MC Co-Author and Head Chef Maxime Bilet is Leaving The Cooking Lab

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BY MAX and NATHAN

Dear friends and fans of Modernist Cuisine,

It has been a long and amazingly fruitful 4 1/2 years here at The Cooking Lab. You’ll soon be seeing the release of our most recent project with Nathan, Modernist Cuisine at Home. I’m thrilled to share this new transmission of modern cooking with the passionate food world. I believe it will provide yet another shift in the perception of culinary education and the power of delicious food.

How incredibly fast time passes by. 3122 pages, 1927 recipes and over 230,000 photos later, Our projects have been gifted with more recognition and respect than we could ever have imagined. We’ve won the praise of some of our greatest culinary heroes: Thomas Keller, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Heston Blumenthal, Grant Achatz, Ferran Adria, Charlie Trotter, Wylie Dufresne, David Kinch, Andoni Luis Aduriz, Marcus Samuelsson, and Alain Ducasse, among a very humbling list of culture changing icons. We’ve won Gourmand, IACP and James Beard Awards. We’ve built a community around the heart of the project; to embrace the many roles of food through a more precise and rigorous understanding of culinary art and science. I couldn’t be more proud of what we’ve accomplished.

With the completion of Modernist Cuisine at Home, this seems an appropriate time for me to move forward. As a team, we have accomplished everything, and beyond, what we set out to do with these comprehensive projects. Change is exhilarating and challenging, but this journey is all about the search for refining a meaningful vision of life. That can’t happen without accepting how important change is to that search. We are all responsible for our personal choices and I intend on taking this opportunity to explore the realm of possibilities that this fragile and precious life has to offer.

I have been the recipient of some profound lessons from some very patient teachers in this lifetime. I did just turn 30 after all and the most perceptible thing I have going for me is a pretty wild tangle of silvered hair standing atop my overstimulated brain. Wisdom indeed! …The road ahead is intrinsically connected to those lessons. Land IS food and needs to be protected. Food is our life-force and should be revered with far more consideration. Change begins in the mind and the heart but the mind cannot function without sustenance and the heart cannot grow without sharing the beauty of experience. I look forward to facing these challenges through my work with the culinary world. Every piece has its value, whether it’s high-end gastronomy, modern farming or ingenious solutions for basic nutrition.

I will always be part of this Modernist Cuisine family; a colorful mixture of open minded individuals, artists, scientists, knife wielding culinary crazies (chefs),engineers and people of the pen. I will miss the daily rituals with my team, “the routine of the unpredictable” as I like to think of it. I will remember the many discoveries that I’ve shared: the profound (centrifuged pea “butter”) and the absurd (tossing hot oil in a cut-in-half wok towards my face hurts!) and everything in between. I greatly look forward to witnessing their future successes.

Sam “The Man”, keep on cracking the whip and making the best gelato on earth. I am so proud of the leadership role you have grown into and embraced these past three years. Anj, don’t let those boys off the hook, you are the powerful “Lady of the House”, you have a beautiful palate and we’ll be sharing coffee honey in Kerala before long. Zhulander, continue to be resourceful and inventive. I can’t wait to see your full line of smoky pork product interpretations on supermarket shelves. Just promise me you won’t let anyone make you wear a costume. A-Ron, you have been a true example of what a young chef should aspire to. Keep your head down and stay true to the work ethic and passion you’ve demonstrated and you’ll be running your own show soon enough. Kimberly, you have an incredible vision for the future of food. I know you’ll find that perfect bridge between nutrition, taste and splendor. Mme. Krystanne, you keep that mighty engine running. You’re the coach from now on, but I hope you can let your smile shine sometimes too. Bruce, Carrie and Hatchess, thank you for being the remarkable guides of THE mission. Scott, Larissa and Ms. Lukach, good luck with the future of Modernist Cuisine and The Cooking Lab, I think they are in very good hands.

To the rest of The Cooking Lab team and for those who have already moved on, Smithy, Grant, Susan, Tracy, Christina, Biderman, Ben, Andy, Jameson and Melissa, your hard work has been so incredibly important to making this happen in the right way. Thank you. These projects could not have been possible without a tremendous amount of support and effort from many individuals.

