond.

Why did you decide to open a restaurant in Paris and not Chicago, where you’re from and where restaurants are so hot right now?

I think it wouldn’t have been that interesting for me. Here I’m open Tuesday through Friday and sometimes on Saturday. You can’t do that in the States and make a living. I don’t want to open a business until I can find somebody who can run it. For me the payoff is something else.

I don’t understand. Isn’t this restaurant a business? And what’s the payoff?

This is not a business, it’s a project. Originally the project was to open the restaurant only for one year. And somebody else was supposed to be the cook, but he left before we even opened. But this is the worst investment in the world. For me personally it’s a good investment because it will open a door for me to meet somebody else. I keep a record of all my dishes for my upcoming book, 365 Days of Spring. I haven’t got a publisher yet, but I’m talking to some people. And ideally the best thing for me would be if I could be on TV. I mean not necessarily my face on the screen, but producing a food and travel show based here in Paris. Doing something like that, that pays money during the week, and something like this, that’s open and accessible at a reasonable price just once a week or twice a month, whatever’s feasible—now that would be pleasurable.

Louisa Chu is a chef and food writer who’s cooked her way through the world’s hottest kitchens, from El Bulli to Alinea. And yeah, that’s her taking Anthony Bourdain on the Paris meat market tour in No Reservations on the Travel Channel. Louisa can currently be found in Gourmet’s Diary of a Foodie on PBS, Gourmet’s Choptalk, and her own food blog, Movable Feast.

Photo-illustration by Sean McCabe

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Bistronomics 101

French chef Iñaki Aizpitarte proves that you don’t need a trust fund to afford haute cuisine

How did you get started as a chef?

Well, I’m autodidactic. I began cooking eight years ago. It was really by chance—a result of a trip. Um, what was I saying? Sorry.

No, no problem. What is it that attracted to you cooking?

I was always attracted to cooking. I already loved it, and then as soon as I started cooking I really felt I needed to stop everything else in order to cook more and more. I wanted to go to school, [but] I was too old and didn’t have enough money. So, I just knocked on chefs’ doors, and I got my foot in the door at more traditional, classic places. I ended up at a little café where I found a cuisine with a living soul. I started to develop my own story, my own rapport with cooking. And then I got the opportunity to be head chef at a little place called La Famille, and I eventually left there to open Chateaubriand.

So do you think it’s necessary to have a basis in classic cuisine to do creative, modern food like you do?

In any case, I think you should have it. For example, now, with the really contemporary cuisine, like this modern Spanish movement, if one doesn’t have the classic background, then what? It’s better to know simplicity, to know the product, then you can understand how to respect it.

So, that’s your mantra: know the technique and know the product?

Mine? Yeah, yeah. For sure.

And is your restaurant organic?

Well, I pay attention to my products. I’ve got a lot of different suppliers, and I choose as I need.

And do you try to be a locavore?

Sure, I try, but I can’t find everything in Paris. It’s a metropolitan area after all.

So then how would you define your take on food at this moment?

My point of view? Well, I try to keep myself to a style of cuisine that’s got clarity and is simple. I try to have fun with it and to amuse my diners. And I challenge myself to simplify and simplify.

How did you try to represent that with your demonstration here at Madrid Fusión?

I did a demonstration on haute cuisine at affordable prices. It’s a bit of a game to do this, quite challenging really. It comes down to the fact that I don’t want to only have rich patrons. I want a place where my friends can come from time to time; a place they can afford. So it’s really important to me to have both affordability and creativity. It’s important to think whom you’re doing it for—even here at a big event like Madrid.

Has that balance of creativity and affordability always been important to you?

Yeah, of course, for my own economic benefit too. Because at a restaurant with affordable prices and small margins, you really have to pay attention to what you’re doing. It’s really a gamble to do this affordable, high-cuisine style in a place like my restaurant that isn’t even all that big. But you learn to adapt to it. Our solution was to have one nightly menu. I think it’s more interesting, because then we do half portions like tapas. And it’s more interesting for me too, with the little tastes of this and that.

