Latest news with #CurtisStone
Los Angeles Times
14 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
LA Times Today: On the Curtis Stone farm at the heart of his growing lifestyle empire
You may know chef Curtis Stone from his days on the 'Biggest Loser' or his restaurants in L.A. Now, Stone is expanding his culinary empire with four Stones Farm in Agoura Hills.
7NEWS
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- 7NEWS
Curtis Stone shares his recipe for the perfect pulled pork sandwich with ‘fireworks' coleslaw and apple-bourbon sauce
Curtis Stone is an internationally loved chef, Emmy-nominated TV host, and New York Times bestselling author. His mum and grandma inspired his food journey. Today, Curtis is cooking pulled-pork sandwiches with 'fireworks' coleslaw and apple-bourbon sauce. Slow-Cooked Pulled Pork Sandwiches with 'Fireworks' Coleslaw If I was forced to choose one sandwich above all others, pulled pork would win the contest. The classic version of this sandwich uses a slow-cooked barbecued pork shoulder. Mine is braised in the oven so it's easier to make, and you can enjoy it any time of year. The result is a perfect combination of juicy, tender pork, soft bun, tangy sauce, and crunchy slaw. There is no polite way to eat a pulled pork sandwich, so grab a napkin and enjoy every messy mouthful. Serves: 6 Prep Time: 15 minutes Cook Time: 3 hours, plus 30 minutes cooling time Make-Ahead: The pork can be made up to 1 day ahead, cooled, covered, and refrigerated; reheat over medium heat before serving. Ingredients Pulled Pork: 2kg boneless pork shoulder roast, skin removed in one piece 2 tablespoons olive or canola oil 2 medium red onions, quartered 2 large carrots, cut into 1-inch chunks 3 celery ribs, cut into 1-inch chunks 1 head garlic, halved horizontally 1 cup dry red wine 4 cups reduced-sodium chicken broth 1/2 cup cider vinegar 1 navel orange, quartered 4 large sprigs of fresh thyme 1 bay leaf 1/2 teaspoon black peppercorns About 3 cups Apple-Bourbon Barbecue Sauce (recipe follows), warm Sandwiches 6 kaiser rolls with poppy seeds, split 'Fireworks' Coleslaw (recipe follows) Method To cook the pork: Preheat the oven to 140°C. Season the pork with salt and pepper. Heat a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add the oil, then add the pork and cook, turning occasionally, for about 15 minutes, or until golden brown all over. Transfer to a rimmed baking sheet and pour off all but 2 tablespoons of fat from the Dutch oven. Add the onions, carrots, celery, and garlic to the pot and cook, stirring occasionally, for about 5 minutes, or until the onions are golden brown. Return the pork to the pot, add the wine, and bring to a simmer, scraping up the browned bits on the bottom of the pot with a wooden spoon. Boil for about 3 minutes, or until the wine is reduced by half. Add the broth, vinegar, orange, thyme, bay leaf, and peppercorns and bring to a simmer. Cover the pot and transfer to the oven. Bake for about 2 1/2 to 3 hours, or until the pork is fork-tender. Remove from the oven, uncover, and let cool for 30 minutes. Transfer the pork to a baking dish. Using a fork and knife, pull the meat apart into large chunks. Moisten the shredded pork with some of the braising liquid and then toss with some of the warm barbecue sauce. Cover with foil to keep warm. Meanwhile, to cook the crackling: Turn the oven up to 250°C (230°C fan-forced). Using a sharp knife or box cutter, score the reserved skin. Rub 1 teaspoon sea salt flakes into the scored skin. Lay the pork skin on a cooling rack set on a large heavy rimmed baking tray and transfer to the oven. Cook the pork skin for about 25 minutes, or until golden brown and crisp. Set aside to cool slightly before breaking into pieces. For the rolls and to serve: Heat a grill pan or griddle over medium-high heat. Grill the rolls, cut side down, until lightly toasted. Pile the pork on the bottoms of the buns. Top with more of the sauce, the coleslaw, and the tops of the buns. Serve hot. Apple-Bourbon Barbecue Sauce I am very proud of this barbecue sauce, with its spicy, hot, sweet, sour, and salty notes. The flavors blend together into a delicious slather for grilled spareribs, chicken, pork chops or pulled pork sandwiches. This makes a big batch, but it keeps well. Makes about 5 1/2 cups. Prep Time: 15 minutes Cook Time: 1 hour and 15 minutes Make-Ahead: The sauce can be made up to 2 weeks ahead, cooled, covered, and refrigerated; reheat before using. Ingredients 30g unsalted butter 1 yellow onion, chopped 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped 1 teaspoon sweet