UGUIDE WOLFGANG PUCK
Ever wish you had a hand in the kitchen during the holidays? Might we suggest Wolfgang Puck? In this very special holiday exclusive, we take you inside the mind and kitchen of the world-renowned master chef. We sat down to talk about his own favorite meals and memories of growing up in Austria; his personal family holiday menu; and tips and tricks for the holiday home chef.
UGUIDE: What are some of your favorite holidaymemories from your childhood in Austria?
PUCK: Christmas in Austria was really the main holiday of the year, mainly because my family was very poor and that was probably the only time we got presents. Our presents were always practical things, but I was a big skier, so getting new skis and new ski boots was always my favorite thing because I could show off on Christmas Day. I could ski right out of my house.
As a kid, I always dreamed of getting a store-bought sweater because my mother and grandmother would knit all of our sweaters. And at that time, store-bought was always better than homemade. Today it's the opposite. I still remember one of my very first presents. It was from a German company, Märklin, and it was a train. My mother and father must have saved for a long time for this, and it was an amazing thing.
UGUIDE: What about holiday dishes? Do you have any "madeleine moments" or tastes and smells that make you recall growing up?
PUCK: For us: the holidays really began when my mother started baking. She was a chef during the summertime in a resort, so she was great in the kitchen but also a great baker. Usually, right around the first week of December, she would start to bake. The whole house began to smell of cinnamon, brown sugar, vanilla, and rum. And I remember she used to make these small rum balls. My sister and I, we loved them. We used to steal them all the time. It was such a buildup: My mother would put all the cookies in metal tins with paper in between, and when friends came, or relatives came, we didn't have the money to give them a present or anything, so they got a tin full of cookies.
UGUIDE: Was there a "eureka" moment where you said, "I want to be a chef"?
PUCK: Every summer when I was 11, 12, 13, up to 14, I went for a month to the hotel where my mother worked, and I worked with the pastry chef, mostly because I loved sweets and I really wanted to be a pastry chef. But then I couldn't find a job as a pastry chef, so I started to cook. It didn't start very well. After three years I went to France to do an apprenticeship. I had quit school when I was 14 and went to the Post Hotel in another small town, about 50 miles away. At that time, 50 miles was far. We didn't have a car, we didn't have a telephone, we didn't have TV at home, we didn't have running water in our house So it was certainly different than these days. Our toilet was 100 yards behind the house. And in the wintertime to go out there, it was very dark...
UGUIDE: How does the Puck family celebrate the holidays? Is there a special menu you make at home or when you're going to a friend's house?
PUCK: I don't cook when I go to a friend's house. The holidays are a very special time. For Christmas, we go up to Vail. I grew up in Austria and here in California where I live, it sometimes gets to be 80 degrees on Christmas. To me. that's not Christmas. One of the reasons I opened a restaurant in Beaver Creek (Colorado): at the Ritz-Carlton, is so I can have a white Christmas. The hotel is perfect — it's up on the mountainside, so you ski in and ski out, which reminds me so much of my parent's house in Austria growing up. I always make a goose with red cabbage which is traditional in Austria. And we make cookies like we make in Austria. We make a chestnut soup. We make it a little richer, we add some black truffles.
UGUIDE: And how do you prepare that meal?
PUCK: Well, it's complicated and not so complicated. If you have the right equipment, nothing is that complicated. For example, with the goose, we always get these young geese from a farmer in Pennsylvania. And then I remove the legs, and then I bone the legs and stuff the legs with brioche and mushrooms and some Swiss chard or any kind of greens like that. So you bone the legs and stuff them, roll them up, and then braise them in red wine with vegetables, celery, carrots, thyme, and a little stock. First brown them really well, then cook them really slow in the oven so they cook really tender. And then the breast we season it, carve into the skin so that the fat can render really well, and then cook the breast basically like a steak. Mostly on the skin side, so the skin gets crispy, and then you have the goose breast medium rare. I use the same sauce I make for the legs. I always add a few juniper berries in it to give it this Christmasy flavor. We serve it with red cabbage, which we braise with onions, put some brown sugar, orange juice, red wine, and sliced apples in it.
UGUIDE: Do you have a favorite holiday dessert?
PUCK: I love dessert. Any kind of dessert for me is really very easy. Like for Christmas I love a bûche de Noël with chestnut puree and vanilla ice cream and bittersweet orange chocolate sauce. I used to eat that in France, and I still love it. I love the flavor of the chestnut puree.
UGUIDE: During the holidays things can get hectic, especially for the home chef. But for a chef in a professional kitchen, that's everyday life. Do you have any advice for the home chef who's trying to juggle guests and kitchen challenges?
