Writing Samples pages 2-7 Sunset Magazine | February 2014 Udon with Peko-Peko chef Sylvan Brackett, with recipes pages 8 Wall Street Journal | February 2014 Wild for Buckwheat pages 9-11 7 X 7 Magazine | February 2012 Food Inc. : A profile of Bon Appétit Management Co.’s Fedele Bauccio pages 12-22 Martha Stewart Living Magazine | October 2011 Life of a Loaf: A profile of baker Chad Robertson, with recipes pages 23-29 7 X 7 Magazine | December 2008 Dinner with Chez Panisse’s David Tanis, with recipes
Buckwheat-Hazelnut Sablés Makes about 4 dozen cookies Add 1 cup toasted hazelnuts to a food processor and pulse until finely and uniformly chopped. Transfer to a medium bowl, add ¾ cup buckwheat flour and stir to combine. Set aside. In an electric mixer fitted with paddle attachment, combine 14 tablespoons butter, ½ cup superfine sugar, 1 teaspoon lemon zest, 1 teaspoon orange zest and ½ teaspoon kosher salt. Turn mixer to medium-high and beat until butter is light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Reduce speed to low and slowly add 2 large egg yolks. Scrape down bowl. Add half flour mixture and mix until just combined, scraping down bowl, then add remaining flour mixture and continue mixing until dough comes together into a ball.
Jan. 4, 2013 Jessica Battilana
Buck-Wild for Buckwheat Gluten-free, earthy and versatile, this ingredient is becoming the darling of pastry chefs around the country. Just don’t call it a grain.
BUCKWHEAT IS NOT what it seems. Though it looks like a grain and tastes like a grain, it is actually not part of the cereal family at all. Buckwheat is a nutritionally dense and gluten-free relative of rhubarb and sorrel that is eaten throughout the world. The kernels, called groats, are hulled, roasted and served as a side dish or stuffing, or ground into a bluegray flour used to make everything from traditional Breton-style crepes to Japanese soba noodles and Russian blini. Long used in savory preparations, both the groats and flour have also been embraced by pastry chefs for all kinds of sweets. “Buckwheat has a full frontal flavor that I try to accentuate, not hide,” said Shuna Lydon, the pastry chef at Calliope restaurant, in New York. “It’s earthy, assertive and unique.” At Calliope, Ms. Lydon created a trifle of cream biscuits made with buckwheat and
all-purpose flours, layered with plums, blackberries and whipped cream. She has also used buckwheat in combination with milk chocolate, an unusual pairing she finds complementary. “Buckwheat is a totally underutilized ingredient,” Ms. Lydon said. “You just need to find someone it can dance with at the party.” At McCrady’s, Mr. Brock serves a buckwheat ice cream made by steeping toasted groats in a custard base. At Yusho, in Chicago, chef-owner Matthias Merges takes things several steps further. He begins by infusing the ice cream base with both toasted groats and Sichuan peppercorns. Then he serves a scoop on a cone made with buckwheat flour, and sprinkles it with a hard caramel flavored with a buckwheat infusion. Mr. Merges makes the latter by cooking toasted groats in sugar and letting the whole mass cool and set before crushing the caramelized groats to make a crunchy garnish.
Form dough into a round log about 14 inches long, then wrap tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerate 1 hour.
At Tartine Bakery and Bar Tartine, both in San Francisco, Chad Robertson uses buckwheat flour in combination with other flours in many of his breads. And he recently developed a recipe for a buckwheat sablé cookie especially for his wife and co-owner, Elisabeth Prueitt, who is gluten-intolerant. Delicate and crumbly, enhanced with toasted hazelnuts and lemon and orange zests, the sablé is a perfect bite-size showcase for this grain that isn’t, really.
Preheat oven to 325 degrees and line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Slice log into ¼-inch coins and transfer to prepared baking sheets, spaced about ½ inch apart. Bake until cookies are golden brown and fragrant, about 15 minutes. Let cool on pans for 1 minute, then transfer to a wire rack and let cool completely.
