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Irish Examiner
17-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Examiner
Seafood Made Simple: These home baked beans go well with any piece of fish
Netflix series Chef's Table is back with a new season. This time around, the focus is honouring four 'Legends'. There's Alice Waters, who pioneered the farm-to-table movement in America. Her restaurant, Chez Panisse, in Berkeley, California opened in 1971 and is still going today. Then there's Thomas Keller, chef owner of the famous The French Laundry in Napa Valley, where he has held three Michelin stars for 18 years. The king of fine dining in America, he has another three Michelin-star restaurant, Per Se, in New York city. José Andrés, born in Spain, has a whopping 40 restaurants in America. In 2010, he founded the non-profit organisation Central Food Kitchen, providing meals across the world in response to humanitarian, climate and community crises. He's been included twice in Time magazine's most influential people. I was delighted to see Jamie Oliver included in this series. Oftentimes, he doesn't get the respect I feel he deserves within the industry. He's the chef on this list that's influenced me the most. So much so, that I'm not sure what I'd be doing now if his TV shows like Naked Chef hadn't sparked my interest in food all those years ago. His episode charts his rise to fame at 24, how he made cooking cool and uncomplicated, without the use of technical language, authored 35 books with dyslexia, his hugely impactful work navigating the reform of school dinners in the UK and his contribution to the sugar tax legislation. This weekend's recipe, gurnard with home baked beans, is all about that kind of simplicity. These beans would work as a side dish with any piece of fish, so use whatever is available to you. They are great with chunky fillets of hake and pollock. Gurnard is a fabulous fish. Lesser known and underutilised it's native to our waters. Gurnard with Home Baked Beans recipe by:Aishling Moore These beans would work as a side dish with any piece of fish, so use whatever is available to you. Servings 4 Preparation Time 15 mins Cooking Time 2 hours 10 mins Total Time 2 hours 25 mins Course Main Ingredients For the baked beans 250g dried cannellini beans (or 2 x 235g of cannellini beans drained) 2 tbsp olive oil 1 small bulb garlic 2 sprigs rosemary For the tomato sauce 3 tbsp golden rapeseed oil 3 cloves garlic, minced 2 tsp smoked paprika 1 pinch cayenne pepper 1 tsp dried oregano 300ml passata 1 tbsp honey 25g butter Salt Black pepper For the gurnard 4 x large fillets of gurnard (or 8 small) 2 tbsp golden rapeseed oil Fine sea salt 1 lemon Method Soak the beans overnight (or at least 10 hours before you plan on cooking) in 1 litre of boiling water in a large bowl. Strain the soaked beans and rinse well under cool running water in a colander. Grease a large pot or Dutch oven with the olive oil and place the rinsed beans, garlic bulb, herbs and bay leaf inside. Top up with 1.1 litres of boiling water and season generously with sea salt and place a tight- fitting lid on. Bake in a 175°C preheated oven for 1 hour 45 minutes. Check after one hour, as cooking time can differ depending on the beans. Remove from the oven, discard the stalks of rosemary and garlic. To make the sauce, heat a medium heavy-based pot on medium heat. Add the garlic and cook in the rapeseed oil for 2 minutes until golden. Add the smoked paprika, cayenne and oregano and cook for a further minute before adding the passata. Add the honey, season with salt and black pepper and reduce the heat to medium-low. Cook for 8-10 minutes to reduce the sauce. Add the drained beans and warm through. Finish with butter and taste to correct seasoning. Keep warm while cooking the gurnard. For the fish: Preheat oven to 175°C. Grease a large baking tray with rapeseed oil. Place the fillets of gurnard on the greased tray and brush each fillet generously with rapeseed oil. Season with fine sea salt and bake in the preheated oven for 10-12 minutes until the fish is cooked through and flakes when gently pressed. Finish with lemon juice and serve. Fish tales Gurnard is one of the trickier species to fillet, so I'd recommend relying on your local fishmonger to tackle this fish. You'll find bones running down the centre of the fillet of gurnard. I recommend asking your fishmonger to remove these also. Make sure you use a baking tray large enough to have space between the fillets of fish to allow the heat to circulate evenly. If you're going to the trouble of soaking and baking the beans in the oven, you'll have some leftovers. Add to salads, soups and stews or make a cannellini bean hummus. Refrigerate leftovers for up to three days. These beans are also great for breakfast. Read More Seafood Made Simple: My Welsh Rarebit blends fish with cheese for an oceanic oomph
Telegraph
