Colameco's Food Show Le BERNARDIN

we're here on West 51st street outside restaurant burn an act to a story I'm going to posit that this restaurant is one of the most influential live opened in the last 20 years in America influential because at that time 1986 in New York you had lakota boss kappa value test lapel ego all great restaurants but all very similar classical French and a very formal service Bern and I would change all of that and they would change the way chefs and restaurant tours and really many Americans would look at fish from purchasing to handling to cooking from that point forward first tuna tartare first fish carpaccio first salmon medium-rare first chocolate puff pastry the list goes on and on about trends that started here for foods that we almost take for granted today add to that this restaurant was awarded four stars by the New York Times after being open for a mere eight weeks which is another first we're gonna meet the chefs made this happen go into the kitchen and see the kind of precision cooking that still makes it possible for stars all along never lost the beat since burnout ad today the inspiration for Bernarda came from egg a and Jill bellicose brother and sister who had a two star restaurant of the same name in Paris in opening for New York they hired Eberhard Muller to be the restaurant chef and succeeding him the chef today still is Eric Rivera he'll bear died tragically young Megha is still involved in the dining room and today will get the story from both of these chefs the only two chefs this restaurant has had since opening every night when I went home or a few hours the kitchen was empty ever heard Muller was geobella closes original chef for the opening he helped establish the tone of the restaurant eight weeks later four stars there was no stocks there was no sauces there was no raw fish there was nothing left in there except absolutely raw products like cream or butter or oil or you know everything else herbs salads vegetables fish were bought every day fresh succeeding him was Eric repair who still to this day is in charge of this formidable kitchen you were given free reign after a while to change the menu to do him and now your own agent Lee it gave me the freedom to do whatever I wanted but you just said to me respect the style of the of the restaurant and make sure you stick with our philosophy and then you can do whatever you like what was and really what still is that philosophy because of he was was fish is very delicate and it's a beautiful product it's a delicacy on its own and you don't want to really destroy that was very refined flavor the ingredients you're getting here in the ingredients you found the restaurant getting the how do you feel about the American fish what kind of fish are using I mean that mean actually the star the show now in terms of freshness and in terms of quality of product American fish is amazing you have day boats which actually the advantage of the day boat is that the boat like it says come back at night with the catch of the day in Europe it's a lot of boats going for four or five six days you know when they come back with the fish from five days ago and from yesterday also yeah they're beautiful yeah with this dense your stiffness right out of the water those you eat up in here yeah this one is you're coming with a whisk oh right this one is bigger yeah those ones come from the west coast you got a respective fish its food that you put in your mouth it's not just some piece of slab that you that you just put in there because you needed it no you you respect it but she'll bear I want a couple of times too in all she's in Paris and I saw him standing there and touching this this fish that bar or that bleu de Mayo or whatever it was were the same sensitivity that you wouldn't necessarily expect from him you know it was like like you would touch a woman right you know or he was he was in love with his with his food and it's just I immediately cut on to that you know I knew immediately when this guy is not obsessed it's not an obsession it's just he he knows it's genuine I mean really nice clean look at the proteins on that almost transparent that that is look yeah look down ceviche let's say alright is different to play more and basically is like Spanish seasoning tuna carpaccio it's a lime ginger mayonnaise nobody was doing carpaccio seafood carpaccio's or seafood talk toss to not talk to us santa banta toss you name it all those things they all wore first done by us at the Bernarda the concept of it might seem Japanese but if you go anywhere on the coast of the world where there is fishermen people will eat raw seafood there it's just the way it is you know and if it's fresh it's utterly delicious and you don't need to do like a lot was it you you put a little drop of lemon juice on it maybe a little bit a few grains of salt and if you're in Italy they travel little olive oil and you have a fabulous fabulous and nice seasoning salt pepper a little Cayenne if you have a nice simple dish on delgo it's a Spanish mackerel and caviar mixed in a tartare with a rather good sauce it's a lobster the lobster tasting is the brandy butter sauce pepper sauce butternut squash chestnuts leeks and that's it when you're working building flavors around fish how's the process go I mean let's say halibut halibut sufficeth you have on your menu that's featured it's a very strange process but you have to put yourself in the shoes of the fish itself