Knives at Dawn

by Andrew Friedman

  But for all his motivation, Hollingsworth struggled with the “detail work.” He had turned artichokes, blanched tomatoes, butchered fish, but had never been shown “100 percent the proper way to do it.” He was also somewhat awed by the overwhelming respect everybody demonstrated for the food, from Keller and Lee to the men and women who shuttled the finished dishes out to the guests.

  Sheer determination and raw talent had gotten him through: Hollingsworth would often be the first one on the property, arriving ahead of the official schedule, queasy with nervousness. To this day, when Hollingsworth glides in before sunrise, parking his Toyota 4Runner along Washington Street and walking to the restaurant, the earthy bouquet of dewy grass and wet leaves trigger a Pavlovian sensation of nausea for him.

  It was his determination, evidenced even in his stalker-like follow-up after trailing at the restaurant, that drew Keller to him in the first place: “When I think about what it is you look for in somebody, it is not necessarily their talent or their resumé. It is their determination and desire. Somebody who really has a strong desire. People talk about passion all of the time and passion is a great thing, but we all know that passion ebbs and flows. You can’t be passionate every day. I look for someone who has desire because for me it is always there … that was something that I recognized in Timmy early on.”

  The dedication paid off: Hollingsworth was promoted from commis to cheese, which he worked for seven and a half months, then to garde manger for more than two years, during which time he was dispatched to New York City as part of the team that helped open Per Se. Back in Yountville, he was steadily moved up the line, working every station on his way to sous chef.

  Remembrances of those days put Hollingsworth in a more receptive frame of mind, a student’s frame of mind, and the shift in perspective produced a change of heart. By the time he returned to the West Coast late Friday night, November 28, he had opened up to the possibility of some conventional competition plating.

  “It’s hard not to do some [of that],” he said. “I think that’s what might win.” Hollingsworth’s conversion also came from reflecting on the chain of titans that had led to this year’s American team—Paul Bocuse, Daniel Boulud, Thomas Keller. You don’t mix in that company selfishly, he reckoned, and you don’t take for granted the amount of money that had been raised, either. Though the conventional wisdom is that one should—must, even—cook from the heart, Hollingsworth was recognizing the inherent dilemma unique to his situation. “I think it’s very different from when Gavin went,” he said. “I think the pressure was more on himself. Now it’s like all these people are doing these things for me, so I want to win for them … if you step back and look at it, it’s like all this support has been raised for me.… Maybe I can’t do what I want. Maybe I want to compromise a little bit.”

  He had even found a way to relate this to his day-to-day work: “If you’re the chef of a restaurant,” he said, “You have to do what the guests want—that’s who pays your bills.”

  Back in Yountville, refreshed from his time away, a set of cookbooks under his arm, and a new peace with the unique demands of cooking for the Bocuse d’Or, his one and only short-term goal was to have something, anything, conceptualized. After weeks of agonizing over what would be good enough, and ending up with nothing, he decided that, “I just have to sit down and write this dish.” It almost didn’t matter what the composition was; he could always change it later.

  Hollingsworth also undertook a training regimen called CrossFit, a Web-based program that a member of Laughlin’s family had recommended to him over Thanksgiving. The site provides users with a different high-intensity twenty-minute workout each day; for example, do as many push-ups as possible in twenty seconds. Repeat eight times. Then do the same things with sit-ups. One day, the three exercises were lifting a bar over his head, rowing on a machine, and jumping up and off a platform. He enjoyed the workouts, and found them useful, as opposed to Rosetta Stone, which he dropped about this time because its lessons weren’t specific enough to what his needs would be in Lyon.

  With a new wind at his back, by Tuesday, December 2, Hollingsworth had a rough version of the fish platter conceptualized. The centerpiece, focusing on the one finfish, the cod, would be based on the cod en persillade that had been on his list of possibilities for Orlando. He would slice the cod, layer it with a scallop mousse, wrap it in plastic, cook it in a water bath, then paint it with mustard and breadcrumbs, similar to a dish they sometimes served at The French Laundry. He was also leaning toward one of the garnishes that he had considered but that also had not made the cut for Orlando, a fried cod brandade with tomato marmalade.

