Chef Jason Hook is the energetic, highly creative chef behind the catering, in-home tasting, and culinary education business called “h2o kitchen.” He prepares elegant and artfully divine meals for private dinners and public events; teaches cooking classes to adults and children; and holds kitchen-side, lecture-demo tasting experiences. He’ll cater everything from weddings and birthdays to a governor’s banquet.
As he prepares his avant-garde, innovative and unforgettable gourmet meals, he shares secrets gleaned from years of working with the best of the best in Michelin- and New York Times-starred restaurants. He can cook anything. Anything.
Oh, and yes: he’s a painter and photographer, too. No surprise, when you see his courses. As he plates a dish, his forehead furrows in deep concentration, and he grabs a paintbrush, then sweeps masterfully, lifting a spot of sauce across the ceramic surface like a Japanese calligrapher. He stands back, pinches a sprig of mint or thyme or carrot top, and dots it ever so gently into just the right corner of his masterpiece.
Tasting food, to Chef Jason, is a fully sensory love affair — starting with the eyes, smelling the aromatics, feeling textures (silky, crunchy, lightly chewy), and physically and psychically immersing in every subtle flavor on the tongue, enjoying the complexities, from salty-sweet to umami to just enough burning heat generated by a thin sliver of jalapeno.
A Private Dinner
Private dinners involve numerous courses; for this writer, the following meal unfolded like magic and tasted like food for the gods:
House-baked bread, grilled and crispy, seasoned with olive oil and sea salt, and a silky foie gras compound butter made with a combination of chicken and duck livers for a rustic appeal.
Fresh-cured pork belly — just a small slab — cured in house, crisped up with a snow crab claw beignet and sauced with a carrot and ginger ale emulsion (fresh carrot juice buzzed with a ginger ale reduction cooked with aromatics such as fresh ginger, lemongrass, and kaffir lime).
Beef Tartare mixed with finely chopped Asian pears, sesame, and pickled shishito pepper, garnished with a white truffle aioli and virgin olive oil powder, then plated with a sunny-side-up, teeny quail egg (“a play on steak and eggs,” says Chef Jason). The warm-cold combo was stunning.
Wild Mushroom Risotto with spring morels and honshemeji mushrooms, garnished with a circulated egg (“the perfect egg — cooked in a circulated bath in its shell at precisely 64 degrees C for 45 minutes”). The risotto was finished with mascarpone and Piave Vecchio cheese, its rich flavors enhanced by a fennel-apple broth with caramelized brown miso.
Guinea Hen Ballotine, innovatively created via a sous vide circulated bath. Chef Jason explains: “I skinned the whole bird and wrapped the breasts in the skin with activa (meat glue to bind) into a torchon, sealed it and cooked it sous vide. Then,
I took the ballotine out of the bag and seared the skin for perfectly cooked breast meat and crispy skin all around the cylinder of the bird. The legs I cooked/braised sous vide with aromatics in the bag along with clarified brown butter for 24 hours. I served and sauced the bird simply with a spiced pho broth (classic Vietnamese pho stock made with guinea carcass instead of beef bones, with the authentic addition of charred ginger, onion, and pho spices); then I strained and reduced the sauce and adjusted with pho garnish flavors — lime, cilantro, fish sauce — then strained again.”
Homemade Ricotta Gnocchi with a Veal Bolognese cooked with anchovy and black garlic for an umami lift and finished with pecorino. Infinitely lighter and lovelier than potato gnocchi.
Braised pork cheek “Mac ‘n Cheese” made with orzo and finished with creme fraiche and a warm tomato marmalade (Chef’s “nod to Pennsylvania Dutch mac with stewed tomatoes”).
Pan-Roasted Sea Bass, seared in the pan and then glazed with a sunset-colored sauce made with burnt orange, pine needles, and brown miso; Seckel pear and charred Brussels sprouts accompaning. Complex in creation, but evocatively Zen in eye appeal, the ingredients all serve to bring the bass’s full flavor to the fore.
Salmon, lightly seared on one side, and finished in a low-heat oven covered with applewood smoke, warmed by a garnish of spaghetti squash spiced with garam masala, a petite herb salad and puffed black rice, crispy chicken skin, and a dashi-yuzu broth.
Roasted Rib Eye (the eye and deckle), caressed by garlic and thyme along with fingerling potatoes confited in duck fat. “This is meat and potatoes with a different viewpoint,” Chef Jason explains. Exquisitely tender.
Intermezzo: A spoonful of candied tomato with fresh basil and a spicy-sweet jalapeno jelly.
Finally, a buttermilk panne cotta with pistachio shortbread and black currant fluid gel — an ambrosial, custardy end to a memorable evening.
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by MARIAN FRANCES WOLBERS | photos by Jason Hook
