At home with Chef Adam Polisei
At home with Chef Adam Polisei
Adam Polisei's mother is not surprised her son became a chef.
"While he was sitting in the cart at the grocery store when he was just about 2 years old, I would ask him what he wanted for dinner and he would point to cod and then to pasta. He could even say the word 'cod,' " Jill Jackman says. "He was always a foodie."
Polisei, the executive chef at Ocean Prime Restaurant in Troy, grew up in Clinton Township. After graduating from high school, he spent his freshman and sophomore years at Oberlin College in Ohio where he played on the football team. Then he transferred to MSU to major in food industry management. At the same time, he worked at Harper's Brew Pub in East Lansing to pay his way through school.
"While working at the pub, I got more serious about cooking due to the influence of their executive chef, Neal Reeves," said Polisei, 32. "He taught me a lot of technical things I had never been exposed to before. I actually considered leaving MSU to go to culinary school, but Neal convinced me it was better to just learn on the job."
Then, after stints first at Mitchell's Fish Market in Lansing, later at their restaurants in Tampa and Jacksonville in Florida, Poliesi became the sous chef at Ocean Prime in Tampa. "I love this company and was very pleased to be offered the position of executive chef at the Ocean Prime in Troy in 2012. It worked out great to move here because this is where I grew up," he says.
Polisei says he has fond memories of watching his grandmother cook fresh pasta and meatballs. "She was actually Polish, but my grandpa was Italian," he says. "The craft and love I observed in my grandma's kitchen kind of stuck with me."
The chef says he cooks at home two or three days a week for himself and his wife, Heather, whom he met while both were working at Mitchell's Fish Market in Tampa. And their daughter, Sloane, was born less than three months ago.
Adam says he particularly loves this caponata recipe because "it's both sweet and sour and has a little crunch from both the pine nuts and the skin of the eggplant. It goes really well with the bread and the burrata cheese and can be made ahead of time and refrigerated. And the flavors actually get better the second day," he says.
Adds Polisei: "We first had the Elvis Pizza at a restaurant in Jacksonville at a restaurant called Urban Flats. We loved it and have been making it ever since."
Eggplant Caponata with Burrata
2 tablespoons pine nuts