Chef farid zadi biography templates
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Tagine dreams
FARID ZADI is finishing off a tagine of lamb shanks braised with nuts and apricots in spicy tomato sauce, the crown of a meal that includes four Algerian salads and the flaky filo snacks called brik. As he skims the fat from the tagine’s red-orange surface, he slyly says, “This is the French chef in me. In Algeria, they probably wouldn’t skim it.”
Born in France of Algerian Berber ancestry, married to an American woman born in Korea, with cooking experience in five countries, Zadi, 39, has the sort of cosmopolitan perspective that probably represents the future of cuisine. He’s knowledgeable about North African food as well as classical French cookery.
His bully pulpit isn’t a restaurant but a Le Cordon Bleu course at the California School of Culinary Arts in Pasadena, where he’s training many of the upcoming generation of chefs. They’re basically learning French technique, but Zadi makes sure they know the right way to make a couscous as well.
He’s making hi
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In a world of Asian-Latino fusion restaurants like Roy Choi’s Kogi Truck or Ricardo Zarate’s Mo-Chica, Revolutionario Tacos stands out as a North African-Mexican fusion, the first of its kind. Only a few blocks from USC, I had never heard of this restaurant and was automatically intrigued at its “African-Mexican” fusion label on Yelp. The owner and Chef, Farid Zadi, was trained in Southern France and born to Algerian parents so he has grown up balancing multiple culinary cultures and has clearly become an expert at it as seen in his success in creating a connection between Mexican and North African flavors (Bennett).
If you were to look up “fusion cuisine” in the dictionary, there should be a picture of one of Revolutionario’s exotic tacos. The food offered at the restaurant exemplified the blending together of two very different cultures and cuisines. On the menu you will find many interesting taco options such as Shakshouka tacos made with sweet peppers, tomatoes and egg or even
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Susan Park demonstrated how to stuff merguez sausage using a natural sheep casing.
In October, Chef Farid Zadi and wife Susan Park established Pasadena as the “Epicenter of North African Cookery in L.A.” For an encore, on January 6, the couple expanded on their vision by hosting a class for a group of food writers at Ecole de Cuisine &#; their culinary school in east Pasadena &#; to demonstrate sausage and terrine-making techniques.
Ecole de Cuisine co-founders Farid Zadi and Susan Park form a formidable duo.
As we learned in October, Zadi was born near Lyon, France, and raised on a diet of fresh baked bread, river fish, frog legs and Charolais beef. Zadi is also a huge proponent of merguez, befitting his Tunisian heritage. As he said, “I grew up making merguez with my mom.”
Zadi uses lamb shoulder, beef tiny tender and beef suet, a hard fat from around the cow’s kidney.
It’s important for them to grind them meat in-house. Park said, “If we buy pre ground meat, we don’