Benjamin Lambert
Culinary Director
Nina May, Opal and Elena James

Kitchen Collaborative is a recipe-development initiative formed by Summit F&B and Flavor & The Menu. To fuel flavor innovation, a group of talented chefs partnered with sponsor brands and commodity boards to create recipes that showcase the passion and potential of our industry.

“I never want to stop learning,” says Benjamin Lambert. “I buy way too many cookbooks,” he confesses. The chef also learns by visiting restaurants “with unique flavor profiles.” One of his most memorable taste experiences was at Leña Brava in Chicago. “It was grilled pineapple with goat cheese, hazelnuts, scallion and an aguachile of pineapple and chiles. It was so simple, but it blew me away. It hit every flavor profile,” he recounts.

Lambert also finds he learns by doing. “That’s one of the best things about cooking for a living. Every day is different, and you are always learning something new.” Now collaborating with the team that launched Washington, D.C.-based Nina May, Opal and the forthcoming Elena James, Lambert says he loves creating new dishes. “When it’s right, that ‘a-ha!’ moment is pure joy,” he says. “My favorite dish is always the one I just created.”

His Kitchen Collaborative recipes are a clear demonstration of passion in action: Honey-and-Kimchi-Marinated Salmon Lettuce Wraps with Pickled Vegetables; French Toast with Chobani^® Oat Milk Caramel, Caramelized Apples and Granola; and Ghirardelli^® Chocolate Budino with Sea Salt Caramel and Brown Butter-Roasted White Chocolate Streusel.

Honey-and-Kimchi-Marinated Salmon Lettuce Wraps with Pickled Vegetables

Photo Credit: National Honey Board

Any veteran participant (or viewer) of live or televised food competitions knows that the pressure of a ticking clock can inspire amazing results. Lambert based his Honey-and-Kimchi-Marinated Salmon Lettuce Wraps with Pickled Vegetables on a recipe he created under such exacting conditions. “I made the original dish under a lot of pressure, competing in the Capital Food Fight to benefit DC Central Kitchen in Washington,” Lambert recounts. “I had 10 minutes to come up with the idea, cook it and present it to the judges.” So, for Kitchen Collaborative, Lambert tapped his memory bank, making one modification to his winning recipe: swapping sugar for honey. “I thought that since the dish was good enough for a panel of top chefs and celebrity chefs to win the competition, I figured everyone else would love it.”

Taking it a bit slower, Lambert marinates finger-sized strips of salmon fillets in a flavor-forward combination of honey, kimchi, white miso, white soy sauce, roasted garlic and yuzu juice. With a little salt, room temperature and time, julienned carrots and cucumber slices start to leak their juices and then are mixed with cilantro, mint, basil (Thai or Italian), scallions, rice wine vinegar and extra-virgin olive oil. The vegetables are spooned into romaine cups, with cooked salmon strips placed on top and a final drizzle of reserved marinade.

“I just really enjoy modern American cuisine,” says Lambert. “It allows me to use a lot of ingredients from around the world and make them familiar.” Lambert strives to always create a balance of sweet, salty, sour and bitter, which combines to build umami, he says. The natural shape and heavy-duty leaves of romaine guided his decision for the lettuce cups. (Plus, “It’s in every grocery store in America.”) Other vegetables that could work well in the dish include daikon, celery root, red onion and cauliflower, he suggests.

While Lambert doesn’t specify a particular honey varietal for this dish, he suggests acacia or orange blossom honey as particularly good choices. “Acacia is honey from black locust flowers and has a pea and vanilla profile. The citrus notes of orange blossom honey also work well with the salmon,” he says.

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French Toast with Chobani^® Oat Milk Caramel, Caramelized Apples and Granola

Photo: Carlos Garcia // Food Styling: Peg Blackley

“Oat milk is one of my favorite non-dairy milks to work with, so I really embraced the challenge of using the Chobani product,” says Lambert. The inspiration for this French Toast with Chobani^® Oat Milk Caramel, Caramelized Apples and Granola was a dish he made years ago: an oat milk semifreddo, featuring oat milk caramel, rhubarb and oat streusel. “I modified it to make something new.” While the recipe features eggs and challah bread or brioche, plant-based substitutes for both ingredients can be employed to make this a vegan dish.

Lambert saturates thick pieces of challah or brioche in an “oat milk soaker” that features a reduced apple cider. The cider is a favorite addition when preparing oatmeal, he explains. “It’s a flavor profile I was introduced to when I was a young cook, and I use it to add extra flavor. It really works with oats, adding a tart sweetness. And when you super-concentrate the cider, it brings great acidity to the dish.”

Each slice of French toast is smothered with a generous helping of warm caramelized apples made even more decadent with the addition of an oat milk caramel, featuring vegan white chocolate chips. Honeycrisp apples are Lambert’s favorite. “Plus, they hold their texture really well after they have been cooked,” he says.

A finish of granola, a drizzle of more oat milk caramel and some powdered sugar complete the indulgent build. Lambert offers no apologies: “It’s early in the day and your body needs the fuel to get through the rest of the day.” Its extravagance also can make a vegan dish more appealing to flexitarian diners. “Vegan food can be very delicious in the right hands,” he says.

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Ghirardelli^® Chocolate Budino with Sea Salt Caramel and Brown Butter-Roasted White Chocolate Streusel

Photo: Carlos Garcia // Food Styling: Peg Blackley

A personal fan of chocolate desserts, Lambert remembers one created by Jacques Torres, then executive pastry chef at Le Cirque, who later founded his own line of chocolates and chocolate shops. “It was shaped out of chocolate to look like a stove with a cake in the oven with chocolate pots of raspberry and mango sauces. It still sits in my memory more than 20 years later,” he recounts. Believing that most consumers today expect a chocolate dessert on the menu, Lambert hopes that this Ghirardelli^® Chocolate Budino with Sea Salt Caramel and Brown Butter-Roasted White Chocolate Streusel will prove similarly memorable to future guests.

Lambert chose to create a budino for its soft texture and simple elegance, as well as for being a highly effective means for letting the chocolate flavor shine, he says. The recipe features three different Ghirardelli products: Ghirardelli^® 72% Cacao Dark Chocolate Chips, Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips and Classic White Chips. “I made this four times before I got the formula I like,” says Lambert. “I don’t like my desserts overly sweet, so I took some sugar out of the recipe and balanced it with the sweeter chocolate until I was happy with the ratio.”

For each serving, Lambert crowns the chocolate budino with a white chocolate streusel composed of a scratch-made brown butter powder, peeled and slivered toasted almonds and white chips. Freeze-dried raspberries are crumbed over top, and the dish is finished with a quenelle of whipped cream made with yogurt and a delicate honey tuile. “I really like to have texture in dishes. It makes each bite that much more interesting,” he notes. “The yogurt in the whipped cream adds a little sourness to the dish, as do the freeze-dried raspberries—I love overly sour things.”

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Project Management: Summit F&B
Photography: Carlos Garcia // Food Styling: Peg Blackley