“Use your senses. Do you hear the fat crackling?”
I’m standing in the kitchen of Chez Maggy attempting to render duck skin on a stove with help from chef de cuisine Nick Morgan. We’d seasoned the meat with salt, pepper and Herbes de Provence and placed it skin-side down in a cold pan so the temperature of the poultry could rise slowly. Now, the pan was snap, crackle, popping with escaping fat. A quick peek at the darkening skin told us the poultry was ready to move into a 500-degree oven to cook through.
The last place I expected to find myself while eight months pregnant was in the kitchen of an upscale French restaurant in downtown Denver. I enjoy cooking at home and have taken culinary classes here and there, but a professional I am not.
Thanks to the popularity of Hulu’s “The Bear,” Thompson Denver decided to offer guests the chance to walk in Cousin Richie’s footsteps. The hotel recently launched a Culinary Stage at its lobby eatery, which is helmed by Michelin-starred chef Ludo Lefebvre (who was not in town during my visit). The offering includes a half-day culinary boot camp for two alongside a two-night stay, welcome cocktails, dinner, coffee at the on-site Duel Coffee and a Thompson-branded chef knife for $2,000.
I’d watched the hit show and thought it would be fun to attempt an abbreviated version of a stage (pronounced “staj”), which is essentially an unpaid internship where a cook works in and learns from another chef’s kitchen.
So here I was, wearing an apron in the heat of Chez Maggy’s still-quiet kitchen late one Monday afternoon with Morgan by my side. The Utah-born chef previously worked at two Mile High City institutions, Fruition and Mercantile Dining & Provision, so I knew I was in qualified hands. He’d also sliced and diced all the ingredients ahead of time so we could focus more on cooking and less on prep. (Those who sign up for the experience can request specific lessons, like improving knife skills or how to make a French omelette.)
I’d started my evening’s education with part one of the Duck Breast Provencal dish, an easy olive tapenade that even those who are hapless in the kitchen can make. We then moved on to the pepper mix that tops the poultry. Its coastal origins — hailing from the Provence region in southern France— were evident in the olives, capers, tomatoes and heavy dose of olive oil at its foundation. I slowly added the various ingredients to a pan and stirred until it was unified, carefully avoiding burning my wrist on the professional-grade stove and removing the pan before the vegetables could over-soften. It wasn’t all that different from cooking at home.
We set it all aside to focus on my next big lesson, which came from a seemingly simple dish: an heirloom tomato salad. The base is a tomato water vinaigrette that is poured over everything until the ingredients swim like they’re floating in a summery gazpacho. I added the dressing components — sherry vinegar, local wildflower honey, garlic, olive oil, tomato water (basically, the juice strained from a tomato), salt and pepper — into a tall, stainless-steel pot. Then Morgan handed me the largest immersion blender I’d ever seen to mix it all together. I panicked that I’d pull it up too far and spray the entire kitchen in red juice, but thankfully that nightmare stayed only in my head.
“The most important thing,” he said, “is to taste your food, no matter how many times you’ve made a dish.” I dipped a spoon into the vinaigrette. It was sweet and tangy, but a touch of acidity flared toward the back of my tongue. “It’s too strong,” Morgan declared. His recommendation: a touch more salt. When we re-tasted, the vinaigrette hit in the middle of my tongue, with no sharpness. I’d achieved what the professionals call “balance.”
But I hadn’t earned my chef’s toque yet. The biggest challenge: plating. Morgan set a bowl of large, diced segments of yellow and red Rocky Mountain heirloom tomatoes and sliced English cucumbers in front of me. I added salt and pepper, gave them a toss and then set to work spooning them onto the plate in small sections so the colors and textures were evenly dispersed. Then I poured the vinaigrette, scattered precisely seven oversize croutons around and ripped two types of basil over it all. It looked like something the team could serve in the dining room.
The duck wasn’t so lucky. Morgan cut the meat in half, then encouraged me to top it with the pepper mix and spoon dollops of the tapenade around. The first step was simple, but my dollops were too big, and the oil pooled unattractively. If I was truly staging, I’m sure Morgan would have told me to throw it all away and start again.
Instead, I got to dig in and enjoy it, one unsightly but tasty bite at a time.
Another opportunity
For those seeking a more carb-loaded experience, the Berkeley Hotel and Bakery Four in northwest Denver are offering a similar hands-on experience. Reserve the Baker for a Day package, and you’ll join sweets-maker Shawn Bergin (very) early in the morning to roll and fold croissants and fill Pop-Tarts and Danishes with seasonal ingredients before greeting customers for a shift. Participants leave with their own box of treats and a recipe booklet so they can replicate the treats at home; upstairs, in their suite’s full-size kitchen, they’ll find everything to make a pasta dinner, including Bergin’s house-made noodle dough.
To book: Make a note in the online reservation, and the concierge will reach out to organize.
