Crave Chef Spotlight: Chicago’s Bruce Sherman hopes to have cherries on the menu in Spokane Valley

Bruce Sherman doesn’t eat at home much.

“If I’m lucky enough to be at home two nights in a week, one of them is probably take-out,” said Sherman, the chef and a partner at Chicago’s Michelin-starred North Pond restaurant which specializes in modern-French, seasonal-American cuisine.

He usually takes Thai or Chinese to go.

And if he is home another night, his cooking is “much simpler” than it is at the restaurant: grilled chicken with steamed Basmati rice, a piece of fish lightly cooked or grilled with potatoes or pasta.

“We don’t go crazy at home. We don’t want to. We don’t have to.”

For his Crave demonstration, the 55-year-old chef is “leaning toward doing something with halibut, cherries and onions.”

He aims to be inventive in the dish – as well as in all of his cooking – while respecting tradition.

His advice for home cooks: “Do what you will enjoy instead of stressing out and panicking about what’s on the stove. I think that can sort of poison the experience and the nature of cooking. It’s meant to be a passion. It’s not meant to be a responsibility or something stressful. It’s supposed to be something enjoyable. It shouldn’t be a huge relief when you’re done; it should be a sense of gratitude and accomplishment and thrill.”

His go-to ingredients: good olive oil, vinegars, lemon, butter, bacon, pork, pancetta, Parmesan and “a bag of Italian pasta.” No. 1 is salt.

“It’s going to bring out the flavor,” said Sherman, who recommends kosher salt for cooking as well as a finishing salt.

But, his new favorite: Tabasco Green Pepper Sauce. He’s not paid to say this, he said. But, “I always have that in the fridge. It adds heat without destroying things or sort of covering up things. It’s great on everything.”

Mark your calendar: Bruce Sherman presents his culinary stage demo from 3:30 to 4:15 p.m. Saturday.