WHEN LESS IS MOHR

Chef says follow your heart, not a cookbook

By Diana Love

My hand flew across the page. No matter how fast I wrote, how quickly cursive turned to chicken scratch and then to barely legible symbols, my hand couldn’t keep up. “Think!” I said to myself. “Remember that.” “No, don’t think. Listen! This guy has something to say, and clearly he is excited about it.”

If there is one word to describe Chef Todd Mohr, it’s “charismatic.” His passion for cooking is contagious. Mohr’s charm and knack for salesmanship were most likely a gift he inherited at birth.

Mohr remembers that at age 5 he would play deejay for his mother. He always liked to be in front of a crowd. Mohr’s charisma must have served him well for the many years he spent as sales and marketing manager for radio stations and billboard companies. Certainly, they contributed to success in his second career as a restaurant owner, chef, caterer and cooking instructor.

Mohr loves to talk about it, to share what he knows, to cook every day. But he didn’t grow up in a foodie family.

While he always liked the good food and fine cuisine encountered during family restaurant outings, he never thought of food as a career — at least not until he was 32, settled into his career, making a six-figure income and, much to his dissatisfaction, deep in the doldrums of middle management.

Confident that his true calling was food, he quit his job, sold everything he had, and entered the Baltimore Culinary Institute. He likes to point out that he went from making six figures to making $6 an hour, barely breaking $6,000 for the year he entered culinary school.

This drastic change in lifestyle and career path reveals how dedicated he is to his craft, how passionate he is about spreading his message.

Mohr says that prior to cooking school he was a decent amateur cook with a repertoire of five good dishes. Admittedly, one of them was Nexishells, which called for Velveeta Mexican cheese and a jar of salsa to be mixed with pasta shells. This didn’t really qualify as cooking — or, for that matter, as food.

At school he began to learn the hows and the whys of food chemistry. Mohr began to apply his own of brand creativity to time-tested formulas. His “a-ha” moment in school came when he realized that cooking is art, not simply the end product of a recipe. In fact, Mohr outright rejects recipes for the home cook.

“Following is not fun. Creating is fun.” Mohr begins a long diatribe on why cookbooks should be tossed from the kitchen.

“Cooks don’t start with recipes, just like painters don’t start with a masterpiece and pianist don’t begin with a concerto.” Cooking, says Mohr, begins with these basic lessons:

Knife skills are perhaps the most important. A good cook must be able to cut so that food will cook and present consistently.

Food safety and spoilage — including how to purchase fresh foods at the market — is important.

Actual cooking begins when the student learns how to impart heat to food: How chemistry and physics affect heat transfer from the pan to proteins, sugars or liquids, thus cooking the food.

“I’ll tell you why I can’t stand popular TV cooking shows and some celebrity so-called chefs,” Mohr says. “How do they know what type of pans I am using, how hot my stove top gets, if my food is fresh or not? Just what is a large or small onion, exactly?

“Recipes don’t provide for real-life variables. Besides, I want to use what I want to use, how much I want. I want the dish how I want it. Who says I can’t use more or less garlic, a different herb, another spice?”

Mohr’s first cooking lesson begins with sautéing, a quick and dry method of heat transfer.

To sauté is to be intimately involved with the food. “Let’s face it,” Mohr says, “you have to listen to a sauté. You have to smell, touch, look, pay attention, give care. This is a lot more exciting that throwing a roast in the oven and waiting for the oven timer to go off.”

To properly sauté, the cook must first properly heat the pan. How to tell if your pan is hot enough? “We know that water boils at 165 degrees,” Mohr says. “It evaporates at 212 degrees. If you sprinkle drops of water on your pan, they sizzle and evaporate, and then you know your pan is hot enough. You must be able to quantify heat. The hand hover simply doesn’t work.”

After sautéing, the home cook must learn to braise, a moist-heat method that, when properly executed, turns tough cuts of protein into tender, flavorful stews and casseroles.

Lastly, the home cook must learn the art of sauce-making. “A good sauce can make a bad chicken breast great, or can make a great chicken breast very, very bad.”

Later lessons should include using spices and seasonings. “Spices are the signature on the cook-artist’s painting,” Mohr says. “Seasoning is artistic expression.”

Conversation with Mohr about food and cooking can best be described as passionately, infectiously interesting. He brought his brand of passion to the Great Grapes Food and Wine Festival at the Anne Arundel County fairgrounds in May, winning first place in the Chesapeake Bay Flavor Magazine Crab Cookoff.

Mohr prepared a corn tart seasoned with Old Bay, filled with crab custard. His intent was to take something comfortable and common to locals, but to make it unique. He used an egg custard to bind the crab rather than mayonnaise, and used corn muffin mix as the base for his tart.

This is the recipe for the winning dish.

Chesapeake Flavor Crabmeat in Old Bay Corn Tart

Original recipe by Chef Todd Mohr

Makes 4 tarts

Ingredients

1 Package Jiffy Corn Muffin Mix

2 Egg whites

¼ cup milk

2 Tablespoons (or more) Old Bay Seasoning

1 whole red pepper or jar of diced pimentos

4 ounces heavy cream

1 whole shallot or small onion, peeled

4 whole sprigs of fresh dill

2 egg yolks

Salt and white pepper to taste

1 pound fresh back fin crabmeat

Method

1. Grease 4 individual fluted tart shells or ceramic ramekins with butter or pan spray.
2. 2. Disregarding the package instructions, prepare Jiffy Corn Muffin Mix with 2 egg whites, ¼ cup of milk and as much Old Bay as you’d like.
3. Portion muffin mix equally between 4 tarts
4. Smooth batter into bottom and sides of baking vessel.
5. Bake tarts 325F until brown and dry in the middle.
6. Set aside to cool If you’re using jarred pimentos, skip steps 7-10
7. Roast red pepper over an open flame until all skin is charred black.
8. Shock charred pepper in ice water to stop cooking.
9. Remove all burnt skin and carve filets from central seed cage.
10. Dice roasted red pepper and set aside.
11. In small saucepan, bring cream, whole shallot and dill sprigs to gentle simmer. Simmer at least 10 minutes GENTLY.
12. Strain cream and discard shallot and dill.
13. In a very slow, steady stream, pour half of the hot cream into egg yolks while whisking constantly.
14. Reverse — now, whisk the cream/egg yolk mixture back into the rest of the hot cream to make a custard base.
15. Return yolk/cream mixture to the stove and heat gently until the custard thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon.
16. Season custard with salt and white pepper as desired.
17. Add crabmeat and red pepper to custard and return to stove to heat through.
18. Remove tarts from their pans and place on a plate.
19. Spoon crabmeat custard onto each tart shell.
20. Garnish with fresh dill sprig.

To see a video of Mohr preparing this dish, go to http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/video/video.php?v=1152751780898

Chef Mohr is the founder of Savor Hospitality, a catering business and cooking school in Cary, N.C. For 175-plus cooking videos and free cooking information, visit Mohr’s Web site, or www.SavorHospitality.com