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Thursday, May 27, 1999 By Suzanne Martinson, Food Editor, Post-Gazette
It's always fun to cook with an admired chef -- even if it's only from his cookbook -- but then the pesky problem of the pear vinegar comes up.
Pears have never been at the top of my most-admired foods, but I figured if Keith Coughenour, executive chef of the Duquesne Club, couldn't win me over, nobody could. The recipe I'd selected was a simple pork tenderloin cooked on the grill (thus sucking my husband, Ace, into action). What wasn't so simple was its accompaniments: pear butter, red onion relish, red skin potato and arugula salad. And that pesky pear vinegar.
After visiting a couple of neighborhood supermarkets and calling eight specialty food shops, I finally found a source for pear vinegar: Shadyside Market, which has the same purveyor as the Duquesne Club. The man's name was Joe Knaus, and his message was succinct:
"We can get it for you, but . . ." When it comes to moving delicious dishes from the chef's kitchen to our own, there is often a big BUT, in this case, "But it only comes in 64-ounce containers."
Sixty-four ounces of pear vinegar! Three days earlier, I didn't even know there was such a thing as pear vinegar. Now I knew there must be many uses for it, or why else would it arrive in such a big container? My mind raced: I could buy the vinegar and destine myself to make every dish for the next year include pear vinegar as a component. I could substitute apple cider vinegar or balsamic vinegar or raspberry vinegar. (If champagne vinegar didn't work, who'd care?)
Or I could buy the pear vinegar, print the recipe in the paper, and stand out in front of the Post-Gazette with a packet of paper cups and hand off the requisite amounts to other drive-by cooks who want to share the succulence of -- as it's described in the cookbook -- Smoked Iowa Pork Tenderloin over Warm New Potato and Arugula Salad, with Maytag Blue Cheese, Red Onion Marmalade and Pear Butter.
I chose a fourth alternative. I bought some simple white vinegar and an extra pear. Then I called Betsy Kline, copy editor for the Food section and a wonderfully competent cook, and asked her advice. It was, after all, DTT Day (Do The Testing Day).
My woes tumbled out to my kitchen confessor: "Last night, I chopped up the pear and pushed the pieces into a half bottle of vinegar. Every now and then I shake it a little. Do you think it will work?"
Betsy pulled out one of our favorite books: Sharon Tyler Herbst's "Tiptionary," and read the references on making flavored vinegar. One of them suggested boiling it. Betsy thought that might be a good idea: "It'll probably intensify the flavor," she said.
Anyway, how intense do you want it if you hate pears? "Sounds great," I said.
Some years ago, when I first became a full-time food writer, a former Pittsburgher by the name of Diane LevKoy Morgan made a comment I'll never forget: "Some dishes should only be made in restaurants." My editor chopped that comment from my original story, but it was permanently etched in my mind.
Fabulous chefs like Keith propel the trends in food, but people just can't stop arguing over whether their recipes have any place in a kitchen without a sous chef, saucier, roundsman and -- maybe most important -- busboy and dishwasher. The most creative chefs are artistes, and their recipes are often only in their heads, depending on what's in season, what looked good in the market, what meat or seafood is abundant (and thus perhaps a big moneymaker for the restaurant). Great chefs don't chuck edibles in the round file.
At La Varenne at The Greenbrier cooking school recently, two chefs approached the same leftover -- tough, woody asparagus ends -- two ways. One made sauce, the other made soup.
Soup du jour isn't a joke. It's the opus of the creative chef.
How does that translate to the kitchen? Well, the best cookbooks by chefs often have translators. These recipe writers take the chef's recipes from grams and pounds to tablespoons and cups. They convert the often heat-intensive, quick-cooking restaurant range and ovens to the temps and times of the home front.
In the case of the "The Duquesne Club Cookbook: Four Seasons of Fine Dining," this person was Ann Haigh, who writes for Pittsburgh Magazine and is familiar with chefs and their creations. I thought her directions were first-rate, though not every recipe that I made looked as picture-perfect as Mark Hobson's stunning environmental photos in the book. Incidentally, these important components were quite familiar to Keith, whose name came up recently at The Greenbrier -- he had cut his creative teeth styling the photos for the West Virginia resort's own excellent cookbook.
When I carried my version of Keith's, Mark's and Ann's Smoked Iowa Pork Tenderloin to the table, I carried the cookbook under my arm. "See, this is how it would be served at the Duquesne Club," I said to my eager eaters.
It didn't have the perfection of a Chef Keith, but it was delicious. And you can do it, too. Perhaps a little sweet talk and at least one big buss could entice somebody you know into becoming busboy. Want to wash or dry?
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