random thoughts of an obsessed chef
Well we made it. It was one year ago today, April 1, April Fool's Day, we opened the doors and a life long dream of mine came true. My wife, my youngest son, Jen my partner, and myself all stood there scared out of our minds and not knowing what to expect. Theresa and Calvin had no restaurant experience and their training consisted of a 15 minuet run through of proper service, and then on the floor they went. We did 16 for lunch and 14 for dinner, all of whom were friends and family, and all of whom we were deeply grateful for their early support.
One year. Wow. The first year is often the hardest to survive for a restaurant. I think the mortality rate is around 75% of all restaurant close in their first year, but not us, and the simple fact for this has been the wonderful support we have received from the community. We thank all of you who have dinned with us and supported us in this first year.
Now that this mile stone has past we look to the future with more than the hope of survival, which was our simple first year goal. We now look forward with expectations and plans. We have our cookbook coming out in September. We are planning a community garden for this summer in the space next to the restaurant. The market continues to grow and we have more leads on local products that will make it even better, and we have other things in the works.
Today is just another day, however. Today we will open for lunch at 11:00 and dinner at 5:00. Since it's spring break for the kids it will be slow and I don't expect to set the world on fire. But in another sense today is special and no matter how slow we are today I will be grateful we are still here.
Today is a sad day. Today one of my best friends, Senior Master Sargent Steven Grandalski is shipping out for his second tour of duty in Iraq. Him and his wife Keri, along with their 2 children are the bravest people I know. I want thank them for their service to our country and for keeping me free.
Thank you Steve and Keri, and may you have godspeed in your return.
As all of you know, cooking if my one passion; my one obsession. But recently I have began to question the place of cooking in my life. What I mean is where does it fit? What's the purpose of cooking in my life. In a way this blog has been the vehicle with which I explore cooking's place in my life, so it shouldn't come as any surprise to me when I begin questioning why I cook. But this recent episode of questioning reaches down deeper inside. I don't know if I am looking for direction or connection. My gut feeling is I'm trying to see where I am connected in my endeavor.
Paul Tillich, an existential theologian, and the one theologian that speaks most to me, spoke often of man's "Ultimate Concern" when referring to god. Faith, according to Tillich is the state of being ultimately concerned. Now, because Tillich's idea of ultimate concern is not the easiest concept to understand, in fact some wonder if even Tillich understood it completely, I'm not going to get into it. If you are interested here is a link to a very good discussion. But I bring up "ultimate concern" because Tillich argued that ones ultimate concern cannot be something finite, hence, my cooking no matter how passionate I am with it cannot stand in the place of my ultimate concern. If cooking cannot bring me fulfillment then what does it do? This is the question now before me.
Cooking by itself will not bring fulfillment. It can't, it's grounded in finite existence, but cooking can be that which leads me to that which concerns me ultimately; at least I hope. Aristotle taught that by living a virtuous life we can find happiness and part of living a virtuous life is living a life where the social good of man is the highest aim we can aim for, this is where a proper use of the political life springs. To put it another way, when we put social concerns above our individual desires we are living rightly and will find ourselves more fulfilled and hence happier. My cooking needs to take that next step where I no longer cook for sake to cook, but I cook for a greater end; an end that takes aim at man's ultimate concern. Is the greater good of man our goal? For now I don't know, but I am going to start off in that direction and see where it leads me if for no other reason than it will be a good journey. I do know owning a restaurant for the sake of owning one or for making money is no reason to own one. There must be a higher aim for us. We are coming up to the first anniversary of the restaurant and we have reached the goal we set for ourselves, just survive the first year. Now that we have done that I want to look ahead with loftier ideals for the restaurant and market. What are they? Have not a clue, but give me time and these ideals will present themselves; a path for us will be made clear. What I do know is I am enjoying the adventure.
Chin Shengt'an was an 17th century scholar who, while staying in a temple with a friend for ten days because of foul weather, wrote 33 happy moments. While I don't find all or even most of his moments all that happy for me, I do re-read them from time to time just so I can think of my own happy moments in life. For the next few posts I want to give you my 33 happy moments in the kitchen. I hope you enjoy them but more importantly, I hope it makes you think of what your happy moments are while cooking.
1. It's early in the morning and I walk into my kitchen. There are no sounds. The hood isn't on yet. There are no people talking or making noise. It's only me. I slowly begin putting together my work station while thinking quietly about the day ahead. Ah, is this not happiness?
2. The restaurant is full and the kitchen is very busy but the cooks are all dancing with each other flawlessly. The sound of pots hitting the stove top. The sound of knives on the cutting boards. The sound of the chef calling his tickets. Ah, is this not happiness?
3. The look of a perfectly cooked piece of fish. Ah, is this not happiness?
4. I had a guest ask me about how to poach an egg. I wasn't busy and invited her to come into the kitchen to show her. After discovering it isn't all that difficult, she smiled. Ah, isn't that happiness.
5. I hire a dishwasher who has had some bad breaks in life. She has no or little education and often comes with a record. After a few months of washing dishes he shows an interest in learning to cook and I teach him. A few years go by and I hear from her and learn that cooking has given her a good life. Ah, is this not happiness?
6. A couple comes into the restaurant for their anniversary but it is soon apparent they don't have much money to spend. The man, though he doesn't readily show it, wishes he had more so his beautiful bride could have a nice dinner. Without making a show of it, we roll out the red carpet and send them extra courses on top of what they have already ordered. They leave satiated and happy without ever knowing what we did. Ah, is this not happiness.
7. It is late afternoon. I brew a pot of my favorite tea and take it down to the dock on the river just behind the restaurant. I watch the ducks diving for food while drinking my tea, and looking up I see my wife coming down to meet me. Ah, is this not happiness?
8. I have had a hard day and notice there are some dishes to be done. Going back to the dish room I get myself lost in just doing dishes and forget about everything else. Ah, is this not happiness?
9. It is winter time and there is a storm raging outside. The restaurant is warm but because of the storm we have no customers. I'm sitting at the table beside our big window looking outside while reading a cookbook and drinking tea. Ah, is this not happiness?
10. It's my day off. The day outside is beautiful. The sun shines and there is a cool breeze, but off in the distant brews a thunderstorm with it's black clouds. I have spent the morning preparing food for the afternoon. The house is full of our best friends drinking wine and eating food. Laughter can be heard and the kids are all running around getting themselves into trouble. I'm sitting in my favorite chair smoking my favorite pipe. Ah, is this not happiness?
11. My son is at the restaurant hanging out with us. He is not doing anything in particular except looking up points of interest on the Internet. Just when I am at my busiest in the kitchen he wants to show me something and I don't really have time, but because he is with us I make time, usually putting an order on hold. He shows me something trivial. We laugh or plan or look at each other knowingly. Ah, is this not happiness?
OK, this is the first 11. I'll post the next 11 in a few days.
As anyone who knows me will tell you, I am a bona fide chef groupie. I follow the careers of the tops chef with a passion. I know Mario Batalli's favorite band is Joy Division. Escoffier was a very devout Catholic and would rub his ear when he got angry. Marco-Pierre White doesn't like music played in his restaurants. Fernande Point loved Champagne so much he drank two bottles a day. Guy Savoy was portrayed as a customer in the French version of Ratatouille, and so forth. I can't get enough information about my favorite chefs. If there was a People magazine for chefs, you could bet I would have a life time subscription. I love finding out small details about those at the top. I get giddy when I discover so-and-so has a goldfish named Bob or some other ridiculous, insignificant detail.
My groupie-ness sometimes can be taken to the extreme where I put on rose colored glasses when it comes to their food and believe these guys can do no wrong. I am also a devout restaurant review reader. There are a number of great websites and blogs who write brutally honest reviews of the top restaurants in the world, and I am a regular reader of these sites. What I like about these sites is the fact that the reviewers are not awe struck by the reputation of the chef or restaurant and will write their honest review of what they thought of the food. While most of the time the reviews do give praise for the greatness of the food and restaurant, there are times when the review does not find that particular meal all that wonderful. It is these reviews I enjoy reading most. It's not because I like dirt but because these reviews are learning experiences for me. I read them trying to see what the writer sees as great, good, and just plain bad, and because these sites are written by seasoned eaters, I generally trust their judgments.
What I look for in a well written review is the writer's (read paying customer) honest take on the food and overall experience. I make it a habit to listen to the honest opinions of those who eat my food. Notice I say, "honest". There are those who are never happy, or find a demented pleasure in telling cooks their food was not so good, and I do not listen to these folks. But, to those who are honest I am thankful.
Often times it difficult for us cooks to really tell how we are doing, and this is because of a couple reasons. Firstly there is the whole can't see the forest because of the trees. You see, we spend our days in the trenches and it is not easy to keep ones bearings straight and it takes a lot of concentration to keep standards up and consistent. Good, honest (read not mean spirited) feed back from the ones eating is always welcomed.
Secondly there is ego. Chefs are an ego driven lot and some of us think we are gods and untouchable. Far to often a chef thinks his/her food is above critique. They often think they are so good that the guest should say nothing, sit there, and eat in gratitude and awe. Bullshit. It is for the guest we cook and it is the guest who has the final say as to the worthiness of a meal. A good, honest review of a meal that did not meet the grade is good for us on occasion. It keeps us on our toes. In the end, it is for you guys we chefs cook for, and in the end it is ultimately your opinion that matters.
OK, I'll take this slow for those of you whom may not understand. Let's pretend you are making a reservation at my restaurant...
ring, ring, ring...
"Thank you for calling The Cooks' House. How may I help you?"
"Yes, I would like to make a reservation for 8 at 7:00pm."
"8 at 7:00pm. Perfect. See you this evening."
It may be me, but I don't see anything there that says, "and we are going to a movie at 8:30". No, I guess it's better to come in and order three courses, take you time, and then at 8:05 tell us you have an 8:30 movie, and this BEFORE you receive your entrees. We must have set a new land speed record getting the entrees for 8 people ready so they can at least get a couple bites before they have to leave.
Guys, listen, do you have somewhere to be at a certain time? Great, no problem. Let your server know and I will guarantee you will get out with time to spare and still be able to enjoy your food. Do not, let me repeat, do not pop that on the the restaurant staff last minute. It's not fair to them, nor you.
There are two type of cooks in the world, bulls and ballerinas. Each has their place and individual roles in the kitchen, and every kitchen needs a healthy mixture of each type. The mix is entirely dependent on the kind of kitchen, for instance, if the kitchen is pumping out buffets or banquets for 100's or even 1000's of people on a regular basis, then it will have the need for more bulls. However, if it is a high end restaurant that is producing world class cuisine where the average guest bill is above the $100 per person mark, then it will have a fair amount of ballerinas dancing around. Get the picture? Bulls are the producers of the bunch. You need 1000 of something made? Give it to a bull, they love these kinds of challenges. You'll get 1000, no guarantee what the place will look like when they are done, but you'll have 1000. Give a ballerina the task of producing 1000 of something and it will take a while, and they may even have a nervous break down in the process, but tell them you need to put tiny drops of vegetable puree around the rim of a dish, all the same distance apart, and in thirty seconds, and they will produce. Give the bull the same task and you will end up with a mess. Bulls cannot be ballerinas and ballerinas cannot be bulls. I have tried to convert each type with no success, but I am convinced that each can learn from the other, and every cook should strive for a happy medium between the two.
Let me give you two example of each extreme. I had this kid working for me that was a mess on the line. No matter how hard he tried he could not get the food on the plate the way I wanted it. Tell him I wanted a dollop and he would plop. He had absolutely no grace in his movements and his plates looked like it, but when I moved him to prep he really came out. This kid was amazing when it came to defeating prep lists. We would leave him prep lists that were epic in proportions and I be damned if he wouldn't have them complete every time we came for the shift. It got to a point where we would put anything we could think of on his lists just to see if he could get them done and he did, each and every time. His speed was truly amazing. He not only completed his lists, he did so without screwing anything up.
OK, contrast him with this little ballerina who worked for me. I'll call her Jane. Jane was painfully slow at everything, but what she did do, she did well. She had a certain grace when she worked. She worked for me as an intern for a couple months during our slow period. We would do 20 people and it would feel like we did 100. It took her forever to plate anything. I don't know how many times I would pound the table screaming at her that I needed HER dish to sell the order. Oh, she would buzz around the kitchen busy as a bee. She was always doing something at 100 mph but getting nothing done. She would come in 2 hours early to start her prep and not be ready when we opened. Sure, she could make beautiful food, but my god, plate tectonics move quicker than she did.
So, what you want to aim for is that happy medium in between the two examples above. The two most important characteristics in a line cook are speed and accuracy. Speed is the bull. Accuracy is the ballerina. A well balanced cook, no matter which side of the line he/she may fall, will have both characteristics, while one will always out shine the other. Discover which one you are and play to your strengths.
What am I? I'm a ballerina, which is good because I look FABULOUS in a tutu.
Well, I just finished the last recipe in the last section of the cookbook. Phew...what a relief. Have no idea what's next in the process, but I'm glad this part is over. I think there are around 100 recipes or so, most of them I have had to do from memory.
Someone asked me this evening when we're going to get on T.V. or on one those cooking competition shows like Iron Chef or Top Chef or the like. My reply was that we're not. Why? Well, it's mostly because my food, our food, is not the type that will win competitions. We don't do theatrics, which is what wins those kinds of shows. We do simple, straight forward food. Our carnival squash soup has 4 ingredients in it; carnival squash, milk, onions, butter. Nothing fancy but in the end what you get is a soup that tastes like, well, carnival squash. Simple, singular, intense flavors is what we aim for. I don't use a lot of garnishes. A vast majority of my plates have no garnish. Take for instance the hanger steak currently on the menu. It's a 7 oz piece of hanger steak served with roasted fingerling potatoes, roasted shallots, and a red wine sauce. That's all that goes on the plate. There is no green stuff, no flair, nothing mind blowing on the plate. It's just a sliced piece of meat with sauce, potatoes, and shallots. Simple and to the point. It has taken me a long time before I felt comfortable enough with my food to forgo unnecessary garnishes. I've seen chefs who have 20 or more garnishes at the ready for all their plates. I have a bag or two of micro-greens, some chopped chive and maybe...no wait, that's all. I think it is an important statement to the guest when the chef doesn't find it necessary to doll up the food. I think it says the chef is confident in what he/she is serving in what it is and no more. I am getting closer and closer to my ideal of what a plate should be like.
