RISING - Carmen Gonzalez

chef profile:
AS SEEN IN
CARMEN GONZALEZ
RISING
FROM ASHES
BY KATELYN BELYUS
72
Intermezzo
This page: Claudia Goetzelman; Opposite: Hayes + Hayes
CHEF CARMEN GONZALEZ IS A SENSATION. A restaurant veteran
of fourteen years, she relies on her Puerto Rican heritage to shape the
peppery tastes, citrusy sights and bombastic sounds that inhabit her
meals like family members around the dinner table. At Miami’s
Carmen the Restaurant, the family was warm, passionate and
unguarded, and always critically acclaimed.
Gonzalez welcomed the praise, but it also struck a nerve. “I realized
I had a huge responsibility not only to my restaurant, but to my
clients. People would come expecting something. Every time we got a
good review, it was a little more pressure.”
This pressure worked to motivate Gonzalez, and even setbacks she
takes in stride. In August 2006, Carmen the Restaurant was ruined by
water damage during a fire upstairs, and she was forced to close. Most
people would have been discouraged.
Thankfully, Carmen Gonzalez isn’t most people.
Instead, she moved to New York, where she opened Lucy of
Gramercy within three months of her arrival. There she cooked every
day, moving from adobos and marinades to spices with the confidence
of a woman as comfortable with her ingredients as she is with family.
For Gonzalez, food has always been a way of life. As a child growing up in Puerto Rico, she accompanied her mother on Saturday mornings to the Crashboat, a well-known beach. A local
woman would wait for her fisherman husband to haul in his fresh catch of snappers and groupers. “She would clean the fish
right there. She’d take the fish, cut it, and she had a big cast iron pot in the sand, over wood. She’d throw the fish into the pot
and fry it right there, then serve it with a few tostones (fried plantains) on a purple plate,” Gonzalez says.
“When I dream of eating—if I had the chance to eat anything tonight—that would be it.”
Lucy of Gramercy retained the familial Puerto Rican charm that has made Gonzalez a star. “My food is American cuisine with
a Puerto Rican flair. That means that all the influence is from Puerto Rico and not anywhere else.” It also means that she serves
Puerto Rican classics such as sofritos (spicy, fragrant sauces), gandules (pigeon peas) and pork.
Though the menu at Lucy didn’t offer
the purple-plate-option, Gonzalez is
nevertheless quite fond of her cooking. “I
love all the stuff on my menu, because
they are my creations. I can tell you that
the most popular tends to be the lobster
and avocado terrine. The shrimp pionono is one of my favorites, and I love
the pork chop, the snapper and the short
ribs.” These are her favorite foods, and
the foods she plans to serve her guests at
the soon-to-open Bar Picadera, a new
concept restaurant that will introduce
her favorite Puerto Rican street foods to
a wider audience.
It all sounds like some very tall
orders for a chef standing at a height
of just five feet, but tall orders are what
Gonzalez has built her career on. In
fact, Gonzalez is recognized as a giant
not only within the restaurant industry, but also the philanthropic community. It began as an extension of cooking: “I think that chefs are very giving
people. It’s one of the reasons that
we’re chefs—what we’re doing is giving, literally, certain pleasure to certain
people every day. I’m extremely appreciative for the things that I have and
the talent I’ve been given. I’d feel selfish if I didn’t try to help others at least
a little bit.”
Chef Carmen Cooks for the Cure is
an organization that raises money for
financially disadvantaged women with
cancer. Feeding the Mind goes one
step further, teaching women “how to
fish.” “FTM was created specifically as
a culinary program in which disadvantaged women could participate
and hopefully get out of the black
cycle of life.”
But Chef Gonzalez tries not to focus
on the negative. She is humble and
pleasant, but confident, promising that
at Bar Picadera, “You will have a great
experience and you will learn why
Puerto Rican food is known as the
best in the Caribbean!”
Intermezzo
A few of Chef Carmen’s favorites…
PAN-SEARED SNAPPER
FILLET WITH CLAMS AND
CHORIZO STEW
SERVES 4
8
1
4
24
12
8
1
3
4
3
2
4
8
tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
cup thinly sliced leeks
cloves garlic, thinly sliced
small clams
11/2-inch slices Spanish chorizo
fingerling potatoes, steamed
tomato, diced
cups white wine
tablespoons cilantro leaves
cups fish stock
tablespoons butter
5-ounce fillets red snapper
chives, chopped, for garnish
1. Preheat oven to 350°F.
2. In a heavy-bottomed pot or Dutch oven
with a lid, heat half of olive oil over medium heat. Add leeks, garlic, clams and chorizo and cook for 2 minutes.