like you have to kind of understand really the what is a piece of halibut what is what are the characteristics of the halibut is it a fatty fish with it a flaky fish is it a firm fish is it a soft fish all those characteristics we'll be taking in considerations and then you will apply the right technique to enhance the qualities of that fish the sauces are absolutely Retta Bowl we start by reducing sherry vinegar we reduce it by half after we reduced our vinegar we had for it and then as we get an order we put out in the fire and reduce it and we add a whole whole sweet butter to it because the liquid down then as the pickup comes we incorporate air and cool the sauce down a bit so that when it goes on the plate is really thick and you've seen the sauce and how beautiful it is so it's a it's a lot of fun like velvet glass beautiful okay so we have is the seared monkfish on top of a cabbage stuffed with oxtail ragu in the dining room we have a very rich red wine sauce that we that we would serve in the dining room table slides later and this would refer to as a dope sauce exactly right what's the sauce chef mushroom consommé wild mushroom cream sauce which are the waiters and spoon over the top of the pizza a lot of the dishes are assembly Tina dining on the end of it especially those resources there we go yeah sometimes during service we do all the final preparation for the sauce it's like a tea if you leave the bag in the curve for an hour your tea is not as good as if you leave it for five minutes and then we have house smoked scallops with a salad of apple endive and daikon sprouts chives and lemon oil a little white pepper on top and the broth is finished with fresh dill and lemon confit and that gets poured over in the dining yes it does it's just beautiful and look too easy no I want to see these guys get in the weeds he's not gonna happen nothin in ten minutes good good the techniques that you're using in the kitchen you know you're really doing cooking on one side a little bit of some time with uh with the not steaming that poaching how many different techniques you're using at the kitchen now for fish well nominating is a technique also cooking fish so we've marinate we saute we bake reproach just lukewarm on the top to the field and that's it just barely Wow yeah you know as we've said will go on throughout the day cooking fish is tough because the difference between undercooked perfectly cooked and overcooked can be twenty seconds can be thirty seconds even this how do you train the guys in the kitchen every food starts on one corner of the kitchen which is usually the gamma radical station and then slowly move around the store and end up two or three years later if they are good as a chef saucier so they learn the techniques very slowly and you cannot rush the education of the other cook theory is one thing like this is another thing and you need married practice and theory and it takes a long what is this year this is the user tied with the ginger parfait to have a really extensive to serve list no one really did have that and it was always sort of an afterthought and we were the first restaurant in New York and I think one of the very few restaurants who had put together a fabulous dessert menu for myself I'm totally happy to have been in this era in this in this time in New York City and in this country when this war was all happened because hey Europe was pretty much said you didn't have this establishment in in this country the food establishment the fabulous restaurants you always had but not model more modernity that I think was what Donald uh helped to create in this and this may be the biggest achievement of ours to help lounge this this culinary revolution in this country let me tell you back in the day when Bernard I opened it was really really really huge we're trying to find some reviews and you know I found this in my attic so give you an idea how compressed I was I didn't save a whole ton of these but this is the original 1980 is it six I can't see the top of it but this is the original Brian Miller four star review it was huge I mean it all of us in the community were like wow and it really was a paradigm change in terms of how fishes can handle even hammering that home the whole front end of the show but it was it was it was a world of difference how they handled fish and the simplicity and the integrity and the whole thing going forward we do a couple of dishes today I mean printe has got four stars really hard to do that stuff at home that's why they've got four stars it's it's not easy the sauces are absolutely incredible all over the restaurant and the cooking is pretty simple but simple with incredible sauces and wonderful presentation kind of a riff on a couple dishes there one of them is going to be a like a scallop seviche it's a part of the menu it's a marinate so the scallops are going to raw I'm lucky I live where there's a great scallop catch and these are wonderful dry clean you see they're not white they're not flaky we get bags of dry scallops coming in every day off the boats these are just great we're going to cut them paper-thin and we're going to make a vinaigrette with olive oil lemon lime a little bit of hot pepper a little bit of coriander and basil and we're just going to paint that on the scallops wait about three four minutes and they're ready to eat that simple and you can do this at home without too much complication first things first we're going to