I like to think my food is finally taking me by my hand and leading me into that simpler life I long for. A chef's food is directly tied to the chef's world view; to her dreams and beliefs; to his life as he lives it. A chef cooks from the totality of what makes them human and I am trying to let my food guide me to a simpler way of things. I find myself facing Plato's cave where what I see is not what is real. I see in my cave, shadows on the wall that merely point to what is real and sometimes during the day while cooking I catch a glimpse of the reality my heart can only see. When I plate a dish and look at and see it's simple beauty setting there unadorned by any unnecessary garnish or when I make a pan sauce for my duck with nothing put the pan the duck was cooked in and some stock and it comes out wonderfully, I am transported to that reality I long for. Like the prisoner who was released from the cave to see the sun, my food often releases me from the shackles of life and grants me a chance to see the beauty that can be found in life. Slowly, ever so slowly, I am beginning to understand I don't have to keep up with the Ramsey's to be happy in what I do. I am beginning to feel comfortable with my desire to take it slow and not heap to much on the plate. Today while talking with the farmer who supplies me with garlic, shallots, and potatoes, I saw in him a quiet happiness that comes from him having his small farm. He isn't going for riches or fame or glory, instead he is farming from his heart and finding happiness in the process. My cave wall still has a lot of shadows on it and it will for some time to come, but I am happy that at least once a day when I look at my food I see the sun for what it is.
Well folks, you've had to sit through 99 posts of drivel and now I present number 100. When I started the blog I was employed in a restaurant that was sucking the very life out of my cooking (not to mention my very existence) and I began to blog to help keep my sanity, but now 100 posts later I am co-owner of not only a restaurant but also a neighborhood market. How far I've come in just a few words.
Here is a link to a recent interview Jen and I did for the opening of the market. Hope you enjoy it and if you live in the Traverse City area hope we will see you soon in the market.
The market is coming along very nicely. We have filled the shelves with produce that is in season. Yes, you can get fresh local vegetables in Northern Michigan even though there is a foot or two of snow on the ground. We also feature a number of take out items ranging from East Indian curries to meat loaf. There are sweets, breads, milk, a bunch of Michigan made cheeses, eggs, and the like. Don't forget about teas and coffee.
Hope to see you soon and lets see where the next 100 posts take us.
Today while taking a break from my usual hectic schedule I was drinking a pot of tea and reading through one of my favorite books called "The Book of Tea", by Kakuzo Okakura. I have found a copy online for you to read. I have copied the first two paragraphs of the book below for your enjoyment because they speak so much to me and always remind me why I love tea so much. Hope you get a chance to read the whole book, but if not, I hope you at least enjoy the first two paragraphs:
Tea began as a medicine and grew into a beverage. In China, in the eighth century, it entered the realm of poetry as one of the polite amusements. The fifteenth century saw Japan ennoble it into a religion of aestheticism--Teaism. Teaism is a cult founded on the adoration of the beautiful among the sordid facts of everyday existence. It inculcates purity and harmony, the mystery of mutual charity, the romanticism of the social order. It is essentially a worship of the Imperfect, as it is a tender attempt to accomplish something possible in this impossible thing we know as life.
The Philosophy of Tea is not mere aestheticism in the ordinary acceptance of the term, for it expresses conjointly with ethics and religion our whole point of view about man and nature. It is hygiene, for it enforces cleanliness; it is economics, for it shows comfort in simplicity rather than in the complex and costly; it is moral geometry, inasmuch as it defines our sense of proportion to the universe. It represents the true spirit of Eastern democracy by making all its votaries aristocrats in taste.
What I love most about those words is how they do not make excuses for the imperfections we find in everyday life, but in fact celebrate them, and raise them to a place of beauty and of art. Tea, as Mr. Okakura tells it, is all about finding what is possible in this life. Tea is victorious in its simple outlook! I especially love his use of the word, "tender" when referring to our attempt to find the possible in the impossible. Tender means given to gentleness and sentimentality as one dictionary defines it, and these are two qualities people generally do not associate with myself, though I would disagree. Sure, I am not the sappy type and I do not goo goo and ga ga over things nor will you find me overly emotional, but I do have a soft streak in me, though you may have to look a bit and over look some of my gruffness, but I digress.
I actually read the word "tender" in this context as not pushing your way through life but being delicate with it. To be tender in this way is to see life as something that is fragile or easily hurt, and life, like a great cup of tea, is fragile and easily ruined if not made with care. The movement of life is subtle and if we are tender with it we will find ourselves able to follow its movements and flow with them instead of battling against them.
I often will spend time just looking at the tea after I pour a cup and find myself simply enjoying the way it looks in the cup. The way it reflects the light and the beauty of its clarity and the delicacy of its color. What is tea really but a few leaves steeped in hot water? But to make a perfect cup of tea takes a life time of practice. There are thousands of varieties of tea in the world and each and every comes from a single plant. How one treats the leaves from the plant "camellia sinensis" determines its flavor. Call me Captain Obvious, but I'm going to point it out anyway; though we all stem from a single source, our shared humanity, we all do not taste the same, and how we treat our lives will be the final judge of its final flavor. My life, like tea, is easy to make, but to make it well takes tenderness, and tenderness is something I find myself having to renew daily.
Hi All.
A quick note to let everyone know our Wellington Street Market will be opening this up coming Monday the 15th. For those of you living in the Traverse City area we hope to see you, and ask that you help us spread the good word.
We are opening up with a menu of 23 or so take items ranging from Jen's famous pizzas to East Indian food developed by our good friends from Kuri Guru, Himanshu and Mutka, to grab and go sandwiches and soups and a good selection of sweets, plus a few more items.
We plan on adding to the grocery side of the market as time goes on to eventually make it into a classic neighborhood market.
Hope to see everyone soon.
Someone left a comment on my last post wondering what my second worst ever was in the kitchen. Well I'll tell you. It was a Friday night and we had 100 reservations on the books. When doing the prep work for the evening the cook will always find out how many covers is expected for the evening and make his mis en place accordingly. After working any given station for a couple weeks one can usually make a pretty educated guess on how much of every item will be sold for the up coming service, and with this knowledge prep what he/she will need.
I was the meat cook on this occasion and I knew that for 100 covers 20 orders of rack of lamb should be sufficient, and was very comfortable with that number. It was a popular item and 20 orders represented 20% of all the entrees that would be sold that evening. I also had fillet of beef coming of my station and had prepped 30 or so orders because on any given night fillet always sold better than lamb, but not on this given night.
The evening started out and I should have known it was no going to go my way. The first few orders took out at least 8 of my 20 orders leaving me with 12 to finish the evening with. I guess I should let you know that the 20 orders I had prepped was all we had thawed out. The chef kept extra racks in the freezer for emergency reasons but because we were getting in more racks the next day I didn't bother taking any out to defrost, to call this a miscalculation would be an understatement.
So now with every order coming in I would develop a knot in my stomach hoping not to hear, "ordering (insert number) lamb(s)", and with each order my once ample supply of lamb dwindled. When I got down to 5 orders I told the chef I had 5 orders and we would have to 86 after that. No go buddy. He told me that was my problem and that I had better get some frozen ones in running water right now because he was not going to 86 lamb on a Friday night. So I ran to the freezer in a panic and threw 8 racks being 16 orders of lamb into some running water to thaw them out. The five orders I had ready quickly were ordered and now it was only the frozen, and I emphasize frozen, ones I had to work with.
From here the night gets a little blurry. All I remember is the chef ordering more and more lamb and my not having any of it to cook. Remember, what I did have was a solid block of ice in the back sink. Had the night stopped there I would have survived but it quickly took a turn for the worse. The next thing I remember is the chef calling pick up on orders of lamb I did not have. Why, because they were still frozen and I could not clean them and hence could not cook them. Well, the chef began to get pretty angry with me and in no uncertain terms explained I had better get some lamb in the "god damn" oven because I was the one holding up the entire service. Remember that sick feeling I spoke of in my last post? The dizziness and confusion that can overcome a cook in these situations, it was worse than that. I wanted to throw up. I couldn't think straight. I ran back to the sink to grab the still frozen racks and made a pathetic attempt to clean them. Mind you, we are still ordering and picking up other tickets while I'm doing this. I'm firing and picking up fillets, chickens, ducks, and other items during all of this, and by this point I am a blob of jello.
"Pick up 3 lamb, medium rare", calls the chef
The usual reply would either be, "oui chef", or "3 lamb medium rare", not in my case. I replied, "The lamb isn't ready chef."
"Not ready? Why the hell not?"
"Because it's still frozen on my cutting board."
"Get it in the oven!!! Fire the f@#*ing lamb!!!". I think he may have a minor heart attack but I'm not sure.
So here I am firing frozen lamb for orders that are ready to be picked up. To put how bad this into perspective, on any given day a medium rare rack of lamb will take about 15-20 minutes to cook and need to rest another 8-10 minutes. So in a perfect situation the quickest a rack of lamb can be sent to table is 30 minuets. Not these racks. They are frozen. They will have to thaw in the oven before they even think about cooking. We are now looking at at least 60 minutes before these babies go out, also remember that the guest has already been in the restaurant for at least 1 hour 15 minutes eating other courses before the entree would come out, making the total time from ordering to eating their food over two hours. Completely unacceptable and boy did I get it.
From here on out it's only bits and pieces I remember. At some point I shut down. I was way past wanting to cry. I completely forgot how to cook. I was worthless and the chef knew it. He mercifully 86'd lamb and we took the remaining pick ups slowly. I could only pick up one order at a time because I could not concentrate past that. Mind you, on a busy night cooks will be picking up anywhere between 1-5 orders, sometimes more, at a time while at the same time taking more orders from the chef. It can be pretty chaotic but any experienced line cook can do it with no problems. Not me, not that evening. I have never before or since that evening been that bad off. It was so bad the chef didn't say anything to me about it ever again. I wasn't called to the office for a royal ass chewing or anything. It just was never spoken of again.
Eleven o'clock finally came around. I cleaned up my station and went home. I really don't know how many lamb orders I cooked that night. I do know it was over 30. When I cleaned up my station I still had more than half of the fillets I prepped. I guessed wrongly.
I have burnt into my memory two of the worst days in cooking career. The first was just not long after I took my first chefs position. The night in question was New Years Eve, 1993. My boss told me we would take no more than 150 reservations and to plan a menu accordingly. I went to work. This was my first time being at the sharp end of the stick and I wanted to impress. I had everything ordered. We did some of the prep the day before. I came in early on News Years Eve to make sure everything ran smooth. Around 11:00am or so in walks my boss. He tells me we are up to 200 and to expect 250. Excuse me, 200 but plan on 250? I thought 150 was the mark we were aiming for? I still get that same sick feeling in my stomach when I think of it that I had when he told me. Plan for 100 covers more than I was told, then I am prepped for, and more than I ordered for. We were still prepping when the doors opened up.
Never, and I mean never, have I been hit so hard and so fast with tickets than I was that evening. "We're open" quickly was followed by a barrage of orders that came at me so fast I was lost the first 10 minutes and didn't find my way back until the last ticket came in. The entire night was a total disaster. People left angry. I didn't have enough food. The boss was mad at me. The waiters were mad at me. The only ones on my side were my cooks. About mid way through this hell I felt like sitting down and crying. Walking out never looked so good.
For those of you who have never cooked professionally probably don't know this feeling I am talking about. Every cook on the planet has had one of those nights were they just wanted to sit down and cry. One of those evenings where you are so far in the weeds you have no idea what is coming and what is going. One of those rushes where the tickets just keep coming in and you get further, and further behind. Usually in the midst of this mess you are so confused you don't know which way is up. You moves become erratic. The plates you are trying to sell get sloppy. The chef is typically losing his mind because of you. It really is one of the worst feelings on earth. Having your puppy ran over before your eyes is better than this. Believe me. It's something every cook hopes will not happen to him/her, but it's something that does eventually happens, no matter how hard you try. Luckily, as one matures and gains more experience, these nightmare moments become rarer and rarer.
It was during one of these moments I had one of the most important insights of my career. I don't exactly remember the rush or just how bad I was in the weeds, but I do remember thinking to myself, "You know Patterson, elven o'clock has to come sometime", and by that I understood that eventually the last order would come in, we would clean up, and we would go home. No matter how bad the rush is. No matter how far in the weeds I may be. No matter how ugly it is, eleven o'clock will come. There is no stopping that.
I have since since that day started applying that philosophy to my everyday life. When things start going wrong. When the bottom seems to be dropping out on me and nothing is as it should, I try to tell myself that 11:00 has to come. That this too will pass and tomorrow, or next week, or next year, has to come eventually come. That no matter how bad it looks today if I don't allow myself to get drug down, I am assured that it can't be like this always. I don't get all Polly Anna and crap like that. I don't own rose colored sun glasses. In fact, those who know me will tell you that I am a pessimist by nature, but what I am not is a defeatist. I plan on the worst to happen, but I also know if it does, that it won't last forever. Change is a natural part of life. What goes wrong today will go right tomorrow, or eventually at least. Eleven o'clock will come back around and I'll clean up my station, and I will go home.
Last night when I got home from the restaurant I went to my son's room, which happens to be the basement of the house, to hang out with him. I do this most every night because I just like being with him and catching up on his day. I have said before that there will be too many things in life I will miss because of my profession, but I will not miss my boy growing up and he will not have a distant dad.
