Paul Bertolli working the hearth at Oliveto restaurant to test recipes for the Magic of Fire dinner.

The book launch party for my book, The Magic of Fire, was at Paul Bertolli’s Oliveto Restaurant. Paul Bertolli loves cooking, loves food, and loves fire. The menu for the evening was incredibly complex, even impossibly complex, but Oliveto is a restaurant that does not know the meaning of the word, “impossible”. Thus, for example, when we ran out of hearth space for roasting paper-wrapped chicken in embers we effectively made the hearth bigger by transferring embers to hotel pans and baking off the chickens in what amounted to portable hearths.

Oliveto does not have a traditional fireplace. It has a grill in front of a rotisserie. It was a huge challenge to go from my book, with recipes tested and worked out on a small home fireplace, to a dinner at one of America’s leading kitchens. But, it worked! And for the first time in a long time, anywhere, a complicated meal was cooked on the open hearth for a lot of people — and everything was produced on time — and just right. The grill/rotisserie set-up at Oliveto is similar to that of many other restaurant kitchens. The dinner at Oliveto demonstrated that it is practical to use the grill for more than just grilling — which opens up a range of possibilities in commercial kitchens for developing the full range of flavors and textures that can only be achieved through open hearth cooking.

Hearth cooking at Oliveto with Paul Bertolli

Peppers and anise roasting on the embers at Oliveto Restaurant.

Like many restaurants with a grill, Oliveto burns a combination of wood and charcoal. For the Magic of Fire dinner we cooked entirely on wood. The Oliveto firewood is oak. We served several ember-roasted vegetable appetizers. What you see here are fennel — the Italian sweet fennel — and red peppers. The dinner was in the month of October, and so the peppers were in prime condition. What is important to notice about this photograph is the mix of embers and burning logs. In hearth cooking one must always keep the fire going. One must always be looking to the next food one is going to prepare. Embers are the life-blood of hearth cooking and so one must always be producing more. For a dinner on the scale of the Oliveto dinner there must be a fire going nearly full bore for twelve hours.

When you cook vegetables directly on the hottest embers, as you see in this photograph, you create flavors that cannot be created in the kitchen stove because you are cooking at somewhere in the range of 700 to 1000 degrees F. The shock of high heat creates incomparable flavors. In some vegetables, like potatoes, a hint of smoke. But in others, like peppers, it intensifies the sweetness. Ember-roasting, however, doesn’t have to be at exceedingly high temperatures. Embers can be banked with ash to create a surface that is less ferociously hot.

When serving vegetables that have been roasted on embers always remove the charred parts before serving. I do not, however, ever advise rinsing under water because that dilutes the flavor. I find that rinsing my hands of charred bits of the vegetables I am cleaning aids in the cleaning process.

Hearth cooking at Oliveto restaurant

Stirring the stock pot

A sauce was served with the ember-roasted prime rib. A chef is seen here browning the meat in a stock pot sitting on the embers. This could have been done on the stovetop in the kitchen, but in the spirit of hearth cooking was made on the Oliveto hearth. Whether working in a commercial kitchen, or in ones backyard on the barbecue, the glowing embers can be used for more than just roasting on embers or grilling. Particularly for the home cook, the heat put out by hardwood embers in ones barbecue is much greater than the heat put out by ones kitchen stove. In many instances braising may be more successfully accomplished over embers than on a gas or electric range.

Rolled prime rib hearth cooking at Oliveto restaurant

Three of six boned prime ribs waiting to be baked
in the embers at the Oliveto Magic of Fire Dinner.

Prime rib baked in the embers was the red meat offering for the evening. These are three of the six boned rolled prime ribs served that evening. As they will be buried in ash, and as ash sticks to wet meat, to minimize the extent to which the ash would stick to the meat the roasts were first dusted with flour. In my book, “The Magic of Fire,” full instructions are given for baking meat under embers. This is an ancient way of cooking, and the results are delicious. The recipe in my book is for brisket. Obviously, the thicker the meat the longer it takes to cook. My system for ember roasting makes it possible to work by time, as the temperature is always the same. I always endeavor to bake as hot as is possible — as “hottest” is easily reproducible.”

Hearth cooking demonstration Oliveto restaurant

The ribs waiting to be buried in
ash and they piled with embers.
This photograph clearly shows the first step in roasting meat on the embers. First, put down a layer of hot embers. In the context of a grill this probably means simply spreading out the embers that are there. Next, dust the embers with a layer of ash. This is just enough ash to keep the meat from being charred, but not so much you smother the embers. The bed of embers here is so hot that in the time it took me to take the picture the meat has already begun to cook as you can see from the fact that the sides no longer are white with the dusted flour.

Hearth cooking demonstration Oliveto restaurant

Prime rib roasting under a mound of embers at the same time ducks are roasting on the spit.

The three prime ribs are buried under the mound of embers. Spit-roasted duck was also served. The ducks, larded with sage, both in the fat over the breast, and in the meat itself, are roasting in the back, behind the ribs. While fresh embers are being generated for the next set of three ribs by the wood being used to roast the ducks, a method had to be developed to separate the embers left after the first set of ribs were finished. Head Chef Paul Canales came up with the idea of sifting out the embers using a spider — the wire tool used in most commercial kitchens to pull food out of hot fat. Being able to sift out the embers enable you to use the embers again, and also to reuse the ash. I have now used this method for sifting out the embers to use them again for a second turn in other commercial settings with good results.

Baking meat under hot embers requires a good supply of ash. For this dinner we saved several days-worth of ash in metal trashcans from the Oliveto grill and pizza oven.

A large piece of meat, like prime rib, does not pick up flavor from the ember-roasting. In my experience, the thinner the cut, the more ember-roasting influences the finished flavor. The meat must, of course, be at room temperature before starting, and de-boning is helpful to insure even cooking.

Ash that sticks to the meat is easily rinsed off in warm water before the meat is cut and served.