Sun 6/9, 6pm: A Good For You Drive Thru with Ryan Sulikowski of Farmers Road Drive Thru
Chef Ryan Sulikowski began his culinary career as a high school freshman in a neighbor’s Mediterranean-style restaurant. From there he attended Drexel University with a major in Biology and then went to pursue a formal culinary education at Le Cordon Bleu at the Atlantic Culinary Academy in Dover, New Hampshire.

While attending Le Cordon Bleu, Sulikowski worked at Zampa’s Mediterranean Bistro and was influenced by the way people ate in New Hampshire. Everything was healthy, fresh and locally sourced. It was there that he developed his signature cooking style.

Sulikowski then went on to serve as Sous Chef at Clay Hill Farm in York, Maine before returning to the Delaware Valley to work at Moro Restaurant in Willmington, Delaware, where Sulikowski was solely responsible for the writing and execution of the dessert menu. There, working with sweets became one of his specialties.

In 2012, Sulikowski joined Courtney Rozas’ team as Executive Chef of Lotus Farm To Table in Media, Pennsylvania. The BYOB features healthy dishes, simply prepared in an Asian inspired relaxed environment. Ingredients are always sourced from local farms and combined in non-traditional ways. The menu is complemented by artisanal teas and a Market area filled with Sulikowski’s homemade jams, pickles, dressings and sauces.

In the winter of 2013, Sulikowski embarked on a new challenge as Executive Chef of Rozas’ new The Farmer’s Road, while simultaneously maintaining his duties in the kitchen at Lotus Farm to Table. The Farmer’s Road in Kennett Square is a quick serve fast casual drive through restaurant with an emphasis on healthy, local and eco-friendly ingredients.

Sulikowski’s motto is progression to perfection, “I am young and grounded and I am not afraid to make mistakes while pursuing new dishes, techniques and preparations,” he says, “I am always willing to try new things to make myself and my food better. I am always learning, always evolving, and always trying. When something does not work, I sit and try to ascertain why and how I can make it better.”

Sun 6/30, 2pm: America’s Favorite Desserts with Jessie Oleson Moore, Author of “The Secret Lives
of Baked Goods”
COOKbook author Jessie Oleson Moore is the woman behind the super popular blog Cakespy.com: a Dessert Detective Agency dedicated to seeking sweetness (literally) in everyday life. Sweet dispatches are posted nearly daily, including writeups of bakery visits, decadently delicious recipes and baking experiments, confectionery themed art projects, and more. CakeSpy encourages you to bake (and live) with sweet abandon.

Your Head Spy is Jessie Oleson Moore (and she is responsible for most of the sweetness on this site). Jessie is a freelance writer and illustrator. She was born and bred in coastal New Jersey, and honed her artistic skills at the prestigious Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. After living in New York for many years, she ventured west to Seattle, where she worked at a refrigerator magnet company. She quit her magnetic job to found CakeSpy.com, and even (for a couple of years) owned a gallery in which she sold CakeSpy artwork (you can still buy it online!). Since 2007, she has made an illustrious but modest living as an illustrator and writer focused on the subject of sweets. Her writing has appeared on DailyCandy.com, and has been featured in a weekly column on Serious Eats. She has illustrated for various companies including Microsoft, iPop, All-Mighty, Taylored Expressions, and is a regular contributor to Taste of Home.

Join Jessie at COOK in June when she will demo 3 desserts: Lemon Meringue Pie, Toklas Truffles (the “virgin” version) and Smith Island Cake.

In 2011, she published her first book through Sasquatch Books entitled CakeSpy Presents Sweet Treats for a Sugar-Filled Life . It was featured on the Today Show, in case you were wondering.

Her second book, The Secret Lives of Baked Goods: Sweet Stories & Recipes for America’s Favorite Desserts , is out this month.

