Archive for the ‘Laurine’ Category
Left Coast Wandering Supper Club with Chef Laurine: Volume 4
Left Coast Wandering Supper Club Flyer
Laurine Wickett is returning to Coffee Bar Cafe in Potrero Hill on Saturday, May 22nd for the 4th volume of her Left Coast Wandering Supper Club. She is cooking a prix fixe, 3 course meal for $35 and Coffee Bar has chosen a wine pairing option for $55. Seatings are at 6:30pm and 8:30pm. This is a great way to taste Laurine’s sexy fresh food in a beautiful chic atmosphere.
To make a reservation email your seating time preference and party number to lwickettatcoffeebar@gmail.com
This will sell-out so make your reservation today.
Left Coast Wandering Supper Club with Chef Laurine
Left Coast Wandering Supper Club Flyer
Laurine Wickett is returning to Coffee Bar Cafe in Potrero Hill on Saturday, April 17 for the 3rd volume of her Left Coast Wandering Supper Club. She is cooking a prix fixe, 3 course meal for $35 and Coffee Bar has chosen a wine pairing option for $55. Seatings are at 6:30pm and 8:30pm. This is a great way to taste Laurine’s sexy fresh food in a beautiful chic atmosphere.
To make a reservation email your seating time preference and party number to lwickettatcoffeebar@gmail.com
This will sell-out so make your reservation today.
Barcelona
I returned from Barcelona a week ago and still, I find myself dreaming of Spain. The laid-back lifestyle of that country–where wine is cheaper than water, work is not everything and they take afternoons off–has sunk into my skin.
Not only are Spain’s people beautiful and well-dressed, but they also appear to lead a very low-stress existence. Miraculously, they eat all day long and stay relatively thin. What’s more, hams hang everywhere. Our mornings, in a very Spanish fashion, began each day with a visit to the neighborhood café where we drank café con leche and a pastry or bocadillo. We savored the morning, alongside most Barcelonians, who don’t take coffee to go but instead stay to enjoy their food and drink, catching up with friends or chatting with the café’s owner, who can almost always be found right across the counter, making your food.
In the afternoon, we visited the Boqueria Market, where it seems all of Barcelona does their shopping. Typically, markets give a good indication of what the locals are cooking, in time with the seasons, and Boqueria was no exception. We found chickens and game birds with heads still in tact, rooster combs, dried salt cod, snails, wild mushrooms, olives, fresh fish and several butchers with everything from whole baby pigs to offal. Some of the best sausages and hams in the world are to be found in those stalls. Read the rest of this entry »
Iron Chef
© Henry Dombey/FACECOLLECTIVE
It’s project week at Gateway School, a very important event in the school’s academic curriculum. The students are cooking this week’s project in a week-long marathon of Iron Chef competitions and they invited me to participate.
I started the day with a quick plug for healthy eating and the benefits of whole foods over processed ones, to remind the kids how important it is to form healthy food habits now, while they’re young. Next, I reviewed the importance of cleanliness and sanitation in the kitchen. We washed our hands together and made sure to cover or tie back any long hair. This second part was requested especially by the judges, who had found a long hair in one of the competition dishes two days earlier.
Before the competition began, I gave a short demo on how to make and roll out fresh pasta and discussed the differences between fresh and dried. While we worked on this, we talked about how widespread pasta is in culinary traditions. The Thai and Vietnamese have rice stick noodles, the Chinese have egg noodles, the Japanese have ramen and soba noodles and the Italians of course have, well, lots. In the Italian genre, we went over sauces and pairing briefly before the competition began.
All of this, of course, prepared the students at Gateway to tackle their secret ingredient with some culinary . As if this weren’t enough of a challange, the competition took place in the school’s bio-lab, where we were cooking on propane stoves, chopping with steak knives and using pretty low-grade cookware. In spite of this, there was palpable team spirit filling up that room between teams Spicy Hot Mamas and Jumbo Gumbo.