And then, with my space limitations, and with just a few people in the kitchen, well, I was pretty much obligated to do a sole nightly menu. I really thought it out, this is the solution I arrived at, and the whole of the operation revolves around that. And I’m proud that this bistronomic concept is really working out. I mean I’ve now increased my prices by one euro, and with that I’ve doubled the number of plates we offer on the menu, I’ve added a chef, added a server; I guess I’m probably sick in the head.

And as a result you’ve found yourself a part of this movement coined bistronomics.

Yeah, you could say that, because my menu is really bistro-ish. I’m in a Parisian bistro and I do bistro fare, but it’s creative and very personal. The thing is I’d say everyone in this type of bistronomic restaurant really expresses his own style, with his own mentality.

In the beginning, bistronomics started from chefs who were over the traditional, palatial style of cooking. They were through with that, with the whole entourage and all of it, so they took off to open places that were simpler.

So, what would you say to the mentality that persists in the States that French cuisine is defined by the classic style of cooking?

Oh, the idea that French cuisine’s got this old-school reputation? It’s hard, because France will always have that; it’s our gastronomic roots. But we’re really a cosmopolitan country, and we’re really open to change. There’s that stuff, sure, but now we’ve really got it all. But in Paris, it’s really all about Chateaubriand.

Translated from French by CHOW Food Editor Aïda Mollenkamp

Photo-illustration by Sean McCabe

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Vegans Aren’t Misanthropes

Isa Chandra Moskowitz dispels the myths

Was it hard to give up meat, dairy, and eggs?

The meat part wasn’t. It was the little bits of dairy. I would eat a bunch of Snickers and feel bad. I went vegan twice. The first time, I was 16. Then I stopped being vegan because I felt like, “I want to be ‘normal.’” But it didn’t feel good to be normal. Somebody said once: “If your friend leaves the room, you’d never take a dollar from their pocket.” That’s the way you feel if you take dairy and cheese from an animal you care about. I became vegan again when I was in my mid-20s.

Do you worry about ruining other people’s fun if you’re all out eating and you can’t eat most of the stuff?

I don’t concern myself with that. So what if I’m eating a salad? I don’t think I’m ruining their fun. Sometimes you spend the whole meal having people apologize to you. They say, “I’m sorry, I’m going to order a hamburger. Is that OK with you?” It makes me think that maybe they want to stop eating meat, and that’s why they’re saying it.

Do you tell them that you think it’s cruel to eat meat?

I won’t usually say anything while someone’s eating. But when people start asking me, then I’ll say something. Usually, people ask why I gave up meat, and I’ll tell them: the needless slaughter and killing of animals. I’ll talk about the environmental reasons for giving up meat—methane and greenhouse gases and things like that. And I’ll usually have them try to make the connection that pigs are as loving and as smart as dogs.

What are some stereotypes that get perpetuated about vegans?

All vegans are misanthropes. Vegans don’t care about people. That’s not true. I think if you did a poll, you would find they do activism for human rights as well as animal rights. There’s the “emaciated vegan with an eating disorder” stereotype, which I’m not. And: All vegans are rich, upper middle class, and white. All of those things are perpetuated, I think, just to undermine the basic premise of veganism.

What did you eat growing up?

Hamburger Helper, frozen food, microwave food. I did have an interest in cooking, but it wasn’t accessible to me.

How did you become a vegan chef?

Ever since I went vegan, even in my interim of not being vegan, food was a way for me to build community. In the ’90s I was a waitress and went into the back of the kitchen and learned stuff, and I also worked for a while cooking in a café in Baltimore. I got my hands on every grain, every bean, and just kept cooking things. I read a lot of classic books: Joy of Cooking, Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone. I went to the library and looked through books on every single “ethnic” cuisine. I went to farmers’ markets and got acquainted with every vegetable.

