PHOTO BY TANIA COLAMARAINO, AMA PHOTOGRAPHY
Once upon a time…a Wilson High School student, needing extra cash (as most teens do), gets a job in the kitchen at the local Sheraton (now the Crowne Plaza). He learns a few things, finds himself at the Inn at Reading — again, working in the kitchen. Tim Twiford, a CIA-trained chef, sees promise in the young man, and takes him under his wing. Little did anyone guess that Jason Hook would end up cooking at several of the finest highly-starred restaurants in the world, including Jean-Georges. Fast forward to 2014 where, serendipitously, Twiford is now head chef at the Crowne Plaza’s marvelous Prime Steak & Wine restaurant, and Chef Jason Hook is back in Berks, doing what he loves best. Talk about coming full circle.
Under this chef’s hands, the bountiful local foodstuffs and seasonal produce of Berks County will fuse with the exotic. “I base my food on the market, on the season, and what’s good,” Hook explains. Spring is his time to explore dishes with ramps and morels (mushrooms), delicate fiddlehead ferns, and all that emerges naturally from the earth.
In addition to his catering, food events, and exquisite food photography, Chef Jason Hook is a sought-after consultant to top restaurants, traveling to meet with clients all over the country. His precision in all that he does, his engaging personal style, and unbridled enthusiasm for food, fine dining and living an artful life is positively contagious. To contact him, email: h2okitchen@gmail.com or connect on Facebook at h2o kitchen in Reading.
Cooking with Class
In a recent cooking demo-lecture-tasting event held at Baldwin Kitchen & Bath Design Center in West Reading, an intimate crowd of foodies watched, entranced, as Chef Jason created three courses, starting with a chilled, bright green English Pea Soup. Among the guests: a chef-manager and staff member from a large food-service company, gourmet cooks, food-lovers and people who just want to watch, because seeing this chef in action is like watching performance art.
The traditional English Pea Soup is one example of a lovely dish “recreated and restructured” by Chef Jason. The garnishes are crucial additions to the puree base. Chef explains, “Most chilled pea soups go well with bacon, mint, and crème fraiche. For this soup, I took the bacon and crisped up lardons, then took the fat and added it into crème fraiche and a little gelatin and put it into a siphon. This bacon-fat-infused crème fraiche became a foam garnish.” The result is both frothy and creamy. “Then I made a persillade (bread crumb mixture with pistachio) out of the bacon lardons, and olive oil powder (created with tapioca maltodextrin).” The garnishing effect is a textural counterbalance of smooth and crunchy.
Next came a lighter variation on potato-free gnocchi: Ricotta Gnocchi, prepared with a Veal Bolognese sauce, served with a circulated egg. The marble-topped tabletop at Baldwin proved perfect for a floured surface for the gnocchi dough; guests watched the prep from start to finish, learning important cooking tips along the way (for the sauce, using grape seed oil instead of olive oil, for instance), and eagerly sampled the pasta puffs.
The third part of the lecture was on two “whole bird” chicken preparations: one, where you break a chicken down into all its parts and cook them all together in one pan with seasonal garnish (cippolini, sun choke, fingerlings, breakfast radish), foamed butter with crushed garlic and thyme/rosemary/sage, and then fresh lemon. The second whole bird demo yielded a ready-to-cook Chicken Ballotine, with Chef’s full explanation and demo of how a sous vide circulated bath, held at 64 degrees C, can be used for cooking a perfectly rolled chicken.
