andrewB

Ya know, a few years ago i bought a 'julienne peeler.' Its terrible, takes more knuckle off than anything else and the cuts are frankly unsexy and gross. I look at this tool all the time and think to myself 'pitch it,' but can't ever bring myself to do it. In the back of my mind i'm hoping one day it'll finally work or i'll use it to scrape paint off the side of my house...

hands down best peeler in the world i think is the Kuhn Rikon carbon steel peeler which comes in various cute colors. It has the best blade i know of for a peeler and lasts forever. The handle is brillant, you can use it in many different ways with great results. I like the little knotch on the side for taking out potato spots etc.. I can't get them here in Slovakia which is a pain. So when my cookies lost all i had, i ended up flying to London to a shop i knew carried them just to have them back in the kitchen!!! For a chef, there's a few pieces of great must have equipment: good knives, measuring spoons and tasting spoons, and a kick arse peeler!! Everything else is optional...

here's some previews of the new menu. a bit earlier here in eastern Europe, but with another restaurant in the works, now had to be the time... enjoy folks... preview mailer for the new menu onion shiitake tartlet glazed salmon scallops with spring veggies Artic char with a morel cream fried coconut ice cream with genoise crumble and candied roses

laugh, ok i won't!!! fusion is much different than confusion. i think goulash would not benefit from kafir leaves ))

i was in the same boat a few years ago. I had a bad accident, breaking 5 bones in my right hand and then shattering a bone in my thumb. It required 4 operations, 2 in Austria and 2 in the US. The best thing someone brought me in the hospital while i was laid up was my chefs knife. After my first 10 days in the hospital, i had learned to cut left handed.. they say necessity is the mother of invention right? Well, to this day there are things now which i only do in the kitchen with my left hand...

i'm with ya!! i've been trying to quit for a few weeks now, regretfully unsuccessfully to this point. I even did laser acupunture to no success.. I need help and moral support!!

no, i used roasted nori to flavor the chocolate. i have done it for a szechwan pepper/nori pot de creme. i have also made smoked nori chocolate for a sauce i did with fried banana profiteroles.

May i ask what interests you so much about The Breakers? Who's the chef in the dining room there now? Do you know what it is you wanna do when you finish school? what culinary field are you trying to reach? This may be something to consider before choosing your extern. Do you see yourself doing the big hotel thing or resort deal? or do you see doing private dining? I did my extern at the Ritz, which was maybe a good thing. After that i learned i wanted NOTHING to do with that sort of life!!!

here here on that! Interesting to note is why do so many americans prefer still water to sparkling? what is it about our culture? In my 4 years living in Europe, i have to have bubbles in the water. Any still water, regardless of what glacier it came from, is boring and blah...

i have made nori sugar and used it for a few things. nori brulee was interesting but not great. nori and chocolate paired well, maybe the best i tried. What doesn't work so well was fruit. I found the nori was too strong for most fruits used and who wants a 'fishy' pineapple for example...

at better restaurants it's usually more about what looked good at the market that day or what the chef felt like doing out of the ordinary based on availablity of ingredients, or weather, or whatever. as far as not trusting restaurants, well, i don't eat at restaurants that i don't trust. i'm not sure why anyone would. ← 'better' restaurants don't run specials though, its called a tasting menu. this is what is used to highlight the seasons. I think i you really look at this, its only middle to low end restaurants which run specials... IMHO

As a chef, i don't run specials and don't trust them on other menus. What makes it special? It was sitting in someones warehouse fridge for too long so someone sold it at a 'special' price?? I think the word sometimes used for those who rode the short bus was 'special' as well...

place de vosges is a better bet in my opinion. i use an apartment on isle st louis which works for me!! There is a chain of shops in paris called nicola which have a very good selection of some older vintages as well as some great new ones. seem to be resonably priced as well...

soaking fish in milk doesn't remove or eliminate stronger tasting oils in fish. As salt water fish proteins breakdown, bacteria and enzymes convert some of the amino acids into ammonia and TMA (trimethylamine) and is responsible for the 'fishy' smell or taste. This is neutralized with lactic acid in milk. Fresh water fish, because of something related to the salinity of salt water, don't produce such aminos and therefore are more mild tasting... I would then say, to start eating fish for someone who doesn't like fish, go with freshwater fish, trout is always a crowd pleaser...

timh, the unchallenged feeling is one of pure and utter crap eh? I'd be proud of you going back to the restaurant-ish thing... I got to such a low point in the career that i would wait until 2 hours before a major dinner party to start cooking. It made me move faster and gave me the fire that i missed in the restaurant. You should give it a whirl!! )

yeah, we have already opened on the bridge!! been a long 6 months. now i'm opening another restaurant located on the main square near the opera... As for pics though, how can you beat THIS

the book has been published already but in Slovakia!! it was a compilation of my recipes used for formal dining and some more simple 'homely' recipes... i'm currently in process of my second book which will make it across the pond to the states )

think i figured out how to add some pics, so here's a few from my new years eve menu... new years ever set up lobster salad with avocado and apricot vinaigrette local artic char with baby veggie ragout and truffle beurre blanc herb crusted filet of beef with apple filled pommes anna molasses roasted pears with gingerbread genoise and cinnamon ice cream mignardise enjoy!!

i bought come hand pounded Paderno copper pans in Europe for the old restaurant. Wasn't as happy with them as i have been with my french Mauviel Inox. The Inox is more durable, better ergo handles and the tin lining is much better...

