Meet Chef Jesus Alcelay of the Cottonwood Grille in Boise, Idaho!
Chef Jesus Alcelay is passionate about food and cooking — and he gives all the credit for his incredible skills to his mother, Felisa. At 9, he began learning traditional Basque dishes at her side in her kitchen in their hometown of Oñati, in Spain’s Basque Country.
Chef Alcelay started his professional career at the bottom of the ladder, as a sous chef at the Hotel Londres in San Sebastian at the age of 18. As an apprentice, he started by cleaning garlic, then fish, then dressing out beef. Each step had to be perfected before moving onto the next.
But his trajectory changed when he met a woman named Tammy who was visiting the Basque Country from the United States. They married and Chef Alcelay followed her back to America in 1975. He cooked in Idaho, Washington, and back in the Basque Country before fulfilling his dream of opening his own restaurant: Oñati, located in Boise, Idaho, and named after his own town.
Once his children were grown, Chef Alcelay moved back to Spain and opened two restaurants in his hometown: a pizza parlor and a classic American burger joint named (fittingly) “Boise!”.
“I served Basque food in Boise at Oñati, so why not serve American food at Boise in Oñati?” he said.
Chef Alcelay relocated back to Boise to be the executive chef at the Cottonwood Grille. He was planning to work for a month. Five years later, he’s still going strong. The Cottonwood specializes in Pacific Northwest cuisine, serving fresh local ingredients, ranging from premium beef to local game such as elk.
Of course, Chef Alcelay has added his own specialty Basque dishes such as lamb shank, croquetas and a daily traditional red bean soup.
Basque Red Bean Soup and fresh baked bread at the Cottonwood Grille.
He regularly incorporates dry beans: garbanzos and white beans for soups and sides, and pinto beans for refried beans. Chef Alcelay prefers dry beans because they thicken soup naturally. The only bean he soaks before cooking are garbanzos; if you use fresh dry beans, he explains, they don’t have to be soaked.
He starts by covering red and white beans in one inch of cold water and turning on the heat. After he brings them to a boil, he lowers the heat and cooks them for 45 minutes to an hour. At that point, he will shock the beans by adding cold water to thicken the broth. With garbanzos he adds the soaked beans to boiling water, never cold water.
Basque Red Bean Soup
Ingredients
1 pound small dry red beans
1 small onion, finely chopped
1 small leek, finely chopped
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 Basque-style chorizos, sliced ½ inch thick
Add the dry beans, onions, leek and oil in a Dutch oven or stock pot, then add about one inch of cold water to cover. Cook on medium heat for one hour. Add the chorizos and cook for one more hour. If the soup needs additional liquid, add more water, but only enough cover the ingredients. About a half hour before the dish is done, add about a cup of cold water to help thicken the soup.
NOTE: If you can not find Basque chorizo please DO NOT substitute it with Mexican chorizo! Use Portuguese linguica or some other sausage that has the same consistency.
