THE restaurant martín COOKBOOK SOPHISTICATED HOME COOKING FROM THE CELEBRATED SANTA FE RESTAURANT GUILFORD, CONNECTICUT An imprint of Rowman & Littlefield Distributed by NATIONAL BOOK NETWORK Copyright © 2015 by Martín and Jennifer Rios All photography copyright © 2015 by Kate Russell Text design: Nancy Freeborn All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available ISBN 978-1-4930-1004-2 (hardcover) ISBN 978-1-4930-2233-5 (e-book) The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. To my wife Jennifer for supporting and believing in me from the moment we met. For your unending dedication to helping me achieve my dreams, being my partner in both life and the restaurant, and for bringing me all the joy the world has to offer. CONTENTS Acknowledgments Learning to Cook, a Lifelong Adventure Bringing the Restaurant Home Soups Salads Crudo and Ceviche Appetizers Other Appetizers and Small Plates Pasta and Risotto Vegetable Main and Side Dishes Poultry Fish and Seafood Main Dishes Beef, Pork, Lamb, and Venison Desserts Resources About the Authors About the Photographer ACKNOWLEDGMENTS When I sat down to start writing my acknowledgments for this book and express my gratitude, the first thing on my mind was my wife and children. Without these three ladies—Jennifer, Emma, and Anneliese—my life would not be complete. Every day, no matter how many hours I work in my restaurant kitchen or garden, or on this cookbook, my family is my inspiration and source of happiness. Although I do not express it enough, I am eternally grateful for them and for having them as the most important people in my life. I am also deeply appreciative of my friends and mentors, both in the culinary arena and outside of it. Chefs with whom I have worked and from whom I have learned hands- on—especially Georges Blanc of Vonnas, France, and David Burke of New York—have helped enormously in making me the chef I am today. I’m also substantially indebted to those who educated me in their books, major chefs such as Auguste Escoffier, Marco Pierre White, and Charlie Trotter to name only a few. I would also like to thank the many talented chefs under whom I have worked since I was seventeen, each of whom taught me invaluable skills and traits along the way. In the non-culinary world I have had the great privilege to count as my confidants and friends Paul Margetson, the late Bill Zeckendorf, the late Jan Bandler, my in-laws, Ron and Joan Finn, the late Ursula Elkins, Al Holzgruber, and Corey Fidler. I am infinitely grateful for their friendship and support. My family, parents Rafael and Guadalupe Rios, brothers Daniel and Eduardo Rios, sister Aurora Rios, and their families are also a great source of strength and encouragement for me. If my mother had not taught me the love of ingredients and the cooking process from an early age, I would not be where I am today. I would be remiss if I did not express my gratitude to the many staff members in the front and back of the house—managers, line cooks, servers, pastry chefs, and sous chefs who have passed through my kitchens, most of whom have become lifelong friends. The following gentlemen all served skillfully and amiably as my sous chefs: Josh Baum, Carlos Alvarado, Caleb Trahan, Julio Cabrera, and Alejandro Hernandez. The front of the house at Restaurant Martín is beautifully run by Jennifer, and an outstanding team of servers and support staff, among them long-term employees Graciela Gonzales, Charles Johnson, and Bethany Morse. They have worked tirelessly alongside me to offer our guests the best dining experience Santa Fe has to offer. Due to my plate/china obsession, I knew when it came to photographing the dishes for this book I would want to feature plates that are manufactured and supplied by some of the people and companies whom I admire most. I thank Nambé, Heath Ceramics, Larry and Maggi Hill of Hill Associates, Pam Shields and The Wasserstrom Company, and the Santa Fe School of Cooking for helping me to have just the right mix of mediums when it came to plating surfaces! On this same front, John Boos & Co. contributed a series of their beautiful cutting boards you will see throughout this book—no kitchen is complete without these! Also, my partners in business, my favorite vendors stepped up to provide ingredients upon request for this project; they included Shamrock Foods Company, Jeff and Butch at Above Sea Level, and of course my favorite farmer, Rachel Le Page at Our Farmilia in Española, New Mexico. Jennifer and I also want to thank Cheryl and Bill Jamison, for putting my thoughts and words into a comprehensive and comprehensible book. We can’t imagine having anyone else tell our story or share our food with the public. It was sometimes very difficult for me to maintain