A Cure for Meats

We love to cured meat. Certainly, the pleasures of the great long cured meats of the world don’t escape us–Iberico, Benton’s, etc.–but we’re also huge fans of the power of quick-curing proteins prior to cooking. Like us, meat is mostly water and to the extent you can extract this away, you can intensify the flavor of a meat. Recently we described this as a key step in our Bo Ssam framework and we’ve even packaged together one curing blend that we’ve used with great success.

The Studiofeast Cure for Meats was a limited edition giveaway at one of our recent dinners. There are some left in limited quantities, so email me if you’re interested in getting your hands on one. The labels and the name were lovingly designed by our very own Soomin Baik and we think they’re wonderful…

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On Cooking: Jazz, Not Classical

Over the years we’ve cooked a lot of recipes. Some have called for a battalion of ingredients and some have even begged for certain items to measured within a tenth of a gram. Taken literally, a recipe inherently calls for some semblance of perfection in the kitchen–you have all the ingredients, all the equipment, all the spices, etc.–and depending on whose recipe you’re reading, deviating from the script can be hazardous.

This sort of cooking is fine and well for the situation that calls for it, but more often than not in our lives, we cook in a much looser format. Life isn’t perfect, we aren’t perfect, so why live under the engineered construct of cooking by the recipe, where the ante is usually some level of perfection that most kitchens don’t have?

And while I learned to cook to some extent by following recipes, what stuck with me has not always been the exact composition of a recipe, but the underlying structure that most good recipes follow. The simplest example is pasta. Why does Yummly need to show us 300 variations on Pasta Primavera? Why do we need 300 separate units of information to tell us how to make different versions of the same dish structure? The formula for Pasta Primavera is: 1) Pasta, 2) Vegetable, 3) Meat, if you wish. Why don’t we just tell people the basic structure of Pasta Primavera, tell them the characteristics of each element in the structure (e.g., Pasta: any long pasta works great, don’t use stuffed pastas; Vegetables: sturdy green veggies work best, don’t use potatoes…) and implore them to find the combinations that they like?

This is a question I aim to explore more. I believe that if you pay attention to how a dish is structured, rather than cooking each variation of it one by one in a recipe, you can have a much more fulfilling experience in the kitchen. You will gain intelligence about cooking, not just knowledge, and you will be more adept in the kitchen as a result.

A recipe is written like classical music–you follow the score, and note-by-note on the page, you create music. What I’m proposing is that we all start thinking of cooking more like Jazz–learn the basic scales and the right chords, then go off and jam out.

The Jazz approach brings cooking back down to Earth, embracing our culinary imperfections and whims, not making us feel bad that we don’t fit the rules dictated by a recipe. If we can teach people to become better improvisers in the kitchen, we can lower the barriers to cooking at home, and hopefully create new a new habit for the average American. I believe that we are smarter than the caricatures of chefs (professional and otherwise) that we see on the Food Network, and that we can teach people how to be intelligent in the kitchen, not simply follow orders.

Which brings me to the image at the top of this post. Here is a structure for Bo Ssam, that carnivorous Korean classic that has sat at the center of many a dinner party for us. In the image, the key elements of a Bo Ssam are unpacked, but we try to give guidelines rather than instructions on how to create your own. It’s an imperfect, initial attempt, but I want to see if it makes sense to people and if it can be the first step toward getting people to approach cooking a different way. This is the start, and it will evolve.

Go on, download the Bo Ssam Framework here and try it on your own. Let us know on Twitter or in the comments below how you did.

Recap: SXSW My Robotic Kitchen

Mike Lee & Will Turnage at SXSWi

The dust has settled and another SXSW is in the books. If you’ve been following along along, you may have known that I presented this year with Will Turnage something called, “My Robotic Kitchen Planned this Dinner Party.” The talk outlined how technology in the kitchen needs to be used to analyze the holistic cooking experience rather than just focusing in isolation on a few discrete tasks. We had a great turnout and a receptive crowd, and you can listen to a full audio recording of the talk and see the slides embedded below from Slideshare.

In the talk, we demoed a rough prototype of a dinner planning app we built as a proof of concept. The app empowers a dinner party planner to customize, scale, and shop for a menu, then organize all of the required steps into one master to-do list. The central inspiration for what Will and I created is essentially a digitized version of the professional chef’s mind, where flexibility and adaptation are the hallmarks of the cooking approach…

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SXSW: My Robotic Kitchen

If you’re in town or following along on Twitter the mayhem that is SXSWi, check out Will Turnage (Ratio, Bread Baking Basics) and I speak on Friday at 3:30 CST on the role of technology in the kitchen. Our dual presentation is called, “My Robotic Kitchen Planned This Dinner Party,” and you can track the conversation with the #SXcooking hashtag.

Over the years, we’ve gotten a fortune of riches from dinner parties and we think they’re straight up magic for bringing people together. Where some see a pile of groceries as simply food, we see them as the raw materials for community and great times. If you believe this, you’d think everyone should be throwing dinner parties more often. We know that’s not the case, and Will and I dissect what we think stands in people’s way: knowledge, organization, and effort. These are things that technology can solve, which is how Will and I came to meet and collaborate on this topic.

