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The
Rant
Sean Patrick O’Keefe – A Hollywood Personal Chef
Enjoying an outstanding three or four course meal in a comfortable environment with excellent service usually means dining at a high-end restaurant downtown. But what if you could have that experience in your own home without having to lift a finger to cook or wash dishes? Sound interesting? It is possible these days through the services of many personal chefs working in Canada and the United States. Here in Canada the Canadian Personal Chef Association has approximately seventy members working in major centres across the country - over thirty of them in densely populated Ontario. Recently I hired a personal chef to prepare a special occasion dinner in my home. While this chef does hail from Newfoundland, his usual area for work is Hollywood, California, showbiz capital of the world.
 Chef Sean Patrick O'Keefe was raised in Mt. Pearl and attended O'Donnell High School there - ironically at the same time he was flipping burgers at MacDonald's for pocket money. Now, after several twists and turns - including five years in the Toronto restaurant scene where he met a big time movie producer - he's ended up working as a personal chef in Hollywood. For the past ten years, while jumping through bureaucratic hoops in a quest to become an American citizen, Sean Patrick has prepared food for some of the bigger names in U.S. entertainment, in their own homes. He cannot reveal their names because as he told me, “They make me sign confidentiality agreements that are sixty pages long. I can’t reveal anything about them or their private lives. If I do, I’ll never work there again. It’s as simple as that.”
Sean Patrick has also worked for multi-millionaires who made their fortunes in business. One of them had in his employ a former staff member of the Royal Family. Then there was the employer who sent Sean Patrick to Europe with instructions to dine at some of the best restaurants on the continent. In return Sean Patrick was required to describe the meals he’d eaten and then, at his employer’s request, reproduce whichever of those meals his boss might fancy eating. That’s how Sean Patrick became so good at de-constructing dishes, to figure out how they were made and what they were made with.
After meeting Sean Patrick I became so intrigued by the young culinarian and his food that I hired him to work with me on the preparation of a dinner party for a few close friends. Normally personal chefs cook and you dine, however, I wanted to see if I could pick up a few cooking skills or pointers from Sean Patrick. He had impressed me not only by knowing quite a bit about food and food preparation but also by his ability to communicate. If there were things I could learn from Sean Patrick I felt the best way to do it would be to actually chop, peel and sauté alongside him.
There are several services personal chefs like Sean Patrick can offer clients. For example, in addition to doing your marketing and preparing a fresh meal for you or a specified number of people in your home, they will also prepare meals in advance that can be frozen and re-heated later. They can do a simple or elaborate dinner party in your home; hiring extra helpers as needed or even cater an event for you.
A few days before my dinner party Sean Patrick and I got together to discuss the menu. I wanted him to prepare ingredients that were favourites of mine but also dishes that were typical of what he might prepare for one of his California clients. I love shellfish, smoked salmon, lamb and cream so the menu reflected that wish list. Here it is.
 Hors d’oeuvres: Shrimp toasts plus smoked salmon on potato latkes accented with sour cream and black lumpfish roe. Risotti: Gorgonzola risotto with green peas plus mushroom risotto with chanterelles. Entrée: Grilled lamb chops with pan-Asian marinade plus grilled lamb chops with citrus and bruleed ginger marinade. Dessert: Bread and butter pudding with crème brulee topping.
 As agreed, Sean Patrick arrived at my house at about 9 o’clock on the day with all necessary ingredients. He’d found some superior smoked salmon from a local supplier and New Zealand lamb at a very reasonable price - to keep my costs down. His hamper also included ingredients like aged balsamic vinegar, hoisin sauce, star anise and lemon grass for the marinades, water chestnuts for the shrimp toasts, oyster mushrooms and dried chanterelles for the mushroom risotto.
Most of my morning was spent preparing the marinades and sauces for the lamb course and, as I had hoped, learning a few things from Sean Patrick. For example, there is a basic formula for marinades that he uses. It goes: acid (i.e. balsamic vinegar) plus booze (wine, bourbon, etc) plus sweet (i.e. brown sugar, molasses, etc) plus aromatics (garlic, ginger, star anise, thyme, bay and so on) You put it all together in whatever combination seems right to you, then let it simmer for a few hours. The result can be fabulous.
Another tip I picked up from Sean Patrick involved bruleed aromatics. For the citrus and ginger marinade we literally burned up or “bruleed” the outside skin of the fresh ginger root over a propane flame. I was dubious but Sean Patrick assured me that ginger, garlic and shallots can all be treated in this manner provided they are allowed to rest on a cookie sheet in a moderate oven for about half an hour afterwards. This allows the smoky flavours to develop through the bulbs and roots. You can then squeeze their contents into a food processor along with the rest of your marinade ingredients - lots of limejuice, lemon juice and so forth. The result is an amazingly flavourful marinade that greatly enhances the taste of grilled lamb.
In the afternoon we tasted various wines I had on hand in order to select vintages that complimented our menu items. Sean Patrick, like most experienced chefs, has a very educated nose and palate. This education comes from tasting and sniffing, over and over, hundreds of food ingredients ranging from the mundane to the exotic. As a result, chefs can quickly become experts at identifying the subtle aromas of raspberry and strawberry in a Californian pinot noir or of black currants, green pepper and violets in a Spanish rioja.
To help me identify certain notes in the several wines we tried Sean Patrick had brought along a box containing essences of various fruits, vegetables and flowers. I found it helpful because, for example, I had no idea what violets smelled like (roses maybe, but not violets) and since violet is a floral aroma common to red wine the only way for a person to discover it in red wine is when your brain has already identified it and stored the memory of the scent away.
The hour we spent tasting wines (and only “tasting” I hasten to add) was much more enjoyable than even I thought it would be. Somehow, being educated on the various aromas common to certain wines made the selection and pairing of wines make much more sense to me. As a result we made a few spectacular pairings. By tasting some Gorgonzola cheese with a few choices we were able to decide that the Koehler Magia Nera from the Santa Ynez Valley, California was going to be a perfect match for the Gorgonzola risotto with green peas. And the extraordinarily fruit rich Consilliance, great oak syrah, 2003 from California was an excellent match for the Asian marinade.
The dinner party went without a hitch. Sean Patrick supervised and plated from the kitchen along with help from my friend Susan Murphy - a culinary arts applicant and eager observer. I performed hosting duties in the dining room explaining how we had devised the menu, cooked the dishes and paired the wines. We all had a marvelous time. A friend visiting from Hawaii remarked, “That was the best meal I’ve had in my life.” Sean Patrick was pleased. It was a memorable evening for my guests and a memorable day for me.
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