Chefs dole out tips, give demos in kitchen stadium

SHOW-AND-TELL | Chefs dole out helpful tips at industry gathering

Let the meat rest. If you've spent any time watching the Food Network, you've no doubt heard that bit of advice uttered time and again from every chef/host dealing with a hunk of meat just off the grill.

And yet, there you go again, peeking under the foil tent, poking and prodding that steak and inevitably, ever so slightly, cutting into it to check out your handiwork.

Well, guess what? Off-screen, in real time, the advice stands. Let. It. Rest.

Rick Bayless said it, Stephanie Izard said it and then so did Marcus Samuelsson.

The chefs were among those leading cooking demonstrations at the National Restaurant Association's annual show at McCormick Place, which ended last week.

The trade show, and the cooking demos, are targeted at restaurant professionals looking to grow their business.

But, I figured, surely there was advice to be gleaned that home cooks would find useful.

With that in mind, I sat through two days' worth of demonstrations in the Culinary Scene, in the rear of one of the giant exhibit halls.

The Culinary Scene theme was profitable proteins. Each day was devoted to a different meat (beef, pork, lamb, poultry).

Which brings us to this tidbit: All eyes are on cheaper but immensely flavorful cuts of meat.

Forget filet mignon. How about the hanging tender?

Pork belly -- indeed. Pig jowl? Even better.

Here's more of what I picked up.

It's standing room only for Rick Bayless' beef demo.

Clearly, the man has done this cooking in front of a live audience thing a zillion times before.

He's articulate, funny and confident as he breezes through his dish, grilled flank steak with red chile tomatillo salsa, fresh corn tamales and grilled knob onions. The dish is a menu staple at Frontera Grill, 445 N. Clark.

"It's all about treating each ingredient right," he says as he whirs the salsa in a food processor.

Bayless is not a fan of overnight marinades for meat.

"I think it changes the texture of the meat, so I try and work with the cut of meat and figure out a topical marinade," he says. In this case, he brushes the meat with an agave glaze.

Bayless makes the filling for the tamales in a food processor -- fresh corn kernels, masa (a dough made from field corn), butter, baking, salt and sugar.

Classic Mexican tamales are typically made with lard. Bayless prefers butter. Lard "cuts into that fresh flavor," he says.

And forget corn husks, the common wrapper for tamales. Along the south coast of Mexico, and in Bayless' kitchen, banana leaves are used.

No need to search for fresh banana leaves, he says. Frozen is fine, and here in Chicago, you can find frozen banana leaves in most Asian and Mexican grocery stores.

"It's an inexpensive table decoration, too," he says, as he unfolds one long leaf. "We cut them up in restaurants and use them in place of doilies on plates."

The tamales steam for about an hour to a "puddinglike" texture.

After resting, the steak is ready to be sliced. Bayless emphasizes cutting across the grain. "It's a nice presentation and makes the meat way more tender."

He plugs two more ingredients: quickly roasted knob onions, which are "so much tastier than regular green onions," and Mexican crema, which is "richer and nuttier, like creme fraiche." You can find both at Mexican markets.

Someone asks about the best way to peel tomatillos. If you're working with a bunch of them, Bayless suggests plopping them in a big container filled with hot water (they use a five-pound bucket at the restaurant). The peels will soften, so slipping them off is a cinch.

Stephanie Izard is a force of nature, bubbly and nonstop and just plain goofy.

Her dish is marinated steak with sweet and sour peppers and cilantro vinaigrette. Like Bayless, she emphasizes letting the ingredients shine.

Izard -- whose restaurant, the Drunken Goat, is slated to open in the West Loop at the end of the year -- is playing it a little off the cuff (but then, as a "Top Chef" winner, she's used to that).

She wanted to use skirt steak, but organizers instead gave her a tri-tip steak from an earlier butchery demonstration. And she'd planned on using a jalapeno pepper but instead was given a small Korean pepper. She rolls with both.

Izard deftly slices red and yellow bell peppers. She doesn't care for green peppers.

Izard explains she is doing a riff on escabeche, a dish of marinated fish, peppers and sometimes fennel.

She turns her focus from the meat (on the grill) and the peppers (cooking down in the pan) to the ingredients for her cilantro vinaigrette: egg yolk, Dijon mustard, chili garlic paste and aged white balsamic vinegar.

She dumps everything in the blender and gives it a buzz, drizzling in oil to emulsify it. Then she asks if people remember the "Top Chef" episode where she had to make mayonnaise by hand.

"It was starting to break and Tom [Colicchio, the judge] came over to me and said, 'There's no way,' " Izard says, laughing.

Way. "If you add a little splash of water, it'll come back together," she says.

Honey and cilantro, stems and all, go in next.

"The stems have flavor," she says. "You don't have to hate on the stems. You can use them in salads."

The dressing is a little thick, so she adds more vinegar. It needs sweetness, too. Izard eyes a bottle of pomegranate juice on the countertop that wasn't meant for her and drizzles in some. The point, she says, is that you can play around.

Marcus Samuelsson's dish is most definitely a restaurant dish -- pork three ways (rack, belly and cheek) with cranberry beans, tomato confit, pickled ramps and pickled cherry tomatoes. Most of the components are in an already cooked or semi-ready state.

His assistant, a local culinary student, does most of the searing. Samuelsson of C-House, 166 E. Superior, does all of the talking (about everything from food in public schools in Sweden, where he grew up, to people's teeth).

He cooks the pork rack to medium and then lets it rest "a good 10 to 12 minutes." If you don't let it rest, you'll lose the precious juices, he says.

Samuelsson is at his best as he plates the dish and explains his approach to cooking.

With every dish, he thinks about: enhancing the flavor; varying temperatures; varying textures ("If you don't have different textures in food, it's bland. If you toss a Caesar salad too early, it'll wilt. If you cook mashed potatoes and you stir too much, it's glue"), and finally, aesthetics on the plate.

Samuelsson's second dish, fish tacos, is a good example of this balancing act. He fills mini taco shells with a smear of avocado, cold hamachi ceviche, pickled onion, crunchy raw cabbage and baby cilantro.

Chris Cosentino of Incanto and Boccalone in San Francisco authors the Web site www.offalgood.com.

Naturally, his demo is about how to break down a pig's head and then turn the meat into the lyrically sounding, rosemary-infused Porchetta di Testa.

Cosentino is a huge proponent of the cuts and organs other countries prize and many American diners shy away from.

"These cuts are being shipped abroad at 10 times what we pay here," he says. "A lot of people here call them garbage cuts."

He removes all of the meat from the pig's head, mostly in one piece. "It's gonna come off just like your Halloween mask," he says as the young male culinary students in the audience -- and there are many -- chuckle, visibly enthralled.

Cosentino wastes nothing. At his restaurant, "we poach the brain and make brain-aise," he says. Pig's ears are deep-fried and offered as bar snacks.

He lays the pig's tongue and ears onto the head meat, seasons with lots of salt, pepper, rosemary, garlic and lemon zest, and rolls it all up. Bundled up in netting, it looks like an Easter ham.

"One of the keys is to serve the familiar with the unfamiliar. It takes away some of the fear," he says. "At the restaurant, we serve brains with bacon."

The meat cooks sous-vide for several hours. When it comes out, it still looks like an Easter ham. But when sliced thin, it looks like stained glass.

"Offal is not to be feared," he tells me after the demo. "Working with offal cuts is an easy thing to do. You start simple. Chicken livers, then chicken hearts, then beef hearts."

Cosentino is selling T-shirts that read, "I [heart] offal." I suppose one could start just by wearing that.