28-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Chef's Table: Legends, review: before Jamie Oliver, cooking was for losers
Television is laden with food. From drama to entertainment factual, from The Bear to Boiling Point to Bake-Off to MasterChef, chow is cool. Ten years of Netflix's Chef's Table, which casts chefs as rock stars and restaurants as their much-hyped backing bands, attests to a complete reassessment of what food means. There was a queue 200-long for a pop-up selling baked potatoes in Soho last week. This means something (although it may just be that the spud fans have never heard of the Emperor's New Clothes). For its 10th anniversary, Chef's Table has re-emerged as Chef's Table: Legends (Netflix), granting an hour each to Jamie Oliver, José Andrés, Thomas Keller and Alice Waters. Of these, British viewers will most likely have heard only of Oliver, unless the names (and prices) of American restaurants The French Laundry, Chez Panisse and minibar happen to be palatable. But while Legends may appear to be just hagiography – and there is indeed a great deal of kissing the ring – over the course of the series it does make a compelling case that what these four chefs have done is more than just amusing bouches. Oliver's societal influence is the most obvious – it's why he gets people's backs up even as he's selling millions of books. With the calm and ease of hindsight, Chef's Table makes a strong argument for how he has changed British cuisine. It's not that complex a history – before Oliver, the British were not great chefs, cooking was for losers and no self-respecting young Oasis fan would be seen dead at a fishmonger's. After Oliver, cooking was cool and something boys did to get girls. He changed TV cookery, and cookery, and eating. The films about Andres, Keller and Waters are if anything even more beautiful to look at (side issue, but food photography in 2025 is so good it is practically Pavlovian) but, as with the Oliver film, they also tease out how something as high-end as fine dining trickles down into mainstream culture. Andres, for example introduced the small plates phenomenon to American cuisine (for which this diner thinks he should be par-boiled, though opinions may differ). Waters, with Chez Panisse, championed the farm-to-table movement, which has ultimately led to people thinking a little bit more about where their food has come from and why that might matter. And Keller has done his best to de-poncify fine dining, while still maintaining two three-Michelin-starred restaurants for more than a decade. Are they all democratisers, as Chef's Table maintains? Well millions of us are waiting for the next series of The Bear, which is all about fine dining and food and standards and caring (and indeed, featured one Thomas Keller in a father figure role last season). As this series shows, you don't have to have eaten their food to understand why these people deserve some veneration. Chances are that without The Naked Chef sliding down the bannisters like a prune, very few people in the UK would be watching The Bear or paying any interest to a Netflix documentary series called Chef's Table.
USA Today
20-04-2025
- Entertainment
- USA Today
Nelly Korda's Chevron champions dinner menu includes nod to her Czech roots
Nelly Korda's Chevron champions dinner menu includes nod to her Czech roots Before Nelly Korda steps foot on property to begin her title defense at the Chevron Championship, she had something important to plan – Monday's dinner. While the Chevron's champions dinner tradition isn't as well-known as the Masters, the chef who curates the menu each year is world-renowned. Thomas Keller, owner of The French Laundry and once named the Best Chef in America, is again at the helm of the annual affair. Some past champions make their way to the dinner via helicopter from the driving at The Club at Carlton Woods. Others arrive in a Rolls-Royce. What is on Nelly Korda's Chevron Championship champions dinner menu? Korda's 2025 dinner begins with Regiis Ova Hybrid Caviar and Big Eye Tuna Tartare followed by cream of mushroom soup. The main dish, herb roasted filet of American Wagyu Beef from Snake River Farms served with a goulash sauce, will be accompanied by a Greek deli salad, asparagus, garnet yam gratin and glazed mushrooms. And for dessert, a nod to her roots, players will be served traditional Czech fruit dumplings with toasted poppy seed and a Tahitian vanilla anglaise. 'Whenever I'm back in Czech I'm usually there around my birthday,' said Korda from the LA Championship. 'If I do celebrate, that's my birthday cake. 'And I just love fruit filled dumplings. That's pretty much what it is. Something that I grew up eating and I just really, really love it. My grandma makes it so probably my grandma. That's the best one I've ever had.' The LPGA's first majors of the season kicks off April 24 at the Jack Nicklaus Signature Course.
Boston Globe
08-04-2025
- Business
- Boston Globe
Love to eat in Portsmouth, N.H.? Thank Jay McSharry.
