art and hunger

Tips from Chef Julie of the Kitchen at Billings Forge

We had the good fortune to visit with another artful chef, Chef Julie Carrion of the Kitchen at Billings Forge in Hartford, CT. She gave us a tour and included a few tips for how to plate your dishes in an artful way when entertaining at home. The Kitchen at Billings Forge is part of a community center in an inner-city neighborhood where the center is contributing something positive to society by providing low-income housing, a vegetable garden, classes, a farmer's market and a play area for the local children. 

Here you can see a summer dance party in progress in the grassy courtyard of the center, where even little toddlers were shakin' their booties like John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. 

In addition to the lovely vegetable garden and courtyard, the center has an elegant restaurant named Firebox and offers cooking master classes taught by Chef Julie, who has previously cooked for the famed Restaurant Daniel in New York. Below she is making some delicious chocolate mousse desserts for the restaurant.

Chef Julie's tips for those of us who only cook at home were to pay close attention to how you plate food on its dish, and to pay attention to the visual form, texture and color of your food. "Color is incredibly important in increasing the desirability of food" she said.  For example, she added chopped pistachio nuts on top of this chocolate mousse dessert in part for the added crunch and flavor, but also for the beautiful burst of green it adds to the rich dark brown of the chocolate sauce.

In regards to plating your food, she said to think of it as if you are creating a picture or arranging a vase of flowers. For example, when you serve a salad, make sure the greens' stems are pointing down, not up. She said stems pointing up is the same as putting flowers in a vase upside down, and you wouldn't do that, would you? That's advice you would only hear from a professional chef.

For more information about catering or cooking classes at Billings Forge community center, visit their site here.

To eat at the restaurant Firebox, visit the restaurant's site.

To shop at the Hartford farmers market visit the market site.

Congratulations to Chef Humm at Eleven Madison Park

Executive Chef Daniel Humm, who heads Eleven Madison Park, was rightly awarded 4 stars today by New York Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni. Chef Humm is the epitome of the artful chef with his extraordinary menus, colorful amuse-bouches and flawless presentation of food. As you can see in these stunning images of Eleven Madison Park's food from their restaurant website, Chef Humm is an absolute artist in the kitchen in the literal sense, so we thought it fitting to write a tribute to his success here.

We had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Humm once at a party, and were struck by what a humble, pleasant person he is as well as a great chef. Bruni wrote a delightful description of Chef Humm’s culinary creativity, which you can read for yourself.  

In addition, Eleven Madison Park smartly leverages high-end, sophisticated graphic design in its favor. The simple, modern logo representing the seasonality of their menu is one of our favorite restaurant logos in New York. Eleven Madison Park’s brochures are printed on smooth, luxurious paper and their food photographer is one of the best. Congratulations to all involved in making this restaurant such a unique place.

Eleven Madison Park

11 Madison Ave  New York, NY 10010  (212) 889-0918

The Art of Tandoor in St. Lucia

The small island of St. Lucia in the West Indies has an interesting fusion of Caribbean and Indian cooking. We recently visited there and were shown how to cook using a Tandoori oven. The oven itself is the shape of a giant clay pot. The chef lights a fire at its bottom.

He then grills meat and seafood on large iron skewers by placing them in the pot. Once they are somewhat grilled, he removes them and hangs them on a rack outside, where they continue to cook and perfect.

Most interesting is how they make Naan and other Indian breads in the oven. The chef takes a ball of dough and throws it at the inside of the oven so it sticks in mid-air. See below:

The Naan cooks very quickly, so the chef watches closely and peels it off the side using a skewer. It is then brushed with a sumptuous coating of Ghee, Indian clarified butter.

The breads are served with a variety of Indian-inspired chutneys and artistic dishes. The vegetable samosa appetizer is artfully plated with a fried plantain- it looks like a mini Surrealist sculpture.

The below is a spicy seafood pocket filled with fresh fish and vegetables that steamed inside the pocket. The pocket is made of a kind of parchment paper and is not edible.

The wholewheat Poori bread is served with a delicious curry, again, packed with fresh local vegetables.

And finally, dessert was a mind-blowing cardamom-coffee mousse with crispy butter biscuits. Delicious!

We highly recommend a trip to this island! Also interesting was a guided nature hike we took through the rainforest surrounding the hotel and restaurant. The guide showed us herbs used in the restaurant's cooking, an Almond nut pod, as well as a vanilla bean pod:

And also what a local coffee tree looks like: