What Chef Jonathan Waxman Can’t Live Without

Most salt that you buy, I’m sorry to say, has been chemically altered with anti-caking ingredients or some other kind of nonsense. Maldon is a pure product. It has this flakiness to it; you can crush it in your fingers to turn it from coarse salt into fine salt. Also, Maldon is saltier than other salts. I don’t know why that is; it’s not actually saltier chemically, but it tastes saltier. Sometimes you even get crystals that look like snow crystals. It’s a good last-minute additive on caramel ice cream, or to get a little bit of a crunch or on steaks. In salads too. Fish is also the best with Maldon. I keep it right next to the stove — actually, I keep two different kinds of salt there. I’ve got Maldon salt and then I’ve got a Brittany salt. The Brittany salt is a little more chunky. I like that too, but for different things. This I’ll use on everything.

I’m all about blue. I wear blue. I have a blue Sharpie to sign books with. I write everything in blue ink. It’s just the best color. This particular pen is great — it has a fine point to it, which I like. Plus, it just feels good. It doesn’t exude too much ink, so it lasts a long time. I like to doodle, so it’s a good pen for doodling. I do all the designing for my restaurants, and draw everything out. I do menu design. I do physical design. I do kitchen design. I do exhaust design. I write out recipes too. I think the pen makes my ugly handwriting look palatable, so I can almost read it and other people can kind of read it. Sometimes, I’ll forget a pen is in my pocket and will throw one in the wash. That’s a really bad idea — don’t wash the pens. Though they actually don’t blow up very much when that happens. They’re pretty well made.

Olive oil is such a complicated subject. It’s hours of discussion. I can definitely taste the difference between olive oils from different regions. In the Mediterranean, there are many different kinds of olive oil. You start in Spain and Gibraltar and go clockwise around the Mediterranean Sea. As you go around, there are great French oils. There are great Italian oils. There are wonderful Greek and Turkish and Syrian and Lebanese and Israeli and Egyptian and Tunisian and Moroccan oils. You get it. This Italian one from Liguria has a freshness and brightness unlike any of those other oils I mentioned. It’s almost like the sun shined perfectly on those olive trees. I first had it in Liguria in 1976, when I was in cooking school in Paris. And it just blew my mind. I had the oil with mesclun lettuce and salt — nothing else. It has a viscosity that’s just perfect, delicate and not too heavy. It’s fruity without being overpowering, and slightly bitter without being texturally different. The nice thing is that it’s a universal oil, so you can actually cook with it. I should also mention that you should buy it in small containers because it goes bad quickly in about three to four weeks — all olive oil does. Some people keep it in the refrigerator, but I think it does something weird in the refrigerator. And don’t be shy with it.

Shure is one of the oldest audio companies in America. It’s from Chicago and it still makes everything in America. If you’ve ever seen a concert, chances are whomever it is will be using a Shure microphone. I was a trombone player, so I played onstage and stuck my horn into a lot of Shure microphones over the years. When I heard that it made earphones, I got the cheapest pair — the 215s — and then worked my way up to the 535s. They deliver the clearest sound. I’m always listening to music, always on Tidal. It has what it calls a hi-fi streaming service, which you pay extra for — it’s a higher resolution sound and it really does matter. I also like the way Tidal organizes things. It’s so easy for dummies like me. When I cook, I always play something loud: rock and roll, James Brown, Marvin Gaye. Sometimes I listen to Mozart when I cook, too.

Shortbread was the first recipe I ever made, when I was 7 years old. I made it from the Joy of Cooking. I would like to make shortbread cookies more often, but now I just buy them. Walkers are better than any ones I could make. Actually, I don’t know about that — but Walkers has been making shortbread for more than a century. They bake it just right: not undercooked, not overcooked. Firm but crumbly, with a great bite. I eat these cookies year-round — shortbread for every season, every day. I’m kidding, but I do eat them a lot. My wife knows they’re a weakness of mine. And if you dip them in chocolate, it’s not such a bad thing.

I had an iPad Air before. When I first got it, I kissed it — it was my best friend. I loved that it was tiny and light and I could have it in bed. But then I got an iPad Pro. It is just so much faster and clearer. And bigger. I still wake up and I go to sleep with my iPad. It’s everything, even my alarm clock. Since Trump got elected, I’ve been getting up every morning at 2:30 a.m., spending an hour and a half reading the New York Times on my iPad. It’s how I communicate, too; messaging people and doing emails on it. (I don’t actually respond — I read emails, then delete them.) Oh, and I do a lot of eBay. I buy everything on eBay: watches, stereos, antique light fixtures, tube amplifiers from the ’60s. My wife thinks I’m insane, and she’s right. I don’t like doing much else with the iPad, though. I never watch movies on it. Occasionally, I’ll do YouTube stuff on it, like when I want to figure out how to fix the TV or the toaster or anything that’s broken, because something just always seems to be broken. I’m a big fan of YouTube in that respect.

Chef Larry Forgione told me about this butter when I first got to New York in 1983. I asked him what the best butter is and he told me that this is the best butter. And it is. At my restaurants, we buy it by the 50-pound lump. I call it the golden nugget. I’m crazy about getting the best butter in the world, but I’m just as crazy about getting things that are local. This butter is cultured and it has less water in it; it’s a denser butter, therefore it makes better croissants, better sauces. It tastes better on your bread in the morning. Everything that needs butter is better with this butter.

My wife got me Bombas socks for Christmas a couple years ago. I’m very particular about my socks. I used to only wear cashmere socks; they’re really light and the material actually retains heat when you need it to, but also wicks moisture away from your feet and keeps them dry. When I stopped wearing cashmere socks (they get too many holes in them), I first tried other pairs from a company that will remain nameless. The company is very popular, but I didn’t like the socks at all. Then my wife got me the Bombas and I fell in love. They’re almost like cashmere, but they wear like wool. They stay up but they don’t push on my ankles like some other socks I know. I love hiking, so I wear hiking boots a lot, and they’re great with those. I use them when I play tennis, too. My drawer is filled with Bombas socks and I just bought another dozen. My kids will steal them from me, and they lie: “Oh, I don’t have any of your socks, dad.” But they do; they steal them all the time.

When Grey Goose called me up about this idea, I said, “You had me at hello.” It’s a whole precooked dinner for eight people made with recipes that I absolutely love and have been doing for a long time. I’m not actually cooking everything that gets sent out, but I’m pretty good at doing recipes. I thought, “If I’m going to do this, I want to use recipes that are going to work every single time.” Salsa verde is a big component because it’s a sauce that I love; when Barbuto first opened, my chef, Lynn McNeely, and I looked at each other and said, “Let’s go old-school.” The salsa is paired with roasted chicken, which is another recipe I’ve been doing forever. Also, there are crispy potatoes with rosemary and Pecorino Romano that are kind of like crack. And I love the included cocktail recipe. A-K Hada, the bartender at Existing Conditions, did an amazing job. She’s very talented and I really love the taste of it. You have to make the cocktail yourself — you get a full bottle of Grey Goose — but the rest of the food is already cooked and delivered to your door. The crowning glory is the charity component. Twenty dollars from each purchase goes to Meals on Wheels.