ALICE WATERS MIGHT BE A HOUSEHOLD NAME, BUT FLYING UNDER THE RADAR IS A MAN WHO’S DEDICATED HIMSELF TO A SUSTAINABLE AGENDA FOR 25 YEARS. IN CHARGE OF 136.5 MILLION MEALS ANNUALLY, FEDELE BAUCCIO THINKS BIG.
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Bon Appétit Management CEO Fedele Bauccio in the cafeteria at the University of San Francisco. 2010 MONTH
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he entire time we’re touring the University of San Francisco kitchen, which produces 4,000 meals a day for students and faculty, Fedele Bauccio holds my hand. It’s unconscious, but as he gets more excited—pointing out boxes of locally grown vegetables in the walk-in refrigerators and stopping at one of the food stations to taste the chile verde—his grip tightens. The 69-year-old CEO of food service company Bon Appétit Management moves so quickly that hand-holding is necessary to keep up. His company operates cafeterias that bring the local-sustainable movement to more than 400 venues nationwide—from private colleges, including Duke University and University of Pennsylvania, to museums such as the Getty Center in Los Angeles, to corporations, among them Twitter and eBay, to restaurants such as Public House and Mijita in SF. Here at USF, the food includes lasagna layered with Bellwether Farms ricotta, marbled and grassfed strip steaks grilled to order, desserts made with fair-trade Cordillera chocolate, and an Asian noodle station that uses artisan tofu sourced from Emeryville’s Hodo Soy. Usually when people think of food pioneers in the Bay Area, they recall restaurant owners like Alice Waters and writers such as Michael Pollan. From their private gardens to house-filtered sparkling water, professional kitchens get big love for menus going small-batch and organic. But once a locally born company gets big enough to, say, distribute to grocery store chains, they usually lose their darling status. The fact that Bon Appétit is a large, for-profit corporation—one that, according to Bauccio, brought in more than $700 million this past year from facilities that aren’t accessible to the general public (employees-only cafeterias, for example)—means that Bauccio often doesn’t get credit outside the industry for being a trailblazer. But let me tell you: His impact on the local-sustainable movement is big. Like 136.5-million-meals-served-just-last-year big.
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here’s nothing dreamy or heady about Bauccio, a man who was raised by Italian immigrants and grew up cooking with his mother. “I’m not a chef, but I’m a damn good cook,” he says. His face is well-lined. His voice is low and gravelly, and his energy belies his age. He moves through the kitchens and dining rooms of Bon Appétit’s cafeterias with pride and swagger, like something of an Italian cowboy in an old Western. He demands a lot of his staff, namely that everything, from the stock to the dressings, is made by scratch. He wants to know what kind of fish they’re grilling today, where the potatoes come from, how diners are liking the new vegan selections. With a fistful of plastic spoons in one hand, he works his way through the stations, tasting everything. Though incredibly savvy, at times Bauccio comes across as old-fashioned, delighting over what he perceives is the novelty of a Mediterranean station loaded with hummus and baba ghanoush, food that has gone mainstream without him even noticing. Bauccio has been at this game since 1987, when he started Bon Appétit. That’s a good 14 years before Eric Schlosser published Fast Food Nation and Michael Pollan wrote his groundbreaking story “Power Steer” for The New York Times Magazine, which put the topic
IN 1999, BON APPÉTIT LAUNCHED ITS FARM TO FORK INITIATIVE, WHICH ASKS CHEFS TO SEEK OUT 20 PERCENT OF THEIR INGREDIENTS FROM SMALL OWNEROPERATED FARMS.
