How Chef Dane Baldwin Inspires New Chefs at His Milwaukee Restaurant — Mise En Place

These are the chickens for our knife-and-fork chicken. We brine for 24 hours. It's a pretty popular item. This is basic brine, water, salt, sugar, some citrus, mirepoix. We steep tea in the brine, then we add buttermilk. So we're kind of getting the best of a few worlds there. Basically, we're going to debone the chicken. We're going to paillard the whole chicken, which means we're going to pound it flat. In no way are we going to deattach the skin. The diplomac and the soft-shelled crab. Heard that. Going 40 and 22. Table 10. We have our knife-and-fork chicken here. These birds have been brined, rinsed, patted dried, and now air dried. OK, so they're easy to handle, and that's what we want when we're butchering. We're going to cut around what is called the oyster meat. We have Chef Ben here. This is something that he is absolutely mastering at this point, and it's really cool to see. In fact, him and I have kind of been toying with having a race, but I'm going to have to put in a little bit of training before we do that. I mean, it's cool, too, if you watch Ben, like, just how proficient he's become at it in a few years. Started here when I was 18. I moved to Milwaukee and spent a journey. You know, I was lucky to get hired here, one of the best restaurants in the state. He started approximately 4 1⁄2 years ago, and this is someone who started on a salad station when we were doing curbside to-go, who grew into being the best grill cook that we've had here, who is now handling one of our most nuanced stations. Just to kind of ride his coattails on his journey a little bit, I mean, he's earned every stripe that he's gotten here. I'm absolutely a very hands-on chef. I've done things in a multitude of ways. I've challenged myself. I've practiced things. I've practiced cuts at home. I mean, these are, you know, many years ago. I really do enjoy the art of cooking and the balance of time and the hours and being present. The reason why we're doing it this way, you know, taking out the back, is, you know, we're gonna try to leave this skin intact, completely whole. Ben's gonna pound them out so we get a nice, whole chicken paillard. Paillard means we pound it out flat so it cooks at the same temperature evenly throughout. Now that we have these basically all butchered out, I'm gonna leave these chickens in good hands. I'm gonna take these bones, and I'm gonna go make the sauce. Now we're gonna make a roasted bone sauce out of it. This is gonna be the fortified stock. You know, we wanna create some fond here, so we're gonna roast them right in the pan. But this is one of those fundamental things that someone is gonna carry with them. This is a sauce making 101. Looking pretty nice and roasty. It's not just about rendering anything out, necessarily. I mean, we started with a good amount of fat on these, which we're gonna pour off. It's really about getting this nice roasted bone flavor. It's really hard not to eat a wing or two while you're doing this. We'll add a little clean oil, and we'll throw in our mirepoix. And we'll shake it up a little bit to kind of pick up those brown bits. It's beginning to roast. It's beginning to deepen in color, which means it's deepening in flavor. So I would say this mirepoix is probably like half-roasted, which means we're gonna go in with a good amount of garlic. We have our roasted bones here. Then we're gonna add back to the pot. You see something like a sauce. By giving it that care, someone may not taste something and say, oh, wow, there are many steps in this, but they are gonna know that there is some soul and there's care in what we put on it. Okay, we're gonna let this come off to temp. We're gonna hit it with some wine. Today we're gonna use a Chardonnay, so we'll let that come up, and we'll let it reduce by at least 2 1⁄3. I'm in a good spot. As I'm moving it around, I can see the bottom of the pan there, which is a good sign. So we're gonna add our stock. You can even see, and we'll wait till it starts moving a little bit. We'll have some skimming work to do. It's 10 a.m. every morning, and it's time to start the bread. I have this oven cranked. Oldie but a goodie, this convection oven has been the life cycle of a couple restaurants. So we're gonna mix flour and water. Then we're going to add our starter. We're gonna let that sit for an additional 15. Then we'll salt it, and then we'll begin our folding process, which we will turn the bread and fold it to develop the gluten. We'll do that every 20 minutes. We make a ton of bread in the house. The reason why that's important, if you can make something that's great or excellent, you should. We'll bring out the cast iron. We'll line them with a little bit of parchment. We'll turn the bread out onto the cast irons. This is the only process we use for the sourdough because we wanna put in something that's gonna encapsulate the steam. I love making bread. So we're gonna kick a little of this flour off, and we're gonna score it, just so we don't have any blowouts. And then we're gonna use just a little bit of ice, and that's gonna create the steam. It'll help the bread rise. It'll help it bake. It'll give it a nice crust. And just try to work quickly. It's like a good, intense way to start your day with a little bit of intention and routine. We'll set a 20-minute timer, and then we'll just begin adjusting the temperature incrementally for the next hour or so. You ready for soft-shell time? Today, we get in our soft-shell crab. With that particular product, we try to get into it right away. We got our soft-shells in. These are whales. They're the largest that we can get. This is for our tempura-fried soft-shell crab dish. We're gonna cut the face off here. We're gonna clean out the gills, and we're gonna cut this tail off. We clean the soft-shell, and then we make a salad. So this is our bok choy salad that we're gonna start. It goes with our soft-shell crab. We separate the stalks from the leaves because we wanna get nice, long strands. Because we're not cooking this and we're wilting it, we're gonna have a nice texture, but we're gonna have a freshness that comes from that process. Adding the salt is going to make it wilt. We're gonna start with the stems. You'll see it happen almost immediately, and then we'll let it sit refrigerated, mind you. It's gonna deepen the flavor. It's gonna deepen the color. Final product's gonna have an abundance of freshness. So we're just gonna purge it of all that liquid. Such a beautiful color, right? We took some of the purged liquid from the ginger. That goes in there. We add some lemon peel. This is gonna kind of sit and marinate some lemon juice. And this is really it for the