Sean Brock, Jeff McInnis, Noah & Rae Bernamoff At The Food Republic Test Kitchen
Today we are live from the Food Republic Test Kitchen & Interview Lounge at Little Owl The Venue in New York's West Village. A lot of our friends from the culinary world are stopping by for interviews and fun in the kitchen.
Jeff McInnis is Executive Chef at Yardbird Southern Table in Miami Beach and a former contestant on Top Chef. Husband and wife Noah and Rae Bernamoff opened the popular Brooklyn eatery Mile End Delicatessen in 2010 and recently published The Mile End Cookbook. Sean Brock is chef-partner of Husk and McCrady's in Charleston, South Carolina.
Sean Brock
What food trend are you sick of hearing about?
Foraging. I am so sick of hearing about it. We do it and it's part of our cuisine, but it has been part of our cuisine since the Native Americans were cooking in the Low Country. You cook what is around you. People are taking it a little too far and are in places that don't have delicious things to forage and are spending their time picking all these things that are tasteless. The way I see it, you should be in the kitchen cooking and developing your cuisine. Yeah, it's fun, but if spend your whole day picking mustard flowers that don't taste like anything, then I don't really see the point.
Is the media to blame?
Oh, no. People get so excited about trends and they don't realize that just because something is trendy – it's only trendy for a moment. Foraging is part of our cuisine and we're lucky that we have the beach. Just the other day, I was foraging for beach plants and that's something that we take advantage of – they are incredibly delicious – we forage beach arugula, which is part of our terroir.
So to be clear, you do it too?
Absolutely. I just think that people are focusing too much on it. It should be part of your cuisine if it's part of your region and terroir. It's free and it's cool to team-build and get guys out and play around in the woods. But I see all these people who are spending too much time gathering things that don't have any flavor, just doing it to be doing it because it's trendy. Why put something on a plate that's not delicious? Don't put it on a plate just because it's trendy.
Noah and Rae Bernamoff
What is the last time that you got home at 7 a.m.?
Noah: That's funny...just last weekend!
Rae: We were together.
What happened?
Noah: I went to a friend's wedding in Chicago and we had Le Fooding on Sunday, so we had to take the flight back in the morning at 6:30. I basically stayed out from Saturday morning right through the Le Fooding after party.
Rae: We got home at 3 a.m. on Sunday night and had basically been up for 48 hours.
Noah: I put in a 43-hour day that day.
What went down at your friend's wedding?
Noah: Just a lot of alcohol [laughs]. It was lovely, a very touching service.
What was the food at the wedding?
Noah: They went for an ethnic food combination wedding. There was a booth where you could get pupusas and tamales, another booth that was Italian beef with peppers, another one with sushi.
Jeff McInnis
Name your favorite fall ingredient and how you can use it in a smart way.
I like pumpkin. I know that's kind of a cop-out because it's an easy one. I like stuffing the little baby ones – cooking the insides and then filling them back up.
What's a good stuffing?
Foie gras is good. A pumpkin foie gras mousse or something could be good.
What is your fall like season-wise in Miami?
There's not much. The seasons don't really change down there too much so you kind of have to rely on everybody else's seasons and follow that path. The fall is actually pretty cool down there because that's when all the produce starts popping up. We get tomatoes like crazy through fall – we get all of our heirlooms through fall and winter. Our seasons are a little bit backwards. All our lettuces start popping up, as well – lots of mustard greens, collard greens.
Hear other chefs' responses to questions picked out of our bowl: