Article about secret restaurant techniques

April 26, 2008 1:14 PM

I'm looking for a particular magazine article. It was about how chef's use uncommon ingredients to separate their food from what home cooks are generally capable of. Not ingredients that are prominently featured on the menu. The little dash of this or that which the diner can't identify. The article seemed to suggest that the ingredients were a crutch or a cheat at least in some instances. Finally, one secret ingredient was something that the chef drizzles over (raw?) fish.

I thought it might have been perilla oil? I thought it might have appeared in the New York Times? I thought that one of the other tricks might have been truffle oil. I've spent far too long searching on nyt.com for all manner of combinations of those terms and other and I'm no longer sure of any of these things.

It's driving me crazy! Thanks.

posted by stuart_s to food & drink (14 comments total)

Anthony Bourdain talks about it in Kitchen Confidential. Truffles, shallots, and shitloads of butter. Although I don't recall the oil, I believe he talks about that too. Chefs have lots of squeez botles to drizzle on stuff.
posted by Large Marge at 1:23 PM on April 26

Truffle oil?
posted by Comrade_robot at 1:25 PM on April 26

Truffles, sure. Truffle oil, not so much... it costs about 5 bucks a liter and is made from a single synthetic flavoring agent, not the expensive cocktail of aroma you get from real truffles.

I'd be interested in the article too, because "secret restaurant techniques" generally are "use high heat and don't hold back with the salt and butter." Everything else (rare ingredients) costs money, and if you want to spend it, you could replicate that at home too.
posted by rxrfrx at 2:37 PM on April 26

When did you read the article?
posted by iconomy at 2:44 PM on April 26

stuart, you might try searching for shiso which is another name for perillo, a japanese herb in the mint and basil family. While I was helping you search, it seemed like shiso may be the more common word.
posted by LiveLurker at 2:47 PM on April 26

Many (but not all) public libraries have a Lexis Nexis account that will let you do broad newspaper and magazine searches. You can use key words that you remember from the recipe and search under "major newspapers" or "magazines."
posted by not_the_water at 3:36 PM on April 26

Maybe MSG?
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/05/dining/05glute.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=msg&st=cse&oref=slogin
posted by friendlyfire at 3:45 PM on April 26

I can't help with the article, but have a look here: they deal in trade-only flavourings and spices and there are a wide variety of interesting items on the site. Perhaps something will jog your memory??
posted by ninazer0 at 6:17 PM on April 26 [1 favorite]

friendly fire, I remember that article. It was very interesting but the article I'm thinking of discussed several ingredients and I don't think MSG was one of them.

not_the_water, even restricted to just the New York Times all of my searches were throwing up hundreds of results. I don't think my search-fu is up to this task. I think my last chance was that someone would remember it.

LiveLurker, shiso doesn't ring a bell. I tried searching for it and couldn't turn anything up.

iconomy, it was a while ago. I would guess more than a year and less than three.

Large Marge, Comrade_robot, rxrfrx, the article may have included truffle oil but I think most of the other ingredients were more honest - that is spices, not "synthetic flavoring agents." It wasn't about things that home cooks underuse like salt and butter. It was more about things that many would likely not even know about.

Thanks everyone.

Anyone else?
posted by stuart_s at 6:20 PM on April 26

I read something like this, but it was in the first chapters of The Elements of Cooking. It extolled the virtues of veal stock, and its use by pro chefs to "separate their food from what home cooks are generally capable of", as you say.
posted by Shoeburyness at 6:41 PM on April 26

This is probably not what you recall but you may enjoy it (I did!) - powdered altoids on salad, coffee on steak, graham cracker bread crumbs used to fry calamari, etc. The article itself is just a summary - click on Listen Now to hear the whole thing.
posted by iconomy at 7:02 PM on April 26 [1 favorite]

This _really_ sounds like one of the chapters in Anthony Bourdain's "Kitchen Confidential", as Large Marge mentioned - unfortunately, on reading the excerpt of that chapter on Borders' website, I don't think that was it, as he doesn't go into as much detail as I recall.
I do remember reading the article that you're talking about, however, and will be watching this thread in hopes that somebody else remembers more about it than I do.
posted by jferg at 8:07 PM on April 26

I'd look at articles by the previously mentions Mr. Bourdain and stuff by Jeffrey Steingarten.
posted by bensherman at 9:24 PM on April 26

Truffle oil, not so much... it costs about 5 bucks a liter and is made from a single synthetic flavoring agent, not the expensive cocktail of aroma you get from real truffles.

Dirty secret is that even very high end chefs use it, tho. Article.
posted by desuetude at 6:29 PM on April 27