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About Chef Daniel
I
believe in expressing my personal and professional dedication to health
and wellness through great-tasting food. In don’t think you can have
one without the other. Healthy living is made healthier when food
feeds the soul. Exciting food is made with locally-grown (or caught), fresh
ingredients sprinkled with a dash of the best and most exotic ingredients
from around the globe. This is how you add the 'secret' flavor and
maximize the nourishment and happiness potential of every meal.
Currently, I serve as Executive Chef to the Spa at Norwich Inn, Connecticut where guests enjoy dining in Kensington's restaurant or in larger scale wedding and social celebrations. My team and I make sure that each meal, whether presented for one or one hundred is made tasty and flavorful. We also work to make it fit for a food magazine photo. The eyes have to eat too!
The Norwich Inn is a versatile venue for any chef, but more so for one also focused on healthy cooking. I can fix any food in the classical way with cream and butter as some of the guests demand, but many others want meals prepared not so richly. Because of this, I write my menus and recipes in satisfying portions based on the use of ingredients and cooking techniques that enhance the nutritional value of the total meal without sacrificing the satiety of luxury and flavor.
Before coming to New England, I was Executive Chef at Red Mountain Resort and Spa in St. George, Utah, in the beautiful high desert. I remember two guests that came looking for me the second day I arrived. They appeared at my door demanding that I start my job – and cook dinner that night. Their pleas were justified because prior to the resort’s conversion into a resort-spa, it had been a weight loss destination and all the cooks knew how to cook was devoid of flavor and totally undesirable. (It made perfect sense – if people were there to lose weight, why should the food be good?) I can’t remember what I cooked up that night, but it was good enough for the guests in the dining room to give me a standing ovation. It was kind of funny, really.
Prior to Red Mountain, Miraval Life in Balance became the place where I was formally introduced to “spa cuisine.” This spa has frequently been rated the best in the country. The chef there at the time was Cary Neff, now a well-know cookbook author and personality that has appeared on Oprah numerous times. It was there that I decided to focus my career on healthy cooking in and for the world of spa. Chef Neff helped me discover an appetite for creating all foods good-tasting and good-for-you. Our styles differ now, but I took a few of his techniques and philosophies and made them my own, just as all cooks and chefs have done since the beginning.
I gave my culinary-nutrition style and philosophy a name: Powerful Nourishment. In a few words, it is all about making food more nourishing by utilizing ingredients for their nutrient and antioxidant contribution to the total meal. In my forthcoming book, I will describe in detail what Powerful Nourishment is and how to use these techniques to eat better, feel better and look better – stay tuned.
A few words about my ethnic heritage: I am a mixed race Chinese-Mexican. I grew up eating great Chinese and great Mexican food. At home we ate very well because both my mother and father knew how to cook well and they enjoyed cooking. For a time, my parents employed a lady, Margarita, from Puebla, Mexico, who was a great cook. She made mole and pipian sauces from scratch in addition to a multitude of traditional Mexican desserts.
I truly enjoy eating foods and cuisines the world around, but my favorite are Chinese, Mexican and French. These are the styles I meld into my own. I cook in the French style with Asian and Latino notes through and through. For example, a recent dish I prepared is braised lamb shoulder with star anise and chocolate in a broth made of Merlot wine and veal stock.
My classical French training, I sought at The California Culinary Academy in San Francisco. I had some excellent teachers there, one of whom was chef Bo Friberg, author of The Professional Pastry Chef and Jean-Michel Jeudy who is currently president of Association des anciens élèves de l'École hôtelière de Strasbourg. I remember these personalities vividly because these men were in command of their knowledge – true professionals given to excellence. Both men were brought up through the time-tested method of apprenticeship and firmly secure in each step they took.
I studied my other passion, animal science, at the University of California at Davis. I took a special focus in aquaculture – the farming of aquatic species. This career gave me the ability to understand human nutrition and to move from the world of food preparation into the world of culinary nutrition seamlessly. More than the standard application of nutritional parameters, calorie counts, food exchanges and portion sizes, UC taught me to think critically and expand into concepts far beyond the textbooks.
In San Francisco, I worked at a few places, one of which was Aqua. Chef George Morrone opened Aqua with Chef Michael Mina. They were both at Aqua when I was there. I had some interaction with Chef Morrone; he is very intense and very talented. I had very little exchange with Chef Mina, but more with Sous Chef, Traci Des Jardines, she was a caring individual and excellent to work with.
I was also fortunate to spend some time in Spain at one of the best-known restaurants: El Meson De Candido in Segovia. A friend introduced me to the founder’s grandson, Candido Lopez Cuerdo, who had taken over as chef. The specialty there is the “Cochinillo” (pronounced koh-cheen-eeyoh) roast sucking pig. People come from all over Spain to enjoy the dish and the ancient, charming beauty of Segovia.
Mexicali, Mexico, after Spain, brought me an executive chef position at a cozy 70-seat, eclectic restaurant called “La Papa” which means, literally, “the potato.” In the vernacular, it means “out to lunch.” This was a lot of fun; opening a place is always a positive experience, but more so here because I had a hand in the design of the place from door to restroom – kitchen too. After three years, I left for Arizona to learn, work and play in Chef Cary Neff’s kitchen at Miraval, Life in Balance. . . .
Chef Daniel has received high praise from Connecticut Magazine's restaurant critic and has been the focus of feature articles in the Hartford Courant, Providence Journal, The (New London) Day and the Norwich Bulletin. His work at Kensington's has won the restaurant four stars from The Practical Gourmet.
He has appeared on Connecticut Public Radio's The Food Schmooze with host Faith Middleton and demonstrated his cuisine in the University of New Haven's Institute of Gastronomy and Culinary Arts Seminar Series. He was one of two chefs who shared the bill with the Chef Jacques Pepin in the demonstration kitchen at Connecticut Magazine's Best of Connecticut 2002 event at the Oakdale Theater in Wallingford, Conn.
He also has demonstrated his techniques and shared his spa food philosophy with students in the culinary nutrition program at Johnson & Wales University in Rhode Island.