All posts tagged: Chefs

You May Not Need a Giant Chef’s Knife When a Midsize Knife Does the Trick

You May Not Need a Giant Chef’s Knife When a Midsize Knife Does the Trick

Kitchen knives are so personal. You can do almost everything you need in a kitchen with a chef’s knife, paring knife, and a bread knife. But the more time you spend in the kitchen, the more you develop preferences, and soon it becomes a bit of an n+1 thing, and there you are, pondering a cleaver. There’s a lot of space between most chef’s knives and paring knives. What’s in that space—often called petty, prep, or utility knives—is often pretty weird. Consider the knives that you never use from a set and you’ll likely think of the short, serrated knives or the petty knives with no room for your fingers between the handle and the cutting board. What if you’re a smaller person, or have smaller hands, or just think a smaller but still high-functioning all-around knife might be your jam? What if the right version of those midsize knives turned out to be really useful? To my delight, the good ones are. With equal parts luck, research, and trial and error, I found both …

The Real-Life Wardrobe of Eddie Huang, Who’s Been Watching Knicks Games With a Weighted Vest On

The Real-Life Wardrobe of Eddie Huang, Who’s Been Watching Knicks Games With a Weighted Vest On

Eddie Huang is many things: author, chef, restaurateur, filmmaker, media personality. The list goes on, and Huang wouldn’t have it any other way. Born in Virginia to Taiwanese-Chinese parents, Huang opened his first restaurant, Baohaus, a cult-favorite Taiwanese bun shop, on New York City’s Lower East Side in 2009, later moving the shop to the East Village, where it remained until its pandemic-era closure in October 2020. Between then and now, Huang published two books, directed two films, and got married and started a family. Nowadays, he’s got plenty more on his plate: a Substack, a podcast (which he co-hosts with his wife, Natashia Perrotti), and his first novel, Come Undone, which hits shelves on June 16. He’s currently (superstitiously) rooting on his beloved New York Knicks in the finals. Oh, and just reopened Baohaus this past March, which is where he and I met up in late May. Huang didn’t expect to bring the restaurant back, but when he received a call—over the speakerphone in his car—from his trademark attorney asking him if he …

Fake lawyers, scientists, chefs and punters: meet the ‘white monkeys’ paid to make Chinese businesses look global | Life and style

Fake lawyers, scientists, chefs and punters: meet the ‘white monkeys’ paid to make Chinese businesses look global | Life and style

Piers had been in China for all of two days in 2009 when he was used as a “white monkey” for the first time. He had travelled to a village in Suzhou, Jiangsu province, to attend a friend’s wedding and had stopped in the village to try a special crab dish at a small restaurant. Weeks later, a Chinese guest who had been at the wedding told him the restaurant had had an uptick in business because the locals had heard that a laowai, a foreigner, had been seen dining there, so people had assumed this restaurant must be good. Piers realised the boss had deliberately seated him in a way to attract attention: “I knew we were sitting outside in a premium spot, but I didn’t pick up on what was going on.” When foreigners in China are used this way, they are called a baihouzi, a white monkey. They’re hired to help Chinese businesses appear more desirable, the foreigner association conveying prestige and a sense that your product is universally regarded. The industry …

Can ‘Tony’ Make Anthony Bourdain Cool Again?

Can ‘Tony’ Make Anthony Bourdain Cool Again?

This is an edition of the newsletter Pulling Weeds With Chris Black, in which the columnist weighs in on hot topics in culture. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Thursday. I read Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential and A Cook’s Tour years ago and liked them both. I have no kitchen ambitions myself, but I love books about sex, drug use, and the “us vs. them” mentality that can make guys who dress salads act like they are the leader of the free world with the nuclear codes. I am not sure if he deserves sole credit for this, but Bourdain’s book certainly helped usher in the era of the celebrity chef, and the romanticization of the troubled culinary genius who snorts coke, drives drunk, and hurls cooking utensils at employees when their station isn’t clean. His two most popular and long-running TV shows, Parts Unknown and No Reservations, were massive hits that inspired countless young men to buy cheap tickets to Vietnam to eat noodles on plastic stools while drenched in …

How to cook the ultimate steak, according to the top chefs

How to cook the ultimate steak, according to the top chefs

Sign up to IndyEat’s free newsletter for weekly recipes, foodie features and cookbook releases Get our food and drink newsletter for free Get our food and drink newsletter for free The culinary director of Gaucho, the celebrated Argentinian steak brand known for its grilled beef since 1994, harbours a surprising secret: he didn’t always enjoy meat. French-born chef Anthony Ekizian, who has called London home for two decades, was far from carnivorous in his youth. If forced to consume it, he recalls, “it was well done”. His journey into the world of high dining was equally serendipitous; leaving school at 16 without a clear path, he found himself working at Saint Tropez’s exclusive Club 55. “I really didn’t choose to be a chef,” he admits, yet somehow, meat ultimately found its way to him. Chef Anthony Ekizian at Gaucho in central London (PA) “When I started as an apprentice, there were some steaks on the grill, on the wood fire. I remember the [team was] showing me. I was just putting vegetables next to it, …

