(published in the Santa Barbara News-Press on September 22, 2011)
“I really love Thanksgiving,” says Chef
Bradley Ogden, as he sits in the dining room of his Root 246 restaurant in
Solvang and leafs through the pages of his upcoming culinary tome, Holiday
Dinners with Bradley Ogden. “It’s always
been a favorite time for me to cook, certainly in the restaurant, but also on a
very personal level.”
“I’m a traditionalist,” he continues. “To me, the holidays equal family and
friends, and food transcends. It’s
timeless value. You touch people with
what you do in the kitchen and what you give them to eat.”
If that’s true, Ogden has been touching
people for decades. The honors graduate from
the Culinary Institute of America worked at the famed American Restaurant in
Kansas City – “It’s where I began to focus on the American heritage of food,”
he says – before gaining acclaim in the mid-1980s as head chef at San
Francisco’s renowned Campton Place Hotel.
In 1989, he opened his first restaurant, the Lark Creek Inn, which soon
became one of the Bay Area’s most celebrated eateries. He would go on to become one of the country’s
most prolific restaurateurs, running hot spots like One Market Restaurant in
San Francisco, Parcel 104 in Santa Clara and Arterra in San Diego. Today, Ogden is chef and co-owner of the Lark
Creek Restaurant Group’s eight eateries and his celeb-friendly namesake
property at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, which won the James Beard Foundation’s
“Restaurant of the Year” honor in 2004.
He opened Root 246 at Hotel Corque in Solvang in 2009.
Throughout his career, Ogden says he’s
managed to translate to each of his dishes his singular mantra: organic and
local food must prevail. “The farm to
table concept is nothing new for me,” he says.
He traces his culinary roots, actually, to his upbringing on his
family’s farm in Michigan, where he recalls his grandmothers’ and own mother’s
cooking very fondly; his new book is dedicated “to Mom with love.”
“We picked our own corn, caught our own
fish, and harvested tons of root vegetables when it got cold,” he says.
In the foreword to his new book, he
writes, ““There is no exception to my love of all things fresh from the
farm.” He continues, “There is nothing
more flavorful than the simplicity of a farm-fresh egg or a trout taken from an
icy creek and placed directly into a sizzling frying pan.”
Holiday Dinners with Bradley Ogden is a
collection of 150 recipes that each hinge on the use of fresh, local, available
ingredients. Ogden is unwavering in his
encouragement of it, pointing to what he describes as “the ethics” of
cooking. “You’ve got to know exactly
what goes into everything you’re eating,” he insists. In a section of his new book in which he
explains his insistence on the freshest of ingredients, he writes, “Organic and
local food not only tastes better, but it also benefits farmers, animals, the
environment and your health.”
In fact, he describes his new hardback
as a lifestyle cookbook. “It’s a lot
about my life, what I eat and how I do it,” he says, “with some creative edges,
of course.”
Ogden has crafted three main chapters,
each one focusing on the three big holidays.
And his personal inventiveness is evident in the most traditional of
dishes. His Thanksgiving lineup includes
his signature recipe for sage butter-roasted turkey (fresh sage, Dijon mustard
and lemon zest make an appearance) and several bird-inspired alternatives, like
wood-grilled turkey chop with wild mushroom gravy, red curry turkey scaloppini
and leftover turkey hash. For cooks
looking for something meatier, Ogden features savory options like braised short
ribs with onions and sugar pumpkin and wood-grilled butterflied leg of
lamb. All the conventional accoutrements
are included, too, all with that distinguishable Ogden flare, including a corn
and sage stuffing, a sweet potato gratin and roasted harvest squash soup. To fill the sweet spot on the Thanksgiving
menu, Ogden offers his take on classic pumpkin pie – “my favorite all-time
food,” he writes – jellied cranberry sauce and apple crumb pie.
What makes one of the most important
meals of the year that much more approachable for the at-home chef are the
author’s very practical suggestions and off-the-cuff food for thought, which
are interspersed among recipes and photos.
On a page dedicated wholly to choosing and cooking the turkey, Ogden
recommends only “fresh natural, organic, free-range turkeys from small regional
producers, as they will have the best texture and flavor.” Among his techniques for maximizing flavor
and texture, Ogden calls for a V-shaped pan because “it holds the turkey in
position during roasting” and because it keeps the bird elevated, “allowing air
to circulate and promoting even cooking and browning.” He also suggests flipping the bird over
halfway through to protect the breast meat and avoiding basting in the last
hour of cooking to ensure crispy skin.