Calvin is learning to play the bass guitar. He takes weekly lessons. He looks up tabs of his favorite songs on the internet and more often than not he plays for me what he has been learning while I'm down in his room. Last night he was playing his heart out on some song he has been working on. His I-Pod is hooked up to an exterior speaker and the song is playing on it while he plays the bass part. He has some time to go before he'll be playing for Metallica or his other favorite band Tool, but he's giving it his best. As I sat there listening last night I had such a feeling of pride for him that made me form some tears in my eyes, at that moment I was so proud of him and to have him as my son.
I've not yet written of my most important source of inspiration, my Mom but last night I caught a glimpse of my Mom's heart and the support she has given me for as long as I can remember. She has always been my biggest fan and my biggest supporter. I look back over my cooking career and at every moment she was there rooting me on, from my beginnings as a lowly apprentice to the opening of the restaurant, every step of the way she has waved my flag with an enthusiasm only a mom could muster. In some of my hardest times as a chef, when all the cards seemed to be stacked against me and I questioned my abilities I would always think of my Mom and how proud she is of me no matter what anyone else thought. She would deny having any influence on my career but in the end she has been the cornerstone that has helped me hold it all together. No matter what, I have always known there is a women in Arizona who thinks I'm the best chef in the world. Thank you Mom.
I recently read an essay by Albert Camus on Herman Melville. In short, Camus found Melville's work to rank up there with some of the greatest books ever written. He wrote about Melville's ability to not only write superior books but to create in those books myths that will last generations. Camus wrote, "if it is true that talent recreates life, while genius has the additional gift of crowning it with myths, Melville is first and foremost a creator of myths." He wrote that Melville's genius made it possible for him to write works that take us on a spiritual journey that help us discover and understand our place in this world. Camus says, "...in judging Melville's genius, if nothing else, it must be recognized that his works trace a spiritual experience of unequaled intensity..." And again Camus wrote about his works, "These anguished books in which man is overwhelmed, but which life is exalted on each page, are inexhaustible sources of strength and pity. We find in them revolt and acceptance, unconquerable and endless love, the passion for beauty, language of the highest order..."
What struck me in Camus' essay is when he spoke about the reception of Melville's work when he (Melville) was still alive. Apparently Melville was not taken seriously as an author while he lived, and after the initial success of his travelogues his popularity declined dramatically. His most famous work, Moby Dick, was considered to be at most a child's book to only be read in school. After the failure of The Confidence Man, Melville went into a self-imposed isolation and quit writing, except for a few poems, for the next thirty some odd years. Camus said that Melville "accepted annihilation", which brings me to point of this post.
I spend a lot of time thinking of all the pain and suffering in this world, and more pointedly, how this suffering is often experienced in isolation and obscurity. How many countless, nameless people the world over and how many untold generations have lived and suffered, and no one knows their names or their stories. Are these lives wasted? I find it difficult to believe or accept that all the pain and gratuitous suffering in the world is part of some divine plan or some cosmic experiment. If fact, it seems to me that it would cheapen those lives if all this is just a test. No, I find it much easier to accept that the pain, the suffering, and even the joy and happiness we experience here is just what it is to be alive. Our isolated and often obscure experiences are what make up the bones, and the sinew, and the cell structure of the collective of humanity. The beauty and grandeur of human life is not only found in our isolated experiences, but in the collective experiences of the all of the humanity and through out all of history. Most of our lives are lived out in relative obscurity and, outside of a few close family members, friends, and close contacts, begin and end in a world that doesn't even knowing we were here. How do I account for that mother in Ethiopia who just watched her baby die of hunger? What of the slave who spent his/her entire life from childhood working in some ancient Sumerian mine? What comfort is there for the man in the slums in India who will work to his dieing day without ever knowing what rest is? What is the point of the failure of the son who was unable to be there when his father died? Up to now I have not been able to reconcile any of this, but I think Camus' essay has given me a good starting point.
Listen to Camus in this extended quote on Melville, " 'To perpetuate one's name,' Melville said, 'one must carve it on a heavy stone and sink it to the bottom of the sea; depths last longer than heights.' Depths do indeed have their painful virtue, as did the unjust silence in which Melville lived and died, and the ancient ocean he unceasingly ploughed. From their endless darkness he brought forth his works, those visages of foam and night, carved by waters, whose mysterious royalty has scarcely begun to shine up us, though already they help us emerge effortlessly from our continent of shadows to go down at last toward the sea, the light, and its secret."
The genius of Melville was to bring myths to life even though that life giving quality was performed in obscurity. I have written before on another essay by Lin Yutang where he exhorts us to live life as a poem, and in Camus' essay I am beginning to put some skin on the bones Yutang presented me. All of our individual lives are collections of short stories, poems, essays, and for some, epic novels. Even though no one may never read my story, I can find some solace in knowing that I, and all those who share and have shared this planet with me, add to the beautiful complexity of this life. We each live in the depths of obscurity, but as Melville pointed out and as his own life was lived out, it is in these depths we find our name and our voice. I know I cannot turn pain, suffering, joy, and happiness into a romantic virtue, and that isn't what I aim to do. I am just trying to understand and find some redemption in it.
Winter is setting in here in Norther Michigan. Outside the snow is blowing. We are currently under a severe weather alert because of what is called lake effect snow. Winter is difficult for me and I'm not sure why. I tend to like gray dreary days so I know the lack of sun isn't the reason. Winter should be an exciting time. Winter is that time where life goes into suspension. It is a time of pause before life springs forth once again, but in this pause things are going on. Underneath the snow the action of continuing is still happening. Winter hits us particularly hard up here. We live at the edge of Lake Michigan with its cold winds buffeting us. I think of living in Las Vegas for all those years when 33 degrees was an impossible temperature to live in. Now we don't even get the heavy coats out until it's below freezing for a week strait. Foul weather doesn't seem to slow the folks up here down. Blizzards are just another reason to BBQ, in fact, I believe BBQ season doesn't officially end until the propane freezes in the line. Winter makes a people tough in a way nothing else can, which is perhaps why I find winter so difficult. I'm not tough enough yet.
This is also the first winter we are going through in the restaurant, and it is a very scary time. Everyone does well during the summer months, but it takes toughness to make it through January to April. Many restaurants don't make it through the slow winters up here, and add to that the 75% failure rate for restaurants in the first year, I think the cards are stacked against us. It takes that uncompromising determination I spoke of a couple posts ago to look the danger straight on and refuse to back down. We will welcome the green grass of spring with it comes, and we will gladly listen to the singing birds when they return, but until then we will set our faces against the harsh winds coming off the big lake and we will find that determination to fight against the snows that are against us.
Here's a link to a very well written article on the hardships of cooking and the disillusionment some younger cooks may get into when they venture into the kitchen unprepared and unawares of the reality of professional cooking. Well done, Chef.
Last night we had the privilege of hosting an Indian dinner with two cooks from Kalamazoo, MI. Mukta Joshi and Himanshu Pant joined us and cooked 5 traditional Indian courses. What was amazing is the fact these two have not spent one day in a professional kitchen and are not professional chefs. We, that is, Jen, Carlos, and myself, acted purely as a support staff to help them organize, do some minor prep, and serve the food. They did everything else.
It is no secrete that I am a champion for amateur cooks and that I believe whole heartily that the serious amateur cook can produce restaurant quality food if they put their minds to it. Last night was proof of my contention. We served a total of 36 people in two seating's. They started prepping for the dinner at 9:00am and we started the first service at 5:00pm. By the end of the evening they were a bit tired but elated. They felt what it is like to complete a successful dinner service and the pride that goes along with it.
During service Jen and I came up with the idea of making this a regular feature at the restaurant. We want to do a series of 6 or so dinners over the few months that feature an amateur cook cooking their food and their menu. I think this will be a blast. I'll keep you posted as time goes on.
Plum pudding is for me one of those iconic dishes that must be passed down from generation to generation so as to not be forgotten. It is a dish that has a rich history behind it. Its origins can be traced back to the 15th century, though possibly it is even older. By the middle of the 17th century plum pudding was being associated with Christmas. For a time in Puritan England it was illegal to make because of its richness. And who are we to actually enjoy the holiday?! As its name implies, it was originally made with plums, or more specifically, prunes. As time went on and new dried fruits were brought to
Taking part in an age old tradition is a great way to touch the past and with it, those who came before us. It connects us to the past in a way that is meaningful to those who lived before us and for us alive today. Olaf Stapelton in his classic, “Last and First Men”, eloquently says it better than I ever could,
We are concerned with the past not only in so far as we make very rare contributions to it, but chiefly in two other manners.
First, we are engaged upon the great enterprise of becoming lovingly acquainted with the past, the human past, in every detail. This is, so to speak, our supreme act of filial piety. When one being comes to know and love another, a new and beautiful thing is created, namely the love. The cosmos is thus far and at that date enhanced. We seek then to know and love every past mind that we can enter. In most cases we can know them with far more understanding than they can know themselves. Not the least of them, not the worst of them, shall be left out of this great work of understanding and admiration.
There is another manner in which we are concerned with the human past. We need its help…. We, who have now learnt so thoroughly the supreme art of ecstatic fatalism, go humbly to the past to learn over again that other supreme achievement of the spirit, loyalty to the forces of life embattled against the forces of death. Wandering among the heroic and often forlorn ventures of the past, we are fired once more with primitive zeal. Thus, when we return to our own world, we are able, even while we preserve in our hearts the peace that passeth understanding, to struggle as though we cared only for victory.
Tradition for tradition’s sake makes us dead inside. Tradition for the sake of remembrance gives us the zeal to fight another day.
I have a book which I re-read on a continual basis in bits and parts called, "The Importance of Living" by Lin Yutang, who is one of my favorite authors. There is a section in the book that I have been wanting to write a post on for some time but each time I start it I just can't restate it better than Mr. Yutang, so I have simply chosen to type out a paragraph that seems to sum up the whole essay. For me this essay has helped put a lot of my life, and more pointly, my life in food into a better perspective.
"Those are the best cynics who are half-cynics. The highest type of life afer all is the life of sweet reasonableness as taught by Confucius' grandson, Tsesse, author of, 'The Golden Mean'. No philosophy, ancient or modern, dealing with the problems of human life has yet discovered a more profound truth than this doctrine of a well-ordered life lying somewhere between the two extremes-the Doctrine of the Half-and-Half. It is that spirit of sweet reasonableness, arriving at a perfect balance between action and inaction, shown in the ideal of man living in half-fame and semi-obscurity; half-lazily active and half-actively lazy; not so poor that he cannot pay his rent, and not so rich that he doesn't have to work a little or couldn't wish to have slightly more to help his friends; who plays the piano, but only well enough for his most intimate friends to hear, and chiefly to please himself; who collects, but just enough to load his mantlepiece; who reads, but not too hard; learns a lot but does not become a specialist; writes, but has his correspondence to the 'Times' half of the time rejected and half of the time published-in short, it is the ideal of middle-class life which I believe to be the sanest ideal of life ever discovered by the Chinese. "
So there it is, a picture of how I would like to see my life.
I spent the morning at the Northwest Michigan Horticulture Research Station in a workshop about preserving traditional foods that are at risk of disappearing. I asked to be there so I could get a feel for what we can do as a restaurant to keep traditional foods alive. I don't know if I have mentioned in other posts or not but one of our big goals for the restaurant is to help define what Great Lakes Cuisine is. A cuisine is the sum total of available food stuffs, culture of the region, bias' and preferences, technical skills, beliefs, and the list goes on, and so I thought this was a good place to start. Boy was I right. I was struck first by vastness of experience of those who were there. I recognized many of the faces and knew many of them by name, but did not really know how knowledgeable they were in such things. I thought to myself, "Just keep quiet and they may think I belong here." Which is what I did for the most part.
I am excited to be part of what looks to be a grass roots movement to revive the traditional foods that were once prevalent in Northern Michigan. We have such a rich tradition up here it would be shameful to see it disappear. On my end of the equation I feel an even more urgency in using local foods than before. Somehow the other restaurants in the area need to be convinced that they also need to buy more locally. I would like to enjoin all of you who read this to find out more about your own local food traditions and support them.
We live in a global economy where literally everything from everywhere is accessible anytime. We can buy dates from Egypt and eat them on a chicken we buy from across the country with a salad with ingredients straight from France. But as I continue my journey into the local mindset I have to wonder about the rightness of doing this. Is it not better to buy from those who live next door to us? We all live in cities and towns where people are struggling to make ends meet why not build up our local economies by supporting those who grow locally. It makes no sense to me to buy asparagus from California when we can get it here.
I don't know what I am wanting to say. I'm just typing my thoughts as they come to me, but I think what I want to say is this: We are all part of the community in our back yards and we can never have true community if we don't buy our food from the community. Food is such a central, vital part of life that I have to believe that when we change the way we buy the food we eat and eat food that forms a part of the tradition and culture we live in, we connect in a way we cannot do so otherwise to our local communities. A solid, peaceful world can start with our stomachs when we make a conscience decision to support our own local community. We are what we eat, so they say, and I am sure we lay the foundation of a better life when we keep ourselves local.
Or something like that....
Lately I have been thinking about one of the many paradoxes I face because of my being a chef. As a chef my job is to bring happiness and joy to those I feed. It is my job to be a good host. To make sure those who dine with me have a nice time. It is my responsibility to provide everything I can to ensure that the guest is comfortable and needs of nothing. It is my place to provide a setting where people can come and relax amongst friends. Restaurants are often places where feuds are resolved or partnerships joined. Guy Savoy says, "The restaurant is the last civilized place on earth." And I would tend to agree with him.
The paradox I speak of is not always easy for chefs to face. We bring people joy. We bring people together. We provide ways for our guests to celebrate life, and this is our duty, but often we are some of the loneliest people. We, who make our living in the midst of friends celebrating, often times miss that part of our lives. Many chefs have families at home with whom they don't spend enough time. We spend many long days and nights planning and preparing for others joy and often miss out of our own, or have to put those we love behind those we serve.
