On Chef Talk, The Show sits down with a chef — from fine dining rooms to nightclub kitchens — find out what makes them tick.
The winners of the James Beard Awards, known as the Oscars of the food world, will be announced next month, and a few Arizona chefs made the final cut.
Rene Andrade of Bacanora is in the final running for Best Chef: Southwest, and Crystal Kass of Valentine is up for Outstanding Pastry Chef or Baker.
The Show got to visit Kass’s kitchen recently to find out what inspires her.
Crystal Kass' pastries and desserts are not overly complicated or stuffy. They're explorations of texture — and sometimes even temperature. And they're often inspired by the desert around us.
She's got a shelf in her kitchen in the back of Valentine that's full of native ingredients — flowers and seeds, from amaranth and red fife to mesquite flour and chil tine peppers. She said she's always watching for what's seasonal in the Sonoran Desert.
"Mulberry season is just around the corner. Usually as a team, we'll go to Holiday Farms, and we'll pick mulberries. I think that's happening sometime next month. So you can see something with mulberries on the menu, whether it's a jam or using them fresh or making it into granita."
Kass didn't start out in the food world, though. She grew up in Chicago and studied kinesiology in college, but she said she realized it wasn't what she wanted to do. She went to the French pastry school instead.
So why did she choose pastries? A big part of it is fond childhood memories.
"Honestly ... just loving food and, and growing up around food, like my grandma is always in the kitchen, my mom was always in the kitchen, baking, cooking," Kass said. "And for me, it's,it's really something that, makes me think of family. And just wanting to cook for other people and putting like love into it, I guess if you will. Because my mom, every time I come home, she's always like, 'Are you hungry? Can I make something to eat?' Like that's her love language. I feel like that's my love language. And pastry was just, it just drew me in because I love sweets. And you know, that was something that I started doing first was baking with my mom."
Kass said she also loves the creativity involved in baking.
"... I love being creative and and trying to like put my spin on things," she said.
And being a pastry chef involves a lot of precision — a lot of very exact measurements and mathematical precision. Kass said that also fits her personality well.
"I like to say my personality is very precise. I like to be on time. I don't like to be late and also very meticulous like in my home life. So everything I use has to get put back right away. If I'm cooking at home, like I have to wipe down the kitchen right away. No dirty dishes in the sink," said said. And so I just think that this profession, whether it like influenced my personality now or like vice versa, but I think I am very like organized and precise in my personal life as well."
As far as what drives her to create, Kass said hot and cold textures are an inspiration in her work.
"So mixing the two like something hot paired with something cold also, you know, something smooth and creamy against something that's very crunchy. I think the texture is very big," she said. "So anytime I try to create a dish, I want to incorporate as many textural components like that as I can."
She uses many uncommon ingredients in her recipes, including Sonoran wheat, blue corn meal and mesquite flower. Kass talked about one unusual ingredient that was an "aha moment" for her.
"I think there was one dessert that stands out where, you know, I was reading a cookbook and I saw that this pastry chef had used hay in a custard," said said. "She infused it ... in my head, I was like, 'You know, I wonder what that would taste like.' So, you know, Donnie got some, some hay from one of the farms from us. And I used it into a dessert and the first time I tried it, it was like that 'aha moment.'"
Kass said she toasted the hay, and it had a nutty, earthly flavor she wasn't expecting.
"... it was so good. It just works so well. And I paired it with like mulberries and strawberries and cacao nibs and just like that flavor together. Just worked so well."
This year is the second time Kass has been nominated for a James Beard Award, and it's her first time as a finalist — and she said she still can't quite believe it.
"Honestly? I'm still in a state of shock. I still don't believe that it's real. You know, I think I won't realize it's real until I'm there in the ceremony amongst all these great chefs and pastry chefs. I'm just, you know, super excited for the team and where we're going. And I'm so happy that Valentine is getting the recognition that I feel like they deserve because everybody here does such a great job and we're such a great team and I'm just also excited for, you know, Arizona being on the map as well."
