Wolfgang Puck Cooks His Oscar Menu | NYT Cooking

All right, it's working. Yeah. Hello, I'm working back and I'm here at the New York Times Studio kitchen. And you know the New York Times is my favorite newspaper. Today I'm going to make a few dishes we do for our annual Oscar dinner for the Governor's Ball. In about the early 90s, the Academy asked me to do their big party. But we changed the format. Instead of doing a formal sit-down dinner, now it's more like a party with small plates. We make at least 30 different dishes. We are doing some dishes you actually can cook at home too. We're gonna have our sesame tuna cones, which are really delicious. You can make them in advance, so it's really easy. And then everybody's favorite, the chicken pot pie. Now I'm gonna add some black truffles because the Academy Awards need to be really special. But if you don't have black truffles, don't worry. And then everybody loves chocolate. So we're gonna make a warm chocolate cake with a little whipped cream. And every year we make chocolate Oscars. And we make it with Valrhona chocolate and then spray it with 24 karat gold. Every guest from us gets an Oscar, so they go home happy. Let's start with the tuna cones first. We're gonna warm up and melt the butter with corn syrup. I'm gonna put it right into my pot here. Okay, on medium heat. And we're gonna melt the corn syrup with the butter here. You don't bring it to a boil. You just warm it up enough so that way the butter can melt and it emulsifies with the corn syrup. Now this is an important advice for you. If you make the cones, make the batter a day ahead. It has to sit for a while. If you do it right away, they don't come out great. So let it sit. Let it rest. Refrigerate it and it will be perfect the next day. I'm gonna add the miso paste. I'm adding here some store-bought powdered ginger. A pinch of salt. A little sesame oil. You don't want to boil it. You just want to heat it up. We have dark corn and white sesame seeds. The butter is almost melted together. Now I'm gonna sift in the flour. So we always sift the flour just in case there's something in there. Just make sure everything is mixed well together and make sure that your butter is melted totally and combined with the corn syrup and all the other ingredients. All right, I am gonna refrigerate it overnight. This is the batter I let sit overnight. You can see the difference in color. So keep it in the refrigerator and then the next day it will be perfectly to use. Now you can place the batter with a little spoon on your silicone pad here. It's very important because they don't stick. Or you put it in a little plastic bag and you just spread it out. Now be careful not to put it too close together because if not they're gonna stick together. So you can make it as big or as small as you like. Just try to make about all the same size. Now we preheated our oven to 350. And we're gonna bake them until they get beautiful brown. And you will see they will spread out perfectly and we're gonna be ready to roll our corns. All right, look at that. Now we wait a little bit. You can see it would be hard to work with them right now. So you wait a few seconds until you can remove them gently from your silpat. Here we have our roller. If you want to make a perfect corn, you need a corn roller. It's five bucks. So really cheap and save it. It lasts for your lifetime. I have here a towel so that way it's softer. They don't break. Take them off. And here we roll it perfectly. See that? You have to really do them right away as soon as they come out. So they are still warm. Because then they get hot and it would be very difficult to form corns. You would break them. So be sure to take them off your silpat while it's still warm. So you have to go fast. When we make thousands of them, we have a few people rolling them. Not just one like me here. So if you don't have a corn sink, put it like this on your mold. And that's it. So simple. So easy. It looks complicated, but it is really not complicated. See that? If you make them small enough, you also can put it on the muffin pan here. You see that? So now you can see you have these beautiful little cups. You decide the size you like them. Very tasty. We are ready to make our tuna tartare. So first we're gonna make our two sauces to incorporate into the chopped tuna. So we have here soy sauce. And here I have some prepared horseradish. So this is wasabi powder, which we put water in. But you can use fresh wasabi if you get it. But it's hard to find. We're gonna mix that well together. Next, some mayonnaise. And we're gonna spice it up with a little sriracha here. A little sesame oil. A little touch of sugar if you like to. I like this sweet and spicy mixture. And now we're gonna whisk that all together. And the most important thing in the kitchen is to taste the food. You know, a lot of chefs, they forget to taste. Delicious. Don't put the tuna in your food processor or in your blender. It