I’m back from Idaho, where I was interviewing a chef. Because the chef’s restaurant is under construction, he made me dinner at his house. See, kids, food writing isn’t easy. Sometimes you have to work evenings and weekends.
There are a couple of things that chefs do differently than the rest of us that are obvious even when the chef is cooking at home.
1. By the time dinner was over, the dishes were all washed except for our plates and wineglasses. How do they do that?
2. The chef sauteed a sliced bulb of fennel in some butter. One stick of butter. Then he drained the excess butter off in a colander when the fennel was done. This is not how civilians use a colander, in my experience.
More information about the chef after the article runs, of course.
belatedly — how *was* the fennel?
It was great. I forgot to mention that in addition to the butter, there was a splash of maple syrup.
I’ve noticed in cooking fennel that sometimes when I cook it it gets tender and sometimes it doesn’t–and I like it tender. I’m guessing this has to do with the amount of butter I’m using. Next time I will pop in a pint of plugra.