CRAIG

 

 

Craig Claiborne and Pierre Franey

 

As a young chef, there were two people that had an enormous impact on me. Craig Claiborne, the New York Times restaurant critic, food journalist and cookbook author and his sidekick, the famous French chef, Pierre Franey were that for me. I think I bought every one of their books (and there were many) and looked forward to his articles in the NYT Wednesday Food Section and in the Sunday Times Magazine. If I had a food idol, it was Craig. He embodied everything I was about at the time. His recipes were so meticulous and he never let chefs pull the wool over his eyes. When I was living in Grand Rapids, I remember driving to the airport each Sunday to buy a copy of the Sunday Times so as to not miss anything he was doing.  He was always breaking into new trends, his recipe writing was exacting and intelligently done, and he didn’t let chefs hide their secrets.

 

In 2000, when he passed away, he gave his entire estate to my alma mater, the Culinary Institute of America. Many chefs at that time would put out beautiful cookbooks and the recipes that these books would contain were sad, incomplete versions of what they actually did. Craig had a very specific way of interviewing chefs and their dishes. He would invite them into his kitchen in Amagansett in the Hamptons, sit down at his typewriter that sat right on top of the center kitchen table. (see photo above taken the summer I met him there). Pierre was always right next to the guest chef watching every move and every ingredient.

 

I remember buying Chef Paul Bocuse’s beautiful cookbook and making his Chicken with Tarragon, Tomatoes and Vinegar. It came out awful! I then produced the same recipe as Craig recorded it when Bocuse was in his kitchen. Fantastic! With Pierre watching so carefully and Craig recording everything so perfectly, I realized Bocuse had to finally give up the goods!!

 

When I had my restaurant in the Hamptons, Craig heard I was there and invited me to meet both of them. They had invited a chef friend who was then the chef of “Bobby Vans’s” an East Hampton longtime hangout and eatery and myself to come to his home and watch our former teacher make some charcutiere for them. It was such a thrill to be there and be part of that day

 

The meeting was later featured as “A Kitchen Soloist’s Homemade Sausage” from NYT Nov 4^th 1981. Jacques F. de Chanteloup, was a chef instructor at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park and was renowned for his charcuterie. He would always say ''The most important thing I can teach them, is quality, the difference between what they should use and what big industry uses. They should use pork butts because they contain an ideal amount of fat for sausage making.”

Robert