Letters to a Young Chef

by Daniel Boulud

  In the modern larder not everything is local in any season, so I do not need to feel a seasonal connection to cook with certain ingredients. Passion fruits are completely exotic to me, so I can cook with them any time of the year without feeling that I am breaking my connection to the season. I used to feel this way about pineapples, but in recent years we have begun to see golden Hawaiian pineapples that are tender and fairly bursting with juice. Now I tend to wait to cook with pineapples until I see the golden ones in the market.

  In addition to fruits and vegetables, fish, fowl, and meat have seasons as well. Again, I try to stay in tune with my local season or at least the spirit of the season. Spring lamb from the hills of eastern Pennsylvania, Gardiners Bay scallops in October, shad from the Delaware in May, Scottish grouse in August, Delaware duck and goose in the fall, upstate New York venison in early winter.

  If you are in tune with the seasons, you will dream about cooking with a particular ingredient when you can find it readily in the market. Stay with the seasons and you cannot go wrong. You will be, as the saying goes, “happy as God in France.” And if you have ever been in a French market full of the choice offerings of the season—bounteous, exploding with flavor, a palette of deep colors to inspire an artist—you will understand why God is so happy. P.S. These days, when I consider ingredients, I think God could be pretty happy in Barcelona, Tuscany, and upstate New York, too.

  This could be a good arena in which to become a bit more activist or political, à la Alice Waters or David Chang. Why should a young chef care? Because as a head chef or owner of a restaurant, you are part of a community. Many communities today lack good access to fresh, unprocessed, healthful ingredients, and chefs have a certain expertise in this realm. Giving back to your community will drive the community back to you.

  WINE AND PASTRY

  LET’S CONSIDER ECONOMICS. When you have your own restaurant and start to review your accounting, you will see that savory foods—the items that come from the garde-manger to the hot lines—account for a little bit more than half the average check. About 10 to 15 percent of that check is generated by the pastry department, and approximately a third goes to the wine cellar. So it is absolutely critical that the complete chef be very conversant with wine and pastry.

  Let’s take those economics a bit further. Although wine is just 30 to 40 percent of the business’s overall sales, the profit margin on it is often much higher. Sometimes with liquor it’s double the profit of the food. This is not, as many people think, because we mark up the bottles 200 or 300 percent. The important thing is to invest in wines that are relatively inexpensive when they are released but that will become more and more valuable as the years go by.

  Today, we have to be especially creative with our wine program. Prices for fine wine have escalated to a point where the consumer is both very cautious and very knowledgeable. We try to buy in quantities that will allow us to sometimes negotiate a better deal and keep the wines at reasonable prices on our lists. We are always very attentive to auctions where, occasionally, we can “steal” a wine by acting very quickly and aggressively. We also have developed relationships with private collectors who occasionally “thin out” their cellars and come to us first. Good relationships and fast payments help!

  Sometimes the profit margin on wine is reduced, because there is no guarantee that a bottle will not be corked. You must also figure in capital costs, the price of storage, interest foregone had you left the money in the bank—and God forbid a bottle be knocked off the shelf as a frantic waiter hurries to satisfy a demanding customer. And, finally, there is always the risk of what happens should the economy tank.

  A great wine list will attract a great clientele, one that knows the value of wine and is willing to indulge. The quality of your wine list will bear a direct and significant impact on your average check in two ways. The wine itself contributes directly to the check. Moreover, the diner who will pay gladly for an Haut-Brion or a Chateau Montelena will expect only the finest food ingredients—the truffles, the grouse, the wild salmon, the porcini. The decision to buy these ingredients in affordable quantities means you will have enough so that you can also offer them to the folks who are buying the less costly bottle of wine. The same relationship holds true in gastropubs or casual places that are chef- or sommelier-driven. There are always some customers who will order the more expensive bottles of wine. When they do it helps you to rebuild your stock faster.

