Rebecca Charles

Chef-owner, Pearl Oyster Bar
New York, New York

Upon leaving chef Rebecca Charles’s New York City apartment, I

marched straight to Bed Bath and Beyond and purchased two

eight-inch All-Clad stainless-steel sauté pans and a pair of metal

tongs. Each pan cost fifty dollars and the tongs were ten dollars,

which might seem like an indulgence, but after spending four hours

cooking with Charles in her kitchen I knew the investment was

sound: with these simple tools, you can make restaurant-quality

seafood dishes at home.

Take, for example, the cod that Charles serves at her beloved

New York City restaurant, Pearl Oyster Bar. She heats the two

sauté pans simultaneously, and once they’re hot, she ladles canola

oil or clarified butter into one (coating the bottom) and fills the

other halfway with water. Into the pan with the oil, she lowers a

thick fillet of cod that’s been soaked in milk, seasoned, and then

dredged in a mixture of cracker meal (basically, pulverized saltines)

and flour.

To the pan with the bubbling water, she adds corn that she cuts

off the cob with a sharp knife, and seasons it with salt. “You

could, of course, cook the corn in a separate pot of water, but then

I think you lose some of the flavor when you strain it. Here, all the