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Katrina inspires chef to give back
Chef John Besh
PHOTO BY WILL CROCKER
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After the massive storm devastated New Orleans in 2005, the survivors bonded in a communal way to help each other out, said chef John Besh, a New Orleans restaurateur, cookbook author, and host of a cooking show on television.
"It was suddenly a noble thing to give someone a job who had no money. It was suddenly a noble thing to feed someone," the chef said last week at the Inverness Club before a private event for KeyBank. For months, his restaurant and others around the city gave free meals to National Guard troops, refugees, police, firefighters, and volunteer workers who had come to rebuild New Orleans.
In his cookbook My New Orleans, the 43-year-old chef said the storm gave him a new focus and a new motivation. He wanted to celebrate his native city by concentrating on its food and doing whatever he could to boost the local economy. That notion blended with the current nationwide interest in farm-to-table cooking, in which restaurants and home cooks look to serve food that was grown on nearby farms.
"After Hurricane Katrina, we all played a part in the localized economy. If I can buy groceries from outside my front door, it has a better effect on my local economy instead of sending the money elsewhere," he said.
And the food tastes better too when it is fresh and local, he said. It can be picked at the peak of its ripeness and whatever is served is always in season. New Orleans is lucky to have a climate that allows for growing a wide variety of produce throughout the year, he admitted, and he credits this climate for being one major reason his city still has its own indigenous urban cuisine. Everyone there cooks what grows nearby or is caught in the Gulf of Mexico, resulting in food that is distinctly from New Orleans.
Mr. Besh has become so devoted to the notion of using locally produced foods that his company now owns its own 600-acre farm on which it raises beef cattle and hogs, and it partners with other farms in the area to grow much of its produce. It isn't always cheaper to do it that way, he acknowledged, but the results are better. So when his restaurants are recognized as being part of the farm-to-table movement, it is often their own farms as well as their own tables.
But he isn't satisfied just to celebrate the foods of the area, he also wants to help rebuild the city by giving people jobs. From the not quite humble beginnings of Restaurant August -- which has landed on lists of the best restaurants in America -- he has expanded his scope to eight restaurants and a catering company. All told, his company now employs 600 people.
How can one man do it all? He runs a restaurant empire, has a television series on PBS (Chef John Besh's New Orleans) and makes regular appearances on Food Network shows. He writes cookbooks, is an avid hunter and fisherman, and is a husband and father of four boys.
The former Marine noncommissioned officer who saw action in the first Gulf War said it comes down to leadership and management. The chefs who run his restaurants are all partners in his company, so they have a personal stake in making certain that the people who work for them are dedicated to making their customers happy.
The working philosophy in his restaurants is hiring "good people who love what they do and inculcating them with the idea that what we are doing is noble and that we can change the world one plate at a time."
Meanwhile, a few years ago his wife, Jennifer, "made it clear that I will go to the ends of the earth to find the perfect satsuma [a type of Mandarin orange] at the perfect farm to feed my perfect customers, but I do not go out of my way" to give good food to his family. So he refocused his life and began doing more cooking at home. He made a conscious effort to begin stocking his pantry with quality ingredients and doing the necessary work to assure good meals could be made.
From those efforts came his second cookbook, My Family Table: A Passionate Plea for Home Cooking, which will be released next week. He has come to believe that most of life's important lessons are learned around the family table at mealtime, so this book is his attempt to get families to sit down together for meals. Along with stories about his life and family, the book includes 140 recipes divided into chapters including sections on Sunday suppers, quick meals for school nights, and cooking breakfast with his sons.
He also takes restaurant tips for time management and applies them to home kitchens. People who do not have time to cook a good meal before dinner can roast a chicken or even braise some short ribs in the oven after dinner one night and then serve them for the next day or two, he said. And he also provides restaurant tips for getting the most out of ingredients -- chicken bones from one roast can be frozen and used to make stock, and then the fat that rises to the top of that stock can be used to add flavor to sauces.
"When you cook for people that you know and love … there is something almost spiritual about that," he said.
