The Ocean House in Dennis Port has Pan Asian food, spectacular views

On a the latest balmy and breezy Monday evening, The Ocean House’s government chef, Tom Woods, and celebrity chef Ming Tsai labored to put together appetizers for 80 at facet-by-aspect tables in a tent outside the Dennis Port cafe.

The occasion was a private fundraiser that introduced in countless numbers of dollars and raised recognition on Cape Cod for the cancer guidance team Relatives Attain.

The impetus for Woods and Tsai operating this fundraiser together started a very long time ago with a tale that also clarifies why a very good slice of the Ocean Household menu has a Pan Asian flair.

Twenty yrs ago, as Woods was ending a two-12 months diploma at Johnson & Wales College in Providence, a mentor instructed him to select a chef he admired, who was also a great enterprise person, and to go function for him or her.

“It took me about four months of making an attempt very a great deal every single day to get a task with Ming Tsai at Blue Ginger in Wellesley in 2001 or possibly 2002,” Woods mentioned. “I would go to the cafe virtually each and every day. I ultimately got a sit-down with Ming and he looked at my fingers that were being all burned and minimize and he claimed, ‘Looks like you’ve got been working.'”

Tsai not only employed Woods but also gave him the unlikely and really worthwhile task of crafting an amuse-bouche — a one bite-sized hors d’oeuvre that is not sold but presented to the chef’s VIP guests to commence their meals.

“I experienced to convey this minimal bite to him just about every day so he could taste it. It was remarkable to be able to expend hours preparing this little chunk, usually from elements we had at the restaurant. He would say this requirements much more texture, much more crunch, much more acid, additional heat,” Woods suggests. “At a younger age, I was doing the job with Ming on menu products.”

At the Family members Access fundraiser, chef Tsai was building “new-model sashimi,” and expressing, “I’ve gotten 1,000 men and women to attempt uncooked fish with this.” The dish starts off with slices of paper-slim uncooked tuna on to which Tsai ladled ginger-lime-soy sauce, adopted by a tiny shot of steaming warm madras curry oil, which flash-cooked the center, leaving the edges raw.

“The Chinese have been undertaking this for hundreds of years,” he states. On the pretty leading, Tsai sprinkled sweet and salty crisped jasmine rice.