It’s that time of year again, where the bright stars of the culinary universe all gather in Abu Dhabi to put on a two week feast-extraordinaire, for the capital’s annual fine-dining festival. Now if you’re going to go out and about to sample the offerings, good on you, but we’ve got something that’ll help you keep the enthusiasm alive in your own home, long after those celebrity chefs have returned to their home countries.
Everyday to Gourmet is a very special cookbook by New York based Lebanese chef and ‘culinartist’, Georges Mokbel. It not only promises to enrich your kitchen with a diverse variety international dishes (with some Mediterranean favourites) but it does so with a twist. What you get is the everyday recipe of a meal alongside steps to make a gourmet version, for those special occasions when you want to jazz things up a bit. We spoke to Georges about his revolutionary new cookbook.
The idea for the book is really cool, how did you come by it?
I did not steal it. (chuckles) But here’s what happened, I trained with the best, and I have worked under a lot of chefs. I wanted to debunk the whole idea of everyday and gourmet, because chefs do get inspired from our daily food in order to prepare things, and they just add their own twist to it. At the same time I wanted to show what chefs do. The culinary arts is called culinary arts for a reason – it’s an art. That’s why there are many techniques and everybody has their own approach to it. I basically show 110 different professional techniques which I took and simplified.
So are the gourmet versions of the recipes something that people can easily prepare at home?
Yes. They are inspired by acclaimed chefs, but at the same time they are things that you can do at home. It always starts with your own basic recipe. All the ingredients that you need can be found in any supermarket. We are not importing truffles from Italy. We’re actually making something and taking it to a gourmet level. We’re just using different techniques and looking at different ways of preparation and presentation.
Great! Well the book covers a wide variety of cuisines but we’ve noticed a leaning towards Mediterranean. Is there any particular reason for this?
At the end of the day it’s my roots and heritage, and in the United States Mediterranean is going to be the next craze. Whenever I’m working with restaurants right now I’m adding a lot of Mediterranean flavour to things. These are the flavours that we like, and we grew up with, and Americans are getting used to them more and more. Like you find hummus here in like every single supermarket, you know?
In many different varieties, right?
Yeah exactly. They’re even doing bean hummus. It’s definitely something that we can take to another level.
Right. Let’s go back to the book, the limited edition pre-release version which is on sale online now is very special for another reason, can you tell us a little about this?
Yeah, it’s an autographed copy and it’s 100 per cent waterproof. In fact, its printed on 100 per cent synthetic paper. You know you spill something on it, like you might spill water or sauce while cooking, and you can just wipe it off. I wouldn’t go to the extent of putting it in the dishwasher, because of the heat, but its definitely waterproof, 100 per cent recyclable and tree free. So there is the green factor in it too. At the moment, they’re limited to 2,500 copies.
Wonderful. And finally, what does Georges do when he’s not writing revolutionary new cookbooks and debunking the idea of gourmet?
I trained under Master Chef Paul Bocuse in France, so I’m a chef but I gear towards consulting more. What I do is consulting for restaurants, hotels, casinos. Typically this involves taking an existing menu and changing it to make it more appealing, or starting a project from ground zero.
Check out some of Georges’ recipes in our Capital Chefs supplement. ‘Everyday to Gourmet’ by Georges Mokbel is available to order online at www.georgesmokbel.com
