What press said about us

PERSONAL FEAST

Want to eat healthy, home-cooked meals without lifting a finger (let alone a saucepan)? Hire a personal chef—it's cheaper than you think. When chef Michael Yang of Gourmet Creations took a class in healthy cooking at the rigorous Culinary Institute of America, he counted every grain of salt and analyzed each dish's fat content. These days, since he's become a personal chef, his customized menus often have to please his clients' palates without adding unwanted pounds. "You have to remove the high fat content and try to achieve the same texture and mouth feel," Yang explains. One of his signature dishes, a steamed whole fish, is seasoned with soy sauce, sugar, ginger and scallions and finished with a touch of hot olive oil to release its aroma. "This dish actually concentrates the true flavor of the fish rather than masking it," says Yang. Other specialties include sushi-style rolls (made with cooked eel or crawfish or with smoked salmon), steamed Thai jasmine rice, clear ox tail soup and five pepper–crusted grilled filet mignon with cognac laced sauce au poivre. Yang's biggest challenge is working around his clients' often-paradoxical requests. On Gourmet Creations' food-preferences questionnaire, one client listed ice cream and creamy soup as her favorite foods but wrote, "Cook light" as a special instruction. "They want creamy, high-fat food, but then they say, 'Oh, I don't want to gain weight, can you cook it light?' " Yang says, laughing.

-By Lexi Dwyer, From Time Out New York Issue No. 277, 1/11/2001

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