How’s that work? The game was a collaboration between young artists and Fresh Artists, an innovative nonprofit organization that empowers young lives through art. The organization teaches children about philanthropy while giving them tangible opportunities to take bold action to help others. Fresh Artists displays K-12 children’s art in highly visible, unexpected places, and delivering art supplies and innovative art programs to schools struggling with severe cutbacks in arts funding.

The idea of the game came from a third-grader, who said, “How ’bout we use our artwork on children’s games.” From that idea, 27 local children provided artwork to be used on five editions of The Memory Game: Fresh Art, Fresh Faces, Fresh Architecture, Mini-Masterpieces from the Barnes Foundation, and of course Fresh Food, which is the edition available at COOK. The young artist-philanthropists continued to be involved throughout the development process, and Fresh Artists raised the money needed to turn their idea into a reality on Kickstarter, the popular online crowd-funding phenomenon.

With proceeds benefiting K-12 schools that are struggling with massive cutbacks in arts funding, the children see that they have made a difference in their world through creativity and generosity.

Included with the game is a self-addressed note card on which you may send a short message to the young Fresh Artists. The organization will share your note with the children. Patron and artist correspondence in action!

The Fresh Food Memory Game ($24) makes an excellent gift for the young artists (or budding chefs) in your family and with summer now upon us, you’ll need all the help you can get to keep them occupied! And speaking of ‘memory,’ to refresh yours, COOK’s boutique is open daily from noon to 5pm!

Yesterday marked the first class of the new session of the COOK Masters Program, an instructional cooking series taught by some of the city’s biggest culinary names, for students who are truly passionate about pursuing a professional career in the restaurant industry.  For the next 8 weeks, 9 students will get to spend 3 hours with 10 of some of the best chefs in town to learn advanced techniques and maybe even gain future employment.

First on the syllabus is Katie Cavuto Boyle of Healthy Bites and who is a health and nutrition expert.  During her class she covered everything from how to cook for people with certain dietary restrictions like veganism or gluten-free life styles to preparing food for people with heart disease or diabetes.  After the teaching portion the students paired up and re-created recipes that Katie uses for her clients to practice what they had learned.  Once they finished cooking, the class got to try all the dishes made.  Katie was impressed with how everything turned out, looks they learned a lot!

Make sure to check back here at the COOKbook for progress on our students this semester.  They’ll be learning Advanced Cheese Making from Patrick Feury of Nectar,  French Sauces with Jean Marie Lacroix, Fish Cookery by Jon Cichon, and much more!

MAGPIE’S STRAWBERRY RHUBARB CRUMB PIE

Makes 2 – 9” single bottom crusts, or 1 – 9” double crust pie

Flaky Pie Dough
2 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
10 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into 1/4-inch pieces and frozen
6 tablespoons vegetable shortening, cut in 1-inch pieces and chilled
8-10 tablespoons ice water

1. Place flour, sugar and salt in a food processor and pulse a few times to combined.
2. Scatter frozen butter cubes over flour mixture. Pulse 5 – one-second pulses until butter is looks like corn meal with peas size pieces. Scatter shortening in flour mixture and pulse 4 – one-second pulses.
3. Place flour mixture in a large bowl and pour half the ice water on top. Using scrapper, mix together until medium size clumps form. Add the rest of the water and mixes until just combine. Use palm of hand to fold and press down on the dough until dough forms one large mass and just comes together (don’t over work it!).
4. Portion dough in to two equal portion discs, wrap tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes. Wrap dough and placed in a freezer bag and frozen for up to 3 months.

Strawberry Rhubarb Crumb Pie Filling
1 pound rhubarb, washed, leaves removed, cut into 1/2-inch slices
1 pound strawberries, washed, hulled, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
1/2 teaspoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup granulated sugar
3 tablespoons cornstarch
pinch salt

1. Heat oven to 375˚F
2. In a bowl mix sugar, cornstarch, and salt. Set aside.
3. In a large bowl toss sliced rhubarb and strawberries with lemon juice and vanilla. Add sugar mixture and toss until fruit is evenly coated.
4. Place rhubarb/strawberry mixture in prepared shell. Top with prepared crumb.
5. Place pie on a foil-lined baking sheet. Bake for 30 minutes, reduce heat to 350˚F, rotate and bake for another 15-25 minutes until top is golden and filling is boiling. Let cool for at least 4 hours.