Most restaurateurs tell me how hard it is to open a restaurant. You have so many of them. How did you do it? Advertisement I keep it simple. I partner predominantly with chefs, and then I try to run the front of house with some great managers. These chefs have a stake in the game, and they've worked their way up. They're a known entity to me for the most part — their work ethic, their commitment to the job. How do you decide who to work with? I'd like it to be a passion project, a chef being passionate about the cuisine they're going to engage with. I know that, when I started Jumpin' Jay's Fish Cafe, it was a passion project for me. It was years in the making, and a lot of different influences. The same energy I have, I want to see in my chefs. Advertisement For instance, Moxy is Matt Louis, who worked at The French Laundry for five years. He went out and traveled. He staged at Noma. He staged at Eleven Madison Park. Then he went out and created his concept for New England tapas, which is based on taking the Spanish influence of tapas and applying it to the region of New England. The pitmaster and chef at Ore Nell's, Will [Myska], his mom is Grandma Ore Nell from Houston, Sugar Land, and those are her recipes. It's all ideally based on passion. Why restaurants, and why New Hampshire? I grew up in Westport and Wilton, Conn. Westport has a great restaurant scene. My whole family worked at Viva Zapata in Westport. I'm the youngest of seven, and I loved restaurants. My sister owned a restaurant in South Norwalk called Jasper's Oyster Bar, and I worked there when I was young, and I always thought that someday I wanted to open a restaurant. As the youngest of seven, we went out maybe once a year, to a steakhouse with a salad bar. So my food passion, I think, came from working in my sister's restaurant. I just love the energy of a restaurant, and then the food passion sort of just unfolds. I started off dishing and busing, and then I managed a restaurant in college. I went to UNH, and I loved it. I graduated in '90. It's really about the energy of a restaurant, the sense of hospitality, the sense of community, being a community partner. There's a sense of teamwork, that you're putting on a show every night, and I love that. Even the smallest link in a restaurant is critical. Being a buser at 14 or 15, you appreciate it immediately. If I was working hard, I was recognized, and I think I got a lot of gratification from that and ran with it. Advertisement What do you think the Portsmouth food scene does well, and what do you wish it did better? There's a great restaurant community here that supports each other; during Restaurant Week, we support each other. I'll go to a bunch of other restaurants, try their menus. We do our own form of Taste of the Nation now, in June, and people need staff. We swap staff to get people through. A high tide raises all boats. I love that about Portsmouth, and I love that everybody's out at everybody's restaurants. For a city of 22,000, we pack a lot of punch. What do you wish were better? We need a Spanish tapas bar in town; that would be one thing I'd love to see. Something like Toro or Barcelona. Something small, something classic. What's your favorite below-the-radar place that people might not know about? Where might we find you? I love [Himalayan restaurant] Durbar Square. I think their food is clean with lots of flavor, lots of vegetables. For quick bites. Nikki's Banh Mi is great. I love Street, but that's my restaurant, so I don't want to be plugging my own restaurants. I like the tuna fish sandwich or the Niçoise salad at La Maison Navarre; they're outstanding. We just went to France to ski over the February break, and my kids love crepes, crepes, crepes. We go there, and they're great owner-operators. What's your restaurant pet peeve? I don't like all the added fees that people are starting to do. If you need to charge more, just charge more, and pay your staff accordingly. And credit card fees bother me: It's the cost of doing business. Advertisement As far as service is concerned, it's the classics: just being greeted within the first minute you're there and your server coming over to the table within the first minute you're there. Those are classic things. My peeve this weekend was that we had three desserts to share for six of us, and they didn't give us individual plates. That was at one of my restaurants. They'll be hearing about it today — in a nice way. I didn't bring it up at the time. Give everybody plates. It doesn't cost you anything. What's your biggest piece of restaurant advice, and what has been your biggest mistake? My biggest advice is: You've got to work in the business. You've got to be in the business. I talk to a lot of people who want to open restaurants. You've got to work it, know it, feel it. Make sure you want to do it before you commit. Do it for somebody else. Do it on somebody else's nickel. And then, if you really love it, take the plunge. I had somebody call me who wanted to open a coffee shop or buy a coffee shop from somebody. But before you do that, you should go out and work in a coffee shop. I know you're going to be the owner, but you should have the passion and enjoy making cappuccinos. I think sometimes people look in and think it's so exciting, or they're watching one of these shows: It's not 'Iron Chef.' There's some repetition. There's a lot of: Wake up; we're doing it again. You have to have a love for the routine as well. Advertisement Biggest mistake? Has there been a restaurant that failed or a restaurant that didn't work? Oh, totally. I'm early on in the kid thing, but restaurants are like kids. You want them to be one way, but they become their own person, and so do restaurants. At one restaurant I had, the menu didn't turn out at all like I was hoping or expecting. The concept changed to more of a high-end Italian restaurant rather than just a casual Italian restaurant, and that wasn't where I wanted to go. But sometimes these restaurants have a mind of their own. I don't put my imprint too far on it. I might say, 'Hey, this isn't working,' three to five years in, rather than keep trying to fix it. How do you know if something isn't working? It's all in the numbers. Customers can tell you all the time: 'I loved [your former pizzeria] Luigi's,' but not enough people loved it. It was a good pizza place, but it's all in the numbers. Even labor, which is a lot tougher these days, post-COVID, but I think you just have to work on it that much harder. You seem to have a good attitude about it, though. When you get up to bat, you know you're not always going to hit a home run. You know you're lucky just to get on base. Since you're a Seacoast guy, let's talk about lobster rolls: mayonnaise or butter? That's a good question. I would go butter. Advertisement Lakes or beaches? My wife's a lake person, Lake Sunapee. That's where we go. And our local beach is great — Pirate's Cove [in Rye]. Last but not least: What food do you absolutely hate? There's one vegetable I don't like: asparagus. I love every other vegetable, anything else. But for some reason, I don't love asparagus. Interview was edited and condensed. Kara Baskin can be reached at
Yahoo
13-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Perspective: ‘Own it, move on, grow up' — is Gavin Newsom an opportunist or a new breed of Democrat?