Thank you to all of our friends at the lab who have worked alongside us since the beginning. Mike V., Ted, Nels, Laura, David N., David B., Chris L., Barcin, Zihong, Pablos, 3ric, Geoff, Ozgur, Sheing, Leo, Keith R. and all of the others, thank you for bearing with us during our learning phase. Thank you for meeting our obstacles with open minds and transforming our ideas into very real manifestations of art and education. Only at the lab could there be a day when a paleontologist fixes one of our ovens while a machinist with expertise in nuclear submarines cuts our microwave in half on a water jet.

I wouldn’t be where I am today without my external team of supporters and teachers, Kathryn and Gary, Lee, my parents, Mamie, John, Alina, Noelle, Katy, Stephanie, Albane and Marcus. Thank you for you guidance and love throughout this process.

Thank you to our readers. The people who have made Modernist Cuisine this successful are spread far and wide, across the vastest spectrum of backgrounds and geography. Without an audience of loyal people willing to invest in our books and look beyond the perceived value of food and culinary education, none of this would have been worth the effort that was put into it. You’ve been an essential key to shifting that paradigm.

Finally and above all else, I am forever grateful to Nathan. You are the very reason I’m able to share all of these memories, individual connections and future hopes. You’ve given me such an incredible combination of creative insights, resources and freedom. Thank you for giving all of us this unique possibility and trusting my ability to lead this team. Thank you for the opportunity to collaborate on this tremendous body of creative work and for all that I have been part of during my tenure under the wing of your greater vision. Thank you for your camaraderie. I will continue to grow and share from everything I have learned from you.

For the next month I will continue with my role at The Cooking Lab and try to contribute a few last worthy pieces to this eternal puzzle. We will be cooking at Charlie Trotter’s anniversary dinner on August 17th and my last official day will be September 1st, the day we perform at Bumbershoot. I hope to see you there.

À très bientôt,

Maxime

About five years ago, after work had begun in earnest on my first cookbook, I reached a critical decision. It was clear that if I didn’t hire some more people to help me with it, I would never get it done. So I decided to start hiring a team that could help me expand the outline I had written into a complete book: Modernist Cuisine. Without that team, the project simply would not have been possible.

Of the many people who joined the Modernist Cuisine team, none made more of an impact than Maxime Bilet. Max became head chef for the project, and he threw himself into the work. He not only served as head chef but also touched almost every other part of the project. Modernist Cuisine and our forthcoming book Modernist Cuisine at Home were both group efforts, and without the skill Max showed in guiding recipe development and helping establish our distinctive visual style, the books would not have been nearly as successful.

Max was our go-to guy for culinary experiments. Hundreds of times over the past five years, an idea would come to me, like vacuum-distilling milk, or rendering fat in a pressure cooker with baking soda and my next move was always the same: contact Max. He took these crazy ideas in stride and worked with the team to try them out. Some turned out to be as silly as they sounded, but others worked or at least inspired new ideas that worked.

Once Modernist Cuisine was off to the printer, we started hosting dinners at our research kitchen for chefs and food writers. Over the course of the next year or so, many of our culinary heroes including Thomas Keller, David Chang, David Kinch, Wolfgang Puck, Pierre Hermé, Andoni Anduriz, Charlie Trotter, among many others came our lab to enjoy 25- to 30-course tasting menus alongside food critics, such as Jeffrey Steingarten and Corby Kummer, and legendary gourmands like Tim and Nina Zagat. It was of course a huge honor to serve such dignitaries, but it also gave us a taste of what it must feel like when the Michelin inspectors arrive on the night your restaurant opens.

I’ll never forget the first such dinner. As the guests were seated and the waiters brought our first dish, Max and I looked at each other, and I said, “Oh my God, what have we done?” It suddenly struck me that we were facing, together, a moment of judgment. Either we would show them that we can actually cook food that tastes as good as it looks in the photographs we have published, or we were about to make complete fools of ourselves. Max looked at me and swallowed hard. “It’ll be OK,” he said, but I could tell that he was just as daunted by the situation as I was.

In the end, Max was right; the food was even better than OK. Since then, I’ve been proud to cook many times alongside Max and the rest of our talented culinary team at The Cooking Lab. And I am proud, too, of our latest accomplishment together, a new book that makes it easy for home cooks to experience first-hand the amazing results that a Modernist approach to cooking unlocks.

You can’t work with other people without facing the fact that eventually they need to pursue their own dreams. Indeed, I myself was able to create the Modernist Cuisine enterprise only because, a number of years ago, I decided to retire from Microsoft. So, as much as I hate to see Max go, I know that it is the right move for him, and I along with everybody else at The Cooking Lab wish him the best of luck.

