Jay Ziobrowski
Corporate R&D Chef
Morrison Healthcare

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.

Whether in his professional role as Corporate R&D Chef at Morrison Healthcare, training and teaching colleagues and customers alike, or when cooking for friends and family or when accepting recipe development challenges like Kitchen Collaborative, “Jay Z” Ziobrowski has a singular goal: to persuade diners to shake off their food fears and try something new, gaining knowledge, awareness and the delights of flavor sensation in the process.

“It’s that moment when you’re cooking something new for someone and you see the hesitancy and doubt in their eyes transform as they taste what you’ve made, hear what you have to say about it and realize it’s good,” he says. “It’s a moment of genuine discovery—and I live for these. It’s a part of everything I do.” Even if they don’t like the result, the chef says he has “helped a person overcome their fear of trying something new.”

Ziobrowski is hoping there will be little fear holding back interest in his flavor-forward recipes for Kitchen Collaborative: Garlicky Umami Croissant-Tadas, Moroccan-Style Chicken Thigh Bowl Bites and Fried Buffalo Chicken and Farro-Stuffed Peppers.

Garlicky Umami Croissant-Tadas

Photo: Carlos Garcia // Food Styling: Peg Blackley

The origin story of Ziobrowski’s Garlicky Umami Croissant-Tadas stretches back 30 years. “It’s based on the first appetizer I had to make in culinary school, pushing white bread into muffin cups and filling them with mushroom duxelles. It became my go-to appetizer, and everyone loved it,” he recounts. Over the years, the chef elevated the dish by upcycling next-day croissants in place of the bread, and now the current iteration of the dish dials up the umami quotient with Custom Culinary^® Gold Label Mushroom Base and Custom Culinary^® Master’s Touch^® Roasted Garlic Flavor Concentrate.

To create the rich filling, Ziobrowski sautés onions with the mushroom base and the garlic concentrate, adding three types of mushrooms: cremini, shiitake and oyster. “Any mushrooms will give you the meaty texture you want,” he advises. “But you could also use oyster on its own; it’s a premium product that lets you charge a premium price.”

Puréed farro is combined with cream and more garlic concentrate and then incorporated into the mushroom mixture. “I’m a whole grains guy—I put farro or quinoa in everything,” he says. “You can fold these grains into dishes and that helps them become the norm.” The mushroom mixture is placed in the croissant cups and then topped with Parmesan before baking.

Ziobrowski uses the mushroom base one more time, pairing it with mayonnaise and a chile garlic paste for a mushroom aïoli that is drizzled over top the finished cups and/or used as a dipping sauce. “The Custom Culinary products have a really intense flavor, and they also replace salt in the recipe,” he says.

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Moroccan-Style Chicken Thigh Bowl Bites

Photo: National Honey Board

Ziobrowski has a confession to make about this honey-rich Moroccan-Style Chicken Thigh Bowl Bites dish: “I stole this recipe from a friend.” But there’s no shame in that game, as a little culinary thievery is an accepted practice, one considered by many to be the ultimate form of flattery. He’d never tried Moroccan food before he met this friend, and that first encounter made an indelible impression. “The dish was honey sauce with apricots and olives—salty and sweet—served over chicken. I morphed it into a bowl and added garbanzo beans for texture and starch,” he says. “It became a go-to dish I would present in a previous position at chef’s table events. The American palate today is all about sweet-salty.”

The dish features layers of flavor. Chicken thighs—selected because they stay tender—are only lightly seasoned with black pepper before being seared. It’s the sauce that brings the Moroccan-style, he explains.

To build depth of flavor in the sauce, he sautés onions, garlic and ginger with the garbanzo beans, deglazing with white wine and then adding apricots, stuffed queen olives, low-sodium chicken stock, honey and aquafaba made from reserved garbanzo bean liquid. After the cooked chicken thighs get a simmer in the thickening sauce, blistered grape tomatoes, parsley, mint and almonds are the final touch. Ziobrowski’s thoughtful curation of ingredients takes color, shape and texture into account. The tomatoes and herbs add color. The garbanzo beans not only enhance the mouthfeel, their round shape also echoes the olives. “This was deliberate,” he explains.

The dish starts as sweet on the palate. “You get that right away, but it’s a savory sweet, not a dessert sweet,” he says. “The honey is the star, masking the olive flavor, but the saltiness of the olives comes in right after that.” He deliberately doesn’t specify a particular varietal of honey in the recipe. “When I write recipes, I try my hardest to get people to go local with ingredient choices. So, here, I hope they find a local honey. Different varietals will change the profile, more or less sweet. Just know your products.”

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Fried Buffalo Chicken and Farro-Stuffed Peppers

Photo: Carlos Garcia // Food Styling: Peg Blackley

In this round of Kitchen Collaborative assignments, Ziobrowski explored the stuffed vegetable format, which has been cropping up on menus. He was inspired to transform this trend by opting to stuff a roasted bell pepper with, of all things, a breaded-and-fried chicken strip. A Buffalo flavor profile further subverts expectations. “Everyone loves Buffalo—they understand it,” he notes. “There are certain flavors like this and, say, honey-mustard, that we know will sell. Stuffed peppers on their own may not be something that attracts orders, but add in Buffalo chicken tenders? That’s going to create some intrigue.”

Ziobrowski’s recipe for Fried Buffalo Chicken and Farro-Stuffed Peppers is packed with flavor, led by a robust filling that features ½-in. diced baked Tyson^® Chicken Strips, onions, garlic, ginger, carrots, poblano peppers, celery, farro and peas. These are mixed with a thick sauce made with cream cheese, milk, blue cheese dressing and hot sauce. “The idea was to transform a Buffalo chicken dip,” he explains, plus, “I wanted to play with peppers on peppers. Poblanos are an awesome pepper that people don’t use often enough, or they feel it can only be used in a Latin dish and not try it elsewhere.”

He favors the post-roast texture of red and green bell peppers over yellow or orange, which tend to be a bit softer. The farro absorbs some of the liquid, but a firm pepper is key to holding all the ingredients together. Between the roasted peppers, the poblanos and the hot sauce, the dish has some kick, which is balanced by the creaminess of the cheese sauce.

Farro is trending with Ziobrowski personally, who features it in the Garlicky Umami Croissant-Tadas recipe and suggests it as an accompaniment for the Moroccan-Style Chicken Thigh Bowl Bites, as well. “It has a toothiness and holds better than some other grains, like white rice. Farro isn’t going to get mushy in a sauce,” he notes. “And I think that farro and chicken go really great together. This is the way to introduce new grains to diners: Pair them with something familiar.”

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Project Management: Summit F&B
Photography: Carlos Garcia / National Honey Board