Cooking Vacations: 2010 Aspen Food and Wine

Masaharu Morimoto at Aspen Food and Wine 2010

Masaharu Morimoto

gave a demo on knife skills. Ha. His hands moved so fast that I could hardly tell what he was doing, but he was very entertaining. I kept trying to take pictures of what he was doing. Just a blur.

Morimoto's hands were a blur

Jacques Pepin and Claudine Pepin

Jacques Pepin and his daughter did a demo on caviar. I don't use this ingredient (can I even call caviar an ingredient?), but figured that any time spent with the two of them would be worthwhile. The first thing they demoed was cabbage (sliced thin), chicken stock, garlic (added via a microplane), cream, white wine, shrimp and dijon mustard with fresh dill added at the end, with red caviar on top. Then there was a boiled red bliss potato with creme fraiche on top, with a bit of caviar on top of that. Then they did a tartare (either salmon or tuna).

Mario Batali at 2010 Aspen Food & Wine

After a thrilling hour with Thomas Keller I got to go to a demo by Mario Batali. He started off with a seafood salad. Not a wimpy one, it had shrimp (simmered for 1 minute), calamari (simmered for 30 sec) annd mussels (evoo, garlic, then mussels, then white wine). Once the seafood was cooked he added green pesto, red wine vinegar, papaer thin red (or Vidalia) onion, a pinch of salt, canned garbanzo beans, supremed blood oranges, olive oil and flat leaf parsley. It looked great, very full of seafood.