Chef Walter Scheib Cooks With The Celebrity Chef Tour

Once again I have the opportunity to share with you a very informative interview with a top American chef. This time with Chef Walter Scheib, an extraordinary person who was the previous executive White House chef for President Bill Clinton and President George W Bush. Not only did Chef Scheib give interesting responses about his time in the White House, he also offered incredible insight to anyone thinking of going to culinary school and entering the food industry. He also provided some great tips for home cooks who are afraid of trying new ideas at home. Read the interview here.

The Celebrity Chef Tour

Like my previous interview with Chef Marc Vetri, I was given the opportunity to interview Chef Scheib by the folks marketing The Celebrity Chef Tour, an organization that showcases the talents of James Beard Award Winners by presenting them throughout the country to prepare award winning dinners to raise money to benefit the James Beard Foundation. For those of you who don’t much about the James Beard Foundation, its mission is to "celebrate, preserve and nurture America’s culinary heritage and diversity in order to elevate the appreciation of our culinary excellence."

Chef Scheib will be the "celebrity chef" this Thursday, April 23, 2009 at The W Hotel in New York City. The event takes place at 7 P.M. and costs $185.00 per person. You can contact them for more information at 720-201-1853.

The event menu will include Mojito Spiked Sweetwater Prawns, Avocado & Pin apple Salsa with Plantain Chip, Chorizo Wrapped Scallops with Pepper Relish, Maryland Soft Shelled Crab, Corn and Bacon Chowder, Pepper Seared Duck, Glazed Shallots, Short Grain Risotto, Crisp Cactus Sorbet, Smoked Angus Beef Tenderloin, Green Chili and Hominy Casserole. The dessert will be Triple Chocolate and Espresso Ice Cream, Banana Rum Compote & Short Bread Cookies. Wow, what a menu!

More About Chef Walter Scheib

Author of White House Chef: Eleven Years, Two Presidents, One Kitchen, Chef Walter Scheib is a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America and as he says, ""For the last eleven years, I have had the honor of doing daily what most chefs would be lucky to do once in their life time. That honor was serving the First Family of the United States.”

He was chosen to be the First Family executive chef after he impressed First Lady Hillary Clinton with the spa menu he developed while working for the Greenbrier resort. She personally hired him in April of 1994. Chef Scheib is a big fan of incorporating American products into his menu including local bread, artisan cheese, seasonal produce, US breed meat and local fish. He says, "America is rich in amazing produce, meats, and fish, using just a few excellent ingredients, anyone can make a perfect meal with very little formal training.”

Chef Scheib’s new corporation, The American Chef, allows him to share his knowledge, experiences and cuisine to audiences across the country. The American Chef offers team building courses using cooking a process to bring business leaders together as well cooking demonstrations at our nations culinary schools. Chef Scheib also teaches classes on how to throw a White House Birthday Party.

To learn more about Chef Walter Scheib, I recommend you read my Novice2Pro Interview with him and also check out his web site, The American Chef.

Once again I had the privilege to interview one of America’s Top Chefs and ask questions you don’t normally see in everyday interviews like "What advice you would give home cooks to take our cooking to the next level?" My most recent Novice2Pro chef interview was with Chef Marc Vetri, a local Philly guy who happens to be one of Food & Wine’s Ten Best Chefs and runs two of the most successful restaurants in Philadelphia, Vetri and Osteria.

The Celebrity Chef Tour

I was given the opportunity to interview Marc by the folks marketing The Celebrity Chef Tour, an organization that showcases the talents of James Beard Award Winners by presenting them throughout the country to prepare award winning dinners to raise money to benefit the James Beard Foundation. For those of you who don’t much about the James Beard Foundation, its mission is to "celebrate, preserve and nurture America’s culinary heritage and diversity in order to elevate the appreciation of our culinary excellence."

Chef Vetri will be the Celebrity Chef this Saturday, April 25, 2009 at the City Club of Washington Columbia Square in Washington, DC. The event takes place at 7P.M. and costs $195.00 per person. You can contact them for more information at 720-201-1853.

The event menu will include Homemade Porchetta with Tuna Sauce, Sweet Onion Crepe with Parmesan Sauce, Homemade Rigatoni with Duck Sausage and Mustard Greens and Veal Breast Braised in Milk with Soft Polenta. The dessert will be Chocolate Polenta Souffle with Vanilla Gelato. Sounds like a great night.

More About Marc Vetri

You may remember a blog I posted back in November on Marc’s new cookbook, Il Viaggio di Veri, A Culinary Journey. It is a beautiful cookbook with incredible photography, wonderful stories about Marc’s experiences in Italy and 125 of his most requested recipes from his restaurants. I have not been this excited about a cookbook for a long time.