makes a paste. So it's very important that you chop it by hand. Look, beautiful color. So it's important when you buy tuna, look at the color of it. You know, we eat with our eyes first, but also it's fresher. Often the tuna gets discolored when it sits around too long. So it's important to get great color. So we're gonna cut that all into small little dice. See, you still want to get the bite of the tuna. You want to feel like you're eating tuna, but not too big. Because if not, it would be very hard to bite it into your cones. But also not too fine so it doesn't make it mushy. The tuna is ready here. And now I'm gonna chop up some scallions. The white part only to add to our tuna. Cut it really fine. And unless you like a lot of scallions, this should be fine here. This is pickled ginger. You can buy it in the store too. I love ginger, so I always tend to add a lot of ginger. So when you do it at home, don't worry. If you like it spicy, add a little more sriracha. If you don't like it spicy, add a little bit less. If you like ginger like me, add a little extra ginger. So the recipe is just an information you can get, but then you can add things the way you like it too. So now, most important thing, we're gonna taste. Not bad. And for me in cooking, it's always about the quality of the ingredients. If it's vegetables, fish, meat, whatever it is, it's the quality of the ingredients which is the most important. You can use a piping bag, but if you don't have that, use a small teaspoon to fill your cones. Be careful because the cones are very ratchet. Now, you just put gently in it. It will sink down anyway, so you wanna be very careful not to put in too much. I think it's always important to make food look good because we eat with our eyes first. So if it looks good already, you're gonna bite into it for sure. If it looks sad, you say, oh, I don't know if I like that. A little bit of tobiko or if you can use any kind of fish eggs or caviar if you're rich. So they add a little bite to it and also flavor. It's all about the taste. So the first time, follow the recipe exactly. The next time, you can make it the way you like it. If you have cups like that, which is very nice too, we're just gonna fill them up with a little bit. So make them small enough so you can have one good bite. We have our tuna cones or the little tuna cups. The proof is in the pudding. You know, we'll see how it tastes. I know I'm gonna need two at least. It has great texture. Also, the spiciness, a little sweetness of the cone is a perfect combination. And the most important thing is I still like it after all these years. That's why we call it a Spago classic. Now we're gonna make our famous chicken pot pie. I still remember the first time I made the chicken pot pie and Barbara Streisand ate three of them. Everybody loves comfort food and chicken pot pie is the ultimate comfort food. We did it for 1500 people and everybody got it hot. So now here we have a nice chicken and we're gonna put it in our pot. Now, I already use a chicken stock here. You wanna have as much flavor as possible. So we cook the chicken in a stock already. Add a few sprigs of thyme, maybe two bay leaves. Not too much bay leaves because bay leaves are very strong in flavor. Some onion. We take a few stalks of the celery. Don't forget to wash the celery before you use it. Okay, the same thing with the carrots. If you want, cut them in half. Now don't forget to put a little salt and a little pepper or some peppercorn. We're gonna bring it to a boil and then we're gonna let it simmer slowly for about an hour until the chicken is nice and cooked. So then for the stock or for the soup you don't use, you can put pasta in it, make yourself a little chicken soup if you have any leftover or use it for other preparation. Because it's always good if you make a sauce to have a stock instead of using water. That's why in the restaurants the sauces taste so good. It's because we use a good stock. So it's one of the basics of cooking. It's about an hour now. Our chicken is perfectly cooked. You don't want to overcook it. I'm gonna get it out of here. Generally in between the legs and the breast is where it takes the longest to cook. But this is perfectly cooked. You don't want to overcook it either because the meat, especially the breast meat, gets dry. Okay, so now with the stock here we're gonna strain it for our sauce. Now you let it cool down a little bit and you remove all the meat. And we're gonna make our sauce with the stock here. It's very simple. It's a chicken velouté really. What does it really mean? We're gonna make a roux out of butter, flour and then add the chicken stock to it. Use a heavy saucepan. Put a little touch of oil in here. So that way when you put in the butter it won't burn. You can see it's foaming up. We're gonna add the flour to our butter here. And now we're gonna cook the flour a little bit with our butter mixture here. Now in New Orleans they