And then he took this idea of cooking at home with love and applied it to his restaurants:
"Teaching the staff to cook from their hearts has been the secret of our success," he said.
Contact Daniel Neman at dneman@theblade.com or 419-724-6155.
RECIPES
Sweet Corn Pudding
8 tablespoons butter (1 stick)
1 medium onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, sliced
12 ears corn, kernels cut off the cob
¼ cup flour
1 quart heavy cream
1 cup cooked grits
3 tablespoons minced canned jalapeño peppers
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
9 eggs, beaten
1 cup shredded white Cheddar cheese
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.
Melt the butter in a heavy-bottomed pot over medium heat. Add the onions and garlic and cook for 3 minutes. Add the corn kernels and cook, stirring, for an additional 3 minutes. Add the flour and stir for 1 minute, then add the cream. Once the cream is incorporated, continue to stir until the mixture comes to a boil. Add the cooked grits, remove from the heat, and stir in jalapeño peppers. Taste and season well with salt and pepper.
With a hand-held immersion blender in the pot (or transfer the mixture to a food processor), purée the corn mixture while slowly adding the beaten eggs, until the eggs are thoroughly mixed in.
Pour the mixture into an ovenproof dish and sprinkle with the cheese. Bake for 25–30 minutes, until the center puffs and the corn pudding turns golden brown.
Note: You can make the corn mixture up to a day in advance, refrigerate, and then bake just before serving. If you chose to do this, make sure to lower the heat to 350? and allow the pudding to bake a bit longer.
Yield: 10–12 servings
Source: My Family Table: A Passionate Plea for Home Cooking, by John Besh
Chef John Besh’s Pecan Baked Ham.
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¼ cup chopped pecans
1 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon Chinese five-spice powder
2 tablespoons butter, softened
1 (5-pound) good quality cooked ham (see cook’s note)
2 medium onions, chopped
Cook’s note: Chances are you won’t find a really good cooked or smoked ham in the supermarket. It’s hard to determine quality by looks alone. All I can say is never use canned ham, and search out a good Italian butcher or ask at your farmers’ market for the best local cooked ham.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
In a small bowl, mix the pecans, sugar, and five-spice powder with the butter until you have a fine, crumbly mixture e_SEmD be sure the butter is soft, and be sure the ingredients are mixed well. Rub generously over the ham, patting the crust with your hands.
Scatter the onions in the bottom of a heavy roasting pan and add about 2 cups water. Place the ham on the bed of onions. Slide the pan into the oven and roast for about 2 hours, checking to make sure there’s still liquid in the pan. As the water evaporates, add a bit more. The ham is done when a nice glaze forms on the outside.
The pecan mixture and the water in the pan will create their own sauce to pour over the ham after you’ve sliced it into beautiful pink rounds. If the sauce seems too thin, just pour into a saucepan and reduce it.
Yield: 12 servings
Source: My Family Table: A Passionate Plea for Home Cooking, by John Besh
Angel Biscuits
1 package active dry yeast
5 cups all-purpose flour
¼ cup sugar
2 tablespoons baking powder
1½ teaspoons salt
2 cups buttermilk
1 cup (2 sticks) butter
Cook’s note: The dough for these biscuits should be made at night, allowed to rest overnight, and then baked in the morning.
Dissolve the yeast in ¼ cup warm water. Sift together the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a large mixing bowl. Add the buttermilk and dissolved yeast and mix well. Using a pastry knife (or two knives), cut the butter into the mixture.
Since this makes a light, fairly wet dough, sprinkle ½ cup of flour on the counter before you roll out the dough. Roll out the dough into a rectangle. Fold the two sides in, making a triple layer of dough. Cut the dough into 3-inch circles or squares. Place on a nonstick baking sheet (or use parchment paper or a silicone mat over a regular baking sheet), cover loosely, and refrigerate overnight.
The next morning, preheat the oven to 400?. Bake for 15–20 minutes, until golden brown.
Yield: 12 servings
Source: My Family Table: A Passionate Plea for Home Cooking, by John Besh
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