  For the other garnishes, he had ideas, but they were all tainted—if such a thing is possible—by The French Laundry’s elegant simplicity. He just couldn’t purge his orientation from his system as he conceptualized garnishes such as a ragoût of dried and fresh wax beans, tomato diamonds, and vegetable brunoise. Such bean preparations are referred to at The French Laundry as a “cassoulet,” a very loose adaptation of the classic French winter bean stew, and the idea was that it would be scattered about (“a drop here and there”) on the individual plates presented to the judges. No doubt those would have been delectable, but they were not intricate enough for competition, and by this point in his crash course, he didn’t need anybody else to tell him that.

  The custard he’d been imagining was coming into focus as a square or rectangle tinged bright green with spring garlic, which would no longer rest on top but instead would be infused into the custard itself, served on a brioche melba toast with accompanying flavors of tomato compote and caramelized cippoline onion. He was also considering a deep-fried piece of shirako (cod sperm … yes, you read right), as well as cod roe wrapped in bacon, cooked sous vide, then crisped and finished with a Niçoise olive sauce.

  That was his basic fish concept. “Things might change,” he said. “It’s just on paper now.” All he wanted was to have something to work with, a draft he could revise and edit. The custard, for example, could be made with just about anything, and the shirako could be fried or piped out of an ISI gun—a canister fitted with a nozzle and powered by a CO2 cartridge that aerates wet preparations like whipped cream. What was important was that he had a first draft that he could work over and revise, then worry about plating.

  Hollingsworth’s goal for the immediate future could not have been more straightforward: Get together with Guest, “find a day and do it after work. Prepare two plates, and we’ll eat it.”

  IRONICALLY, AS HOLLINGSWORTH WAS picking up speed, the team back in New York City was growing ever more anxious. According to Pelka, Boulud so innately trusted Keller, his standards, and his staff that panic hadn’t quite set in, but because Hollingsworth had largely gone radio silent, the East Coast contingent had no idea what he was up to. Hollingsworth insists he didn’t mean anything by it; there were no formal systems of reporting in place, no instructions on whom to update or when, and so he was going about his preparation on his own schedule and in his own way.

  Having reached more or less the same conclusion, on Thursday, December 11, Jennifer Pelka decided to establish a new world order. She sent Hollingsworth the following e-mail, with the subject line Bocuse d’Or USA Training Update:

  Hi, Timothy and Adina,

  I hope everything is going well out in California! Can you please send on an update to the Board and the rest of the group in regards to your progress in anticipation of the competition? Everyone is eager to hear how the training is going, and we are all certainly at your disposal for help. Ideally, we would like to get a formal update every two weeks until the competition, covering the following:

  Independent training sessions: how often, how are they structured, what have you been focusing on?

  Training sessions with Chef Henin: how often, how are they structured, what have you been focusing on?

  Goals for the next two weeks

  Proteins and garnishes: how far along
are you with the decisions? How is menu development? Photos and descriptions to date.

  Timing

  Platters and plating: aside from the MOSS smoker pieces, do you need anything?

  Additional needs before Lyon

  Needs in Lyon

  Day by day schedule in Lyon (Gavin and I are meeting tomorrow about this, and we’ll pass on our notes to you thereafter)

  Chef Henin, of course, any update notes [from] you would be greatly appreciated as well!

  Thanks,

  Jennifer

  BY FRIDAY, DECEMBER 12, Hollingsworth was having second thoughts about the fish platter. Though the main cod preparation was the same, he had decided that some of his garnishes, while “excellent” from a flavor standpoint, were perhaps too “pedestrian” and it was easy to see his point. Even the name of one garnish, cassoulet, suggested adaptable, rustic cooking, not the formal, structured cuisine that impresses competition judges.

  He realized that he’d have to return to the drawing board.

  On the other hand, it was about this time that he also was gaining some traction on his meat platter, which began with a surge of inspiration not at The French Laundry and not at the Bocuse House, but at home one night in Napa, when he was cooking dinner for Laughlin.