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of grass-fed beef on the dinner table. Many of Bauccio’s initiatives— buying from local purveyors, using meat produced without nontherapeutic antibiotics, and purchasing sustainable seafood—were instituted far before they became common practice in restaurants here and elsewhere. “I don’t care at all that most people haven’t heard of me,” he says in regard to his under-the-radar status. “But I do want them to know that Bon Appétit Management is doing extraordinary work. We’ve led the industry, and we will continue to raise hell until we can see a more sustainable future.” Understandably, the word cafeteria—one that conjures up an image of a grim lunch lady dispensing mystery meat—is a dirty one at Bon Appétit. At all of the company’s venues, the menu changes daily, the kitchen is helmed by executive chefs (many with restaurant pedigrees), and locally sourced food abounds. After visiting USF, Bauccio and I drop by the employees-only Oracle cafe (“cafe” being the preferred terminology) in Redwood City. Our lunch includes grilled fish, rosy slices of beef, and a persimmon salad that could hold its own at any San Francisco restaurant. It’s here that I begin to understand how wholly Bauccio’s company has revolutionized the corporate food-service model. Well before Bauccio founded Bon Appétit, he was a student at the University of Portland, studying to be a dentist (a flash of his blue-white teeth is the only hint at the career path that wasn’t). He worked in his college cafeteria washing dishes and then graduated and went to work at Saga, a giant contract-feeding company that also ran a chain of restaurants. Disillusioned by the food that Saga served, and following a buy-out by Marriott, Bauccio and partner Ernie Collins left Saga to start Bon Appétit. To capitalize on burgeoning Silicon Valley business, he headquartered his company in Palo Alto, where it is still based today. “The contract business at that time was horrible. I saw a need in corporate America to create chef-driven, restaurant-quality food,” Bauccio says. Good hours (weekends and holidays off) and salaries (high by restaurant standards) have helped lure cooks from notable restaurants to Bon Appétit’s cafes. At Oracle, the food program is overseen by chef Robbie Lewis, previously the chef at the nowshuttered Bacar and a former executive chef at Jardinière. He took the job, he says, because he was impressed with the facilities but admits he thought it would be an easy gig, an idea he was disabused of early on. “There are different issues [than in a restaurant kitchen],” says Lewis. “But the pressures—to make good food, to manage staff—are tremendous.” Bauccio also is wise enough to give chefs the freedom to cook the food they want to cook and lets labor costs hover around 6 to 10 percent higher than the restaurant average. “We don’t tell the chefs what to make,” says Bauccio. “I pay 19,500 people a living wage, and this company impacts a hell of a lot more people than that.”
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fter lunch, we head to Bon Appétit’s Palo Alto headquarters. In Bauccio’s sleek new BMW—one of the few CEO-like things about him—we’re so deep in conversation about his quest for good flavor that Bauccio misses the exit and then loops around and nearly misses it a second time. We talk about how in the early ’90s, his pursuit of good ingredients forced Bauccio to examine some inconvenient truths. Back then, meat was almost universally pumped full of antibiotics, and people hadn’t yet come to terms with the fact that the oceans are being fished to extinction. Bauccio found that sourcing more sustainable ingredients, especially locally, was going to be a challenge. For example, in 2005 alone, the last year for which they have records, Bon Appétit purchased 8 million eggs. Buying on such a grand scale—and preparing food at student- and FEB RUARY 2012
FROM LEFT: Bauccio’s mode of transportation in San Francisco; at USF with Holly Winslow, the resident district manager of Bon Appétit.
