The seventh annual Culinary R&D conference was brought to a close with a cooking demonstration by celebrity chef Bob Waggoner, executive chef of Charleston Grill at Charleston Place, in Charleston, S.C.
Waggoner spent much of his culinary career in France, where he ran his own restaurant in Burgundy, but for the past decade he has been in Charleston, presenting food that combines influence from France with the Low Country cuisine of the Carolinas.
He started off by making a yellow gazpacho with verjus, local goat cheese, pear and cilantro.
Next he made “dirty grits” topped with duck confit leg. The grits were made “dirty” by adding blood sausage, bacon and duck liver.
For dessert he prepared a spiced-berry martini by reducing a bottle Pinot Noir wine with cloves, sugar, star anise, lemon wedges, cinnamon and vanilla. He drizzled that over berries and topped it with star anise ice cream.
