A Demo of Cool Kitchen Tricks.

Part of my voluntary education at FCI includes attending chef demos. Chef demos happen all the time. There are two just this week alone! There is a huge amount of variety in the type of chefs who give the demos, some are current teachers, graduates, celebrity chefs, as well as the topic of the demo.

Today I went to my first demo! It was awesome. The auditorium is small, holds about 40 people and you have to get there early if you want a seat otherwise there is some standing room. I went straight from work and was able to get a close spot in the second row.

The demo was given by Master Chef Nils Norén, Vice President of Culinary Arts at FCI with his very enthusiastic sous chef who's name I forgot. But anywho , Chef Nils has been on Top Chef. See Video He had a lot of fun stuff for the demo some of which I will briefly show you here.

Champagne Saber. (take a knife and open up a champagne bottle, the top of the bottle is sliced off but if you have skill there is no shattering of the glass and very very little bubbling... observe)

Here is the video I took at the demo. That's me going 'oooooohhhh' in the background. It was completely impressive and now i'm gonna practice at home until I can do it too.


We learned about the cutting edge techniques which involved using a centrifuges to separate nut oils and nut paste. I tasted the most delicious, clean, flavorful pistachio nut oil and hazelnut butter. It put everything else to shame!!!


Sorry this next picture is off in color and doesn't look to appetizing but I wanted to post it anyway to show you another part of the demo. There is a specific type of enzyme, humans have it in their bodies, and when used in cooking, it can bind together ANY two types of protein. So Chef Nils made us "fake bacon". It was strips of veil with strips of scallops so the veil looked like the meat of bacon and the scallops looked like the fat in bacon.

Here is another not so appetizing picture while it was being cooked, but at least you can clearly see the strips I'm trying (and failing) to describe. I wish I could remember the name of that protein he used. Starts with an A something... anyway it gets kinda technical and boring so enough. Tasted DELICIOUS!

He spent some time using a vacuum, yeah like a vacuum that sucks air out. But obvs it looks a lot different then your normal Hoover Vac. The vacuum in conjunction with the centrifuge is used to make clarified sauces such as clarified strawberry sauce. Normally making a clarified fruit sauce is very time consuming and has a low product yield percentage. However this method is much faster and uses nearly 99 percent of each berry. I think it will be a while though before many restaurant kitchens have a centrifuge.

But back to the food... Chef Nils took the clarified strawberry sauce, mixed it with some champagne, gave it a little extra carbonation and served it to us in champagne glasses which he had chilled using liquid nitrogen.

Finally he made us an arrowroot sauce, with scalliots infused with fresh apple juice and an urchin pate served with some pork tenderloin. Just your run of the mill boring stuff

Oh yeah and for dessert... I almost forgot. Onion ice cream, eh I could live without it but still a pleasant surprise considering it was onions. And the most delicious, herb ice cream with more clarified strawberry sauce (pictured below). The herbs were chopped up and then pureed with liquid nitrogen before being folded into the ice cream. Heaven might exist.


A final note: I promise to learn how to use my camera so that these pictures stop looking off color. just keep in mind the plates the food is served on are white so everything is kinda rosey, but not in a good way. Anyway sorry I will do better.