paprika 1/2 teaspoon dry mustard 1/2 cup bourbon whiskey 1 cup cider vinegar 2 cups reduced-sodium chicken broth 2 cups ketchup 3/4 cup packed light brown sugar 2 canned chipotle chillis in adobo sauce, finely chopped 1 1/2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce 1 teaspoon kosher salt 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper 2 Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored, and finely chopped 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice Method 1. In a large saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat. Add the onions and cook, stirring often, for about 5 minutes, or until tender. Stir in the garlic and cook for about 3 minutes, or until the garlic is tender. 2. Stir in the paprika and dry mustard, then stir in the bourbon and vinegar, bring just to a simmer, and simmer for 3 minutes. Stir in the broth, ketchup, brown sugar, chillis and their sauce, Worcestershire sauce, salt, and pepper. Add the apples and lemon juice and bring the sauce to a simmer over high heat. Re- duce the heat to medium-low and simmer uncovered, stirring often to prevent scorching, for about 1 hour, or until the sauce reduces and thickens slightly. Remove from the heat. 'Fireworks' Coleslaw While this slaw was created for the pulled pork sandwiches, it can be put into service any time you need a great-looking salad to dress up the table. It got its name from the colorful array of vegetables in the bowl, but it also bursts with flavor. Serves: 6 Prep Time: 20 minutes, plus at least 10 minutes standing time Ingredients Poppy Seed Dressing: 1 1/2 cups mayonnaise 1/4 cup finely chopped shallots 2 tablespoons cider vinegar 1 tablespoon poppy seeds Finely grated zest of 1 lemon 2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice 2 teaspoons kosher salt Slaw: 1/2 head napa cabbage, cored, cut in half, and then cut crosswise into 3mm-wide slices (about 3 cups) 1/2 head red cabbage, cored, quartered, and then cut crosswise into 3mm-wide slices (about 2 cups) 1 large carrot, cut into thin matchstick-size strips 3 spring onions (white and green parts), thinly sliced 1/2 cup lightly packed fresh coriander Method 1. To make the dressing: In a medium bowl, whisk all the ingredients to combine. Cover and refrigerate for at least 10 minutes to develop the flavors. 2. Using your hands, gently toss the napa cabbage, red cabbage, carrots, scallions, and cilantro in a large bowl to combine. Toss the coleslaw with enough dressing to coat (reserve any remaining dressing for another use). Serve immediately.
Los Angeles Times
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Inside the Curtis Stone farmhouse at the center of the chef's growing lifestyle empire
If you want to find Curtis Stone, a winding, twisting drive through the Santa Monica Mountains should get you there. The Melbourne-born celebrity chef and TV personality behind Gwen in Hollywood and the Pie Room by Curtis Stone (in the Beverly Hills space that was his now-shuttered fine dining restaurant Maude) might be filming a cooking demo or tending to his vineyard on his 55-acre farm in Agoura Hills. It's the first farm that Stone has ever owned, and a purchase that's offered new paths for his companies: his own wine label, a production studio he hopes to open to other chefs, an events space and, one day, a vegetable garden. 'I was constantly going, 'We need something bigger,'' he says. 'So when I got this, I'm like, 'That's it. About 60 acres. It can't get bigger.'' Pass through a wrought-iron gate, then dip through a small creek and the white, 1958 ranch-style farmhouse comes fully into view. Beyond it are acres of grapevines on a soft slope, lightly worn paths just visible up the curving hillsides. The lawns are dotted with large oak and sycamore trees, some of them 400 years old. As the grand limbs fall, wood is chopped and repurposed for live-fire cooking at Gwen and for the grill at the farm, which sits at the east end of the yard and features a smoker, a brick oven and an adjustable, Santa Maria-style grill. Stone and his family live somewhat nearby, in Brentwood, and all of them help to work the property. One of Stone's sons also uses the grounds as a performance space: Each year they host 'Kidchella,' where 150 guests file in to watch children's bands play while Stone cooks up barbecue. On a late-April day, Gareth Evans, one of Stone's longtime staff and a former executive chef of Maude, is prepping ingredients and pulling props for Stone's impending shoot for the Home Shopping Network. These happen monthly, a grueling filming marathon that begins