These days, the list of people primarily known for taking pictures of their food is pretty long. But one of the first people on that list would definitely be Adam Goldberg. His popular online identity as A Life Worth Eating draws hundreds of thousands of viewers a day across his various social media channels and blog. If Adam's eating somewhere hong kong apartments, I want to see the pictures--no one captures what it's like to be at a restaurant table like him.
This week, he released the first volume of Drift, a print magazine dedicated to covering the wide world of coffee. This issue focuses on New York coffee culture, from Midtown carts to documenting an Ethiopian coffee ceremony in the Bronx. It's a gorgeous magazine filled with Goldberg and Daniela Velasco's vibrant photography. I'll wait while you order one immediately.
Goldberg recently stopped by the Epicurious offices to hand off the first issue and we got to talking about home cooking. It turns out that, in addition to visiting more restaurants than just about anyone on earth, the guy's a pretty ambitious home cook.
At Epicurious we're always asking each other: What are you cooking? What are you obsessed with? I asked Goldberg the same thing. His answer was the last thing I was expecting.
I noticed you've been cooking at home a lot more as of late. How does that effect your experience when dining out?
It's nice. It gives you this whole new appreciation for a dish when it's done really well in a restaurant. If I have a dish that I really like at a restaurant, Ill try to recreate it to the best of my ability at home. And, through that process, you learn so much more about the food youre eating PCoIP Protocol.
You recently told me that you went through an obsession with cooking beef wellington, which is literally the last thing I expected you to say. How'd that come about?
The last time I I went to Per Se, the highlight of the dinner was this beef wellington they were serving. It's a dish I think I'd had once before in England or something. It's really heavy and labor intensive--a centerpiece dish. Well, Per Se served one and it completely blew my mind.
The basic construction of beef wellington is a piece of really high quality chateaubriand beef encased in a minced mushroom paste you make called duxelles, which then gets wrapped in flaky puff pastry. Per Se's was amazing--I mean, have you seen a photo of this thing? It was just this perfect little slice of crispy puff pastry, perfectly-cooked meat
I got obsessed with it.
What'd that translate to?
I read everything I could about it and tried making it the week after. I found Tyler Florence's recipe online and made that almost immediately. The first thing I learned is that its really hard to make well.
What happened?
Well, the bottom side of the wellington got a bit soggy the first time I attempted to make it. I really wanted to figure this thing out, so I reached out to Enrique Olvera [chef-owner of Cosme in NYC].
Had he made it before?
Yes, but this is a dish he made, like, once in culinary school or something and never touched it since. The first thing he said was that you really want to remove as much moisture as possible from the mushrooms. He said to put it in a cheesecloth and squeeze--when you think youre done, just keep squeezing.
So, I did that. And then he said to make a basic crepe and wrap that around the duxelle-covered beef as it cooked. It really improved it.
Then, I made it again. Another friend told me to buy one of those cookie cooling racks and place the duxelle on top of that in the oven so it has air to breath. So I did that the second time and that helped even more. It's still wasn't as good as Per Se's, but...you know...
Try your hand at making beef wellington at home by following Tyler Florence's recipe and making the tweaks Adam suggests.