Those of you who know me know that I marvel at those who walk away from the profession that they studied for and pursue their dream of cooking. One such person that I was lucky enough to meet and get to know is Eyal Liebman. Eyal’s background is in engineering, recording engineering, to be specific. According to Eyal, he chose this career because he “liked the marriage between the technical and the art”.
Eyal Liebman
Looking back at his accomplishments in the kitchen over the past few years one would think that Eyal had been cooking for many years, when in fact he only started after coming to Canada in 2007. Although he attended culinary school, he credits the two years spent in the kitchen of Master Chef Didier Leroy as being the most influential in his culinary life, “Every day I spent with Didier I learned more than a year in culinary school”.
After leaving Didier he worked with many different pastry chefs around Toronto, though finding chefs to work with was tough, “This is an ego industry, so it’s hard to work for a lot of chefs”. Eventually Eyal ended up working with Chef Paul Boehmer someone very easy to work with because “he lets people do what they do”.
Why did you start your own company?
Most chefs in the city lack the confidence to work with somebody as good as they are and that’s why I started L is for… about a year ago.
Why did you decide to focus of being a pastry chef instead of being a traditional chef?
Once upon a time you came to a kitchen and you mopped the floor, you washed dishes and occasionally you’d peel a carrot or potato and slowly move your way up to your first salad station. You’d then move around to each possible station and you decided, or as we say in the world of culinary art, your station decided that you belonged there. That’s the way I started, and one day Didier came to me and said “I think you’re a pastry chef”, and that’s how pastry found me.
Other than Chef Didier who are some of your biggest influencers?
People who I’ve never met such as Pierre Hermé, Alain Ducasse and Auguste Escoffier, the fathers of French cuisine, my style of cooking. These are the people that developed the techniques that we use today. You have a whole new generation of chefs out there that say classic cuisine is not innovative, meaning that if you’re going to make steak tartare you’re not making something new. Well, we don’t have to make something new all the time. If you don’t have a foundation then your building is very weak. You can interpret the classics, you can give something new to it, that’s what we do to classics.
What advice would you give to someone wanting to get into the culinary field?
Don’t do it! Actually the advice I always give people is before starting culinary school go work in a kitchen for a year and see if you like it. Cooking a pot of fries for your family and cooking five kilos of fries every day, maybe even twice a day, using a recipe from a chef who really doesn’t care about your opinion, is not the same. The most optimistic people would think that they’ll be a celebrity chef. There are possibly 10 celebrity chefs in the city, maybe 20, but there are 400 graduates every year. There are going to be a lot of line cooks, and you have to know if you love cooking. If you don’t love it then run away. What are the chances that you’ll be a celebrity chef? One percent? You should be very, very happy with the other ninety-nine percent options that you have and if you don’t then you’re in the wrong profession.
I’ve heard that baking is an exact science, how do you feel about that statement?
Total crap! That comes from people who don’t know how to bake trying to make my profession justifiable to a department. In North America most people are baking with cups instead of weight. A cup of flour will differ in weight from one manufacturer to another, the only reason you need precision is for consistency. It’s not an exact science but there is chemistry. The difference between my cooking and a cook’s cooking is that I have to cook just like him to a certain point, but every day I have to measure again and again and keep in mind that today’s strawberries are not yesterday’s strawberries. You need to constantly taste and be ready to adjust your recipes. This being an exact science is one of the most aggravating things I hear from pastry chefs.
What are your views on food bloggers?
If someone is a food blogger who is true to their profession then I love them, but I don’t like the ones who turned it into a profession to make money out of it. That’s not the idea, blogging is not a profession. You need to decide if you are a food critic or a food blogger. If you’re a critic you should not be known so that you could go anonymously and make a judgement. Nowadays everybody has become a blogger and the line between “I like to write”, as opposed to, “I am a writer”, is dimming. If you want to call yourself a writer you should have proper grammar and check your facts before submitting a story.
Do you have a particular style when it comes to your work?
Yes, classic French. I adore the classics so my mission as, not even a cook, an artist, is to bring back foundations. You need to do things like they used to do them. When I get a new recipe from a chef that I respect, the first thing I do is try the recipe as is. I may have my own opinions on it but I try the original recipe, then I build on it. People don’t know the classics anymore, but there was a time when you had to, no matter how boring it was.
How has your musical background helped you in your current position?
Art is art is art, everything is related. Music teaches you joy, discipline and a lot of other things, and so does cooking. Cooking has discipline, cooking has rhythm, cooking has structure just like music. Music has patterns and so does cooking. Everything affects everything else.
Why did you decide to create your chocolate dinners and how did you come up with the menu?
The main reason is because I wanted to. The second reason is that I wanted to show people that chocolate can be very, very versatile. I also wanted to challenge myself, I wanted to challenge people, I wanted to experiment and see if people would come and how they would respond to it. It’s a marketing stunt as well, because if I can do it with chocolate then I can do it with other ingredients. How did I come up with the menu? The menu found me. I know I sound cocky when I say that but there’s no humble way to say it, when you create art, you create art.
What current food trend needs to end?
Fusion! I will quote my mentor, master, and life role model, Didier Leroy: “Fusion brings confusion”. You have people that are the origins of fusion and these people are blessed. I look at Susur Lee and I admire him greatly, he’s a genius. He masters Chinese cuisine, he knows it to the core. He knows French cuisine very, very well and he fuses them and makes something very beautiful. But his cooks don’t know French cuisine. No one tells them that they need to master French techniques and only then can you combine, so they learn fusion and now they’re confused.
What would you be doing if you weren’t a cook?
Before I was a cook I was a musician. At the core I am an artist, I have a philosophy that was always expressed. I always expressed it as a musician and I am loudly expressing it now as a cook and it will be expressed if I change my profession again.
What do you see as a major accomplishment as a cook?
Moments in my career, like when my Canadian aunt calls me one day to tell me that she bought an endive. This was a woman who considered cooking from scratch as taking 2 cans of something, pouring it over a chicken and sticking it in the oven. But the fact that she went out and bought an endive meant that I touched a soul in Canada. That feeling is beyond anybody saying that my food is good, beyond my best review. It made me smile and feel accomplished much more than I felt when the Globe and Mail wrote that I have a keen eye for ingredients. Moments like that is the reason I cook.
Where do you see yourself in a couple of years?
I don’t know. I’m not a psychic. I’d like to be here talking to you, touching my aunt, speaking to kids about the wrongs of McDonalds and Harvey’s and all the shit that they feed you. Going against GMOs and disgusting food and culture and doing the same thing that I’m doing today, hopefully with some more money in my pocket.
Here are some pictures of some of Eyal’s dishes from the last chocolate dinner of 2013:
