Colameco's Food Show THE FRENCH LAUNDRY

Hey guys, guess where we're going today, this is one of the best backstage at the best restaurant in America, it's on everyone's top list as the best of the best, The French Laundry in Yville, California, you can't get in here, it's like 3 months. backed reservations good luck today you're in you're in backstage watch how they make this magic happen beat chef Tom Keller learn his story and watch these things evolve stay along for the ride this one will be fun up RAB with a T handicap, then pick up the head of the wood with a please.

I've followed Thomas Keller's cooking since he was in New York at Rael and it continues to evolve. He really is in the best shape of him. Now many feel that the

food

he is making. The

food

at French Laundry and maybe a half-dozen similar restaurants across the country is as good as anything on the planet today, and that's a revolutionary thing: American food prepared by American chefs who stand alongside the best in the world. planet anywhere in the world. regular followed by ravioli in the woods asking for asparagus we are not trying to reinvent the wheel here we are trying to find the best products we can in each category we can find them they are the freshest we can find them use them By the time they are really good and not the you ruin, you know, don't get in the way, really, this is a salty TW with sesame seeds inside, we put fresh cream with red onion and then salmon on top. tartar, everyone who comes to the restaurant gets one of these as soon as you are seated in the restaurant and they give you something to drink.

Your first fun is the salmon bugle. How do you conceptualize the dishes? I mean, according to your way of thinking, what is your process now well, you know, I think there are many ways, I mean, sometimes you know that you are inspired by something, whatever you know, the blue bird flying through the sky , you know, say, oh my God, that makes you think about something and that's an inspiration and then you take that and try to work with it, you know it, you conceptualize it, you try it a couple of times and see if it works a few more times.

You know, it's just finding something that you really like and feel really comfortable with. and presenting it perhaps in a more modern way, I was saying to Michael Ran, who was one of the authors of the book, how do you know oysters and pearls, and I told him that's logical. Michael and he said, how is that logical? I said, well, you know you have pearl tapiocas. you know and where pearls come from oysters you know and he said well that's not logical you know well I said well it's logical to me you know so you know define logic that's perfect Chef this is perfect the sauce now perfect I came here to visit on a Monday they were closed I walked around the property I looked around and it just hit me this is this is your restaurant this is the place you've always been looking for this is the three star French restaurant uh and it was the real destination, I mean, it was, you know , it was, it was meant to be, it was destiny, uh, uh, you know, I said this, it's that I had no money, I lost my job, I was out of my element, which was New York. more or less known, you know, uh, both in a negative and positive way, known for not being able to control costs, known as, you know, a good cook with many, many emotional outbursts, uh, however, a young chef, TRUE?

Chef, a young and mature chef, yes, I mean, they are all around us, all one. As you get older you realize that's not the way to do things, yes sir, you've got shaved truffles haven't you, you've got shaved truffles when looking at the plates at The French. Laundry, you can't help but see Thomas' respect for classic French cuisine, there are references in almost every dish, but when he made changes he just made it more modern, more up to date, a little lighter and the flavors are extremely concentrated and clean , tell me. a little bit about the ingredients, what you come to cook, what it's like here on the west coast, the west coast, it's certainly interesting because someone recently asked me about California cuisine and, if I know, do you know if California cuisine Does California influence my cooking and me?

I said no, California cuisine doesn't influence my cooking because California cuisine has been defined as fresh and you know, seasonal grilling and I'm like, well, I mean, that's logical, you know, I mean, no. You should do nothing that's not fresh and nothing that's not local, which brings up a good point about what's already local every day. I talk to Bobby every day in New York and he tells me what's out there and I say, okay, you know, set aside 20 pieces for me and he makes them. As an aside, they left at JFK at 4:00 or 5:00 yesterday afternoon and are here today at 11:00, so the place becomes anywhere you can get anything within 12 to 24 hours.

Jakarta could be local exactly, not any day. It could be that yes, locality is no longer defined by geography. UPI with three SW bass, cook them nice and slow, okay, don't cook the fish fast. Che, please, to maintain this standard of quality night at Night Out, service dish after dish. after service, consistency is the optimal word, these guys know the recipes, they know them cold, execute them perfectly and never deviate, you have 400 g of pike base, 50 pounds of bone in each pot, seven feet of beef in each pot, then you have 3 and 1/ 2 eggs 1.5 egg yolks we use 20 gallons of cold water, bring it to a simmer, add 16 oz of tomato paste, make a little treat for guests with lemon juice, 25 g of sugar, this is all the tomato guts, we spin it first thing in the morning. bring it to a boil and then simmer very slowly, after that I'm going to strain all of this and brush it with butter.

