Cooking gets his creative juices flowing
He's young, but Andrew Shedden, 26, is looking toward a long culinary career.
Now executive chef of the Onion Pub and Brewery in Lake Barrington, the Cary native studied culinary arts and management at Elgin Community College and worked at Pirro's in Woodstock before heading down to Orlando, Fla., to work at a Cheesecake Factory. Deciding that corporate cooking wasn't his milieu, however, he soon returned home to work at All Seafood in Woodstock before joining the Onion Pub a year ago.
Shedden lives in Crystal Lake.
What made you become a chef? I always had been drawn to food. Some of my best memories are of food and family.
After school, I decided to move down to Florida and live with a friend. Then I got a great offer to run my own kitchen when I was 21 years old and I've been a chef ever since.
What's your favorite thing about your job? The electricity that this business has is like no other. I don't sit at a desk all day. The creativity I can exercise is one of the things I like best.
What kinds of things do you cook? We are a pub. Mostly our menu is pretty basic. We get really creative with our specials. I have three culinary graduates working for me and we just wrack our brains.
We do have fish and entrees. It's a wide spectrum.
We're a brewery so I cook with beer. I'm learning a lot about beer. Even our house bread that we do is made from the spent grains from brewing.
We're a very green company. We don't like to waste anything. We're putting in a biodiesel brewing system that runs on oil from my fryers. I add methanol and we use that as fuel.
What's your advice for cooking with beer? Be careful when reducing it, because it strengthens the bitterness. Try to add it toward the end of cooking, so it adds flavor, not bitterness.
Do you have a culinary philosophy? My philosophy is never to let your quality standards go. You're only as good as your ingredients.
How is the rising cost of food affecting your business? Definitely we're seeing weeknights slowing down. I've been shortening some portions so our dishes can stay the same price. There's a fuel surcharge on all my deliveries and the price is going up. My cost of beef and pork is going up.
When there are sales, I'm stockpiling a little bit here and there. Before, I used to say, OK, we'll wait till next week to order. Now I don't, because the price is only going to go up. Of course, that only drive the price further up.
Where do you see yourself in the future? I want to go back to school and get my four-year business degree. I definitely want to own my own little restaurant in time.
What do you do in your spare time? I live next to a state park. I like to take my dog out there. I go fishing and hiking. My aunt lives on the Fox River. I like to go fishing there. I don't eat anything out of the river - it's just sport fishing. The Fox River's still a little dirty. You want to be really careful. I do go up north and catch walleye.
What do you cook at home? Simple things. The best meal I could have is one I don't cook for myself. I eat a lot of vegetables. Italian. Mediterranean stuff.
If you hadn't become a chef, what would you have done? I probably would have gone into sales. My father was a salesman. He passed away right when I went to college. I probably would have gone to work for my uncle, as a sales rep for a hardware company.
Tell us about this recipe: Grilled Pork Chop with Blueberry-Stout Ketchup and Roasted Red Potatoes. It's kind of got a Southern touch. In the restaurant, I do add a little smoke to the chops and I use our house-made stout.
Try this at home or at the Onion Pub & Brewery, 22221 Pepper Road, Lake Barrington, (847) 381-7308, www.onionpub.com.
Chef du Jour appears weekly in Food. To recommend a chef to be profiled, please send the chef's name, restaurant and telephone number to Chef du Jour, Daily Herald Food Section, P.O. Box 280, Arlington Heights, IL 60006; or e-mail us at food@dailyherald.com.
Pork Chop with blueberry stout ketchup