Wolfgang Puck: Mozart in the kitchen and beyond

Celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck doesn't just sell his own brand of organic gourmet food, such as soups and stocks. When he is cooking at home, he actually uses them too.

He does his own cooking at home, he said last week from his Wolfgang Puck Grille restaurant at the MGM Grand casino in Detroit. And when he cooks, say, a rice dish, he uses a can of his own brand of tomato soup and a carton of his own chicken stock. In fact, he said he has never made homemade chicken stock at home, preferring pre-made shortcuts that are faster and easier.

To make a meal from scratch every day turns home cooking into a job, he said. "You become a professional cook."

Whenever he has the chance, the 62-year-old chef cooks family meals for his wife and two younger sons (he also has two older sons from a previous marriage). But the chance does not come as often as he might like, because he is busy running a massive food empire. Twenty-two fine-dining restaurants now bear his name, from Los Angeles, where he lives, to Las Vegas to London to Shanghai. His company also owns several casual, smaller restaurants under the Wolfgang Puck Express and Wolfgang Puck Bistro names, and franchises out dozens more.

He can't be everywhere at once, and he also flies around the country cooking for a wide array of charitable shows and special events, such as a party for the North American International Auto Show here last week. Yet he still manages to spend time on the line in his professional kitchens, though it is as a coach or a teacher.

"The most important thing for me is to train people to be good chefs and good managers," he said. And that's how he manages to run so many restaurants at once -- he makes sure the people who do the cooking and handling the day-to-day operations of the restaurants know how he wants things done. He lays down certain guidelines and then allows them the freedom to cook as they want within them.

"I always tell young chefs [to] make something with six ingredients, not 16 ingredients," he said. He prefers serving simple food ("that can be the hardest thing to do") that is made with the freshest and best ingredients.

In other words, he is not impressed by molecular gastronomy, the current trend of using science to prepare and present food in entirely new ways.

"At the end of the day, I think there is a place for everything. Will it last is a different question," he said.

"At the end, taste is the most important thing. At the beginning, newness is enough. After awhile, you say to yourself, 'is that the best ice cream, is that the best food I have ever eaten?'?"

Mr. Puck dined at the famed (and now closed) elBulli restaurant in Spain, which was considered the Mecca of molecular gastronomy. Eating there, he said, was a memorable experience, with 37 tiny courses of elegantly prepared dishes served over several hours.

"Would I do that often? No. Would I do it every two years? Yes," he said.

But he has also been to Alinea, another bastion of molecular gastronomy in Chicago that has topped several recent lists as the best restaurant in America.

"A lot of the dishes are visually interesting to look at. But if I were blindfolded, I don't know if I would have said 'that's a three-star taste,'?" he said.

It is important to him that his restaurants be accessible to diners and that when they eat there, they want to come back soon. Repeat business is vital to a restaurant, he said, and that is why the quality of the food should take precedence over everything else.

"If I have a chef who can cook the best fried chicken, the best Wiener schnitzel, or the best pork chops, then I'm happy," he said.

Mr. Puck may embrace simplicity, but he is also a savvy businessman. His eyes light up when he talks about the wealthy and free-spending Londoners, who think nothing of paying $400 or more for a bottle of fine wine at his restaurant there. And even his famous slogan, "Live, love, eat," has been trademarked.

Along with running all of the restaurants, his company also is responsible for selling a wide array of kitchen cookware. According to a company representative, his combination electric grill and griddle -- which Mr. Puck also uses at home -- has sold more than 1.1 million units. The chef hawks that appliance and about 100 others on television on HSN, formerly the Home Shopping Network. Other chefs have come and gone on HSN, he said, but none has had the kind of longevity that he has enjoyed.

A final part of Mr. Puck's business interests is catering, including cooking for the biggest and most star-studded party in Hollywood, the annual Governors Ball at the Oscars. For the last 17 years, he and his staff have cooked and served food for 1,500 of the most powerful people, and most discriminating eaters, in Los Angeles -- and they have done it all under the glare of television lights.

Even so, last summer he catered an event that may have been even more closely watched and analyzed than the Oscars: the wedding of Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries. The marriage famously lasted just 72 days, and looking back on it now he said, "you didn't feel like they were in love." When the couple was choosing the food they were going to order for the reception, "he wasn't there holding her hand and saying, 'Oh honey, whatever you want. Anything for you, you're my princess,'" he said.

He has known the Kardashian family since Kim and her sisters were children -- he used to make them pizzas that looked like Mickey Mouse -- and said he was surprised that she married Mr. Humphries ("He seems like a nice guy. Young"). He said, "the mother, Kris, runs the business, and that's what it [the wedding] turned out to be -- a business."