Brown Sugar Crumb Topping
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup whole oats, ground
1/4 cup whole oats
1/2 cup light brown sugar, packed
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into 1/2 inch pieces, room temperature

1. In a bowl, mix flour, ground oats, whole oats, sugar, salt and spices.
2. With your hands, work in butter pieces, until small to medium curds form, and mixture feels like wet sand.

This past Saturday night, we were delighted to host Ryan Fonash of Vintage Imports, a frequent instructor and friend of COOK, for a class about springtime cocktails. Preparing everything from a refreshing sparkling drink with absinthe and raspberry shrub to a concoction featuring his own homemade rosé vermouth (our guests got to take some home!), Ryan wowed the crowd with his grasp of spring-friendly spirits. We were also lucky to have chef Sam Jacobson, formerly of Sycamore in Lansdowne, in to pair some of his incredible cooking with Ryan’s drinks. Favorites here included scallops dusted with juniper and served with an orange-cardamom cream; and an airy lemon gnocchi chef Sam paired with hearty duck ragu and quail eggs. Check after the jump for more photos from this exciting evening!

Photos: Yoni Nimrod

The roster was quite the dream team — Nicholas Elmi (Rittenhouse Tavern), Jon Cichon (Lacroix), Daniel Stern (R2L), Pierre Calmels (Bibou), Mitch Prensky (Supper) and James Beard winner Jeff Michaud (Osteria). Each chef contributed a no-expense-spared course reflecting his personal style. Wine for this once-in-a-lifetime meal, which took place at a beautiful private residence in Society Hill, was curated by Sommelier Jeff Benjamin of Vetri Restaurant Group and provided by The Wine Merchant.

While Team FEASTIVAL is coordinating the 2013 event and auction, we invite you to view photos from this 2012 Ultimate Dinner Party. And save the date for the 2013 Audi Feastival: Thursday, September 12, 2013.

VIEW PHOTO GALLERY >>

Didja miss us?!

Open Stove, COOK’s recurring culinary battle, took a brief break in frigid February, but it was back and stranger than ever in the month of March. The 11th installment of the series brought in two new game victims competitors ready to take on absolutely anything: Carmen Cappello (left), COOK vet and sous chef/charcuterie expert aboard The Moshulu; and Jamie Wolf, who kills it in the kitchen of the nearby Alma de Cuba. Would Cappello capitalize on his familiarity with the battlefield and come out with his glove raised? Or would Wolf continue in the tradition of first-ever female victor Hilary Hamilton and earn the W? Read on to find out!

As far as the rules of OSXI, same as it ever was: Each chef is required to cook four courses, fully pre-preparing only an amuse bouche and a dessert. For app and entree, the COOK staff throws ‘em crazy secret ingredients and other momentum-halting roadblocks to see how they react and/or crack. The winner = decided by the crowd’s popular vote. It was smooth sailing at first, with Jamie’s sous chef Kate (above) and Carmen’s right-hand man Danny maxin’ and relaxin’ almost as much as the guests, which popped the tops off brown-paper-bagged “Mystery Beers” inspired by frequent COOK hangout Tangiers. Cheers!

For the amuse: Jamie tapped into her ceviche skillz from Alma (plus a previous stint at Chifa) with a Peruvian citrus-marinated scallop ceviche flavored with pomegranate, celeriac and toasted hazelnut (above). Cappello, ever the crowd-pleaser, had the wherewithal to ply the voters with booze as a first course: his spin on a michelada, tomato juice and Negra Modelo hooked up with raw Pacific Northwest oysters and pickled cukes and chilies he made himself.