  As an accompaniment for steak and salad, he decided to make pommes dauphinoise, a classic French dish of scalloped potatoes and cream. Though he hadn’t had it in a long time, it was a technique that was seared into his memory, taught to him by former French Laundry chef de cuisine Eric Ziebold: thinly slice potatoes on a mandoline, then bring some heavy cream to a boil and season it with salt, pepper, thyme, and garlic. Add potato slices one at a time, shaking the pan to ensure that each is well coated in cream. As you work, the natural starch in the potatoes thickens the cream even further. Hollingsworth poured the creamy potatoes into a vessel, and baked it until it was nicely golden brown on top, with the cream bubbling up around the sides.

  “I hadn’t had it in so long,” Hollingsworth remembers. “You take a bite of it, and it’s so good.”

  Hollingsworth got to thinking: you don’t see this dish very often in restaurants, and if you do, it’s not usually made all that well. Before long, he’d thought up a Bocuse d’Or–appropriate version: turn the potato on a vegetable slicer, cut uniform rectangles from the ribbons, cook them in cream, and then layer them into some kind of baking vessel. Once baked, the preparation could be unmolded and cut into shapes, even served atop a pommes Maxim (thin potato rounds, tossed in clarified butter, and baked together to a crisp in overlapping decorative shapes) to make it easy to lift off a platter. Complementary ingredients could be added; at the moment, he was thinking of punching out cylinders of pommes dauphinoise, wrapping them in carrot for color, and topping them with a poached quail egg and chopped chives. Gee, maybe he was getting the hang of this competition thing after all.

  In addition to the pommes dauphinoise, Hollingsworth soon devised a working collection of garnishes for the beef platter. The centerpiece was still a blank, but if all the other components were in place as they turned the corner into the New Year, he wasn’t worried about being able to weave the preparation of the final element into his and Guest’s game plan.

  One of the garnishes he was most excited about made use of that smoke glass Kaysen was so taken with. Convinced that the smoke would be a crowd-and judge-pleasing flourish, he wanted badly to include something like it on his platter. Moreover, he had to use the glass or a similar vessel because he was committed to those circular light panels Tihany had incorporated into the platter’s design. His first thought was to smoke braised beef cheeks, and accompany them with a brunoise of cabbage, apple, and onion. Another idea he had was to transform one cut of beef, curing the calotte (beef cap) from the côte de boeuf into bresaola, or air-dried seasoned beef.

  Hollingsworth didn’t have much experience with curing, but Devin Knell had been experimenting quite a bit with it during the fall of 2008, and was set up for curing at Ad Hoc. (Hollingsworth had also done some curing himself in the wine room at The French Laundry to good but not great effect.) For the moment, he was planning to cure the calotte with salt, pepper, and sugar, starting at three different times to give him three levels of intensity to choose from, then use the cured meat in a riff on eggs benedict: on a base of fried brioche, he would lay a piece of compressed spinach (made by repeatedly Cryovacing the green with salt and olive oil), wrap the bresaola around that, and top it with a circulator-cooked quail egg that was filling in for the Benedict’s poached chicken egg. (Cooking the egg in a circulator would result in a perfectly round orb and make both the yolk and the white seductively runny.) For a finishing touch, he planned to make a truffle hollandaise and pipe it out of an ISI gun, the introduction of air alleviating the vinegary richness, then top the whole thing with sliced truffles.

  Centerpiece concepts eluded him, but he had options: if he didn’t come up with a better idea, he could always bring the bacon-lined tenderloin from Orlando back for an encore. That left the rest of the côte de boeuf, which demanded a high-impact presentation. It hadn’t come to him yet, but if everything else worked, he had little doubt he’d be in good shape.

  GRAY SKIES AND A persistent drizzle greeted Yountville on the morning of Tuesday, December 16, but Hollingsworth and Guest didn’t mind; they were too excited about the next four days, which they would devote entirely to recipe work.

  By eleven o’clock, the two of them were in the Bocuse House kitchen, grinning at each other.

  “I’m excited,” said Guest.

  “Long time coming,” said Hollingsworth.