make the vinaigrette so to do this I'm going to get a little bit of the zest of a lime and of course when you doing this you can really smell those oils - all right that's good enough I'm going to save these because I'm gonna need their juice and we're going to just run a knife over them just a little bit of fresh basil you roll it up like a little cigar notice there's no stem in that basil we take the stems off and with a real fine knife just going to cut it in a little bit of coriander as well again not too much because if scallops have their own voice and if you learned one thing from the Lakotas and the chef's it's you know the seasonings the herbs should complement fish not overwhelm them this I'm going to turn around one more time just to get a little smaller now with this pepper I want to use just part of it I don't to use the whole thing you get the seeds out of the center I don't want those and I'm going to take just the flesh part we turn into little tiny little again because this is going to be an aggressive flavor so I don't want anybody getting a big bite of that these are pretty strong you know chives are sort of in that onion family so I'm not going to put too many of these in and again you have to have some sharp knives here but I'm just cutting these thin we're going to kind of lay them out in a little bit of a like a flower pattern this will be the acid part of the vinaigrette so we'll just cut these in half and a little lime juice and into this we're just gonna whisk in some extra virgin olive oil okay this is much more acidic than I would have for a salad or for anything because this is going to cook that so I've got this sort of loose acidic vinaigrette we're going to add the herbs boom this has all the zest in it stir it around a bit and the last thing I'm going to do before I put that on is a little bit of salt because a couple of things are going to happen at once here the salt is also going to help in the cooking and we're going to paint it simple and it looks like a lot that we're going to come back in a couple of minutes with the camera you're going to see that the scallops are actually these are dry scallops these are not wet so they're going to actually pick up a lot of this vinaigrette and in essence that's how they're cooked we'll be back in a minute been sitting for I don't know less than five minutes and if you take a peek you can see that scallops of the gun to cook just a little scallop little vinaigrette I love seafood for a beverage you've got a lot of acid happening in here you know a wine like a booze a maybe a salt share that has a fair amount of acid you're going to need a city to stand up to this because again this is a the vinaigrette is going to be the pronounced flavor the richest of the scallops is really offset by the acid so you're gonna need a high acid white easy to do at home and your friends will be impressed one of the dishes from the early menus did Bernarda remember hazard when meg a wanted to lose weight she'll bear made this for her but I liked it because it was kind of again an early signature dish and that was a really the fish is beautiful and I've got halibut here really wonderfully you could see that you know the nice gelatin the protein set up on this and if you can see the sheen but it's not white it's not chalky looking we're going to poach it and then we're going to serve it with a warm vinaigrette and just steamed or boiled vegetables so it's a very very light plate again I'll probably toast points or whatever with this maybe turn to potatoes if we had them but it's going to be very simple poached a warm vinaigrette spooned over the top great simple flavors and an early dish from Bernadette and I think you know again since then I talked about the influence guide Eve eating fish with the negraph the idea of eating fish medium-rare the reliance on freshness and trying to get the flavors to speak for themselves so we'll try and bone this guy out and we're going to see what we're going to get come around the top of that I'm just running the knife right along the bones you don't have to look at what you're doing because a knife is sort of telling you there's a bone there I'm going to cut them in half again and to skin them just lay them on the cutting board boom skins off we're going to give it some shape this way it holds its shape in the water too okay now they've got a nice shape you know most people break asparagus when they peel them so in the kitchen you know one of your first jobs usually come to a kitchen you're the vegetable guy on to me ta sounds better meaning you're in charge of the first thing they let you do if you screw that up you're not going to cross them you know the 50 pounds of foie gras or whatever so when you're peeling cases of asparagus you've got a better way to do it then then on it most you'll go like this in a sinker and they break them all the time so in a restaurant especially have really nice asparagus lay them on get a table like this put a cutting board down sit something on top of it and then just down like this very easy you'd have to press too hard you're never going to break the thing and you're really just getting off that skin yeah simple all right we're just doing what we always do with these this is salted boiling water till they start to get a little tender not quite yet and then we'll pull them see it's just got some more play in it now a little bit flexible it's still gonna be a little firm then they're going to carry over I'm not going to shock these just give it a little rinse they're ready what do we do we have the asparagus blanch we have the fish prepared meaning it's been butchered tied ready to go into little medallions in the refrigerator I've got my poaching liquid on the stove warm I'm going to make the vinaigrette now I want everything ready because the last thing we're gonna do is actually cook the fish because that's five to seven minutes plus or minus and when that fish comes out boom it's got to be served right away and eaten so asparagus is waiting now let's make the vinaigrette I'm not great with measuring stuff so this is going to be a warm vinaigrette not terribly warm but somewhat warm you know as it gets too warm it breaks so a little bit of Dijon mustard then we're going to get a little bit of diced shallots then with the base here into this I'm going to add two types of vinegar a little bit of red wine and again I try and buy good vinegars that's probably a couple of tablespoons I'm guessing a little red wine a little dash of sherry they have two different flavor profiles okay and we're going to incorporate that in and now we're going to start adding the oil and I'm going to mix again two oils here I'm going to use a good fruity extra-virgin olive oil and I'm going to mix it with a little bit of corn oil so the olive flavor doesn't overwhelm it when you're making these vinaigrettes if you wanted to the emulsions add the oil gradually otherwise it's going to break right away and we're going to go through the corn oil the last thing I'm going to add right before we serve this is these parsley a little bit of tarragon tarragon is really strong chervil which is really very very delicate and chives here so these are four herbs that are part of that mix that the French call fees failed all right now we're going to poach the fish easy this is just salty water with lemon juice in it and getting good flavor into the fish I'm not leaching flavor out acid so it sets up the protein and I'm not going to go crazy with it I actually like it and at home it's a lot easier to make in Cordon Bleu you know this is a little sea salt and we're going to salt the fish when it comes out to this is coarse sea salt now this fish is going to go in now that water you can see it's just simmering I don't want it any hotter than that and what I'm going to do is put a little lid just off to the side just to keep some of that steam in we going to check that fish in about 2 and 1/2 minutes and turn it over so we'll see what it looks like turn it and then it will figure out show you that it hasn't done this on this kind of fish when it's cooking so you don't have to guess two minutes all right spin about two and a half to three minutes and you could see as your little hotter than I want to turn it down slightly turn gently action up in there get off my fish okay that's beautiful all right no more tongs after this that's why I hate tongs as we get closer to pick up I'm going to put the asparagus right in that pan I mean why not this could be like the easiest one pot pick up that we'll have does the asparagus has to be reheated anyway why not put it in the salted water in goes the asparagus hey you get used to get on the same plate right okay let's check them it's been about 2 and 1/2 minutes on each side I'm going to put this right in you want this to be a little warmer than your skin good there there there let's get the asparagus out first get this slotted spatula now I'm going to put the vinaigrette in the same place just to warm it up let that sit there for not very long that's just so it's not cold in go the herbs remember we're putting them and I cactus into the last minute because this way they keep their color remember the heat and the acidity I got to beat up their color a bit okay here I want to be really careful I want to get this off I don't want to damage the finish oh they're good good sharp knife helped it's gonna go right in the center of the plate a couple of pieces of asparagus I don't know this is the part of cooking that always drives me nuts you know how fancy do you want to get with plating this is not my forte that's fine with me now we're going to get the vinaigrette and just spoon it right over the fish because of the acidity in the warm vinaigrette you're going to want to wind it's bright that's acidic maybe a Chablis I'm thinking like maybe a Premier Cru Chablis got a lot of acid they can stand up to this I wouldn't do a red I mean I had a little bit of red wine vinegar and that maybe I cooked a bone or one of the second growth Beaujolais is possibly but I think I'd shoot with the shovel II anyway let's just take a Vista oh yeah look at this look at the flake you come here you just zoom in on that that's it's about perfect I mean you see the consistency of the fish it's just cooked through look at the moisture in there that's the way you want fish you don't want to dry it when it just cooked perfectly poaching easy way to control it test the theft temperature with your little poker I mean that's just about perfect until next week thank you eat fish live longer that's what the bumper stickers say in my neighborhood

Channel: Mike Colameco's Real Food

Views: 69,107

Rating: 4.8586955 out of 5

Keywords: Le Bernardin, Eric Ripert, Gilbert Le Coze, Colavita, Colameco, Food Show, Cooking Show, Food

Id: ZMnhaIBtpEs

Length: 25min 7sec (1507 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 19 2016