Madison Cowan: the Hendrix of food is now on the scene

By David Robledo

For South Texas Nation magazine



Cowan  http://www.facebook.com/MadisonCowan

Tall, dark, and lean, Madison Cowan is the Hendrix of  food, an alchemist of sorts who transmutes soul through food much like Jimmy Hendrix communed with the universe through his guitar. 
  The depth of Madison's speech coupled with his physical prowess might also remind you of Muhammad Ali. His relaxed British accent that hardly meets a consonant speaks authoritatively from another world, and food's the portal. 

   Madison, restaurateur and author of Soul Voyage, insists almost feverishly that he cooks "soul food."  Not fried chicken and waffles (though he says no dish or ingredient should ever be ruled out), but food that draws inspiration from stints in four star kitchens and character from time that he spent in the U.S. military, and then, in the usual order, homeless on two continents.

   For Madison, taller than six feet and quick like a panther, soul food is a rock-salt and frozen-vodka watermelon basil salad which he refers to as "wicked," or a knockworst and sweet potato satay which he describes as "proper".

   His creations consistently floored Chopped's foodie icon judges -- restaurateur Mark Murphy, chef-star Amanda Freitag, and new-Italian authority Scott Conant -- during the show's finale, aired Tuesday, May 24.

   Like a black and agile E.F. Hutton, when Madison talks about his food, judges hang on every word. Through the show's four rounds of elimination, Madison's food is only able to inspire judges. His work remains virtually impervious to criticism other than Murphy's whimsical "too many prunes on my plate" critique. Slightly pudgy and with the over-partied look of a privileged, third-generation Jersey mobster, Murphy might have benefited greatly from eating the eight prunes Madison served him.    
   "You sing with your soul, you make love with your soul. You definitely must cook with your soul," Madison lectured the judges as they nodded, making sure to throw in a gratuitous sex and food correlation.

   Explaining that "99 percent" of his food is "connected with women," Madison is fond of reminding his public that the food that he cooks from the soul can in fact be used to convey emotion to women, or convey emotion about women.

   Everything Madison says and does seems larger than life, as if he's keyed into a world of food essences through which he's able to transmute soul.
   Despite his ability to flavorfully execute the talk, he notes that "It's what you do, not what you say," that's important, advice he hopes to demonstrate to his daughter with his performance on Chopped.         

   Madison defeated three chefs to win the competition, including a former working associate with Anthony Bourdain whom Bourdain characterized as an "evil Energizer Bunny," and a self-professed Christian chef whose cottage cheese-orange-juice ice cream and beignet dessert riveted and titillated judges.
   Though Madison has created a Facebook page hoping to persuade the Food Network to give him his own show as a celebrity chef, we desperately hope that, instead, Madison is simply given time to cook without the shallow, distracting pressures and demands of production deadlines. Like Jimmy's experimental, self-recorded eight-tracks laid down before his career took off, what Madison does for the sake of food itself could in the end define any greatness he might achieve. +

Source: Chopped's final episode at  http://www.hulu.com/watch/230491/chopped-crunch-time#s-p1-so-i0

A Garagiste for the wine revolution

Page uncorks The Stash at the Santa Fe.

This story first appeared in South Texas Nation magazine. To participate in this year's Bryan Page wine dinner at the Santa Fe Steakhouse in McAllen, click here.

By David Robledo
Like musicians who open doors of perception, Bryan Page, a winemaker from Orange County, California, will usher you to the other side using fermented grapes.  He smashes them by hand with his brother Chris to produce limited edition wines spanning Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay under Page Wine Cellars and Le Nu labels.  Bryan’s solo-project, the Revolver Wine Company, offers edgier, brasher wines.  All Page wineries are part of a broader garage movement of Napa Valley vintners who handcraft wine in small warehouses, often to the sounds of exceptional Rock & Roll. 
   Page has deep roots in the world of cuisine. His track to hand-crafting wine includes working as server and sommelier in noted California restaurants.  But it was during a food and wine tour through France’s  Bordeaux, where the renegade Garagiste movement was born, that Bryan first imagined making wine as a trade, applying the insights he’d gleaned throughout a decade or so working Napa Valley’s food and wine scene. He no doubt hoped to apply the Garagiste’s penchant for technical excellence, a balls-out work ethic, and avant-garde sensibilities toward fermenting Napa Valley grapes.  The first barrel casked in 1997 yielded 36 cases of Page Proprietary Red,  a highly-sought commodity.