This article was first published in the Right to the Point newsletter. Sign up to receive the newsletter in your inbox each week. Joe Rogan may not have single-handedly put President Donald Trump in the White House again, but there's no question that the long-form podcast, as a new form of media, played a role in what's happening in Washington right now. From Megyn Kelly's elevation of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on her show, to the appearance of Trump, J.D. Vance and, most recently, Elon Musk on the Rogan podcast, Republicans have made good use of the format to connect with everyday Americans. A little late to the party is California Gov. Gavin Newsom. Newsom, whose name is rarely mentioned in the press without the antecedent 'potential presidential candidate,' launched a podcast last week called 'This is Gavin Newsom,' and he immediately made headlines for telling Charlie Kirk that he is troubled by the issue of fairness in the matter of transgender athletes competing on women's sports teams. As he likely knew he would. Newsom has been in politics for more than two decades, having been elected mayor of San Francisco in 2003. He doesn't stumble into soundbites, although he does sometimes trip over a glaringly obvious faux pas, such as his visit to the upscale restaurant The French Laundry during the first year of the pandemic. 'Should have gone to Applebee's,' he told Kirk on the podcast, saying that he had resolved to 'own it, move on and grow up.' That is the sort of mantra that can benefit anyone, particularly the despondent of the Democratic Party right now, and yet Newsom's admissions of guilt, for himself and for his party, haven't played too well with Democrats this week. (Watch, for example, how the women of 'The View' talk show received his comments about transgender athletes in women's sports.) Nor is it entirely clear what Newsom is up to by first featuring Kirk, and then conservative podcaster Michael Savage, who started his broadcasting career in California by describing himself as 'to the right of Rush (Limbaugh) and to the left of God' and recently launched a cable television show on Newsmax. The latest episode features political strategist and podcaster Steve Bannon in what The New York Times described as a good-natured and fast-paced conversation. Does Newsom's base — if it exists outside of California (and that's yet to be seen) — really want to listen to conservatives run roughshod over him, as Kirk did in the first episode? That seems unlikely. But if Newsom is instead trying to expand his support and present himself as a new breed of commonsensical Democrat who can appeal to moderate Republicans and independents, the first show was a fail on that account too. That's because in 'This is Gavin Newsom,' the governor presented himself as no ally of American Christians, peppering his speech with many casual references to Jesus, and not in the reverential sense, so much that Kirk had to ask him several times not to take the name of his Lord in vain. Even after Kirk first asked Newsom to stop, the governor kept it up, making it clear that this is just how he talks. It's bewildering that anyone on his staff thought this was a good look for anyone hoping to make it into national politics. Had I been an aide in the room, I would have been jumping up and down waving my arms, telling him to stop. But Newsom kept it up, to the very end of the podcast and vowed not to edit anything out. Newsom has a long record of public service and a boyish, telegenic presence that plays well on TV. But his liabilities on the national stage aren't limited to his ties to the wine industry at a time when Americans are drinking less. Trump, of course, has his own problem with profanity, which voters have chosen to overlook. But Newsom's choice of words will be harder for Christians to brush aside and, for now at least, serve as additional evidence that what works in California won't necessarily fly in 'flyover country.' Trump recently sent out a news release touting '50 wins in 50 days' of his presidency. Shockingly omitted was the recent birth of three baby bald eagles in California's San Bernardino National Forest, which Trump could have cheekily claimed as a MAGA win. After all, the parents of the chicks, who became famous via a live stream of their nest, have tried for a couple of years to reproduce without success. And suddenly, after having suffered eggs that were eaten by predators and others that just didn't hatch, Jackie and Shadow have not one, but three healthy babies — all the more remarkable since only about half of bald eagle eggs hatch, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. You'd think that Trump would be all over this win, given how important the eagle is as a national symbol. Even JD Vance, in his first speech as vice president, said, 'I want more babies in America.' And voila: Jackie and Shadow, despite living in a blue state, promptly delivered. But maybe it's too soon to celebrate. According to an article in Popular Science, 30% of chicks don't survive their first year, and even though it's March, winter weather still presents a challenge for the family. 