Laurent Gras

Banana Flambée

One day you buy those beautiful yellow organic bananas that are ready to be eaten. But then if for some reason after a couple of days, they are still in the fruit basket and start to go from yellow to dark brown, it is not completely over. They've lost the appeal to be eaten raw, but what about flambée with a vanilla ice cream from L'arte del Gelato? It is all good.

The most important thing is the pan. It has to be just the right size to fit all the bananas without overheating during the cooking process. I warm the pan, melt fresh butter and roast the fruit on both side until it starts to get that nice caramel color. Then sprinkle the cane sugar over the top and lower the heat to let the sugar caramelize and roll around the fruit. The spoon has an important role to baste the fruit with the cooking butter. The last chapter is to increase the heat, pour the cognac over the top and turn the pan into fire. I'll do it twice as I like fire work. Serve the fruit glazed with their cooking juices and some vanilla gelato.

Food Gallery by Tammar & Shimon

This is a series by Tammar and Shimon. They are photographers in NYC and dear friends. They came to L2O at the opening in 2008 to shoot the food and the restaurant. For these photos, they decided the layout, the lighting and really made it their shoot. I have always felt their sensibility is just right, and the pictures reflect what we were trying to achieve at the time. Their studio is few blocks away from home. I hope to spend time with them to improve my photography skills in term of lighting, diaphragm aperture and speed. Food pictures in a kitchen space are getting close to being a studio format and I still feel like a beginner when it comes to it.

Doing pictures for the blog pushed me to buy a digital version of my old Leica. I never used a flash with my old camera. At the time, it was a traveling tool I used to fix all the important moments happening from early morning to sun set. No pictures at night time. I realized it is much more complex to photograph inside a room versus in natural light where the sun gives you exactly what you are going to get. 

 

 

Cooking at Home

Cooking at home, for a chef really has an advantage: you get to eat everything you cook. But the disadvantage is you don't have a team around you to put everything together and do the dishes. I enjoy the process of cooking at home. Usually a glass of champagne comes in the middle and that make it even more enjoyable. I usually buy a small list of ingredients the day ahead to avoid going to the store three times in the same hour.

At dinner the other night, I was responsible for the first course. Suddenly the pressure of the service came right back to me. I thought to myself, I am going to do a ceviche so I don't go into a war with the pots and pans.

In the afternoon I picked up a live lobster, a fillet of stripped bass and a few garnishes. I poached the lobster slowly, cooled it down in water, removed the shell and sliced it finely. The stripped bass had a bright red blood line and a translucent flesh, so those were good signs of freshness. I removed the skin, then sliced the fish into fine strips. The garnishes were a combination of sliced torpedo shallot, diced ginger and jalapeno. The juice for the ceviche was a combination of meyer lemon, lime, orange, garlic, ginger and chili.

All the plates were assembled in stages, one by one to keep them cold until they hit the table. The rest of the meal was a little bit like when I'm doing a dinner with other chefs. I help out on the other courses, but no more pressure. Maybe because the wine pairing were excellent that night.

My Neighborhood: Chelsea

What I really like about living in Chelsea, is actually many different things.  First, there is the ethnic and social diversity in the area. Secondly, the youthfulness gives it an informal lifestyle. It also has a cluby feel during the weekend that make it different from the rest of the week.

The neighborhood has changed a lot over the past decade. The real meat packing district has really chilled down. The overnight routine used to be shady, now it has become hip and fun.

Chelsea has kept many independent boutiques and developed new ones. The art galleries are moving art all year round and world class DJs play at least once a month in an ultra-equipped sound system night club. The Chelsea market is three blocks away from our apartment,with our poissonnier, our boulangerie and boucherie. Our favorite restaurant, Dell'Anima, is four blocks down Hudson.

Equinox gym on 10th Avenue has a yoga studio over looking the Highline. I ran into my friend DJ Timka there. That's how you know you are home, when you see your friends in the neighborhood.

My ginza master hairdresser is from Japan and speaks just a few work of English. He must be using scissor made in the same place as my knives made out of number one blue carbon steel. It is frightening to hear the sharpness of the blades when he gets close to the ear.

Yojimbo Garage

During my time in Chicago, Marcus was not just my neighbour but became a good friend as we built my fixed gear bike together, step by step.  owner of Yojimbo garage where I, step by step put my fixed gear together.

When I first arrived in Chicago I bough a fixed gear bike in a regular bike store. This one was stolen immediately. I really wanted and needed bike to move around the city independently as I do not have a car.  I went to Yojimbo garage the next day and tried to by a complete bike.

Marcus is the owner of Yojimbo. When I first met him, I didn't know that he likes to have more time to put a bike together, especially if it is a bike that he likes. He is very passionate about what he is doing. He knows his craft, and knows every bike part that's available in the market. I mean all the bike parts, even the unique ones that are not usually in stores.

At that first visit to the store I bought the frame with a decent set-up. A few months later, I decided to make some improvements. We added handmade red hubs from a small manufacturer, white rims, white tires, red crank with red chain, white handle bar with white stem, and red spokes. The spokes don't come in red, so they were custom painted. 

Somehow Marcus found my  found my blog, and that's when my customer profile really changed. I think we connected on our similar attention to detail. Reading my blog, he understood that the usual was not enough and everything should be special or unique. He and I would talk about these things when I would bring in the bike. We discussed how we organized our individual working spaces. He likes to have everything around him while he works, while I like the minimum. It is always wonderful to connect with people that have such a passion for their work, doing whatever it takes to achieve the desired result.

Eventually I would drop the bike off with him and he would more or less make the adjustments and improvements he wanted. And I was fine with that. I have total confidence in his work. He is one of the people in chicago that I will miss the most. 

Michelin Guide Chicago Cocktail Reception

 

Jean Luc Naret, Laurent Gras, and Jennifer Leuzzi at the cocktail reception for the Michelin Guide Chicago