“I PAY 19,500 PEOPLE A LIVING WAGE, AND THIS COMPANY IMPACTS A HELL OF A LOT MORE PEOPLE THAN THAT.” corporate-friendly prices—continues to challenge the company, which has outstripped the industry’s ability to supply products that are as ethically and sustainably raised as Bauccio would prefer. In his office, a bright corner space decorated in a calming wabisabi Japanese style, I spot a note from Alice Waters on his desk. Bauccio and Waters were both honored last year with a Leadership Award from the James Beard Foundation. But given that Waters’ Chez Panisse is completely opposite of Bon Appétit in size and scope, I ask her if she has reservations about big business getting into the sustainability game. “It takes a super-human person like Fedele, someone who is willing to take a lot of risks. He admitted it. He can’t do everything he wants to do—that’s the unfortunate part of it. Until there’s reform at a high level, he can’t even find enough antibiotic-free meat to fulfill his needs.” Still, Bauccio’s large-scale purchasing has a big impact. In 1999, Bon Appétit launched its Farm to Fork initiative, which challenges chefs to seek out 20 percent of their ingredients from small owner-operated farms—ones that make less than $5 million in sales and are within a 150-mile radius of the chef’s kitchen. “It wasn’t easy,” Bauccio admits. “We were way ahead of our time, and no one knew who the hell we were.” Today, Bauccio’s 400 cafeterias buy approximately 20 percent of their ingredients from Farm to Forkapproved vendors, now a network of some 1,100 farms, fisheries, and artisan producers such as Martin Bournhonesque, who I spot making a delivery to Oracle from his small organic farm near Salinas. (Bournhonesque also delivers to Nopa and Bi-Rite Market.) Marin Sun Farms has also grown thanks to the company’s support: Bon Appétit buys everything the grass-fed beef producer is able to offer. Farm to Fork was just the first of the eco-friendly initiatives spearheaded under Bauccio’s direction. In many cases, he’s voiced opinions or formed policies on issues before they become a matter of public concern or interest. He was among the first to adopt a cage-free egg policy, exclusively use rBGH hormone-free milk and yogurt, and champion sustainable seafood. “Fedele always wants to be out front of the issues,” says Maisie Greenawalt, Bon Appétit’s vice president of strategy, who has worked with Bauccio for 17 of the company’s 24 years. Tireless in his determination, in 2006 Bauccio served on the FEB RUARY 2012
Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production in part to get access to factory farms, so he could see how the animals were raised. “You can’t run a company from behind a desk,” he says. “They took us to see the best of the best [factory farms]. And I couldn’t believe it—the manure lagoons alone were astonishing.” In 2009, Greenawalt was put in contact with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, who told her and Bauccio about the enslavement of workers on tomato farms in Florida. The two flew down to Immokalee to see the conditions for themselves. Just weeks after, Bon Appétit refused to buy tomatoes from farms unless they signed the company’s code of conduct, which stipulates a minimum wage and safe working conditions, including shade and water for workers. In the first season, two farms signed the code of conduct, and Bon Appétit gave them all of their business. Marion Nestle, professor in the department of nutrition, food studies, and public health at New York University, served with Bauccio on the commission. “He talks the talk, and he walks the walk,” she says. “It’s clear to people who meet him that he’s the real thing. He’s doing his own research and making up his own mind.” Most recently, Bauccio sat down with executives at a major meat company in the hopes of getting them to adopt a new model for pork production, one that addresses practices such as raising sows in restrictive gestation crates. “I told them, ‘Don’t talk to me about economics. Create a new model for production. I will buy everything you raise, and I will pay anything,’” says Bauccio. Three weeks later we’re in his office, and little progress has been made with the meat company. Bauccio, who admits his impatience, karate-chops his hands on the desk in front of him in frustration. Bauccio’s emotional stake in Bon Appétit is huge. Though his tanned face indicates otherwise, he works