Restaurant Pantries Inspire Budget-Friendly Dishes
Commercial-kitchen pantries are stocked with culinary inspiration. Here, chefs spill favorite secrets from their kitchen shelves.
Kate Leahy, Senior Associate Editor -- Restaurants & Institutions, October 1, 2009
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| A house-made blended salt is served at Taste. |
It happens in nearly every chef-driven restaurant: Some must-try new product purchased with the best intentions finds its way to the back of the shelf where it sits, unused, for months.
But that may be happening a lot less often. Rising food costs and tight budgets are forcing chefs to take stock of their dry-goods inventories and encouraging them to use up what they already have on hand before purchasing extra novelties. It’s not always a hardship: Many are finding that plenty of new inspiration can come from their usual stash of kitchen staples.
That’s the view Chef de Cuisine Marc Dunham takes at The Ranchers Club, an upscale restaurant on the campus of Oklahoma State University (OSU), Stillwater. Dunham’s basics? Flour, a couple of good salts, some versatile vinegars, canola and olive oils, a few whole spices, a handful of pasta and whole grains, and one kind of rice.
“My pantry is pretty small,” says Dunham. At The Ranchers Club, he stocks a red-wine vinegar and a quality balsamic. The spices he keeps on hand—typically fennel, black cumin and saffron—are used throughout the menu. But his menu isn’t static. For example, saffron risotto (made with carnaroli rice) one day becomes fried saffron arancini the following day.
His reason for keeping things simple: Inventory is unrealized cash. “When ingredients are sitting on the shelves, I see dollar amounts,” he says.
R&I asked several chefs to share how they’re stretching the ingredients inside their pantries. Here are some of their methods.
Shelf Life
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| ajasteak’s Kobe fries with pickling liquid |
Boston’s Restaurant Week was so successful this summer that it was extended from one week to three. The challenge for Greg Griffie, executive chef of the Renaissance Boston Waterfront Hotel, was offering creative menu items at the property’s flagship restaurant, 606 Congress, that would encourage guests to return after the special promotion was over, without adding too much to the restaurant’s overall budget.
For a Restaurant Week dish of deep-fried halibut fingers battered in rice-flour tempura, Griffie concocted a malt-vinegar dip, a signature spin on bottled malt vinegar typically offered with fish and chips. For the dip, he reduced the malt vinegar with sugar, salt, shallots and thyme. To accompany the halibut, Griffie made a fennel-and-orange slaw seasoned with ancho chiles and sherry vinegar, two more ingredients from his pantry. “This was a dish that came out of our normal inventory,” Griffie says.
Shelf Staples
Being responsible for all of the hotel’s foodservice means that Griffie is always looking for items that he can use at breakfast, lunch and dinner. “At a hotel of this size, I want to keep my inventory as low as possible,” Griffie explains. “I love new items, but I can be apprehensive about adding them.” From the dried pineapple, an ingredient in the breakfast granola, Griffie makes a pineapple ancho-chile ketchup served with cheese plates at lunch and dinner. GET THE RECIPE
Salt Mining
Craig Hetherington likes to keep an assortment of specialty salts on hand. To ensure that they don’t sit on the shelf unused at Taste restaurant at the Seattle Art Museum (a Bon Appétit Management account), the executive chef combines the salts—pink salt, lava salt, kosher salt and smoked salt—with chile flakes and cinnamon to create a custom blend that he uses for seasoning food in the kitchen and also sets out for customers in the dining room. “That’s our table salt,” he says. “We go through the stuff.”
What he doesn’t advocate is unrestrained use of the ingredient. He phased out a salt-crusted salmon preparation for this reason. “If we were having a party for 400 people, we would go through eight boxes of salt,” he says. “It was such a waste.”
Smoke and Pepper
At ajasteak at Chicago’s Dana Hotel, Executive Chef Joshua Linton takes the Tellicherry peppercorns and sea salt regularly used for seasoning meat and gives them a twist: he smokes them.
A hint of smoke can complement a perfectly charred steak, Linton explains. “An actual smoked item is great, but it is a very specific and powerful ingredient in itself,” he says. “Using a smoked spice is a way to add subtle smokiness.”
Since Linton doesn’t have a smoker, he uses a simple stove-top method: He lines a 4-inch hotel pan with hickory chips, and then covers it with a 2-inch perforated hotel pan lined with a sieve. Next, Linton pours a quart of peppercorns on top of the sieve, stretches two damp towels tightly over the pan, and place a third pan on top for a lid. The makeshift smoker is set on the stove over high heat for 25 minutes. (Sea salt is smoked using the same method.)
Liquid Courage
Salt and pepper aren’t the only items that serve multiple purposes in Linton’s kitchen. Pickling liquid from house-pickled jalapeños on the shelf at ajasteak becomes a dip for the Kobe fries served at the restaurant’s bar.
“When I design a dish, I design it for flavor, first and foremost,” Linton says. “The trick is having a second or third look to justify including the dish on the menu.”
Jar Stars
Dani Cone found menu inspiration in another common pantry item—though it’s not an ingredient. Last winter, the owner of three-unit Fuel Coffee in Seattle began using Mason jars for baking pies, which she sells under the name High-5 Pie as an accompaniment to coffee at Fuel. Cone learned she could bake the pies in the jars without having to make any adjustments to her recipes for all-butter pie crust and fillings (such as apple or mixed berry). And every customer who buys a pie, gets to keep the jar. “We’ve been
marketing them as little self-contained gifts,” Cone says.
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Ancho Chile and Pineapple Ketchup
Executive Chef Greg Griffie,
606 Congress
Yeild: 1 1/2 cups
| Ancho chiles | 4 |
| Dried pineapple | 1 cup |
| Caramelized onion | ¾ cup |
| Honey | ½ cup |
| Sherry vinegar | 2 Tbsp. |
| Salt | 2 tsp. |
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To prepare the chiles, warm in a 350F oven for 2-3 minutes until flexible. Remove the stem and seeds and place in warm water until hydrated, 8-10 minutes. Drain.
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Soak pineapple in hot water until plumped, 8-10 minutes. Drain.
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In a blender, purée chiles, pineapple, onion, honey, vinegar and salt. Strain mixture; chill. Serve with a cheese plate or use as chutney in a sandwich.
Contact writer at kate.leahy@reedbusiness.com
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