It's A Celebrity Feast On Celebrity Cruises

On April 29th we boarded the Celebrity Summit and headed out for Bermuda for a week of tasting, learning, and food celebration with chefs from the hit TV show Moveable Feast. Chefs Richard Blais and Bryan Voltaggio headlined all of the Moveable Feast events, meeting guests, hosting interactive cooking classes, giving demonstrations, and even a tour of Bermuda's local agriculture and Bermudian family food traditions.

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Moveable Feast with Bryan Voltaggio and Richard Blais

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Moveable Feast with Bryan Voltaggio and Richard Blais

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Now, of course guests on Celebrity Cruises are always blessed with a dining experience to rival world-class eating establishments. Celebrity Summit's Executive Chef Kuldeep Singh oversees a galley that is staffed by over 150 multi-cultural cooks who prepare and serve over 16,000 meals and dishes every day for Celebrity Summit's 8 on-board restaurants. That's not to mention the meals prepared for room service and their delightful coffee café, Café Al Bacio, which serves excellent espresso drinks as well as elegant pastries and desserts. (The smell of espresso and pastry from that little café put a smile on my face each and every ocean-air filled morning!) Adding to all of this, Chefs Bryan Voltaggio and Richard Blais, made for a food lover's paradise cruise.

Celebrity Cruises exclusively hosts Moveable Feast specialty cruises, which give guests an opportunity to engage with celebrity chefs in a way that many people might never experience. Guests were given the chance to meet the chefs in person and have their pictures taken together. Both chefs offered private cooking lessons for about 20 of us in the galley of the ship. Both chefs also took the stage and gave fun and informative cooking demonstrations in the main theater.

The private cooking classes included lunch with wine afterward in the Tuscan Grille where we were able to sit down and be served our very own creations made just moments before in our Celebrity cooking class.

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Richard Blais' cooking class centered on creating a first course he called a Sushi-rrito.  I'm not sure about the spelling but in concept a Sushi-ritto is a mash-up between a burrito and a sushi roll. Tuna tartar with toasted sesame oil, spices, and yuzu extract act as the burrito filling and a perilla leaf acts as the tortilla. BOOM, a Sushi-ritto! (Really it's more of a taco but I'm from California originally and we get technical about this stuff.) But after this class I am definitely searching New York's Korean markets for perilla leaves. They are wonderfully crispy, light and tasty.

In Bryan Voltaggio's class we prepared seared Branzino with a delicious caponata, not made with eggplant but instead made with melon, cucumber, raisins, capers and peppers. Chef Voltaggio demonstrated how to sear a fish filet properly in a cast iron pan. He even gave us instruction on how to take care of the cast iron pan afterward.  Both of these classes were jam packed with useful information.

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The chef's theater demonstrations were equally informative and fun. Chef Blais is right at home on stage and makes quite a show of his demonstrations. Equal parts show biz and cooking lesson, Chef Blais brought with him various kitchen toys. He even demonstrated his prized smoking gun for "spot smoking." Basically this involves placing the item to be smoked under glass and piping smoke from an electric gun device that heats smoking chips in a chamber and pipes the resulting smoke through a rubber hose into the glass cover. There the food item bathes in a flavor cloud until it reaches the desired amount of smokiness. Not exactly what a home cook might do but a lot of fun to watch.

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Chef Voltaggio's stage show was a bit more traditional but filled with very practical home cook information. I came away with a new understanding of the role of salt and your basic refrigerator as a place to prepare food not just to keep food from spoiling. I learned how to choose a great rib eye steak, how to prepare it before cooking, and just how much butter goes into restaurant pureéd potatoes. Oh my gosh folks, no wonder they taste so much better at a restaurant!

On our first gorgeous blue, turquoise, sun filled day docked in Bermuda Chef Voltaggio and about 25 of us disembarked the Celebrity Summit, hopped into a couple of vans and zipped off to tour Bermuda's own Wadson's Farm.

What makes Wadson's Farm so special is that it's a "community supported agriculture" (CSA) farm. This means that the community can buy "Farm Shares" which helps pay for the cost of running the farm and each member receives in return a weekly distribution of fresh seasonal produce. Plus all the crops are grown using practices that are respectful of health, environment and the future of Bermuda's agriculture. Members can also arrange to pick their own crops.

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This sustainable and organic farm has been the passion of Tom Wadson since 1976. When you visit you'll see Tom's hydroponic lettuces, the most popular on the island especially in the summer since fresh lettuce is difficult to find. Mr. Wadson also grows a large variety root vegetables as well as chickens, turkeys, Ossabaw hogs, and Dorper sheep.

After exploring Wadson's farm our chef and tour guides ferried us around Bermuda past Horseshoe Bay, stopping at Bermuda College for a demonstration of local family dishes prepared by Chef Teneika Eve who is an island celebrity and host of her own cooking show, "Live, Love Eat." Chef Teneika is quite a personality teaching us all, including Chef Voltaggio, new kitchen lingo like "fresh crack!" which raised a few guest eyebrows but as it turns out is really just her term for "freshly ground black pepper."

Chef Voltaggio joined her for the demonstration making Farine Pie, really a bread not a pie in my opinion. But Farina Pie is a Bermudian tradition around Christmas. Some locals bake chicken into the pie so we were treated to that version as well. Personally I preferred the non-chicken version but I'm guessing it depends if you want to serve it as a main dish a side or a separate course.