six days a week and plays golf—but at 5:30 a.m. on Saturdays. He drives a cherry-red Vespa around San Francisco, where he lives in Pacific Heights. Married, he has three grown sons, yet none of them live in the Bay Area or plan to join the company and take up where he will eventually leave off. “People always ask when I’m going to retire,” he says, with a mixture of incredulity and annoyance. “But when I get up in the morning, I have a million ideas. I’m excited as hell.” When I ask him if a huge for-profit corporation like Bon Appétit can be counted on to do good, Bauccio’s face clouds over. “It’s not one or the other,” he says. “We have to make a profit in order to do good.” x 7 x 7. C O M
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Who says chefs don’t cook at home? Chez Panisse’s David Tanis debunks the popular myth, just in time for the holidays. By Jessica Battilana Photography by Joe Vaughn 110 7x7sf
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t’s 11 o’clock on the morning of his holiday dinner party, and David Tanis, chef of Chez Panisse, is already in the thick of it—potatoes are frying on the stove, a pot of braising liquid containing a prehistoric-looking octopus is sitting on the counter and a pan of prawns awaits the paella pan. Ever the consummate host, he takes a break to offer me a cup of thick espresso before showing me a scrap of paper on which he’s scrawled in shorthand the complete menu he’s preparing for a dozen of his friends: squidink paella topped with Santa Barbara spot prawns; potato-and-egg tortilla; roasted piquillo peppers filled with goat cheese; pork kebabs with Arabic spices known as pinchos moruños; almonds roasted with rosemary; octopus salad; and garlicky toasts topped with anchovies. Tanis, upon first meeting, seems somewhat reserved. Yet, over the course of a day spent at his bungalow in the Berkeley Hills—which he shares with longtime partner Randal Breski and their nine-yearold Venice-born fox terrier, Arturo—I catch him breaking into song (in Spanish), dancing (to jazz, with old friend Davia Nelson, the coproducer behind the publicradio program Hidden Kitchens) and exclaiming over a meal of his own creation with disarming enthusiasm (“Now that,” he crows, setting down a platter of paella, “is abbondanza!”). Anyone hungry for who has ever been more? visit intimidated by the 7x7.cOm and click on “eat very thought of a big+drink” for name chef would be the recipes. charmed by Tanis, who saves his bravado for his food—which speaks loudly, and well, on his behalf. Tanis has been chef at Chez Panisse since the early ’80s, sharing duties with Jean-Pierre Moullé. They split the year between them—six months on for each, followed by six months off. Tanis spends his away time in Paris, in an apartment he
ALL THE FIXINGS (clockwise from top left): Anchovy toasts are a quick and humble snack; this is a menu made for casual entertaining—Chez Panisse cooks Nico Monday and Amelia O’Reilly dig in standing up, no place settings required; Tanis’s philosophy is to keep things simple—rosemary-roasted almonds and lengths of Spanish chorizo are this chef’s idea of an hors d’oeuvre; gently simmered octopus emerges tender, not chewy. (Opposite): The octopus gets its finishing touches—pickled onions and a sprinkling of pímenton de la vera, a smoky Spanish paprika.
IN THE GLASS
The first rule of a good party? Keep the drinks flowing. Here’s our how-to.
WhiTe To sTaRT
Then a BiG sPanish ReD
oR a Glass of sheRRY
anD foR a laTe-niGhT siP ...
Tanis likes to serve spanish whites, such as Albariño or Txakolina—an unusual white from the Basque region of northern spain that, he says “is just fun to drink”—with this menu. He recommends the 2006 Do ferreiro Albariño ($25) or a Txakolina such as Ameztoi Getariako Txakolina ($20), both of which go well with seafood.
A spanish red would be a natural pairing with this rustic menu, such as the 2005 Bodegas Condado de Haza Tinto Ribera del Duero ($24) or the 2004 Bodegas Muga Reserva Rioja ($26), both of which have enough body, minerality and fruit to stand up to cured meats, rich cheeses and garlic.
sherry is a popular beverage at tapas bars throughout spain, where it is sipped at all times of the day. Tanis recommends the chilled fino variety, such as Hildago “La Gitana” Manzanilla ($12) or Lustau Puerto fino ($15). A good dry sherry is nice for pairing with the Manchego; try Lusata “Los Arcos” Amontillado ($15).