The perfect birthday cake: tips for the best blow-out | Chefs

The perfect birthday cake: tips for the best blow-out | Chefs

What’s the best birthday cake?Katie, by email“My mum once made a cake with mini rolls made to look like cats with googly eyes and strawberry lace tails,” says Nicola Lamb, author of Sift and the Kitchen Projects newsletter. And that’s the whole point of a birthday cake, right? It should align with the recipient’s favourite thing: “That could even be a lasagne,” Lamb says. “I’m not at all prescriptive about what you stick a candle into.” Of course, some cakes are a safer choice than others. Take the Victoria sponge: “I don’t think anyone is going to have a problem with a plush vanilla sponge, jam and cream job,” Lamb says. “If you want to lower the effort and feed a lot of people, bake the sponge in a brownie tray for a single-layer, low and wide cake, spread whipped cream stabilised with mascarpone over the top, dollop on some jam and you’re good to go.” That said, you could go for a vanilla or chocolate buttercream instead, which, Lamb adds, comes with the bonus …

Eat better with less stress—a chef’s simple guide on how to start meal prepping this week

Eat better with less stress—a chef’s simple guide on how to start meal prepping this week

People often avoid meal prepping because they assume it takes too much time. In reality, it can be one of the most efficient ways to cook—saving both time and mental energy across the week. Private chef and NASM-certified personal trainer Jane Olivia says meal prepping is a simple strategy for busy people who want to eat well without overthinking it. Having food ready in advance can make it easier to avoid last-minute, less healthy choices—helping create more consistent eating habits. “Life is busy, and people often fall into poor food choices simply because nothing is prepared,” she says. “Meal prepping removes that daily decision fatigue, when the food is already there, you’re far more likely to eat well.” Article continues below You may like It can also save time, reduce food waste and make the most of your budget. Rather than cooking from scratch every day, preparing meals in batches means you spend less time in the kitchen overall. “Most people spend time each day figuring out what to eat and cooking it,” Olivia explains. …

Violet Oon and the legacy of Singapore heritage food

Violet Oon and the legacy of Singapore heritage food

Their first restaurant, Violet Oon’s Kitchen, was a casual eatery along Bukit Timah Road serving Peranakan food with a few Western twists. It wasn’t until 2015, when the National Gallery Singapore invited them to set up a restaurant in its new premises, that the family were able to realise their goal of spotlighting Singapore’s culinary heritage. The historic venue, in what was once City Hall, was the perfect site and particularly meaningful to Oon. As a young music and arts journalist in the early 1970s, she had spent much of her time in the Ministry of Culture offices on the building’s third floor. “That was exciting for me, but also a great responsibility, because how do you interpret national food?” she recalled. “Is it hawker food? Home food? Or restaurant food?”  The short answer is, of course, all of the above.  “So I went to learn to make idlis from scratch from Indian housewives. We made chilli crab, because that’s what’s national to us, and then we had fish head curry,” she said. “Food is not only …

‘Morning Baker’ celebrates pastry chefs who opened L.A. bakeries

‘Morning Baker’ celebrates pastry chefs who opened L.A. bakeries

The sky is still a dark indigo-purple at 5 a.m. over this eastern stretch of Hollywood Boulevard, where Thai Town and Little Armenia overlap. Located directly across the street from Jumbo’s Clown Room, neighborhood bakery-cafe Friends & Family looks blue-hour quiet. But the morning crew is nearly two hours into the week’s biggest “bake.” That means preparing a thousand baked goods of nearly 50 varieties, most of which will fill the pastry case by the time the doors open at 8 o’clock. Co-owner and baker Roxana Jullapat — who has just published her second cookbook, “Morning Baker: Recipes and Rituals for Breakfast and Beyond” — watches over a rotating oven that holds two nearly six-foot racks of 30 sheet trays filled with croissants. She left behind a career as a fine-dining pastry chef to open Friends & Family nine years ago with her partner, Dan Mattern, and helped lead a whole-grain baking revolution. Croissants fill the bakery case at Friends & Family, which baker and co-owner Roxana Jullapat opened with her partner nine years ago. …

How to save limp herbs | Chefs

How to save limp herbs | Chefs

What can I do with herbs that are past their best?Joe, by emailHappily, Joe and his on-the-turn herbs aren’t short of options. “The obvious choice for hard herbs is to chuck them in a sandwich bag and freeze them for future stock-making,” says Alice Norman, founder of regenerative bakery Pinch in Suffolk. Alternatively, Sami Tamimi, author of Boustany, would be inclined to dry his excess herbs. In summer, he’d simply pop them on a tray and put them outside in the sun, but right now he “dries them in a 60-70C oven, then packs in containers, ready for the next time you’re short of fresh herbs”. Norman’s current MO is to blitz languishing herbs (“rosemary and/or thyme work best”) with a 3:4 ratio of fine salt. “You don’t want too many herbs, because that will throw off the moisture content and turn the mix black, but you need enough for the blades to catch and break down the rosemary properly.” Pulse until fine, then store in an airtight jar in the fridge (where it’ll keep …