June 15, 2018
It's a spring afternoon in Paris, and chef Daniel Humm is in the kitchen of Refettorio Paris, a soup kitchen founded by his chef pal Massimo Bottura. Boxes of mushrooms, browning at the edges and no longer fit to be sold at the local supermarket, are being turned into a mushroom soup starter, while osso bucco is stewing on the stove for the main dish.
The ingredients he has to use up are humble and on the edge of expiry: over-ripened bananas and bruised strawberries, veal shanks and brown mushrooms. They're a far cry from the delicacies he's used to working with in the kitchens of Eleven Madison Park, his New York restaurant which currently holds the No. 1 spot on the World's 50 Best Restaurants ranking.
On this particular spring afternoon, Humm is not in a pristine white chef's coat or surrounded by an army of kitchen staff. It's just him, in jeans and a T-shirt, and two other line cooks.
"This is great, it's the sort of thing we do every day for our staff meals, going into the fridge and finding foods we have to use up."
Humm is in his element. He has a special fondness for working with humble ingredients. In fact, it's a dish he invented made with celery root -- one of the lowliest vegetables in the plant kingdom -- that he cites as the pinnacle of his career.
More at https://www.yahoo.com/news/secret-chef-daniel-humms-eleven-madison-park-success-124546352.html