the slower pace required to write a cookbook over running a restaurant kitchen, but we never expected anything less from these highly decorated, award-winning cookbook authors than to achieve a perfect balance. Cheryl showed infinite patience and support in making sure not a detail was missed. While Cheryl was the glue, Bill was the backbone putting all the pieces together to make this dream a reality on paper. Sadly, shortly after this manuscript was turned in, Bill fell ill and a few short months later, on the day I was named a finalist for the James Beard Best Chef of the Southwest Award, he passed away. Completing the edits and the process of bringing this book to print without Bill has been bittersweet and full of wonderful memories of our dear friend. Cheryl soldiered on like a champion, but we all have felt, and will always feel keenly, his absence. To Kate Russell, photographer extraordinaire, when we started the process of putting together a cookbook, the one thing we knew was that we didn’t want to do this book if we couldn’t work with you. For years we have admired and marveled at how her photography has made its subject leap off the page in the best of ways. We never wanted a food stylist because we knew Kate brought all the eyes we ever needed in order to show our product in the best light. That said, when Kate brought Tuscany Wenger along as a stylist, she only improved what we were already doing. These ladies truly made this book come alive. Words cannot express our appreciation and gratitude to the Jamisons and Kate for their attention to detail, creativity, precision, and most importantly their friendship before and throughout this process, and beyond. None of their support would have worked successfully, however, without the able guidance of Doe Coover, our agent, our editor Amy Lyons, and the staff of Globe Pequot. We thank everyone in our lives and our community who have stood behind us, perhaps most importantly our loyal guests, who have helped us to realize the dream that is Restaurant Martín. This cookbook is the icing on the cake. learning to cook, a lifelong adventure If I ever stop learning about food, I’ll have to stop cooking. It’s a deep-seated need, this drive I have to explore and grow. It pushes me like some powerful internal engine in all aspects of life, but the pistons really rev up when I’m preparing food or just thinking about a food idea. Even after thirty years as a professional chef, confident in my cooking, I can’t just rely on what I’ve learned or what I’ve done to this point. It would feel like running in place, never moving forward. Instead I need to keep experimenting with new dishes, old dishes, odd dishes, hoping to pop every one of them to a fresh level of brilliance. Chef friends sometimes rib me about being a “throwback” in the way I work at Restaurant Martín, where I run the kitchen as the co-owner with my wife Jennifer, the general manager. They warn me that I’m bucking the trend by not seeking celebrity stardom, or trying to build a culinary empire, or easing myself out of the “burden” of cooking in some other way. But cooking is most definitely not a burden to me. I create and refine and taste every item that’s on our menu and look at every dish that goes to our Santa Fe dining room under my name. By choice, not necessity, I work the line with our other cooks, and they are my closest compadres rather than any would-be investors, bankers, musicians, or media moguls. If hands-on is a throwback trait these days, it’s also my way of staying ahead of the crowd. The obsession with learning and growing goes back to my early childhood. I grew up in Guadalajara, Mexico, the sixth of eight children in a working-class family. Our income, such as it was, came primarily from my father’s job as an auto-body repairman, work that was never in steady supply. I saw his anxiety over money, how he was forever looking for a job or trying to make more money, and I saw how it affected my mom and older brothers and sisters. We were far from living in despair, but I realized over the years that I needed an exit from that life, from that eventual fate, one that I saw few people escape. Despite this struggle, my memories of those young years are primarily happy—mostly because they relate to food. At home we ate well, but very cheaply. Like many Mexican home cooks, my mom spent much of her time finding inexpensive ingredients that were fresh and tasty, and then putting them together for family meals. I particularly loved her sopes—fried masa patties made with various toppings. My favorites were the ones filled with refried beans, grated white cheese, chorizo, crema, and tomatillo salsa, and the ones flavored with poblano chiles and potatoes. No one would call sopes fancy cooking,