IT'S NOW TRENDY TO BURN YOUR FOOD

Chefs Get Fired Up About Dishes Coated in Ash
Burnt Vegetables Make Tasty Flavoring, They Say; Taking a Blowtorch to Hay

It's near the end of barbecue season, which means millions of apron-clad, backyard chefs are engaging in that ever-familiar ritual of flipping their burgers and rolling their hot dogs while making sure nothing slips through the grill and accidentally hits the ash.
But for Frank McClelland, a Boston chef, restaurant proprietor and organic farmer, it's the ideal time of year for the opposite approach: He likes to coat his food in ash. (click below to read more)




One of the latest cooking trends is cuisine that incorporates ash. Chef Frank McClelland of L'Espalier in Boston, demonstrates a steak dish coated with an ash mixture made from spices and charred vegetables.

At his Apple Street Farm in Essex, Mass., he spends many a morning preparing edible ash by burning vegetables in a trough, so by night, he can use the result on all sorts of foodstuffs, from venison to New England oysters, at his French-inspired L'Espalier restaurant. The ash's fresh-from-the-fire flavor, said Mr. McClelland, in the midst of a recent morning burn, "awakens that primal, caveman part of your brain."

And it's a flavor that has Mr. McClelland's clientele, who can pay up to $200 for a tasting menu, clamoring for more. The chef is thinking about packaging his ash—made from several kinds of burned vegetables—for sale. "Lots of people want to take it home," he says.

"It's a complex flavor, but in a good way," says Herbie Bohnet, a Boston attorney who sampled Mr. McClelland's vegetable ash-covered veal tenderloin.

Indeed, in culinary circles, 2012 may be remembered as the year of the ash. Chefs at high-end restaurants are winning over diners with their inventive use of an ingredient that's more normally considered a byproduct of cooking—and a seemingly unappetizing one at that.

At New York's Aquavit, Executive Chef Marcus Jernmark favors an ash made from hay. He is known to take a blowtorch to it in the kitchen.

"It's not a good thing to do in your apartment. I can't stress that enough," he says.

In San Francisco, chef Mourad Lahlou uses a leek ash to flavor yogurt at his Moroccan-inspired Aziza restaurant. In Chicago, Dana Cree, a pastry chef at Blackbird restaurant, creates a toasted hay ice cream that's topped with (what else?) hay ash.

And back in the Boston area, Will Gilson, a chef who is planning to open a new restaurant in the fall, is experimenting with ash made from onions and garlic stalks. But regardless of what he's burning, the goal is the same, he says: to "mimic that hot dog-off-the-grill" char-like taste.

On a visit to Tokyo, food writer Heather Sperling tried a dish in which a piece of Japan's famed Wagyu beef was covered in vegetable ash, so that the meat resembled a lump of charcoal.

"It looked like something completely inedible but it was actually a spectacular hunk of meat," she says.

Culinary trend-watchers say the craze for edible ash is being fueled by other movements in the gourmet world. In the past decade, a new breed of chef has turned cooking into a kind of game of avant-garde one-upmanship, introducing oddball preparations and techniques—a little liquid nitrogen, anyone?—to create dishes that are as much science experiments or artistic statements as they are plates of food. At the same time, there's been a growing emphasis on rustic, earthy flavors. (click below to read more)

Edible ash speaks to both the former—"It's about trying to do something that no one has done before," says Bret Thorn, who blogs about food trends for "Nation's Restaurant News"—and the latter: "Americans are finding out that food is supposed to taste like something," he adds.

In many ways, the trend isn't all that new: Largely because of certain chemical properties, ash has been a part of food preparation for centuries. Mexicans have used it in the processing of corn, cooking the grain in water mixed with ash. Europeans have favored it in cheese-making to help develop a rind.

By most accounts, it wasn't until a decade or so ago that edible ash became part of the tool kit of contemporary chefs. Many credit Denmark's Rene Redzepi for launching the trend. His "Noma" cookbook features a recipe for boiled leeks rolled in hay ashes as a complement to poached king crab. Other chefs followed suit.

Not every culinary pro shares in the enthusiasm, however.

Says Ray Lampe, aka Dr. BBQ, the author of four cookbooks on food and flames: "We have evolved away from laying the meat on the fire. That's why we built grills."

Chris Scarduzio, chef and proprietor of Table 31 restaurant in Philadelphia and Mia in Atlantic City, N.J., says all a good piece of veal requires is a little dose of olive oil and maybe a squeeze of lemon.

"I want to taste the veal first," says Mr. Scarduzio, who considers himself an "old school" chef. "Ash is fooling with the flavor."

Others wonder if ash is safe to eat. But some researchers and food scientists suspect the risk is rather low, given the limited amount diners are likely to consume and the fact the ash is generally derived from vegetables.

"Barbecuing meat in the backyard poses more of a risk," says Kenneth Spaeth, a specialist in environmental medicine at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, N.Y.

Perhaps no culinary professional has embraced the trend with such fervor as Mr. McClelland, who says he was inspired by the supply of vegetables—from onions to beets, kale to kohlrabi—from his farm that he could tap for his ash-making experiments.

Mr. McClelland approaches crafting an ash the way Indian cooks approach making a curry or barbecue enthusiasts a dry rub. He uses ashes from different vegetables and then combines them with a mix of spices, from sea salt to cumin.

"It's almost like blending wine," Mr. McClelland says.

For chefs like Mr. McClelland, the real question is how far the trend can go.

He sees potential for vegetable ash as a kind of breakfast spread—a wake-up call that could work better than jelly atop a buttered English muffin. "You need a little caveman in the morning," he says.