How many times a day and what do you eat yourself? For breakfast I eat cottage cheese and drink coffee. At one in the afternoon I try to have a snack at work. And perhaps that's all. True, in the kitchen you have to try something all the time. After seven - in principle, I don't eat, only in case of emergency, like working out and launching a new menu. We must keep ourselves in shape. So I don’t have dinner as such, and I don’t even feel like it. Did you have to go on a diet?Nothing special. If necessary, he set himself some restrictions and chose gentle methods of cooking. It's another matter if the clients had certain health problems and asked to cook something special. Diet is too broad a concept. There are unhealthy diets that stress the body. The correct diet is one that is compiled on the recommendation of doctors, an individual one, built on analyzes and research. In Selfie restaurant, I try to cook light meals, after which there will be no feeling of heaviness. Of course, I understand that for many of us, junk food is often the most delicious, but I also try to make healthy food as attractive as possible. We have dishes on the menu that are suitable for a low-calorie diet - for example, halibut cooked with steamed sake, with crumble of sun-dried tomatoes,pine nuts and couscous. Tomato, avocado and quinoa salad is perfect for vegans. And for those on a protein diet, there will certainly be something.
How do you feel about GMO foods, fat-free foods, fortified with vitamins - is this a marketing ploy or does it make sense?
I think this is complete nonsense, pure marketing. What can be completely fat-free? Vegetables? Meat? Sausage? There is no need to try to get the vital amount of vitamins from food - it is too difficult to calculate how much of what is contained where. Let's say the daily intake of vitamin C is half a liter of apple juice. If you drink it in such quantities, you can plant your stomach. And, by the way, few people at this moment remember that the Russian people traditionally get vitamin C from potatoes, where it is one and a half times more than in apples.
Who would you like to feed?
I would like to feed my daughter when she grows up and starts to understand a lot about food and food quality. And it would also be interesting to feed a person who fundamentally does not eat some things. There are people who, without objective reasons, declare, say, "I don't eat pickle" or "I don't porridge." To cook these dishes in such a way that they would want to eat them, to break stereotypes - I would try.
What would you like to try yourself?
I would like to try interesting domestic products of good quality, from which one could enjoy working.
What is your favorite food?
Any seasonal dish made from products, so to speak, at its peak. For example, in summer, for me, these are cosmic Astrakhan tomatoes with sweet Yalta onions and fragrant butter.
Fried calamari with onion pie
You will need:
Mini squid 5 pcs., Olive oil 20 ml, butter 20 g, puff pastry bun 1 pc., Watercress 3-4 sprigs
For filling:
champignons 60 g, shrimps 40 g, egg 1 pc., bone marrow 15 g, green onions 5 g
For espuma (foam):
onions 100 g, butter 60 g, milk 100 ml, 33% cream 100 ml
Cooking method:
- Cut shrimps and mushrooms into small cubes, fry, mix with chopped boiled egg and green onions.
- Chop the onions and simmer in butter for an hour. Add milk and cream, bring to a boil and cool. Then grind in a blender, strain, pour into a siphon.
- For cream sauce: shallots 30 g, white wine 20 ml, thyme 2 sprigs, 33% cream 110 ml, chicken broth 50 ml, bone marrow 20 g
- In a saucepan, combine shallots, thyme, white wine, broth and cream. Bring to a boil and beat in a blender with the bone marrow. Put the mushroom filling in a pastry bag, stuff the squid with it and stick with skewers. Fry in a mixture of butter and olive oil with the addition of butter sauce. Fill the siphon puff bun with the onion espum.
- Place the squid on a plate, pour over the sauce, top with the bun. Garnish with watercress.