We’ll bring you cooking demos from the likes of Jacques Torres, François Payard, and our own contributing editor, Abigail Johnson Dodge. See below for the full schedule. When available, we’ll add links to recipes from the ch

Source: http://www.finecooking.com/item/12035/fine-cooking-live-at-the-chocolate-show

“…a shining example of new chef-owned ventures, the best I’ve tasted this year…maybe even perfect” is how Lenadams Dorris described Rosemary’s Restaurant in the Las Vegas Weekly in August 1999, the year the restaurant opened and the year it was featured on Taste of Vegas as the new top-rated neighborhood restaurant.

And it was no big surprise.

Wendy Jordan and Michael Jordan are both extraordinary chefs; teamed in their restaurant, they are unstoppable. Both came through celebrated kitchens in New Orleans, a city known for its outstanding chefs and restaurants. Wendy worked under celebrated chef Susan Spicer, a James Beard honoree, and participated in a special dinner at The James Beard House in New York when she was Susan Spicer’s assistant. She also worked with the late John Neal in his restaurant Peristyle in New Orleans, and took over in the kitchen when he passed away. Michael Jordan was first featured on Great Chefs when he worked at Emeril Lagasse’s NOLA restaurant in the New Orleans French Quarter, then served as Executive Chef of Emeril’s New Orleans Fish House at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

With the Jordans combining their illustrious kitchen pedigrees for their own restaurant, the result is like fine cooking: even more than the ingredients would suggest. In 2007 Michael was named restaurateur of the year in Las Vegas; Rosemary’s was named gourmet restaurant of the year in the city.
 

While many French restaurants were transformed by the influence of nouvelle cuisine, Lucien Verge’s L’Escargot remained a bastion of the simple, honest food of provincial French cooking.

In fact, customers were so thrilled by his cassoulet that they did not allow him to remove it from the menu, even during the hot summer months. And his desserts, rather than being elaborate constructions, featured the elegant simplicity of fruit — fruit tarts and feathery crepes filled with fresh fruit.

“I call my style of cooking cuisine du terroir,” said Verge, a native of Lyons. “It means cooking of the earth, and, when it appears on the plate it is basic, country cooking.”

It has taken the culinary world 20 years to catch up to his concept of terroir.

But traditional and authentic dishes can also be done with the finest and freshest ingredients, and this was equally important to Verge. When he first moved to Chicago in 1966, he was unable to find French mustard in the markets and had to send to New York — or further abroad — for many of his ingredients. Those he could not locate he would work around, devising new dishes in his traditional idiom.

Again, finest-and-freshest ingredients are an essential in fine cooking in the 21st century.

Verge maintained he did not change, but rather that his customers caught up with him. “I could not get them to try dishes like choucroute with braised cabbage and sausages, or a pot au feu with boiled meats. Now they trust me, and if I go into the dining room and suggest a dish, they’re likely to give it a chance.”

While his style of cooking drew upon his childhood, his training was in the grand tradition. After four years at La Mere Filloux in is native Lyons, starting training when he was 16, Verge moved to the dining rooms of two of Paris’ finest hotels, the Hotel Crillon and the Hotel Plaza Athenee.

“A chef’s trade is not all written in a book, and each place I worked opened up a different part of the repertoire of French cooking,” he said.

The varying size of restaurants also added to his training. While his experience in Lyons — one of the gastronomic centers of France — was in small places, it gave him a large variety of duties; at the Athenee with 43 chefs he learned the structure needed to avoid chaos.

From Paris Verge moved to New York in 1956 to work at Le Veau d’Or, a restaurant known for the same hearty and informal style of cooking he later produced at L’Escargot. Dishes like leg of lamb and roast duckling were favorites, and he learned about American tastes and preferences.

“It was during those years that I really came to understand recipes from my heart and not just my head,” he said. “You cannot just follow a recipe, you have to understand what each ingredient does for it.” This innate feeling for cooking was immediately appreciated when he opened L’Escargot. When the first restaurant was destroyed in a fire in 1979, he and his partner Alan Tutzer immediately opened another location. When the original reopened, Lucien Verge split his time between the two. His was a cuisine that was the base upon which other chefs innovated and built. "I say to myself, 'I do it authentically.'" he said.