It was soon came time for the unveiling of the first secret ingredient: starfruit! In addition to looking like it was a totally sweet toss toy manufactured by Nerf, this Southeast Asian fruit is known for its super-juicy texture and crisp, pear-ish texture. How would Cappello and Wolf work it to their advantage? (Also, check out the thematic woven basket in which the starfruit were unveiled! Team COOK always nails the details.)

We quickly learned that, by pure happenstance, both chefs had packed octopus for their appetizer. What are the octo-odds? While Cappello’s stewed in lemony, herby broth (top), Wolf’s suckas got sliced into coins by Kate for course number two…

…an escabeche-style octo/scallop combo for Cappello, hooked up with guacamole, watercress and starfruit (top); and a poached octopus with apple cider vinegar-pickled starfruit for Jamie, main elements informed by Brussels sprout leaves and a dusting of sugarcane ash (bottom). Pretty impressive on the fly, guys.

As soon as everyone finished up their app plates, we were made privy to the theme ingredient for the entree course — Bacos. Friggin’ BACOS! These Betty Crocker-created wonders of American culinaire, a sneeze-guarded salad bar staple, pack plenty of smoky flavor, but they’re actually 100% vegan product — yes, the bacon bits your weird aunt carries around in her purse actually contain no pork at all! (They’re kosher, too — l’chaim.) Cappello and Wolf scrambled to work these meatless wonder bits into their mains, all while juggling additional secret ingredients (Spam!) they’d snagged out of the bonus-points box introduced to them at the outset of the battle. (Each pink tally you see on the chalkboard up top represents a bonus ingredient, and a bonus point, for each chef.) Of course, this is Open Stove, so yet another culinary curveball was nigh…

…Cappello and Wolf were told that they were not allowed to physically cook their main course, leaving all the actual chopping, slicing, stirring, searing and basting solely to their sous chefs, Danny and Kate. They were, however, permitted to taste and lend moral support. Man, the Open Stove powers that be are sick puppies, no?

And here’s what Danny and Kate managed to crank out for the crowds by themselves. While Cappello’s side crusted yellowfin tuna in Bacos, searing them into the fish in a buttered hot pan, Kate built a quicker-than-quick Bacos-laden fideua, a hearty noodle dish prepared in a similar style to paella. In the end…

…Cappello put out their fish with a whiskey/coffee sauce, Spam/sea urchin/’shroom hash (so good) and Brussels sprouts, while Wolf topped her flavorful noodly base with head-on prawns seared a la plancha. Both chefs made tremendously quick, delicious work of the many challenges placed in front of them, and both made it look way too easy.

After scraping their dessert plates clean — Cappello’s pannacotta, with blood orange sorbet and macerated berries; then Wolf’s olive oil honey/orange cake with champagne pearls — it came time for the toughest part of every cookoff: the voting. Once the scores were tallied and double- and triple-checked, Wolf came out as the winner of Open Stove XI, making it two victories in a row for the ladies. Who will be throwing down in the Open Stove Arena for Open Stove XII? Keep an eye on the soon-to-launch April schedule for the answer to that burning, hunger-inducing question.

All Photos: Drew Lazor

And so began our final COOK Masters class, with Solomonov in the lead like the naughty conductor of some deranged culinary orchestra. If you’ve read your Bourdain, or marveled at Ramsey’s foul-mouthed locutions on the telly, or even seen Ratatouille, you already know that professional kitchens can be a bit rough around the edges—seething, cursing vortexes of controlled chaos and intense personalities on a passionate mission to craft flavor and beauty. No matter where you eat, the person who cooked that exquisite dish for you is likely to be the type who, say, was once a roadie for Insane Clown Posse, or who could teach you the kind of filthy Spanish that would make his abuela gasp and faint. They truly are a “colorful” lot.

There are plenty of tyrants out there commanding their kitchens with expletives and berating and belittling, but that’s not what I’m talking about with Solomonov. He’s more of a mischievous sort, slinging the shit for fun, of course, but also to build camaraderie and the kind of healthy rivalry that gets everyone to goad everyone else into doing an even better job. The Japanese call this “sessa-takuma,” which literally means people polishing each another by grinding against each other’s hard surfaces. Faster, cleaner, prettier, tastier, better, whatever-er—that’s what gets cooks off, and they take pride in it.

Solomonov was here to throw us into the trenches with a “mock service” at Audrey Claire, the end-game of which was to be lunch for twelve. The slightly intimidating guest list included COOK’s Lily and Michelle, but also a bunch of high-profile chefs, including Jon Cichon of Lacroix and Peter Woolsey of Bistrot La Minette. But Solomonov quickly put things into perspective: “Oh yes, it’s very important to know your guests. Today we’re cooking for a bunch of French assholes, so we’re gonna put everything in nice tight lines for Cichon, and we’ll baste everything in a shit-ton of butter, because Woolsey will love that.” He’s friends with all these guys, of course, and I’m sure given half a chance they’d take the piss out of him right back (mock his chickpeas or something). Sessa-takuma….

Solomonov kept the menu simple, the point being solid execution more than culinary acrobatics:

Kale Caesar Salad with White Anchovies OR Cauliflower Soup

Chicken Breast with Pastilla & Haricots Verts OR Salmon with Potato Puree & Braised Red Cabbage

Chocolate Cake in a Bowl

Cheese & Fruit

I got right to work butchering the chicken and salmon. As Solomonov sauntered over to give a quick demo, his eyes instantly fixated on my vintage boning knife, easily the wickedest blade in my kit. “Oh yes, I wanna use this…” he whispered, picking it up and deftly sliding it through the wing joints, under the legs, down the keel, along the ribs, and past the wish bone, peeling off the tender flesh, all trimmed and ready for the hot pan…. Cutting up poultry is very satisfying once you get good at it, though in a disturbingly Hannibal Lecter-ish sort of way. There’s the beautiful whole chicken on the board, and after a few deft strokes there’s the chicken lined up neatly in the pan, dispatched into twelve or fifteen pretty pieces. As Solomonov was finishing the job, I confessed to him my fondness for poultry cutting. “Oh, me too,” he replied, putting down the evil-looking blade. “Cutting up chickens is like… totally ‘therapeutic’ or something.” Then he wandered off to check on the chocolate cake team.

Being a big fan of Moroccan cuisine, I was excited to have pastilla on the menu. To the Western palate, pastilla is an improbable dish—basically a savory “pie” of crispy phyllo layered around spiced chicken, cooked eggs, sugared almonds and cinnamon, dusted with confectioner’s sugar and additional cinnamon. Traditionally it’s supposed to contain pigeon, sometimes with the bones still in there. Lacking pigeons, we used the chicken thigh and leg meat instead, chopped up with the hearts, livers, and gizzards. The bones we roasted and left for the Audrey Claire stockpot. Like all successful chefs, Solomonov likes to utilize absolutely everything. Piling a bunch cauliflower stems into a sautoir, he remarked, “Your average schlub might just throw this away, but it’s still a few bucks a pound, and if you can figure out a way to sell it for eight or nine, you should.” The cauliflower soup was garnished with cauliflower leaves, and the chicken skin was fried into cracklings for the Caesar salad. Nothing wasted.

For all of his “off-the-wallness,” Solomonov is actually pretty meticulous, and his cooking is subtle. He insisted, for example, that onions be minced petal-by-petal instead of the usual way, and the finished product was indeed more appealing. He’s famous for his hummus, too, because he knows how to coax the best qualities out of the humble chickpea. And like an orchestral conductor, he has the capacity to be simultaneously “all over the place” and in specific places as needed, calmly calling up the right “instruments” at the right time, evenly communicating his expectations and cuing all the details that make for a fine dish and an exceptional service. He is also organized and had plenty of practical advice: “Keep all your mise squared up and neat, at 90° angles. Everything in the smallest possible containers. Proteins on ice. Portions weighed out, not just eyeballed. Nothing on your cutting board that isn’t about to be cut. Stack of hot pans at the ready. Wipe down constantly. Keep everything clean.”