   WINE REVOLUTION
Bryan named his Revolver Wine Company after The Beatles’ Revolver album, that renegade work whose title suggests the pscyho-spiritual changing of perception that the beat generation yearned for.  Born in 1966, the year of Revolvers’ release, Bryan might be a wine-crafting Dionysian love child of the album’s spirit.  You may literally transcend upon first sampling his wine, and more than likely you will become a devotee.  Revolver also suggests an old-fashioned six shooter, a fitting image to connect with a winemaker whose tasting room is in a ghost town and who ends days of hard work popping open Maker’s Mark. 
   Nods to music history saturate Bryan’s solo project.  He respects Johnny Cash by using jet-black wine labels.  Titles with Rock & Roll attitude convey a condemned chic of deserts and criminals on the run.  The Fury, for example, is an appropriately-named Cab-Franc, a style usually associated with elegance and dedication to historical wine-making methods.  Bryan uncorks a wild spirit in The Fury, unleashing his style against Cab-Franc’s usually medium-to-delicate grain. He does the same with Perdition, a Petit Syrah that recklessly drives to flavors that few would imagine possible for the delicate grape.
   In a black country-western shirt with white-hot stitching, Page led a wine dinner for an unsuspecting 40 people at McAllen’s Santa Fe Steakhouse on Cinco de Mayo last year, a fitting date to present wines that embody the revolutionary Garagiste approach.  Among wine lovers wearing family pearls or three-piece suits, Page’s just-off-the-plane blues-bar attire conveyed the rebellious spirit and unpretentious elegance of his wines.  And in an inspired nod to Rock & Roll history, Page took the Jesus Christ pose late that evening, spreading his arms wide against a backdrop of artisan crosses that decorate the Santa Fe’s dining room.  As if reaching for Chris Cornell at a Soundgarden concert, fans reached for Bryan in this South Texas setting of fine crystal and linen.  Page had just introduced a 2005 bottle of  The Stash, a Cabernet Sauvignon you think might first knock you over.  When its more subtle flavors settle and you’re hopefully left standing, you know something much like Rock & Roll has just occurred.
   That legendary night, when Page took the Jesus Christ pose in the Texas Valley, a Catholic stronghold where the devout spot figures of Christ in tortillas, the Santa Fe paired Proprietary Red with a creamy roasted-duck soup with duck-skin cracklings.  The wine’s cherry notes played to the duck’s propensity for fruit pairings, and the rich cream sauce held oak-aged spice long on the palate.  That and other pairings impressed Page enough to draft a letter to the Santa Fe, complimenting an intricate menu.
   “Each course worked wonderfully with the wines my brother Chris and I produce,” Page wrote. “The presentation of each course reflected creativity and refined coordination....  I cannot emphasize enough how impressed I was.... “    
   Similarly talented pairings are typical of the Santa Fe’s wine dinners, monthly events that bring selected vintners or styles from wine regions to their 10th Street dining room.
   Getting to the point that food and wine make such complimentary statements is a demanding process. Co-owner Sony Rego and chefs Jennifer Guerra, Juan Guerrero and Zenon Ollis brainstorm before creating dishes whose revision often spans days.
   Featuring Bryan Page, a cutting-edge wine maker by any definition, shows that the Santa Fe can harness talent as it arrives on an international, culinary scene.  For the Santa Fe to execute wine dinners in step with such emerging names requires technical and instinctive skill that is itself much like Rock & Roll, in a windswept Texas Valley that could be a stop on Page’s enticing train ride to flavor ... somewhere near The Fury, not far from Purgatory, and all too close to Perdition itself. END
To attend this year's Bryan Page wine dinner at the Santa Fe Steakhouse, call 956.630.2331. It will be held Friday May 6, 2011 at McAllen's Santa Fe Steakhouse