  Vintage Bordeaux represents the big time in collectibles and investment. Then there is Burgundy, the premium Italians, the California cult wines, the prime picks from Mendoza or Australia—you must have a list that represents these categories. Burgundy produces so little wine compared to the demand for it that the prices are driven up. Although it is important for a gastronomic restaurant to have that Latour ’61 or ’70 for the customer who wants the best and does not care about price, it is just as important for your reputation to offer newer, lesser-known winemakers and less costly bottles. For example, I take greater pride in finding some of Jim Clendenen’s Sanford and Benedict pinot noir than in buying a ’78 Corton, which is already well known to every oenophile. Someday the young producers are going to become the old masters, and, of equal importance, you will have diners who want good wine but do not have the pocketbook for the pricey stuff. Those customers are your future, and you cannot afford to drive them away with the sticker shock of a Greatest Hits wine list.

  As a young chef you will have many opportunities to broaden your knowledge of wine. These days, there are tastings all around town (not only in New York, but in any serious restaurant town). There also is a tremendous depth of information contained in books, newspapers, magazines, and food and wine festivals. Still, there is no substitute for tasting. Just watch how much you taste. I remember at one of my early jobs, we had one old chef—a good chef at that—who was pretty lit five days out of six. That will not fly anymore.

  You have advantages that I didn’t when I started. Being French, we accepted wine as part of life, but if we had to drive somewhere to get it, my dad’s philosophy was, Why bother? He was a man of very local mentality. Like most Frenchmen, we drank the wine of our region, northern Rhônes and southern Burgundies: thick, sun-rich syrah; crisp, delicate yet powerful pinot noir. It wasn’t until I worked in a fancy restaurant in Lyon that I began to learn about Bordeaux. Whereas the Burgundies and Rhônes of my youth were a pure expression of terroir (the land, the climate, and the je ne sais quois that define a wine region), Bordeaux often has more elegance and powerful lightness.

  At my next job, at Georges Blanc, on our days off we would try the wines of Mâconnais and Beaujolais, and regional wines such as those of Provence and the Loire—wines that are good for everyday consumption, are affordable, and are very representative of the wide range of wines in the French bistro tradition. We would visit winemakers, driving all day from village to village, and to tell the truth, by five in the afternoon we were feeling toasty. But we were young, and that is the way young chefs were (and still are). Nowadays many chefs travel with their sommeliers to the wine country.

  At my restaurants, we encourage kitchen staff to learn about wine and to attend classes on wine, or to come to tastings directed by the sommeliers. I will see those same faces at wine tastings that I see bent over their notebooks jotting down recipes in the kitchen, or spending their down time asking other cooks about ingredients, techniques, and so on. It boils down to this: the young chef who has ambitions to be a great chef is interested in every aspect of the business, and wine is a very big aspect.

  Apart from being a companion to food, wine is a primary ingredient in French cuisine. It is fundamental to Italian, German, Spanish, and modern American cooking too. Wine helps to balance acidity and concentrate and enrich flavor in a way that vinegar or lemon juice or beer cannot. Only wine has the complexity to bring out the length of flavor in a sauce bordelaise for a ribeye steak, or in a civet de lapin, or in a poularde in a creamy Riesling sauc
e.

  Asian, Middle Eastern, and Latin American cuisines did not evolve around wine the way European cuisine has. Spices, herbs, chilies, and fermented ingredients other than wine were the traditional backbones of these rich traditions. As these cuisines have made their way into the mainstream of first-class modern restaurants, chefs are inventing beverage pairings that are outside the European canon but exciting in their own way for the new possibilities they open up. They will pair foods with cocktails, beer, sake, or booze—no longer just wine.

  Whatever beverage you are pairing with your food, there is something magical about wine that I cannot put into words. Perhaps wine is sacramental because it is touched with an aura of the mystical and sacred. Certainly the French treat it that way. I remember my parents telling me stories of the war, when every family hid their wine from the enemy. The invaders could take other things, but never would they take our wine! From the great châteaux of Bordeaux to the hills of Côte-Rôtie and even in my own home, wine was hidden like the family jewels. My grandfather Joseph Boulud dug a secret underground bunker in which to hide our wine. In our case, it was not about the value of the wine as something collectible but rather the value of the wine as something the family held and loved to share. Wine was part of our patrimony.

