Chef Laurine's Stew

Posts Tagged ‘laurine wickett’

© 2010 Melissa Nicastro Photography

Last Saturday we celebrated our first wedding of the season and with it, I find myself thinking about this whole business of getting married.

As one of the most intimate events, a wedding gives us a rare opportunity to become involved with a couple in planning what is often the most important celebration of their lifetime. A couple’s wedding is a celebration of their love and their union with friends and family by their side. Weddings are major events in most people’s lifetimes and they have to be memorable. Over two million people in the United States get married each year, and while weddings comprise a unique part of our business, they are hardly unique occasions.

As a part of the industry dedicated to weddings, we are associated by default with all the magazines, websites, and conventions devoted to overwhelming the couple with every detail of planning their nuptials. We often meet couples who are frightened, confused and generally fatigued with the process, before they’ve even met us.

We have the advantage of planning weddings, as well as many other kinds of events, and this perspective (we like to think) makes Left Coast a sort of antidote to wedding planning madness. It makes us more flexible and more enthusiastic about each event on its own. Ultimately, it’s just a party. And with an experienced, creative caterer, it can be a painless process with incredible results. In the end, we want you AND your guests to be happy.

What makes a great wedding? It really comes down to three things: great food, close friends and a fun party. It doesn’t have to be pretentious or overthought, it doesn’t have to be fancy. A great wedding can happen in the middle of the woods, at a private home, on the beach or the top of a mountain. There can be table settings, or not. Fancy linen or not. A great wedding can be as easily a cocktail party as a banquet. Whatever the plan, the bride and groom should be able to relax and enjoy their day.

The wedding last weekend took place in a rental house in San Francisco. The bride & groom threw an informal barbecue the night before the wedding for friends and family. Left Coast provided a chef to help with grilling and sent over some dolled up mac and cheese to add to their spread.

The next day we came in and transformed the space for the ceremony and dinner. The couple held a simple, beautiful ceremony outdoors and the guests came inside for cocktails and hors d’oeuvres. To start, we made grilled pork and pineapple skewers with a Vietnamese caramel sauce, seared scallops with meyer lemon relish, edamame puree on taro chips and Vietnamese spring rolls with chili sauce. At dinner, the guests sat down to a salad of mixed greens, shaved spring vegetables and warm goat cheese followed by seared Artic char with lemon aioli, pea shoots and lobster broth with leeks, fennel and english peas; porcini ravioli with white wine cream sauce, english peas and fried leeks; or grilled flat iron steak, red wine mushroom sauce, green garlic-spinach bread pudding and sautéed spring vegetables.

The evening followed with more drinking, dancing and tower of cupcakes. When we left, the party was still in full swing and we were invited to stay and join them. The following day I received a note from the bride, I wanted to express my heartfelt gratitude for your wonderful food and flawless execution.  Your staff was super friendly and the timing of everything was perfect.  As a result, we received numerous compliments about our fun party (with lots of kudos on the food!) and didn’t say goodbye to our last guest until 4am!

Their friends and family will remember that party for years to come. My advice to those starting this process–before you start, spend some time thinking about the best party you ever attended. Then, think about recreating that experience to make it your own. If you’re simple, make it simple. If you’re into the outdoors, have your wedding outside and bring natural elements to the table. If you’re creative, be creative. We helped plan a wedding for a very fun artsy couple and had our waiters dress like they were in the French Rivera. This summer, we’re planning something in the middle of the woods that so far includes a bluegrass band and bottles of whiskey on each table. The day’s space, look and feel should reflect you both, what you like and who you are as a couple.  Make it genuine and fun. And we’ll fret over the details for you.

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.

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 »

© 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.

© 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.

© 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.

© Henry Dombey/FACECOLLECTIVE

Can anyone say disaster? I think Dana Cowin can, only she pronounces it “cat food.”

Yes, this week’s challenge didn’t go quite as I had planned: a rustic French pork rillette to pair with the French pinot noir I had chosen. For those of you who aren’t familiar with rillette, it’s a rustic French dish similar to a spread-able pâté. It’s traditionally stored in a crock covered in fat and served as a spread with toast points. My first mistake was probably attempting a dish that I’d never done with pork before. I had made several rillettes, always with rabbit, in which case the rabbit is salted overnight, braised in stock or water until tender, shredded and mixed with duck or goose fat. Turns out, there’s a slight difference in technique between rabbit and pork rillette, which is that pork is braised in fat, while rabbit is braised in liquid.

My arguably larger mistake here was attempting this lengthy technique in our limited amount of time. I skipped the salting and curing stages in the interest of brevity, and without this preparation, the meat needed more time to braise, not less. Sometimes you can, in fact, make several mistakes in the course of a disaster. I had never timed a braised dish before, as it’s not a cooking method dictated by time. Mostly braising is used for cooking tougher cuts of meat where heat, time and moisture aid in breaking down the tough connective tisuue and collagens. When it’s done, it’s done, but not a minute sooner.

I’d like to think that when made properly, a pork rillette would have been an excellent pairing for that French Pinot Noir, though of course it’s hard to say. It wasn’t my first choice of the wines we tasted, nor my second, nor my third. I’m not much of a red wine drinker, truth be told, as it more often than not gives me a headache. When I do partake, I enjoy pinot noir and I almost exclusively drink varieties from the Russian River Valley. Ask any Pinot lover and they’ll tell you that the best California Pinot grapes come from the unique blend of Goldridge and Franciscan soil, from the early morning fog, from the warm days, cool nights and afternoon sea breezes you’ll find only in the Russian River Valley, in western Sonoma County. Living in San Francisco, I would never buy a French Pinot Noir. It would be a waste of food miles for it to travel around the globe, when I could get a superior wine two hour’s drive from my house. Read the rest of this entry »

© Henry Dombey/FACECOLLECTIVE

When Padma first announced that we were having a dinner party that night in our very own house, I was so excited. I love dinner parties. I love attending dinner parties and I love throwing dinner parties.

I realized quickly upon arrival back at the house that we were not guests at the dinner party, of course, but I was just as happy to be cooking. Especially for an all-start line up of chefs, including the likes of Tom Douglas, Nancy Silverton, Tyler Florence, Govind Armstrong and Takashi Yagihashi? I was stoked about this challenge from the start.

I felt lucky to draw Tyler Florence’s knife and to be paired with Brian. When we opened the refrigerator to find a tub full of California staples, I was entirely at ease; I felt right at home cooking in our cozy kitchen with familiar ingredients to boot. Read the rest of this entry »

© Henry Dombey/FACECOLLECTIVE

I’ve never done deconstructed food. It doesn’t really interest me. It seems over-thought, with little consideration for pleasure or sustainability–an intellectual style of cooking that lacks character or soul. I understand that to deconstruct is to break down, to dismantle, but I can’t figure why you’d take something apart if it isn’t broken in the first place.

If you asked me, I’d tell you I can cook pretty much anything…so long as my heart is in it. Maybe that’s where this week’s task challenged me: present a classic dish, deconstructed in a new way. In my case, fish and chips. It seemed contradictory, to ask us to be creative, but classic, constructing in deconstructing.

I devoured the best fish and chips I ever had with a friend late at night alongside a cold beer, after working a long shift. I remember it feeling so well-deserved. Fish and chips should always be eaten that way, late at night in a hungry fever, out of a plastic red basket. Doing a deconstructed version not only seems silly, it’s just not food I’d want to eat. It doesn’t hit the spot without the context.

Read the rest of this entry »