dish that he teaches me to make after first showing me how to
make his signature mushroom stock.
Step one: put mushrooms in the food processor. Blitz. Step
two: add the chopped mushrooms to a pot, turn on the heat, and
wait. Eventually, the mushrooms will release their liquid. Strain it
through a chinois. (Says Richard: “Without a chinois, you are a
bad cook.”) And that’s it. You have mushroom stock.
What’s remarkable is that both that stock and the mushrooms
left behind after straining will be fodder for several dishes: We’ll
use the stock to make potato risotto, and we’ll also use it to make
a mushroom sauce with butter and cream. The mushrooms we’ll
wrap around chicken and bake until we have mushroom-crusted
chicken breasts.
As we cook, Richard is constantly tasting, constantly adjusting.
For example, toward the end of cooking the risotto he decides he
doesn’t like the color and adds squid ink, turning the risotto black.
Then he decides he doesn’t like the texture (“Too liquid,” he says),
so he strains it. By the time the dish is plated, however, you
would have no idea how much of it was improvised: it looks like
the work of a master chef (which, in fact, it is).
The secret of cooking whimsically, it turns out, is to be
constantly in the moment, to react immediately to what’s
happening around you. It also helps to have a solid foundation of
techniques from which you can pull. And, most of all, to have a
sense of humor about yourself and the food you’re cooking, which
Richard certainly does.