A lager-style beer wouldn’t be out of place with this menu. Cruzcampo is a popular spanish variety, but Dos Equis would be a good substitute. Also nice to have on hand: a bottle of J&B Whisky ($17.49), a Tanis favorite and good for taking the chill off a winter evening. Wines and whisky available at K&L Wine Merchants, klwines.com
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and Breski have kept since 1991. In addition to his chef duties, Tanis also published his first cookbook, A Platter of Figs (Artisan) in September. The book is broken into 24 menus that, taken together, underscore Tanis’ food philosophy (“simple is best”) and showcase the breadth of his repertoire, which runs the gamut from “Slightly All-American” to “A Simple Moroccan Supper.” Cooking at home is something Tanis does almost every day. Even after a night at the restaurant, Tanis and Breski make time, often after midnight, to share a simple meal together—tacos, maybe, or a salad or bowl of soup. As for his penchant for eating, and entertaining, at home, Tanis simply shrugs. “A lot of times, people who work in restaurants choose places [to have dinner] that are homey to them. Otherwise, they can’t really relax; they feel they’re critiquing the whole time. But for me, there’s no place homier than home.” While most home cooks might not feel at ease with a paella pan the size of a bicycle wheel, Tanis has clearly done this before. He balances it on an Indian wood-burning grill—a gift from San Francisco-based cookbook author Niloufer Ichaporia King— stoking the fire with sticks gathered from the backyard. Together with friend Nico Monday (a get the recipes, sources fellow cook at Chez Panisse), and tips for re-creating he sautées the prawns in olive this feast at 7x7.cOm oil until the shells turn rosy, (click on “eat + drink”.) removing them before proceeding to cook the onions with saffron. Then he adds the squid ink, Spanish rice and water, all the while educating me on the origins of this dish—originally a peasant meal cooked in the rice fields of Valencia, Spain, it employed such land-based ingredients as rabbit, snails and beans rather than the plethora of seafood that has come to characterize this dish. Tanis loves to cook, especially at home, even on his day off. As he writes in the introduction to his book, “I like building a meal. I believe there’s joy and amusement inherent in the cooking process, in putting the food into companionable serving vessels, in gathering in the kitchen and at the table, and in all the many little and big aesthetic decisions along the way.” The party is an
READY, SET (clockwise from top left): Tanis eschews high-tech kitchen implements in favor of simple tools, such as sharp knives, earthenware bowls and an impressive collection of mortars and pestles; the party begins with tumblers of Txakolina, a Spanish white; Arturo, the couple’s fox terrier, inspired the name of Tanis and Breski’s occasional Parisian supper club, Aux Chiens Lunatiques; membrillo (a condiment made from quince cooked with lemon and sugar) pairs perfectly with sheep’s-milk Manchego cheese; guests serve themselves from the buffet and grab a fireside seat; for his anchovy toasts, Tanis prefers to use salt-packed anchovies from Italy, which he fillets, then soaks in a bowl of warm water; Tanis and Breski keep their Berkeley bungalow minimally furnished—the open space is ideal for a gathering or impromptu dancing.
I belIeve there’s joy and amusement inherent in the cooking process. expression of this joy: Tanis putters around in the kitchen all day, roasting almonds with rosemary and olive oil until crisp, flipping the tortilla with an acumen that shows off his skills and charging Monday and Breski with the task of stuffing the piquillo peppers. As the first guests begin to arrive, Breski refills my glass of sherry, adds a log to the fireplace and puts plates on the table. The food, arranged so artfully that it resembles a still life, is all intended to be served at room temperature—there’s no last-minute fussing in the kitchen. “You don’t need to set the table, and there’s no real beginning or end to the meal. It’s perfect for a group,” says Tanis. No formal announcement marks the meal’s start either, but there’s no need—the guests gravitate to the well-laden table, cutting slices of cheese and chorizo, anointing their paella with dollops of aïoli and digging into an extraordinary feast that, at least in Tanis’ world, is a perfectly ordinary occurrence. x DEC/JAN 2009 7x7.COM
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