Paia seafood11/20/2023 I was so inspired by the imagery and attention to detail, and felt pretty lucky to be working with the man I saw as the absolute pinnacle of the profession. His cookbook White Heat was the first cookbook I’d ever read. I walked into Marco Pierre White’s Café Royal Grill Room and asked Marco-then Britain’s most celebrated chef-for a job. (Photo: Bon Appetit) Carpaccio of beef at Quo Vadis (London)Īfter traveling around Europe with Tommy, I landed in London with hardly a dollar to my name, so I knew I needed find work quick smart. Now, I’m back to doing it again at Maude. I went on to perfect the art of making homemade pasta in my early restaurant life in London by rolling it every day. I just had to watch and follow their lead. There were never any recipes to read or measuring cups to gauge the proper amounts, and I still didn’t speak a lick of Italian. I spent a lot of time in the kitchen with the three generations of women cooking in there, spanning the ages 20 to 80, and it was there that I fell in love with making homemade pasta. The cooks would give me small jobs, dicing onions or slicing eggplant, and eventually I graduated to making fresh pasta. Very soon into our stay, I knew what we were there to do: eat. Tommy’s parents emigrated from this beautiful place a few decades before, but his entire extended family-on both sides-still lived in Francavilla. I traveled with my best mate Tommy and, after some exhilarating experiences such as running with the bulls in Pamplona and dancing the night away in the Greek Islands, we decided to head to Tommy’s family home in Calabria, Italy. I was 21 years old and had that particular blend of swagger and stupidity that young men have when they get their first real taste of freedom. The first time that I travelled outside of Australia was in 1998. Once you feel confident with classics, you can get experimental and try something that pushes you further. Mastering traditional dishes like this is important. I make sure her roast pork is on our Christmas table every year. It sounds really simple just a little roast pork with crunchy potatoes, but my mum makes this dish taste extraordinary. My mum’s pork-leg roast with delicious crackling and crispy potatoes is a dish she cooks brilliantly. She’s been gone for seven or eight years now, but I wanted to name the restaurant after her to keep those memories alive. When I was a five-year-old boy, she taught me the recipe and it’s really what sparked my interest in food. My granny, Maude, was actually from the north of England, and she used to make this delicious, really sugary fudge. Read on to discover the 10 dishes that have shaped Curtis Stone’s career, from sugary fudge made by his English granny (and restaurant’s namesake) Maude, to mole at his favorite Mexican restaurant in L.A.’s Koreatown. “I love that my TV work enables me to reach a lot of people, but when you want to cook at a higher level, a restaurant is the only place to do it.” “I guess I was looking for a creative outlet where I could express myself a little differently,” Stone says. It’s like having a new bloody restaurant every month!” Still, he’s excited to get behind the burner between stints as a regular co-host on The Chew. He admits it’s a challenging concept to get right: “The week before the new menu starts I’m refining the dishes, then I’m implementing the dishes, and by the middle of the month I’m already thinking about the one ahead…. At his celebrated new restaurant, Maude, in L.A.’s Beverly Hills, Stone and his chefs have created a $75, nine-course tasting menu inspired by one hyper-seasonal ingredient each month (for March, it’s artichoke). These days, his style is marked by unexpected uses of organic, local produce. I love that my TV work enables me to reach a lot of people, but when you want to cook at a higher level, a restaurant is the only place to do it. “My earliest food memory is of sitting on the kitchen bench at the age of five, running raisins down a stick of butter and popping them in my mouth,” he says. He has always been a man of simple, if unusual, tastes. TV gigs and bestselling cookbooks later, Stone has become synonymous with easy-going dishes that reflect his laid-back demeanor. In 2007, he made the transition to celluloid as the co-host of Surfing The Menu. As he ascended the ranks from chef de partie at Pierre White’s Mirabelle to head chef at Soho institution Quo Vadis, Stone’s easy Aussie charm and surfer-dude good looks caught the attention of TV producers in both the UK and back home Australia. After cutting his teeth at the local Savoy Hotel, he ventured halfway around the world to London, where he worked under the renowned Marco Pierre White. Curtis Stone’s cooking career began humbly in his grandmother’s kitchen in Melbourne, Australia, but it didn’t take him long to end up in the celebrity-chef spotlight.
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