Sagebrush Classic Chefs Talk Dishes, Trends

Last weekend was the 22nd annual Sagebrush Classic at Broken Top Golf Course. It’s a charity golf tournament, auction and more importantly, one of the biggest culinary events in Central Oregon.

Twenty chefs from restaurants around the country and even internationally showed off small plates to the over 1,000 guests.

Temperatures were in the upper 80s, the music was hopping, the crowd was dressed to the nines and the food was delicious.

Some of these chefs have been coming to Sagebrush for years. Chef Ken Frank of La Toque restaurant in Napa, for example.

“What’s really important now is that people everywhere are paying attention to local, seasonal, farm to table and it gets over done like all trends do, but it’s a really good direction,” said Chef Frank, standing next to his booth on the golf course.

“Some trends are a little bit silly, but this is a really good one,” he added. “People are paying attention to where their food is grown and how’s its produced. It doesn’t have to be organic, and it doesn’t have to be local to be good, but organic wins all ties, local wins all ties. People are realizing how important food is to our culture.”

Chef Frank created a seafood salad with chilled white beans, aioli sauce, squid, seared octopus, Ahi tuna, shrimp and dungeness crab.

Thanks in part to reality TV and the internet, an increasingly younger generation is getting into food, even blogging about it. While some chefs look down on culinary novices, Frank embraces it.

“People are discovering that the entire animal is delicious, not just the filet,” said Frank. “It just has to be cooked right, it has to be used right, so for people to be adventurous is never something I’ll scorn.”

Another Sagebrush regular, Chef Mark Kiffin of The Compound Restaurant in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He also was doing seafood … with a delicious twist.

“We have jumbo seared scallops today, with a duck foie gras that’s rolled and sliced and a fig compote that’s made with medeira with a little of the duck jus on top of that and fresh chervil,” said Kiffin while plating scallops and topping them with foie gras.

Chef Kiffin says to avoid the rubbery scallop texture that comes from cooking it too long, just quickly sear them on a hot hot pan, nothing over medium doneness, so they quiver.

“I’ve been coming here six years in a row for me, and it’s really a family,” he said. “It’s so different from some of the other ones. There are great corporate sponsors here, there’s a lot of local support here, and you get to work with a lot of families and a lot of volunteers, and it makes it really special.”

One booth down is John Finger of Hog Island Oyster Company in Napa. He says oysters are the perfect finger-food for summer. “I just think when oysters done right which is really nicely chilled and shucked well, they’re refreshing.”

So how does it cope with serving and shucking hundreds and hundreds of oysters for events like these? Chef Finger takes it all in stride.

“I think we have an easy job compared to all the other chefs here,” Finger laughs. “We’ve already done our work growing the oysters and stuff and you’re talking to people at the same time you’re shucking, but we’re good at that now.”

So summer party throwers, here’s how to wow your guests and properly shuck and oyster.

Demonstrating as he talks, Finger says, “Every oyster has a scooped side and a flat side. Wearing heavy gloves, hold it with the scoop side down and the hinge of the oyster toward you. Use a strong knife and insert it into the hinge and pry open. Then use the knife to gently cut under the oyster to remove the muscle that attaches it to the shell — and voila!”

There were so many other amazingly flavorful small plates, like the pork belly in a hom bao roll from The Slanted Door restaurant in San Francisco, fried alligator from New Orleans and seared Kobe beef with baby greens from Dallas, Texas.