It's a paradox I wish could be solved. There are so many demands that we never have time to get to everything we need to. There are always more menus to create. There is always some part of the business end that needs attending to. We must be present for service to ensure everything goes out to the guest perfect. There is shopping, ordering, and planning. So much more I could write, but in the end of it all there may be a few minutes left for us. While we spend our days surrounded by others, often times it feels like it's just us. I'm one of the lucky ones. I have most of my family working with me, and my youngest son is able to come down when ever he wants. I don't see him as much as I would like, and I miss him more often than I don't, but I have a duty to make others happy. It's easy to say spend less time at the restaurant but not so easy to put into practice. What a balance we must walk on! Is this our joy? Is this our happiness? Are wired in such a way that enables us to see through our own longings and find happiness in the happiness of others?
I suppose it's a true saying that passion often leads to lonely decisions. Is this place where true inspiration comes. Are those who miss out, who walk alone, who choose others happiness over their own, are they the ones who find the most inspiration? Perhaps that's the trade off. Perhaps inspiration can only be found in the lonely places on earth.
*picture by LA Crewe
I have an old copy of this tale always in my kitchens. The same copy has been with me for some years now and so it's getting a bit dirty and frail. I have used it as my paradigm to cooking since I discovered it. In my mind if we cooks approach cooking like Peiwoh did the harp we would make the most beautiful music also
"Once in the hoary ages in the Ravine of Lungmen stood a Kiri tree, a veritable king of the forest. It reared its head to talk to the stars; its roots struck deep into the earth, mingling their bronzed coils with those of the silver dragon that slept beneath. And it came to pass that a mighty wizard made of this tree a wondrous harp, whose stubborn spirit should be tamed but by the greatest of musicians. For long the instrument was treasured by the Emperor of China, but all in vain were the efforts of those who in turn tried to draw melody from its strings. In response to their utmost strivings there came from the harp but harsh notes of disdain, ill-according with the songs they fain would sing. The harp refused to recognize a master.
At last came Peiwoh, the prince of harpists. With tender hand he caressed the harp as one might seek to soothe an unruly horse, and softly touched the chords. He sang of nature and the seasons, of high mountains and flowing waters, and all the memories of the tree awoke! Once more the sweet breath of spring played amidst its branches. The young cataracts, as they danced down the ravine, laughed to the budding flowers. Anon were heard the dreamy voices of summer with its myriad insects, the gentle pattering of rain, the wail of the cuckoo. Hark! a tiger roars,--the valley answers again. It is autumn; in the desert night, sharp like a sword gleams the moon upon the frosted grass. Now winter reigns, and through the snow-filled air swirl flocks of swans and rattling hailstones beat upon the boughs with fierce delight.
Then Peiwoh changed the key and sang of love. The forest swayed like an ardent swain deep lost in thought. On high, like a haughty maiden, swept a cloud bright and fair; but passing, trailed long shadows on the ground, black like despair. Again the mode was changed; Peiwoh sang of war, of clashing steel and trampling steeds. And in the harp arose the tempest of Lungmen, the dragon rode the lightning, the thundering avalanche crashed through the hills. In ecstasy the Celestial monarch asked Peiwoh wherein lay the secret of his victory. "Sire," he replied, "others have failed because they sang but of themselves. I left the harp to choose its theme, and knew not truly whether the harp had been Peiwoh or Peiwoh were the harp."
Autumn is the season more than any other that teaches us the hard lesson of the impermanence of everything. Autumn is the first sign we don’t live forever. While this is a hard truth to learn, autumn also teaches us the impermanence of death. Harvest festivals the world over are celebrated as a way of giving thanks for the bounty reaped after a year of hard work. It was Jesus who first used wheat as a metaphor for a resurrected life. By using wheat Jesus was teaching us the natural cycle of life comes from things dieing before new life can arise from them. Autumn, and with it the harvest, is that sign for us. Just as seeds must die and cease to be seeds in order to become life giving food, so too must we all die someday, and in this death we too are transformed into something life giving. Our bodies are returned to the ground and all that made us is redistributed into nature and becomes something else. One of the best insights on the eternal re-cycling of the elements that make us us came the day when I read that everything in us, everything that make us up, all the elements we are were once in a star. We are in reality star dust. It was one of those eye opening moments for me. I learned that though I die, I become something else. My billion year journey from that star just takes another turn.
In his book, “No Death, No Fear”, Thich Nhat Hanh recounts his mothers own death and his coming to terms with it. After more than a year of mourning her he had a dream one night and realized she was with him everywhere. She is alive in him. She is alive in the trees, the grass, the clouds in the sky. Thich Nhat Hanh learned the lesson Jesus was teaching two thousand years ago. Death has no mastery over us or our loved ones as long as we keep death in the proper perspective. Thich Nhat Hanh learned that when we die it means only that the conditions for this life have changed and we will be manifested in some new way. All of those who have passed before us are here. They are in trees, the grass, and the clouds in the sky.
That is what autumn is for me. Autumn is a time of melancholy joy. We know what is in our future, but we also know we’ve done this season many times over. By looking backwards to those warmer, longer days of summer we miss out on the harvest. The time we should be reaping is spent dreaming of times we can never take back. Life in autumn is one of thankfulness. It is a time to take stock in what we have done and a time to look forward. It is a time to reap our awards and to celebrate that inevitable change that must come to all of us.
First, and may I say OMG. I was at the culinary school the yesterday using their ice cream freezer freezing five gallons of cantaloupe and sweet basil ice cream we were serving for the Grand Reception at the Epicurean Classic held the past three days. I was going through one of the kitchens trying to find a full 600 pan to put the ice cream in when someone caught my eye.
"Is that? No, it couldn't be. Is she scheduled to be here?" I saw a short, older woman with thick round glasses cutting some fennel over across the kitchen. "Excuse me," I ask one of the students standing beside me, "is that Joyce Goldstein?"
"uh uh", came a not so enthusiastic reply.
"Oh my god!!! Oh my god!!! That's Joyce Goldstein?"
"Yea." Again I don't think this youngster of a cook/student had any idea she was breathing the same air as...well you know...JOYCE GOLDSTEIN!!! And if she did she was containing herself much better than I was.
It was a Wayne and Garth moment, "I'm not worthy. I'm not worthy"
After I pissed my pants and breathed into the paper sack someone provided me, I got the courage to go over and actually meet her.
"Chef," I stammered, "You have no idea who I am", and I thinking to myself you really don't care, "but I have followed your work since the '80s, and I am a big fan of what yours." Starry eyed and all I must have looked the fool I felt. I am an unabashed chef groupie and I would have let out a teenage girl-seeing the Beatles for the first time-scream, had I not caught myself.
Now at this point I am a pan of half melted jello and I hold out a visibly shaking hand in hope she will find me worthy enough to return it. She looked at me like it would be better if I just died and let her get back to work, shook my hand, said thank you, and turned around and continued what she was doing before I came over and got in the way. Chef Goldstein has a reputation of being that crabby Jewish mother who will chide you at the drop of a hat, so when she gave me that look, I was in heaven. Sure she forgot about me 10 seconds after I left her presence but for 34 seconds I shared the same space with her, and for a brief moment it was I who was irritating her. It took me some time to calm down from such an unexpected encounter. I kept walking in the kitchen where she was working just to catch a glimps of greatness.
I'm such a dork.
Jen and I are teaching a class at the Epicurean Classic this year. It's a class that will focus on what will be available at the farmer's market and how to prepare those items. What we want to teach everyone is how chefs think when they are trying to put together new dishes. Since I haven't spent much time thinking about how I come up with new things I thought I would work it out here before I step onto the stage and make a fool of myself. This post may be a bit choppy since I'm literally working it out as I type.
Every chef goes about this differently. For some it is very easy. Take Jen for instance. We can sit together for a few moments and she will spit out a dozen ideas before I have time to write them down. I, on the other, struggle with ideas. For me it's best to go to the market and wonder around for a while hoping for some inspiration. Sounds like my life. Just wonder around and something typically shows up.
OK, so I'm just going to take this piece by piece. What are the elements needed for creative cooking?
1. Develop a philosophy of cooking. This forms the foundation of all your cooking endeavors. All your decisions will be made according to this philosophy. What do you believe cooking should be or do? This takes years to develop, but the good news is that in order to do so it also takes years of cooking trial and error. You can't simply pull this out of thin air. It has to be a work in progress. It's an ever evolving process and one that never stops. Pick a starting point and work from there. My philosophy of cooking is simple. Food needs to stay in it's most natural form when ever possible and cooked in the simplest way. When ever I am looking for a new dish from the myriad of ingredients available to me the over all question I ask is how to keep those ingredients natural. I have found that one's philosophy of cooking stems from ones world view. How you see yourself and your world will effect how you cook.
2. Think in terms of contrast and balance, yin and yang, if you will. Each dish has to have contrast and balance. If you have something acidic then there has to be something that will balance it. If there is sweet then it has to be balanced. The creativity comes in when we try to find new ways to bring balance to the dish. Creamy balanced with crunchy. Take a plate of tomatoes. By themselves they are wonderful, but introduce something to balance the natural acidity of a tomato and the plate goes to a new level.
3. Always keep aesthetics in mind. What ever the dish is you are cooking it must be pleasing to all of your senses. Work on seeing the finished plate in your head before you even start. Can you see it? Can you taste it? Does it look nice? Does it taste good? This takes lots of practice, but a skill well worth developing as it will save you loads of time and money in the long run. A dish needs to present well also. Don't neglect this aspect. Does it excite you when you see it or smell it? Is the dish over all aesthetically appealing? As I said, this is something done before you ever begin cooking it and it's something that takes loads of practice.
4. Everything, and I mean everything, in a dish and on the plate has to have meaning and purpose. If you can't justify the presence of an ingredient then said ingredient has no place in the dish or on the plate. Don't add cilantro if cilantro servers no purpose. The whole idea that if we just add more crap it will have to taste good is wrong. In fact, less is better when cooking is concerned. Constantly question your every move. Do you need that? Can this be made better by...? Question, question, question.
5. Start storing up in your memory food combinations and use these as a reference point when walking down the isles. For instance, I know tomatoes and rabbit go well together. I also know rabbit and chocolate go well together, I wonder how tomatoes and chocolate will work. Now, I've never put these two together before but I would be willing to bet the two will work if tweaked enough. Start stretching your imagination when you cook and remember, or at least start a card library, what ingredients work with each other. Make associations between ingredients and use those to your advantage. You will find after some time you will be making connections instinctively.
6. Approach your food poetically. Let yourself go and don't be constrained by conventions.
7. Learn when to break the rules, but do so only if you have good reason. Most of us remember when fish and red wine was a big no no. Now it's perfectly acceptable. Someone said it was a silly idea and served fish with red wine and found it to be a fantastic combination.
8. Read, read, read and then read some more. Buy good cook books by good chefs and read them. Don't waste your time on silly cook books that have no value but find a chef you like and read her/his cook books. Don't just read the recipe and copy them but try to understand why something was done. Why did they do step 3 before step 4? What purpose does the pinch of nutmeg have in this particular dish. I read cook books constantly looking for new ideas and new approaches. I regularly find new techniques for old ways I am putting into practice from a cook book I just read. Read the introductions to these books. Read all of the chef's notes. Try to get behind the passage and understand what is being said. Apply what you read to your shopping trips. I read how Batalli does this or that, I wonder if I can apply it to this eggplant? Reading great cook books is the simplest way to get a cooking education without having to spend years in professional kitchens and a ton of money in cooking school. Let the chef/author be your teacher.
These 8 items are a good starting place to cooking more creatively. There is so much to learn about food you will never learn it all. Even for professional chefs who spend their entire lives cooking the task of learning is never finished. In fact, I just picked up a better way to poach an egg from a Gordon Ramsay video off Youtube the other day that I will be applying next time I poach eggs. It's easy to get overwhelmed by how little we know about cooking, myself included. The best strategy is to just cook and let the pots fall as they may.
A couple months ago I posted a Peter Griffin like rant where I let some pressure of my chest. I think I'll make this a regular feature of my blog. Most of those who know me will tell you that I am a crotchety ol' bastard and have no trouble telling people what I am thinking. Besides, my family has a history of heart problems and I need to let of the steam on occasion, so deal with it.
Dinner: Listen folks, when you come to dinner sit there and enjoy it. This getting up and down and up and down and up and down does no one any good. My observation has been that the majority of the upping and downing is for a cigarette. Now, I don't give a flying f$%# what you smoke. I really don't. But when you have to a one between every course it becomes my problem. A good dinner should be like good sex. You need to stick with it and get a good rhythm going. If you can't go a couple hours without a cigarette, then I think it's time you think about quitting. The kitchen is also counting on you staying put. We often will fire the next course while you are eating the current one. This happens if the course is going to take a little longer to cook. We try to time each course so you don't feel rushed and so you don't have to wait to long. It's hard enough without you getting up all the time. But wait there's more!! How do you expect to taste anything just after you've smoked a cigarette? We, the kitchen, could you serve you cat crap and you wouldn't know it because the cigarettes kill your taste buds.
Your Server: Repeat after me: "My server is a human being with thoughts and feelings." Now practice this mantra until you mean it. Charlie Trotter puts it best. He says servers are NOT servants. They don't come up to the table and say, "Hi, I'm your servant this evening and I would really like it if you treated me like I don't exist." These men and women come to work every day with one purpose, to ensure you have a pleasant dinning experience. They will get you what ever you need to make that experience memorable. May I suggest you look them in the eye. Call them by name. When they come to the table, stop talking long enough for them to see if you need anything. That is called acknowledging their existence. If you need lemon with your drink don't wait until they bring you the drink to tell them and then wait to tell them you need sugar after they bring the lemon. This really can be done in one step. This may be hard to believe, but there are others in the restaurant for them to look after. You are not the only one. Don't talk over them while they are trying to take our order. In fact, why not treat them as you would like to be treated. Hmmm, that sounds familiar.