To help the reader carve the turkey –
an intimidating task for any dinner host – he recommends letting the bird rest
for 30 minutes first, and then, “with the turkey breast side up, begin
with the legs”
Ogden's suggestions continue to
the actual prep before dinner guests arrive.
“Decorate your table with simple flower arrangements and sliced seasonal
fruits set on clear bowls filled with water,” he writes. He also urges the use of name cards so guests
know where to sit and small white Christmas lights “for a sparkling backdrop.” For the hostess seeking practical rules of
etiquette: ”Place a nice folded linen napkin to the left of the forks for
formal occasions or on top of the plate for less formal gatherings.”
The book’s Christmas chapter features
its own share of classic comfort foods, including a braised lamb shoulder with
butter beans, a coffee-spiced rib roast and grilled Cornish game hens with
spicy cherry rub. He expresses special
fondness for his candied yams – “One of my faves,” he says – which features a
spicy profile of cinnamon, allspice, kosher salt and black pepper. His popular takes on eggnog, winter citrus
punch with spice pomegranate ice and chocolate brioche pudding aim to please
any sweet tooth.
This section also features a personal
note on wines, which his son Bryan, also an accomplished chef, helped
prepare. The wide range of diverse
flavors on any holiday table can make wine selection tricky, so Ogden makes
general suggestions. His red of choice
is pinot noir. “Since it is a light wine
with savory, earthy notes, it complements many foods,” he writes. Fruit crispness that cleanses the palate
makes pinot grigio his preferred white wine, and he declares that sparkling
wine “elevates any meal to a special affair.”
The younger Ogden’s specific wine suggestions for several dishes are
found throughout the book.
A page dedicated to the use of fresh
herbs includes sensible tips: “To revive limp herbs, trim ½-inch of stems and
place the whole herb in ice water for an hour." And the author offers a list of recipes that,
inspired by his own childhood memories, he says would make ideal gifts to bring
to any holiday dinner, like spice plum BBQ sauce, banana blueberry bread and
espresso double-chocolate soufflé brownies.
“I can always enjoy gifts I can eat,” Ogden says.
For the New Year’s feast, Ogden shares
another personal favorite, blue corn cakes with caviar and crème fraiche, along
with his recipes for Yankee Pot Roast, sole fillets with citrus brown cutter
and a leek and sweet potato risotto. He
also includes some of his favorite countdown cocktails, like blood orange
mimosas and mango-pineapple margaritas.
But his most popular may be his “Eye-Opening Blood Mary,” which he
mentions in a special section on hangover remedies. “When your head is spinning and you’ve
definitely overindulged, you need to take serious measures before going to
sleep to stop the hangover before it starts,” he writes. The popular morning sipper, he says, forces
your body to process new alcohol, thereby giving it a break from the toxic effects
of the booze you’ve already consumed; a temporary but effective fix, he calls
it. He also calls for drinking plenty of
sports drinks to replace electrolytes and taking a shower that alternates
between hot and cold water.
Each of the main chapters concludes
with a common sense timeline aimed at helping the at-home cook plan and
organize their dinner party. The
Thanksgiving section, for example, suggests ordering your fresh turkey three
weeks out, making the jellied cranberry sauce one week ahead and prepping the
corn and sage stuffing the day before the big feast. Each chapter also includes four sample menus
to match individual lifestyles and personal holiday realities, like
an “Intimate Christmas Dinner for 2” menu and a four-course “Football
Dinner Party” menu for New Year’s Day.
Among the book’s most attractive
attributes are the lush, vivid snapshots by Solvang-based photographer Jeremy
Ball. “And they weren’t staged,” says
Ogden. “They’d come out of the oven,
into my hands, and it was like, ‘Okay, take the picture!” The photos were taken over five days this
past January at the Santa Ynez home of Maria Murdock, daughter of the late
Rosemary Clooney. And for Ogden, they
were intrinsic to the book’s allure, since “recipes are the template and the
rest is show-and-tell.” To that end,
Ogden already has plans in place to develop visual media, like a DVD and
YouTube videos, to accompany his new book.
Holiday Dinners with Bradley Ogden is
being published by Running Press and is already available for pre-order through
Amazon.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.