You can mess around in the kitchen all you want—laugh and point at the dumb-ass who broke the hollandaise again, spatula-slap the FNG on the thigh, and make rude comments about people’s manhood—but at the end of the day, you’ve got to have your shit together, tight and ready to kick it when the tickets start pouring in.

Like most chefs, Solomonov seems to prefer simple things. At the end of service, he was slathering chunks of baguette with the Caesar dressing and rolling little bits of Grana Padano around in some whiskey barrel–aged maple syrup. Middle Eastern food is known for such sophisticated, skillful simplicity, and Solomonov is well versed in creating dishes that simply highlight the essence of their ingredients. For this menu, he didn’t even include any sauces, explaining that sometimes it’s better to just cook a quality protein perfectly and leave it at that. “It’s good to let things speak for themselves,” he said. And turning to the guy making the soup: “Cauliflower is white, right? So our technique needs to keep the soup as white as possible. And what does cauliflower taste like? Right, like cauliflower! So we’re gonna build some mad flavor here—cauliflower flavor. You know what this soup is gonna be? Like a KARATE-CHOP OF CAULIFLOWER, RIGHT IN YOUR FACE!”

Need I say more about what makes this chef tick? It was definitely a lot of fun to meet and cook with him!

Photos: Yoni Nimrod.

You start, of course, with the dough, which is simple to make with a good recipe and a little practice:

1,000 grams of 00 pizza flour; 295 grams whole eggs; 295 grams egg yolk; 29 grams extra-virgin olive oil. KitchenAid. Dough hook. Six minutes. Hand-knead into a ball. Rest cold 20 minutes.

“You can feel how pliable it is,” said Cavaliere, passing around balls of the finished dough. “Pleasantly tacky to the touch, but not sticky.”

If you want to jazz things up, you can make a colored pasta by replacing some of the egg with an equal amount of some intensely colorful ingredient, like spinach, beets, squid ink, or saffron. You could also just laminate in some pretty speckles, like cracked black pepper or a green herb. “Mint chiffonade works really well,” says Cavaliere, “It blanches to a beautiful bright green.” I expect that would go nicely with spring peas; or until they arrive, lamb.

Rolling out the dough is fun, but it does require some finesse. Things quickly get tricky as your six-inch chunk of dough stretches to an unwieldy six feet between the steel rollers of the hand-cranked pasta sheeter. “Drape it on the edges of your hands, not your palms, to keep it from warming and softening too quickly,” Cavaliere suggested helpfully, “and when you’re halfway down, fold it in four and start again, to build tensile strength.” The thickness is up to you; maybe a bit thicker for spaghetti and similar strands; fairly thin for stuffed pastas, “So you can see your fingers through it.”

Tools for cutting and shaping pasta can be as simple or specific as you like. The basics are a pizza cutter, a sharp knife, and your hands, but you can buy all sorts of fancy wheels, crimpers, stamps, molds, and cutters. A ruffled wheel is handy for making pretty fluted edges, and the cutter attachment on the sheeter does the trick for simple spaghetti and tagliatelle. And while you can just eyeball things, the In Riva crew uses precisely cut pieces of wood as cutting guides to ensure perfect consistency. Maybe it was their penciled-on labels (“Garganelli, Fiondette — Do Not Remove From Kitchen!”) but these reminded me of the platinum-iridium alloy bar kept at the headquarters of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures in Paris, once used as the official scientific standard for the length of one meter (in case anyone needed to know). In restaurant-ing, as in science, consistency is key, and people notice it.

