Knives at Dawn

by Andrew Friedman

  The carpaccio was very good and a beautiful idea. There is great importance to have everything of the same size, and you should really carefully calculate the size and number of slices needs for a 40g truffle and have some back-up options if we can’t find the exact truffle you need. Remember you can use the scraps in other preparations, gratin, etc., but those slices with the beef and celery are a lot of work and required careful planning.

  The marmalade with the honey was a little too sweet and could dominate the truffle a little too much and could be a little more spicy (could you consider a frutta di mustarda) compatible with truffle and celery of course then you will get the sweet and the heat) or keep the way you have it and add couple of drop of homemade English mustard oil??? You don’t want the pastry to become too papery and dry—it needs to be flaky pretty flat. May be a pissaladière dough with a touch of buckwheat flour and butter instead of olive oil.

  For the pommes surprise or pommes maxim, all the garnish has to be very secure so it doesn’t move around when you are plating it. Be careful that the chestnuts are braised enough so that they are tender and moist and don’t dry up in the jus. The chestnuts may be frozen now unless you have some in CA you want to take with you.

  For the braised beef check, the flavor was fantastic. After you are done cooking it, maybe wrap it in plastic film to make it more compact, so when you are trimming it you can cut it into bigger squares or maybe even use a cutter the size and shape of the turnips. You have to be careful it doesn’t topple over on the plate, and this will help give it a more secure base for the disc of carrots. They were delicious, but again, they need to be secure as the platter has to travel and the food has to be platted … I don’t know how much great broccoli rape you will be able to find, so think of an alternative just in case.

  The glass with the bresaola is very, very nice, but you have to be careful not to have either too much smoke or not enough. You also have to be sure not to be rushed and overwhelmed at that finishing moment of the platter so my suggestion but I have not try it is for Adina to take the smoke gun just before pick-up and fill two large 1-quart squeeze bottles with a small tip and a cap over with the smoke, keep it enclosed and Adina take the bottles and go with you to dress the beef. Basically you present the platters without the smoke (judge can see the inside which is good), and then right before the plates go out, Adina fills each glass ball with smoke from the bottle. Inject it carefully and keep your cool. You need to do a lot of practices of this to make sure this is working with the timing and the flavor. The flavor of the garnishes is very good. If you take the prune out of the oxtail jus, you could put it on the bottom here for richness. The pieces of apple could be a little bigger so when we crunch on them we know what we are tasting.

  That’s all for now and so sorry to get to you a little late for your practice tomorrow and last but not least, you have both all our congratulations again and you are on the right track for Lyon.

  Good luck with all of the training! We will see you in France soon!

  Best regards,

  Daniel

  THE NEXT FULL RUN-THROUGH took place on Thursday, January 8. In attendance was another journalist, Lisa Abend of Time magazine. Hollings-worth had received Boulud’s e-mail before the practice, but did not have time to read it closely; he was so far along in his thinking and refinement process that, at the end of the day, he didn’t take any specific changes from the chef’s lengthy think piece. It was yet another testament to how quickly things were moving; under normal circumstances, this level of feedback from one of the nation’s top chefs would be something to mull over at great length, but there just wasn’t time.

  That day’s practice began and, once again, for five hours, Hollings-worth and Guest went through their routine. Though he still opted not to reference his timing sheet, Hollingsworth evidenced more efficiencies in his prep. He butchered and cleaned all the beef at the same time (per his note from the initial practice), and got the pieces to their respective destinations: the beef cheeks and oxtail were in the pot with veal stock and vegetables, the pressure-cooker lid suctioned into place. The tenderloin and côte de boeuf, meanwhile, remained on his station.

  He turned his attention to butchering the cod, his hands gliding quickly but delicately as he took the beast apart. The Dance came quickly for him that day, evidenced in almost all of his movements, as when he steadied a section of cod with one hand, using his other to run a knife between skin and flesh with the finesse of a pool hustler. After skinning the other fillet, he put the cod in a stainless-steel bowl, seasoned it with salt and pepper, and set it aside.