I would go to restaurants and think: “I want to make this at home.” And I had a knack for doing this. Now if you want to know how to make pad thai, you could go to the Internet. But back then, you’d be like, “What the heck is in this?”

The dishes I made from Veganomicon seemed both simpler and more flavorful than vegan food I’ve made from other cookbooks or have eaten at restaurants. How would you describe your cooking versus that of other vegan chefs?

There are two extremes in vegan cooking. One is everything [incorporates] prepackaged, high-sodium fake meats. The other is everything is kinda highfalutin, using weird ingredients most people don’t have around, like a particular kind of sherry vinegar. Or they’re really complicated restaurant recipes, like in The Millennium Cookbook. I would say that our recipes are for the home cook, are really homemade, not semi-homemade, and it’s not food that started its life in a jar of chemicals. And it’s made with stuff you can find at most supermarkets.

What big things have you learned about vegan cooking while writing your three cookbooks?

You don’t need eggs. Before I wrote Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, I was always trying to work on egg replacers, and a lot of the time you don’t need them. The gluten from the flour works fine to hold things together.

Your recipes coax really intense flavor out of vegetables. What are some of the techniques you use to do this?

A lot of times vegans think they need to use 3 teaspoons of thyme and 4 tablespoons of cumin, and they way overflavor things. [Romero and I] are both into cooking vegetables so their flavor comes out. Roasting them goes a long way, as does grilling in a cast iron grill pan if you can’t use an outdoor grill. People worry because it gets really smoky, but that’s OK. Things like asparagus, zucchini, and eggplant are great grilled.

If somebody wants to go vegan, what would be your advice?

All the nutritional information is available online, like at the Vegetarian Resource Group. Or read the book Becoming Vegan. But I think the biggest thing is to read up on animal agriculture. If you become vegan for health reasons, it might not really stick. The only way it’ll stick is if you’re doing it for your own ethical reasons. Eventually your taste buds do catch up with your ethics. I didn’t think that I could live without blue cheese, and I’m doing fine. You don’t have to be perfect at first, but do what you can.

What’s next for you?

I’m working on opening a restaurant [in New York], which I hope to do by [this] summer. I’m doing a brunch book, and a cookie book. I try to donate my services to whatever I can, like Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary. I did a big Thanksgiving for them for 300 people.

What’s the restaurant going to be like?

I have no idea—I’m not gonna jinx myself. I want it to be vegan, local cuisine that’s not incredibly expensive. I think a lot of people think vegan means it’s going to be $26 entrées or a Boca Burger, and I don’t want to do either of those. I want to do vegan home cooking. That’s pretty much it.

Photo-illustration by Sean McCabe

Lessley Anderson is senior editor at CHOW.

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Tony Bourdain Would Pimp for Prada

The No Reservations star shares his plans, real and imagined

Why did you quit smoking completely—rather than just not smoke around the baby?

It just became so hard. I mean, where am I going to smoke? I can’t smoke in my own apartment—the last refuge. … [A]ll that would be left would be the short distance between the hotel and the media escort’s car, and during shows, in which case I’d kind of only be smoking for television, and that seems fundamentally wrong. I’m going to end up like Hunter Thompson—tragic. And I’m not wearing the leather jacket anymore either. I mean, occasionally I’ll bring my old friend down. I joke about bobbleheads: I’m not going to become an action figure.

What’s with the book?

You were there! It’s our never-ending summer vacation isn’t it? Who gets to do what we do? It’s fun going where we go. Being able to go to cool places and be treated well and have lusty adventures in faraway places that you’ve only seen in movies. It doesn’t suck. It just absolutely is great.

What’s been the best show for you?

Tuscany was the most fun show to do ever. We were staying in this incredible villa. Right in the same town as Dario [Cecchini]—and Dario drops by. Faith Willinger was in town. Cesare [Casella] comes up to cook, hang out, and bring us gigantic truffles. People are giving us cheese that’s so good you want to black out. It was ludicrously good.

How was Jamaica? I heard you had a tough scene.

The single hardest scene [we] ever shot. Ever. Ever. Insane. We went caving. In the middle of the jungle. Down a shit-filled, guano-slicked tube. [Cameramen] Todd [Liebler] and Zach [Zamboni] are going, “This is fucked up. This is insanely reckless behavior.” [Segment producer] Diane [Schutz] said, “I thought there were going to be guardrails. And a gift shop.” You had to lower yourself down through moss-covered tree roots. It was horrifying. And covered with cockroaches.

But it’s going to make great television.

I heard you were going to be producing another show?

I hope this Mario [Batali] thing really goes through [for Travel Channel]. It looks like it’s going to happen. I think it’s going to be the greatest thing on television ever.

It will be an exhaustive, definitive Italy series with the kind of production values that Planet Earth had. It will let Mario be the fucking genius that we know he is: able to talk about everything from Renaissance architecture to rock-and-roll b-sides to food, geography, everything. It will just unleash him.

It is my expectation that it will be a series. Especially given his shoddy treatment at Food Network. Who wouldn’t want to make TV with us?

Why don’t you do endorsements?

I’ve done no endorsements ever. Amstel had some deal with MSN—they were paying for the page or something like that. I got no money. I got paid to write prose for MSN, which I did. Amstel? I don’t drink it. I’ll tell you right up front.

I think it’s vanity. I was having a very thoughtful conversation about this with Rocco DiSpirito—whom I make a lot of fun of, but who’s not a stupid guy—and another chef, whom I won’t mention, whom I really respect. I felt foolish at the end of the conversation. I mean, what is my problem? I think I’m behind the curve on this. Maybe it’s cynical, but I think to be honest with myself it is sheer vanity that prevents me from doing it. At this point it’s almost a fault. I’m looking to lose my cherry to the right guy, I guess. I’m thinking Aston Martin—my ankles will be behind my ears in a hot second! Aston Martin, and Prada, I’m there!

What about offers to be a partner in a restaurant?

It’s happened recently. “Here are monstrous sums of money to just show up with your friends once a month.” And it’s in a city I really like. And it’s not even once a month: “When you can, bring some friends. Spend as much money as you like. Stay in the presidential suite.” But you know what I’m thinking? I’m thinking, “I’ve been in the restaurant business long enough to know that you want to put your name anywhere near the door, you better know everything—everything.” The bartender serves some 17-year-old girl, and she goes out and gets into a car wreck, and it’s “Girl Dies at Bourdain Restaurant.” No way. I’d be freaked out if I saw online that somebody found a fly in their soup or their plate was crusty. I’d take that personally. With the restaurant business, you’re either crazy enough to go all the way or you don’t bother.

What about a place like Mario’s with the Spotted Pig? Let’s say Fergus [Henderson] wanted to open a place?

Fergus? I’d do anything with Fergus. Anytime. Blind. I don’t care. We could kill 17-year-olds with regularity! I will personally serve 17-year-olds if I’m in business with Fergus!

How’s your cooking these days?

Well we’ll find out for sure on the “Into the Fire” special we’re doing Christmas week. We’re shooting it. We’re going back to Les Halles. I’m doing a double shift on sauté station. There are twice as many seats as there used to be. I will work sauté station for lunch and dinner.

And my grill bitch will be Eric [Ripert]! Can you imagine? Customers are going to shit themselves when they see us there! You know, “[It’s the] fish dude!” Most I ever did at Les Halles was 365 [plates]—that was when the dining room was half as big as it is now. Lunch was about 120, 140—it’s turn and burn.

Photograph courtesy of Diane Schutz and the Travel Channel; photo-illustration by Sean McCabe

Louisa Chu is a chef and food writer who’s cooked her way through the world’s hottest kitchens, from El Bulli to Alinea. And yeah, that’s her taking Anthony Bourdain on the Paris meat market tour in No Reservations on the Travel Channel. Louisa can currently be found in Gourmet’s Diary of a Foodie on PBS, Gourmet’s Choptalk, and her own food blog, Movable Feast.

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