Offal Good™ http://www.offalgood.com Chef Chris Cosentino's guide to all good guts. Thu, 26 Apr 2012 18:37:50 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.3 Adams head to tail 2012 experience http://www.offalgood.com/blog/adams-head-to-tail-2012-experience http://www.offalgood.com/blog/adams-head-to-tail-2012-experience#comments Thu, 26 Apr 2012 18:37:50 +0000 Chris http://www.offalgood.com/?p=1522

photo courtesy of: Michael Harlan Turkell

Dear Chef, Incanto Crew, and all future Head to Tail stage applicants,
There is an endless number of words I can use to describe my week at what might very well be the most interesting restaurant in the country, Incanto.  I hope to use a few of them to both reflect on my time at the restaurant, as well as give all future applicants a better idea of what the experience may entail if they are fortunate enough to be selected.  Before I begin though I would like to say thank you to Chef Chris, Chef Manny, and the entire Incanto crew for inviting me into your world for a few short days, and that I am incredibly grateful for both the experience and our time together.  You were all unbelievably gracious hosts as well as phenomenal cooks and I consider it a privilege to have been a part of the team even if only for a week.  Thank you for that.  Now onto the experience.
First off I must say the stage was intense.  I’m not going to lie and say that there weren’t points where I did not feel as though I was in over my head.  Flying across the country to an unfamiliar city, to work in an unfamiliar kitchen, doing unfamiliar food was certainly more difficult than I had imagined it would be.  It is a tremendous amount of pressure entering a kitchen and representing not only yourself, but all of the people you have worked for over the years.  My first two days I could barely hold my knife straight.  It took me until service the first night of the dinner before I was able to finally get out of my head and just cook.  This was all exacerbated by the fact Incanto is a vigorous place to work.  There are no throw away items on the menu at Incanto.  All of the food is executed at a tremendously high level and as Chef wrote on his blog to describe the experience: “there is a shit ton of detailed work to be done.”  This was certainly the case.  I may have flown 6 hours from New York to northern California, but this was in no way a vacation.  There were sinks of tripe to be cleaned, thousands of fava beans to be shelled, and gallons of consommé to be clarified.  My fellow stage Italo and I were there 15 hours a day, and there was constantly something to be done.  This is by no means a complaint, but rather the reality.
For those future applicants, if you are reading this and are concerned about taking your vacation days and spending crazy amounts of money to fly out to California to work harder than you probably do at your normal job don’t be.  As a restaurant, Incanto is an inspirational place to work even if only for a few days.  I don’t know if there are any other restaurants in the world where food is looked at and viewed the way it is there.  Yes the nose to tail cooking is the main draw but there are so many great things going on in the Incanto kitchen.  The restaurant makes almost everything imaginable in house.  There are the basics like preserves and jams and pickles, but there is so much more.  They dehydrate and grind their own spices and chiles.  Make their own bread.  Their own garum.  Salt and cure egg yolks.  I swear to god there was a fish drying from the ceiling.  Also everything at the restaurant gets used.  Almost nothing is thrown out.  Herb stems go into confit oil. Confit oil gets used to cook with.  Incanto is a model for sustainability.  Every ingredient is treated with the utmost respect from the most expensive protein down to a single stem of mint.  Nearly every product there offers one hundred percent yield.   It is through these practices that even with using almost exclusively sustainable and organic products the restaurant is able to operate with a ridiculously low food cost.  It is amazing to witness and something all cooks and chefs should not only learn how to do, but strive every day to do better.
Now speaking of learning.  This brings me to what I feel is the word that best describes my stage at Incanto – educational.  There is so much to learn at this restaurant, and everyone there is more than willing to teach.  From cooking spleen, to making pasta out of pig skin, dehydrating and puffing beef tendons, and even making panna cotta out of foie gras you will learn a lot.  I know I certainly did.  The chefs at Incanto make it a point that when you work there you are actively learning.  Education often seems like the number one priority.  This extends even beyond food and cooking.  It may mean taking ten minutes out of the busiest day to watch a video about a Japanese man making coffee for tsunami survivors, or taking twenty minutes out of the day to go down the street to browse the cookbook Mecca that is Omnivore Books.  It was a constant theme running through the restaurant that even though we were busy and there was work to be done, we should always be learning something.  Even our day off included lunch with Harold McGee and a trip to the market to check out the different products you won’t find just anywhere.
Perhaps the most important thing I took away from my stage at Incanto though was the memories of a once in a lifetime experience, and if you are reading this still wondering what to expect if you are selected for the stage I offer you this information.  You will have the opportunity to work side by side with an unbelievably brilliant and knowledgeable chef, and a team of cooks as talented as you are likely to encounter anywhere in the country.  You will make extraordinary friends.  You will cook great food and also eat exceptionally well.  And you will work.  Hard.  And when it is over you will want to do it again and again.  Once again I’m incredibly thankful for this experience, and I encourage anyone who is a serious cook to apply.  If you are reading this and have already been accepted I offer you my congratulations and this parting advice.  Work hard.  Work clean.  Cook with confidence.  Have fun.  And mostly importantly even if you’ve done something a million times before,  always read your labels and double/triple check your math.
Thank you Incanto crew and good luck to all applicants.  I look forward to the opportunity to work with you in the future.
Sincerely,
Adam R. Wile
Brooklyn, New York
]]> http://www.offalgood.com/blog/adams-head-to-tail-2012-experience/feed 0 Italo’s head to tail 2012 experience http://www.offalgood.com/blog/italos-head-to-tail-2012-experience http://www.offalgood.com/blog/italos-head-to-tail-2012-experience#comments Thu, 26 Apr 2012 18:31:17 +0000 Chris http://www.offalgood.com/?p=1517