  He then made the scallop mousse, processing scallops in the Robot Coupe with crème fraîche, salt, and polyphosphate, which would aid the texture of the mousse, allowing the mixture to take on a large quantity of fat without breaking or separating, and to hold water in rather than leaching it. (Hollingsworth likens the effect to that of a hot dog.) He transferred this to a bowl, then used a rubber spatula to fold in diced preserved Meyer lemon.

  In perhaps the most complicated maneuver of their routine, Hollings-worth would need to wrap the delicate scallop mousse around the cod. This required a multitude of steps, and each of them demanded extraordinary touch: He transferred the mousse to a Cryovac bag (in which items that will be cooked sous vide are vacuum packed), flattened it out with the back of his knife, snipped a few inches off the top, and sealed it in the Cryovac machine. He transferred the bag to his cutting board and used a rolling pin, then the back of his knife to gently level the mousse as evenly as possible. He set the bag in a sheet pan and poured boiling water over it to cook it, a fog of steam blanketing his work surface.

  Next, Hollingsworth sifted Activa through a small strainer to “glue” two pieces of fillet into a rectangle (a reprise of the Orlando presentation), then sifted Activa over the rectangle, lay the overlapping bacon strips on top, Cryovaced it inside a bag, and set it aside.

  Preparing for the cod mousse graft, he lay a large swath of plastic wrap on his station. He cut the mousse, which had solidified by the gentle cooking, free of its bag and set it on the plastic. He put the cod on this, sifted Activa over it, cut the mousse again (he had enough mousse for two pieces) and rolled it up using the sheet of plastic as a tool rather than grasping it with his own fingers. Then he wrapped the sausage-like piece in another sheet of plastic, twisting the ends to hold it firmly together. He cut the ends off the cylinder, which would allow the olive oil to permeate the cod and mousse when confited with the plastic, maintaining the cylindrical shape.

  He repeated this with the remaining mousse and cod, but the second one was a little off—when Hollingsworth tried to roll up the mousse around the cod, it came up short, not unlike a man trying to button a jacket only to discover that he’s gained a few pounds. Hollingsworth calmly unwrapped the bundle, transferred the cod to a clear area of his station, trimmed it, and rolled it again, successfully, then put both cod-mousse setups onto a small steel tray and into a lowboy refrigerator.

  The order of steps might seem, to the untrained eye, random, but they were orchestrated to save time in a number of ways: the “beef stew” required an hour, so that was set in motion first, and, of course, consolidating the use of Activa saved Hollingsworth several steps including reaching for it, returning to the refrigerator more than once to store the prepared meat and fish, and needing to clean up the strainer an extra time. Exactly these kinds of efficiencies banked time for a team and could reduce the expenditure of crucial minutes on Game Day.

  Meanwhile, Guest was executing an interlocking series of smaller tasks: candying orange peel in successive changes of sugared water while trimming broccolini florets, peeling and slicing celery, cooking chestnuts, and setting just-baked potato mille-feuille into an ice bath to chill it.

  Though they barely spoke to one another throughout the first four hours, the final push once again presented complications that led to dialoguing. They composed the scallop tartare together, making it this
time with overlapping scallop rounds instead of a puree, then pieces of grapefruit and strips of orange rind. It was pretty but it was decidedly not uniform; for example, different melbas had different numbers of grapefruit pieces on them.

  When it was over, and the team had put up all their proteins and garnishes, altered according to the conversation and experimentation of the past several days, Henin offered his feedback. He had nothing but praise for the beef platter: He was pleased at the balance between artistry and good taste, and liked that the six components all had different shapes. He approved of the three different preparations of the protein (cured, braised, and roasted), and pronounced the sauce, made by infusing reduced beef cooking liquid with prune, “the best I’ve seen.” (One small tinker that he and Hollingsworth agreed on was that the fillet rectangle would be abandoned in favor of the two cylinders from the previous practices.)

