He's the guy your girlfriends warned you about. Look at him, emerging from the surf like a chef-Adonis, kelp fairly dangling from his biceps. He caught those big fish with his bare hands!
The guy's gorgeous. And he can cook. What could be sexier?
The guy is Ludo Lefebvre, the daring renegade chef of Bastide, on Melrose Place. The book is called "Crave: The Feast of the 5ive Senses" (Regan Books, $50). On the jacket photo, Lefebvre, who had hitherto been known professionally by his given name of Ludovic Lefebvre, has slipped out of his whites into something a little more comfortable, as well as slipping into the more familiar "Ludo." He peers at you with an MTV come-hither stare. He's holding, quite tenderly, a papaya filled with pomegranate seeds. But you're not looking for symbolism.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Saturday April 16, 2005 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 40 words Type of Material: Correction
Cookbook photographer -- An article in Wednesday's Food section on "Crave," a cookbook by Ludo Lefebvre, identified Steve Wayda as a photographer for both Playboy and Penthouse magazines. Wayda is a photographer for Playboy; he no longer contributes to Penthouse.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Wednesday April 20, 2005 Home Edition Food Part F Page 3 Features Desk 1 inches; 42 words Type of Material: Correction
Cookbook photographer -- An article in last week's Food section on "Crave," a cookbook by Ludo Lefebvre, identified Steve Wayda as a photographer for both Playboy and Penthouse magazines. Wayda is a photographer for Playboy magazine; he no longer contributes to Penthouse.
He's beautiful, with his white teeth and downy beard and all those vivid tattoos. The gold earring is set off by a nose stud. Curiously, there's no photographer credited for the book, though in the acknowledgements, Lefebvre thanks Rachel Weill for "making the food look beautiful" and Steve Wayda and his team "for making me look the best I can look." Wayda, incidentally, is a photographer for Playboy and Penthouse.
Lefebvre (luh-FEH-vruh) is clearly of the Nigella Lawson school of selling cookbooks. He's not the first male chef to bank on sex appeal: Since the late Jean-Louis Palladin broke ground in 1999 by wearing nothing but a Vita-Mix in a blender ad, chefs from Bobby Flay to Rocco Dispirito to Jamie "The Naked Chef" Oliver have strutted their stuff. But Ludo does it so convincingly.
Even without the glamour shots of him, this book would be food porn -- the dishes themselves look irresistible. You want it. All of it. You crave it.
Red wine-poached beef with star anise, long pepper and cardamom infusion with caramelized Belgian endive with lemon. Chicken Etouffee in dried verbena and curry leaves. Ile flottante with praline and mocha sauce.
You crave it, but can you have it?
You can't have the chef: He's married. "For Krissy," reads the dedication, all on its own big white page. "I was only a rumor, but you believed in me; Los Angeles was a mirage, but you've made it my home; This book was a fever dream, but you've made it real. I love you."
So that's out.
But the food -- at least you can have the food. Right?
Not so fast. Even if you can find long pepper and a piece of caul fat, you would have had to start preparing the beef recipe three days ago: First make a homemade stock, then let it chill two days before using (there's no explanation why). For the chicken, you'll need curry leaves, fresh porcini and dried verbena leaves.The ile flottante calls for pink pralines, preferably French.
I learned this the hard way one recent Sunday, when I pulled out a review copy to try out some recipes. I thought I'd shop in the morning, and test two or three dishes for dinner that night.
I started flipping through the book. Curiously, I couldn't find anything I could cook that afternoon -- either one or more components needed to have been prepared at least the day before or exotic ingredients had to have been sought out or mail-ordered.
But I was hooked. I examined every recipe from the start, looking for a starter and a main course.
Cream of broccoli soup called for homemade chicken stock. Moussaka required lamb stock and a homemade curry powder that needed to sit for three weeks for flavors to meld. Other recipes called for foie gras, Kobe beef, licorice root, acacia blossoms.
Finally, I settled on carpaccio of broccoli with saffron oil and salmon en croute with red wine-shallot reduction, potatoes and clams.
The broccoli recipe worked perfectly, though it was a bit fussy (and why "carpaccio"? It was neither raw nor thinly sliced). Crisp-steamed florets are plated in concentric circles and drizzled with a lime-saffron dressing; shaved Parmesan, diced tomato and sliced basil leaves are scattered over. On top of that, a garnish: fried tomato skin and fried basil leaves, then a sprinkling of fleur de sel.
The dressing was very tart; the intense lime flavor fought with the Parmesan. Otherwise, it was OK -- and gorgeous to look at -- but not worth all that effort.
For the main course, salmon fillets were wrapped in layers of filo brushed with clarified butter. Depending on the shape of the fillet, the packages looked trim and appealing or huge and bulbous.
The method was interesting and worked well. The recipe says to heat a saute pan, then to add the salmon packets. No butter or oil? Seemed highly unlikely. What to do? I used olive oil. No matter. You cook them two minutes per side, then into a 400-degree oven they go to finish while you prepare the plates.