Reservations: I am a big believer in the reservation system. If someone has the fore sight to call us ahead of time and reserve a table, then we are going to honor that. Don't call us and get upset because we are full for the evening. And no, I don't know who you are and no, I don't care how important you think you are. What do you expect us to do? "Oh, you're so and so and this makes you very important. I'll just call the not so important table you want to cancel them and put you instead." I can't do that. I believe everyone who walks through those doors are as important as everyone else. The whole concept of this person is a VIP is foreign to me. I serve the same food and I expect the servers to give the same service to everyone. I would cook the same for the President as I would for anyone else. We will keep the table for whom ever calls first. With that said, if you make a reservation then honor it. Show up and show up on time. No shows cost us money. Showing up 30 min. late for your reservation puts a strain on the entire system. We often times have a table reserved for the same table you are sitting after you leave. By showing up so late, there may be a problem when the later reservation shows up and because they are as important as you, we would also like to honor their reservation also.
And that's what grinds my gears...this week.
One of my favorite movie lines comes from the 1992 film "A League of Their Own". Jimmy Dugan, played by Tom Hanks, is yelling at one of the girls about how bad she is playing and during his rant she begins to cry at which point Dugan says, "Are you crying? There's no CRYING in baseball!" I have since began to apply that quote to the kitchen telling my cooks when they begin to get a bit to sensitive, "There's no CRYING in the kitchen!"
Sensitive is defined by Dictionary.net as, "Having quick and acute sensibility, either to the action of external objects, or to impressions upon the mind and feelings; highly susceptible; easily and acutely affected". And for any of you may be entertaining the thought of entering the restaurant world, leave any sensitivity you may have at home. The kitchen is a brutal place for feelings. Ones feelings are typically burnt (pun intended) out of him/her early on in the career path.
There are a few reasons for this. One is found in my last post. Shit head chefs have numerous means and ways of stripping young cooks of any sensitive feeling they may have. It's really just a defense mechanism. At the first sign of blood any chef will go at that sensitive soul with a vengeance. A second reason is because of the fast pace of restaurant life most of us have found that it is simply more efficient to speak in short, commanding sentences. Thirdly, the pressure has made most of us a bit grumpy. It's not that we are angry or upset but over the years of being under constant pressure to perform at top level has taken it's toll and we speak more gruff than the average person, that's all. Forth, in the heat of battle tempers rise and things are often said that have no meaning. Most of us who have been down that path for years have learned that anything said during service is best forgiven and forgotten, as it is said in the heat of the moment. In one restaurant I worked we would get our asses handed to us on a nightly basis and we would go down in flames of glory almost nightly. In response to this my fish cook and I would apologize before the rush even began for anything we were about to say. You see, it's just part of the game. Being a bit explosive and verbal is also another way we let out pressure, and to be frank, I would rather do that than bottle it up and have a stroke or heart attack. My luck they would just kick me out of the way and keeping service going while the paramedics try to revive me. "Chef, there's no DYING in the kitchen!"
No, sensitive souls have no place in the kitchen. If you are one, it could be a rough ride for you and I suggest growing thick skin before entering. This is an aspect my family is slowly learning. If you recall, my wife and youngest son are making their first foray into a culture I have spent my entire life. They are slowly learning that when I speak shortly and gruffly I am not mad at them or anything of the like, but I'm just being a cook.
The Apostle James reminds us that confession is good for the soul, and I have a confession I would like to share. Chef's are assholes. No argument there. All of us have heard some horror stories about screaming, tyrannical chefs who stalk around their kitchens ready at a moments notice to rip some poor sap a new butt hole for some small mistake. In my early days of being "the chef" I was one of these shit heads. So full of myself that I forgot those working under me were human beings. I remember the day I came to realization how wrong it is to be like that. I had a father-son team working for me and it was the son's last day. He made some mistake or another and I lost my mind, and can you believe he had the audacity to talk back to me while I was treating him like a sub-human. Well, that made me even madder and I started to yell louder. At some the point the father spoke up and said, "Hey, I think that's enough". I'm lucky I didn't get my ass kicked up one side to Sunday, and the father would have justified doing it. I look back at that incident with nothing but shame and have wished many times I could apologize both to the father and his son for my actions that evening.
It is a sad fact of kitchen life that abuse is common, and like any abusive relationship the abused often times becomes the abuser. Many chefs have worked in some horrendous conditions and have learned that screaming and abusing is the way things get done in the kitchen. That in order to maintain high standards ones must use fear as the motivator. It's really too bad.
Two chefs stand out in my mind who can and should be used as role models for us to imitate. The first is Auguste Escoffier. It is said when a cook angered him, he would compose himself and leave the kitchen so as to get himself calmed down and then come back in and correct the cook in a calm manner all the while never showing any disrespect for the cook. The second is Anton Mosimann. Ever the gentleman, Chef Mosimann has the reputation of being in complete control of himself in the kitchen and never yelling and screaming and carrying on. He keeps the highest standards by motivating his staff with positive means, not fear.
I learned long ago that everyone working for me is someone, and when that someone goes home at night they are someone's hero. Who am I take that away from them because of my ego? I believe yelling and screaming is a sign of weakness in the chef. If the chef has to use fear and intimidation to keep his standards then that chef fails. It makes no matter if the highest standards are kept if those working for the chef are demoralized in the process. Don't get me wrong. I am still stern with my staff when I need to be. I still believe in striving to be the best we can but my tactics have changed over the years.
So if Pierre or Serg ever reads this please know I am sorry and that I have changed my ways.
My grinder. A pepper grinder. A grinder barely alive. Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the technology. We have the capability to make the world's first bionic pepper grinder. My pepper grinder will be that grinder. Better than it was. Better. Stronger. Faster.
Today the UPS truck pulled up and out popped the little man dressed in brown. In his hand was a box. Not just a box, but THE box I have been waiting for. Jen, my business partner, was in Massachusetts a few weeks ago doing a cooking gig for some people when she saw a brand spanking new version of my older model that took a dive a couple months ago, bought it for me and had it sent. She had expected me to use the new one, but my loyalty is with my old grinder. I took the top off the new one and put it on the old one. Tonight was it's grand return. Tonight my grinder took it's rightful place.
So I get a phone call the other day.
"Thank you for calling The Cooks' House." I say.
"Are you 100% organic? I only eat organic." Comes the reply.
"Excuse me?"
"Organic. I ONLY (emphasis hers) eat in places that can serve me organic foods, and it is very difficult to find those places in Traverse City."
"Um, we serve locally grown products...."
"Yes," she interrupts, "but are THOSE (emphasis hers) products organic?"
"I can't guarantee it." I reply now becoming increasing irritated by THIS (emphasis mine) interrogation I am currently enduring, "You see," I continue, "we place our emphasis on supporting the local farmers. I do know they all are very conscientious about their growing practices and most of them practice organic or natural (meaning they don't use traditional pesticides) methods."
"S0 you don't know how the farmers grow the food you sell?"
"Not to the extent that I can guarantee what is organic and what is not. Like I said, we are trying to support the local farmer, and the ones we buy from practice very ecologically safe growing methods."
"I guess I can't eat in your restaurant because you don't know if what you serve is organic or not."
"No, I guess you can't.
And I hang up.
I suppose when she got off the phone she probably grabbed a wine glass, farted in it, and proceeded to smell her own fart and languished in it's fragrant aroma. I on the other hand was happy she did not find us up to her standards and thus saved us the hassle of having to serve her.
Organic or not organic? This is the question. I don't fault those who try to use only organic. It's a great idea but not always feasible. I have the privilege and the opportunity to know almost all of the farmers and producers of everything we buy and have talked to a few of them about their growing practices. There is a common thread found with those who are not "100% certified organic". It's to damn expensive of a process to get the certification from the governmental agency that regulates it. So what these farmers, ranchers, and producers have opted for is calling their product "natural". I have stopped worrying about organic and have placed my focus on finding those individuals who practice sound methods, what ever label it ends up getting. My concern and focus is on the local, not the organic. I find it much more ecologically sound to buy a naturally grown (insert item) from the area then buying an organic one shipped in from (insert growing area not in the area). Feel free to snub your nose at me, but make sure that glass you use is made using fair trade values.
What do I want in life? Since cooking and the restaurant takes up a vast majority of my life I have to ask what do I want from it? I have no desires for fame or wealth, never have. I don't want an empire of restaurants. I really just want to cook and enjoy my time doing that.
But with these simple desires there is another side I fight against constantly and that is the pressure to keep going, to keep getting bigger. This pressure comes not from within but from without of myself. It's the under current felt by everyone living in America. It's the push to be ever busy. It's the "need" to go faster, make more money, to have a full schedule. People ask me all the time when we are going to out grow our small, bread box size restaurant and get into something bigger. My reply is always the same, "We're not". I'm perfectly happy. I would be content to live out my days cooking my simple fare in our little restaurant.
Fate has not granted me the power or ability ( or the desire for that matter) to move mountains or create a new type of cuisine or be a major mover and shaker in the food world. The other day while drinking a pot of tea down by the river I was watching a spider working on it's web. While watching this industrious little guy I got to mussing about what I'm writing about now. You see, this spider was working on it's web. It didn't care a hill of beans about anything but it's web. It was being a spider and being true to it's nature. I would like to quote the entire of chapter 80 from the Tao de Ching because it has become for me such a paradigm for living and my desires for the restaurant and my food. It goes:
My years of cooking have taught me a lot and one of these lessons is that the customer is a fickle animal indeed. Those who know me will tell you that I am always unsure how the diner will react to what I serve them. I must ask the servers a dozen times a night how everyone is doing, if they are enjoying everything. Sometimes the server will show me a clean plate and remark that everything was eaten so they must of liked it. I usually reply that all that means is they were hungry and did not necessarily like it.
I have also learned that just because someone says everything is good they may actually be thinking something different, and so one cannot always take the customer at their word that all is well. It may take weeks, months before a restaurant finds out that what they are doing is not what the customer wants or that the restaurant is still producing at the level expected of them from the dinning public. I have always asked myself the question, "How do I know I'm still on track?" This is the single most question that keeps me awake at night. It's the question I ask myself everyday almost every hour. How do I know? I don't know.
It's not like we churn out exact copies of every dish that goes out. Each dish has it's own personality and even though we try to produce each dish like that last we are still human and so each dish will differ in small ways, sometimes, but not very often, even in noticeable ways. Also, because these changes are often very small it may be sometime before anyone takes notice and then a correction has to take place. How do I know I am consistent? I don't know. I may make a particular dish a hundred times before it is taken off the menu and because of this the small changes that creep in can take hold if I am not diligent and over time change the entire character of the dish.
You know, I guess it comes down to three things when trying to remain consistent: 1) Diligence, 2) Consentration, 3) Honesty. I have to make a diligent effort each day, to keep up the standards I have set for myself and for my food. I cannot allow my concentration to slip during service. A cook's concentration is key to a successful service. When concentrating on the dishes before me and not thinking about other things I am focused and therefore make sure each dish is prepared properly. By being honest I mean a cook has to be able to tell her/himself that what they are doing is wrong, bad or unacceptable. Honesty keeps the cook grounded. I guess I'll never come to the end of questioning my food. What I can hope for is that I stay honest with myself and allow course corrections when they become necessary.
I'm a cook. I'm not a businessman. I own a restaurant not to get rich but because it gives me an opportunity to cook as I see fit. It's the business aspect of owning a restaurant I dislike most. It's the day to day things I have to deal with and I wish there was someone else who could do them. It's when I'm standing behind my stove with a few orders hanging that I'm able to forget the business aspect and allow myself to be submerged in the pure act of cooking.
The "Cherry Festival" is in town and for most of the restaurants in the area this means very little business. Yesterday after a dismal lunch I let everyone go home early, pulled the open flag down and closed down for a couple hours. During this down time I had a few things that needed prepped for the evening service and so I found myself in a quiet kitchen with myself, a batch of gnocchi to make and my thoughts. It's times like these I truly cherish. I was in no rush. Each step of the gnocchi making process I was engrossed. Making the pate a' choux. Picking the herbs from our herb garden and chopping them. I love the smell of fresh chopped herbs. Shaping each gnocchi into a quenelle and then poaching them. Wonderful, simply wonderful. A very restful and peaceful afternoon. When everyone came back to work and we re-opened for business I was still in a different place. The evening went by and I was able to remain in a quiet, meditative mood.
I'm a cook. I love being a cook. I have reached a point in my career where I am able to reflect on the act of cooking and discover truth. It's during those times when I am alone in the kitchen with nothing to do but cook that I am truly alive.
I go home nightly convinced what we did was crap. It is a rare occasion indeed when I review the previous dinner service and feel proud. I am honestly surprised when people actually enjoy what I serve them and I spend my waking hours trying to make something of which I would be proud.
I think my problem is that I have grown bored of my food and the way I see is if I'm bored then the guest must be tiring of it also. For the past few months I have been trying to break out of my current mode of cooking and into something else. I see it in my head, what I want to do, but am struggling to make it come to life on the plate. The current menu has little of what I would consider what I want to do. There may be a glimpse every now and again but nothing concrete. A few posts ago I was trying to come up with a new duck dish and went through the process with you until I came up with what I wanted. Well, for me right now this is how my entire mode of cooking is going.
There is in my head a dish. One dish that represents where I want to go with my food but I can't translate it. I don't even know what "it" is. I believe "it" is a new level for me. "It" is that step closer to what my soul wants to cook. "It" is an evolution in my food that becomes more authentic.
There is a boundary I need to break through that lets me go to a new level of cooking that is not so contrite. Not so ordinary. And I find that I fight myself when I try to go over the boundary. I think what I am lacking most of all is the confidence to just let myself create with out fear. I don't just allow a dish to form itself. I spend entirely to much time trying to make it do what I want it to. I spend to much time putting to many constrictions on it. I have set to many rules up on what makes a proper dish and I need to break those rules and allow it to become what it wants to.
I'll let you in on something. You know what that dish is that I see as that which represents that evolutionary step in my cooking? It's a dish of carrots. Different types of carrots all cooked differently but comprising a dish. This dish is an appetizer. That's it, a plate of carrots. The boundary I need to break through is the thought that this dish is not a proper dish, that it needs something to make it a proper appetizer. I know it doesn't but I don't have the confidence in my cooking to let it be.
There is a Family Guy episode where Peter lands a job on the local T.V. station doing an opinion segment where he rants about various topics. He begins each rant with, "You know what grinds my gears?"
Well let me tell you what grinds my gears. People who come into the restaurant before we open and get upset because we will not serve them yet. Today a couple came in around 9:45am looking for breakfast. We explained that we don't serve breakfast and that we open at 11:00am.
"Don't serve breakfast?" Says lady who looks as she hasn't smiled for years, " I just wanted some eggs and a cup of coffee. Why can't you do that?"
Really? If I were to pull up at the bank 1 hour and 15 minuets before they open they wouldn't let me do my business. If I were to knock on the window at any other business in town 1 hour and 15 minuets before they open they would tell me to come back. Why, may I ask? Why are we then expected to drop everything and open for these people. I'm not sure how much people know what goes on in a restaurant before opening so let me fill you in. We get in at 8:30am and start our prep for lunch which begins at 11:00am. Because we want to offer our guests the freshest possible meal we only prep what we need for that day which means each day we come in we start over. It does take us a couple hours to get ready for lunch. If we were to stop and make breakfast because someone comes in before hours we would get nothing done. We don't stand around drinking coffee and picking our noses during our prep time. We don't roll in five minuets before we open for lunch. So I apologize when we are not able to accommodate everyone who comes in before we open. If we could we would but we can't. Sorry. How about some understanding here?
"If you aren't open then why is your door open?"
Well, maybe, just maybe, I like fresh air.
And that is what grinds my gears.
Morel season is over. (sigh) The growing seasons up here are short and fleeting. Morels this year were available for not more than 4, maybe 5 weeks. Strawberries are on deck. With June beginning tomorrow I am expecting the call any day now from the company that will be suppling me with those beauties. Again, strawberries will be in season for only 4 weeks or so. The short growing seasons are the rule up here and not the exception. If we had access to morels year round they would not be as special as they are. I cannot wait for the first strawberries to arrive because I know I will have to get the most of them while I can before they are gone for another year. I am already anticipating tomato season which we will not see until late July. The lady who supplies with eggs also grows over 40 types of heirloom tomatoes and has promised to get me some when they are ready. But like everything else, their season will be short.
Living and cooking in Northern Michigan has giving me an appreciation for the fleetingness of life and the beauty than can only found in it's brevity. I find myself falling into the rhythm of the seasons. I anticipate. I celebrate. I say good-bye as each season comes and goes. Then the cycle begins again anew. It's no great insight that our time here is but a blip on the time scale of the universe. We are born. We live. We die. Our entire lives are played out in a mere fraction of time. Lin Yutang, one of my all time favorite authors, wrote an essay extolling us to live our lives as a poem. To live in such a way that we celebrate each part of the poem and engage ourselves to the fullest while living each part of the poem. The young must be young and do the things youngsters do. The middle-aged must live as middle-aged and the elderly should live the later part of their poem in a way that if befitting their age, quietly reflecting on a full life.
My approach to food has taken on the poetry Mr. Yutang suggests and because of this my outlook on life has also been changed. I love morels. I mean, I really love morels. But I am thankful that morels are not here long before they are gone. I am thankful that there will always come a day when my suppliers say to me, "no more." I am thankful that I really never know when that day will be. That some years morels are in longer, or shorter, than the last. I love the uncertain anticipation that accompanies each season. Never really knowing when it will start or when it will end. It is this uncertainty that gives much of the season it's meaning. It's glory. Today I have (insert food), but I'm not so sure about tomorrow. It's the shortness of our seasons up here that make them so beautiful for a cook. It's the shortness of my life that make it so beautiful for me as a human. It is precisely because my season is so short that my life takes on a special meaning. We grow weary of things that last to long. If morels had a 9 month season, they would be no big deal.
I used to fear death, but as I have contemplated the shortness of the seasons in Northern Michigan I have began to look as death as yet another part of the season of life. Right now, today, I have. Uncertain as to it's length I am trying to get the most out of it. Tomorrow the suppliers may say, "no more" and so I will begin a new season. Taking a cue from my philosophy of cooking I live in such a way as to allow my life to shine forth unadorned. To let me just be me. To search for the essence that makes my life what it is and let that speak for itself. Like those morels, whose season just ended, I will not cover my life with unnecessary sauces or over-powering seasonings. Like those morels, I am trying to present it for what it is.
I have a duty to my guests. I've been trying to put my finger on something for sometime and this evening I think I may have finally figured out what it is. What I've been trying to understand is that eternal question, "Why?" Why put myself through all the stress trying to make sure everything is right? Why spend so much time and effort in trying to produce great food? I have alluded to this numerous times and have even spent entire entries on it trying to understand, but this evening I had one of "aha!!" moments during service.
This evening there was a couple dinning with us who read about our opening in Food Arts and flew up here from Chicago to eat at the restaurant. It was when the server told me this I had that "I get it" moment. I, we, chefs, struggle to give our all in making sure everything is as perfect as we can because it is our duty toward our guests. Why? Because they come to our restaurants expecting a certain experience. This couple came in tonight for dinner. They flew 325 miles to eat our food. What a disappointment it would have been if we served them a mediocre dinner. Now, because I don't know every time someone has come in for a special reason I have to make sure every dinner I serve is special. As our reputation grows people will more and more come to expect even more from us and we will have to rise to the challenge and meet their expectations. One bad meal is unacceptable. One bad dish is unacceptable. People come because they expect something special. It is my duty to meet those expectations. While not everyone will travel great distances to eat in our restaurant there will always be those who come in for some special occasion in their lives. It is my duty as a chef to make sure those special occasions are not marred by mediocrity. This charge must be seen from the first instance they come to that last good-bye. Everything from service to food to clean windows to fresh bread to everything must be as good as we can make it.
I have to share something with you that happened this evening during dinner service. We were busy, the dinning room was full. I had about 5 tickets hanging on the line and was picking up the entrees on two or three of them. I think I was burning a flourless chocolate cake and was wondering how I was going to get that damn walleye cleaned before I needed to pick it up in a couple minuets. The people eating were having a good time. I could hear them laughing, talking, and generally enjoying themselves. I was in the weeds. I think I was singing the song, "I feel pretty", you know, "I feel pretty, oh so pretty...", to myself and trying to keep things in order. I was in the zone baby! Suddenly out of no where applause erupted from the dinning room. It scared the shit out of me. I turned around to see half of the diners standing up and clapping. Yes, because of the food. Thank you very much. Now this was a first for me but I think what I really like about it, beside a huge boost to the ego (not that I need it, just ask my wife), but it seemed to me that they were getting the point of it all. Good food, great food, should cause us to get aroused. Dinning with friends with a good bottle of wine and some good food should give us cause to stand and clap. Not for me, though I'll take that anytime so bring it on, but for the experience of eating with each other as friends. Let the food you eat give you joy and happiness and let it make you emotional.
Butter Sauce. Beurre Blanc, which is the French name for it, is made by sweating shallots, adding an acid (usually wine or vinegar) reducing and then adding chilled butter. This is considered to be the purest (read right) way. Pretty easy, but there is a hotly debated issue to this sauce, does one add cream? Cream is considered cheating. It's said to be added to make the sauce more stable because butter sauce made the traditional way can be a fickle creature indeed. Too hot, it breaks. To cold it breaks when it hits a hot plate. To much butter it breaks. You get the point. I have been making beurre blanc the "right" way for more than 20 years and I have always derided those who make it with cream as cheaters, lesser cooks. If you need cream to keep the sauce then you don't know how to make it. But over the years I have seen some Michelin 3 star chefs make beurre blanc with cream and have been confused as to why. Are they cheating? Do they need to stabilize their sauces? I seriously doubt it. Most of the beurre blancs made in 3 star restaurants are made to order, so there is no need to make them stable. But why add cream? The other night I was picking up a fish dish that has a beurre blanc on it but in my hast I forgot to make the sauce (I also make my beurre blanc to order) but I had enough of a left over cream sauce still warm so I added some butter to it and made a cheaters butter sauce. I liked it. I like the way it looked. I liked the way it tasted. I thought the addition of cream gave it nice body. Since I don't make more than an order at a time I'm not interested in the stabilizing aspect of the cream addition but I liked the result in flavor and look. Tonight I made it again with the cream, this time because I wanted to and I like it. I'll be making it like this for a while to see what I really think about it.
Lately I've been questioning everything I do in the kitchen. Why do I make it this way and not that way? Is this the best way for this? I have been revamping my thoughts and ways for many things I have done for the last 20ish years. Questioning ones cooking is the best way for progress. If a cook never questions why he/she does something then that cook never grows. Never gets better. I scraped the crepe recipe I was taught during my apprenticeship yesterday because I have never really like it. I came up with a new one and like it better. I've noticed what I have questioning lately is the basics I learned way back when. I'm returning to essentials of cooking and wondering what I can to better. I've changed my knife stroke when I cut chives. I've started messing around with how I poach eggs. I've noticed that I am more mindful on how high the heat is when I sauté. Do I really need everything I put into my chicken stock? Is it necessary to cook this so long? Does it really need cooked at all or can I just leave it alone? It's all really very exciting. I think at it most basic level what I'm really doing is continuing my quest to simplify my food. I have for a few years now trying to see how little I can do to the food I serve. The over riding question I continually ask myself is what is the least I can do to the dish and still make it good? And so the quest continues.
It seems my life is like this. I have been coming full circle in all areas of my life and re-examining everything. It's been a very good growth period for me. I have questioned everything about myself and have been making a concerted effort to change those things about myself that are useless or need changing. I have long made the same mistakes out of habit and have over the last couple years slowly been changing my outlook and ways. I am coming up on a year since I quit drinking. I have been making an effort on my social skills, which have never been good. I am trying to make amends to those I wronged or offended in the past. I am returning to the basics of what it means to be human and am enjoying it. And so the quest continues.
One of the aspects about restaurants I have always known about but have never put any thought into is the sense of community that arises between the guests with the restaurant, the restaurant with the guests, and the guests with guests. Over the last couple weeks I am starting to see this commonality, a certain bond if you will, developing between all of us. Now I don't for a second think it is special to our restaurant, it's not, but I have never really thought about it until now. It seems to me a restaurant becomes more than just a restaurant when this sense of community comes to be. Not all restaurants have this happen but I would be willing to bet that the long lasting ones do. I don't think it is anything that can be conjured up. It can't be written into the business plan. It can't be forced to happen, but when allow to, it will happen naturally. The Tao teaches us that if we act with out acting, if we let things happen as they naturally will, then we can expect to see the events in our lives have long lasting results. This building of a community of individuals at the restaurant is one of the things we are letting happen naturally.
I am seeing this community spirit happen in various ways but the one that stands out for me is we are having our guests call us or email us or put us in contact with suppliers that can help us fulfill our mission. This past week a guest went out and found a supplier of local duck and give us their telephone number. I just received an email from another telling me about a miller down south who mills flour in a 200 year old mill. Both of these leads will be followed up on and hopefully added to our growing list of local suppliers.
It's as if our customers are taking a sense of ownership and feeling like it's their restaurant. Perfect. This is what I was hoping would happen, and it is. One side effect of this happening is that I am feeling a sense of responsibility to our guests in a way I had not planned. Sure, I have a responsibility to cooking good food, following health departments codes, providing comfortable and inviting atmosphere, but now I feel like I, we, need to remain true(for lack of a better word) to our guests. I don't know how to put it into words but there is a definite feeling of a higher responsibility toward our guests.
In the movie, "The Jerk", Steve Martins character, Navin R. Johnson, started jumping around screaming, "The new phone books are in!! The new phone books are in!! Now I am somebody!" Well today the new Food Arts arrived in the mail and we are listed in the Birth Announcements section. We are somebody!! It was a nice plug and sparked a series of telephone calls wanting information about the restaurant.
Things are going, as Borat would say, very nice. We are coming upon the end of our first month. We are doing the numbers we expected and the reception has been positive. I have asked to go to one of the local high schools and speak to the second year French students about French food and cooking. That will be fun. Jen is getting to spend a bit more time here since she has gotten over her jet lag from her trip to Germany. My wonderful wife has been able to take the last couple days off and get some much needed rest. We are settling into a routine and the long days are getting easier.
In times past I would have to go out side and look at the sign to remind myself that my name wasn't on it. I just took a walk out side and looked up...yep, it's our sign. All is good.
I get my game birds from Hill Top Pheasant Farm just north of Elk Rapids. The other day as I sat in the dish room plucking the feathers off of the quails I am serving currently I started thinking about the importance of having respect for the food we serve. Plucking birds makes for great Zen moments because it can be so tedious. I think the Buddhists and Taoists have it right when they talk about the inter-connection of off all things. In cooking we get to see this inter-connection everyday if we look close enough.
The kitchen is a violent place. In it's space things die daily and often with out thought from the one doing the killing. Take these quails for instance. When I need more I call the farm and let him know I'm on my way out. When I get there I follow the farmer over to the quail pen and stand there as he picks out and then beheads the little guys. A violent act no matter how one frames it. Now there are a couple ways to look at this. It's just a bird, who cares. Or, it's a living thing giving it's life, involuntarily, for our pleasure.
