Portland Pizza Icon Sarah Minnick Talks ‘Chef’s Desk,’ Dough, and What it Means to Prepare dinner Seasonally

“I’ve actually come to like the pepperiness, the spiciness, the bitterness of bizarre weeds,” Sarah Minnick says at first of her new Chef’s Desk episode. The viewers watches her trudge via her household’s backyard, clipping flowers for her subsequent pizza. “It’s very magical when you may simply go into your yard and see stuff that’s popping up in all places, and also you’re similar to, ‘Guess what? We’re going to eat that for dinner.’”

Minnick, one in every of six cooks to seem within the newly launched Chef’s Desk pizza season on Netflix, is — within the perspective of many — one of many authors of what we see as Portland pizza: sourdough pies topped with seasonal components, utilizing flours made with Oregon-grown grains. Her restaurant, Beautiful’s Fifty Fifty, has change into a vacation spot for her pizzas, all made with 5 Camas Nation Mill flours, topped solely with produce from Pacific Northwestern farmers. It isn’t a spot for a slice of pepperoni; as a substitute, pies come topped with summer time chanterelles or contemporary fenugreek, edible flowers or sprigs of purslane.

Earlier than she turned a celebrated pizzaiola, nonetheless, she was a positive arts pupil, working in her faculty cafe. When she opened Beautiful Hula Arms in 2003, her boyfriend was the chef, and she or he centered on the entrance of home. In her Chef’s Desk episode, viewers see how she taught herself make pizza and developed her ardour for wild, distinctive, and hyper-seasonal Oregon produce. Eater chatted with Minnick to speak via her profession, the present, and what it means to construct a restaurant from the bottom up.

Eater: My first query, as a result of I actually can not cease enthusiastic about it: Is that actually your backyard? It’s large.

Sarah Minnick: So there was a Polish girl who lived on our block, and she or he had an enormous backyard. After which when she died, her nephew got here and knocked on my door to see if I’d simply purchase the home instantly as a result of he was visiting from Poland for the weekend. So we simply purchased it with all of the contents. Anyway, she had this large backyard with one rooster, and all she grew had been potatoes. So the backyard is undamaged, however that was a few years in the past now — it’s actually fertile as a result of that’s all she ever did there. It’s basically my mother’s yard, however we develop stuff there for the restaurant and ourselves.

Watching this was actually a beautiful dive right into a facet of your life that many Portlanders could not know until they’ve been following you for years — you initially needed to be a painter and went to varsity for artwork. How does that facet of you emerge in your method to meals?

I’ve all the time been a really visible individual, so I did go to highschool for portray. I’ve seen meals that manner ever since I first began cooking: the alternatives there to verify it appears stunning. I feel it’s necessary that meals is scrumptious, too; typically individuals will sacrifice taste and go, “Let’s simply make it fairly.” Plenty of instances you may see meals that’s ripe, that’s scrumptious, meals that’s going to make sense collectively, and you’ve got the chance to do each. That’s been simple for me, to verify they work collectively on the pizza. It’s simply one other outlet of that. It doesn’t essentially need to be portray, drawing, stitching. It simply occurs that one of the best ways for me to do this is thru cooking. It took me some time to determine that out.

One thing that additionally got here into extra focus for me whereas watching this episode is that your story is considerably the reverse of many chef-owners: You had been an proprietor first, and needed to train your self be a chef. Discuss to me about that course of. What are we not seeing within the present that was part of that story?

I all the time liked working in eating places, however I assumed, Oh, I higher go get an actual job, I want all the advantages. However I needed to have a artistic profession, and I knew I liked working in eating places. We had this chance to open this restaurant, and it turned clear that my sister and I had been good at it, however the cooks stored leaving. It form of fell to me, after being open for years, having cooks rotate via the door. I used to be like, “I higher be taught no less than a few of this as a result of I need to have affect on the menu,” and once I would work with the chef, typically they’d be like, “You recognize what you need, however like, you need me to execute it. And, you understand, I don’t actually need to execute your imaginative and prescient.”

So we opened Beautiful’s, and I had somebody that made pizzas for the primary two years, who was like a household good friend. I did the salad menu and executed that, and I additionally made the ice cream, and I additionally waited tables. However then the pizza man moved on, and I used to be like, “Oh, crap.” I didn’t know make pizza in any respect. I acquired the Tartine Bread ebook, and he gave me two weeks’ discover, so I needed to bounce in, make it work. But it surely seems that I actually liked it, and I used to be good at it. So I simply took off with that and was like, “All proper, I’m the chef.” That was a pleasant shock, and it took the stress off the concept that you’re all the time going to have cooks coming and going, which precipitated lots of stress.