make it brown, they make it dark roux. Here we want to keep it blonde so we don't want to brown it. Okay and now we're gonna add our stock. This is the chicken broth from our chicken. For sure get all the corners well out so you don't want to have the roux in there. Now you can see there is no lump in here. And if you like you can add a little truffle oil. If you find some good ones. You see how nice and smooth it is. Now I'm gonna add some creme fraiche or just some heavy cream to make it richer. You cook that for about 20 to 30 minutes. You want the sauce to be really, really well cooked. You don't want to have the flavor of the flour. And also to get the right thickness. You can see this is pretty nice already. We're gonna taste it. I didn't add any salt and pepper yet. But I added some to my stock. So we have to be very careful not to add too much salt. Because you cannot take salt out of it. It's easy to add to it. So little by little we add salt. Oh we need a little more. And a little pepper. Our sauce is ready. Look at the texture. If you put your fingers through you want to see that it doesn't run. So you want the chicken and the vegetables to be coated by the sauce. Okay let's put all the chicken in here. Okay then the vegetables. Carrots. Roasted pearl onions. A few potatoes. And peas. All right. I think we are done. If you're rich you can add a little black truffles to it. We use black truffles. Why? Because the black truffles are still in season. The white truffles are in season in fall. Whatever is left over use it for your scrambled eggs in the morning. And you will be in seventh heaven. Now we have to let our pot pie filling cool off. Why? Because if you put the puff pastry on top while it's still hot. The puff pastry will melt. Because puff pastry has so much butter in it. And then it will not cook the way it should. So it's really important to cool your pot pie filling down. Before you add the puff pastry. Here we have some puff pastry. If you don't have puff pastry you can get a pie dough. Cut around little circles. So to put it on top of your pot pie. Now an important part is egg wash the sides also a little bit. So the dough sticks to it. Be sure the dough is big enough. So it covers your pot pie perfectly. You can make that a day in advance if you want to. Or at the last moment. Okay final thing. We brush it with a little bit of the egg wash here. That gives it a beautiful shiny color. Now we are ready to bake it. It's 25 minutes. Our chicken pot pie should be perfectly done now. Let's look at it. Now I know this is very hot inside. So we wait a few minutes before you serve it. Because you don't want to burn anybody. Now another good idea. If you have truffles you make it extra luxurious. Just put one slice of the truffle on top. You can see the puff pastry is perfectly cooked. Because you can cut it very easily. And right in here we have our amazing chicken pot pie. And now we're gonna taste it all together. Be careful it's really hot. It doesn't get any better than that. This is amazing. Barbara Streisand gonna come again to the Oscars just to have dinner. The Oscars wouldn't be the Oscars without our chicken pot pie. For me my ultimate dessert is always chocolate. My mother used to make a great chocolate cake. We make a great chocolate cake now. Served warm with a little unsweetened whipped cream. First thing we need some really good dark chocolate. I don't like milk chocolate personally. But somebody who likes it it's fine with me. This is about the same amount of chocolate as butter. We call it a ganache. Over a water bath we're gonna melt it down. So never melt chocolate on a stove with a fire. Because you're gonna burn it. And you're not gonna have good melted chocolate. So put your fire on simmer. And let it melt by itself. Here I have six eggs. I'm gonna separate them. The eggs should be on room temperature. So I'm gonna add part of the sugar to my egg yolks. Make sure it's sugar not salt. So you get your exercise at the same time as we cook see. Then you don't feel bad eating dessert because you exercise making it. You can see it starts to thicken up here. Foam up a little bit. That's about good now. I'm gonna put in the sifted flour. Not too much. You can see very little flour actually. Just mix it well together. So you make sure you don't have any lumps in here. So I'm waiting until my chocolate is totally melted with the butter here. Meanwhile I'm gonna also put our egg whites in our mixer here. Make sure the mixer is really clean. Because if there's any oil or anything in here your egg whites won't get nice and fluffy. So it's really important to use clean utensils. We're gonna add a pinch of cream of tartar. It makes for stiffer egg whites. And I always add a little salt to it too. But the flavor combination of having sweet and a little salt that's what I really like. All right I think our ganache is ready here. I'm gonna add a little sugar to our egg whites. While that is going