  His evaluation of the fish platter was more qualified. “The fish guys are going to feel cheated,” he said. “They’re going to say, ‘Look at those guys [the meat judges] …’ ”

  Henin was stuck on the need for a big piece of protein on the fish plate. He took out a pillbox-sized, oval-shaped pastry he had procured from Bouchon Bakery that morning.

  “What do you think of something like this?” he said. With his other hand, he dropped a prawn into the bain-marie.

  Hollingsworth didn’t say anything, just looked at it and considered. Henin mentioned that he felt a lack of urgency in the day’s practice, especially during the final hour.

  “We’re still trying to work out each other’s roles,” said Hollingsworth.

  “Like the beginning, that was picture-perfect,” said Henin. He carved out a portion of the pastry, holding it in one hand, then extracted the prawn from the water and held it upside down, its head resting in the newly carved cavity, a slightly different take on the artichoke-shrimp proposition he’d made the day before.

  Hollingsworth considered it, but said nothing. Like Henin, he didn’t want to threaten the bond that was being established, but the truth was that what the coach was proposing was hopelessly far from anything Hollings worth would do; it just didn’t resonate with him at all. Henin let it go for the moment. No sense in pushing. Things were going too well.

  Henin’s suggestion assumed that the sponsor-provided shrimp would be of a certain size, but neither he nor Hollingsworth knew how big they’d actually be. Hollingsworth knew the total weight of product he’d be cooking with, but had been unsuccessful trying to ascertain the exact specs. This was especially important with the shrimp, which can vary more in size than the other proteins. At Pelka’s request, Carey Snowden had actually gone so far as to try to order the Norwegian seafood and Angus beef from overseas, but they got stuck in customs and were eventually destroyed. (In truth, unbeknownst to the team, full details of the size of all proteins were available on the Bocuse d’Or Web site, but were difficult to find, located several “levels” down under a “Themes” tab that had to be double-clicked for its contents to be revealed, a detail that, according to Pelka, was never explained to the team.)

  That afternoon, Hollingsworth, still feeling some residual tension between himself and his coach, suggested to Laughlin that they should cook together, and asked her to make the overture. “There had been a couple of hard points and we had a few issues,” he said later. “I really wanted to reach out and basically let him know that I did appreciate him, and I do have a lot of respect for him. It’s just that I see things different. It’s not that I don’t respect his opinion or his history.… I felt that he might feel a little bit left out, therefore I wanted to make the extra effort to tie us all together.”

  Henin would be leaving town for the weekend, but Laughlin set the dinner up for Monday night, three days before the team’s departure for France.

  TO HELP TEAM USA plan for their departure, Jennifer Pelka arrived in Yountville Saturday morning, January 10, and checked into Petit Logis, a five-room inn tucked behind Bouchon Bakery on Yount Street. When she met up with Hollingsworth, she was caught off guard by his garage-band look—the unshaven face, the ripped jeans, the knit cap. He gave her a tour of The French Laundry, then the Garden, but the sightseeing portion of the day was brief, because Practice Number Four was planned. In addition to Pelka, a number of special guests were expected: Hollingsworth’s family— his parents and sisters—as well as two of Laughlin’s cousins, close to fifteen people in all. Step right up, folks …

  Though the competition was drawing closer, and practice time was scarce, Hollingsworth was only too happy to talk to his family as he rehearsed, to explain what he was doing at each turn. It was the first time any of them had seen him cook professionally. “They have no idea what I do, or what kind of work goes into what I do. To be able to see it, really was a very special thing for me,” he said.

  His father’s attention was especially gratifying to Hollingsworth. “For him to be there and to watch that and to really be so interested … and kind of really show a respect and an interest was really amazing for me. It was very special,” he said.