3. Add potatoes and tomatoes and deglaze
pan with white wine.
4. Add cilantro leaves and fish stock. Cover,
reduce heat, and cook until clams open,
about 4 to 8 minutes. Stir in butter.
5. Heat remaining olive oil in an oven-safe
skillet over medium-high heat. Add snapper
and cook, skin-side down, for 2 minutes.
Turn fish and transfer to oven. Bake 3 to 4
minutes, until fish flakes under light pressure.
6. To serve, arrange 6 clams around side of a
wide, shallow bowl. Mound potatoes and
chorizo in center. Place fish on potatoes,
skin side up, and sauce with remaining stew
mixture. Garnish with chives and serve.
BRAISED BARBECUE SHORT
RIBS WITH CREAMY FUNCHÉ
SERVES 4
Funché is a smooth and creamy corn pudding.
Serve ribs with Chayote Slaw (recipe follows).
For barbecue sauce
1/4 large onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1/2 cup Bacardi dark rum
1 cup ketchup
21/2 tablespoons white vinegar
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
4 tablespoons brown sugar, packed
6 tablespoons molasses
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
73
3/4
2
teaspoon salt
tablespoons tomato paste
For marinade
1 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon minced fresh rosemary
1/4 cup minced garlic
For ribs
2 pounds boneless beef short ribs
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
11/2 cups chopped onion
1 cup chopped carrots
3 tablespoons minced garlic
1 cup red wine
2 cups chicken stock
2 bay leaves
Opposite: Patricia Suau
For creamy funché
2 cups heavy cream
1 tablespoon butter
1/2 cup fine cornmeal
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1. Make barbecue sauce. In a small saucepan
over medium-high heat, combine onion,
garlic and rum. Cook onion and
garlic for 5 minutes or until onions are
translucent. Add remaining ingredients and
bring mixture to a boil. Lower heat to medium and simmer, stirring constantly, for 15
to 20 minutes.
2. Force sauce through a fine-mesh sieve
and cool.
3. Combine all marinade ingredients and
whisk thoroughly. Pour 1/2 cup marinade
over meat and refrigerate for 6 hours, or
overnight.
4. Heat oil in a large, heavy skillet or Dutch
oven over medium-high heat. Add ribs and
brown well on all sides. Remove ribs with
a slotted spoon and transfer to a plate.
5. Add onions, carrots and garlic to skillet
and cook, stirring, for 10 minutes or until
they begin to color. Add red wine and cook
until reduced by half.
6. Add chicken stock and bay leaves and
bring to a boil. Add ribs and cook at medium-low heat for 11/2 to 2 hours.
7. While ribs cook, prepare funché. Bring
heavy cream and butter to a boil in a large,
heavy saucepan. Gradually whisk in cornIntermezzo
meal. Reduce heat to medium-low and stir
constantly until thickened. Keep warm until
ready to serve.
8. Remove ribs, reserving cooking liquid,
and cover both to keep warm. At this point
ribs and cooking liquid may be refrigerated
for up to 2 days. To reheat, bring reserved
liquid to a boil and add ribs. Lower heat to
medium-low and cook for 10 minutes or
until warmed through.
9. Brush barbecue sauce on ribs and serve
with funché and Chayote Slaw, if desired.
CHAYOTE SLAW
SERVES 4
The chayote is a pale green, squash-like fruit
with a white interior. The bland, crisp flesh can
be used both raw and cooked.
1
1/4
1/4
1
1
1/4
1/4
chayote, pitted and sliced into thin
strips
medium red onion, thinly sliced
red pepper, thinly sliced
teaspoon fresh lime juice
tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
cup cilantro leaves
cup chives, cut into 1-inch pieces
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1. In a mixing bowl, combine chayote with
red onion and red pepper.
2. In a separate bowl, whisk together lime
juice with olive oil, cilantro and chives. Add
to chayote slaw, mixing well, and season
with salt and pepper.
ROASTED DUCK TOSSED
WITH CARAMELIZED
ONIONS, CILANTRO, AND
PASSION FRUIT VINAIGRETTE
SERVES 4
Note that the duck needs to marinate in adobo
sauce for two days. The onions can be made up
to a day in advance; reheat before tossing with
duck. Serve duck with corn pancakes (recipe
follows).