at midnight and requires two hours of nonstop cooking demos and interviews, all broadcast live to promote Stone's line of kitchenware sold through HSN. They shoot in two-hour blocks, rotating between the farmhouse's various cooking stations, whose rolling islands are interchangeable. When the cameras cut away for a 30-second break, Stone and his team will reset or jump to another station, leaping into the next demo. A smaller kitchen — a bit more country-home in design — serves as another shooting locale as well as a prep kitchen. Sometimes these shoots extend to the outdoor patio, draped in hanging strings of wisteria, where its own grill awaits. Inside a living-room-like staging area with a fireplace and a piano, Stone records podcasts and conducts interviews. The farmhouse now serves as home base for his growing empire. Stone flies to Australia roughly every eight weeks, but otherwise he's typically found in L.A. It was meeting his wife, Lindsay Price, that put down his roots here. 'I fell in love with this city for all the usual reasons: great weather, good surf and a lot of delicious food,' he says. 'But I decided to stick around when I met Lindsay.' According to property records, Stone purchased the farm for $4.7 million in 2021. He says it was a pandemic-spurred necessity. Prior to COVID-19, he and his team shot cooking demos in the HSN studios; when lockdown began and in-person production slowed to a halt, he began shooting these spots in his own test kitchen, located above Gwen, and quickly realized he needed more space. Stone employs a small army, with an increasing number of operations running through the farm. He still maintains a test kitchen and offices above Gwen but is weighing relocating them to his sprawling new Mid-Wilshire bakery, a 6,000-square-foot facility that includes a viennoiserie for laminating croissant dough with butter, a chocolate room, a double-decker bread oven, a proofing station and multiple rotating ovens. Stone's business realm is vast, with some branches run in partnership with his brother, Luke, and longtime friend Chris Sheldon. For every cooking product Stone develops, he and his team write five to 20 recipes. For those strenuous midnight HSN shoots, he'll staff 50 people on-site. His catering company operates here and in Australia, and feeds as many as 30,000 guests in a day. He helms the food operations at Melbourne's Royal Botanic Gardens, maintains two restaurants in Los Angeles, an events space in Melbourne and a floating restaurant on a cruise ship. Between his restaurants, production company, catering, and product and recipe teams, he employs around 250 people, plus freelancers. He needed the space. When Stone obtained the farmhouse property, he inherited an outdoor shipping-container wine bar built just off the farmhouse. He expanded that single metal rectangle and flipped it into what he now calls Shipping Container Village, which includes a walk-in fridge, a commercial kitchen, prop storage, an upgraded wine bar, laundry and offices. And though winemaking was not a business he ever expected to enter, Stone also found himself with a vineyard when he bought the land. 'The day that we got it, the owner was like, 'All right, so here's the keys, and here's the keys for the tractor.' And I'm like, 'Tractor?'' Stone says. 'She was like, 'Now I don't know if you want to harvest this year or not, but if you want to harvest you probably have to net the vines this week, and you'll harvest in two or three weeks. Here's the number of a guy.'' He's had to learn a lot about wine production, and quickly. (He's also learned how to drive that tractor.) The result is Four Stones, a wine label named for himself, his wife and their two sons, with grapes grown entirely on the property. Previous owners planted the vines in 1997, and the roughly 12 acres of vineyard have produced Four Stones' Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, a Bordeaux blend, Cabernet Sauvignon, Moscato and a 50-50 blend of Syrah and Cabernet, with the grapes processed nearby in Westlake where they're pressed, transferred to stainless steel vats and aged in oak barrels. It puts out 230 cases of wine, give or take, which is not large by any commercial standard, but large enough to sell at his restaurants. Triunfo Canyon's vacillating clime offers warm, direct sun on these south-facing-slope vines by day and cool breezes trapped from the coast by night. The Santa Monica Mountains are dotted with wineries, including Cielo Farms, Colcanyon Estate Wines and Rosenthal. This spring, Stone's vines are blossoming back to life from a dormant winter, sprouting fruit that will ripen in the summer sun and be ready for an early fall harvest. His sons help train the grapevines up onto wires, and when the time comes, pluck the grapes into buckets, usually eating the fruit as they go. 