  That day, Hollingsworth tried a new shrimp garnish, a shrimp and avocado tart. To make it, he cooked the shrimp sous vide with clarified butter, halved them, and tiled them in long strips, alternating the pieces with slices of avocado, like a long green, pink, and white caterpillar. This he set atop a piece of puff pastry spread with fennel compote, then brushed the shrimp and avocado with a yuzu (a tart Asian citrus) gelée and sprinkled it with a brunoise of red jalapeño. (Though he did not voice it, like many of the dishes to which Hollingsworth is drawn, this one was founded on the flavor profile of a classic of Americana: shrimp cocktail, with the red jalapeño standing in for the cocktail sauce.) On balance, he was happy with it, although he found the yuzu overpowering and the crust crumbly. He and Guest also added a new element to the mille-feuille, topping the individual pieces with quenelles of leek puree made by mounting blanched leeks with crème fraîche.

  On Sunday, the team had a planning session largely devoted to all the equipment that would be required in Lyon. Pelka typed a list, divided into three categories: Pack, Ship (that is, FedEx to Boulud’s parents’ home just outside Lyon), and Purchase There. Hollingsworth and Guest did some fine-tuning, such as reducing the amount of yuzu and changing the pastry for the new tart from a handmade dough to purchased puff pastry. Though most elements in the competition need to be prepared and produced from scratch, Bocuse d’Or rules allow many ready-made items into competition, such as puff pastry and stocks.

  That night Pelka, Hollingsworth, Guest, and Laughlin went to dinner at Ubuntu, the Napa vegetarian restaurant with a yoga studio upstairs that the New York Times’ Frank Bruni had ID’d as the best new restaurant in the United States. It was a relaxed evening that blended planning (for the near future) with enjoying food and wine (here and now).

  When the moment was right, Pelka broached a delicate topic: she and the rest of the East Coast contingent were concerned about the modest character of the platter, barely three-dimensional, and with virtually no “old-school” flourishes to trumpet the food.

  “If we win for that reason, I don’t want to win,” Hollingsworth said flatly. After his extended exercise in self-discovery, feeling his way through the conception of his dishes, he had arrived at his own well-defined place. The food was as manipulated as he wanted it to be. If anything, he was considering going more modern by adding some edible flowers to the plate, a personal predilection of his. This was another violation of Viola’s advice, but Hollingsworth was feeling real ownership of his platter, and he wanted to remain true to himself.

  Pelka persisted. She took the simplicity of the new shrimp tart (“the new tiled shrimp thing” she called it) as an example: such a simple composition would need to be beyond perfect to score; the lines would need to be so well-defined, the color so tantalizingly vivid that even the slightest flaw could prove fatal. Why not hedge their bets with some more razzmatazz?

  “Wha
t can we do to add more height?” she asked.

  Again, Hollingsworth and Guest pushed back. They had performed four practices in eight days and had a swelling sense of command. Didn’t Pelka understand: they were on the verge of possibly beating the clock, of giving themselves a chance to actually breathe life into the fairy tale that had been constructed for them? There was no time for new challenges, let alone finding the kind of pieces she was describing. They were getting on an airplane in four days!

  “We have a ton of time,” countered Pelka. If, say, Thomas Keller asked for something, they could get whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted it. As far as she was concerned, it would be the culinary equivalent of a request from the president of the United States. People in the industry didn’t say no to Keller, or for that matter to her chef, Boulud.

  Hollingsworth relented. The next day, he spent hours on the phone with Daniel Scannell. Scannell agreed to overnight him approximations of vessels—like little footed silver stands to hold the beef cheek stacks; long, half-cylinder vessels in which the pistachio-crusted cod might rest; small rectangular trays on which the bacon-wrapped rib-eye would sit—that could be produced in time to add to the tray, but would not be available until after the team departed for France. If they were lucky, they’d get to practice with them one time, which expanded the potential for the unknown to encroach upon their Bocuse d’Or performance. Culinary competitors don’t just rehearse to get the conception and execution of their food down pat; they also fine tune the act of assembling the platters and plating the food so that every single pitfall can be identified and addressed. Throwing additional variables into the equation all but ensured that Team USA would have at least one surprise in Lyon, either in their final practice, or during the contest itself.