By
Jim Duncan
CVFDude@aol.com
Twitter.com/foodude
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| Sweet
corn butter cakes with caramel and sweet
corn ice cream. Wandering Chef mailing list
for future dates: wanderingnearyou@gmail.com. |
Des Moines is a AAA town. We compensate for
whatever we lack in size with intimacy. My father
saw several World Series yet said his greatest
baseball thrill was watching teenagers Bert
Blyleven and Vida Blue break records on consecutive
nights in Des Moines. Both players spoke to
him afterwards, an unthinkable thing for average
fans in major league towns. Here we nurture
young talent like crops. Aficionados like Dad
relish such opportunities to catch a glimpse
of budding greatness.
Our food scene is now AAA, too. Independent
restaurants are healthy enough to expand their
brands like big league indies do. Among our
most honored chefs, only Jerry Talerico (Sam
& Gabe's) still regularly cooks in his restaurant.
Younger top chefs have become teachers, managers
and front of the housemen as much as cooks.
Several now run more than one place. The upside
of this big city model is that Des Moines now
attracts the kind of enthusiastic and creative
prodigies who used to move directly from culinary
school to the nation's food capitals, like central
Iowa's most famous chef, Eric Ziebold, did 20
years ago.
Bree Ann Leighton, 21, graduated from culinary
school one year ago. She has California in her
pedigree and family in Las Vegas, yet she's
been banging pans in Des Moines the last year
at Azalea, Baru and Alba. Other chefs, generally
a very self-confident lot, admit Leighton's
chops are something special, like Blyleven's
curve ball 40 years ago. She's been pestering
Jason Simon at Alba to let her open his restaurant
on Sunday nights for special fixed price ($65)
dinners. Being himself a former prodigy who
left Iowa for the culinary capitals, Simon said
yes.
"All young chefs think they can do something
special. Most find out that actually doing it
under pressure is another story. Bree is ready
though," he explained.
For her first "Wandering Chef" dinner,
Leighton recruited talented friends Jessica
Dunn, 23, and Benji Lefebvre, 20, from Baru's
kitchen, plus Michael Kesterson, 23. It's not
easy getting young people to spend their rare
nights off doing the same work they do all week.
"We just all love what we do," Dunn
explained.
They do it all quite well. Lefebvre began the
meal with a spicy crab mousseline plated with
cool cucumber carpaccio and two emulsions —
sweet corn and coconut. Leighton followed that
with a terrine of Robiola di mia Nonna goat
cheese, roasted patty pan squash and mushrooms.
She plated it with local rockets (arugula),
balsamic vinegar reduced with raspberries, and
mixed nuts. She followed that course with tender
lamb lollipops, twice breaded and rolled in
breadcrumbs, served on curried cauliflower puree
with salade Nicoise.
Her main course was similar to the signature
dish in "Babette's Feast," though
Leighton had never even heard of that short
story nor the iconic movie. She stuffed whole
quail with foie gras and cornbread, glazed them
in maple syrup and plated them with ratatouille,
fresh peach coulis and freshly-picked squash
blossoms. She followed that with almond and
panko crusted balls of Pierre Robert (a decadent
triple cream cheese) served with a homemade
lemon drop melon sorbet that coaxed more flavor
out of fruit than any ice cream I've eaten all
year. She topped that plate with a crisped,
thick sliced piece of prosciutto. Dunn completed
the meal with an equally decadent dish. She
made sweet corn butter cakes, served them atop
fresh caramel and paired them with a homemade
sweet corn ice cream served in a confit of lime.
The gang of four provided their own service
— chef's table style. Intimacy trumped grace
and polish, AAA style.
Bottom line: These talented young guns plan
to serve two such Sunday evening dinners a month,
probably beginning in late August or September.
Catch them while you can.
Side Dishes
Jethro's broke ground on a Cajun restaurant
in Hawthorne Plaza… Forbes.com named central
Iowa native Eric Ziebold one of the10 most influential
chefs working in America. CV
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