on I'm gonna add the ganache to our egg yolk mixture. Add again a little more sugar. Always add sugar a little at a time. If you add too much sugar at the beginning they don't come up as well. All right that should be about right now. So add about 25 percent of your egg whites at the beginning. You can see now. So now the rest you can unfold it nicely. You can fold it really beautifully into your chocolate mixture here. So this is so easy to do at home because there are very few ingredients. Now you fold it nicely. You turn your bowl against the clock since you don't want to break up the beautiful egg whites. Which makes the cake nice and fluffy. And then we use this aluminum mold here. You can use any kind of molds but I like them because they conduct the heat really well. Also a good thing you can put in butter and sugar. But I prefer actually non-stick spray. Why? Because non-stick spray is not sweet. When you add sugar it makes the cake sweeter. Just be sure to spray it really well. Now this is enough for 12 people probably. You fill them about two three quarters at least. You know this cake is so popular at Chinois our restaurant in Santa Monica. We started it years and years ago. And sometimes I say you know I'm tired of doing the same cakes. But you know at the end of the day the guests have to be happy also. Not just me. So that way I can make something different if I want. But I keep the classic the most popular dishes on the menu. You want the cake to be a little underdone so the inside is really soft and creamy. Let's get cooking. In the middle rack of the oven. 350. Okay 10 minutes. While our chocolate cakes are cooking I'm making a little whipped cream here. I generally mix heavy cream and creme fraiche. Creme fraiche has this beautiful acidity so it gives it a better balance. So you have the chocolate cake which is sweet and the cream is not sweet. So it's a perfect balance. All right that's about right. One of the great things about the Oscars is people sit for hours in the theater. They have to get ready in the morning. Maybe they have a cup of tea with the toast. That's about it they have time for. So I think at 10 o'clock at night they're really hungry. And I know some people who were vegan and at the end they ate the chicken pot pie and our Miyazaki beef. I'm not gonna tell you. Our chocolate cakes are ready. You can say they almost look like a souffle. So let them rest for a few minutes for sure. They're easier to handle if you let them rest for a few minutes. And then if it's too hot you know they might go like this. So we'll see if I spray them enough. Hopefully they don't stick. If not what are we gonna do? I'm gonna start all over again. Okay they're very hot. Ah they don't stick see. Perfect. To me it's really really exciting to be in LA and you know have the Oscars in LA which is probably the biggest party of the year in Los Angeles. I don't like really to go to this ceremony because I'm getting itchy. I said you know I don't know what they are doing in the kitchen. I want to be where my action is. My action is not in the movies. My action is in the kitchen. So that's what I love. All right so let's see. Oh perfect. You can see it's still a little undercooked in here. And then you eat it with the whipped cream a few berries. Now normally we take a fork. You know it doesn't matter how long ago I made that. It's still amazing. The texture is so light because there's almost no flour in it. When you can see I made enough for 12 cakes. So one of my favorite cake and one of our favorite cakes we have at the restaurant. You know we each time I take it off I said I'm tired of seeing the same cake. The people basically tell me I'm not tired of eating it. So you shouldn't be tired of making it. Here are our chocolate Oscars. So this is Valrhona chocolate. And then we spray it with 24 karat gold. Yeah it's a spray like just like the painter. You know you go to your local garage and they will paint your Oscars there. Now you let it dry a little bit. Let's take this off. It's a gold powder, water and a little lemon juice. We make 3,000 small ones. So everybody can take one home and we often put it on our dessert also. Yeah yeah for sure. If you have good teeth you can bite them. The big ones, the little ones are easy to eat. But the big ones are a little harder. But it's just chocolate. Today we made some of our traditional dishes for the Governor's Ball. Which happens right after the Oscar ceremony. We have our big dining room with two big kitchen. About 100 chefs in the kitchen and 200 waiters. So it's a big event. But now you got the recipes. You can eat like John Travolta or Barbara Streisand or any of the famous directors. It's really a special event. Oh thank you so much. Well I have to thank my mother, my family. I don't have an agent. My beautiful wife Galila and my four boys. Like what? Okay I like the New York Times. I am a subscriber for the New York Times. So should you be out there.