Farine Pie is one of those recipes handed down from one generation to the next and everyone is very particular about what makes it authentic. When Chef Voltaggio wondered aloud if it would be nice served with a bed of vegetables or sautéed greens Chef Teneika promptly put that sacrilegious idea to rest. Not traditional! Truthfully I thought it was a great idea especially if the pie included the baked-in chicken.

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Next Chef Teneika prepared delicate Bermuda codfish cakes made with salt cod, pureéd potatoes parsley and fried golden brown in butter. Served on a raisin bun and topped with Banana Black Rum Chutney this was a major hit with my fellow guests/students.

Finally we hopped back into our vans and made our way to the town of Hamilton where we had just enough time to catch some lunch before taking the ferry back to the Celebrity Summit. I took this opportunity to sample a local specialty cocktail called a Bermuda Rum Swizzle. If you enjoy punch-like cocktails this may be a good choice. Frankly I prefer my Bermudian Rum in another classic, the Dark and Stormy. No offense to the Bermuda cocktail council if there is one!

While we were touring in Bermuda, back at the Celebrity Summit, it was Moveable Feast Night and Executive Chef Kuldeep Singh along with his crew of cooks were busy preparing dishes made according to recipes given to them by our Moveable Feast chefs.

Chef Blais featured tuna tonnato toast made with the bread baked on board, English pea soup, and seared duck. Chef Voltaggio's recipes included shrimp and grits with a beer sauce that practically got a standing ovation when the chefs came out to talk to the diners. Also tomato watermelon gazpacho, and pan roasted sea bass with dashi, cranberry beans and mushrooms. For dessert there was a banana pudding with caramel, a combination of creamy and sweet/salty.

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Photo credit: Celebrity Cruises

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Photo credit: Celebrity Cruises

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Is it difficult to create recipes for amazing dishes like these on a cruise ship where space is limited and there are restrictions regarding techniques? Not really, Chef Blais pointed out that it's important to think like the cook who will be preparing that food. Recipes need to ensure it can be easily finished in the galley and delicious. Definitely restrict last minute searing or finishing. It's best to prepare components ahead so plating is accomplished quickly.

I had the very special opportunity to interview both Chefs and discuss their backgrounds, influences, and vision for the future of American gastronomy. Voltaggio and Blais each clearly count appearing on Top Chef as an impressive individual achievement, both are American-born, raised on the east coast, both graduates of the Culinary institute of America in Hyde Park, NY, but both have unique styles, culinary philosophies and professional histories that make them unique.

 After CIA and working with Charlie Palmer and other famous chefs, Voltaggio wanted to go back to Fredrick, Maryland to open his first restaurant.  The reason for this was because of his affinity for the local agriculture and what he considers real mid Atlantic coastal ingredients. He sees his art as typically mid-Atlantic, coastal cuisine. So it's not surprising that his newest restaurant set to open in the first quarter of 2019 will be in DC.

Describing his youth, Bryan says he grew up around a lot of agriculture and it was a tight community. For example, when the corn crop would come in people of the town would get together, shuck and make creamed corn. It was a communal thing with fresh food. So Bryan grew up very close to the products and the agriculture of the region. He boasts about the growing season that rivals Central California, "There is an abundance of local product to choose from." As a result, he craves a reset to the way things used to be. "Before trucking, before 'big ag'. We should return to planting crops that should be planted in the region."

He also has strong memories of cooking with his Grandfather who was a Korean War vet who then became a Whirlpool salesman and it just so happened he also loved to cook. He remembers his mom strictly held the tradition of the 5:30 dinner table. They lived in the same townhouse unit as the Grandfather and so Bryan, knowing there was something delicious happening at his Grandfather's, would run down to the end unit and help him cook. As a youngster Bryan was given his first apron and cookbook – the kind for kids with recipes for grilled cheese cut into animals. (But to be sure there are no grilled cheese animals on any of his menus!)

Chef Richard Blais' background is as different from Chef Voltaggio's as East Coast and West Coast. His Mom was not a great cook.  He grew up on canned foods and maybe that's why he craved something more. He worked at McDonald's. Not the glamorous story of romantic farm living. But his unglamorous beginnings certainly did not hold him back. He worked for Thomas Keller and Danielle Boulud and quickly became a kitchen star. But he still enjoys red Jell-O every once in while, bragging before his demonstration that he had 4 servings at the Oceanview Café before coming on stage.

Chef Blais considers his craft a cultural moment. Sort of like hip-hop where someone took two records, made sample sounds and called it music. It's arts and crafts. It's a food culture moment, like standup cooking. He says his cuisine is global but likes to source locally to give local farmers a chance to expand their offering.

Blais will do 100 shows this year. What is his motivation? More than the food it's a transfer of energy, he says, giving love and getting attention. It's why chefs are so giving and charitable. They love to make people happy, entertain and get that positive feedback. When you stop and think about it, cooking food, giving love and getting feed back hasn't changed much for many millennia.

Luckily I hear there will be another Moveable Feast culinary cruise on board Celebrity Equinox sailing out of Miami on August 11, 2018, featuring star chefs Michelle Bernstein and Marcus Samuelsson! The sailing will be a 7-night Caribbean cruise, calling ports in Key West, Costa Maya, Cozumel, and George Town.  So the love fest continues! See you there?

For more information on Celebrity Moveable Feast Cruises, go to https://www.celebritycruises.com/specialty-cruises/moveable-feast-with-fine-cooking

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