Cooking Demonstrations

After a very late night the evening before, we were kicking ourselves for signing up for a Bertolli demo with Fabio Viviani at 9 a.m. the next day. But he greeted us with coffee (scratch that — cappuccinos!), and gave us a warm Italian welcome (you'd have never known that he'd gone to bed at 4:30 a.m.). "I'm not famous enough to have my own party in South Beach, but I do like to cook," Fabio said, as he introduced himself humorously before making fresh pasta. After that, we knew we'd be OK.

In fact, we were more than just OK — we were in stitches with the former Top Cheffer's zingers. To see a few of his best quotables from the morning, keep reading.

When a slightly hungover Ming Tsai fixed himself a melon mojito at his cooking seminar in Aspen, Chef Ming also revealed a tip that he'd discovered that weekend.

"One trick I learned from [Chef] Jasper White's prep cook is to use tongs to juice lemons and limes," he revealed, placing half a lemon close to the fulcrum of his stainless steel tongs. He used the tongs to get a better and more powerful grip on the citrus before squeezing.

This tip is a great way to juice without a citrus juicer or reamer, and makes even more use out of those multipurpose kitchen tongs. What's your foolproof method of getting the most juice from citrus?

We spotted Ming Tsai at a late-night party in Aspen for the Food & Wine Classic Friday evening — so it wasn't a surprise to find the chef roughing it a little at his early-morning cooking demo the next day. Still, the Next Iron Chef contestant and Blue Ginger proprietor managed to bring his best when it came to wit and cooking skills.

Ming made a number of dishes from his new cookbook, Simply Ming One-Pot Meals, but my favorite was his demonstration of a dish called Clams, Pork, and Jicama, in which he offered up a number of helpful tips that I wasn't familiar with. Follow these bivalve suggestions next time you cook at home, and you'll be happy as a clam. To see them, keep reading.

At food festivals past, I've learned more than enough about new cooking tips and techniques I should be doing — but what about things we shouldn't be doing in the kitchen? At his seminar in Aspen, Cal-Italian maestro Michael Chiarello tackled spicy dishes from Calabria, Italy, but also took the time to touch upon a number of culinary no-nos. While some were highly specific and others were more general, many of his kitchen don'ts were revelations. Find out what they are when you read on.

When it comes to record-setting celebrity chefs, Rachael Ray is the woman to beat. She's been the world's richest culinary personality, has the first daytime TV show to incorporate 3-D, and tomorrow she'll be heading up the world's largest cooking demonstration.

Tomorrow at 11:30 a.m. EST, in front of a studio audience of 90, Ray will be teaching a new recipe for honey mustard chicken. Her demo will be beamed via satellite live to a jumbo screen in the Los Angeles Hollywood & Highland Center, where approximately 200 fans will be watching and cooking along in real-time. If that isn't enough, the lesson will also be streamed live over Facebook to fans all across the world.

I suppose now that Rachael Ray has just about everything (Daytime show? Check. Cookbooks? Check. Emmy? Check . . .) she's moved on to setting world records. What do you think of this new concept? Will you log in to Facebook to check it out live?

From Giada to Mario to Morimoto, there was no shortage of big food names at the Food & Wine Classic. But no one was more popular than regional Mexican expert Rick Bayless. When I attended his seminar one afternoon, I sat shoulder to shoulder with literally hundreds of attendees crowded under the cooking tent just to see the Top Chef Master in action. The affable TV host captivated the crowd by preparing ayocotes, or runner beans, in coloradito, a Oaxacan chocolate sauce. He explained that the Mexican region of Oaxaca is known as the "land of the seven molés" for its many indigenous sauces made by blending chiles with nuts or seeds. As he worked on the dish, Bayless also offered a primer on dried chiles. Learn how to better utilize them when you read on.

Of all the demos I visited at the Food & Wine Classic, the seminar hosted by Giada De Laurentiis surprised me the most. I worried that it'd be too crowded due to the Food Network star's popularity, but it wound up being one of my favorites. Although the Italian bombshell did spill her secrets for looking great, she definitely demonstrated that she isn't just a pretty face. The lady can cook, and has a sense of humor to boot! She invited three audience members to join her on stage to cook specialties such as cherry tomato pasta and cauliflower gratin, offering plenty of party advice and pasta tips along the way.

See what she had to say after the break.

In my time spent with Momofuku's David Chang, I've learned that there's never a dull moment with the opinionated chef. When I found out he was demoing in Aspen, I knew I'd be there.

Chang, who was a Best New Chef himself at the 2006 Classic, showed his version of vacuum cooking. "Sous vide cooking will be more popular in the next 10 to 20 years," he declared. Although he recommended a water immersion circulator for home cooks ("they didn't pay me to say this, but PolyScience is the best one out there"), he demonstrated a similar, more affordable technique that he refers to as "sandbagging" or "ghetto sous vide."

He made fun of his jury-rigged concept, but I think it was classic avant-garde David Changian. With a large vat of water, the chef used an instant-read digital thermometer to gauge the temperature at about 140ºF, or 60ºC. Then he inserted a vacuum-sealed piece of meat for about 45 minutes, until the protein was just barely, but uniformly, cooked through. For more about what the Momofuku maestro had to say, read on.

"I don't get to come here often," Thomas Keller said to a morning audience at this past weekend's Aspen Food & Wine Classic. There's no question the godfather of all restaurant chefs has been busy, between his nine restaurants, six Michelin stars, cookbooks, and Bocuse d'Or leadership, so it was a rare treat to watch him demonstrate how to prepare homemade preserves out of his award-winning cookbook, Ad Hoc at Home.

While Keller demonstrated the versatility of sweet onion tapenade, cured lemons, and mushroom conserva, he revealed his sense of humor when he spoke about being in the first group of Best New Chefs 22 years ago, preparing a lobster dish that was served in a resident's home. "After 600 lobsters, I'm sure that home was never the same again," he joked. The chef also offered plenty of useful advice. To check it out, keep reading.