All of us at one time or another have daydreamed about returning to our alma mater as a professor. Johnson & Wales University has reached out to give a local alumnus the opportunity to do just that.
JWU’s Distinguished Visiting Chef program invites renowned chefs and personalities from the world of food and wine to visit and share their experience and knowledge with the students. Since it was first established in 1979, such distinguished names as Jasper White, Marcus Samuelsson, Paul Prudhomme and JWU alum Emeril Lagasse have graced the university’s performance kitchen amphitheater.
Recently, Johnson & Wales selected as its 159th distinguished visiting chef university alumnus Champe Speidel, proprietor and chef of Persimmon restaurant in Bristol. He came back to campus to speak and put on a cooking demonstration for a lecture hall packed with approximately 200 students.
Even though he is one of the younger chefs to be chosen to visit, he came to culinary arts somewhat later in life than most of the students who attended his demonstration. “I did not attend JWU until I was 26,” he said. “I know what the students are going through and what they want to learn.”
He demonstrated a three-course menu consisting of an appetizer of smoked salmon with salmon caviar, crème fraiche and a poached quail egg, followed by an entrée of crispy-skin chicken breast stuffed with mousse of seasoned dark meat from the same bird, all cooked using a cutting-edge method called sous vide. French for “under vacuum,” sous vide is cooking in vacuum-sealed plastic pouches at precise, low temperatures. This differs from slow cooking, such as in a crockpot, in that the food is sealed and the temperature is carefully maintained. The result can be extraordinary, with perfect textures and flavors. Speidel said this is an excellent example of the philosophy he brought to his guest professorship. “I wanted to bring familiar, common ingredients and through techniques, show dramatic results.” He was readily able to gauge the students’ interest in technique-driven dishes because when he was a student, he wanted to learn them himself.
In his presentation to the culinary students, Speidel knew what he wanted the chefs of tomorrow to take away from his lecture: “I want to be clear and concise without showing off.” He cited his uncomplicated menu, which food writers would describe as “clean,” as a presentation of the familiar in a different way. He avoided going down the cliché path, which some in his position would have done, bringing in an avant-garde presentation such as a dish with all of its parts laid out on the plate, so-called “deconstructed” cooking. “That’s the last thing I want to be tagged with. It’s not about being uber-creative. This is not a science project. The food still has to taste good.”
It is interesting to note that Speidel’s menu was chosen from items that have been on the regular menu at Persimmon for at least two years.
Following the morning presentation, which went on for over two hours, Speidel was the honored guest of the faculty at a luncheon prepared by the students. When I asked the chef to go back to his days as one of those culinary students and recall a time when he might have been in the audience for such a lecture, he laughed. “I was too busy cooking!”
He explained that his course of study was focused more on technical applications and he spent many hours in the university’s labs perfecting the techniques he used for his recent demonstration.
I know this much: If the lectures when I was in college were this tasty, I would have graduated at the top of my class. •
Bruce Newbury’s “Dining Out” food and wine talk radio show can be heard Saturdays and Sundays on WPRV-AM 790 and radio stations throughout New England. He can be reached at bruce@brucenewbury.com.
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