photo courtesy of: michael harlan turkell

I need to start off by saying thank you to everyone in the kitchen and front of house for welcoming me into your world for a week.

A few days into my stage Manny asked me if I was having fun, and I answered him in the only way I could truly sum up how I was feeling. I said “This restaurant is like Disneyland for cooks!” It is truly a cooks dream. A beautiful kitchen, a friendly crew, and all of the fun products a cook could ever ask for. The produce is amazing, the offal beyond fresh, and working never felt like work. Chris told me, “We’re all just here to have fun.” I have honestly never had more fun in a kitchen while working so hard. The hours start early and end late, but by the end of the week it all seemed too have gone by too quickly. And what you take with you at the end cannot be learned in any book.

Anyone who considers themselves a chef, or even a cook, needs to experience Incanto first hand. They epitomize what it is to truly cook, to let a product be and not to manipulate it. Just coax it along and help it shine. And any cooks who are thinking about applying for next year’s dinner, DO IT! To not send them your essay would be doing yourself a great injustice.

My time at Incanto was second to none. I have never learned so much in such a short time. And not just recipes and techniques but what it truly is to be a cook. We as cooks have a job, which is prepare food. Pretty obvious there. But what most seem to forget about is that we have a duty to honor the products we are using. Take nothing for granted. I have never seen a kitchen that respects food as much as Incanto. And with zero pretention may I add. When you have pulled mint from the ground essentially you have killed it just as much as when you knock a hog on the head. Now you owe it to that piece of mint and that hog that they were not killed in vain, and that none of it will go to waste. And Incanto was an amazing example of this philosophy.

I honestly had the time of my life and I can’t begin to thank Chef and the rest of the crew enough for the amazing opportunity to work and learn alongside them. I look forward to next year’s head to tail and my next trip to Incanto.

Thank you

-Italo

 

 

]]> http://www.offalgood.com/blog/italos-head-to-tail-2012-experience/feed 0 2012 Head 2 Tail stage winners!! http://www.offalgood.com/blogroll/2012-head-2-tail-stage-winners http://www.offalgood.com/blogroll/2012-head-2-tail-stage-winners#comments Thu, 01 Mar 2012 23:33:16 +0000 Chris http://www.offalgood.com/?p=1513

working out the plating

Another  difficult year to choose the 2 stages for this years head to tail!! We had a great mix of very talented chefs form all over the country as well as Canada. As well as some amazing essays as well as some really bad ones, but that being said I feel we did a great job choosing our 2 stages for this year. So now the hard part is over lets let the fun begin. I have included their names and essays for you to read after the break. Thank you everyone for your time and effort in your essays, it is a very hard decision to make, all who applied were really great. keep cooking offal !!

Italo Marino from Mt Pleasant, South Carolina

I first fell in love with offal at thirteen. I come from a very large and very old world Sicilian family. And every year, for generations now, all of the men in the family get together for what they call “tripe-fest.” It’s been a family tradition since my grandfather was a child, and when they moved to America they’ve kept the tradition alive. All of us meet at one of the uncles’ houses and everyone brings something. Whether it is a case of wine, a box of cigars, or some homemade lemoncello, everyone contributes. It’s a day for drinking and eating and catching up with family u may only see once a year.