Sincerely,

Nathan

Looking Back at the Modernist Cuisine Feast

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Amazing! That’s all I can keep repeating to myself after witnessing the result of our collaboration with Tom Douglas’s team and some very generous friends on June 21, 2012.

There were 40 guests, 30 courses, four brilliant guest chefs, and a team of 20 cooks, servers, and presenters. As a result, we raised more than $27,000 to be distributed among the organizations represented that evening.

Four years ago, the Modernist Cuisine team set out to write a document that captured the science of cooking so that chefs and home cooks could have a better understanding of one of the most fundamental acts of human existence: transforming food into something healthy, delicious, and beautiful. The project took on a much larger scope over the years, however, and we have had an overwhelmingly positive and open-minded response to Modernist Cuisine since it was published in March 2011.

The heart of the project was founded on the desire to enrich culinary education, eliminate boundaries, embrace interdisciplinary study, and demonstrate immense creativity.

Throughout the years, we have depended on some of the most talented chefs, scientists, farmers, community leaders, and artists to create a more complete, empowered experience of food.

There are currently two large and opposing movements in food in America. One is the detachment between food and cooking, wherein whole foods are replaced with inferior alternatives, a very real public health concern. The second is the movement toward organic, sustainable, and dynamic modern cooking, which is often inaccessible to most of the population.

A determined community of food organizations and social advocates has shown that bringing healthier, fresher foods to a larger proportion of the population is possible. Many incredible individuals and organizations are demonstrating the power of education as a means for change, including Alice Waters, FareStart, the Hunger Intervention Program, Community Kitchens, Teen Feed,  Hopelink, Chefs Collaborative, Chefs Move to Schools, and more.

This past June, with the tremendous support of many individuals and organizations, we created a feast for the ages with the purpose of honoring these organizations and promoting awareness. Modernist Cuisine along with Tom Douglas’s team joined forces with chefs Bill Yosses of the White House, Jason Franey of Canlis, Jason Wilson of Crush, Matt Costello of the Inn at Langley, and Flynn McGarry of his up-and-coming Los Angeles pop-up.

The crowd featured 26 people who purchased tickets via an eBay auction. Special guests at the dinner were representatives of the organizations being celebrated: Katelyn Stickel from Teen Feed, Kate Murphy and Linda Berger from the Hunger Intervention Program, Dan Johnson from Farestart, Julia Martin-Lombardi from McCarver Elementary, and Kristina Kenck from Hopelink. All of them were able to address the dinners, tell their story, and share their ideas for meaningful change.

My sincere thanks go to our good friend Tom Douglas, as well as to Katie Okumura, and Alex Montgomery, all of who made this event possible.

Thank you to my amazing culinary team, Sam Fahey-Burke, Anjana Shanker, Johnny Zhu, Kimberly Schaub, Andy Nhan, Ben Hulsey, Scott Heimendinger, and Nick Gavin; our mixologists Jon Christiansen and Jonathan Biderman; our service managers Christina Miller, Maria Banchero, and Stephen Miller; and all of the dedicated stagers and volunteers that volunteered their time.

Thank you to the operational mastermind, Krystanne Kasey who helped make sure every detail was accounted for; to Tyson Stole and Rina Jordan for their beautiful photography; and to Paul Rucker for his brilliant cello improvisations during the evening.

Lastly, thank you to Nathan Myhrvold for giving our team time to collaborate with these wonderful folks and make this dream a reality.

With so much at stake in the food industry today, it was a moment of validation for so many individuals who push for pronounced and resolute change. If you can find the time, please go through the links below to read about what these different organizations are doing to educate our children and feed the less fortunate. They should be celebrated, protected, and supported with all of the resources we can offer.

