Pixie Tangerine and Shrimp Sauté with 2010 Binner Les Saveurs White Blend  

Binner Les Saveurs btl

The Dish

Shrimp Sauté

Pixie Tangerine
Bok choy

The Wine

2010 Binner Les Saveurs White Blend 
Alsace, France
Auxerrois,Gewürztraminer, Pinot Blanc, & Sylvaner,

 

 

The Chef

Gabbi Patrick Head ShotChef Tom Fraken

When did food capture you?  Probably back when I was 5 years old, that’s when I began cooking with my mom. We’re real close so I wanted to get in there and help. I just played around and as I got older she trusted me more in the kitchen to play with different things and try to make the same things she did. I told her I wanted to be a chef when I grew up and she said sure, keep cooking. I didn’t go that route ‘til much later, but she was the reason. And it’s cool because my son helps me a lot now. He’s 12 but he’s been helping me in the kitchen as well.

What’s your creative process working with a new ingredient?  I’ll cut it open and look at it. Especially here, they’ll bring in something like a Kiwano melon. It’s really trippy. It’s about this big [he shows with his hands] with horns all over it, kind of spiky. You cut it open and it’s this brilliant bright green and has kind of a cucumber flavor.

The internet’s my best friend. They didn’t have computers and internet and all that stuff when I was in school so I’ll get on now and Google it and start learning. And then I think ‘how can I tweak this?’ How can I make it personal and make it special for us?

*See all of Tom Franken’s photos, interview, and recipe at  Chef’s Insight.

 

The Wine Expert

Alice Feiring

A riesling would be the classic for asian accented recipes, but this floral field blend from Alsace is even better. A melange of  five local grapes, including the perfumed riesling and gewurtztraminer, it’s got the required acid zip, medium body with lots of  personality to be up to the task. 

Alice has been published in most of the glossies in this country as well as the New York Times.   Alice is the author of two books The Battle for Wine and Love (Harcourt).  Naked Wine (Perseus Books) came out on September 2011.  When not on the road learning about wine, Alice working on her personal writing, rereading Letting Go orHudson River Bracketed, and dreaming about a cellar full of Domaine Romanée Conti.  You can find Alice on twitter at @alicefeiring, or her blog The Feiring Line.

 

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Chef’s Insight is a raw, behind-the-scenes look at the culinary process and the people behind it. Photographer Bob Hodson shadows the chef—in his or her restaurant, home kitchen, backyard, favorite farmers market, wherever—shooting editorial style and capturing the details and the process… action on the line, scribbled recipes and plating notes, flashes of knife work, the flip of a pan, the beautiful symmetry of the finished mise en place