We rolled squares around pencils to shape garganelli, pinched a few farfalle, cut pappardelle with the special guide wood, and sent sheets of dough through the tag cutter—but if you really want to show some love for your dinner guests, it’s worth spending the time and effort to make one of Italy’s many stuffed pastas. Cavaliere led us through cappellacci, tortelloni, agnolotti, candele, mezzaluna, and doppio—pope’s hats, little pies, “rings,” candles, half-moons, and “doubles.” The Italians have the charming custom of naming their pastas rather descriptively, sometimes very literally. If they look like little radiators, they’re radatori. Bellybutton-like shapes are umbellico. And fiondette are named after fionda, the slings once used to hurl rocks at medieval enemies, but these days more likely to hurl mushroom ragú into your mouth. Pappardelle comes from the verb “to gobble up,” which I think is pretty spot-on. Garganelli has a slightly grotesque origin, so please google it yourself.

Each type of stuffed pasta probably has its own traditional filling, but basically you can use anything you want, as long as it’s delicious. Cavaliere brought four fillings for us to play with: Truffled Green Peas, Lemon-Scented Ricotta, Butternut Squash with Orange & Nutmeg, and Beets with Caraway. The filling should also be dry enough that it handles easily and stays inside the pasta when it’s cooked. Ricotta may need to be drained, and pea puree may need firming with a little gelatin, since frozen peas contain a lot of water. (Yes, every restaurant on the planet uses frozen peas. Get over it, they’re fine.) One of the most interesting stuffed pastas is filled with a ring of ricotta around a fresh egg yolk, which gently thickens to become its own oozy sauce. I can imagine involving truffles in that, too (and sadly they’ll probably stay just “imagined,” since I don’t actually have any).

“The sauce for a stuffed pasta should be simple, to let the intensely flavored filling stand out.” As if to prove the point, Cavaliere set down a dish of candele, plump with deeply magenta-hued, caraway-scented beets, glistening in nothing but a bit of golden butter and olive oil. I ate three in a row.

One of the best ways to eat pasta, by the way, is as Cacio e Pepe (“with cheese and pepper”). “This is one of our back-of-the-house favorites,” says Cavaliere enthusiastically. “Just pasta, cheese, butter, and black pepper.” It’s so typical of kitchens: They cook all sorts of sophisticated stuff, but at the end the day they go for things that are simple, hearty, and just plain good.

Pasta has its classics, but it’s also flexible and amenable to new inspirations. I took my pappardelle home and fancied it up with a bunch of leftovers from the fridge—smoked trout, kabocha pumpkin, fresh dill from the struggling window box, and some warm lemon yogurt left over the previous night’s Indian experiments. Unorthodox, yes, but I tell you it was good! Pasta is not exactly a free-for-all, but it does make a fine venue for all sorts of culinary shenanigans. We’d best head down to In Riva to see what Chef Cavaliere has up his sleeve next!

Patrick Feury, the Executive Chef/Partner of Nectar Restaurant located in Berwyn, Pa  made his return to COOK with this cheese filled class on February 26, 2013.  Feury sources fresh, local, natural and organic ingredients and applies them to simple French and Asian techniques at Nectar.  Among Pat’s extensive culinary experience and expertise, he is certified in cheesemaking from the Vermont Institute for Artisan Cheese at the University of Vermont. Or as Lily from COOK would put it “Pat is a Cheese Genius who went to Cheese Camp.”

Pat brought with him an assortment of exquisite cheeses from Doe Run Farm, Birchrun Hills Farm, and Yellow Springs Farm all found locally in Chester County.  He would incorporate cheese in all of his courses and provide a demo on how to make simple cheeses you can make at home without the need of a cheese cave!

Pat helped raised sheep with his parents when he was five.  His exposure to pastoral farming and aquaculture is very important to his philosophy in the kitchen at Nectar.  By fourteen he was working at a butcher shop where his taste for cooking evolved and where he enrolled in the Academy of Culinary Arts in Mays Landing, New Jersey.

He would find himself starting in the kitchen of the Waldorf Astoria, NYC and trained in an ice sculpting program. Pat moved on to work with Christer Larson, a well known Scandinavian chef as his Sous Chef at Gertrude’s NYC.  He left NYC for Les Olivades in Paris where he would be taught by Chef Flora Mikula to source the freshest ingredients by shopping the market at Rungis.

