Colameco's Food Show FOUR STARS

it wasn't that long ago that in order to eat extraordinarily well you had to fly to France or Italy our best was very good but their's was superb over time that's all changed New York is now home to a half a dozen or more restaurants as good as any on the planet today we're gonna visit one and find out what makes this restaurant so extraordinary here we are at 55th and 5th the historic st. Regis Hotel to spend a day with an old friend chef Christian de Lully a of lespinasse this is perhaps the best restaurant in New York or anywhere else for that matter so what's it take to be this good certainly one of the most beautiful kitchens in the city a world-class team in the front and back of the house and endless devotion and energy sparing no expenses or details to create a menu and a dining experience that has to rank among the best you'll have ever had anywhere so that's four stars we're here with Christian Blu ray and I've known him for almost 20 years now fishing had to put up with me for about two two and a half years way back in the early eighties this is sous chef and watching his career go he's been great in the in a day when chefs traveled with their own psychologists corporate jets book deals and movie deals this guy's done an old school and this is one of the great stories of Christian he's just nothing would worked unwaveringly at getting better and has gotten better and better and today is one of six four-star chefs in New York and I think there's 18,000 restaurants at last count Christian thanks for having us in today thank you tell us a little bit about memories your memories cooking growing up how you became a chef well I became a chef I became sure it was natural to me to become a chef I always was raised in a family where food was very important to grandmother was spectacular cooks and my mother was also doing very well so been raising the time yawns like this it's only natural one day that if you don't feel like a good to be a doctor or you don't want to stick too much in your face or whatever it's just natural that you take that you're taking that that way and that's what I did this ending of the past right there that's the government repast meet pass fish passing they're gonna set up the bread it put the bed ready to go for the services in the meantime I'm cutting the foie gras for tonight and did a barrel that's what really put my mind to give me the taste to be an to be a cook to be a cook first to try to be a good one and then maybe to become a chef because to be for running you have to know what to walk and it took me a long time but finally I'm here and it is what made it was the glazed chest night with quince puree and laughs from the day what to puree on the bottom that's squint appearing in Germany okay and every diner gets one of these boom as they sit before the menu what makes it be so much oxide how we put on the shallots and seasoning salt pepper we used to some tomato confit on the bottom mixing with some ginger and soy sauce beautiful beautiful it's very difficult for me when people say I can cook everything I can for Chinese I can cook Italian I can good French whatever it's not that easy because you need to be brought up in an atmosphere and an ambience since the young ages that that you become it's natural to you you easy about it you know to you know and you and your in your mind that this is going to work we're still going to work that's a big portion we saw fake that pressed yeah it's not so there is real quilt yeah it's a migraine is the surreal stuff we're sourcing the sweetbreads they're gonna come through lucky customers this is what they called me some floss meaning everything in its place and that's what this is okay it's a terrine of foie gras which is just blah blah basically that's been cooked very slow in duck fat and then molded in a terrine triangular shape mm-hmm and it's inside of poached pear and that's a salad of lovage got to be brilliant man that looks good this is the scallops Swiss chard the gnocchi yeah yeah it's the gnocchi is cooked with them with a really really nice like chili peppers and and citrus zest good God smoked tomato mousse yeah I love this it's natural and the easy parts because these something this is like watching Segovia play the guitar or Michael Jordan play basketball it looks easy but you try it yeah well I mean you're cooking really is over time yeah it's based on classic classical technique it's not the class it's not classic but it's based on classical technique is based on the basis and you just know what to work with those bases and then after that if you can it becomes natural and easy basis flavors foundation really this is the essence of all great cooking it's like architecture you're building from the ground up okay that is the pride and joy the pride and joy that's the pride and joy is we used to do that at the Melissa we start with like a 15 to 20 soup chicken and water onions with onion on the stove carrots leeks tomato a lot of tomato and we cooked it until the chickens are completely overcooked we strain the next day we take the boil and we put 15 more chicken in it yeah it's simple it's simple justified a little bit the price to be charging at the restaurant I mean look at the color of this stock all right now yeah that was just the first we all agree there should be another one yeah this is number one yeah it already has this kind of color yeah right because the onions Wow into their mushroom essence here and 25 pounds of mushrooms cook down to about a cup and a half of pure mushroom essence take a look at this veal style any recipe book look it up roast the veal bones add the water cook them for a day yourself here at lesbian us the meats still on the bones they're extracting every drop of flavor they can it's sweet it's rich it's meaty it simply can't be made any better than this I've noticed the theme here with the stocks in this restaurant that to me the days of the bones are gone like liquid bones you can cook the animal it's gone full turn here we find Christian experimenting it's playing with a special that could be a new menu item tarragon and did any other restaurant on its first take this could be the signature dish it looks fabulous but not at lespinasse so the shank braised yeah the loin sauteed Neal Romero was a flower Kezia he may work this another dozen times until it's absolutely perfect and then it'll find its way out the kitchen doors and into the dining room but not until then a dish that I going to keep and the signature and it's very simple you're gonna laugh about that but it is it's a confit of baby pig it's a baby pig that is been confit and cooked in duck fat in the oven and a Deora we finish it on the on the rotisserie a we crisper off in the oven and let's serve it on a really a dish of cassoulet beans that's all I think the parmentier for lunch is as a brass braised beef beef cheek with a mashed potato on top of them is a version of the parmentier which is Shepherd shepherd boy chip a pie you can do that with you do that we left over but we don't do that we left over here we do that wait beef cheeks are marinated for like five six seven days in mirepoix and white wine and then the beef cheeks are then seared off and braised with cap speed and and pork skin and everything in that shoe and with fresh red wine and we top oh it's very simple we just top it with the truffle mashed potatoes but it's all about just real cooking real food real developing big flavors develop a nice slow long slow cooking with true flavor that's that's exactly what it is this sauce is made from what this sauce is the braising liquid raising liquid if any part of the marinade go in here you really don't use that marinade because it's got too much for too much impurities in it too much blood in it okay and it'll make the sauce go sour Wow Wow I mean if you can imagine hitting every you know taste this is extraordinary I guess there's some acid from the wine the richness is unbelievable but it's offset by the sauce potatoes are ridiculous and the flavor of the meat is crazy it's another dish that we didn't we are not going to put back for a little while in the world chicken with truffles okay where'd you get to chicken race bridge this chicken is an organic chicken it comes from Italy and we get him for a cool company called onion that well you've probably heard it so while this is cooking I mean I'm asking a silly question but the truffle flavor is beginning the enemy at the grass right and with season it always in the cavity never on the skin because the skin will dry the skin and it will break and they will look not too appealing ugly ugly so first time in so first thank you so garlic for people that don't trust you will simply throw it in the oven tell us what this is doing how it's protecting some things and now you you're just making a big bowl the legs against the breast so the legs could have or take the the breast here it's going to make a juicer chicken okay that is that is essential to your success of a good to go that's butter something that's good why do I like this picture and that's who it is that's the good that's the bird before and after we'll see it when she comes out looks good yepper this looks beautiful truffles lots of time everything's boiling bubbling everyone's shaking the pans around I mean Showtime here and four stars no less I don't know the public quite gets it but this job when you took it was your following in the track of a four-star chef this room had four stars again in New York is 18,000 restaurants a couple hundred two stars maybe fifty three stars but never more than the half a dozen four stars you know the eyes of New York are on you the ending to this job yes I was very it was very conscientious about that I knew about that and that's what I took it because the eyes of New York and food critics were on me you have to understand that for me I've always been a twist a twist a chef for many many years like 25 20 years and I always could never get four cells so when I knew I could take that job I took I took very control risk and I said to myself I needed the attention I need to do something that people could attract the attention of the public and the food critic what do we have here what am I looking at here guys the caviar tasting sashimi little beggars purses caviar the traditional garniture Kirk look at this veal dish it looks extraordinary little pity posh on trails what's the sauce there it's like a gastrique it's the veal is great with time honey that has to be fabulous it's a Vidalia onion whole roasted Vidalia onion juice from depends as if these fresh lobsters aren't wonderful enough it LESBIAN us they coat them in a glaze of pure lobster stock reduction just to be sure that's the strong Wow wait a minute where's the pastry chef during all this we're also doing a banquet down here for apple tarts making miso braised penny for baskets stays busy down here all night long what do you making here this is a garnish from one of the desserts a peach tart this is a almost like an almond brittle what else is working on the plate with this um there are some peaches with a peach reduction glaze with peach reduction a little bit of blueberry for contrast and flavor and then on top of this a canal large vanilla peach ice cream and then the almond brittle on top of that oh that sounds extraordinary Wow I think I'm saying wow so much I have to learn new descriptive adjectives wowie-zowie unbelievable extraordinary Galecki so in this country for you to maintain and then to come to this level of four stars and maintain it one of the things you've seen this really helped has to be the availability of Jeff's fabulous ingredients yeah fabulous ingredients fabulous ingredients and the quality of the steps that surround me so those two things and maybe is a couple of a good ideas and remember it's easy it's all easy yeah it's very simple it's very simple following Kristin around with it it's simple simple I wasn't buying that let me tell you something the food it let's be nice and the food it a bunch of other restaurants Danielle I mean the really great New York restaurants frankly it's nearly impossible to do at home Christian can do recipes that we can do at home but they're not gonna be the recipes from Las Pinas unless they're scaled down a bit and they'll be wonderful