Chef’s Desk: Pizza. Cr. Netflix © 2022

The present does an excellent job of illustrating the time you spent attempting to fine-tune your crust recipe. What do you search for in an excellent crust?

Someplace in that Tartine Bread ebook they are saying, “Pizza dough is simply bread dough; you simply make pizza out of it.” I switched from a one hundred pc white flour dough to a complete wheat sourdough, and I simply needed to battle with it. The hydration all the time adjustments, simply because we use a lot contemporary flour and flour that’s not standardized. The flours from Camas Nation Mill change, so we’ve to roll with that. However typically, there are 5 flours in our dough. So what I search for in pizza dough is that it’s much like an excellent loaf of bread. Generally once we get press, or individuals hear that we’re the “greatest pizza within the nation,” individuals will ask for “additional crispy,” and I’m like, “What the heck?” I simply allow them to realize it’s bread dough. It’s not simply crispy; it’s lots of various things. I search for somewhat sourness, lots of taste. It must be crispy on the surface, so far as there being an precise crust to interrupt into, after which there’s an inside that’s somewhat bit extra like bread dough.

In earlier conversations, we’ve talked about the way you need to deepen our understanding of what seasonal cooking has change into. How has your relationship to seasonal cooking advanced because you first began making pizzas?

After we first opened Beautiful Hula Arms 18 years in the past, we didn’t work with any farmers. My boyfriend was the chef and we had a fairly fanciful menu that was all totally different sorts of issues, like Thai meals, Southern meals — no matter he needed to cook dinner. However once we moved up the road and Troy Maclarty was the chef, he was from Chez Panisse and he began working with farmers. That was like 14 years in the past; there weren’t that many farmers who had relationships with eating places. However they might stop farming within the winter and there was no year-round farmers market, so there was simply no produce from November till March. So we used a produce firm to fill within the gaps.

Ultimately, we began having a year-round farmers market, and much more farmers began making deliveries on to eating places. At that time, I simply lower off the produce firm, we simply went with farmers and the farmers market. That signifies that stuff is proscribed. Within the winter, you must be sure you put up sufficient stuff, you must guess simply what number of hundreds of kilos of tomatoes you’ll must make it via. However pizza is a good medium for that as a result of it’s fairly easy. If we run out of parsley, we’re simply out of it; we’ve to be artistic with one thing else.

Chef’s Desk: Pizza. Cr. Netflix © 2022

One thing I discovered notably fascinating within the episode was the way in which you introduced within the affect of the Culinary Breeding Community — how has your relationship with these farmers and seed breeders modified the way in which you cook dinner, or the way you develop your pies?

What Lane [Selman] does at Culinary Breeding Community is that she brings cooks and farmers collectively so farmers can determine what cooks need. It’s extra about constructing direct relationships between cooks and seed breeders and farmers, making these connections in order that while you’re serving one thing or cooking one thing, you are feeling extra invested and related to it. I wish to go to the market, I wish to see what persons are rising, and I don’t need to be within the place of telling individuals what to develop. To me, it’s a problem to get issues to work that manner. It’s one thing we take note within the kitchen at Beautiful’s.

Within the episode, there was a severe emphasis on this DIY type of restaurant that I feel many individuals affiliate with a youthful Portland — this Goodwill-furnished restaurant, in your phrases, that has no startup cash. Because it turns into costlier and tougher to employees eating places, do you suppose that’s one thing individuals can nonetheless do right here?

I’d wish to suppose so, as a result of the choice is fairly bleak. However there’s a sure distress to doing it that manner. All of us labored for pennies manner again — eating places weren’t well-paid jobs. I wouldn’t return for that, for me or for my staff. I’ve been via sufficient to not need to do it once more, but additionally I hate to suppose that it’s gone. You do need to be younger sufficient and keen sufficient to go for it. However now individuals have observed Portland, and persons are keen to spend money on individuals’s concepts. It’s simply totally different. It’s not good to have debt and traders attempting to tug out some kind of revenue; that may be depressing, too. We pay individuals extra, we cost extra, and it’s a lot better, I feel.

The total season of Chef’s Desk: Pizza is now obtainable on Netflix. This interview has been edited and condensed for readability.