Thursday Life shares kitchen space today with Johnny Iuzzini as we continue our countdown to NyamJam Festival slated to take place at Goldeneye on November 13 and 14.

Tickets are available at www.nyamjamfestival.com/tickets

Johnny Iuzzini – A James Beard Award-winning pastry chef and television personality, Iuzzini has been recognised as one of the 10 Most Influential Pastry Chefs in America by Forbes, Best New Pastry Chef by New York Magazine and one of the Top Ten Pastry Chefs in America two years in a row by Pastry Arts and Design. Iuzzini is also the author of Dessert Fourplay: Sweet Quartets From A Four-Star Pastry Chef and Sugar Rush: Master Tips, Techniques, and Recipes for Sweet Baking

Thursday Life (TL): Your passion for cooking commenced when…

Johnny Iuzzini (JI): I ended up in the kitchen by accident at the age of 15. I come from a humble family in a region in upstate NY called the Catskills and when I wanted money to go out with my friends and girls my dad told me to get a job. By the time I got my working papers all my friends got the good jobs being golf caddies and the only job left was being a pot washer in the kitchen. My friends made a lot of tips, went home at dark, and didn’t work when it rained, while I worked every day until 9-10 at night and then went home to do my homework smelling like a wet swamp. But I enjoyed the kitchen and the discipline. I worked my way up, step by step through the ranks, year after year. I dedicated myself to my craft and worked for whom I felt were the best in the world. I travelled around the globe and made sacrifices and compromises to continue to work for the best.

TL: What are your five larder essentials?

JI: Salt, sugar, chocolate, hazelnuts and some sort of fruit.

TL: Your favourite food to eat is?

JI: Well, I am half-Italian and half-French. I love Italian savoury dishes and sweet French pastries. After that I can eat sushi for days. There is something about clean, fresh fish lightly seasoned over the perfect amount of rice with vinegar.

TL: Butter or olive oil?

JI: Butter with breakfast and olive oil for the rest of the meals. I use both with my desserts.

TL: Wine or Champagne?

JI: Hmmm I’m not really a big wine drinker but too much Champagne gives me a headache, so I’d say bourbon or rum.

TL: Jerk or Scotch bonnet pepper?

JI: I can’t handle the super heat of the Scotch bonnet and my best friend Brad Thompson actually married a Jamaican woman, Kerry Ann Brown, and has worked with her and her family to recreate her family’s jerk sauce recipe and bottle it. It’s called Jule’s Gourmet Jamaican jerk and I have fallen in love with it. I use it all year round for lots of great applications, including dessert.

TL: You are in Jamaica because…

JI: There is nowhere else in the world I would rather be. I mean the view from where we are sitting having lunch looking over the rail into this ridge of the Blue Mountains is just incredible, especially after this mystic rain storm. So relaxing and revitalising at the same time. I guess the real reason we are here is to connect with the land and taste the produce in order to be inspired and get our creative juices flowing for the upcoming NyamJam festival in November. I definitely have some ideas about what I want to do, very different from what I thought I would want to make.

TL: What I am eager to try in Jamaica is…

JI: I really like eating at roadside food stands, small trucks in little villages, places that specialise in one dish that they have been making one way for many generations. This excites me. They make it this way because it’s what was available to them, truly living off the land and within their locale. I noticed several versions of jerk, barrel-roasted chicken, ways to cook vegetables, salt cod fritters, and local fish. What I was really excited about though was to try so many new kinds of fruit that I have never tried – some sweet, some sour, some bitter, some fragrant. All very interesting and thought-provoking.

TL: My best food experience has been…

JI: About seven years ago a bunch of chef friends and a DJ friend but serious food lover and I took a trip to Spain for some serious back-to-back reservations. We ate at places like Mugaritz, El Bulli, Asador Etxebarri, El Celler Can Roca and I remember we ate in as many markets as we could and ate as much street food and tapas as we could possibly digest and we could not find a bad meal. Spain is a place where people love to eat, respect their ingredients, respect the culture of cooking. I will never forget how humbling each and every one of those experiences were for me, from the simplest grilled prawn with salt and lemon to the most elaborate modernist technique.