Even with the television appearances and the products he sells, it is the restaurants that are responsible for making Mr. Puck famous. Along with such contemporaries as Alice Waters and Jeremiah Tower, he helped create the style of light cooking with fresh ingredients known as California cuisine. When he opened his flagship restaurant Spago in Los Angeles in 1982, he changed the face of American cooking by serving highly flavored pizzas with nontraditional toppings. His pizza with smoked salmon, caviar, and dill creme fraiche was perhaps his most famous dish, and it remains on the lunch menu there and at some of his other restaurants.

But Mr. Puck, who left his native Austria to learn cooking in France when he was in his teens, believes in change. Even his famous pizza dough recipe will soon be different -- he is going to incorporate some dough that is five days old into each new batch of dough, giving the crust a slightly tangy flavor and more of a breadlike texture. Later this year, he is even going to change the focus at Spago, though he has not yet decided what he will do. Perhaps, he said, he will cook most of the food over oak fires, to re-create the experience of the early California settlers.

"I'm always interested in new things," he said. "As an immigrant, you have to be positive or else you would never leave your hometown."

Contact Daniel Neman at dneman@theblade.com or 419-724-6155.

Pan-Seared Beef Filets in Port-Dijon-Cream Sauce

4 (6-ounce) filets mignons, trimmed of excess fat, OR steaks OR skinless, boneless chicken breasts OR lamb chops

Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

1/2 cup port wine

1/2 cup heavy cream

1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

2 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into pieces

1 tablespoon chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley OR chives

Sprinkle both sides of each steak evenly with salt and pepper to taste.

Over high heat, heat a heavy skillet or saute pan large enough to hold the steaks comfortably. Add the oil and as soon as you see the slightest wisps of smoke carefully add the steaks. Cook the steaks undisturbed for 4 minutes on both sides for medium rare. For well-done steaks, reduce the heat to medium low and cook for a few more minutes on each side. Transfer the steaks to a heated platter and cover with aluminum foil to keep them warm while you make the sauce.

Pour off excess fat from the skillet and return it to high heat. Add the port and stir and scrape with a wooden spoon to deglaze the pan deposits. Turn the heat down so that the liquid in the pan is not boiling, and stir in the cream. Simmer the mixture briskly until it is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon, 3-4 minutes more. Whisk in the mustard and, a piece at a time, the butter. Adjust the seasoning to taste with a little salt and pepper, if necessary.

Transfer the steaks to individual serving plates. Stir the juices that have collected on the platter into the sauce. Spoon the sauce over and around the steaks, garnish with parsley or chives, and serve immediately.

Yield: 4 servings

Source: Wolfgang Puck Makes it Easy, by Wolfgang Puck

Countertop Grilled Chicken Breasts with Garlic and Parsley

1 whole chicken breast, halved and boned, skin left on (see cook's note)

8 plump garlic cloves, peeled

1/4 cup chopped flat-leaf parsley

1/4 teaspoon kosher salt

1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

1medium lemon, juiced

Cook's note: Chicken breasts at the supermarket are typically sold already cut into halves.

Preheat an electric panini maker or double-sided countertop grill (if using a grill pan, do not heat it until you are just ready to cook). Ease your fingers between the chicken's skin and meat. Bring a small saucepan of water to a boil. Add the peeled garlic cloves and boil them for 1 minute. Drain well and rinse with cold water. Cut the garlic cloves lengthwise into paper-thin slices. Put the garlic in a small bowl with the parsley, salt, and pepper, and toss well. Stuff half of the garlic mixture under the skin of the chicken breasts, then lightly salt both sides.

Heat the grill pan over medium-high heat, if using. Place the chicken skin side up in the panini maker or countertop grill, or skin side down on a grill pan. Close the lid or cover the pan and cook the chicken until its skin is deep golden brown and the meat is cooked through, about 12-14 minutes (if using a grill pan, turn the chicken once after 7 minutes). Test for doneness by piercing the meat with a thin skewer and checking to see that the juices run clear.

While the chicken is cooking, melt the butter in a small saute pan over medium-high heat. Add the remaining garlic-parsley mixture and saute until the garlic starts to turn golden, 3-4 minutes. Add the lemon juice and stir and scrape with a wooden spoon to dissolve the pan deposits. Taste the sauce and, if necessary, adjust the seasoning with a little more salt and pepper.

Transfer the chicken breasts to two heated plates, spoon the sauce over and around the chicken, and serve.

Yield: 2 servings

Source: Wolfgang Puck Makes it Easy, by Wolfgang Puck