From Chef To Instructor
A funny thing happened to Peter Tobin on his way to becoming a head chef he decided to try teaching instead.
Tobin, a 35-year-old chef/instructor at Spokane Community College, began his culinary career at age 14 as a dishwasher in a restaurant in his home town of Salem, Mass.
“The owner said if I worked hard, I wouldn’t have to wash dishes any more,” the fast-talking Tobin recalls with a laugh. “I worked my way up through the cooking line.”
After graduating from high school with an interest in cooking but no clear direction in life, Tobin attended the prestigious Culinary Institute of America in New York, where he “really got the bug.”
An avid skier, he worked at restaurants in Taos, Sun Valley and Colorado Springs before arriving at The Coeur d’Alene Resort in 1985. By 1988, he finally felt ready to try for a job as head chef when he saw a newspaper ad for the SCC position. Surprising even himself, he applied - and got it.
Why teaching? “I was working with a lot of cooks who all wanted to be chefs, but they couldn’t cook,” Tobin explains. “If you asked them to make a vegetarian dish, it was steamed vegetables with rice. There was no creativity. I felt strongly that the craft was being lost.”
Today, Tobin teaches 60 students a year all about cooking history and tradition, as well as basic techniques. He proudly points to such SCC graduates as Curtis Smith of Beverly’s, Michael Scroggie of Patsy Clark’s, Scott Baum of Cucina! Cucina!, Bob Hancock of Fugazzi and Tina Iten of Wine Stein’Z.
Tobin teaches on a broader scale through his weekly cooking show on KREM-TV, “Fresh Approach” (Sundays at 9:30 a.m.), sponsored by Tidyman’s Warehouse Foods. The focus is on healthy recipes that people can prepare quickly.
“With today’s busy schedules, everybody says they don’t have time to cook,” Tobin says. “I say, cooking can be an event - spend a Sunday afternoon with the family, and make something fun.”
Tobin says a chef’s job may still be in his future. To keep his skills sharp, he’s spent summers working at such eateries as the Manito Country Club, Carnegie’s in Post Falls and Pastry and More in Coeur d’Alene.
This summer, he’s sticking around home - at least, until he finds out when he gets to go on the seven-day Alaskan cruise he won as grand prize in the professional division of the recent Darigold “Whip Up Your Best Butter Recipe” contest.
Tobin enters as many cooking contests as he can, and encourages his students to do the same. “It’s a nice pat on the back (when you win), and it makes you think about cooking,” he says.
His Darigold winner, Crab Ravioli with Lemon Caper Butter Sauce, reflects Tobin’s Italian heritage. While his mother wasn’t much of a cook, her Italian-born mother was.
“She was my inspiration,” Tobin says. “Unfortunately, I never cooked beside her. But I remember one time in Sun Valley when I was making gnocchi, and as soon as I tasted it, I was back at my grandmother’s house for a Sunday dinner. I thought: ‘I’ve made something that Nonna made!”’
Today, Tobin’s 5-year-old son, Brett, frequently accompanies him into the kitchen.
“There are so many roads in cooking,” Tobin says. “I don’t see how anyone could ever get sick of it.”
Crab Ravioli with Lemon Caper Butter Sauce
If you don’t want to bother making your own pasta, Tobin suggests stuffing the filling into prepared pasta shells or rolling it up in lasagna noodles.
Pasta:
3/4 cup leaf spinach, cleaned, stemmed and tightly packed
1-3/4 cups semolina flour
3 eggs
1 teaspoon olive oil
Pinch of salt
Filling:
1/4 cup fresh bread crumbs
5 tablespoons whipping cream
12 ounces crab meat (preferably Dungeness)
1 tablespoon softened butter
2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese
Pinch salt, pepper and nutmeg
2 egg whites
Sauce:
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 shallot, minced fine
2 cloves garlic, minced fine
1/4 cup dry white wine
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 cup butter, softened
2 tablespoons capers
1 tomato, skinned, seeded and diced
2 tablespoons Parmesan cheese
Fresh herbs for garnish (optional)
For pasta, blanch spinach in boiling water until bright green and tender. Drain, refresh with cold water, and dry; mince fine and set aside.
Place semolina flour in large bowl and make well in center. Combine spinach, eggs, olive oil and salt; pour into center of well and work flour into egg mixture to form dough. Knead until smooth and elastic; cover and let rest for 30 minutes.
For filling, soak bread crumbs in whipping cream. Combine with crab meat, butter, cheese and seasonings. Whip egg whites in separate bowl until foamy; fold into crab mixture. Chill until ready to assemble raviolis.
To assemble, roll out dough very thin or use a pasta machine. Cut into 18 rectangles, 5 inches by 4 inches. Place rounded teaspoon of filling mixture in center of each rectangle. Brush edges with water, fold over filling and twist ends to seal. Cover with a towel until ready to cook.
For sauce, place olive oil in heated saucepan; add shallots and garlic and saute until aromatic. Add white wine and lemon, and cook until volume is reduced by half.
Reduce heat to low; whisk in butter in small amounts, incorporating well between each addition. Do not boil. Stir in capers, tomato and cheese.
Cook raviolis in boiling salted water until they’re tender and float to the top, about 3 to 4 minutes. Serve with sauce on heated plates and garnish with fresh herbs, if desired.
Yield: 6 appetizer or 3 entree servings.
Note: For a low-fat variation, use only egg whites in the pasta, eliminate the butter in the filling and substitute skim milk for the cream. For the sauce, place 2 ounces dry white wine, 2 tablespoons lemon juice, 2 tablespoons capers, 1 seeded and diced tomato and 1 tablespoon minced parsley in a saucepan and reduce over low heat until half the liquid remains; add 1 cup chicken broth with 1 teaspoon cornstarch dissolved in it, bring to a boil to thicken and season with salt and freshly ground pepper.
Chef du Jour is a monthly feature of IN Food that profiles area chefs and provides one of their recipes for readers to try at home.
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo