Dirty Work: Fried Avocados and Perfect Potato Bread with John Fraser

Welcome back to Dirty Work, our series of dispatches from the MUNCHIES Garden. We're inviting chefs, bartenders, and personalities in the world of food and drink to explore our edible playground and make whatever the hell inspires them with our rooftop produce. In the latest installment, chef John Fraser stops by to make meat-free magic with fresh summer produce straight from the garden.

"I'm vegetarian," says chef John Fraser, "except when I'm at work."

The chef isn't joking around.

Deliberate and methodical, he arrives at the MUNCHIES Garden with a plan seemingly firm in his mind, and his focus doesn't waver as he carefully slices Armenian cucumber into thick coins, tossing them into a bowl with shallots for quick-pickling. He gingerly picks up portions of potato fry bread dough and gracefully places them in a bubbling Dutch oven. But in this attention to detail is also a studied quickness, and he's easily most the efficient chef we've hosted in the kitchen.

Indeed, Fraser is hardly new to this game. The chef—who owns Dovetail, and is the executive chef and partner at Narcissa and the new meat-free Nix—did stints at The French Laundry in Napa Valley, and Taillevent and Maison Blanche in Paris, before being named the executive chef at the lauded Compass in Manhattan. He opened Dovetail in 2007, where he earned the restaurant a Michelin star, and he's been racking up accolades since.

The recently opened Nix represents a new chapter for Fraser, who confided that he continues to taste meat products during his shifts but avoids them in the rest of his life. While he introduced a successful Meatless Monday menu at the otherwise omnivorous Dovetail in 2010, Nix has gone fully vegetarian—or "vegetable-forward," as many chefs (or, more likely, their publicists) are styling such restaurants these days.

The Yukon potato fry bread—described on the Nix menu as "highly decorated"—is one example of the distinctly non-hippie, non-orthorexic approach to meat-free fare that Fraser offers.

The chef became a vegetarian himself about five years ago, citing "lifestyle, health, a mixture of all the political reasons and personal reasons" as factors in deciding to make the change. And Nix has certainly come at the right moment, when conscientious eaters around the world have begun to turn away from the traditional meat-vegetable-starch triad that restaurants have relied upon for decades. Fraser says that the vegetable-centric approach is certainly working, too, noting that the dining room is consistently packed, and that he's received a stream of praise from diners and fellow chefs alike.

"It's so good," he says of working with seasonal produce. "And the food cost is zero."

In the MUNCHIES Garden, Fraser grabs a few handfuls of sungold tomatoes and green beans. Back in the kitchen, he tosses them in a hot pan with a little bit of oil, allowing the skins of the tomatoes to just barely burst. At the same time, he adds thick slices of avocado, searing them in the pan until they attain a rich, brown crust. On the plate, he adds toasted sunflower seeds and a drizzle of sunflower seed oil, which add an earthy layer to the dish, while the crispy creaminess of the avocado cuts the sweet acidity of the tomatoes.

It couldn't sound more clichéd, but it tastes like summer on a plate.

But if that still seems too light for decadent palates, the Yukon potato fry bread more than satisfies. Fried until crispy and golden, the bread tastes like a zeppole fucked a French fry. Fraser generously salts the breads as soon as the come out of the oil before coating them with a thick schmear of sour cream. On top of that, he layers a mosaic of the pickled cucumbers and shallots, and showers them with roast-y Urfa pepper and a few sprigs of peppery arugula.

Simple as hell, but not even remotely basic.

For his final act, Fraser turns to a classic combination: berries and cream. But these berries—blackberries, ground cherries, and strawberries—were all plucked straight from the garden. And for the cream? He swaps in crème fraîche, which provides an acidic bite. (When asked if he buys his crème fraîche or uses a starter culture, Fraser jokes, "Just cream and buttermilk left in the danger zone.")

Fraser ups the ante with a simple syrup, in which he had added a scraped vanilla bean and a few slices of lemongrass.

As he composes the dish, he spreads out the crème fraîche on the plate and uses a spoon to cut narrow channels into it, which he fills with the slightly warm syrup. Atop that goes the berries, left whole, and a few sprigs of bronze fennel.

It takes all of five minutes, and it's goddamn delicious. And even though Fraser has managed to nix meat from his menu today, we never would've missed it.