Beauty in Simplicity: Jamestown Fish

Some chefs love complexity: the layering of flavors, taking days to prep a sauce, using tiny bits of exotic ingredients to create a never-before-tasted idea on a plate. And some chefs love simplicity, believing that less is more when it comes to cooking, and that the freshness of the best quality ingredients is what makes a truly successful dish. Chef Matthew MacCartney of Jamestown Fish is definitely in the latter camp. The restaurant is fine dining but not fussy. As Sous Chef Heliovaldo Arajuo describes, “It’s not fancy food. It’s the most truthful. Most dishes have no more than five ingredients. We have such a bounty around here in Rhode Island. All we have to do is create unique combinations of flavors.”

Jamestown Fish offers a handful of cooking classes in their off-season, mostly in the coldest months, and the chefs carry the same philosophy of simplicity to their students as they do their guests. There are 20 or so of us standing in the kitchen of the restaurant on a Saturday afternoon, drinking a well-chosen Italian Rose as the cooking demonstration begins. First up: Linguine and Clams. “You see it on a lot of menus,” Chef Matthew says, “but I think the approach is the important part.” Their approach at Jamestown Fish is to treat the shellfish with a delicate hand, cooking the clams just enough and mostly from the heat of the pasta. “If you can eat the clams raw,” he says, “why are you going to cook them to death?” In his dish, the littlenecks stay very tender, and since the recipe calls for only six ingredients (there is no butter, wine or stock in this recipe), the simple flavor really shines through. “This is sometimes too intense for some people,” Chef Matthew says. “As I say, too much truth. There’s nowhere to hide.”

For the first recipe, Chef has shown us how to shuck clams. For the next, he’ll show us how to “process” a live lobster, then make a stock from the shells and turn the raw lobster meat into Lobster Linguine. It’s not pretty, but the process has an excellent result: instead of working with pre-cooked meat from boiled lobsters, Chef Matthew is able to delicately prepare the lobster and create an incredibly simple dish. Lobster Linguine has only six ingredients – granted, one of them is black truffle butter, and he added some fresh black truffle as a surprise – but the taste is unbelievable. “Make it all about the lobster,” he says. “That’s the chef’s trick here.”

The same is true of dessert, which is a rustic Chestnut Torte. It has seven ingredients, and takes about five minutes to prepare for baking – but it’s exactly the uncomplicated, sweet ending you want to a hearty meal. There really is beauty in simplicity, even on the plate. Jamestown Fish offers cooking classes during the winter.

JamestownFishRI.com