While great chefs can work wonders with an open fire, give them a precision oven and the possibilities multiply fast.
To kick-start her creative ingenuity, Chef Deseree Lo looks to Gaggenau’s Expressive Series—a Bauhaus-inspired arrangement of seamlessly integrated appliances, each engineered to rival the performance of the world’s finest professional kitchens. As Lo puts it, “it’s closer to a wall of oven art.”
Lo— a Top Chef Canada finalist, better known as Chef Dez — didn’t begin her career in the kitchen. She started in risk management on Wall Street, chasing the high-stakes trading floor until, in the wake of 9/11, she wanted to learn to cook the way her mother and grandmother had before her. She enrolled in culinary school, and years later, when she was offered a coveted finance contract, she pivoted to New York’s kitchens, working her way up in top spots like La Grenouille and Locanda Verde and then gaining national recognition on Top Chef Canada. Currently, Lo is the corporate chef at the BSH Experience & Design Centre in Vancouver.
Now, when she develops new dishes, she relies on the Ex-pressive Series for both precision and possibility. “There’s so much to love, but the most important thing for me is temperature control,” she says. “There are no hot spots. With the specialized layers of glass and construction of the oven, the heat distribution is shockingly even.”
That level of control has led to seriously fun experimentation. The new culinary warming drawer, adjustable from 80F to 180F, doubles as a low-and-slow cooking environment. Lo recently used it to gently cook a chicken marinated in Chinese rice wine. Alongside it, the combi-microwave oven roasts butternut squash to a melt-in-your-mouth finish in just eight minutes. And for a playful dessert, she and her sous-chef activated the combi-steam oven and fully automatic built-in coffee machine to create a whipped sunchoke and coffee mousse.
“I love the vacuum drawer for wagyu steaks— I can delicately dry-age them before finishing with sous vide. And the oven’s Airfry setting, used with the Airfry tray, delivers precise, uniform results. People think air frying is a compromise, but I’ve made chicken wings and crab cakes that are both perfectly crisp and deliciously juicy.” Even in professional kitchens, chefs often rely on a jumble of single-use countertop gadgets. Here, everything lives in one intuitive flow.
With tools like this exacting, a chef’s imagination can move seamlessly from ambitious ideas to beautifully executed plates.
GAGGENAU
Handcrafted for professionals and discerning home cooks alike, Gaggenau transforms cooking into an art form – where performance meets precision, and every creation becomes a masterpiece to be savoured and shared.
The difference is Gaggenau.
To learn more, click HERE
—Lindsey King
Share: Facebook, X (Formerly Twitter)