For adobo marinade
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/2 cup minced garlic
1/4
bunch cilantro
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
For pulled duck
duck, giblets and neck removed, rinsed
and patted dry
1/2 medium onion
1/2 bunch cilantro
1/2 medium carrot
2 bay leaves
1/2
For passion fruit vinaigrette
6 tablespoons passion fruit juice
concentrate, thawed
6 tablespoons minced shallots
8 teaspoons sherry vinegar
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
6 tablespoons canola oil
1 tablespoon cilantro leaves
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
For caramelized sweet onions
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 large Vidalia or other sweet onion,
thinly sliced
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon white vinegar
1. Make adobo. Combine all ingredients in
a medium bowl.
2. Place prepared duck in a medium bowl.
Pour marinade over duck, cover bowl and
refrigerate for 2 days.
3. Preheat oven to 250°F.
4. Pull out large pieces of fat from cavity of
duck and stuff with onion, cilantro, carrot
and bay leaves.
5. Place duck breast-side down in a roasting
pan and place in center of oven. Roast for
45 minutes, then remove pan from oven
and drain out fat. Turn duck breast-side up
and roast another 45 minutes.
6. While duck roasts, prepare vinaigrette
and onions. For vinaigrette: In a small mixing bowl, blend passion fruit juice, shallots,
sherry vinegar and Dijon mustard; gradually whisk in oil. Set aside.
7. Toss cilantro leaves with salt and pepper.
Set aside.
8. For onions: In large skillet heat oil over
75
medium-high heat. Add onions, salt and
pepper; cook, stirring frequently, about 8
minutes or until onions begin to brown.
Add vinegar. Reduce heat to medium and
simmer until vinegar reduces, stirring occasionally, about 15 minutes. Set aside.
9. Remove duck from oven, transfer to a
baking sheet and let rest until cool enough
to handle.
10. Remove and discard skin. Pull meat
from bone, keeping meat covered so it will
stay moist.
11. In a mixing bowl, toss shredded duck
with caramelized onions, vinaigrette and
cilantro leaves. Serve with Roasted Corn and
Scallion Pancakes.
ROASTED CORN AND
SCALLION PANCAKES
SERVES 4
3
2
ears corn, shucked
tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1 bunch scallions, thinly sliced
diagonally
1/2 bunch cilantro, chopped
11/2 to 2 cups flour
1 egg
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup water
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
Extra virgin olive oil, for frying
lightly coat bottom. Drop pancake mixture
1 tablespoon at a time into pan. Cook
each pancake until golden brown on both
sides.
7. Transfer pancakes to a baking sheet and
place in oven for 2 minutes or until thoroughly heated through. If serving with duck,
serve 3 pancakes per person.
CALABAZA FLAN
This page and opposite: Patricia Suau
SERVES 4
1. Preheat oven to 350°F.
2. Brush corn with olive oil and season with
salt and pepper.
3. Heat a charcoal or gas grill to mediumhigh heat. Grill corn for 3 minutes on each
side or until golden brown in color. Remove
from grill and set aside until cool enough to
handle.
4. Slice corn off cob into a mixing bowl.
Add scallions, cilantro, flour and egg and
mix thoroughly.
5. Add heavy cream, milk and half of water.
Mix until all ingredients are incorporated.
Add vegetable oil and season with salt and
pepper to taste. Add more flour if mixture is
too wet.
6. Heat a cast-iron pan over medium-high
heat. Pour in a small amount of olive oil to
Intermezzo
1
1
1
1
1
8
3
cup Bacardi Gold rum
vanilla bean, split in half
8-ounce calabaza squash
14-ounce can sweetened condensed
milk
12-ounce can evaporated milk
eggs
to 5 tablespoons sugar (depending on
sweetness of calabaza)
For caramel
1 cup sugar
For garnish
8 cinnamon sticks, optional
1. Slice open vanilla bean and scrape out
seeds with back of a paring knife. Place rum
and vanilla bean and seeds in a small
saucepan. Cook on medium-high heat until
liquid reduces to 1 teaspoon. Set aside.
2. Preheat oven to 450°F.
3. Cut calabaza into quarters, remove seeds
and place on a baking sheet. Roast for 20
minutes or until soft.
4. Remove calabaza from oven. When cool
enough to handle, peel and place in food
processor along with vanilla-infused rum
and remaining ingredients. Purée mixture
at medium speed until creamy. Check for
sweetness, adding more sugar if necessary.
5. Reduce oven temperature to 350°F.
6. Place sugar in a small skillet over medium-high heat and stir while it liquefies.
Continue stirring until sugar boils and
turns a brown color.
7. Divide caramel among four 4-ounce
ramekins. Pour flan mixture on top.