 

And the meal is an all offal feast. Three kinds of tripe, headcheese, grilled beef heart and pork liver skewers, chicken and duck liver mousse, brains, sweetbreads, kidneys wrapped in caul fat, all sorts of sausages and a few simple salads. But the day I fell in love with offal it wasn’t my uncles tripe, which is still the best I’ve been able to find anywhere, but it was a simply braised pigs trotter that stopped me dead in my tracks. It was nothing more than a foot simmered in a basic tomato sauce, but this was it! There was practically no meat to be found anywhere on that foot and I didn’t miss it at all. The skin was so tender, which held in all of the delicious gelatin and cartilage and all the lovely bits that are hidden in a trotter. All the old timers thought it was great. The first year I had been invited and I’m sitting behind a pile of picked over bones. I must have had half a dozen or so.

 

I had the good fortune to be able to work in three amazing Michelin starred restaurants while living in New York. Now that I have moved out of the city I luckily found a position under a young chef as excited about food as I. The highlight of my week is when we get our pork delivery from Keegan Filion Farm. But the best part is not only the beautiful grass fed pork, beef, and poultry, but each week they bring us a box of mixed offal. They give it to us for free because none of their other clients want anything to do with them.

 

Each week it’s something different. Sometimes it’s a couple of pig heads, liver and tails. Other times it’s a case of 40 pigs feet and beef hearts. But each week we get to take these products and work them into specials for our restaurant or our Italian restaurant next door. Testa, guanciale, smoked hearts, liver sausage, all sorts of things that test us on a daily basis. And every now and then when I serve a one of my special I cant help but think about that simply braised trotter on a paper plate sitting on a picnic table all those years ago.

 

AdamR. Wile from Brooklyn, NY

 

Chef,
Although I am sure you will be reviewing a great deal of applications I am submitting this essay to make the case why I believe I should be chosen as one of the stages for this year’s Head to Tail dinner.  First I must say that growing up in Queens New York I have never visited Incanto.  This however has not stopped me from becoming a huge fan of the restaurant and the type of food you prepare.  I follow you closely on twitter and am often awed by the dishes and ideas you post.  I believe in the philosophy of using the whole animal, and as a cook have tried to work in restaurants that believe in that philosophy as well.  It is one of the main reasons I was drawn to the kitchens of Momofuku and Fatty ‘Cue.  Both these restaurants are at the forefront of the New York dining scene when it comes to sustainability, and both restaurants afforded me the opportunity to work with parts of the animal not often seen on menus.  Still when it comes to head to tail eating I can’t help but feel both of these restaurants could have gone further, moving beyond the more popular though still untraditional parts of the animal and showing people just how delicious all parts of it can be.
“That animal gave its life for you…  Don’t waste any,” I remember a cook at Momofuku saying to me as I was bone-ing out pork shoulders one afternoon.  I was very aware.  It reminded me of the lessons my uncle passed onto me as he was teaching me how to slaughter roosters at his farm in upstate New York when I was younger.  It’s something that has stuck with me ever since.  Animals which have given their lives must be treated with respect, and part of that respect is not wasting any useable piece of them.  To do so is to waste life.  There is a quote from Fergus Henderson I like to remember along the same lines; “Once you knock an animal on the head it is only polite to eat the whole animal.”  This seems simple and fair enough, but I believe in it deeply.  I feel what stops many people from acting on this idea, myself included, is a lack of knowledge.  There may be no better kitchen in the world right now to truly learn how to cook offal and innards than at Incanto.
Clearly as cooks and chefs our responsibility to sustainability goes beyond just the meat we cook with, but also the produce and the vegetables we use as well.  This idea led me to turn my tiny Queens backyard into a full on organic garden which my sous chef affectionately referred to as Wild Wile Farms.  Growing everything from my own Mizuna to Shishito peppers to French Breakfast radishes has given me a deeper respect for the work and time that goes into growing delicious fresh food and has furthered that same notion of “Don’t waste any.”  I know California and San Francisco in particular offer local and seasonal produce rivaled by very few places in the world.  It would be extraordinary to have the opportunity to be able to work with some of these products if I was selected.
With Fatty Cue Brooklyn recently shutting its doors for renovations I am in the unique position to be able to pack my bags and head to San Francisco for this incredible opportunity.  It would be an honor to be selected.  I feel as though I have so much to learn and would take this experience with me far beyond my cooking career.  Thank you for your consideration and best of luck with the decision making process.
Sincerely,
Adam Wile

 

