Jose Andres Puerta
Jose Andres Puerta
José Ramón Andrés Puerta, known as José Andrés, is a Spanish American chef often credited for bringing the small plates dining concept to America. He owns restaurants in Washington DC, Beverly Hills, Las Vegas, South Beach, Dorado and Philadelphia. Andrés is chair of the advisory board for LA Kitchen, a social enterprise in Los Angeles, California that works to reduce food waste, provide job training, and increase access to nutritious food...
NationalitySpanish
ProfessionChef
Date of Birth13 July 1969
CountrySpain
Gelatins are one of most unbelievable areas in cooking today.
A plancha is just a hot flat surface. So if you think about it, anything is a plancha, like a saute pan or a griddle. A la plancha is the perfect way to cook for a crowd.
Old cookbooks connect you to your past and explain the history of the world.
The time has come to recognize that food, how we produce it, process it, package it, sell it, cook it and eat it, is as important as any other issue.
I've been a cook all my life, but I am still learning to be a good chef. I'm always learning new techniques and improving beyond my own knowledge because there is always something new to learn and new horizons to discover.
Iberico de Bellota is best when cooked medium rare with a nice, pink center to allow the delicious acorn-infused flavor to come through.
I love to talk about cooking and recipes, but I love as much talking about how food and cooking can change the world.
People ask me in Europe, when they do interviews... they ask me, 'Well, how does it feel to be a cook in a country that doesn't know how to eat?' It always touches a nerve, because Europe and the world think that America is no more than bad hot dogs and bad burgers.
I guess that from the moment we are fed by our mothers, without even knowing it, we are caught in a net that brings us comfort, something we always feel when a special woman cooks for us. It is something unique and personal - it is something we want to keep for ourselves.
I remember being a young boy in Spain and watching my parents cook. We didn't go to a lot of restaurants because we didn't always have the money, so cooking at home was just what we did.
As immigrants, we understand better than most that to be an American is a privilege that conveys not just rights but responsibilities.
Don't put too many chefs to work. Sometimes they get too involved in the ingredients and are of no help.
As chefs, we work with organizations like Oxfam to enrich their projects with culinary tools, recipes and ideas.
I think every chef should have a food truck. It's a good way to test the markets, to invest in meeting the future restaurant goers.