8. Place ramekins in a large roasting pan.
Pour boiling water into pan until it reaches
halfway up sides of ramekins. Bake 30 to 40
minutes, until a knife inserted in center
comes out clean.
9. Remove from oven and allow flans to cool
completely. When ready to serve, place a
plate on top of flan and invert onto plate.
Garnish with cinnamon sticks, if desired.
77
NUEVO
RICO
Food Artist Carmen Gonzalez is
putting the street food of her
native Puerto Rico on the gastronomic map. John Mariani reports.
Photos by Rebecca McAlpin.
y
Carmen Gonzalez (above) is translating the flavors of Puerto Rico for mainstream American tastes. See the checkerboard sampler (overleaf) of her dishes: (top row) creamy potatoes stuffed with charred
sirloin picadillo; yuca mofongo with bacalao guisado (mashed yuca with roasted garlic topped with codfish stewed with olives, chorizo, charred tomatoes, and sofrito); aranitas (grated green plantains
with roasted garlic); (center row) pork bites with chimichurri sauce; tostones with garlic “mojito” sauce; (bottom row) almojabanas (Manchego cheese puffs); grated yuca and chicken with spicy dipping sauce; bacalaitos (codfish fritters). Above: When it comes to entrées, Gonzalez adds Latin counterpoint to a Berkshire pork chop with a sweet plantain/goat cheese/chorizo piñon (lasagne).
Every professional chef has undergone a trial by fire on a packed
night when a line cook failed to show up. But even a veteran such
as Carmen Gonzalez was a little frantic about having to cook for
100 very hungry guests with only one line cook after three others
called in sick on a Saturday night.
“Fortunately, even after more than 20 years, I still love to jump
behind the line and cook, and take up the challenge,” she says.
“Somehow we pulled it off, from seviches and appetizers to main
courses and desserts. Actually I felt all charged up. It was a mad
rush, and we did what we had to do.”
Gonzalez—all 4 foot 11 of her—has never shrunk from a challenge,
and today, after working her way up from sandwich shop to catering
to high-end restaurants, she is considered one of the foremost women
chefs in America, one of the most creative Nuevo Latino chefs, and
easily the finest female interpreter of modern Puerto Rican cuisine.
True, this last accolade she wins pretty much by default. Except
for a handful of chefs in San Juan, notably Wilo Benet of Pikayo and
Roberto Trevino of Aguaviva, there are few contenders for the
title. “Puerto Rican food is fairly limited but has tremendous potential,” says Gonzalez. “The flavors are wonderful, but it’s a simple
cookery. I try to translate the food I remember from my childhood
in a contemporary way. I want to cook what’s closest to my heart.”
Among those memories, she recalls a childhood in Aguadilla
when on weekends the family would go into the hills of Guavate to
a roadside lechonera, eat rotisserie barbecued pig, and vie for who
would get the pegao (crispy rice scraped from the bottom of the
pan). Her most cherished memory is of long sunny days at the
beach with her family. There, a woman named Hela would have a
cauldron of boiling lard dug into a hole in the sand. “Her fisherman
husband would come from the sea and bring live fish, and Hela
would clean them, flour them, pop them in the oil, then serve them
crisp and hot with lemon and tostones [flattened fried plantains].
We would be ravenous and eat right there in our wet bathing suits.”
Hela later opened a little restaurant near the beach.
Gonzalez’s mother, Doris, and both of her grandmothers were
exceptional cooks, very traditional. “When they cooked, it was all
the wonderful old Puerto Rican dishes—the mofongo, the ropa
vieja, the arroz con pollo.”
Today, Gonzalez replaces lard with canola oil, but the flavors of
her food have a bright intensity that balances authenticity with
refinement, evident in her picadera (small bites of codfish fritters),
arañitas (grated green plantains with roasted garlic), pork chicharrones with garlic, parsley, and chimichurri, and papitas rellenas (creamy
potatoes stuffed with sirloin picadillo).
As Carmen Aboy Valldejuli notes in her classic book Puerto
Rican Cookery (first published in 1975), “For almost five hundred
79
FOOD ARTS
MAY 2008
Café de San Juan, serving the cruise ships and working 14 hour days.
She then moved to New York City, enrolling in the New York
Restaurant School, where she learned the basics. “But,” she says, “my
real training began at The Quilted Giraffe, where I worked for two
and a half years. There was such talent in the kitchen—Jan Birnbaum was chef de cuisine—and owner Barry Wine would search out
and nurture that kind of talent.” She later worked at John Clancy’s in
Greenwich Village and then moved to Coral Gables, Florida, to open
a 50 seat restaurant named Clowns, which closed when the Gulf War
cramped business. She had to go back to catering until she was able to
open her award-winning upscale namesake, Carmen the Restaurant,
in The David William Hotel in 2003. She recalls, laughing, “We had
a strong clientele and something no other restaurant around Coral
Gables had—plenty of parking, which matters a lot in Miami.”