]]> http://www.offalgood.com/blogroll/2012-head-2-tail-stage-winners/feed 0 Do you have the guts to cook guts 4.0? http://www.offalgood.com/blog/do-you-have-the-guts-to-cook-guts-4-0 http://www.offalgood.com/blog/do-you-have-the-guts-to-cook-guts-4-0#comments Fri, 27 Jan 2012 09:00:58 +0000 Chris http://www.offalgood.com/?p=1505

menu meeting

After each years head to tail I look back and say how can we top that, and each year its a challenge that I gladly  welcome. With the past 3 year we have brought in stages to spend a week cooking with the Incanto team, and it has been alot of fun and a great experience. Each stage has come and left their mark, thank you to Derek & Omar 1st year , Michael & Jonah 2nd year, Kylie & Michael 3rd year.  So to continue on in that spirit we shall do it again, its time for someone else to come and play.  This is all about sharing, inspired by the constant requests for knowledge about how to cook offal. Now’s your chance to learn. I will be accepting 2 volunteers to help with the event this year. You get to come into my kitchen and help cook 2 nights of head to tail dinners. You will work your ass off, have some fun and learn a ton, but there are rules to this game. This offer is open to professional cooks only. You will be an unpaid volunteer. You must commit to working in my kitchen for 5 days, from Friday, March 23rd  through Wednesday the 28th except for Tuesday, which you’ll have off to recover. But usually i take us all out to eat and do something fun. You must submit your resume and a short essay on why you should be one of the chosen ones. This is a busy time and I don’t have time to be baby sitting. The Head to Tail dinner is a multi-course menu with a shit load of detailed work..

Here is the pay out; you get all 4 of my t-shirts to take home and you will be able to sit down and enjoy the head to tail menu in the dinning room on the last night. And you have to write a story for me to share on this website after your time here to share with the world. hey Jonah I am still waiting for yours.

working out the plating
working out the plating

Email your resume and brief essay to me at chris@incanto.biz by friday February 20th th. I will make a final decision and contact the 2 lucky winners on February 24th to confim your participation. This gives you 4 weeks to make travel arrangements. Ultimately, this is a fun opportunity to be a part of a great team for a week and learn how to cook some innards.

team photo

 

]]> http://www.offalgood.com/blog/do-you-have-the-guts-to-cook-guts-4-0/feed 2 Mozo vs Zappos cook off Finale http://www.offalgood.com/videos/mozo-vs-zappos-cook-off-finale http://www.offalgood.com/videos/mozo-vs-zappos-cook-off-finale#comments Fri, 08 Jul 2011 20:56:04 +0000 Chris http://www.offalgood.com/?p=1497 Click here to view the embedded video.

 

This was so much fun, I hope they had as much fun as Aaron and I did. Who would have thought it would come down to that! Be sure to look to Zappos for our shoes, they cant be beat

]]> http://www.offalgood.com/videos/mozo-vs-zappos-cook-off-finale/feed 0 Mozo vs Zappos cook off Part 1 http://www.offalgood.com/videos/mozo-vs-zappos-cook-off-part-1 http://www.offalgood.com/videos/mozo-vs-zappos-cook-off-part-1#comments Thu, 07 Jul 2011 18:41:49 +0000 Chris http://www.offalgood.com/?p=1480 Click here to view the embedded video.

Some how I got paired with the super forward thinking CEO of  Zappos in a cooking competition I dont

know how, but I am not going to complain Tony is a true visionary.

This was a fun event we did at Zappos headquarters in Las Vegas with the entire staff watching on.

There is another video with part 2 coming to see who win take the crown so keep watching.

]]> http://www.offalgood.com/videos/mozo-vs-zappos-cook-off-part-1/feed 0 Eat my heart on The Feast! http://www.offalgood.com/press/eat-my-heart-on-the-feast http://www.offalgood.com/press/eat-my-heart-on-the-feast#comments Thu, 07 Jul 2011 06:35:42 +0000 Chris http://www.offalgood.com/?p=1301

View more videos at: http://www.thefeast.com.

This is a video I did for The Feast for valentines day, its a bit old but I thought I would share it anyways.I cant get enough of the heart tartare, but with the foie gras it’s over the top.

]]> http://www.offalgood.com/press/eat-my-heart-on-the-feast/feed 2 Restaurant trade panel on Twitter http://www.offalgood.com/blog/restaurant-trade-panel-on-twitter http://www.offalgood.com/blog/restaurant-trade-panel-on-twitter#comments Wed, 29 Jun 2011 14:34:32 +0000 Chris http://www.offalgood.com/?p=1454 Click here to view the embedded video.

This is the Amex Trade panel I did about social media in 2010 at Aspen Food and Wine classic. It was a fun panel to be on, what you cant see is I have a giant screen posting my twitter feed to the audience as you answered my questions. It was a great way to show the power of social media.

