Chef schools california

If you’ve ever enjoyed something besides a burger off your favorite fast-food menu, you have one item, one person and one place to thank: the Egg McMuffin, its inventor Herb Peterson and the birthplace of the breakfast treat — Santa Barbara . I recently set out to have one served at the source, at the very spot where an egg was first cracked into a Teflon-coated iron ring and grilled on a flat top. And I wasn’t disappointed. ‘Where quality starts fresh every day’ Herb Peterson wasn’t a natural fit to invent a fast-food icon. He didn’t even start out by working in kitchens creating recipes. Instead, he was born and raised in Chicago, and after serving in the Marines during World War II and earning the rank of major, he returned home and started working for D’Arcy Advertising. There, he helped manage the firm’s biggest account, McDonald’s, a fast-food empire in its ascent. Peterson was on the team that created Ronald McDonald and is credited for coining the chain’s first … [Read more...] about ‘A little bit of perfection’: The California McDonald’s that invented the Egg McMuffin

MINNEAPOLIS — Pot roast was one of the first dishes the chef Gavin Kaysen learned to cook, if you can call it cooking. The recipe he used as a teenager growing up in Bloomington, Minn., a Twin Cities suburb, required no culinary training. “I’d just Crock-Pot it,” Mr. Kaysen said. He then mimicked the act of pouring packaged beef stock into a slow cooker and grinned. Mr. Kaysen had just slid a more technically advanced pot roast into the oven in the open kitchen at Spoon and Stable , the restaurant he opened here in late 2014 to much anticipation. “I can’t wait for that gravy,” he said. Northeasterners cook Yankee pot roast . Jewish brisket and most beef daube in New Orleans are pot roast by other names. But to many who grew up in America’s heartland, pot roast tastes and smells of home. Comprising little more than a large cut of beef (chuck roast is common), onions, root vegetables and braising liquid, pot roast has none of the meddling influence of haute cuisine. … [Read more...] about Coming Home to Pot Roast

MINNEAPOLIS THERE’S no escaping Scandinavian heritage in the Twin Cities. At every turn, there’s a billboard for Norwegian language-immersion camp or a “Drool if You’re Finnish” baby bib for sale. But in food terms, it’s long been easier to get an authentic taco al pastor, Thai green curry or a grass-fed beef slider than a good kanel snegl (cinnamon roll). There hasn’t been a successful Scandinavian restaurant here since 2003, when Aquavit, a slick expense-account-fueled import from Midtown Manhattan, closed after a lackluster run. “When I was growing up, if we wanted to have meatballs and lingonberries, we had to go to Ikea,” said Kathryn Anderson, a student at the University of Minnesota. “That’s how bad it was.” There are plenty of good restaurants in the Twin Cities: at least one great Mexican tamale joint (La Loma), several Vietnamese pho specialists and storefronts that cater to the cities’ large Somali and Hmong communities. Several upscale places, like Tilia, Heartland … [Read more...] about A Return to Nordic Roots