I did it just because I'm going to twist it all up again along with some ancho chiles because we want to make it spicy Chef can ask you a question absolutely Chef, how long have you been chopping scallions? I've been chopping scallions for probably about 45 minutes. Coral oil is made with 100% lobster coral, which is green when we take it out of the lobster, a good bite is something relaxing, let's see how it will achieve. I've been watching you, you put it under a low torch out of the blender and when the Cooks coral turns Bri red, who the hell thought of that?

I don't. I know if it was Thomas Keller, hell, that's all about a blowtorch on the outside of the blender, we can't do that at home, my staff, you know, I have to say that's my strongest asset, you know what they do and I want say. We started with 12 employees, a 62-seat restaurant and today we have 72 employees. Wow, 72 employees and 62 seats for 62 seats for this type of service. And do you think how I can improve it? You know, that's how I can do it. do it better you know it's not about how much money I'm making how much money I'm losing it's like how can I make it better what can I do to keep life here good night Chef tonight same as last night Chef like last night with Thomas' cooking at The French Laundry there is nothing superfluous on the plate PL nothing that does not belong there nothing that is just a garnish or autal for the sake of garnish, even down to those little powders that you sprinkle on the plates in the To get a little red onion powder, paprika spicy, we have a mushroom powder, dried chiaki mushrooms, okay and then they are pulverized in a coffee grinder.

Citrus powder, it is a very nice powder, this is lemon, orange, grapefruit and lime, caramelized onion powder, onion viell, sweet viell. onion we have Monte bar, which is a standard U melted butter, we use it to reheat vegetables, crawfish broth, which is crawfish broth reduced to gloss and cream. We have vegetable broth on hand to thin out the sauces and here is the truffle juice, which was used in a couple of pasta sauces and we also used that for the FL ravioli. Truffle Custard Sauce is a treat sauce with the addition of chopped black truffles, truffle oil, and a bit of butter-fried Spanish spatulas to go with skating tonight.

Two lobsters in a window. shf you need to have the Mis plast to be able to serve people, then the Mis plast is necessary. What has happened in modern cuisine is that we have become shorter in terms of cooks, is that we take primal cuts of meat, primal cuts of fish and we just sauté and that's a lot of modern cuisine because it allows you to do alamu F things, but The part we enjoy is the part that when you talk about cooking, you're talking about long processes, you know? We are talking about how to roast the next Lamb for 9 and 1 half hours and and and the technique the temperature Knowing when to remove the fat that is how it is being rendered knowing when to base it knowing when to cover understanding the smells and the sounds and that and that is cooking, now we're going to take that product and put it in a situation where yes we can, we can cook it in 6 minutes, 8 minutes or 10 minutes. or 12 minutes or whatever it takes, you know, because that's what I mean, it's a restaurant kitchen, you have to be able to serve the service for 9 hours to do it well for 9 hours, the Mis Plass is the most important part and to be able to use different techniques in your cooking and creating different characteristics by using those different techniques really gives you more than I'm just a short time cook and the reason you know you want to keep it as a base is because you see all that foam that's there.

That's still a slight emulsion, so as long as you can keep the butter emulsified it won't burn, therefore you'll keep the fish bathed in an emulsified solution that will maintain the flavor of the butter with greater integrity than if you just let it cook like that. and the butter will burn and it won't burn any salt and you know it will have so that's the purpose of basting as well as keeping it Incas itself, Incas in the fat. but as long as you have foam like that, you have partial emulsification. The tasting menu with French clothing is almost Japanese-style ready. 12 13 dishes of just one or two bites each.

Thomas believes that after the third bite you really stop. Savoring anyway and when you get down to it, what better way to eat than just a couple of spoonfuls of something absolutely cooked perfectly and then move on to the next thing, this is a real treat. One of our greatest compliments is when someone comes in and says This reminds me and they'll tell me this wonderful story about a restaurant somewhere else, whether it's in our country or in Europe or in Asia, this memory that they have, you know, they remember that place where had and this reminds them of that so I can only hope that you know that we create those memories for people and that they go out somewhere and say: you know, this reminds me of French Laundry because there you have had success, it doesn't matter you know the dollar you earned or you know it or any of those things it just matters you know you've touched someone to the point where that's a memory for them well, the French Laundry now, what am I supposed to do?

I mean, I'm afraid to boil water after leaving that place. I mean, I don't make best lists, I don't like them, I don't believe in them, but if I did, that would have to be close to my top, you know, one of the middle. dozen of the best restaurants in America, I mean, they're just kicking it, the food was amazing, over and over again, with that kind of food, like when we cover these restaurants from time to time, you can't do it at home, you just You can not do it. at home look how many guys I had on the line look what me and plas are involved in, I mean, forget it, that's why you go there and good luck if you go there, I can't get you in, I can't even get in.