Type this chef's name in the for a list of associated recipes and shows.

Kevin Thornton has been called the best chef in Ireland by no less than Food & Wine magazine, who certainly should know. Food & Wine’s writer Jason Cooke compared Thornton’s quest to the singularity of purpose and solitary grit of the long-distance runner, which in fact Thornton is. Thornton laid the foundation for his formidable skills early, working in the vegetable gardens of the Cashel Palace Hotel and parsing the essence of each vegetable and herb; helping at an abattoir and learning everything he could about meat. He left home for Galway RTC to study fine cooking when he was 17, encouraged by his sister Maura. Upon graduating he worked at Walton’s in London, then traveled through vineyards in Europe learning about wine. He then expanded what he knew by working and traveling — to Switzerland, to Canada, then back to Ireland to the Shelbourne before going to France to work at the multi-starred restaurant of Paul Bocuse in Lyons.

Following this sort of culinary boot camp, he returned to Ireland, teaching at the College of Catering. Finally, Thornton and his wife Muriel opened a restaurant in partnership in 1990, The Wine Epergne in Rathmines. The rave reviews poured in. In 1992, with the lease running out, they closed the restaurant and Thornton went back to teaching while the couple kept an eye out for the perfect location for a new place. In 1995 they selected the spot for Thornton’s, in the five-star Fitzwilliam Hotel and overlooking St. Stephen’s Green. He’s never taken a night off, preferring to oversee every dish that bears the Thornton’s name. His is the discipline, knowledge, experience, and passion that have won Thornton’s its first Michelin star — and the hope for more.
 

‚“…a shining example of new chef-owned ventures, the best I´ve tasted this year…maybe even perfect‚” is how Lenadams Dorris described Rosemary´s Restaurant in the Las Vegas Weekly in August 1999, the year the restaurant opened and the year it was featured on Taste of Vegas as the new top-rated neighborhood restaurant.

And it was no big surprise.

Wendy Jordan and Michael Jordan are both extraordinary chefs; teamed in their restaurant, they are unstoppable. Both came through celebrated kitchens in New Orleans, a city known for its outstanding chefs and restaurants. Wendy worked under celebrated chef Susan Spicer, a James Beard honoree, and participated in a special dinner at The James Beard House in New York when she was Susan Spicer´s assistant. She also worked with the late John Neal in his restaurant Peristyle in New Orleans, and took over in the kitchen when he passed away. Michael Jordan was first featured on Great Chefs when he worked at Emeril Lagasse´s NOLA restaurant in the New Orleans French Quarter, then served as Executive Chef of Emeril´s New Orleans Fish House at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

With the Jordans combining their illustrious kitchen pedigrees for their own restaurant, the result is like fine cooking: even more than the ingredients would suggest.

Fine cooking is fine art, but is also a fine science. Linking Il Luogo di Aimo e Nadia (Aimo and Nadia´s Place) to Paolo Ferrari´s Centro Studi Assenza, where Ferrari has set his cultural and scientific project concerning the properties of reality, Moroni expresses his interest in the very nature of cooking itself.

In 1962 Aimo Moroni and his wife Nadia opened a restaurant in Milan, bringing their Tuscan culinary roots to the table. Although the restaurant was always popular, Moroni was never content to let his work remain the same. Drawing on culinary traditions and ingredients from other regions of Italy, he expanded his definition of Italian cuisine. In 1987 the couple´s daughter, Stephania, joined them, creating initiatives that brought their culinary message and style to everyone´s attention. Among the events she created was a day of Italian cooking in Kyoto, Japan, and again in New York City.

Changing the name from Ristorante to Il Luogo, the Moronis have now linked their philosophy of fine Italian cuisine to Ferrari´s ongoing study of varying media ‚Äî photography, video, music, poetry, theater, science ‚Äî expressing his philosophic themes. All this, and it tastes wonderful, too!