It was an exciting time for women chefs in Miami: Michelle
Bernstein was creating fabulous Asian/Floridian cuisine at Azul in
the Mandarin Oriental, Cindy Hutson was upgrading Jamaican
food at Ortanique, and Andrea Curto-Randazzo brought lusty
Mediterranean flavors to South Beach at her restaurant Talula. All
was going well for Carmen’s until disaster struck: fire consumed the
hotel, with the kitchen suffering devastating water damage.
“It was horrible and depressing,” she remembers, “but so much
of my clientele down there was from New York City, and they were
always asking me, begging me, to open a restaurant in New York.
So, after the fire, that seemed like a capital idea.”
She moved back to New York City and took over Lucy in ABC
Carpet & Home. At 49, Gonzalez is still a fireball working chef. “I
have to be very tough sometimes in the kitchen,” she says, “but you
know, I think I became a better chef when I became a manager here.
At my own restaurant in Coral Gables I was owner and had to deal
with so many issues outside of the kitchen that I didn’t enjoy myself
as much. I used to get ill when a customer said he didn’t like my food.”
Unfortunately, this spring Gonzalez and owner Phil Suarez parted ways over the direction of the restaurant, which had the effect of
forcing her to act on some plans she is now pursuing, which includes
a Spanish PBS-TV show and her long-cherished dream of opening a
Bar Picadera, where she will serve the street food of Puerto Rico.
This June she will be at the Aspen Food & Wine Festival with four
other Puerto Rican chefs preparing a traditional lechonera.
No one in New York City or anywhere outside of San Juan is
doing quite what Gonzalez delivers. Her cuisine is a crucible of new
ideas based on old flavors. Hers is a transformational talent, in the
way that Eric Ripert of Le Bernardin has continuously revitalized
seafood cookery, the way Jean-Georges Vongerichten changed
perceptions of French food, the way Mario Batali brought new
vision to Italian food, and how Michael Psilakis has created a
wholly modern style of Greek food. Gonzalez has brought all she
knows and all she loves about Puerto Rican food into sharp focus,
not only as an expression of what is possible within the Latino genre
but also what is a very personalized vision of a great chef.
Fire away: Gonzalez “still loves to jump behind the line and cook.”
years the basic ingredients the native Indians used have been
enriched by the culinary skills of newcomers who have chosen
these blue-green islands as their homes, [but] the time-honored
ingredients are still at the bottom of almost every dish.” Adobo, a
mixture of ingredients rubbed into poultry and meats, and sofrito,
a cooked seasoning of salt pork, onion, green pepper, chiles,
cilantro, and garlic, are essential to Puerto Rican cooking, and frying is the basis of scores of dishes, from tostones and buñuelitos (fritters), stuffed with cheese or fresh corn, to bacalaitos (cod fritters)
and papitas enteras fritas (crispy fried potatoes).
While it has its fiery condiments, it’s not a particularly hot cuisine. Puerto Rican food bears little resemblance to Mexican food or
the cookery of the former British colonies in the Caribbean. It’s closer to Cuban, but it’s richer in seafood and cod recipes and escabeches.
Gonzalez’s food draws on all these traditions, but it has been
made very beautiful to the eye, brilliantly colorful, and remarkably
light—a virtue unfortunately not often found in Nuevo Latino
cooking, where starches and fried vegetables crowd the plate. She
wraps cod with taro and Serrano ham and serves it with green
mango slaw and micro greens; Chilean sea bass is bathed in a corn
broth with a single fingerling potato croquette. She takes the
beloved Puerto Rican dish ropa vieja, usually a stringy gray soupy
beef dish, and uses Wagyu beef and a boniato mash. For dessert she
may do coconut custard with mango/kumquat relish or sour
orange/mango strudel with queso blanco and fruit salad.
Gonzalez always loved cooking, even as a child, and her favorite
13th birthday present was a pasta machine, with which she made
spaghetti that she hung on her father’s suit hangers. At 16 she was
doing catering, and by 20 she had her own little sandwich shop, the
FOOD ARTS
MAY 2008
John Mariani is the food and travel correspondent for Esquire magazine and a contributor to Wine Spectator as well as other publications.
80