{"id":14133,"date":"2017-11-22T18:23:55","date_gmt":"2017-11-22T23:23:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/?p=14133"},"modified":"2017-11-22T18:23:55","modified_gmt":"2017-11-22T23:23:55","slug":"plat-du-jour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/plat-du-jour\/","title":{"rendered":"Plat du Jour"},"content":{"rendered":"

December 2017 | view this story as a .pdf<\/a><\/p>\n

Off-script moments in the kitchen reveal the culinary creativity of Maine\u2019s award-winning chefs.<\/span><\/h3>\n

By Olivia Gunn Kotsishevskaya<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Hungry-Eye-WG17\"Your dish arrives, the components meticulously arranged and artfully drizzled. It\u2019s a work of alchemy executed with obvious precision and insight, seemingly created from a tried-and-true method. And yet, more often than not\u2013the secret ingredient? A touch of improvisation.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe open at 4:30 p.m., and sometimes we\u2019re printing the menu right then,\u201d says Melody Wolfertz<\/strong>, owner and chef at Rockland\u2019s In Good Company<\/strong>. Focusing on dishes that are \u201cgenuine and simple,\u201d Wolfertz and her team rarely follow a recipe. \u201cWe just make it. If you have something here one night, it\u2019s likely you\u2019re never going to have it again,\u201d she says. \u201cWe\u2019re building on flavors, not following recipes.\u201d Wolfertz says she thrives on adrenaline. \u201cYes, there are days when I wish it were a little more thought out, but I\u2019d probably die of boredom if it were.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Relying on her network of farmers and local foragers, Wolfertz doesn\u2019t believe in over-complicating her dishes. \u201cI refer to our food as \u2018triage,\u2019\u201d she says. \u201cI cook on three butane camp stoves. My food isn\u2019t meant to be pretty. It isn\u2019t meant to be structural.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

But Wolfertz doesn\u2019t throw the rule book totally out of the window, particularly if she\u2019s drawing from another culture\u2019s recipes. \u201cYou can\u2019t riff off another country until you know that country,\u201d she says. \u201cFirst you learn French, the classic techniques you\u2019re trained in. From there you can start experimenting.\u201d Wolfertz flexed her international culinary muscles during her \u2018Food Journey\u2019 dinner series earlier this year at In Good Company. The series covered a diverse geography of international cuisines, from Greenland, to Greece, to Gaza\u2013faithfully reproducing traditional dishes in her Rockland kitchen.<\/span><\/p>\n

But as for her daily menu? \u201cThat\u2019s playtime. I have a firm belief that if you\u2019re starting with the best ingredients, then it\u2019s going to be good. How do you screw up something fantastic in its simplest form?\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

Wolfertz\u2019s musings bring to mind the words of the queen of kitchen improvisation, Ms. Julia Child: \u201cIn cooking, you\u2019ve got to have a what-the-hell attitude.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

The Art of Spontaneity <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s say 20 pounds of matsutake<\/em> mushrooms show up after an evening\u2019s menu has already been laid out. What next? \u201cI jumped to serve them that night,\u201d Nate Nadeau<\/strong>, Fore Street\u2019s<\/strong> Chef de Cuisine says. \u201cThey were the first of the season. We cleaned them up and made a compound butter. They\u2019re really piney, so we used juniper and some sumac one of our foragers had brought in that day.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Using ingredients caught, raised, grown, and foraged throughout Maine from the likes of Four Winds Farm in Lisbon, Nadeau and his line cooks are already working with the best paints on the palette, but what happens on the canvas each night is even more impressive. \u201cWe write our menu here every day,\u201d he says. \u201cThat\u2019s the function of our restaurant. Our crew is here every morning prepping from the ground up for that evening\u2019s meals. We have an idea of what\u2019s coming at us every night as far as proteins and produce, but it changes throughout the afternoon.\u201d With ingredients arriving until the very last minute, the team at Fore Street has to be prepared for Nadeau\u2019s last-minute decisions and inspirations. \u201cThe people who help us execute this have skills that you don\u2019t necessarily learn in culinary school.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Sizzling Improv<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Working under pressure while staying innovative is bound to result in some off-script moments, so why not make a menu for them? The Chef\u2019s Tasting Menu at Five Fifty-Five <\/strong>on Congress Street, owned by Steve and Michelle Corry, is the perfect outlet for that creative energy. \u201cIt allows us to have a little fun with some extra ingredients we have in-house\u2013something cool we saw at the Farmer\u2019s Market we can only get in smaller quantities,\u201d says Chef Kyle Robinson<\/strong>. \u201cWe have quite a bit of fun with it.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

