YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, CA — Featuring half a dozen renowned chefs — all with Bay Area ties and most of them familiar from the world of food TV — last week’s final sessions of Chefs’ Holidays for 2015 proved delectable, delightful and deliriously fun.
I was honored to be a host of Chefs’ Holidays at the Ahwahnee Hotel for a third straight year for the annual series of cooking demos and gala dinners.
Session 7 featured Chef Ron Siegel of Michael Mina Restaurant in San Francisco, who recounted his experience of being the first American chef to beat an Iron Chef on the original Japanese program. Siegel, who prepared the five-course gala dinner, revealed that he was most worried about cutting himself on the Japanese cooking show (he didn’t) and how he was glad the “secret ingredient” was lobster, rather than something really crazy like a live cow he’d have to milk on stage.
He was joined in that session by Chef Kyle Itani of Hopscotch in Oakland, who showed off the hand-forged Japanese knife he had made when he lived and studied in Japan; and by Chef Hoss Zare of The Fly Trap in San Francisco, who talked about how he wanted to be a brain surgeon when he was growing up.
Session 8, “TV’s Rockin’ Women Chefs,” starred Chef Elizabeth Faulkner, who opened the pioneering Citizen Cake in San Francisco; Chef Zoi Antonitsas of Westward in Seattle; and Chef Duskie Estes of Zazu Kitchen + Farm in Sebastopol.
All three are veterans of TV cooking shows, with Faulkner the leader with 31 battles on various shows. A runner and a longtime soccer player, Faulkner says she may have lost more battles than she won, but she’s enjoyed the competitive nature of it all.
Antonitsas, who was defeated in “Top Chef: Season 4,” vowed she’d never do another competition after that. Although she loved befriending her fellow chefs, she didn’t like the nature of the often cut-throat show.
Estes, who competed on “Next Iron Chef,” had the crowd in stitches as she admitted she participates in shows like that, mostly to tout her Black Pig Meat Co. products or wines that she and her husband make. “They always edit it out if I try to name them,” she says. “But once, I used a bottle of our wine to roll out dough on a show. I’m a total whore!”
It may have felt like spring in Yosemite — no snow on the valley floor — but the chefs turned up the heat in the sprawling Ahwahnee kitchen. Just take a peek:
Siegel oversaw the gala dinner for Session 7, starting with chilled Dungeness with oroblancos and tarragon salsa verde.
Besides demonstrating one dish of their choosing, the women chefs had another challenge: They each had to cook a dish from a mystery basket of ingredients that included Arctic char, squid ink, fresh abalone, shiitake mushrooms, arborio rice, fennel, Meyer lemons and Black Pig bacon. Here is Estes’ dish.
Antonitsas’ mystery basket dish. Although there was no official winner, Antonitsas appeared to have the edge as the audience favorite.
A tasting-size nosh of Faulkner’s French vanilla cake with meringue, which she first created for Sharon Stone’s birthday cake years ago.
Antonitsas demonstrated how to make pickled oysters that could be used in a dressing for a riff on Caesar salad.
The Ahwahnee dining room all decked out for the gala dinner, a collaboration with all three women chefs and the Ahwahnee chefs.
The first course by Ahwahnee Executive Chef Percy Whatley featured seared yellowtail with sea urchin-brown butter emulsion.
More: Scenes from Chefs’ Holidays 2014