Few things piss me off more than seeing cooks taunt something before they cook it. That 'thing' may be a lobster awaiting the boiling pot. It may be that quail I just bought or it may be anything else. Thomas Keller once wrote that all cooks should have to kill their food at least once so as to understand the importance of the moment. I think he's right. Sure, we're on top of the food chain but that doesn't give us the right to show any disrespect for that which is below us. I hope diners also learn the importance of showing respect for the food they eat. What ever is on the plate before them died for them.
Great cooking requires great respect for the product. When a cook understands that, she/he takes greater precautions to cook it correctly. How tragic to over cook something and make it useless because of a lack of respect.
Those quail, and in the fall it will be pheasant and chukker, and I are connected. We share the same space. Their lives make my life possible and in turn I have no option but to prepare them in the best possible way I can so as to give their deaths meaning. The Buddhist have a prayer that says, "This food is the gift of the whole universe, Each morsel is a sacrifice of life, May I be worthy to receive it." Amen to that and I would add, May I be worthy to prepare it.
I can see it in my head. The duck breast is sliced and fanned along the bottom half of the plate. A sauce of dried plums is spooned over it and on the upper half of the plate is...what? I have no idea. Menu writing has always been a struggle for me. I know chefs who can sit down and write menus one after another. Me? Not so easy. I don't consider myself very creative. I think and rethink and over think every dish that ever makes it onto one of my menus. Often times a dish takes shape because I see it in my head but have no idea what "it" is. I just start with the picture I see and go from there. That's where I now sit with this duck dish. I am not happy with the current incarnation on the menu and need to change it. I know what I want it to look like and sort of know what I want to serve with it, but not much else.
Right now sunchokes are in season and they go very well with duck but I'm not so sure how well with dried plums. My problem lies in having to put a vegetable/starch with the dish. If I could just serve duck with dried plums and get away with charging $24, I would. But the customer has this thing with getting their money's worth and you have no idea how many times this gets in the way of a fantastic dish.
What to serve with the plums? Maybe I can take a Japanese twist on this. Rice goes very nice with plums. We have wild rice in Michigan. I know, wild rice is a grass but the idea is still valid. OK, what to put into the rice. Some bamboo would be nice, but not much of that grown locally. Is there anything up here that can be used as a substitute for bamboo? It tastes kind of like corn. How about Asparagus? Asparagus season is quickly approaching, but I need to do something now. Besides, asparagus doesn't have much of a corn taste. Corn, but that's not in season for a couple more months. Corn...You know, I'm coming back to the sunchoke idea. Can I use sunchokes in the rice. They would add a nice crunch. I think I could. Served by themselves I don't think they would go well with the plums but added to the wild rice, well now, this changes things. Toss in some onion of some sort, some of the duck confit and I think we may have a dish.
Sauteed Duck Breast with a Dried Plum Sauce and served with Wild Rice, Sunchokes and Duck Confit. How's that sound? I'm not completely sold yet. The rice needs some work. Can I make a fried rice out of wild rice? That sounds like fun, not Japanese but ideas have to evolve. Stir fry the rice with the sunchokes, confit, onion, maybe some egg. I like the way that sounds. Sauteed Duck Breast with a Dried Plum Sauce and Stir Fried Wild Rice with Sunchokes, Duck Confit and Onions. I'll see if I can get some of those cute little onions from one of the farmers. Sold. I'll get to work tomorrow finding the rice and other things and hopefully have the change in place by the week-end.
So I've been thinking. In our business plan I wrote as a goal to receive one Michelin star within 10 years. The food I'm doing now isn't Michelin level but in time I think it could be. What I've been thinking about is do I really want to reach that level of cuisine? In the Red Guide, one star means a very good restaurant in it's category. Andre's, the restaurant I left to move up here, is rated one Michelin star, so I know I can cook at that level but I don't know if I want to. I'm having a ball doing the food I'm doing right now. My salads are not perfectly constructed, every leaf doesn't have a perfect spot to be. The main plates are simply built with nothing special about them, but I am so enjoying making them. I don't have to over think anything. This evening, for instance, we're serving a warm rum and raisin bread pudding with some lightly whipped cream. I had some left over, stale bread (which makes the best bread pudding) and didn't want to throw it away so I made a dessert special out of it. Would one find bread pudding on a Michelin level menu? I don't know, but my hunch is no.
So what to do? I don't know, I guess I'll just keep cooking a see what happens. Does it really matter if we ever get any Michelin stars? No, I would say not. I living a dream and having a damn fun time doing it. Of course in a few months when we have a couple full time cooks maybe I'll change my mind. It's not a matter of can we do it but if we want to. It takes some pressure to cook at that level. Everything must be right all the time, but at the same time, I already demand of myself and my cooks to cook the best we can. I suppose my best line of action is to not worry about if and continue cooking what I like. Hopefully as time goes on it will get some recognition. I wouldn't mind going up against the big boys from around the nation and playing on the same field they do. I know we can do that.
I don't know why I spend so much time thinking about this subject, but it takes up a fair amount time space. Chefs for the most part are ego driven. Sure we do what we do because of love and passion but if truth be told, we love hearing moans and groans from the tables. There's nothing sexier than some one, be it female or male, proposing marriage to me just after they have finished dinner. Want to make a chef your friend for life? Just blow some sunshine up his ass about how good of a cook he is and he'll love you forever. Ego baby, that's why I'm so concerned about ratings. That's why most of us are so concerned. We want to know where we stand in the cast of thousands and nothing does the ego as much good as know you're cooking in the elite category, and you know that because of the ratings, and Michelin is the only rating that really counts.
Fine, I said it. Happy? Good. I'm never satisfied with being mediocre. My opinion is if it's worth doing, it's worth doing to the extreme. Why cook OK when I can, and should, cook amazing?
I'm not so sure what day of the week it is but I know it's day 2 of The Cooks' House. We, and by we I mean Theresa, my wife, and Calvin, my son have been putting in 12-15 hour days for the last week or so. They have been some real troopers. I've been doing this for 26 years so I'm used to it but my family have been doing it for only a couple weeks. It's a pretty steep learning curve and they have caught on quickly. On Monday afternoon I gave them a crash course in waiting tables and turned them loose for our soft opening Monday night. I must say they are doing very well. Give them a week or so and they'll be seasoned pros.
The restaurants I have helped open in the past have always been difficult. There is so much to do it can be daunting. There were usually 10 or more cooks under me which made it much easier. This last weekend my wife and I prepped the entire menu by ourselves. I'm not sure how we did it but, hey, we did. Jen owes us big when she gets back. I can't blame her though. She had the trip to Germany planed way before we got the space.
My whole body hurts. My legs hurt. My head hurts. My back hurts. My hands are killing me. I'm getting to damn old for this. Line cooking is a kids job. Chefs in their forties should be screaming orders. Nothing new, but this time it my aches and pains. This time it's for me and my family. It feels good.
I am much more confident today in us than I was a week ago. We're open. We have cash flow. We are paying the bills. Survive the next month and a half and we'll be in the clear. Word is slowing getting out. I think people are liking what they eat, at least I hope so. I have never been confident in my food. Just because I like it doesn't mean everyone else does. I am truly surprised each and every time some one says they enjoyed dinner. I have always been this way. Every dinner I have ever cooked I expect it to suck and am pleasantly surprised when it doesn't.
Have to go, the wife is tired and wants to get home.
There has been some disagreement about the name of our new restaurant. We have all settled on "the cooks' house". We think it fits us, the nature of the restaurant, and the area we are opening, perfectly. We have not been silent about the name since we came up with it about 8 months or so ago. We have told everyone we talk to about the restaurant the name. No one has said anything. That is until a couple weeks ago when all the experts converged on us at once and said in a voice of unity that they, who ever 'they' are, thought the name does not fit us. Really? After 8 months NOW (emphasis mine) is when you tell us you don't like the name. Sorry Charlie, too late.
One of the biggest reasons for not liking the name is because we call ourselves cooks. "But you two are much more than cooks, you're chefs", so they say. Now, it's not much of a secrete about how I feel about being a cook. I prefer to refer to myself as a cook and not a chef and I am going to tell you why.
The word 'chef' is a French word and it simply means, 'chief'. The one who is in charge of a certain area is called chef. In the restaurant there are many types of chefs. The one in charge of the kitchen is called the 'chef de cuisine' or the chief of the kitchen. Below that person is the 'sous chef'; the under chief, sous being the word for under. Each person in charge of a station is called 'chef de partie'. The person in charge of cold salads and appetizers is called 'chef garde manager' and so on and so forth. All it takes to be called a chef is a position. Now granted that position is more often than not reached with some skill but I have worked under, and with chefs, who do not have the skills to be called chef but because of their position we called them, 'chef'. I have always thought it interesting that Julia Child did not refer to herself as a chef. She flatly refused the title saying that because she was not in charge of a professional kitchen she did not have the right to have the title. There is not one of us who would deny Ms. Child had great culinary skills.
I have always maintained that it is much harder to think of oneself as a cook than as a chef. Anyone can be called chef. I frequently call my cooks chef but that doesn't mean they are. There are chefs who never step foot in a kitchen; whose job it is to maintain food and labor costs, to push papers. Large hotels and corporations are full of these types of chefs. These are men and women who have the title but not the skills.
To call yourself a cook is a great thing indeed. To be a cook requires skill. To be a cook requires humility and to be a cook requires love and passion. As I have said before in other posts, the position of cook is an ancient position held by talented people who may have never been called chef. It is with these people I identify, not the Bobby Flays of the world who are called chef but of whom I would not put in the category of cook. There are cooks who cook in small, out-of-the-way places producing some of the best the food the world has ever known, but they may never be called chef by some starry eyed foodie. The title chef has, over the years, become increasingly bitter on my tongue because of rise of superstar chefs, people who have perhaps forgotten the shear joy of making a simple salad for someone unimportant.
So, yes, 'the cooks' house' stands and will stand. We are simple cooks cooking simple food in an agrarian area of the country. New York, San Fransisco, Las Vegas all need chefs. Northern Michigan needs cooks, good cooks, not fancy chefs who think too highly of themselves. We need cooks who humbly take the products produced here by masters of their trades and cook them well. The farmers and artisans of the area are the true focal point, not me, not chefs. They do the hard work. We simply take their fruits and present them.
I think what I am trying to get at is this: If I think of myself as a chef in Northern Michigan, I miss the point. By seeing myself as a cook is to place myself along side those whom make my job possible. I take part in the beauty of creation they pour their souls into. 'Chef' is too haughty of a word for the work that is done up here in Northern Michigan.
I still answer to chef when some one says it. My email has the word chef in it. Our business cards list us as chef/owner. I tell people I am a chef, but I think mainly because I don't have the confidence my convictions require. Perhaps I still hang on to this title because I am not confident enough as a cook to be called simply a cook.
It's been a busy week. Painting is going very well. Jen has picked out some great colors for the place. The dinning room is going to be a kind of burnt orange color with the wall where we are going to hang the art being a shade(apparently out of thousands) of white. I understand that orange is a good color for dinning rooms because it makes people hungry and it makes them think the cooking is better than it actually is. I'll take that help. The front door is going to be a very deep burgundy wine color. There are other colors but I won't bore you with that right now. I'll post pictures as soon as I can figure out how to download them onto my computer. I am hoping to get the new awning up sometime in the next week or so.
I am finding all of my purveyors; something I was concerned about. Since we are opening in April there are not much available produce wise. Luckily there are some farmers who grow in greenhouses during the winter months. I managed to scrape together enough for Jen and myself to put together our opening menu.
I am working on a website for "the cooks' house". I'll let everyone know when that is ready.
It's funny. I don't have any jitters about going out on my own. This move feels completely natural. I don't stay up late wondering if I can do it or anything of the like. Of course I have financial worries. Everyone who opens a business has these worries. What I do worry about is people not liking what we do; but in reality, I have these worries every time I cook for someone else. I can say without doubt that every meal I have every cooked I expect the people to hate it. I am truly surprised when they actually tell me they enjoyed themselves and that everything was fantastic. Really. So I hope the restaurant will be like that. Me worried it will flop and people will actually love it. We'll see.
More later.
I have started contacting my purveyors and many of these are local farmers/growers. I spoke yesterday with the farmer who will be supplying my eggs. He assured me that they will be no more than a day old when I get them. The cream and milk we will be using is taken from the cow the day before it is delivered to the restaurant. I can get my greens for salads and many of the vegetables I use the same day they are picked. Now coming from a chef's perspective this is all very exciting. Think about how good ice cream will be that is made from day old cream and eggs. We plan on putting a herb box on the window ledge inside the restaurant so we have the freshest of herbs to use. I simply can't believe my good luck.
We have finished cleaning and start painting today. The colors they picked are very nice. The dinning room wall is an orangeish color with a shade of white for the ceiling and crown molding. According to the pros orange is a great color for dinning rooms because it stimulates appetite and makes people think one is a better cook than one is (I'll take all the help I can get in that department).
What is it with the putting paper on the windows thing when re-modeling? I was going to keep the windows open but when our friend who does interior design for a living showed up to help us with colors she said the first thing we need to do is get paper on the windows. Is there some mystical-magical thing here I just don't get? Have I over looked a law stating windows must be papered when re-modeling? I do not understand; But as Jen is so fond of pointing out, I talk to food all day. Perhaps I am not supposed to understand the paper thing.
One of my all time favorite things to do is take a long hot bubble bath. Last night after we got finished with the lawyers and getting the restaurant re-keyed I went home. Yesterday the temperature was 7 degrees with a wind chill of -2. The wind was coming from the north off the lake and it cut through my coat like a knife. So needless to say I was looking forward to my nightly bath.
Waiting for me when I arrived home was the new copy of "Food Arts". It's an industry magazine and in my opinion one of the best ones out there. So there I sat in smokin' hot bubbles with my magazine and it occurred to me that I was reading the articles with a different outlook. For the first time since I arrived in Northern Michigan I was reading about food with the mind of a chef. Oh it felt soooooo good. I mean, wow!, maybe my time spent in purgatory (i.e. the restaurant I am currently employed) isn't going to leave it's mark on me for too long. Let's hope. One of the days I will have write a post about this place.