PUCK: For the home chef, the most important thing, just like in a restaurant, is you have to get organized. Especially if you have a bigger family. And do things in advance, the way my mother did with one stove and one oven. If she would have started baking on the 23rd, we wouldn't have had enough until Christmas Day. That was it. When she made cookies, there was enough until after January 1st. Organization is really the most important thing. Plan ahead. And then, keep it simple. Don't make it too complicated. If you like to make a butternut squash soup, but you think it's going to be too much work, make it in advance. You can put it in small containers, or whatever you have; and put it in the freezer. You can make it two weeks ahead if you want to. So that way you have certain things ready. Then you don't have to do everything at the last moment. Desserts are the same. Cookies are the same. So make a list of what you want to do, and then figure out what you can do ahead of time. Because you don't want to be in the kitchen all day. By the time everybody sits down and has a good time, you're so tired you fall asleep. I used to do that, too. You know, in the old times when I opened the restaurant, I had people over for Christmas at home. At the beginning it was 10 or 12 people, and then I'd see, for example, Vincent Price, who was a friend of mine, and I'd say, "Vincent and Carol, come over." And then Billy Wilder and Audrey, "Oh just come on over." And then David Hockney and his boyfriend, I'd say, "Just come on over." So we ended up being 35 people and I didn't have a chef at home. I finally said, "I need one waitress!" So somebody said, "OK, I'll come and help you." But I was in the kitchen all night long. They all loved it, but at the end, I sat down, had a good glass of red wine and a piece of cheese and that was it. I was so tired, I fell asleep. And then the next day we had some other people come over. And there were glasses everywhere, plates everywhere. "Oh my God," I said; "I’m not doing that anymore." I opened the restaurant.
UGUIDE: What's your personal philosophy when you're creating a dish from nothing?
PUCK: I think for me still, the most important thing is going to the farmers market. I've already trained my kids, who are seven and eight, to go with me to the market. It's really important to buy the best ingredients. And then we make it very simple. At home, we don't cook very complicated restaurant food. It's different. You don't have dishwashers, you don't have people right and left helping you. You just put it all together and make it yourself. So we have a simple roasted chicken, and we might have some fresh herbs. A little rosemary, a little basil. I open up the chicken and put a few herbs under the skin and bake it. Sometimes I take a truffle home from the restaurant and at the end I shave a little truffle on top. We almost always make fresh vegetables, and pasta, because my youngest son loves pasta more than anything. He likes the dried pasta better than our fresh pasta, so he brings out the box of pasta and says; "Papa, I want macaroni, I want spaghetti today."
UGUIDE: So he plans the menu?
PUCK: He plans the menu for himself. Like yesterday I brought home a steak. The day before, I made a roasted chicken. And he did not eat this chicken. And he said he'd much rather have the Kobe steak from my steakhouse. Cut. So I bring home a Kobe steak, and he says, "No, no, I don't really want to eat meat today. I'm not a carnivore." So again, he ate his pasta, his broccoli, and salad.
UGUIDE: And how about professionally, when creating a dish for a high-end restaurant like Spago?
PUCK: For a high-end restaurant, I can get inspired anywhere. For example, yesterday I went to the fish market and I saw some kinky head fishes, like a rock cod type of fish, very delicate and very delicious. So I said, "OK, this is what I want." So the philosophy is the same. You see what you can get really fresh at the market, and then you make it. I like it steamed, the whole fish, or maybe fried, the whole fish. I told one of my chefs, Ah, who started with me when he was 16 years old (now he is 32); "Make one this way and one that way," and we tried them out. More than anything now. I am a guide to the young chefs and tell them what I want. So then we taste it. I think it needs more spices, more vinegar, more this or that. We perfect it over a period of time. I think often people make one dish and say "I don't like it. Oh. it's not really that good, it's not that interesting" and then they give up. I remember when I was young, when I started Spago, I tried to make Peking Duck. I messed up more ducks and I threw them away just trying to air dry them and roast them so that they get skinny. It was really hard. It took me a month to do it right.
UGUIDE: With all your restaurants, do you still spend a lot of time cooking?
PUCK: I cook in my head more than physically. I cook every day, but in my head all the time. I wake up — I'm a light sleeper. I might wake up at two-thirty in the morning and not sleep anymore — I think about what can we do next, how can we do this. Half of it I forget, and the other half we try out. I do it or a guy like Ari does it.
UGUIDE: Tell us about your cooking line. What was your approach? Did you have a hand in designing it?
