Schaumburg Live Work & Play - March/April 2009 - (Page 37) Chef’s Corner Luis Montesinos You’d think that after slaving over a hot grill at Weber restaurants in Wheeling and Lombard and then helming the kitchen of Weber Grill Schaumburg since it opened three years ago, Chef Luis Montesinos would want to get home and eat something Scandinavian or Burmese or Pan-Asian. “My favorite thing to cook at home are steaks,” Chef explains, “on my Weber grill in the back yard - sometimes I even use it in the winter.” The love of fire-cooked food seems to lurk in the DNA of the chefs, cooks and wait staff at Weber Grill and the communal devotion can be felt by diners. It doesn’t hurt that there’s a shared desire for success, either. Chefs at each of the restaurants come up with new dishes, they congregate, taste, decide what’s polished and punchy and finally see how customers take to them. Montesinos showcased his ability to coax the maximum flavor from whatever’s in his reach when he found himself hungry, loaded a blue corn tortilla chip with various ingredients and a daily special appetizer was born. “I liked the spiciness of chorizo, coolness of the pico de gallo and shrimp is one of my favorites, so I put it together and the other chefs said - yeah, this works. I’m a Mexican guy and I love to add a little spice to everything.” Just check out the half-dozen chili recipes that change every week. Montesinos favors the black bean chili with skirt steak, tomatoes and demi-glaze, the Cincinnati version Chef Luis Montesinos likes to add a little spice to his recipes. that uses chocolate and beer and the green chili made with tomatillos and pork that smoked for 10 hours. Montesinos, 33, recalls intently watching his mother cook the diverse recipes of his native Oaxaca, Mexico so it was natural to get his first job in the U.S. as a cook in 1993. Today, he’s married to Brandis and little Alexander is 2 years old and loves to watch his mother cook, too. “My wife makes a really good dried beef casserole with onions, garlic, pasta, cream, salt and pepper and my son can add ingredients to the pot and help her stir. He‘s starting early, so when he goes to college, no ramen noodles for him“!
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