Chef Wiechmann is the chef and
owner of T.W. Food in Cambridge, MA. He creates his menus using local organic produce
with a classic French approach.
How you go from planning a dish to putting it on the
table?
I start with the ingredients—they all have to be in season. I came up with a dish that
was made with leftover cheese from the Pyrénées. Black cherries and beets are in season,
so how can I dress up a beet salad? In the Pyrénées, they have cherries with sheep’s milk
cheese. Most of my stuff comes from cultural things, from traveling all over and having a
sound grasp on food in Europe. I study what people make from all over—they do this here,
they do that there. And these things are done for thousands of years. I try to have a
knowledge of these things and then I just look at my own ingredients here, and I draw them
together.
What is your approach in the kitchen and what thoughts do you
have on technology in the kitchen?
My menu is actually really difficult. My employees start out with this picture that we
just dig out a carrot and boil it. We don’t do that. Everything goes through a rigorous,
precise set of cooking parameters. With certain preparations, time and temperature are
everything. There are things like the water circulator you can use to cook all the meats
and fishes perfectly every time. Even for cutting things, we use rulers and metal caramel
cutters.
Observation is critical, as is getting experience in knowing what looks good. If
you’re cooking an onion, it changes color over time. There are certain stages where you
want to pull it because the bitterness increases as the caramelization increases. Onions
in a tall pot will sweat differently than onions in wide pot. In a tall pot, they release
their own water and cook evenly because the water doesn’t disappear. We have specific pots
that are good for certain things—sweat the onions in this pot; don’t use that pot—but a
new cook will just grab any pot.
How do you know if something is going to
work?
You just try. When you start to play the piano, you don’t know where the notes are.
You have to have the technique, then you can think about putting the notes together. If I
hit this note, then I’ll get this sound; if I want onions to be sweet, I’ll caramelize
them. The technique follows the knowledge. I keep a log of my own recipes and times for
each thing. How long to put cherries or apples in a bag and cook in the water circulator,
that comes out of experience.
My big thing I always say: “Get into it and go for it.” Just buy it and try it. Every
time you cook something—even if you burn it and it goes in the trash—it’s not a failure,
it’s just: next time I’m not going to burn it.
Out of all these criteria that make for a good evening,
clearly food is an important one, but what do you think people
underestimate?
Little things. Maybe they don’t know why they don’t like something. You know what I
mean? “Well, I’m not sure. I just didn’t like it.” I think very few people know what they
like and can identify what they like. That’s why I’m pretty good at what I do—I really
know what I like. Do you know what you like?
I’ll have to give it some thought.
I don’t know what I like in the visual art world. I just haven’t spent enough time on
it.
I can answer that one on the visual art world. Anything that
prompts an emotional response. It might not be a positive emotion, but it should stir an
emotion or create an experience. Have you seen
Ratatouille?
Yes.
The scene where the camera zooms into the critic’s eye and goes back to
his childhood as he’s eating ratatouille. He has an experience. For me, food needs to
touch on emotions.
Everybody is geared with that, but I think a lot of people don’t know how to identify
that. They’ll say, “I don’t like cauliflower.” One really great French chef taught me that
you don’t have to like it, you just have to make it good. He said, “taste this,” to which
I said, “I don’t like it; I don’t want to taste it.” He yelled at me. “You’re going to be
a chef and you can’t taste it? You have to taste it.” I’ll never forget him screaming at
me.
I think this would apply if you’re cooking for friends: keep
in mind what your friends are going to enjoy.
That’s right. My job is to make something that people will enjoy.
Roasted Red and Candystripe Beet Salad with
Almond Flan, Black Cherry Compote, and Ossau-Iraty
Serves 8; Prep time: 2 hours.
Prepare the cherry compote. In a container, measure
out and soak overnight:
4 cups (600g) pitted black cherries
1 ⅔ cups (340g) sugar
1 tablespoon (10g) apple pectin
2 vanilla beans, sliced open lengthwise
After soaking overnight, transfer to a pan, add the zest and juice of a lemon, and
cook over medium heat for an hour, until the mixture reaches a jam-like consistency.
Transfer to a plastic container or jar and cool.
