CRAIGIE ON MAIN - CHEF TONY MAWS
WHOLE CHICKEN

Brine:
2L water
60g kosher salt
11 g kombu
1 tsp dried thyme
2 tsp coriander seeds
2 tsp fennel seeds
2 ea allspice berries
2 ea juniper berries
1 tsp chile flakes
2 ea cloves
1 ea 4# chicken, trussed.
2 tblsp chicken or duck fat
1 sprig thyme

1. Add all brine ingredients together  and bring to a simmer.
2. Remove from heat and chill.
3. Place whole chicken in brine for 3 hrs.
4. take chicken off brine and wipe dry
5. Season the chicken with kosher salt and fresh cracked black pepper. 
6.  Place chicken, fat and thyme in a sous vide bag and seal on medium so as not to distort the shape of the bird but still removes all air.
7. Place chicken into an 70c bath until the internal temp is 64c.  approx. 2.5 hours
8. let the chicken rest for 20 min at room temperature.
9. put chicken into ice water for 3 hrs until thoroughly chilled.

 Preheat combi-oven to 425 with “browning” mode on.

1 hour before serving remove chicken from bag and wipe off as much of the gelled juice as possible and season lightly with additional salt and pepper.

Place on a roasting rack in the combi oven for approximately 35-40 minutes, or until the thigh joint is barely warm. Remove and let rest 10 minutes. Carve and serve.

Ingredients:

1 ½ lbs cream cheese

1 vanilla bean

3 lbs sheep’s milk yogurt

 600 grams of sugar

1 teaspoon salt

13 eggs

Place tempered cream cheese into a kitchenaid bowl with the seeds of one vanilla bean.

paddle until smooth.

Add the yogurt and paddle until smooth.

Add the sugar and mix until smooth

Add the yolks one at a time, mixing well.

Pass through a chinoise

.

Bake at steam 93C for 25 minutes, covered.  then convection 110C for 25 minutes, uncovered.

The cheesecakes will puff slightly during the convection portion of the baking process.

be sure to the batter is tempered before baking as it tends to curdle slightly otherwise.

be sure to temper all ingredients to keep the mixing time to a minimum as you do not want to work too much air into the batter.

If using ring molds, filled 3/4 full, will yield approx. 16-18 ea.

You might find you need to tweak the proportions and cooking method to work in your kitchen since we use a combi-steam oven.  As a substitution I recommend you cook in a bain mairie, or water bath, to provide the moisture.

Save The Date!

Craigie On Main’s Chef Tony Maws—Together with Ideas in Food’s Chefs Aki Kamozawa and H. Alexander Talbot—To Host

Celebrity Chef Tour Dinner Benefiting the James Beard Foundation

(CAMBRIDGE, MA; May 24, 2010)—The Celebrity Chef Tour benefiting the James Beard Foundation is coming to Cambridge on Thursday, July 29, 2010, for a night of culinary celebration. Two-time James Beard Nominee for Best Chef Northeast (2009, 2010) Tony Maws of Craigie On Main will cook an eight-course meal with IdeasInFood.com husband-and-wife dynamos Aki Kamozawa and H. Alexander Talbot.

Chef Maws’ signature “refined rusticity” will be paired with the modern culinary prowess of Chefs Kamozawa and Talbot in a fun and spectacular dining event. The full menu is currently being developed, but you can be sure of courses by the Craigie On Main team and the Ideas In Food team individually, as well as special courses concocted by Tony, Alex and Aki together. The night’s dinner will be paired with a variety of libations from Maws’ hand-selected wines to Craigie’s infamous cocktails and local brews.

            A portion of the evening’s proceeds will go to the James Beard Foundation educational programs, which include continuing education classes, guided tastings, readings, conferences, children’s programs, scholarship opportunities for aspiring culinary students, and volunteer opportunities for current culinary students.         To date the celebrity chef tour has raised of 850k for the James Beard Foundation.