  The two of them stood over the rolling prep tables in the center of the kitchen, dressed in their blue aprons, an important symbol of life at The French Laundry. The blue apron, worn by commis and apprentices in French kitchens, is worn by everybody during prep time at The French Laundry, a symbol of their willingness to help each other and to always be learning. Hollingsworth and Guest wore the blue aprons in the competition kitchen in Orlando and planned to wear them in Lyon, at least until the time came to plate up. “It means French Laundry,” said Guest of the apron. It’s a “comfort,” said Hollingsworth, “Not as much, but like the American flag is the symbol of our country, the blue apron is the symbol of values.”

  Hollingsworth showed his commis illustrations of the garnishes he’d been imagining and reimagining, then they broke from their huddle and started gathering ingredients and equipment, getting ready to cook for the rest of the day. What they did not do was discuss who would do what. Because they worked together at The French Laundry, they already knew what their division of labor would be: Guest would do all vegetable prep and Silpat work, and Hollingsworth would do all the butchering and the cooking of the proteins, as well as any finishing work that required particular finesse.

  One way in which things differed from The French Laundry in this satellite kitchen was the constant presence of music. Hollingsworth doesn’t function well in quietude, and so even on this formative day, he put music on the sound system, opting for something relatively low-key: CDs featuring music mixes from Keller’s casual restaurant Ad Hoc: “One Step Up” by Bruce Springsteen, “Bye Bye, Blackbird” by Ray Charles, “Wild Horses” by the Rolling Stones, “Could You Be Loved” by Bob Marley. By Hollingsworth’s standards, this was easy listening—a mellow way to slide into the long week ahead.

  The first order of business was to try that pommes dauphinoise. Guest peeled the potatoes, turned them on the vegetable slicer, par-cooked them in boiling water, drained them, and cut them into squares, arranging them in stacks like wonton wrappers on a sheet pan, which she brought over to Hollingsworth at the stove.

  Now the teaching commenced. Hollingsworth poured milk and cream into a large, stainless-steel pan, added salt, pepper, thyme sprigs, and a clove of garlic, and brought it to a simmer. Then he had her taste it, so that she’d know what to look for when she made it—how salty the cream should be, how much t
he thyme flavor should have infused the liquid before the sprigs were removed and discarded, and so on.

  One at a time, Hollingsworth added squares of potato to the mixture. Doing it that way ensured that it never lost its simmer and would continue to thicken. As the potatoes piled up to the top, Hollingsworth added more cream, then agitated them gently with a spatula to help the liquid find its way between the layers of potato.

  Hollingsworth then transferred the potatoes to a wide, deep stainless-steel bowl. At the ready, he had a small rectangular pan with deep sides and upward-facing handles. Both of them snapped on latex gloves and as Guest looked on, Hollingsworth put layers of potato into the pan, spooning liquid between the layers. After a few layers, he turned to Guest:

  “Got it?”

  She nodded and he stepped aside as she stepped in, or “cut in,” if you refer back to Keller’s original description of The Dance. As usual, Guest worked faster than Hollingsworth, with quick, urgent, compact movements. Although the dishes were still works in progress, Guest treated them as though they were being prepared for competition, working as fast as she could without sacrificing neatness. It was a nod to their accelerated timeline. “I shouldn’t start going faster when I am practicing [fully developed dishes] for Lyon,” she said. “I need to do it now.” Just as Hollingsworth was incorporating preparations she knew from The French Laundry into the platters, Guest was treating each visit to the kitchen as a chance to improve her efficiency. She was also under instructions from Hollingsworth to make sure to take on preparations at The French Laundry that resembled her Bocuse d’Or tasks so she could have more opportunities to increase her speed.

  Hollingsworth snipped open a sous-vide bag filled with veal stock, and poured the viscous brown liquid into a tall stainless-steel pot. He seasoned three pieces of beef cheek and three pieces of oxtail with salt and pepper then opened up a tin of extra virgin olive oil and heated a few tablespoons in a wide, deep sauté pan. He added the three pieces of beef cheek, searing them well, then transferred them to a paper towel–lined hotel pan. He added diced carrots, leeks, and onion (collectively referred to as a mirepoix) to the pan and sautéed them. He transferred the meat and vegetables to the pot with the veal stock, snapped on a pressure-cooker lid, depressed the button in its center to vacuum-seal it, and left it to stew.