Prepare the flan. In a blender, combine:
1 cup (150g) almonds, toasted
1 teaspoon (5g) almond extract
6 medium (330g) eggs
2 cups (480g) heavy cream
Nutmeg, salt, pepper to taste
Pour onto a quarter sheet pan (9″ × 13″ / 23 cm × 33 cm) lined with a Silpat or
parchment paper and bake at 300°F / 150°C until the custard sets, about 45 minutes. Cool
on the sheet in refrigerator.
Prepare the beets. Preheat oven to 450°F / 230°C.
Create a foil pouch containing:
6 medium (500g) red beets
6 medium (500g) candystripe beets (also known as chioggia
beets)
Salt, olive oil, and pepper to taste
Roast until tender, about 45 minutes, depending on the size of the beets. Remove from
pouch and peel with a knife. Cut the beets into attractive circles or cubes.
To serve. Make a quick salad dressing with oil and
vinegar, salt and pepper. Toss the beets and 1 cup / 90g of toasted slivered almonds in
the dressing.
Arrange the beets and almonds on large plates. Place a nice slice of flan somewhere
among them and drop a few scoops of the cherry compote in various places.
Using a vegetable peeler, shave into long strands (about 4″ / 10 cm):
½ pound (225g) Ossau-Iraty (a medium-soft cheese from the
French Pyrénées, creamy and complex)
Decorate the salad with the shaved Ossau-Iraty.
RECIPE USED BY PERMISSION OF TIM WIECHMANN
Regardless
of your feelings about or definition of GMO (genetically modified organism) foods, the
topic is an intensely charged political and social minefield. Fear of the unknown has a
long record of helping to guarantee the survival of our species, so avoiding things until
they’ve established a history of being safe does certainly seem prudent. But this view
doesn’t consider the potential harms that a GMO-based food might be able to avert.
What if a strain of rice could be produced that was more resilient in the face of
floods and droughts? Such a strain of rice would increase crop yields for families in
impoverished countries, and the need is only going to increase. The United Nations’ food
agency expects that worldwide food production will need to increase by 70% between 2010
and 2050. Or how about strains of rice or corn that need fewer pesticides to remain viable
crops? Worldwide, some 300,000 deaths a year are attributed to pesticide poisoning.
Then there’s “Golden Rice,” a golden-yellow rice that has been genetically modified to
produce increased amounts of beta-carotene as a way of addressing Vitamin A deficiencies
that impact the extremely poor in some nations. Everyone agrees that Vitamin A
deficiencies are a serious problem: an estimated 1 to 2 million
children die every year due to Vitamin A deficiency, according to a 1992 World Health
Organization report. Still, Golden Rice has not yet been approved for human consumption;
organizations like Greenpeace have opposed it, saying that it’s an unproven solution and
that other, better solutions exist.
More personally, would you accept genetically engineered cows guaranteed to be free of
prions, which cause Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (a.k.a. “mad cow disease”)? Or how
about a GMO banana that was able to withstand the fungus Fusarium
oxysporum that threatens to wipe out the banana as we know it? Related to GMO
foods, would you accept irradiated chicken if it was guaranteed to be free of
salmonella?
This isn’t to suggest that you should seek out GMO-based foods;
but at the very least you should recognize that there are very real trade-offs. Hundreds
of Americans die annually from salmonellosis, and while those deaths can be avoided with
proper cooking, perhaps we as a society shouldn’t blindly fear technologies that could
prevent those deaths just because they’re unfamiliar.
Sure, it might be reasonable to fear corporate overlording—the
idea that our food chain might become reliant upon a corporation with a patent on the very
food we need to survive—but this is a separate issue from GMO food itself. Another
argument against GMO foods claims that the money spent on GMO research would be better
spent on other areas of agricultural technology; but again, this is a separate issue from
whether genetically modifying food itself should be done.
I personally do not enjoy burgers served by fast food chains, but I recognize that
they are able to feed literally millions of American families every day. Around the world,
advances in technology have increased crop yields and improved the quality of life for
many, although there are still many in starving conditions. What happens to those families
who are just barely making ends meet when the prices of food exceed what they can
afford?
Non-GMO foods are not inherently more expensive, but the economics to date have tended
to make the price of GMO foods cheaper. The quick-serve industry is not saying “we want
GMO foods”; they’re simply buying what’s most economical, because in a price-sensitive
market, the chains need to keep prices down to remain in business.