salad portion. Basically ready to plate it up. I'm gonna start the chili crunch for the soft-shell crab. Wow, the chili crunch is everything. Gonna roast garlic today. We're gonna blanch it first. It's a pretty encompassing part of the dish. The soft-shell crab is the selling point and the star of the dish. I think the chili crunch is absolutely what brings everything together. We have some oil here. We added our green garlic too. We're gonna start by frying this. Once it begins to brown, we're gonna pull it off, let it carry over, strain it off. Reintroduce the oil that we fried it in. And we added some sesame oil to it. Chili flake and the Aleppo pepper. You can see that the chili flakes are starting to hydrate a little bit from being in the oil. And then we're just gonna mix the oil in with our fried veggies until they're all coated. That's our chili crunch. So we're gonna put together the tempura batter for the soft-shell crab. Three ingredients, a little salt, rice flour, and mineral water. Just wanna make sure it's all incorporated, no lumps. So we have the crab. We're just gonna hold it just to set the tempura batter for a moment so it doesn't stick to the basket itself. I'm gonna take the salad base. We have our tempura crab. We just wanna drape a little of this chili crunch over the top. And that's our soft-shell crab. I absolutely appreciate mentorship. And I think the best part about coaching is coaching someone who wants to be coached. So, you know, that has to be number one. So you have someone like Ben, who sought out employment here. He's done a ton of growth. Then you have someone like Olivia. And Olivia hasn't line cooked anywhere. She has a natural knack. The way that she works is with so much care. Fred's been cooking for 40 minutes at two different temperatures, 475 down to 425. Got a nice rise. We're very happy with the way that looks. We're gonna let the bread cool. We're gonna put it on a rack. So we do a couple slices and we grill it on our seasoned grill. By the time it hits the plate, it's gonna be great. I won the James Beard Award in 2022. I'm gonna tell you something that no one knows, okay? The first year that I was named a semifinalist, I decided to take a picture of the James Beard emblem and make it the background on my phone. I didn't share that with anyone. My wife is the only person who knows that and now eater. It is absolutely an honor to be named James Beard Best Chef 2022. It's not necessarily something that I sought out, but getting that recognition in 2019 really reinforced the thought a lot of things are possible. You have to dream a little bit, I think, to be successful in this business or to do it in the fashion that we are. And that was part of a dream coming true. We're gonna make my lemon pasta. We have Anna here, who is my partner in crime in everything we do. This is my wife. So right now I'm putting in our sugar, heavy whipping cream, and the zest of one Meyer lemon. So Meyer lemon, very seasonal. It's nice and tart. But we're gonna bring this up to 215 degrees. I don't have professional pastry experience, but like Dane said, when you own a restaurant with your husband, you kind of do a little bit of everything. We met 17 years ago, I think. Yes, in a walk-in cooler, similar to the one we have here at the restaurant. Dane was a chef de cuisine, and I was coming in brand new as a bartender. I was in the walk-in cooler. I needed limes. He said he needed limes as well, which I don't think he did. And we grabbed the same line. That's not true. Just kidding. So I'm gonna take this off the heat. Going to put the Meyer lemon juice in. Whisk that in. And the citric acid. Whisk that in. Then we're going to strain it. So we're gonna set this. It doesn't take long. So we'll put this in the cooler, and then we'll just layer it to order. I think what's cool about a pasta is that it's not something you see very often. It's always a fun question to ask, or it's always fun to see someone try to pronounce it for the first time. Two and a half hours from service. Just like the sauce, things are starting to boil in here a little bit. The cooks have just arrived. Everyone's grabbing their mise en place. They're getting ready. They're setting up their stations. Things are really moving now. Finished ranch sous vides. You can work with Anna on that. Portion Yukons, carrots, banana breads in the oven. If you could clean collards, that would be great. And I can show you how to do that. I would just get your mise en place set up. Is that roasted garlic? Nice. Staff meeting and meal is done. We're 20 minutes out from service. We're putting final touches on things, and looking forward to a good Friday night. One knife and four chicken. When we're talking about the idea of Midwest food, you know, I'm not necessarily trying to change the idea there or reinvent the wheel. I've heard a lot of the same things, you know, over the years. Milwaukee is a meat and potatoes town. The reality is, is, you know, having been here and progressed here, you notice that there is so much more to Milwaukee. I mean, I think people are absolutely unveiling that now. Walking in, we have one deviled eggs, one diplomat fries, one diplomat add fries. We have something like, you know, the burger. It's a great cheeseburger. We buy in a great quality of beef, but we make the mayo, we make the ketchup that goes into the Thousand Island. We hand cut the fries. We triple branch those fries. We fry them at a low temperature. We let them cool, and then we fry them again. And it really is delicious. Naturally, the final product of what we have here is absolutely what Milwaukee has to offer. We have two pretzels all day. By implementing those cornerstone items here, I think it also really refreshes the notion of, we are here, we are cooking, this is us, this is what we're putting on the plate, and it's honesty, and it's delicious, and it's true. We have three soft-shell crab. So service is up and running. We're just starting to crescendo into the thick of it. Everything's firing on all cylinders. We got a lot of teamwork working back here, and, you know, that's where great cuisine comes from. It's definitely a team effort. I'm happy to be behind the line. One deviled eggs, one sauerkraut hash brown. I've worked in larger kitchens, and I've worked in, you know, the brigade system, and, you know, there's something to be said for that. I think because we are a neighborhood restaurant, I think because we are in the business of intention that that's what matters. And I think when we're, you know, we're bringing in these products, we're handling them the way that we should, and we're being creative with it at the same time. New York strip. You can align yourself with people who care. Sky's the limit.