Sincerely,

Maxime

Resources:

http://www.teenfeed.org/

http://www.hope-link.org/

http://castingsorg.wordpress.com/

http://edibleschoolyard.org/program/mccarver-elementary-school-and-hilltop-garden-explorer-program

http://www.hungerintervention.org/

http://www.farestart.org/

http://www.chefsmovetoschools.org/

http://edibleschoolyard.org/

http://www.jamieoliver.com/foundation/

http://new.worldcentralkitchen.org/

http://www.letsmove.gov/

Spotlight: Aaron Verzosa

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We could never do what we do without the support of an incredible team of people. Over the years, numerous chefs, photographers, editors, researchers, and machinists have contributed to our endeavors at The Cooking Lab. They don’t always get the recognition they deserve for all of their hard work, so we’re starting a “Spotlight” series that allows members of The Cooking Lab to share what it’s like to work here, from their perspective. –Nathan Myhrvold

I went to the University of Washington for a degree in linguistics, but my track was actually premedicine. I worked in bioengineering research for about 2 1/2 years and was planning on getting an MD, or possibly going into an MD/PhD program. But then I took the summer off and enrolled in a few cooking classes. I wasn’t planning on going to culinary school full-time, but I did. I fell in love with the craft of cooking, with the very idea of it.

I had heard a little bit about Nathan Myhrvold and his Modernist Cuisine project before I even started culinary school, but at that time, it was still supposedly focused solely on sous vide. Then when MC came out, some of the team from The Cooking Lab came to my school. Max brought Johnny and some of the other staff chefs to do demonstrations, but they were also talking about their pedigrees and where they had worked. There just aren’t a lot of chefs in Seattle who can tout the same lineage of restaurants in which they have worked.

I really wanted to pursue that Modernist experience, but I wanted to do so locally, and there really weren’t a lot of restaurants around here that were doing it, at least not as well as the top-tier Modernist restaurants. Sure, we did things here and there at The Harvest Vine, where I worked for two years, such as playing with a couple of gels and foaming agents like soy lecithin, etc., but we didn’t really delve into the concept or philosophy of Modernist cuisine. It was more about utility. So when Max mentioned they might have work, I jumped on it.

I really wanted to come here to get grounded in the philosophy of the Modernist movement and to work with some of the best. A number of Modernist chefs like Ferran Adrià, and even Max and Nathan, talk about Modernist cuisine as a language. I have a deep interest in linguistics, which is probably why their explanations appeal to me. In Modernist cooking, just as in every language, there’s definitely structure–an architecture, if you will–but there’s also nuance. There are myriad ways to convey one particular thing. Many people think of Modernist cuisine as technique-driven, but, at least as I practice it, it is really more philosophical. It’s much more fluid. It’s the idea of creativity. It’s searching for purity, for perfection in any dish, whether it’s classical or completely novel. That’s rare, in any realm of life. That’s what I take away from my time of working with the team: the sort of philosophy of Modernist cuisine, more than any technique such as pressure cooking or sous vide. Most importantly, I’ve learned to keep an absolutely open mind. To stretch beyond technique.

I think that that will serve me in my next step, which is to stage for a few months at L’Agapé Substance in Paris. It is a Modernist restaurant, but rooted deeply in classical French cooking. When you go into a new restaurant as a chef, you are not necessarily thinking of which technique to bring. You are there to be imbued in what they’re doing and to understand it. Pushing boundaries, keeping an open mind, and always striving for perfection will help me bridge tradition and modernity. These are all Modernist principles, and all things I learned while at The Cooking Lab.

Aaron made an extraordinary amount of tiny sour cream spheres for our last lab dinner.

Aaron Verzosa joined the team as an intern fresh out of culinary school. He had written me a very passionate and sincere letter describing his connection with Modernist cuisine and his desire to contribute in a very meaningful way. Over the past year, Aaron has more than lived up to that promise and has blossomed into a very talented chef. He is now off on a journey that is important for every young chef, and I have no doubt he will continue to hone his creative culinary potential. –Maxime Bilet, Head Chef, The Cooking Lab

Maxime in Europe; Named One of 30 Under 30 in Forbes

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We are very excited to announce that Modernist Cuisine coauthor Maxime Bilet has been named to Forbes magazine’s 30 Under 30 List in the category of Food & Wine! At 29 years old, Max just makes the cut, joining other “movers and shakers” as Forbes puts it, such as Gilt Taste editor Jennifer Pelka; Lena Kwak, the inventor behind Thomas Keller’s gluten-free flour C4C (Cup for Cup); Top Chef alumnus Kevin Gillespie; and many more talented 20-somethings.

Unfortunately, Max isn’t around The Cooking Lab today to celebrate. He’s busy promoting the foreign editions of MC in Europe. You can see him in Paris tomorrow (December 20) at 6 PM at TASCHEN’s bookstore in Paris and on Thursday (December 22) at 6 PM at TASCHEN’s London store.