'Eaglets are born without their waterproof feathers and all of the down layers that keep warm air in and cold air out. The crucial waterproof feathers usually come in about six weeks after hatching and snowstorms are still forecast for the area,' Laura Baisas wrote for the magazine. Indeed, it's snowing on the nest even as I write. Predators would also like to make a meal of the eaglets, which can make watching the webcam unnerving for those of us who don't like to see nature red in tooth and claw, in the words of Tennyson. But also, it's kind of mesmerizing, especially when dad brings back a fish for his family. Recall that Benjamin Franklin once grumbled that bald eagles are birds of 'bad moral character' because they are 'too lazy' to fish for themselves. But within a span of two days, Shadow delivered five fish and some sort of water fowl to his family, according to the Facebook page of Friends of Big Bear Valley, the nonprofit that runs a YouTube channel with the livestreams of the nest. In other eagle news, the Philadelphia Eagles have accepted an invitation to visit the White House after weeks of reporting that they had spurned Trump's invitation. In the Department of Headlines That Probably Didn't Land the Way the Author Intended, I give you a Washington Post op-ed arguing for more federal spending on scientific research: 'Science needs more shrimp on treadmills' Princeton University's Robert P. George is skeptical of Gavin Newsom's 'fairness,' writing that 'Americans mustn't be fooled by politicians who, for transparently self-interested reasons, attempt to revise their party's history, hide their own previously publicly state beliefs, and rebrand themselves as supporters of common sense — and common decency.' 'Perspective: Americans should not be fooled by politicians who conveniently change their tunes' Valerie Hudson goes at the issue from another angle: The Democrats who refused to budge despite being at odds with their constituents. 'It is almost impossible to find any other subject on which almost 80% of Americans all agree in 2025; you just don't see an 80/20 split on social issues today. Americans are strongly united on this issue.' 'Democrats will long pay the price for their position on women's sports' On the fifth anniversary of the COVID-19 lockdowns, Sarah Jane Weaver writes about the human connection we so desperately craved in 2020 and how we seem to have lost sight of its importance: 'People live alone in nearly 30% of U.S. households, according to 2022 census data. This is a record high, compared with 8% of solo households in the 1940 census and 18% in 1970. (Gene) Hackman's death has prompted me to ask myself some hard questions: Do I know my neighbors? Do I check on my family members who live alone? Are there people in my realm who long for connection?' 'COVID-19 taught us valuable lessons about connection. How did we forget them?' I talked to Franklin Graham, the CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Society, for an article on the rise in public profanity. Graham (no relation, although we both have southern accents) told me that he never once heard his father utter a curse word or even use slang. Here's a quote from him that didn't make it into the article: 'If somebody was telling a untoward joke, my father would never laugh. Everybody in the room might laugh, but he wouldn't laugh. It made everyone feel very uncomfortable. That's how he did it. He just didn't participate.' Silence can say a lot, that's for sure. 'It's not your imagination. Public profanity is worsening. How can we reverse the trend?' The body positive movement is ruing that 'thin is in again,' thanks to Ozempic and, well, apparently, Trump. The author Kate Manne wrote on Substack, 'Thin is more in than ever now for another reason too: the rise of authoritarianism, and the way women can signal their deference to the powers-that-be by conforming to a certain ideal of conventional femininity.' But do a Google search of 'thin is in again' and you will find articles about this 'new trend' in 2022, 2023 and 2024. Maybe maintaining a proportionate weight is just a good idea, no matter who is president? Just a radical closing thought from someone who has always struggled with her weight. Send your weight-loss tips, amusing headlines and ideas to me at Jgraham@ Thank you for being part of the Right to the Point community.