Each team had a chef, several prep cooks and several dishwashers. Flour was everywhere before too long. While one group asked about making ravioli’s, another worked on just getting the pasta to go through the machine. There was a basic cream sauce, tomato sauce, a butter sauce and the biggest surprise–broccoli romanesco. Especially surprising was that no one on that team had eaten or cooked it before! I made a suggestion to cook it in brown butter, which I stand by, but the browning butter let off enough smoke to set off the fire alarm and the entire school had to evacuate! It felt very nostalgic, filing out in a single file like that.
Once we were back in the kitchen, the teams fired the stoves back up and finished doing the dishes. The shrimp fettuccini was finished off with a salad of apples, caramelized pecans and served with fresh squeezed tangerine juice. The ravioli plate came out with lightly seasoned garlic bread. But the clear winner, in terms of originality and taste, was the Brown Sugar Mamas’ Broccoli Romanesco with shrimp, leeks and basil. One of my fellow judges was even interested in the recipe.
Using the Iron Chef competition turned out to be a great teaching tool. If the students hold interest, it would be great to see the kids’ creations assembled in a cookbook. These experiences at Gateway have gotten me really fired up about giving back to the community. If you’re interesting in donating something to Gateway here in San Francisco, you can follow this link. Or get involved wherever’s local to you. You won’t regret it.
Coffee Bar Presents A Special Chef’s Dinner with Laurine Wickett
Coffee Bar in San Francisco is hosting a special chef’s dinner with Laurine Wickett in January.
Saturday, January 30th
seatings at 6:30 & 8:30pm
Sunday, January 31st
RSVP with the day, seating time, number in your party, and a phone number:
number: LWickettatCoffeeBar@gmail.com
The Dining Initiative
© Henry Dombey/FACECOLLECTIVE
Before I embarked on the Top Chef Las Vegas adventure, I gave a lot of thought to what my life would be like afterward, what I wanted to use my time in the spotlight to showcase and what I had to say to the American public while I had the chance. I wanted to make my 15-minutes-of-fame more like 20 minutes, by using it to affect positive change and therefore have a lasting impact both for me, and for other people.
As I’ve written here before, I believe in people eating a variety of tasty, healthy and nutritious food at a table united with their friends and family and the rituals of lovingly prepared food. I attribute our national nutrition epidemic whose symptoms are obesity and diabetes, to the popularity of processed foods and the decline of family mealtimes. I am as guilty as the next person, sitting down in front of the TV at the end of a long day–too tired to cook, but feeding myself regardless. I don’t know or care what I am eating, I am unaware of portion control, and I’m not really concerned with nutrition, quality or flavor. But when we sit down at a real table with other people, the meal is not only a good chance to engage with other people, but also a good chance to pay attention to what we’re eating. Is the food delicious? Am I full?
While most people rely upon supermarkets for their food, everything I need comes from one of our purveyors. Meat, vegetables, dairy and dry goods come in fresh through my front door daily. So going to a grocery store, as a chef and owner, is a rare experience and I am always fascinated. Aisle upon aisle of packaged, canned, frozen foods, and if the contents of their carts is any indication, people want all of these easy, cheap, processed foods. Meanwhile, fresh, whole foods are out of sight at the perimeter, hiding under the banner of “natural foods,” and hard to find even when you’re looking.
According to a recent study, the average American spends a total of 27 minutes preparing food a day, including clean-up. Moreover, they spend more time watching TV shows about cooking then they spend actually cooking. Apparently, we’ve become quite taken with the idea of cooking, but can’t find the time when it comes time to get up and actually do it.
© Henry Dombey/FACECOLLECTIVE
As I was incubating all of these ideas, I was asked to participate in a collaboration between UCSF and the KIPP/Gateway school. The KIPP/Gateway school had recently started an edible garden, modeled after the Alice Water’s edible schoolyard to teach kids about the origins of their food. UCSF became involved through an initiative to encourage families to dine together. Through extensive research they found that children whose families dine together 4 or more time per week perform better in school and less likely to engage in risky behaviors, including drug use, underage drinking and sexual activity. In tandem with these ongoing efforts, they asked me to teach the kids how to cook. Vegetables, specifically.