You know, like six months to get a good table for Thomas Keller, he's really successful and the food is beautiful, so let's play with something. You see, that thing he did with the crab. What was he? The soft shell crab looks like a po. boy, some kind of thing where they got this beautiful big soft shell, I mean I love those 350 piece things, I ate it all, you know, the head, the tail, the wings, I love them, take out the lungs and all that, but he cut the thing anyway. down with about the size of a quarter and then I had it like in the bio with some matte fondu and some micro greens and it looked amazing it was like two bites absolutely beautiful two bites I mean I guess that's it what it does and that's why you go there because the flavors are exceptional well we're not going to do that we're going to do something although it's like having fun with a riff instead of the best soft shell po boy how about a shrimp and giant crab meat? burger with onion rings, you know, it's like a roadside stand, only unlike the real roadside stand, and he's not, he's playing.

The first thing we're going to have to do to make this today is make lemon mayonnaise because we're going to serve. the uh little crouton toasted bread with cut crust we're going to have the shrimp burger on top and in the middle we're going to spread a little bit of lemon mayonnaise let's talk about making mayonnaise at home it's easy to make and now the eggs are much safer so I don't want to know anything about the anti-egg lobby. Eggs are safe. There was a time when they didn't want restaurants to use fresh eggs, but now they're apparently saying it's okay again.

The first thing I'm going to do, actually, you know whatI'm going to do. The first thing I'm going to do. Wait. I'm going to suggest that anyone making flavored mayonnaise make it a day in advance because the esters from the zest to really permeate the mayonnaise mixture, we're going to take this and make it a little bit smaller, okay, and inside we're going to add a little bit of mustard I would say maybe oh maybe a tablespoon and a half just to help me give me a little bit of Base here and now we're going to add screams that are going to break here we go that was on my track and the reasons one of these one of The Reas these eggs are so soft when you make mayonnaise any of these egg based sauces everything better be at the same temperature so my oils are at room temperature my eggs have been out of the refrigerator for half a dozen hours I want everything be at the same temperature and that's room temperature, if everything is cold, you've really made it difficult to sign, so these eggs have been at room temperature, they've been out of the refrigerator all day and that's why they were soft. as they were good mayonnaise 101 we have your egg yolks we have the lemon juice we have a little bit of mustard now I'm going to drizzle this oil and a little drop, nice and slow, especially at the beginning until I start to make the emulsion catch, almost never You can say too slow but too fast, the fat won't do it, the protein, which is the egg yolk, can't handle all that fat at once and it will just break down and look good. like scrambled eggs or curd, something that doesn't look right, eggs are kind of miraculous, this way you know it's one of the only things on the planet that can emulsify oil and water and that's really mayonnaise, that's what They are emulsion sauces. you're suspending oil in a liquid look the oil doesn't incorporate as easily because this is starting to harden which means the eggs are telling me they're reaching their limit of how much they're going to absorb and I'm probably going to stop before I go too far.

Shrimp Burger 101. These are small and average. I didn't buy them big. I didn't buy them fancy because I'm going to grind them. The first thing I'm going to do is peel them. and save the shrimp shells because put them in a little baggie, put them in the freezer, you can make a really great shrimp broth just with these shells, a little bit of oil, so I take that, give them a little bit of color. Add water, reduce and add a little more water. reduce it and about 20 minutes later you reduce it completely and you have a very flavorful shrimp broth that is a great base for, say, a pasta sauce.

Let's shuck them because it looks to me like some of them had a little schoy in them are you rolling did you think I was joking? This is my bag of shrimp shell look, I'm not kidding, I buy them and I freeze them and every once in a while I cut a piece off and I make a really good sauce, like I'm making shrimp with simple pasta, you know, garlic, a little basil, blah blah blah, and I want something good in there and I don't want it to be all greasy, like just butter or olive oil, delicious shrimp. 25 minutes to do it, we did it in a program already per book, what a book, okay, this one is giant, well, if it's a giant lump, it says it somewhere, it says it on the cover, usually, this one has the least amount of shells.

Actually, I usually don't. I buy jumbo chunks usually I buy tail fins and I worked my way through them but CU jumbo chunks, it was the best they had today after I sniffed and that's how I clean crab meat. I just check it at the end, but not least, let's choose some cilantro and I don't want any stems, remember we were in the French Laundry. I can't let you down, there's no stems, man, Thomas will have me, he'll have me making compost in the kitchen, you're the compost man for the Next month now I'm just going to run a knife over this because I don't want any big chunks of cilantro in here, just small ones, okay, culinary art shrimp, first let's press the shrimp, that's enough.

I don't want to. overprocess them now. I'm not going to add all this crab meat, that would be a waste of crab meat. I want to do something else with most of this crab, we're just going to put a little bit in because it's going to be tasty, so a little bit of crab meat and I'm also going to put cilantro in from time to time. I don't want to process this too much, all I want to do is make it press and catch, you'll see what. I mean, in a minute, where's the lid? Salt and pepper.

