Chicken soup with toasted orzo
Some of my earliest memories are of me sitting on the counter in the kitchen with my nanny cooking and feeding me, perhaps the strongest memory is of her chicken soup. She would toast little orzo pasta in clarified butter and combine it with the most flavorful aromatic chicken broth. That longing for the taste of home put a stamp on my mind in terms of what is important for me when it comes to food, often the simplest things can evoke the strongest emotional response.
Spaghetti Alle Vongole
Later when I began to show a passion for cooking, my mother would send me to my uncle in Italy who helped to get me a job as a kitchen apprentice in a small osteria. This is where my love affair for pasta truly began. I have a great passion for fresh handmade pasta, all of the pasta we use in LDC is all made from scratch daily. But there will always be a very special place in my heart for a well-made spaghetti vongole.
Warm fig bread with butter
This is less a dish and more just a singular item that culminated a whole experience for me. A few years back I worked as an apprenticeship at a bakery in Paris. The bakery was run by one of the kindest, humblest people I’ve ever met in this industry. He shared his knowledge freely without any pretense or secrecy. The days were long and were spent predominantly in the basement with the ovens, but the experience and knowledge I gained there was priceless. We made these small, sourdough loaves with dry figs and nuts. Those fresh out of the oven with a little spread of butter were something I will always remember. That experience truly taught me the power that a well-made loaf of bread has.
Salt Crusted Dover Sole
I was working at a 2 Michelin star restaurant in Chicago called RIA. We had a dish on the menu that consisted of a whole dover sole, baked to order in an aromatic salt crust with lavender and scheuan peppercorn. It was then cleaned tableside and served with the most amazing sauce made of the bones of the fish. Needless to say making salt crust to order during a hectic dinner service is no easy task, but the Chef insisted that I make every batch fresh and by hand at that! That lesson of sometimes doing things the harder way to truly learn and appreciate the value of what you are doing is something that has stuck with me through the years. Just for the act itself. The care, the pride, the meticulous attention to detail that was required. It was all about showing respect to the product. There is no shortcut to excellence and this is something that we hold true every day in what we do at LDC.
Korean Fried Chicken
This dish was the real motivation behind the kung fu chicken sandwich we have on the menu in LDC. A few years back I was traveling with some colleagues, we were in Seoul and were being taken around by an old friend. She brought us to a little ‘Mom and Pop’ restaurant serving up fried chicken. The chicken was simultaneously the crispiest, tastiest and spiciest thing I think I’ve ever eaten. Despite the heat it was just so addictive, you just couldn’t help yourself. The whole table was giddy laughing and enjoying the food, partly in pain and partly food coma. Of all the amazing food we ate and wonderful experiences we had on that trip, this experience always stands out in my memory. How something so honest and comforting could bring us all together for such a happy moment. This is the philosophy we strive to adopt every day in LDC.
LDC Kitchen + Coffee, One JLT, Jumeirah Lakes Towers, Dubai. +97143209669