'If you want your name on the bottle,' Stone says, 'you gotta work.' But the new venture hasn't been without disaster. Last year the vines bore nothing — the mountains' deer and white flies beat the family to the fruit. 'The vineyard is something that you spend money on all year, because you water it, there's maintenance, and then you have to prune, and then you have to harvest,' Stone says. 'If you lose your crop, all gone, that's $150,000.' Someday the chef would like to see sheep grazing between the vines, as they often do in Australia, to help control weed growth. He'd also like to add a menagerie of animals to the farm and plant a large vegetable garden. Local grower Logan Williams of Silver Lake's Logan's Gardens consulted on what might suit the land, and Stone is currently plotting where to begin. There is near-constant maintenance on his 55 acres. On this April day, a team is not only clearing the brush from the vines but also, near his shed, cleaning what was once a pond, its future use to be determined. In the weeks prior, another tree fell, which will need to be processed for wood if possible. From a vista near the property line, Stone surveys the vines and the rolling Santa Monica Mountains (a view that also includes a peek at 'The Bachelor' mansion). 'You sort of focus on one thing and you're like, 'Let's get that under control,' and then you turn around and you're like, 'Man, this other thing's totally out of control,'' he says. 'You know, it's a full-time job, but I'm lucky. Look how beautiful this is.' It's a perfect setting for an outdoor wedding. In fact, he's hosted a few on the property. But rather than using the farm as a dedicated events space, Stone prefers to use it for one-off events such as this month's Great Australian Bite, held in collaboration with the Los Angeles Times. The May 31 event will feature Stone's cooking in an ode to his homeland, and feature guest chef and Staġuni restaurateur Clare Falzon. Across Stone's farm, they'll be referencing the nation's cuisine through imported ingredients like Skull Island prawns and native mountain pepper, Margra lamb shanks with dates and pistachios, and grilled Wagyu strip loin from Blackmore, one of Australia's forerunners in the breed. Perhaps someday, Stone says, he'll add an Airstream trailer or other accommodations to the grounds. But for now his focus is mostly on what occurs inside that 1,800-square-foot white farmhouse. He hopes to create a one-stop shop for cooks and culinary creators, photographers and food stylists who are not only looking for a kitchen set to shoot videos and cooking demos as he does, but also a team of producers to help produce and polish the content for social media or other uses. 'The truth is, we're cooks — we're not social-media geniuses,' he says. 'Some people do it way better than others, and some people outsource it to agencies, but it's become an important part of business in general, especially for restaurants.' After years in the kitchens of the Savoy and under the tutelage of legendary chef Marco Pierre White, Stone launched his TV career with 'Take Home Chef' and went on to appear on 'Master Chef,' 'Iron Chef,' 'Top Chef' and 'Crime Scene Kitchen.' One of his latest programs, PBS' 'Field Trip With Curtis Stone,' is currently nominated for a James Beard Foundation Award. He hopes to help other chefs hone on-camera skills as he's done over the years. And afterward, maybe they'll take a bottle of wine or a few logs of fallen oak to remember their time on the farm. The Great Australian Bite with Curtis Stone and Clare Falzon takes place on Four Stones Farm in Agoura Hills on May 31. Entry includes a multicourse meal highlighting the bounty of Australian cuisine, as well as cocktails, wine, beer and nonalcoholic beverages. Tickets cost $289 and are on sale now.
Los Angeles Times
19-05-2025
- Business
- Los Angeles Times
Curtis Stone gives a tour of Four Stones Farm
With a vineyard, a customized barbecue station and 55 acres to plant, produce and roam, celebrity chef Curtis Stone's Agoura Hills farm is giving the Australian entrepreneur new ways to grow his culinary reach. In advance of The Los Angeles Times' 2nd annual Great Australian Bite event, to be held at Four Stones Farm on May 31, the L.A. Times toured the facilities to see just how the production studio and fledgling winery works.
