MENU TRENDS: Learning from the Mediterranean
R&I shares 10 cooking tips from the Culinary Institute of America's Worlds of Flavor conference.
By Kate Leahy, Senior Associate Editor -- Restaurants & Institutions, November 25, 2008
RELATED VIDEO: 2008 CIA World of Flavors Conference
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| Sicilian Chef Ciccio Sultano, chef/partner at Il Duomo in Ragusa, Sicily, demonstrates Sicilian pasta dishes with American Chef Paul Bartolotta of Bartolotta Ristorante di Mare in Las Vegas. |
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| At the CIA's Worlds of Flavor conference in St. Helena, Calif., chefs and food writers demonstrated Mediterranean cooking techniques. |
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| With the help of culinary students from The Napa Valley Cooking School, Chef Jim Botsacos from Molyvos in New York City served a celebratory Greek lunch for conference attendees. |
“Use more olive oil” was the not-so-subtle message guest chefs presenting at the Culinary Institute of America’s 11th annual World of Flavor Conference wanted attendees to absorb. The conference focused on regional Mediterranean cuisines, so seminars and kitchen demonstrations were awash in olive oil and other essential Mediterranean ingredients.
From Nov. 6-8 at the CIA’s Greystone campus in St Helena, Calif., chefs and culinary experts from countries including Greece, Italy, Turkey and Lebanon shared their culinary traditions. In addition to advocating the liberal use of olive oil, they provided useful Mediterranean-cooking tips. Here, 10 fresh ideas:
1. Prepare preserved lemons using a sous vide technique. Mourad Lahlou, chef/owner of Aziza in San Francisco, uses sous vide for his lemons because it’s much faster (traditional preserved lemons take three weeks to cure). In a plastic bag, add lemon wedges, olive oil, salt and lemon juice (about 1½ tablespoons of salt per lemon). Vacuum-seal the bag, then cook it in a water bath or immersion circulator for a few hours.
2. Make smoked olive oil. Franco “Ciccio” Sultano, chef/partner at Il Duomo in Ragusa, Sicily, pours olive oil into a baking pan and puts the pan in his wood-burning oven as the fire smolders, infusing the oil with a smoky essence.
3. Give gravlax Greek flair. At Molyvos in New York City, chef/partner Jim Botsacos cures sushi-grade tuna in salt, sugar, dill and lemon zest for 15 minutes. He rinses the fish and slices it thinly, adding dill, lemon zest and olive oil to garnish.
4. Grind saffron with a cube of sugar using a mortar and pestle. The sugar absorbs any moisture in the saffron, allowing it to be finely ground. Najmieh Batmanglij, a U.S.-based cookbook author and teacher, infuses ground saffron in rose water, which she adds to baked quince.
5. Season meat and veal with a Tunisian spice blend. Cookbook Author Paula Wolfert suggests tabil, a blend of coriander, caraway seeds, dried garlic and dried red pepper.
6. Update tzatziki (a yogurt-garlic-cucumber dip) with an upscale twist. Ana Sortun, chef/owner of Oleana in Cambridge, Mass., layers yogurt with roasted beets, toasted slivered almonds, sesame seeds and za’atar (a spice blend of toasted sesame seeds, dried thyme, dried marjoram and sumac), then garnishes the tzatziki with shaved black truffles.
7. Blanch and shock fresh pasta sheets before assembling lasagna. When assembling lasagna alla Bolognese made with fresh, hand-rolled sheets of pasta, Alessandra Spisni, founder and owner of La Vecchia Scuola Bolognese in Bologna, Italy, blanches and shocks the sheets in order to firm up the pasta before it’s baked.
8. Use bottarga. Christoforos Peskias, the inventive chef at 48 The Restaurant in Athens, Greece, calls this ingredient (made from salting and curing tuna or mullet roe) the "bacon of the sea.” For a dish nicknamed Greek carbonara, he shaves bottarga over daikon radish “noodles.”
9. Finish pasta with fresh ricotta. Corrado de Virgilio, a lecturer at cooking schools in the Italian cities of Bari and Venice, finishes an orecchiette pasta dish with “ricotta spaghetti.” He puts ricotta in a food mill, aims the mill over the pasta, and cranks the mill until so-called noodles of ricotta coat the top of the pasta.
10. Cure anchovies. Popular white Spanish anchovies (boquerones) are cured in vinegar. At B44 Catalan Bistro in San Francisco, Chef/partner Daniel Olivella makes his own. He cleans fresh anchovies, seasons them with salt, cures them for six hours in vinegar, and marinates them in garlic vinaigrette before serving.
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