I visited the school and had a tour of their garden before making my way to the cafeteria, where the event was to take place. The cafeteria and attached kitchen were sad spaces. Much to my surprise, and disbelief, I learned that school lunch is not cooked in the kitchen, but instead packaged and delivered daily from an outside source. The kitchen, obviously not used for cooking, gave way to a cafeteria which looked to be underused for eating too. A conversation with the students confirmed these suspicions, that the students didn’t eat in the cafeteria because they didn’t like the school lunch provided and what’s more, that if they did eat a lunch packed from home, they preferred to sit in the classroom and eat at their desks. Plenty of the students skipped lunch altogether.
© Henry Dombey/FACECOLLECTIVE
Last Thursday with the help and aid of several of my chefs at LCC, we taught kids from 5th grade to 12th grade and their parents how to cook vegetables and incorporated 4 basic cooking techniques. We roasted carrots, braised turnips greens, sautéed zucchini and steamed green beans. And then the students LINED UP to eat their vegetables. It was quite a sight. The parents and their kids sat together as a family and as a community at the table and really enjoyed that meal. Anyone involved that evening will attest that it was a monumental experience. The parents learned how easy it was to prepare tasty, nutritious, simple foods. One mom remarked that she was amazed how easy it was to cook vegetables so nicely and that she would use those recipes from now on. And the kids seemed to echo in a chorus, this is real food I would actually eat.
© Henry Dombey/FACECOLLECTIVE
Though we certainly can’t change the way we feed our kids in school overnight, we can try. Showing how simple it is to cook real food, getting kids to think cooking is fun and helping busy parents to find time for their kids at the dinner table is certainly a start. Little changes make a huge difference in how we cook, and these little changes trickle out through a community every time a new person comes to the table. I felt so lucky to be part of that night, and if my Top Chef “fame” brings more of these opportunities my way, it’ll be totally worth it.
Where Foodies Go Interview Now Playing
Hear the interview in "Where foodies go"
If you missed my telecast last night you can listen to it at Where Foodies Go.
Topics we discussed included:
What was the process for becoming a contestant on Top Chef?
How do you think your culinary skills compared to the other contestants?
What was your experience of working with Michael Voltaggio?
What’s the scoop on the judges?
How did you feel when the judges were critical of your dishes?
What skills are needed to win Top Chef?
Do you think the show fairly represented who you are?
Knowing what you know now, would you still choose to participate on Top Chef?
What was the letdown like after the show was complete?
Has your experience on Top Chef changed how you relate to your clients?
What’s your reaction to being eliminated on a night where you weren’t cooking?
Have you gotten any interesting offers to open a restaurant after the show?
How would you describe your cooking style?
Can you recommend some interesting appetizers for a cocktail party?
What are some of your secrets for preparing a dinner party for 8?
What is your signature dish?
Who is your favorite chef, and why?
What’s the next big trend in food?
What has been the impact of the disappearance of the “family meal”?
What food initiatives for children are you working on?
How do want people to remember you?
Evernote Video
I did a mini cooking show with Andrew Sinkov from Evernote for the Evernote blog. We cooked a rustic Pork and Orange stew – a recipe from Michael Chiarello, and one of my personal favorites, an Arugula salad with roasted beets, shaved fennel, toasted hazelnuts, and blue cheese with Sherry Vinaigrette. See the video here:
The End of the Line
© Henry Dombey/FACECOLLECTIVE
By now, you’ve no doubt heard that last week was my final hoorah as a contestant on Top Chef. C’est la vie.