  Wine, then, is the essence of the French dining experience. So are the wonderful sugary caprices that pour out of the pastry kitchen, although there are no stories of families hiding treasure troves of pastry in their cellars. Everybody loves pastry, and even the most health-conscious diners usually indulge in something rich and sweet for dessert when they go out for a special occasion. They do not do this every night at home, but when they come to a fine restaurant they usually think, “Why not? One pear clafoutis won’t push me up three belt notches.”

  Gastronomically, dessert is important. The palate craves sweetness at the end of a meal. There is something warm and cozy about dessert, like a goodnight kiss from Mom before she would tuck you in at night. As mentioned above, this childhood craving that stays with grownup diners will account for 10 to 15 percent of the check. Although food costs for desserts are relatively low, labor costs can run high—especially if you have an especially experienced or artistic pastry chef. Still, I believe it is worthwhile to have a well-paid pastry chef because well-conceived, well-executed, and well-marketed desserts can be twice as profitable as your main courses and appetizer. That is a huge hunk of business, one that you cannot afford to leave to the printed menu and hope that the customer takes the hint. These days, when everyone is counting calories and many share desserts, you need to reawaken people’s appetites with a special dessert menu while making sure that your waitstaff is trained in describing the sweets in the most tantalizing manner.

  For your own foundation as a chef, you must acquire an understanding of baking (both bread and pastry). It is much easier to do this when you are younger rather than waiting until the responsibilities of the kitchen pile up on you. Just like the eager-to-learn chef who comes to our wine tastings, the young chef who spends an afternoon every now and then with the pastry chef or bread baker is the person I recognize as having the drive and ambition to advance in this business.

  Although pastry and the rest of the menu both come out of the kitchen, and all are made by a brigade wearing checked pants and white coats, they are two very different disciplines. Cooking is often about speed and creativity in technique. It is also about the ability to improvise—to accommodate variations in ingredients—while maintaining consistency in the finished product. Pastry is the opposite. It is less about spontaneous creativity and more about precision and measuring. Instead of speed, it is about waiting. Pastry ingredients—flour, sugar, butter, sometimes chocolate—are much more uniform than the basic ingredients in appetizers and main courses. In a way, pastry is more like chemistry, whereas the rest of cooking is rather like music. Both have a written-out plan, but in baking you rarely deviate, and in cooking you often must change and adapt.

  The creativity of the pastry chef often expresses itself in elaborate presentation and delicious combinations. If, as they say, first impressions are important, last impressions are equally so in a restaurant. It is hard for the customer to forget a mille-feuille (literally translated as a thousand sheets) of parchment-thin layers of extra-bitter Venezuelan chocolate separating wafers of toasted hazelnut praline, held together by multilevels of pillowy-soft arabica coffee mousse and crowned with a zabaglione of smoky Kentucky bourbon. Crunchy, toasty, bitter, sweet, mildly intoxicating, and thoroughly seductive.

  You may never be a pastry chef, but you cannot call yourself a chef at all if you have not mastered the art of making dough. It is basic to desserts, but also to many of the things we do with hot and cold savory appetizers as well as with main courses. For example, brioche, pâte sablée, and puff pastry are used as much in savory items as in sweet. A combination of crayfish, morels, sweetbreads, and asparagus in a foamy chervil sauce on a flaky, golden pastry crust is a far cry from a tart of crushed fresh figs tossed with cinnamon and brown sugar and baked over a butter-rich crust. Still, they both depend on mastering the delicate and demanding art of puff pastry. So even though you may have little interest in becoming a pastry chef because you have your sights set on the line, spending some time on the dough station will serve you well.