This summer, I bought a sauté pan at E. Dehillerin in Paris. Even with the dollar weak against the euro, it was a great buy. Not counting airfare. ← that store Rocks!!! It has everything one could need for a kitchen. In the basement i found a 70liter copper stockpot. Can't imagine what that would run someone!!!

i shared in a similar experience, working as the private chef for the US Ambasador to Slovakia. He was an investor in the restaurant i worked at in SF and asked me to come out to train his staff and to design the 3 kitchens in the new residence. The position was suppose to be for a month, but turned into a 3 year gig!! I loved it for the first 1 1/2 year because it was an escape from the restaurant biz, but still being able to cook on an unlimited budget and scale. But as time wore on, i really got burned out on their lifestyle and the whole private chef thing. These weren't normal people mind you, so maybe that's what wore me down. Pureeing steamed pheasant breast for the kid wasn't cutting it for me anymore... I will say, the benefits of the life were pretty good though. Diplomatic immunity in a foreign country as a young single male was pretty appealing and i used it to its fullest. Also i had plenty of time to soul search and explore my career and art further. I spent hours on end reading, doing research and experiments, even wrote a book in the end! I think when all said and done i am a creature of the restaurant industry. I need what it has that i private chef lacks: sense of structure, the pace and stress of it, and probably the exposure as well. Only so many diplomats can enjoy your food on a weekly basis, but in a restaurant you are only limited to how many seats you have and how many you can fit in the door!!

All the info on bratislava which has been posted here is disheartening considering i am a chef in Bratislava!! Originally the US ambassador's executive chef, i have stayed because the market is so young, open, and inspiring. It's true that the history of Slovak cuisine didn't offer much variety, but the velvet revolution has come and gone and the times they are a changin!!! This city boasts a huge cultural diversity and a vast assortment of restaurants, you just have to know where to look. For example i have had one of the best tiki masalas i have ever had in my life in Bratislava!!! For more info on good restaurants, here's a few. Oh, and for all you who will be here after April, I am opening a new restaurant right downtown next to the Opera and the Carlton hotel... www.u-f-o.sk Krisna retaurant paparrazi restaurant Camoflague restaurant Le Monde restaurant The culture of food and cuisine has to start somewhere Andrew M. Benjamin executive chef, UFO restaurant & Mama a Papa restaurant. if i knew how to post pictures, i would do so....

Wendy, can you elaborate... Lack of understanding would cause me to think that too much leavening would have the opposite effect. ← I'm not Wendy and I'm not a professional, but if I remember correctly, it's because the excess leavening causes it to rise too fast. There is no underlying structure, so it falls. That's your crater. When a cake rises at the proper speed, the underlying structure of the cake is intact and supports it. ← also too much liquid in the batter and too high a temp can cause this reaction...

by using water and chocolate together, you can also produce an 'eggless chocolate mousse' or more properly a chocolate chantilly. If you reproduce the same fat content as heavy cream, about 35%, you can do it with anything: foie gras, olive oil etc... for the chocolate chantilly: 200g 70% chocolate (i use Calibo dark chocolate which is 70.2%) 100ml water add water and chocolate in double boiler and melt. Take out and shock over ice bath until cool. Whip to desired peaks....

Cooking is a passion which has its consiquences i suppose. I can say the reasons for me to be a cook would be because i can, because i was born to be, and because i need to... Some people were born with a silverspoon in their mouths, i was born with a heat treated spatula. My mother runs a catering company and my whole childhood was surrounding food. For me to spend time with my mother meant i was in the kitchen. At the age of eight won a bread baking contest at the local cooking school and was also the year i met Madeline Kamen. In retrospect this became the most pivitol year for my emerging career. Throughout high school i worked in the catering company, doing everything from waiting to cooking. I started to despise it, loathe the thing that literally put food on my table and clothes on my back. I left home after high school and went to college. I had no intentions of ever going back to the life i was trying to leave behind. I took jobs in bookstores and shoe shops instead of back in a restaurant and tried to avoid it all... Leaving school with a degree in humanities didn't leave me with many interesting career choices and so i became a snowboarder and professional bum in Colorado. As fate had it, i began working as a waiter in a chinese restaurant in Snowmass and also a dishwasher on top of snowmass mountain at Gwyn's High Alpine. One of the cooks for the restaurant broke his arm skiing, leaving a hole in the line and the owner panicing. I told George i could work the line and he just laughed. After that day though, my fate was sealed. I couldn't continue to run from what i knew i needed to be doing in life, cooking.. Cooking for me posesses everything in life i need to be sane. I need to be creating, to be inspired, to throw myself into things, to go big or go home. In all those years of wandering, my life was incomplete until i returned to cooking. from my last menuToday, i am an executive chef in Europe with two restaurants and in the process of my second book. There is not a day that goes by where i don't think, feel, create, and try to understand food. I look back on the odd twists and turns of my life and know it couldn't have happened any other way or me to get where i am today. Food is what keeps all of us alive and food is my life...