For the most part, I feel good about my run–I made it to the final eight and I cooked some good food. Restaurant wars, the most anticipated episode of the season, was also a unique departure as a milestone in its own right, and a tough challenge. I’m glad that I made it this far and got to participate in this tradition with such a strong team. Coming off of the win on the quick fire the blue team was confident, focused and excited to be working together.
Perhaps this over-confidence was to blame for the missteps that followed. Right off the bat, we decided to skip a dessert, and in hindsight this was a mistake. A dessert course would have likely been an easier thing for Kevin to finish and/or plate, on top of the main course he was already handling…it turns into a game of What If fairly quickly. But I volunteered to tackle Front of House, and the team rallied behind that delegation, which left Mike Isabella to the first two courses, Jennifer Carroll on the second course and Kevin to prepare my lamb main course, in addition to his own pork dish. We had no trouble procuring all the items on our shopping list under budget and besides the minor drama with Robin over our “stealing” their idea to serve Pellegrino, we were in good shape at the end of the first day. Or at least we thought we were.
I finished the prep for my dish early on the day of the challenge, and turned to my colleagues to see if they needed help. Jennifer had said she had a lot left to do, but it wasn’t til I went to help that I understood how far behind she really was. Her mussels and clams still needed cleaning, the fish cut, the consommé finished. The status of the kitchen made it even more difficult for me to get out of the kitchen and into the dining room, which was my assigned post. By the time I was changed, the servers were already waiting for me and I had scarcely time to catch their names, introduce the chefs and go through the menu before I had to just put them to work. When Tom stopped by to check in, I assured him I trusted Kevin to execute my lamb and that I would be checking plates as they left the kitchen.
But once guests were arriving, time seemed to be moving at a clip and the diners arrived just as we were finishing a tasting with the servers. Although the kitchen wasn’t ready, I had to start seating tables. I visited the first round of diners and got some helpful feedback on the plates: namely, the pork loin was over cured and too salty and the fish course had just taken too long to arrive. I relayed the information to my colleagues in the kitchen, which should be useful for an experienced chef but that night seemed to only rattle their nerves. When the judges arrived hot on the tails of our first seating, we still hadn’t ironed the kinks out. I welcomed them to the Mission and then had to run off to deal with other issues; it was at that point, a matter of triage.
Which is why I didn’t linger over any one table, including the judges. A huge mistake, of course. In retrospect, one of many. From the start, we should have elected a leader. No matter how much respect you have for one another, someone should have been in charge. Also, two courses per chef was totally unrealistic. I let Kevin have final say on my lamb, another error in judgment. And personally, I lost sight of the fact that a dining experience is made up of two significant elements: food and service. I didn’t have enough experience in the latter to overcome the shortfalls of the former, and in the end, both suffered. By the end, I didn’t want to chat with the judges over their meal, I wanted the night to be over. We all left feeling defeated and it was a pretty bad night all around.
I’m not sure I was the weakest part of that team, or that I deserved to go home. But it was sort of a matter of time for me. Top chef gave me the opportunity to work shoulder to shoulder with really talented chefs, cooking for some of the best chefs in the world. I forged friendships and had unbelievable experiences in the kitchen, which taught me a lot about myself, my style and my thoughts on food in general. I was exposed to different techniques and approaches to cooking that were entirely new to me.
So what’s next for this Top Chef ex pat? I intend to continue pouring my heart and soul into my business, Left Coast Catering and to continue working to position it as one of the Bay Area’s top catering companies. More specifically, I’m planning some private dinners at Coffee Bar here in San Francisco on November 7th and November 10th, which will feature a three course menu. I’m also looking forward to working with the kids at the KIPP school in the kitchen and the classroom, exploring where our food comes from and the best ways to cook it.
So Top Chef may be over for me, but I feel like I’m just getting started.
On the Road
© Henry Dombey/FACECOLLECTIVE
Hi there. Just wanted to stop in for a second to let you know I’m on the road this week. I realize it is quite the week. So check back Tuesday for the recap of this week’s events on the show and a full update.