Maine news, sports, weather from Portland Press Herald / Maine Sunday Telegram, Portland, Maine

Talented Maine sous chefs front and center

By Meredith Goad mgoad@mainetoday.com
Staff Writer

Chris Geer gets a lot of questions about his life as a sous chef at Cinque Terre, an Italian restaurant on Wharf Street in Portland.

click image to enlarge

Cinque Terre sous chef Chris Geer at work on his beet and potato gnocchi.

Ted Axelrod, Axelrod Photography

click image to enlarge

Chris Geer

Select images available for purchase in the
Maine Today Photo Store

SALUTE TO SOUS

HERE ARE THE RESTAURANTS and sous chefs participating in "Salute to Sous":

Cinque Terre – Chris Geer

Vignola – Chuck White and Kevin Heenan

The Front Room – Tyler Cole

The Grill Room – Joseph Higgins

The Corner Room – Brett DeBlieck

Walter's – Tony Scherrer and Rick Morey Jr.

Back Bay Grill – Jordan Martin

The Farmer's Table – Mike Rivera

Sonny's – Ethan Tobey

Local 188 – Nicholas Nappi

Hugo's – Andrew Taylor

Nosh Kitchen Bar – Robert Pieper

Q&A WITH CHRIS GEER

What is your favorite local Maine ingredient?

Locally raised animals, partic-ularly red deer and local lamb.

How would you describe your cooking style?

Classic Italian.

What person or people have influenced you most?

The chef I worked for in Asiago, Italy.

What is your go-to ingredient?

Fresh, hand-picked fennel.

Is there an ingredient that surprises you with its flavor and impact?

White truffles.

What do you enjoy cooking for your family?

Thanksgiving dinner.

Is there something at the restaurant that's a favorite? Our handmade pasta.

BEET AND POTATO GNOCCHI

Cinque Terre Sous Chef Chris Geer

1 1/4 pounds potatoes (roughly 8)

2 chioggia beets, cooked, peeled and pureed

2 cups all-purpose flour, plus extra for dusting

1 egg, lightly beaten

Kosher salt to taste

Steam the potatoes for 25 minutes or until tender, then mash with a potato masher or vegetable ricer while they are still hot. Stir in the flour, egg and a pinch of kosher salt, and knead for a minute. Add beet puree and continue kneading until you reach a soft, elastic dough. Be careful with the ratio of potato to flour: if there is too much potato, they tend to disintegrate while cooking. Using a rolling pin, gently roll the gnocchi dough into a thin sheet approximately 1/4 inch thick. Using a small circular cookie cutter, cut gnocchi dough into individual pieces and lay on a floured surface.

GORGONZOLA CREAM SAUCE:

8 large Swiss chard leaves, cleaned and trimmed of stem, chiffonade

1 small vidalia onion, sliced thin

1 head roasted garlic, cloves removed

4 ounces gorgonzola dolce, trimmed of rind

1 1/2 pints Oakhurst heavy cream

2 teaspoons extra virgin olive oil

Kosher salt and fresh ground pepper, to taste

10 leaves fresh parsley, chopped fine

Bring a medium pot of lightly salted water to a boil. While waiting for the water to heat up, start making the cream sauce. Over medium heat in a large saute pan, add vidalia onion and sweat for 2 minutes. Add Swiss chard to saute pan and continue cooking an additional 1 to 2 minutes until the leaves start to wilt. Add the roasted garlic cloves and Oakhurst heavy cream and then reduce by half, about 3 minutes. Gently add in gorgonzola dolce and fully incorporate until sauce has smooth consistency. Season the gorgonzola dolce cream to taste with kosher salt and fresh ground pepper. Cook gnocchi in boiling water, a few at a time, and remove with a slotted spoon as they rise and float on the surface. When gnocchi are fully cooked and drained, add to cream sauce and toss gently. Spoon sauce onto plate or platter, and arrange gnocchi over sauce and serve. Garnish with fresh parsley.

Serves four.

"People talk to me every day about what my job entails," Geer said. "It's hard work. There's a lot (going on) behind the scenes, not just cooking."

Portlanders can learn more about the city's sous chefs and what they do through a new booklet Oakhurst Dairy is distributing through November called "Salute to Sous."

The booklet profiles 14 Portland sous chefs from restaurants as varied as Walter's, Sonny's, Hugo's and Nosh Kitchen Bar. It includes a recipe developed by each sous chef. The chefs were not required to use dairy products in their dishes, but they all did, and the recipes in the booklet specify Oakhurst butter, cream and other Oakhurst products as ingredients.

Six of the recipes, along with a Q&A with each chef, will run in the Food & Dining section of the Portland Press Herald, beginning this week with Geer's profile. One Q&A and recipe will run each week through November.

The "Salute to Sous" booklets will be available this week at Harvest on the Harbor and through November in the restaurants and on the Oakhurst website, www.oakhurstdairy.com.

Jim Lesser, vice president of marketing and sales at Oakhurst, said people can also call the dairy to have a copy sent to them.

The sous chefs' signature dishes will be on the menus of their restaurants through November. At the end of the month, for every sous chef dish sold, Oakhurst will make a donation to Share Our Strength Maine's Operation Frontline, a nutrition education program for families, up to a total of $1,000.

Lesser said the project has been in development since late spring/early summer.

"We kind of fell in love with the concept of really putting the sous chefs out in front of the restaurant for a little while because we all know how hard they work and how much they really make happen back in the kitchen," he said. "We talked to some of the restaurants. Our concern was that no, they may not want to have sous chefs really in the spotlight, but they were very receptive to it as well, so we decided to run with it."

What does a sous chef do? Geer said he's in charge of everything from staffing to making sure the right food products are stocked in the kitchen at Cinque Terre. He also works the line every night.

He is the eyes and ears of the executive chef or the restaurant's owner when they are not around.

"To have a sous chef is to make sure that everything runs smoothly and the frost heaves in the road, per se, are no longer there," he said.

Geer graduated from Freeport High School and got his start in the culinary world washing dishes at the Harraseeket Inn, where he worked his way up to working with food. He earned an associate's degree from Johnson & Wales in Providence, then took a year off to work as a butcher.

He did an internship at Foxwoods, "which was amazing. That really got me to kick it into high gear and decide to go back and get my bachelor's in culinary."

After his earning his bachelor's, Geer went to Asiago, Italy, for three months, where he worked with Riccardo Cunico at Ristorante da Riccardo al Maddarello. He says the experience was "intense."

"It was long hours, 14-hour work days, but it was probably the best experience of my life to date," he said.

Geer's recipe in the "Salute to Sous" booklet, beet and potato gnocchi, is a dish he learned from Cunico. It takes gnocchi a step beyond potato dumplings.

"It's a combination of taking the potatoes and beets together and making a dough, but also rolling it out and then cutting it with a cookie cutter into sort of round, cylindrical shapes," Geer explained. "And the whole idea behind the dish was to lay it out on the plate so you'd have these nice, dark, ruby-red potato discs that were laid out to look like a bunch of grapes, and then arranged on the plate with a nice gorgonzola cream sauce."

Geer still gets back to Italy frequently, on trips with his mentor, executive chef Lee Skawinski, and the rest of the staff at Cinque Terre.

"They're foodie vacations," Geer said. "It's interesting to meet the people who make the products that we use here in America."

Staff Writer Meredith Goad can be contacted at 791-6332 or at: mgoad@pressherald.com