PUCK: I designed it totally. The hard part is to make something that is of quality yet reasonably priced. It's very easy to design cookware or china or a chair, if you charge $1,000 for a chair, it should be good. If you charge S120 for one pen, it should be good. But if you charge $20 for a pen. it's more difficult. How are you going to do it? The good thing with Home Shopping Network is that they order in large quantities. You don't need a distribution, you don't need a middleman, so we can do it at a reasonable price. That's why I still do it. Just now, we are making a new low-pressure oven. You can cook a whole turkey in 50-55 minutes. A 12-pound turkey comes out perfectly, and if you carve off the breast, the juice will run. Why? Because it has low pressure — that way it doesn't dry it out. That's going to be our next big item on HSN. I like to innovate and there is no such oven out there. It's really great. People sometimes tend to cook fish really slow, or cook it too long so that it gets dried out. With my pressure oven, you can put whole fish or fillets in and set it at 150 degrees under pressure so there's no escape of moisture. It makes the most flaky cooked fish before the protein coagulates, which doesn't dry out the fish. You are left with the most tender, delicious fish. But the obvious first step is to start with the highest quality fish you can afford.
UGUIDE: How does a chef of your stature make something a simple as a hamburger?
PUCK: When we make it at home it's very easy for me because I use really good meat that we get at the restaurant. I don't like it too thick, only about a half an inch. I like it charred on the outside with a lot of black pepper, some fleur de sel. some grilled onions. French mustard, a little touch of ketchup and some salad. Or. if it's in the summer we have some good tomatoes. The kids don't like it when it's too spicy.
UGUIDE: Speaking of spices, do you have a go-to spice you use if you're cooking in the kitchen and you just need to add something to it?
PUCK: I think a lot of times some really good balsamic vinegar will lift up a lot of different things, so I have that at home, and good sea salt and fresh ground pepper. I think that's what I use the most. When you have young kids at home like I do — I like spicy food but I cannot make the food just for me. So I always have the peppermill next to me and I have fresh ground pepper on my food.
UGUIDE: Besides starting with quality ingredients, what's the most important thing in preparing a dish?
PUCK: The execution of the dish is really the most important thing. If you want to make a Wiener schnitzel, which is very easy, the first thing you do is buy good meat, pork or veal. The second thing is that you have to bread it at the last moment. If you go to a restaurant where they make the mise en place in advance, and they bread it and put it in the refrigerator, the bread crumbs get soggy and then its like a carpet. It's tough and not very good. But if you do it at the last moment, and fry them at the right temperature for the right amount of time, the inside is juicy, the outside is crispy. All you need is a little lemon on top. It's not complicated, but the execution has to be right. Most of the time, making something simple is more difficult than making something with a lot of ingredients because you can mask a lot of different things. I like to taste the food. If I eat eggplants, I want them to taste like eggplants. If I want to eat a tomato salad or a tomato soup. I want them to taste like what a really ripe tomato should taste like.
UGUIDE: Have you tasted another chefs dish recently that made you say, "Wow. I wish I'd thought of that one"?
PUCK: You know, one guy is like that not just one dish, but the entire restaurant. It's Grant Achatz’s Alinea in Chicago. I think he is the most talented young chef in America. He is different, his restaurant is different, he doesn't care what other people think or do, he does his own style. I think he is probably, in my mind, the best one. I might go to Matsuhisa, which is an old restaurant like us, and have the best sashimi and something really clean and Japanese.
UGUIDE: You have a smartphone app out there with recipes and tips. Do you think digital technology will replace the physical cookbook eventually?
PUCK: I think the cookbook is going to look good for decoration. The young people get everything on their iPads and read it there. I still have never used a computer in my life. And I still don't do email. But I'm actually preparing, as we speak — I don't know when we are going to premiere it — an online cooking school. You sign up for $9.95 a month, or $98 a year, and you will get recipes, techniques, and all sorts of wonderful things. So instead of the apps. we're going to do the cooking school and see where it goes.
UGUIDE: In terms of innovations, what do you think of the fad of food trucks or secret restaurants? What is your take on all that?
PUCK: At home or in the restaurant, I want to have the comfort of the table. I try to teach my kids that the table is something sacred. Food is something sacred. I love to sit down and have the comfort of the table, and say, “OK, we are sitting, this is something important, don’t disturb us. This is our time together.” I’m never that hungry that I have to go into McDonald’s or any of those places.
I think it’s a really big problem in America – the overabundance of fast food restaurants. All these food trucks now. All these new fads, old fads, whatever you call them. I think it keeps the family apart. One of the important parts is, if you have a family, to eat together at least once a day. And generally it’s dinnertime. So you don’t want to go at five o’clock and have your hamburger in the car. I can’t stand that.
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