A big theme of what we cover is the notion that kitchen gadgets and today’s recipes engines don’t solve for the holistic experience of putting on a dinner party. They solve certain problems related to cooking (e.g., Slap Chop: if you can slap, you can chop) but they don’t really teach you how to think like a chef. We’re not advocating everyone needs to become a real chef to have a great party, but we think that there are smart things a home cook can take away from how a chef works that can help anyone. For instance, knowing how to multi-task multiple recipes into one single to-do list, how to approach improvisation in the kitchen, and understanding basic recipe structures instead of rote recipe learning.

All of this we cover in our talk, and I’ll post an update afterward with the slides what we learned from the crowd. Stay tuned for more, and come say hi to us if your’re down here in Austin.

Photo by Steph Goralnick

Studiofeast Sunday #2 Recap

On February 19th, we had our second installment of Studiofeast Sunday. While we still love the big, weird events that we’ve been known to throw, last week also reminded us how great it is to cook for a small group of people in a really intimate setting. We had a great group of dinner guests with whom we shared a good laugh with, but we also had an conversation about one of the dishes we served and the technique involved in the preparation.

Of the five courses we served, one standout was the 72 hour short rib we served with white bean, fennel, and carrot. The ribs were locally raised and sourced from Dickson’s Farmstand Meats, then sugar cured overnight, sealed with olive oil in a vacuum bag, and cooked in a water bath for three days. The result is a medium done rib that’s insanely tender due to the time in the bath, which breaks down the connective tissues and collagen. It tastes amazing and is a great application of low temperature cooking with sous vide.

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Studiofeast Sunday #2

Our next Studiofeast Sunday dinner is this Sunday February 19th at 7pm.

Our Studiofeast Sunday dinners are our more intimate 10-12 person affairs, with seating in an open kitchen similar to a chef’s table format. Ask questions, poke around, smell things right as they hit the pan–everything is out in the open for you to interact with.

This is the second of the series and we have a plethora of new dishes, really weird ideas, and questionable jokes to share with you. We take our food seriously, but not much else.

The following is our menu, with two wine pairings and an assortment of cocktails for $100:

1. Lobster, Burrata, Green Apple, Micro Arugula
2. Winter Vegetable, Bagna Cauda, Chili
3. Split Pea, Bacon, Creme Fraiche, Miso Toast
4. 72 Hr Short Rib, White Bean, Fennel, Carrot
5. Zeppole, Sichuan Pepper Hot Chocolate, Fig

Please RSVP with your donation at this link:
http://studiofeastsunday02.eventbrite.com/

Wine pairings and cocktails will be by our good friend and bartender, Brian Quinn. He’s awesome and is a wealth of adult beverage knowledge. (http://www.brianquinn.co)

Participants will be emailed the location 24 hours before the event. Reservations are non-refundable and are first come, first serve. We cannot make any menu substitutions, nor do we have vegetarian options.

I do hope you’ll join us and can’t wait to cook for you.

The Last Meal 2011 Recap

As the year draws to a close, we all have a tendency to look back and reflect on what happened in 2011. For Studiofeast, it was a great year filled with events where we had the privilege of bringing people together with food. You can surf this site to see the things that ensued in 2011–through prose, video, and photo–but a less visible reflection of our year comes in the form of the responses to that question on our invite form, “You’re about to die, what’s your last meal?”

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Studiofeast Sunday #1 Recap

For the past few years we’ve been doing events that have become more and more ambitious in scale, concept, and execution. This has been a good thing, as we’ve been able to push ourselves to create some really great dining experiences for our guests. These events have been our way of continuing to explore the culinary & social gray area between a high concept restaurant and dinner at your best friend’s house.

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The Last Meal: Death Row Class of 2011

See the recap of this feast here.

I hope this message finds you well. As the end of the year draws near, I have the pleasure of inviting you to our final meal of the year: The Last Meal 2011.

For nearly 5 years we have had a question on our mailing list form that asks, “You are about to die, what’s your last meal?” Over time we’ve collected some great responses from all of you and last year, we created a meal using the top 20 ingredients from our entire dataset.

This year we’ll be creating a meal inspired by the “Death Row Class of 2011′s” submissions. To do this, we’ve sliced and diced the dataset into segments and will prepare dishes inspired by the favorites from various segments: Brooklyn vs Manhattan, Male vs Female, Spring vs Fall, Gmail users vs AOL users, etc.

Which Studiofeast segment has the best taste in death row food? You decide:

• DATE: Sunday, December 18th.
• TIME: 5:30pm – 9:30pm
• LOCATION: Brooklyn, NY
• FORMAT: Five courses that deal with duck, chicken, lobster, sichuan peppercorns, bourbon, whipped foie, more.
• WINE: Two wine pairings; BYOB if you wish
• DONATION: $100/pp

Seating is incredibly limited, so act quickly to secure a spot at the table by visiting this link: http://sflastmeal2011.eventbrite.com/

Participants will be emailed the location 24 hours before the event. Reservations are non-refundable and are first come, first serve. We cannot make any menu substitutions, nor do we have vegetarian options.

I do hope you’ll join us, but if not, have a great holiday season and we’ll see you in 2012 for more ridiculousness.

–

Photo by: David Christiansen, http://pop-up-studio.com