Chef Vetri and his partners are also involved in a charity that is near and dear to my heart, Alex’s Lemonade Foundation. It is called The Great Chefs Event where Marc invites a bunch of his chef friends from all over the country to come to Philadelphia with staff to prepare tastings for those of us attending the event. This year I am proud to be a sponsor and will be bringing a bunch of my friends to attend with me. Here is the list of Chef Vetri’s chef friends who will be there this year:

* Kiong Bahn, Twenty Manning, Philadelphia
* Dan Barber & Josh Lawlor, Blue Hill at Stone Barns, Pocantico Hills, New York
* Franklin Becker, Abe & Arthur’s, New York
* John Besh, Restaurant August/Besh Steak/Luke/La Provence, New Orleans
* Chris Bianco, Pizzeria Bianco, Pane Bianco, Bar Bianco, Phoenix
* Tom Colicchio, Host of Top Chef, Craft Restaurants
* Bobby Flay, Food Network Star, Mesa Grill Restaurants
* Clark Fraiser & Mark Gaier, Arrows/MC Perkins Cove/SummerWinter, Ogunquit, Maine
* Neil Fraser, Grace, Los Angeles
* Katsuya Fukushima, ThinkFoodGroup, Washington D.C.
* Jose Garces, Amada /Tinto/Chilango/Distrito, Philadelphia
* Suzanne Goin, Lucques/ A.O.C., Los Angeles
* Paul Kahan, Blackbird/Avec, Chicago
* Lachlan Mackinnon-Patterson and Bobby Stuckey, Frasca Food and Wine, Boulder, Colorado
* Joseph Manzare, Zuppa/Globe/Tres Agaves/Pescheria, San Francisco
* Masaharu Morimoto, Food Network Star, Morimoto, Philadelphia
* Jeff Michaud, Osteria, Philadelphia
* Emilio Mignucci, DiBruno Bros., Philadelphia
* Luke Palladino, Ombra, Philadelphia opening Summer 2009
* Eric Ripert & Jennifer Carol, 10 Arts, Philadelphia
* Marco Rossi, Osteria Le Cantine D, Bergamo, Italy
* Bryan Sikora, Talula’s Table Restaurant, Kennett Square, Pennsylvania
* Michael Solomonov, Zahav, Philadelphia
* Brad Spence, Vetri, Philadelphia
* Daniel Stern, Gayle/ Rae Restaurant, Philadelphia
* Michael Symon, Lola-Lolita, Cleveland/ Roast, Detriot
* Sue Torres, Suenos, New York
* Marc Vetri, Vetri/Osteria, Philadelphia
* Rocco Whalen, Fahrenheit Restaurant, Cleveland

Tickets are expensive. I think they are $250 a piece, but it is for an incredible cause, finding a cure to childhood cancer.

If you want to learn more about the event, I recommend you go to Alex’s Lemonade Stand where you can read Alex’s story and learn how to order tickets.

All About Chocolate - Part 2

Yesterday I wrote all about where chocolate comes from, how it is made and the differences between bittersweet chocolate and semi sweet chocolate. I also look at dark chocolate, white chocolate and ask, "Does chocolate really taste sweet?" - See All About Chocolate - Part 1

Chocolaty Examples

Here are two brownie recipes. The first uses 8 oz. of unsweetened chocolate. Look at all of the sugar that is used to balance that! The second calls for semisweet chocolate. The difference between the two recipes is pretty clear.

Brownies made with unsweetened chocolate (100% chocolate)

8- 1 ounce squares of unsweetened chocolate
1 cup butter
5 eggs
3 cups sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla
1-1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt

Brownies made with semisweet chocolate

8 ounces semisweet chocolate
1 stick (4 ounces) unsalted butter
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3 large eggs
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
1 cup all-purpose flour

Note that, even though both recipes call for 8 ounces of chocolate, there is a full 2 1/4 cup reduction in sugar in the recipe that calls for semisweet chocolate! The semisweet recipe also halves the butter and reduces the number of eggs. This is most likely because there is more cocoa butter in the unsweetened chocolate than there is in the semi-sweet chocolate.

Since the semisweet chocolate also contains less chocolate (maybe as much as 65% less, depending on the semisweet chocolate used), not as many eggs are needed to balance out the drying effect of the cocoa solids contained in the chocolate.

How To Make These Brownies

To make either version of the brownies, melt together the chocolate and butter. Stir until smooth and then cool. Whisk in the sugar by hand, followed by the eggs, one at a time. Stir in the vanilla and then the flour. You can add toasted nuts as well, if you’d like. Pour into a greased and lined pan (8” x 8” for thicker brownies and 9”x 13” for thinner brownies) and bake at 325F until done.

To Temper or Not to Temper

There is no need to temper chocolate that is going to be used in a recipe. Melting it is sufficient. The goal of tempering is to get the cocoa butter to crystallize in its most stable form, and, since it melts at body temperature anyway, tempering would be a waste of time in a batter that will go in the oven at temperatures well in excess of 98F!

The time to temper is when you want the chocolate to stand on its own—either as a coating for truffles or molded candies or for decoration. Tempering is not difficult, but it can be a little fussy. There are many excellent resources on the web that can walk you through the process.

If you want to make candy but do not want to go through the trouble of tempering the chocolate, you can use chocolate coatings. These can be found in craft stores or grocery stores. In my opinion, these products do not taste very good, partly because of the substitution of other fats for cocoa butter.

You can make your own, good tasting coating chocolate using this simple formula: chocolate and a neutral oil together in a 10 to 1 ratio. So, for ten ounces of chocolate, you’ll need 1 ounce of vegetable oil. For 5 ounces, you’ll need ½ ounce (1 tablespoon). The addition of the vegetable fat will allow the chocolate to firm up and maintain a sheen without needing to be tempered.