What Brad Farmerie's Prepping: A Baby, A Book Proposal

Executive chef Brad Farmerie (of Public and Double Crown in New York City) is working on a big new project, but it's not another restaurant.

"To be honest, what's on my plate right now is a pregnant wife, who's going to give birth in September," the former Next Iron Chef contestant told Eater while in Portland for the International Association of Culinary Professionals convention. "So I'm trying to keep the work thing a little loose this summer."

That's not to say he didn't have his fun at IACP... which is how he found himself eating the nonpareil chicken and rice at local food cart Nong's Khao Man Gai twice in 24 hours.

"I usually wouldn't do that on such a short trip, but I woke up a little worse for the wear," Farmerie confessed. "It could have been the beer, or the rum, or the vodka, or the whiskey talking. Who knows? I just came back from Singapore and Malaysia, so it was a comfort food I needed to ingest."

Farmerie wrote about that Asia trip (and rice) for Poetry of Food, where he's a regular contributor.

"It's a very cool concept, where they take one subject and they ask 12 or 15 food writers from around the world to give their viewpoint — kind of a personal story, and some history, and then a recipe," he said.

At IACP, Farmerie demoed his pig's liver crème caramel with roasted grapes and crispy bacon, a dish he developed after killing a wild boar in South Carolina (as documented in a 2009 Men's Journal article).

"My theme was culinary alchemy, like, turning shit into gold. I talked about pig's head, and tongue, and kidneys, stuff like that," he said. "Just trying to get people excited and turned on about these things. It's such a trend in restaurants — I don't know if and when that's going to trickle down to the home cook. But if you point out how some of these things are actually easy, and all of them are very inexpensive, and show that they can really be very delicate, very beautiful objects, hopefully they try it."

Farmerie also said he has "a book proposal on the go," but being that it's still just a proposal, he's not saying any more. "Too early. But, pig's liver crème caramel will feature heavily!"

·Public [Official site]
·Double Crown [Official site]
·All Eater Interviews on Eater [-ENA-]