Rocco
DiSpirito: The Science
of Flavor
And What You Don't Know About Celebrity Chefs
by Lisa Snider
findingojai@aol.com
“Find
your inner chef!” encourages a voice from a stage at
the recent Santa Barbara
Arts Festival. The stage, set between the Courthouse Sunken
Gardens and Elements Restaurant, is surrounded by luxury cars
and a ravenous crowd. The voice is celebrity chef, television
personality and cookbook author Rocco DiSpirito, in town for
the Lincoln Savor the Dream tour, and he’s spending
the afternoon hosting food demonstrations.
“The palate is the most important
cooking tool,” DiSpirito tells the audience while preparing
his recipe for Shrimp Sate Sauté (see below) and doling
out samples. His books, Flavor and Rocco’s
5 Minute Flavor, detail his philosophies surrounding
the taste buds. Best known for his NBC reality television
show, The Restaurant, DiSpirito is currently on a
cross country tour with Lincoln and starring in a commercial
for their new MKX crossover SUV.
Lincolns and chefs? What’s the connection?
“Their demographic appreciates food and entertaining
and the good life and chefs are an access point to that,”
explains the 40-year-old DiSpirito.
Accustomed
to the technical aspects of being a celebrity in front of
cameras, getting out and working in front of an audience is
a welcomed change. “What’s great about it is that
you’re interacting with people and you’re teaching
them something which are the two most important things a chef
can do,” says DiSpirito. “It’s much more
personal than a TV show.”
The native New Yorker has had an affinity
for entertaining with food since childhood. “What I
fell in love with the first day working in a pizzeria at 11
years old is the interaction with the people.” The experience
stuck and at the young age of 16, DiSpirito entered the Culinary
Institute of America. After graduating, he pursued a business
degree from Boston University. DiSpirito then went on to become
a restaurateur, most notably as chef and owner of the former
Union Pacific in New York City’s Gramercy Park. In 1999
he was named Food & Wine’s Best New Chef,
which thrust him into the limelight with multiple television
appearances, a radio show and three cookbooks.
Rocco’s flavor philosophy…
In recent years, DiSpirito’s focus has been all about
flavor. Thumbing through the pages of his beautiful first
book, the James Beard award-winning Flavor, it’s
easy to grasp his concepts. “The world of ingredients
breaks downs into four basic flavors the same way the
world of colors breaks down into three basic colors.”
DiSpirito says those four basic flavors are sour, salt, sweet
and bitter and encourages home cooks to find a balance among
the tastes. Tapping into the basics was a “huge epiphany,”
which came to him when he got out of his well-stocked restaurant
kitchens, started cooking at home and quickly realized there
had to be an easier way. “For me it was cracking the
code to
flavor, discovering the algorithm.”
Wanting
to make the concept accessible to the home cook, DiSpirito
broke down his philosophy and built recipes around those four
flavors. His most recent book, Rocco’s 5 Minute
Flavor, stretches the concept even further by promising
dishes utilizing just five ingredients in five minutes for
five dollars. That’s putting the 30-minute mealers on
notice, but for DiSpirito, it’s simply “a strategic
combination of fresh food and shortcut food.” Those
shortcut foods, grocery store convenience items such as bagged
salads and pre-chopped vegetables, are combined with other
fresh ingredients to combat the everyday challenge of what
to make when you’ve got no time, little money and few
ingredients.
DiSpirito’s passion for flavor is
largely inspired by his Italian immigrant family’s roots.
“I watched my grandmother make food with all the wrong
cookware, yet her food always tasted good.” His mother,
Nicolina, a school cafeteria chef who many will remember from
his TV show, taught him the fundamentals of great Italian
cooking, always relying on her most important tool. “She
counted on her palate.” With only the slightest hint
of eye-rolling cynicism, DiSpirito admits she is still a huge
influence in his life.
Rocco dishes the misconceptions
surrounding celebrity chefs…
One major misconception about celebrity chefs, DiSpirito says,
is that they cook a lot.
“Celebrity chefs are running in many
directions and each chef has to decide how to strike a balance
between creating product and marketing product. If you’re
on the road doing demos and appearing on TV and writing cookbooks,
it means you have less and less time to cook in a restaurant,
so what people don’t know is that chefs are really managers
and administrators.”
Another misconception is that chefs are
out of shape and overweight. This writer has always said,
“Never trust a skinny chef,” but that doesn’t
apply here. “I’m the only exception!” And
that’s only because DiSpirito, sporting bulging biceps
and chiseled calves, is a tri-athlete. Knowing all too well
the unconventional lifestyle of a chef - the eating, the drinking,
the late nights - DiSpirito admits it’s tough. “Nutrition
and all the issues of health weren’t a top priority
for me as a chef.” Training for the Iron Man in 2008
is yielding new creativity in his kitchen now. “I’m
very aware of what you put in your body and how it affects
you. There is some change going on in the recipes. I think
my next book is going to have a lot of that influence manifested
in it.”
Rocco on wine and the holidays…
DiSpirito doesn’t fuss too much over wine but realizes
its importance in cooking. His advice? “Don’t
worry about the label or how much it is.” He’s
not pretentious, either, declaring, “There’s a
food that will go great with a Three-Buck Chuck!” But
he does admit to being partial to Pinot Noir, a Santa Barbara
favorite. “It’s got everything you love about
red wine, it’s lighter, it’s fruit forward, it’s
got lots of acidity and tannin and it doesn’t obliterate
food.”
With the holidays just around the corner,
DiSpirito doesn’t plan to bring anything new to the
dinner table. That’s because in the DiSpirito household,
it’s all about his family and their traditional Italian
Christmas Eve dinner, The Feast of the Seven Fishes, popularly
thought
to represent the seven sacraments. This meatless meal, a bounty
of seafood and pasta dishes, follows the age old traditional
observance of “La Vigilia Di Natale,” - the wait
for the birth of Christ. But for DiSpirito, it simply means
family and good food, “I have nothing to add, it’s
the perfect meal.”
Look for Rocco’s books and recipes
on his website www.roccodispirito.com.
Lisa Snider is an Ojai resident and
local freelance writer. Her other columns are featured on
her website, www.findingojai.com.
Shrimp Sate Sauté
From Rocco’s 5 Minute Flavor, Published
1/30/06, © Spirit Media 2004-2006. All Rights Reserved
Estimated Cost: $19.29
Serve hot!
1/4 cup corn oil
8 oz package thin rice noodles
3 slices bacon, julienned crosswise
salt and freshly ground pepper
1 1/4 pounds shrimp, peeled and deveined
4 cups, packed tightly kale, already washed and cut
2 jars Taste of Thai Peanut Satay Sauce
1/2 cup water
Place rice noodles in a large bowl and cover completely
with water. Allow to soak for 1/2 hour. Drain.
Heat oil in a large sauté pan until very hot.
Add bacon and cook until it begins to brown, stirring
frequently.
Season shrimp with salt and pepper and add to pan. After
about one minute, flip shrimp and add kale to the pan.
Stir and cover with a lid. When kale begins to wilt
add rice noodles, cover and cook until tender.
Next, add satay sauce and water and cook until sauce
comes to a simmer.
Season noodles with salt and pepper if necessary and
make sure you toss to evenly coat all of the noodles.
Yield: Serves: 4 |
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