Jesse Koide has worked at sushi bars and Italian restaurants, and now helms the kitchen at the original San Francisco location of Mission Chinese Food, where the chef–who had no prior experience in Chinese cuisine–cooks some of that city’s most memorable food.
So it makes sense that the pantry in Koide’s home kitchen is crammed with a global assortment of ingredients, from Benton’s bacon to dried seaweed kombu to heirloom Italian beans. When tasked with creating a recipe for the latest edition of the Sous Chef Series, he made a pot of beans using all three. The focus in his Italy-by-way-of-the-American-South-and-Japan heirloom beans is on building layers of flavor that infuse the beans with smoky, savory, depth, is simple but revelatory.
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