Chefs Experiment with Flavors

Marinated Anchovies with Pink Grapefruit and Black Pepper
Five and Ten in Athens, GA
2012 James Beard Nominated Chef Hugh Acheson  

Dining duos such as onion and garlic, oregano and basil or lemon and pepper are flavor combinations we’ve gotten used to tasting together. But, there’s a delicious new world of flavor match making going on today as chefs season with a touch of surprise. Step aside lemon-pepper. At Five and Ten restaurant in Athens, chef Hugh Acheson’s new take on citrus paired with a bit of heat arrives with seafood. An appetizer of marinated anchovies and pink grapefruit segments dusted with black pepper is marvelous mix of briny fish with slightly bitter fruit and a hit of cracked pepper. Anchovies, by the way, are an excellent source of heart healthy Omega-3 fatty acids and these tiny fish are very low in mercury so you can eat them often. Diving into Acheson’s anchovy dish is far more fun than taking fish oil pills.

Fresh Look at Taste

Culinary Nutritionists
Andrea Canada, Natalia Hancock and Kristy Lambrou
at Rouge Tomate, NYC

Do you like hot sauce on oysters? Most folks eat them that way. But, oysters on the half shell at Rouge Tomate in New York are topped with a pineapple, ginger and mint. Marmalade of shallots and prunes perks up poultry. Lemongrass-ginger oil with jalapeno pairs with fresh fish. Natalia Hancock, culinary nutritionist with Rouge Tomate, works with executive chef Jeremy Bearman to find flavor combinations which are not only mouth watering they have to be healthful too. “There’s nothing better than when the worlds of nutrition and food collide.” While the seasonal dishes are designed to fit within a healthy range of calories there are no numbers on the menu. Hancock, trained as a chef and a dietitian, says the food philosophy at Rouge Tomate prioritizes the quality of calories, “I choose certain ingredients for a dish not just because they taste good together but because they improve the overall nutritional profile of the recipe. A bit of olive oil in a sauce helps you better absorb vitamin A, for instance, in the vegetables.” Another example of this nutritional synergy is a sauce made from a puree of green olives and avocado.



Flavor Focus



Sometimes appreciating a specific flavor means finding it in a variety of forms. In their annual Flavor Forecast, chefs and other food experts at McCormick &Company identified the “quest for the ultimate” as one of 2012’s trends. For example, combining Meyer lemon with lemon thyme, Limoncello and Lemon Peel is described as the “ultimate lemon” taste experience. Flavors known for their cooling effects such as dill, mint, melon and cucumber are combined to create the “ultimate refresher.” At Five and Ten diners can find a new way to satisfy their fish with lemon craving with Rainbow Trout stuffed with thinly sliced fennel and preserved lemons. At Seasons 52, the spring menu brings lemon to the table in a new way with Steelhead Trout in a lemongrass sauce.

World View

Borrowing from the spice cabinet of world cuisines continues to inspire cooks to try new things. McCormick’s chefs identify Korean pepper paste and Moroccan harissa as flavors showing up in everything from barbecue to baked vegetables. Chef Marvin Woods, author of The New Low-Country Cooking which explores the influence of Africa, France, Spain and the Caribbean on southern regional cooking says “It’s great to extend your knowledge. There are no boundaries and its like ‘Wow! They did that!’ and makes you want to run with it.” Woods, who shares healthy southern recipes on his website www.chefmarvinwoods.com such as Lamb Burgers with Orange and Mango Ketchup, says “Too often people think they will lose something when they hear its ‘healthy food’ but you’re adding fantastic flavors with spices and herbs.”

Spice Savvy Cooking Classes


The Cook’s Warehouse – Midtown Location

“Favorites from Masala Farm”: April 5th 7pm-9m

Indian Cuisine: Chef Suvir Saran, author of three cookbooks on Indian Cuisine.

“Red Hot Chilies”: April 10th 7pm-9pm

“Cooking with Chilies” Chef Nancy Waldeck and Cultural Anthropologist Deb Duchon

Get IN the Kitchen on Vacation



Executive Chef Elijah Bowe's Cooking Class at Graycliff Hotel in Nassau




Most folks go on vacation to get out of the kitchen and let someone else do the cooking.

But, when Atlantan Lydia Connerty began planning a bicycle tour of Vietnam with several other girl friends she chose a group cooking experience as one of their activities, “The first thing I did was sign us up to take a hands-on class in Vietnamese cuisine. What a fun way to get introduced to the country and its culture. And then we’d know more about what to order from menus on our trip.”

From cruise ships to resort hotels, cooking classes are joining spa treatments and zip line adventures as popular vacation activities. Joe Carlin, Associate Editor of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, has sought out cooking classes on his world travels with wife Julie for years, “We I took a class in Bangkok on green and red curries back in 2008 and found it a very positive experience. The class served as a nice introduction to the foods of the country. The class was a success because the instructor was knowledgeable, knew her audience and did not try to overwhelm us with too many dishes.”

Chefs at hotels and restaurants also find that inviting guests into their kitchens to cook is a great way to promote their properties and build customer loyalty. Executive chef Elijah Bowe, of the historic Graycliff Hotel in Nassau, Bahamas welcomes his class with a flute of Champagne and then hands out the aprons and knives. After a review of culinary vocabulary associated with the evening’s recipes from “al dente” to “roux” he leads the group through a step-by-step lesson in how to clean a whole fish.

Then the group of six separates into duos to get dinner ready including blackened grouper with tomato compote. While his students slice and dice Bowe, a native of the Bahamas, shares stories of growing up in the islands and his enthusiasm for teaching, “Some people are very skilled and others are kitchen novices. It’s fun to see the teamwork develop. Eventually we do get dinner on the table!” Then the aprons come off and kitchen duties are left behind as guests take their places in the elegant colonial dining room and enjoy the courses they created with sommelier selected wine pairings.

The wine cellar deep beneath the floors of Graycliff Hotel with thousands of bottles of buried treasure! 

If you’re still craving time to cook on a trip to Nassau, the One and Only Ocean Club on Paradise Island has added cooking classes and mixology lessons to their menu of things to do at the beach.

Pretty Dune Restaurant at One and Only on Paradise Island, Bahamas

The evening I visited, executive chef Emmanuel Gibson of Dune restaurant showed us how to make plantain crusted grouper and led us through a tasting of spices used in Bahamian cooking before sending us off to the ocean front dining room where the classroom experience really added to appreciation of the Caribbean spiced fresh seafood dishes. 

Fresh caught seafood of course! Chef Emmanuel Gibson of Dune speaks fluent fish.

Kitchen Clean Lessons


One of the things that impressed me is the attention to sanitation before, during and after these amateur hours in professional kitchens. Everyone is firmly instructed to properly wash their hands, avoid cross contamination between raw meats and fresh vegetables and to wash their hands again before entering the dining room. During the Chefs Plate Gourmet cooking class at the Royal Playa del Carmen resort in Mexico, the lesson in proper hand washing technique included nail brushing and scrubbing up to the elbows. Good moves considering you don’t really know the other guests in your group or whether they’ve just come off the golf course or shopping in town before helping to cook your lunch. It was apparent the food and beverage staff of the hotel, part of the Real Resorts of Mexico, were trying really hard to dispell any fears of Montezuma's Revenge. In fact, the kitchens were gleaming clean.  
So, whether you’re traveling to India or China or taking a cooking class at a restaurant in Atlanta, keep an eye on kitchen cleanliness as well as the cuisine to get the most out of the experience. The only souveniers you want are a few new recipes and new found appreciation for world cuisines.