You know you need salt and I'll tell you what I'm going to get back in a second. Some fancy pepper. This is smoked habanero. Alright. That's all. I want to make it looks like ground beef uh get it shrimp burger now this is what we're going to do this is what we're going to do we have the boas what are we going to do we're going to take them off and leave them on the ground here make it easy for everyone at home to see I have this here I'm going to get my hands wet because every time I make meatballs or something like that it's easier if your hands are a little bit wet because you'll find that the protein I won't stick to them as much as it's a shrimp burger.

Look, I wasn't lying. Friends. Shrimp burger with crab meat. Wet my hands again. Enters. Why don't we take out this blade? What do you think? Good idea, yes, good. idea, okay, burger number two, oh, they look good, onion rings are easy, buttermilk, pour into a bowl, onion ready, any kind, I don't care, you want to spend a fortune, buy some expensive ones, I don't know, for me, this is an onion and onion for this type of application here, where is my little knife? Let's do this the right way, let's cut them up just like you had imagined, how about that boom into individual pieces so there aren't any big clumps?

Well, you put them on anything you want. You see, you see, you're not telling me anything, why should I tell you? Go find out like the rest, go watch the

show

, watch the

show

, reveal the secrets, now we'll tune in to something else, maybe. There are some sports in I don't know the X Games or something, so now I'm going to watch. I want the buttermilk to cover them, so I'm just going to push it down and let it sit. there for a while fat frying you know I love this look how elegant okay two things for fat frying one is get a pan that's wider at the top than at the bottom if so , if the sides are equal, the problem is if you put something that is very hot, it will overflow, so it is always better with a deep fryer to have the shape like that.

You know, the top is wide and the bottom is tighter. This isn't a great example, but it qualifies. canola oil and what I'm looking for is 350° 350 is good if it's a little hotter I'm not going to worry because when I start putting the onion rings the temperature is going to drop and I think we're going to reach 350 and we'll probably get to 375. Okay, okay because when you put the onion rings in here, it's going to cool down with the introduction of the onion rings. Okay, we're going to toss them in the flour like this, like this, make sure the flour covers them and then, like you see in restaurants, we're going to fry them, how do you know they're ready?

They are ready when they are golden and crispy not before, in the meantime, let's put the shrimp burger in the Frying Pan with a little oil. The pan is hot, we are only going to cook one of these burgers because we are only going to finish by placing one of them on the plate , so boom in the pan. The burger is cooked just like Mom used to make and we'll have the next batch right behind us. I'm going to do this and I'm going to cover it up a little bit. What I don't want this to do is make it dry out on the bottom, I mean the shrimp I don't have to cook it, it's very light so there's little steam, keep it covered, boom, let's push the cooking a little bit, okay , coming closer, here we are, we're back, Thomas Keller, don't shout, this has nothing to do with your restaurant, okay.

Playing in my kitchen I can play with some mayonnaise or la la kind of looks like lemon or oh oh, doesn't it look good? Come on folks, you gotta be honest, Mayo looks good, okay, we've got Mayo around, my goodness, it looks like custard. well, I'm going to put some lettuce around it, little colors, little screams, that's backwards, a little here and there, a couple more pieces here they want to make this really pretty, because they see this in Yville and they're going to sue me . I think we're there, burger on top and then I took them out again, guys, I have to tell you something when they came out of the fryer, I took them out again, so they look like a couple more, but I'm not done yet.

I haven't completely finished the mackerel yet, it looks good, look at that, look how crispy this one I was in love with was, now you can see why okay, that's it, oh my goodness, I'm making 12 foods and cleaning the plate a little . I want dots, uh, you want dots, I'll give you some dots, dot, oop, dot, I've got four dots there, make it five, make it five, I want five, now let's do five on this side. I have points. I have onion rings. Things are happening, okay, I'm not going to tell you what these red dots are, let me just say that they will go great with onion rings, well, how come I like that thing?

I mean, is it that ridiculous or what's okay before closing that? What are you going to drink with this? That I'm fine? How about you don't think about beer? Don't think about the beer. No, no, vet, maybe a dry vet like a Demis SEC or maybe a wine that I love, which is a pinoe from, unfortunately, big grape um Pino in Italy, same in different names, different places, different styles, but alaan Peno GRE is wonderful, um, I also like it with cream sauces, which is strange, I would go with this and that, but anyway, French Laundry is amazing, you have to try it.

I arrived, you know, it's supposed to be New York 2003 and it's a Time Warner building. I can not wait. Book me a trip around the country and I hope I can get a reservation. Thomas Keller, you are the man. Excellent cooking, excellent, no, you know. The jokes are decided and you know this is a shrimp burger. What can I say? You know, do your thing. I make shrimp burgers. Whatever. I'm going to eat this until next week. Yeah.