Noted chef begins cooking series on Princeton Community Television
By: Pat Tanner
Move over, Emeril. Princeton has its own celebrity TV chef in Bobby Trigg, chef/owner of Princeton’s popular Ferry House restaurant. His show, called "Cookin’ with Bobby From Our House to Yours," premiered last month on Princeton Community Television’s TV30 and will continue with a new episode each month.
At one point in the premiere episode, which featured Mr. Trigg at his backyard grill preparing three barbecue sauces, he actually uttered Emeril Lagasse’s famous tag line, "Let’s kick it up a notch." But his subject matter and his boyish good looks were more reminiscent of another of the Food Network’s star chefs, Bobby Flay, whose "Hot Off the Grill," has been a longtime hit.
The show’s opening montage shows Mr. Trigg sprinting across Witherspoon Street into his restaurant, where he changes from street clothes to chef’s whites. But for the cooking sequences, all the action takes place at his home in Hopewell. The first episode was taped in his backyard, with the chef standing in front of his imposing professional-grade gas grill, one that comes complete with two burners on the side so convenient for sweating onions and sautéing tomatoes for sauce.
Mr. Trigg, whose culinary motto is "keep it simple, fresh and fun," began by declaring, "Your grill is an extension of your kitchen, so don’t put it away after Labor Day." With jazzy percussive music punching up his actions and the screen occasionally splitting in two the better to catch his every move he then launched into his first preparation, an ancho chile barbecue sauce for grilled filet mignon.
Mr. Trigg’s previous television experience consists only of two guest chef appearances on Channel 12, but they were enough for him to catch the video bug. "It was kind of neat," he said. "I like the whole educational aspect of it. After all, a lot of people took the time to teach me over the years and this is my chance to give something back, to pass some things on." The main ideas he hopes to instill in viewers are, he says, "that cooking is fun and easy. And these days, there are so many good products out there to try, so why not?"
Bill Turk wears a number of hats at Princeton’s TV30, including that of training director. He says of Mr. Trigg, "He’s a talented TV chef and he’s doing quite well. The idea of working in his home and talking to people came together quite nicely."
In the first episode, Mr. Trigg introduced viewers to sweet chile sauce in a bottle, noting that it is available at most Asian markets. On camera, he added a couple of tablespoons of the sweet-and-hot sauce to a fruit-based barbecue sauce for grilled mahi mahi that features mangoes, jalapeño peppers, fresh cilantro and lime juice. In keeping with his goal of making cooking simple, he pointed out that the mangoes could be replaced by fresh peaches in summer, Granny Smith apples in fall, and canned pineapple rings any time.
After the fish had been glazed with the sauce, the chef demonstrated how the dish gets "plated" over a bed of crab salad at his restaurant.
As two unidentified guests looked on and intermittently asked him questions (out of microphone range, alas), Mr. Trigg also demonstrated recipes for grilled filet mignon with ancho chili sauce and tuna steaks glazed with a sauce made with chipotle adobo. He carefully explained that chipotles are smoked jalapeños, and that adobo includes herbs, spices, vinegar and tomatoes.
Like the sweet chile sauce, the canned chipotles, available at most supermarkets, were representative of the kinds of off-the-shelf items this enthusiastic chef wants viewers to discover and use in their own home cooking.
Bobby Trigg began his working life on Wall Street. After six years he decided to switch gears and attended the Philadelphia Restaurant School, where he trained with French chef Jean Pierre Tardy, longtime executive chef at Philadelphia’s acclaimed Le Bec-Fin and whose eponymous Newtown, Pa., restaurant is an area favorite.
Mr. Trigg apprenticed at Le Plumet Royal, the restaurant in Princeton’s Peacock Inn, and opened his original Ferry House restaurant in Lambertville in 1992.
In March of 1998 he moved the restaurant to Princeton, where his unique style of eclectic New American cuisine continues to garner rave reviews.
Among the signature dishes at the bring-your-own-wine spot are a classic crème brulée and an entrée of roast baby rack of New Zealand lamb with mustard basil crust, with a sweet potato-and- black bean tortilla, and roast garlic and green peppercorn jus.
Mr. Trigg hasn’t yet settled on the subject for January’s installment of "From Our House to Yours," but he is leaning toward mushroom dishes, since, as he says, "It’s been a great year for mushrooms and more and more exotic varieties keep appearing in the market. It would be fun to educate people on how to use them."
Another signature dish at The Ferry House is Trigg’s firecracker shrimp with Oriental barbecue sauce, a version of which can be found on the restaurant’s Web site at www.the
ferryhouse.com. Below is an adaptation of that recipe, prepared as wontons. Currently, at the restaurant, Mr. Trigg skips the wontons and instead skewers the shrimp between slices of cucumber and uses the Oriental barbecue sauce as a glaze. To serve, he sets the skewers on a bed of Thai cabbage salad.
The first installment of "Cookin’ with Bobby From Our House to Yours" was aired three times on three dates in December. TV30 has not yet set the dates and times for the January broadcast, but as they say in TV Land stay tuned.