]]> http://www.offalgood.com/blog/restaurant-trade-panel-on-twitter/feed 0 My rejected TV pilot Chef Unleashed http://www.offalgood.com/videos/my-rejected-tv-pilot-chef-unleashed http://www.offalgood.com/videos/my-rejected-tv-pilot-chef-unleashed#comments Sun, 26 Jun 2011 17:10:23 +0000 Chris http://www.offalgood.com/?p=1438

Click here to view the embedded video.

A lot of you have been asking me if “Chefs vs City’ was coming back and the answer is no! I have been trying to find a show that makes senses for me. This is a pilot project that I completed a few months ago that has been turned down,  I am proud of this show check it out.
ABOUT CHEF UNLEASHED
People pitch me TV ideas all the time.  Some are good, some not so good.  Having done my fair share of TV, I’ve gotten to a place where I’m particular about the projects I choose to do.  I’ve also watched how our celebrity-driven culture has infiltrated the food world, with some alarming side-effects.  But I’m getting off-topic.
Last year, a couple of guys approached me about doing a food/adventure show called Chef Unleashed.  One of them had written about me a couple of times in food magazines and the other was known for directing music videos and concert movies.  I was intrigued.  The approach they suggested was fresh and honest and, as it would turn out, envelope-pushing:  They actually wanted to do a show that would challenge and excite me, a chef, and, in so doing, challenge and excite viewers.
The impulse behind the show was simple:  Everybody onboard loves food, is fascinated by where it comes from, and is not squeamish about how to get it, whether it might be game hunted on open terrain or tuna hand-gaffed by blood-soaked Sicilian fisherman, a tradition that goes back 1,000 years.  As the guys wrote in their proposal, “Chef Unleashed invites the viewer on a global eating exploration.  It’s a new kind of reality show, about where good food really comes from—when it’s done right.”
I appreciated the directness and honesty, along with the prospect of traveling the world to explore how the very best food is raised, butchered, or farmed in its native habitat:  Chef Unleashed would have me put on waders, pick up a rifle, wear a hardhat, don overalls, whatever it might take.  Real stuff.  Challenging and yet totally entertaining.  No oohing and aahing studio audience.  No eating of 40-pound omelettes or 9-foot hoagies.  No races or contests.
We went to the Texas Hill Country in January and shot a pilot with one of my favorite purveyors:  Broken Arrow Ranch.  They’re the go-to guys for wild game in the US.  We had a blast.  I learned how to “field harvest” deer alongside their sharpshooters and, in turn, I taught them how to use the whole animal, including the heart, the kidneys, the liver.  We had a huge feast at the end, outside, with the moon rising.  Some of the ranch guys were pretty skeptical about a.) my hunting ability (well, honestly, I was skeptical about my hunting ability, too), and b.) my approach to cooking.  But when it was all over, everyone was fast friends.  We learned a ton from each other and it was, I have to say, one of the very best days I’ve ever experienced as a chef and easily my best experience doing TV.
The guys working on the show captured it all brilliantly:  my excitement, my apprehension, my eyes opening – and my hosts’ too — to new ways of doing food.  I have no doubt that the pilot will open more eyes, right down to the very frank, honest, and totally riveting footage of Texas deer – majestic, gorgeous animals — being hunted (and butchered) to provide food for our dinner tables.
Oops.  Mistake.  Yes, we were pretty aware that we were, to repeat the phrase, pushing the envelope with this.  And I admit, it was pretty gory stuff.  If you watch, you’ll see my very real reaction to it.
But this was not – at all – about shock value.  This was all about getting down to the very source of the very best food and showing where it comes from.  People who know me know I’ve been waging war against our Styrofoam-wrapped, hormone-pumped supermarket culture my entire career.  Chef Unleashed allows me to continue that by other means, along with cracking some jokes, making new friends, and preparing some great food.  But I suspect that some squeamishness – both the kind that I encounter occasionally in diners at Incanto, but, seriously, more often in TV executives who like to say they’re always looking for the next “new” thing, but in reality are pretty terrified when they ever really see anything new – got in the way of our show:  The program made its way around the network that paid for it.  And then just kind of petered out.  Whatever.  These things happen all the time and I refuse to take it personally.  I’ve done other projects that didn’t get above the ground floor.  Fair enough.
But this one is different.  I think it’s a great opportunity for viewers and for a network game enough to break the boundaries of where food TV is right now.  I’ve said way too much and yet I don’t think I’ve even given the best picture of what I think this show could become — something, I believe, that can inspire a lot of people in their own kitchens, in their own journeys.  It’s part travel show, part cooking show, and total adventure.  It’s a food and travel show that looks and feels like no other.  I love it and, even in this roughed-out pilot form, I think you might, too.
Thanks for checking it out.
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