Chef Robert Reynolds

OregonLive.com:

What kind of farmers market shopper are you? An organized list-maker who makes a beeline through the open-air space, as if wheeling with determination through the supermarket grocery aisles? Or, do you travel light, meandering through the market, looking for the freshest and the most intriguing seasonal ingredients to build your menu around?

If you do the former but envy the latter, or simply want to take a fascinating behind-the-scenes journey through a local farmers market in Portland, Oregon, sign up for Robert Reynolds' market tours, given every Saturday and Wednesday at the downtown Portland Farmers Market. The group visits with vendors, discusses what's on hand and how to use it, then sits down to watch how those ingredients can create a spontaneous and delicious meal.

Reynolds is a chef's chef, an eloquent cook and teacher who brings deep knowledge, passion and a historical perspective on food to the table. As the force behind the Northwest Culinary Forum, a nonprofit platform hosting provocative educational programs for amateurs and professionals, Reynolds seems possessed with stirring up fresh culinary visions in others. The bottom line is he weds his experience with information helpful to home cooks eager to take their cooking to another level.

Reynolds, 62, first gained attention with his Le Trou restaurant in San Francisco's Mission District. In the early '80s, it was the place to experience the true feeling and tastes of France. Reynolds' educated palate comes from studies in France with culinary icon Madeleine Kamman and octogenarian Josephine Araldo, San Francisco's most famous Cordon Bleu chef. Araldo passed on to Reynolds a taste for unusual combinations and a belief that nothing should be wasted (Alice Waters, guru of California cuisine, also studied with Araldo). After Reynolds sold his restaurant, he devoted himself entirely to education in this country and in France. In the late '90s, Reynolds moved to Oregon and made it his home.

Joining Reynolds at the market is a little like being on a field trip with a favorite teacher and a lot like going to market day in a European town where everyone happens to speak English. Somehow everything you see, taste and smell seems more exotic, more promising and more within reach of excellence. And to top it off, after shopping, the group heads to the kitchen for a cooking demonstration of at least four of the menus discussed at the market.

Since 1987, Robert has also offered apprenticeship sessions in France, in the region of the Poitou and Charentes.

Each session is organized around a daily routine of life in a small French city. In France, he offers an advanced 7-week ‘apprenticeship’ course in culinary education between March and May.

Each morning he meets with his students for coffee. Together, they plan menus. They shop at markets in various settings - small villages, medieval towns, port cities - Coulonges, Parthenay, La Rochelle, Niort - each presenting the exceptional products which come from this province of France - butter, cream, cheeses, vegetables, poultry, beef, sea foods.

Students return from the market to Reynolds' house to prepare lunch.

In the afternoon, a class is held in which a menu is presented and its elements analyzed. Each day, each menu has a point of view, a region, an artistic ambition, an historic tradition, a grandmother. Reynolds' students discuss in detail how to achieve its goals. Over the course of time they focus on and cover a repertoire of dishes that constitute French food. They emphasize methods and techniques, skills. And they look at its cultural and historic context.

A solid foundation of the subject is put in place in an effort to understand food as the French perceive it.

Reynolds says, "What I take is based on sound culinary technique and tradition. We want to grasp the process of gastronomy, the art and science of food, from the germination of the seed to the final presentation of dishes at the table. In this setting in France that is possible. Then we cook, hands-on, with me providing close supervision. We look inside the pots, while theories are being applied, to figure out if we see them, understand them, can apply them and achieve the results to achieve good food. We taste, we talk, we apply ourselves, we try to go beyond and to achieve excellence."

Only 4-6 students are permitted per session.

Reynolds guarantees that over the period of the 8 week course, your palate is subtly formed. He says it is a secondary goal, but it happens. He says his students always comment that the food they prepare together is always better than anything they get in restaurants. It has the taste of France, and the authenticity and harmony that comes from studying French cooking

The cost of Reynolds' 8 week course is $8000.

The cost of a 4 week course is $4750.

A 1-week course will cost $2250.

All three options include housing and food and local travel save weekend meals.

To contact Robert Reynolds in Oregon for either a shopping adventure in Portland or an apprenticeship in France, please call 503.233.1934 or write:

Robert Reynolds
222 SE 18th Avenue
Portland, OR 97214
USA

If France is a bit too far to travel, you can always sign up to experience his one-day class on Wednesday, June 23rd at Draeger's Cooking School in San Mateo, California.

The cost of this class, called Home-Style Provencal Cooking in an Elegant Style, is $50.

To register, go to: Draegers.com

For a different "taste" of Reynolds, we encourage you to buy his book From a Breton Garden which he co-authored with Josephine Araldo (1896-1989). Araldo was one of the first women to earn a toque from the Cordon Bleu, who came of age at a time when the cooking of Brittany was just winning high regard among Parisians.

Inspire & Be Inspired.

~Jennifer King