Craigie On Main is located at 853 Main St., in Cambridge, MA. The Celebrity Chef Tour Dinner will begin at 7 p.m. on Thursday, July 29, 2010. Tickets are $150 per person, (inclusive of wine pairings, tax, and gratuity) and can be reserved by calling Jeff Black at 720.201.1853 or by visiting http://www.celebritycheftour.com.

About Tony Maws

Tony Maws is the award-winning chef and owner behind the Northeast’s culinary gem: Craigie On Main. James Beard nominee for Best Chef Northeast (2009, 2010), and a Food & Wine Best New Chef (2005), Maws is celebrated equally for his innovative and traditional work in the kitchen, and is known for his immense talent, creativity, and rugged standards and expectations for himself and his staff, as well as the farmers and suppliers who visit him daily. “Commitment” is a key term for Maws and the entire Craigie on Main team. This commitment to the traditions of old-school farming methods— of “nose to tail, root to stem, and fins to gills” cooking—are implemented daily, combining to create a style of cuisine that can only be described as “refined rusticity.” All of Craigie on Main’s ingredients arrive each morning, and all are farmed or raised sustainably and with purpose and conscience. “It’s been part of my philosophy long before the terms ‘locavore’ or ‘farm-to-plate’ were coined,” Maws says. Maws has earned widespread attention, including being honored as “Boston’s Best Chef” by Boston magazine (while at his first restaurant Craigie Street Bistrot). He has also been featured in The Martha Stewart Show, Travel + Leisure, Gourmet, The Boston Globe, and on MSN.com, as well as NBC’s “Today” show and Fox News.

About Aki Kamozawa and H. Alexander Talbot

Aki Kamozawa and H. Alexander Talbot are the owners of Ideas in Food, LLC, a consulting business based in Levittown, PA. They met in the kitchen at Clio in Boston in 1997 and have been cooking together ever since. Kamozawa and Talbot specialize in sharing techniques for creativity with restaurants, food-service companies, and home kitchens using modern ingredients, equipment, and innovative approaches to food. The business grew out of their blog, Ideas in Food (www.ideasinfood.com). In addition to their one on one work with individual chefs, they have consulted with companies such as the No. 9 Group in Boston, Fourth Wall Restaurants in New York City, Frito Lay, and Unilever. The pair also writes for Popular Science online. Their column, titled “Kitchen Alchemy,” focuses on scientific explorations in the kitchen. Kamozawa and Talbot published an article about garlic in Santé magazine in March 2009. They contributed an essay to the anthology Food and Philosophy, which was published in November 2007. In addition to this they have been featured in articles for The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Food & Wine, Saveur, and many others. Their newest book, “Ideas In Food– Great Recipes and Why They Work” (Clarkson Potter) will be released in December 2010.

About the Celebrity Chef Tour benefiting the James Beard Foundation:

Since its inception in 2004, the Celebrity Chef Tour benefiting the James Beard Foundation has become a favorite event for both the chefs to participate in and guests to attend, and has raised more than $825,000 for the James Beard Foundation. The Celebrity Chef Tour brings James Beard Foundation Award winners and other celebrity chefs to private clubs, resorts, and other exclusive venues around the country for spectacular dining events. The tour was created to benefit the James Beard Foundation and to promote the culinary arts across America.

Proud sponsors of the Celebrity Chef Tour benefiting the James Beard Foundation include, Mercedes Benz, Stella Artois, and VisaSignature®. Partners include Wine & Spirits magazine, Certified Angus Beef, Hudson Valley Foie Gras, Fiji Water, and Forever Cheese.

About the James Beard House and the James Beard Foundation:

James Beard is widely recognized as the father of American culinary arts. Throughout his life, he pursued and advocated the highest standards, and served as a mentor to emerging talents. The James Beard House is where Beard lived, taught, and welcomed friends and colleagues who shared his love for food. Shortly after he passed away, a group of friends sparked a drive to save his home and create a living memorial and a center for the culinary community. It has become what Founding President Peter Kump envisioned it could be: “a culinary place to see and taste the work of this country’s most talented chefs, winemakers, cookbook authors, and teachers.” The James Beard House’s sister nonprofit organization, the James Beard Foundation, the mission of which is to “celebrate, preserve, and nurture America’s culinary heritage and diversity in order to elevate the appreciation of our culinary excellence,” furthers Mr. Kump’s vision by providing scholarships and volunteer opportunities for aspiring culinary professionals, educating today’s youth on the importance of good food and essential nutrition.

