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My dad was more like someone you’d see in one of those Martin Scorsese period pieces. He was a small-time banker working in Queens and never made more than $50,000 a year. Though my father wasn’t Italian, several of his clients were in the mob, and they always treated him really well. Sometimes he’d come home with twenty pounds of meat they’d given him, or cheese and olive oil, caviar and booze—stuff we couldn’t afford.
Mistakes happen quickly; comebacks take a long time. I’ve said that to myself more than once over my career, as those sentiments ring painfully true in both the kitchen and in life. Over and over, I’ve tumbled from the tops of mountains that took me years to climb. And each time, I’ve made the long, laborious ascent back to the summit.
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In his debut cookbook, Chef John Tesar tells you how to have the best steakhouse meal you've ever eaten--in your home kitchen. Infused with the flavor of Texas and Tesar's culinary genius, this book reveals Tesar's "back to the pan" method for cooking the perfect steak. Tesar doesn't stop at steak, though; this book is full of recipes and techniques for cooking lamb, pork, veal, burgers, along with recipes for sides, salads, starters, and foolproof versions of classic sauces. Tesar also provides a comprehensive guide to cuts and breeds, and gives portraits of top producers. KNIFE is devoted to the celebration of steak in every form, with recipes for your favorite juicy cuts, as well as techniques for making mouthwatering dishes from underrated cheaper cuts. Tesar blends old school techniques and new cooking methods to cook meat like you've never had it before.
My father worked in the Queens neighborhood of Kew Gardens, and one day, I remember he took me with him when he went to eat at a mob-owned steakhouse. He ordered a filet mignon that had been perfectly sizzled in the restaurant’s gas-fired steak broiler. Its magical aroma preceded it as it came to the table—savory and beefy with a perfume of meaty deliciousness. It came out perfectly browned and juicy, and I’ll never forget it. I just fell in love with meat and thus fell into a phase where all I wanted to eat were steak and lamb chops.
Portland Farmers Market Cookbook: ...
But I love steak, more than almost any other food in the world. I love ordering steak at a restaurant because that was the only way I could get an edible one. Jordan Mackay is a James-Beard-award winning writer on food, wine, and spirits. His books include Secrets of the Sommeliers and The New York Times bestseller Franklin Barbecue, and his work has appeared in such publications as The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle and Food & Wine. Cooking a steak for me means I'm going to be eating shoe leather.
Some of the best steaks I ever ate were cooked this way—where the beefiest flavor and the deepest crust depended mainly on a good pan, a strong burner, and an honest piece of meat. I like to call this method Back to the Pan, because it encourages people to not get too fussy about steak. John Tesar was called “the single most talented cook I ever worked with” by Anthony Bourdain. Tesar also enjoys the pseudonym Jimmy Sears in Bourdain’s bestselling memoir Kitchen Confidential and in Medium Raw. An iconoclastic celebrity of the food world, Tesar came up as a chef in New York City at 13 Barrow St, 44 & Hell’s Kitchen, Vine, and the Supper Club. He then went on to open two acclaimed restaurants in Dallas that have been named among the best in the country by Bon Appetit, Eater, and Esquire.
Shari Lewis and Lamb Chop: The Team That Changed Children's Television (Hardback
In a large bowl, whisk 1 1/2 cups dry mix with the sparkling water. The batter should have the consistency of a crêpe batter or vegetable oil. Sift or whisk together the cake flour, all-purpose flour, baking powder, and salt. Remove the rings to a baking sheet lined with paper towels and season with a pinch of salt.
I graduated high school early at seventeen and moved in with the guys from Magic’s. This time of my life still glows in my memory—working, cooking, listening to music, surfing. If you're going to deep fry something, I always recommend temper as the batter. It's one of the million millions of things about foods that the Japanese have nailed.
Most chefs have a lot of tension and a lot of energy. One thing most people don’t know about me is that every day I run. Like a frigging windup doll, I get on a treadmill and race my legs for an hour, sometimes more.
You'll stay much more clean and sane that way. At first, I was the dishwasher, washing every plate by hand. The next summer, I graduated to putting tomato and lettuce on the plates, and I made tuna fish sandwiches at lunch. The following year, I was full-on in the kitchen—cooking steaks and burgers and starting to realize I have a pretty good touch, even with this simple food. I just instinctively knew when to flip the steaks, when to turn the heat down. That year, 1976, I decided to stay out in the Hamptons year round instead of going back to attend school and live in Queens.
In the South of France, Francine had met these two elegant chefs, Pierre and Alain, whom she brought to New York and helped get fixed up in this restaurant in the Hamptons. Their place was a major step above Magic’s—classic French food rendered by real French chefs. In its heyday, to get a reservation at Club Pierre on a Friday night was next to impossible. I’m not sure where the energy comes from. I heard my biological father was an Irish gangster, but I don’t know for sure. They put me up for adoption as an infant only weeks old, and I was taken in by second-generation immigrants, a Czechoslovakian couple already in middle age.
Drop the onion rings into the tempura batter. The world’s #1 eTextbook reader for students.VitalSource is the leading provider of online textbooks and course materials. More than 15 million users have used our Bookshelf platform over the past year to improve their learning experience and outcomes. With anytime, anywhere access and built-in tools like highlighters, flashcards, and study groups, it’s easy to see why so many students are going digital with Bookshelf. At age twenty, I left for Club Pierre, a swanky new restaurant opened by the rich New Yorker Francine Farkas, whose husband owned Alexander’s department store.
We often had crowds on these weekends, and he’d get buckets of lobster and crab, and we’d spread newspaper over the tables and bury cases of Heineken in ice. The boys would be in the backyard shucking littlenecks and steamers. At dinnertime, we’d heave twenty lobsters up on the table with french fries, sliced tomatoes, and corn on the cob. I grew up about as far culturally from Dallas as could be imagined in America—in the boroughs of New York City and, perhaps more significantly, on the shores of Long Island. My parents were very strict and disciplined.
His favorite white wine was white Burgundy, long before it was cool. Knife was a response to the sad state of the American steakhouse, which often lacks personality, verve, and distinctiveness. More important, it usually lacks good steak, a particularly galling failure when you live in Dallas, a beef capital.
My latest campaign has been the steakhouse and American beef. How a New York chef came to Texas, much less how I came to own a steakhouse in Dallas, is a piece of a much longer culinary tale. It’s a story with many generous spoonfuls of success right alongside several heaping servings of failure. I also want you to understand me so that you can ultimately see what Texas, Texas beef, and serving steak in America mean to me. I suppose I’m an old-school chef in that sense, but I’m also grounded in a way I’ve never been before in my life, thanks to Texas and thanks to beef.
My first job at his restaurant was garde-manger—keeper of the pantry and preparer of cold food. I started making salads—salade Niçoise, salade verte. We tossed the Caesar salad tableside to order.
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