  Did you ever watch a pastry chef draw a picture of a dessert? It is almost like watching an architect. You are struck with the physical design, how flavor is located in different layers, the way texture enters into the equation. Whereas a line cook might rely more on gut and inspiration, the pastry chef always plans it out. Many line cooks I have known would have benefited from this kind of planning. No doubt I have such respect for the pastry chef because Michel Guérard, my mentor, and Alex Stupak, of Alinea and WD-50, were pastry chefs before they decided to become chefs. Their visual artistry and creativity, by virtue of their pastry background, are beyond the capability of most traditional chefs.

  Although I can think of nothing more perfect than a classic chocolaty and creamy éclair washed down with a cup of espresso, at the same time, I will never say no to some just-invented passion-fruit extravaganza topped with a scoop of saffron gelato. One is not better than the other, and whether you want to create traditional or original desserts you must understand the basic principles of pastry and desserts as they are practiced by pastry chefs. Then you must learn to let your imagination go. As I write this I cannot help but think of one of my former pastry chefs, Dominique Ansel. Where did he get the insane idea of marrying a donut and a croissant? Certainly not from the traditions of classic pastry. Instead it was a bolt of playful inspiration from his genius that led him to pair two iconic pastries, French and American, into one that produced lines of hundreds of people waiting outside his Manhattan, London, Tokyo, and LA shops.

  I mentioned earlier how I am interested in exploring all the facets of the flavor profile of an ingredient. Right now at Bar Boulud we are making a strawberry, lime, and rhubarb dessert. In a glass, layer a light lime gelée, a mix of fresh and stewed strawberries, a tart lime whipped cream, strawberry granita, and rhubarb ice cream. Alongside we serve a warm rhubarb turnover. Three basic ingredients (rhubarb, lime, and strawberry) presented in a multitude of texture and taste.

  Without the knowledge of how to use sugar precisely, how to create sweetened creams, and how to layer elements, this would be a so-so dessert, the kind that kids make when they dump every sweet thing in the refrigerator into a mixing bowl. Only by virtue of the fact that we have studied the science of sweetness and tartness in pastry as well as in basic cuisine can we get to an interesting and novel “chef’s dessert.” And if there is ever a place where pure whimsy and caprice rule on the menu, it is in the desserts.

  THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD

  EXPERIENCING OTHER CUISINES in their home territory is more important for a chef today than it ever was. It will be even more so in the future, because many chefs have learned across the globe and then gone ba
ck to their homeland to create a new cuisine with their indigenous ingredients. But before you buy your tickets and take off for Lima or Sri Lanka, there are some things you need to ask yourself.

  First, what kind of food interests you? Italian, French, Peruvian, Chinese, Mexican, Indian, Thai, Japanese? If you have an idea of what you particularly like, it can be an indication of what cuisines you ought to see and try. You do not always have to travel the world, by the way. In New York City, you could sample at least thirty different cuisines—in true ethnic communities—if you hopped on the number 7 train at Grand Central and got off at every stop in Queens. You will find restaurants, groceries, butchers, bakers, fish stores—all specializing in ethnic ingredients.

  New York is not America’s only melting pot. San Francisco, New Orleans, Los Angeles, and Chicago all have ethnic communities: Vietnamese, Italian, Mexican, Japanese, Eastern European, Portuguese, and others. So you can do a lot of your culinary world traveling close to home. The important thing is that you try the real thing—true cuisines—wherever you can find them.

  Even for the explorer who does not have access to the real thing, we are all floating on a sea of cookbooks, magazines, documentaries, YouTube videos, and Instagram posts crammed with recipes and mouth-watering pictures of different world cuisines. Any food magazine or even the food section of any international paper will pretty much take you around the world if you read it for a year.

  We did not have such a wide exposure to global cuisine when I was a young chef. Honestly, we didn’t think we needed it. I understand why we thought that way. We were French, and the French all think that serious cuisine is French cuisine. French is the language of cuisine the way English is the language of air traffic control. I say that because in France, even in small, remote villages, you can find a great chef who is cooking local cuisine or who has a world reputation. Clearly, today any country can claim world-class talent, but maybe not yet all over the country, the way France can.