For more information, please see www.celebritycheftour.com.

###

For more information, or to schedule an interview, please contact Jessica Rodriguez

at Wagstaff Worldwide: 212.227.7575 or jessica@wagstaffworldwide.com

Dads are hard to buy for, and they don’t really need more grilling tools, business ties, or sleeves of golf balls. This year, whisk your father away to Craigie On Main where veteran dad of two-year-old Charlie Maws, and acclaimed chef Tony Maws is determined to make this holiday anything but ho-hum.

Craigie On Main has several dining options available:

Dinner will feature a dad-centric, four-course meal designed by Craigie’s cooking crew of gourmet dads. On the night’s menu will be big pieces of meat and “Flintstone”-type bones, as well as a lardo-wrapped Vermont beef tenderloin, and dessert for $75.

For brunch, a special “Papa Panino” will make its debut. The panino is comprised of pork heart sausage, garden pickle relish, provolone, and fried farm-fresh egg on ciabatta. Other brunch options include corned beef hash, steak and eggs, pancakes, grits, and the infamous Craigie brunch burgers, as well as a grilled spice-rubbed Berkshire pork chop, with a fried farm-fresh egg.

Craigie On Main also has one of the finest whiskey selections in the city from the highly sought after Buffalo Trace Antique Collection to a variety of scotch and scotch cocktails. There’s also the newly expanded beer list that includes Baird Shizuoka Natsumikan Ale (Numazu, Japan); Brasserie St. Germain, Page 24 Printemps (France), and Narragansett (Providence, RI) to name a few. 

No matter what your dad craves, Craigie On Main will make sure he’s well fed—because as we all know, the way to any daddy’s heart is through his stomach.

To make your Father’s Day brunch or dinner reservations, please call 617.497.5511 or visit www.craigieonmain.com.

We got the following email the other day which prompted a reply on a subject that’s got a lot of responsible chefs scratching our heads.  Here’s the Q and A so  you can think about your own tradeoffs.  We’ll keep updating you as we find more info to help us meet the challenge to our fisheries.

Q. “We enjoyed a wonderful meal at your restaurant this past Thursday, particularly enjoying the salmon. One member of my party had the Halibut, as you ran out of the salmon….. The waiter mentioned that the Halibut came from the Atlantic (from Maine I believe). I have since read that the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch suggests that wild caught Atlantic Halibut be “Avoided” due to over-fishing. Is Craigie aware of this suggestion? 

A. We’re definitely aware of the suggestion and the Monterey Seafood Watch. Unfortunately acting on  these advisories is not always so black and white.  The timing of this question is ironic as I just participated in a meeting with the Chef’s Collaborative on this very subject and I’ll be sitting on  a panel at their conference in Boston this fall that will touch on this and related topics (and I’ll be doing a few demos as well!).  Unfortunately there is no perfect scale we can use for fish in the local vs. sustainable argument to help us decide what to do. Just consider these options:  Small Day-boat, line-caught fish from Maine vs. Day-boat dragger fish from Gloucester vs. organically farm-raised hiramasa from Australia that flies around the world..You can see that the tradeoff isn’t obvious or easy..

Certainly the halibut population is a worthy consideration, but so is the sustainability of the local fisheries and the fishermen whose livelihood rely on a catch that is exponentially restricted now compared to just a few short years ago.  We avoid gill-netted and dragger fish, and focus on local and sustainable.  I think Monterey’s advisory can be a great guide, especially for consumers who often rely on supermarkets that might be buying from larger, long trip boats with greater by-catch issues.  

All in all it’s more than challenging, but to sum up Craigie’s bottom line – we’re proud to serve the halibut we cook at the restaurant. 

Tony Maws