He then returned to New York to work for Sirio Maccioni’s four star Le Cirque 2000 as sous chef under Sottham Khunn where he would experience for the first time Asian Ingredients with French technique.  Before Nectar, he most recently served as Executive Chef at Sulian Restaurant at the Borgata Hotel in Atlantic City.

As with all COOK classes we started out with an ice breaker question: What’s your favorite cheese?

Let’s just say after hearing some of the classes answers, I need to step up my cheese game.  When it came to my turn in answering the question, I went with string cheese as my favorite and got some looks and laughs.  Probably because they thought I was joking…  In any case, Brie was a class favorite and moved up to a bunch of fancy stuff like Ewephoria and Humboldt Fog. Surprisingly, the Whiz was not mentioned.

Pat’s current favorite cheese was found in his recent visit to Scotland, from the Isle of Mull.  Mull Cheddar is considered the daddy of Scottish cheddar.

Yellow Springs Farm Goat Cheese Gougere

In addition to stepping up my cheese game, I decided I need to work on my French.  Oui.  I shouldn’t have skipped out on all those French language classes in middle school, because it took me a while to realize that the first course of Gougere was pretty much a French cheese puff.

For the first course Pat would start off making a choux paste for the pate a choux, which again if I knew my French I wouldn’t have written down “shoe paste” on my notes.  The main ingredients to a pate a choux are water, butter, flour and eggs.  Not only can they be made for gougeres, you might be familiar with them also being used in making eclairs and beignets.

Pat would use a Yellow Springs Farm Chevre a.k.a goat cheese to stuff the gougere and serve with a baby arugula salad dressed with a vinaigrette.

“If you don’t go out and buy a goat, I failed.” – Patrick Feury

The above picture featured the ingredients necessary for preparation of the second course.  Dill, eggs and flour for the dill pancakes which was made via the special pan (top right). Leave it to the Swedes to come up with a multi-pancake pan.

Cured Spiced Smoked Salmon

Calling on his time under Scandinavian chef, Christer Larson in New York, Pat would cure and smoke the salmon himself.  This Skuna Bay Salmon from Vancouver would be cured in a mix of 50/50 salt and sugar. The salmon would sit on top a dill pancake with mustard sauce and a fresh cheese.  Pat demoed how to make the fresh cheese by tempering the milk and adding rennet and some Maldon Salt.  He explains more about the process which can be viewed in the video below.

When making or buying cheese, Pat feels that there isn’t really a difference in buying or making cheese with raw vs. pasteurized milk.  He would caution that the most important thing in making is 1) sanitation and 2) sanitation.  When making cheese from raw milk, the FDA requires that they aged for 60 days so that the acids and salts in raw-milk cheese naturally prevent listeria, salmonella, and E. coli from growing.

Pat used a beer analogy when explaining how rennet and cultures are used in the cheese making process.  Consider rennet being the yeast and cultures being the hops.  Where yeast is required to make the alcohol the hops would be used to impart flavor.

Doe Run Country Goat Sausage

Pat’s Asian techniques he utilizes at Nectar shine with this dish.  He would serve a homemade sausage stuffed in lamb casing with goat sourced from Doe Run Farm.  Accompanying the sausage, dumplings made with black trumpet mushrooms served with truffle sauce.

Pineland Farm Ribeye

Pat spent a week up in Maine on the farm learning about cheese, but would also find that the beef from Pineland would be what he considers one of the best meats in the country.  The fourth course ribeye steak was served with a gratin made from Birchrun Hills Farm Equinox, potato, turnip and winter black truffle.

Cheese Board

Parsnip Cake

Pat capped the night off with a parnip cake with lingonberry paired with ice cream made from Doe Run Seven Sisters cheese and milk from New Jersey.

Pat was recently up at the James Beard House to present Farmland Feast in collaboration with the crew of Victory Brewing.  The dinner was a wine and beer pairing with farm-focused French cuisine.  On April 24th Pat will be hosting the same Farmland Feast at Nectar.