and we're gonna try one of those today I'm gonna make a dish I'm gonna use a piece of white fish today it's gonna be mahi-mahi I'm gonna create a base for it that's going to be a tomato sauce that I love I'm gonna use that as a base under the fish fish I'm gonna start a really easy Bing Bing Bing set it on top of the tomato concassé we're gonna have a little bit of basil puree basil oil around the sides and I'm gonna get zucchini skins deep fried and just pile them up on the top here's how to make tomato concasse which is the beginning of this first you get a plum tomato say you take the end out or it grew that was the vine end and the other end we're gonna make a little X we're scoring these Tomatoes because what I'm gonna do is plunge them into boiling salted water for about 30 seconds to a minute until the skin begins to loosen up let me see this one see how the skin begins to come off this is what we want it's gonna plunge them in cold water for a minute this is just to get them to stop cooking the skins gonna come right off it just walks off like this and then we're gonna do this cut him in half and I'm gonna squeeze out the seeds and then the excess liquid because really what I'm trying to do here is just get the Shh okay we have the tomatoes these are seats these have been seated now for the most part and peeled and we're just gonna cut them into pieces like little kind of a dice these zucchini sticks here's what we're gonna do we're gonna get the zucchini and I try to pick zucchini that are uniform can they cut it right about in half and then I'm gonna lay my knife right in here and I'm just gonna cut the skin off just watch the knife and watch it roll and in the meantime we'll do these the way I always did them which is by hand so we have the tomato concassé we blanch them peel them seeded them chop them I'm going to get some olives to throw in here these are Nicoise olives and I'm going to pit them and there's really only one way to do this that I've ever found and that's by hand now we're going to get shallots and we're gonna do a couple of cloves of garlic as well have I end up with all this little garlic today I hate shopping small cloves of garlic but we're just gonna line them up and like this the other thing I have here what a mess is basil puree this is very easy to make I'll make it sometime on the show it's very simple this is a Mediterranean style thing of a so we're gonna have olive oil and a fair amount of it that's your shallots and your garlic and I do not want them to take any color so in about 10 seconds the tomatoes are gonna go in all right tomatoes are in tomatoes go in the olives go in now we're gonna bring this whole thing up to a simmer put in a nice little wad of that and spread it around and you'll see when we come out that'll be that will have worked its way in and again if I had fresh basil I would have used a chiffonade of basil we're gonna get this up to temperature I'm gonna cover this with parchment paper that's looking good and the parchment goes down like this and parchments good in the oven because it doesn't burn and won't this these little pieces they'll take a little color they'll turn a little brown but they won't burn alright one more second on the stove top to bring this up to here you see how she's bubbling how often a she goes ovens 400 degrees we'll check this in about 15-20 minutes okay now that's that's what I wanted well we dried this out I mean you could smell the olives big time then it's just the essence of tomato mahi-mahi nice firm flesh whitefish here nice little fillet about 8 ounces we're just gonna season this saute boom in a pan in and out you know medium just cooked so it's cooked through the center I've got oil about 350 degrees back there you tell us moving around we're gonna do the fries in batches so we don't go crazy and I want these also to cool off a little bit so stand back folks all right we're cooking with two hands and she goes these guys are gonna come out once they get that nice brown color they're gonna continue to cook once I take them out a piece of fish this big is gonna take some time to cook up this this side here you're probably looking at another three to five minutes to get this done in a restaurant you might do it here we also might just slide this into the oven and let it finish cooking in the oven so we'll make a decision on that in a minute all right I like doing that with fish in the oven like this that ovens about 350 400 because it's gonna cook slowly here maybe three to five minutes in the oven if you continue on this on the stovetop you're just worried you're gonna get the skin to dry you're gonna get the surface too much color and the center's not gonna cook so this is gonna let the fish fish cook a little more evenly so because again that thick side was about an inch and a half two inches it's gonna need three four minutes in here to really come through so we'll come back to this in a minute pull it out and complete the dish easy that's good to go alright so the fish hot the beautiful little tomato compote is the base hmm just like this just enough to come a little under the fish and a little around it not too much on with the fish up with the the zucchini hair oh yeah oh yeah oh my god looks like something out of a darn magazine doesn't it oh we look at that tall food I hate tall food why my naked tall food I've never been a proponent of tall food and little dribbles little speck re dribbles here just around the side of the plate beautiful huh that's not simple huh that's nice not bad simple good flavors simple and this tomato sauce all-purpose use it for anything enjoy it and get yourself to lesbian ah small it's still there because you're saving yourself a trip to Paris or France for that matter because the food is extraordinary hats off to Christian thank you and see you next time

Channel: Mike Colameco's Real Food

Views: 13,212

Rating: 4.8888888 out of 5

Keywords: The New York Times (Newspaper), Four Star restaurant, Corey Lee, Christian Delouvrier, Colavita, Colameco, Food Show, Cooking Show, Food

Id: geFSZvaBzV4

Length: 25min 6sec (1506 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 02 2015