Looking at a collection of ingredients for tonight\u2019s meal, Robinson envisions his tasting menu. \u201cI\u2019ll start the seven-course menu off with a scallop crudo with apple-and-cilantro aguachile, fennel, and chorizo oil, then a local chicken liver p\u00e2t\u00e9 with grape jam, fermented grapes, husk cherries, and house-made brioche.\u201d And that\u2019s just the beginning. A sweet potato agnolotti and butternut squash may make an appearance, along with seared scallops, cauliflower pur\u00e9e, roasted romanesco with a sauce of hazelnuts, capers, and red wine. To finish it all off? \u201cA date cake with figs, mascarpone mousse, and tahini ice cream.\u201d If one dish proves particularly popular, there\u2019s a chance it\u2019ll find a spot on the permanent menu.<\/span><\/p>\n

Should guests request the Chef\u2019s Tasting Menu, they should hang on for a delicious ride. \u201cI\u2019ll grab a pur\u00e9e from this dish, a vinaigrette from that dish, some vegetables from another entr\u00e9e. It ends up being a collection of little bits and pieces of different menu items transformed into something new.\u201d This spontaneity means you\u2019re likely to see a dish once\u2013and only once. \u201cWe don\u2019t do the same thing over and over again. It tends to be similar people who come back for this experience, so we try to give them something they haven\u2019t seen before,\u201d Robinson says. \u201cIt\u2019s great fun. On occasion, if it\u2019s a crazy busy night, it can be a little difficult for us to stop and clear our heads and think, \u2018What can we come up with right now?\u2019 But on a mellow weeknight, it gives us a chance to be creative and try out something we\u2019ve read about or seen.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Happy Accidents<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Some chefs find last-minute menu ventures exhilarating\u2013others less so. \u201cThe thing is, I try not to have that happen,\u201d says Adam Flood<\/strong>, Executive Chef at Grace<\/strong>. It\u2019s stressful enough making sure the food ordered from the menu is perfect, let alone cooking off-the-cuff. That\u2019s not to say he\u2019s never been pushed to improvise. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve had a few happy accidents in the kitchen,\u201d Flood says. \u201cI remember making king oyster mushroom confit, which can be very rubbery if not treated right. I put them in the oven without checking the temperature, a very rookie thing to do, and cooked them at 350 degrees when it should have been 225. I left them in the oven at 350 for four hours<\/em>.\u201d After abandoning the effort to focus on other dishes at hand, Flood returned that evening to examine the aftermath. \u201cThey were super caramelized, nice and soft. They were the best mushrooms I ever had!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

F<\/span>lood\u2019s mushrooms ultimately made it onto Grace\u2019s menu for a time as Fried King Oyster Mushrooms with black garlic aioli, though he says the process of improvisation in the kitchen is not one he enjoys. \u201cWhen stuff like that happens, it feels like a horrible pit in your stomach. You want to puke, to be honest. But then you get away from that feeling, think of what you\u2019ve done in the past, and move forward to fix it. I enjoy the art of perfection. If things aren\u2019t going well and I\u2019m pushed to improvise, I can and I\u2019m good at it. But it\u2019s only satisfying after the fact.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

There\u2019s a romanticized image, one many of us share, of our favorite Maine chefs whisking, saut\u00e9ing, and chopping their way to the next signature dish led by pure imagination and instinct. But maybe we value equally, if not more than their artistry, their resourcefulness. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

December 2017
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