Anyway, I feel the mojo returning, albeit a bit slow, but returning none-the-less.
Yesterday we signed all the legal stuff for the restaurant. My business partner told me our lawyer said I look like a deer in the head lights. Well what do you expect? I'm a cook. I talk to food all day long. I don't know what a 'wherewith' has to do with my 'pertaining to' so I just sign when the lawyer says sign. For all I know I just bought an orange grove on Old Mission Peninsula. Wait a minuet, we can't grow oranges up here. Good thing I trust the guy representing us.
So today we start cleaning and boy do we need to clean. It's a total mess. Good thing it's not much bigger than broom closet. We'll have it cleaned up in two days. Jen has a friend who is an interior designer for commercial properties and she will be flying in this weekend to help us get the place fixed up. I'm hoping to get before and after pictures up. This friend of Jen's is very good at her job and so I am very excited to see what she has planned.
More as we go along.
OK, here we go again. On Tuesday of next week we sign, yes sign, lease papers and purchase the equipment for a space of our own. Now, it's not the big, grandiose kind of place we had our eye on the last time we tried this but is our own. If truth be told I think the space will qualify us for the title of micro-restaurant. It has a total of 18 seats. Oh but it's so cute. During warmer months we will have seating for around 12-14 more outside. The kitchen is open. In fact, it is very open. Those eating with us will definitely have a feeling of intimatecy with the those cooking their dinners. We will be open for lunch and dinner and also be available for catering.
It's funny. I thought when we finally landed our place and it was really going to take shape I would have a feeling of relief. No, I'm scared shitless. Now we have to stand on our own. The future is truly in our own hands. I don't want to let our investors down. I don't want to let my partner down. I don't want let my family down. And, I don't want to blow my dream.
I remember telling people from time to time in the past that the perfect restaurant for me would be one that has 20 seats. Well, as they say, be careful what you wish for. With such a small place we have so many options. We have the opportunity to really get down and give each diner the personal attention they deserve. It's really quite exciting. With such a small place we won't have a large overhead and so can still make a good living without the added stress. And talk about keeping the product fresh. We will not have to stock up of a ton of food to keep ahead during the busy times. We can conceivably prep our needs daily. Ferdinand Point, one of my culinary heroes, once said that everyday must start from nothing. That in order to cook truly great food the kitchen can not use yesterdays ingredients but must start new today. I am looking forward to attempting that. At first it's only going to be my amazing wife and myself so that will be difficult. But by June our business partner will have fulfilled her contract with her current job and she will be joining us. We also hope to add two more cooks and one more wait staff before it gets too busy. So by July I think we will be prepping daily for today.
One of my biggest concerns, outside of the business aspect, is myself. It will be two years since I last cooked in a great kitchen producing great food. As I have posted before, my current position is not the ideal place to keep ones skills honed. I am out of shape and it shows. It will take a few months before I'm cooking at the level I am able. I also need to start thinking like a chef again. After not having to do so for a couple years has dulled me, but have no fear it's like riding a bike. I just need some time back in the saddle. And the way it looks, I'll have plenty of that.
I'll keep you posted as we go along. Our open date is April 1. We have a lot to do in a month. It's an exciting time.
Today before coming to work I was reading an article in an old Saveur magazine by Thomas McNamee. In it he was recounting an internship he took through an organization called L'Ecole des Chefs that helps get passionate amature cooks into some of the top kitchens in France and elsewhere in the world to spend a week or so cooking and learning. He was lucky enough to spend his time in a couple of Paris' best restaurants. I would like to share the ending paragraph of the article because I think it does such a wonderful job of summing up my feelings towards those who cook at the highest levels and follows up what I was trying to understand in my last post.
He writes, "It comes down to this: I used to deem Tuscan cooking the best. 'A thing on a plate' was my aphorism for it; let the ingredients speak. Now I know that I was confusing good cooking with artistry. Now I think that a hundred-dollar lunch is a deal. In my internship, I didn't learn how to make puff pastry or master Six Secretes of the Great French Chefs. I learned that bringing to cooking the rigor and passion and limitless labor of the artist can transform food into an experience as deep and memorable as that of more enduring works. I learned that doing it demands a life spent doing it. Great art is always expensive, always rare, always oblivious to the injustices that make it possible. The fact that these astonishing meals disappear into one's experience of them, in fact, gives them a unique power rooted in mortality: The coucou de Malines die and are made glorious for our pleasure, and in doing so they disappear. Like them, we shine, if we're lucky, and then we die."
I started this blog to explore what it means to cook. Whats the purpose? I have always wondered about the first cook. Between some 1.9 million and 790,000 years ago one of our ancestors dropped a piece of meat into a fire he/she had going and tried it. Was it an accident? Did she reason to herself that it would be a good idea? I don't know. I do know that it was a significant step forward for us as a species. So I guess in one way our survival as a race gives meaning to cooking but because I cook for a living I find that pure survival is not enough for me.
It is this divorce between what I feel inside, that is I want to believe I cook with meaning or purpose, and what reality tells me, that in all actuality the only thing cooking truly does is give us an evolutionary advantage. I guess if truth be told my profession is unnecessary. In the end it doesn't matter if that fish I cook tonight is perfectly cooked or not. So why cook? And by cooking I mean more than applying heat to food. So why?
A plate is taken to a guest sitting at a table. It has been lovingly prepared and plated. As the waiter sits it down on the table the guest will often comment it looks to good to eat. But that's not the point. The point is to eat it. If the plate just sits there and is never eaten then it was prepared in vain. But at the same time does it really matter if the food is well prepared? Yes, I have to say it matters. The purpose of the dish was to be eaten and I think the act of eating is where meaning is found. Not only eating but enjoying what we eat. The pleasure found in well prepared food gives the food meaning. Doesn't it?
Ultimately, in the end, beautiful food with beautiful taste means no more than meat thrown on an open fire and burnt to a crisp. They both give us fuel and allow us to exist another day. But I just have to wonder if it isn't the cooks in the world who help us defiantly wave our forks in the air and damn evolution with it's impersonal march onward demanding that though we are no more than fancy animals we are animals who will find more to life than just existence. We will find beauty and joy and happiness.
So while it is an absurd act to cook well it is an act, none the less, that allows us to find happiness and well being in the daily struggle of life. To sit down and enjoy a good dinner and a fine bottle of wine is an act of rebellion (which explains my choice of picture at the beginning) against that march that leads to our final end. It says we will not just exist and then die, but we will live this life before we depart it.
So where to begin? I haven't been posting because I have been busy getting ready to kick the restaurant project into high gear. That is until this weekend. We have been contacting, or should I say, trying to contact our investors to get the monies to get us going. Well, to make long stories short, our big investors are coming up bubkus. Basically, we are dead in the water. Unless we come up with $100,000 in the next few days we can kiss opening in Spring good-bye.
Needless to say this has come as a great shock to me. I have spent the past few days in a fog. There is a lifetime of hopes, dreams, training, sacrifice and all the other crap that is wrapped up in fulfilling my one basic goal in life, opening a restaurant. I don't really know where to go from here. I am 40 years old. I don't have much time to get something going. I have 20 good years left behind the stoves and I don't want to spend them cooking for someone else. Have I lost hope? Not at all. I will regain my composure and reformulate a new game plan. I am a cockroach. I don't die easily and it takes a lot to make me go away. There will be a "Cook's House Restaurant", I just need to go a different path.
I need to share with you just small bit of what I deal with on a daily basis at my place of employment. The names have been left out to protect the stupid. If my last year and a half working in this restaurant is a seven course meal the following would be the amuse-gueule.
1) Tuesday night. Ms. X("chef"/owners mom) spoke to "Chef" Y("chef'/owner) earlier that day about him working Tuesday evening because she didn't want to. Now, I can't say I blame her. She is here 6 days a week for both shifts. For a 72 year old woman, she works her ass off. OK, so "Chef"Y comes in at 5:00pm to do his shift(which, if truth be told, would have ended about 6:30 because to be frank, he just isn't capable of working 8 hours). Around 6:00ish Ms. X comes in, probably because she wasn't sure dumb shit would really be there. Now we have both "Chef" Y and Ms. X in, and god forbid that happens. So, being the giant shit head "Chef" Y is, he says to Ms. X, "I'll flip ya to see who goes home." OK, to remind the class one more time, Ms. X works an average of 40 plus hours a week(and she IS 72 years old) and our beloved "chef", and this is no exaggeration, works no more than 24 hours a week, and this is a 6 day work week. Yes, that's about 4 hours per day. So back to the story, Chef Y flips Ms. X and "Chef" Y wins. So what does O Wondrous One do? No, he doesn't say, "You know Ms. X, take the night off because I know you don't want to work and I never work." Oh no, this isn't what happened. Mr. Poopy Pants packs his shit up and leaves, all the while bragging to us how he won the flip and "fairs fair". Can you f*$%ing believe that!!! How does he look at himself in the mirror each morning?!
The next two accounts deal with the genius of a "chef" I work under.
2) Potato cookery. I believe every beginning cook has the task of making the potatoes. Why? Good question. Because potatoes are a BASIC F*%$ING OPERATION!!!!! IT DOESN'T TAKE A GODDAMN GENIUS TO MAKE THEM!!!!! Sorry...I lost control. Chef Y decides he will make some gratin Dauphinois for service last night. Apparently at the Culinary Institute of America gratin Dauphinois is made without salt and only cooked half way. I tell Mr. CIA this morning that I couldn't use said potatoes because they were not cooked enough. "Not enough?" He questions. And of course he couldn't understand. He cooked them for 45 min on 350(for the newbies, that's just long enough to get the custard hot) and turned off the oven and then let them sit in the cooling oven for a couple hours(that's OK, get an aspirin, it helps) They should have cooked up. You know, carry over cooking. Just shoot me in the head. Hey, I have an idea. HOW ABOUT YOU CHECK THEM TO SEE IF THEY ARE DONE!!!! Sorry again. And why no salt you ask? Well apparently in Italy the best chefs substitute Parmesan cheese for salt. Really? Do I look that stupid? It's OK, you can tell me. Do I?
3)Gnocchi. Now, I believe the word "gnocchi" in Italian means little pillows. Don't quote me, but I pretty sure that's right. I guess the word "little" means as big as f*%$ing soft balls in "Chef" Y's family. A seven year old could make a better gnocchi than our "chef". Salt the water the potatoes are cooked in? Please....don't be silly. Salt the gnocchi mix? I don't think so. How about the poaching water for the yet unsalted gnocchi? Are you MAD? I guess in Italy they don't salt gnocchi either. But I get ahead of myself. I go into the walk-in and notice the boiled potatoes on a sheet tray on a shelf and and I am compelled to ask, "'Chef' Y, why are the cooked potaotes in the walking getting cold?" Potato cookery 101, cold cooked potatoes get gummy when ran through a food mill and make shitty puree and therefore, wait for it, wait for it...that's right, MAKES A SHITTY GNOCCHI!!!! GODDAMN IT!!!! SOMEONE PLEASE KILL ME!!!! Breathe Eric, breathe. But according to our resident food scientist, by putting the potatoes in the walk-in it causes them to evaporate any excess water. I'll say this again just in case you didn't get it. The walk-in can be used as an evaporator. It makes my head hurt. Never in my life have I tasted a more disgusting gnocchi. If I were to poach cardboard, I would get a better tasting product.
Now, these are only three separate incidents that cover a two day span of time. Just for a moment try to imagine what it is like when the time period is stretched out for months and months on end. Reality T.V. could not get any better.
I am left speechless.
I live in Traverse City, MI. The city has a lot of culture. Recently with the help of Micheal Moore(yes, that Micheal Moore) the old State movie theater has been renovated and among the films and events that takes place there, we now have a live feed from the Metropolitan Opera. We can now see many of the operas live direct from New York. My wife and I attended Romeo and Juliette by Charles Gounod last Sunday. Wow!! I love opera and to see it direct from the Met itself is amazing. The Met offers the viewers of these live feeds some benefits those who attend the opera house cannot see. For one, the words in English are subtitled as the performers sing. This greatly enhanced the experience for me. Another benefit is they take the cameras behind the curtain during scene changes, giving us an opportunity to get some behind the scenes peeks that otherwise would be missed. There are a variety of camera angles that are shown as the opera proceeds and one of these angles shows us the conductor of the symphony as he leads the musicians. This was one of my favorite perks.
That particular performance was conducted by none other than Placido Domingo, who had just sang the night before at the Met. What I really loved about watching Maestro Domingo conduct is the passion he felt while he was up there. You could see it on his face and in his movements. As the music played and the singers sang you could see that he felt it all with his total being. It flowed through him and he was caught up in it. I remember thinking how beautiful he looked as he conducted the orchestra.
May I also translate my love for kitchen into the beauty I saw in the Maestro that afternoon.
This last Saturday I cut the crap out of my right middle finger while using a mandolin to slice some potatoes. Rookie move!! Rookie move!! I haven't cut myself significantly on a mandolin in about 10 years. It took wrapping ten or so Band-Aids around it to get it to stop bleeding and could have used a stitch or three but once the bleeding stopped I didn't see a need for it.
Cooks are proud of their scars that come from cuts and burns. I have about 30 scars that come from cuts, a missing thumb tip, and a scar or two from really bad burns that left my hand wrinkly around the area that was burned. Our hands and arms are not pretty. Even the women who venture into the kitchen professionally get pretty beat up and they are just as proud of their scars as anyone. I know one chef who has a scar that required 150 plus stitches on the outside and I believe 50 or so on the inside of the arm after he fell while down some stairs while carrying a stack of plates. You think he's proud of that scar? You bet your sweet bottom he is.
I used to work with an old school Frenchman who ran the fish station in a restaurant I was chef who would catarize his cuts right on the flat top as he was working. That's a bit more hard core than I could ever get. We would be cooking along in the midst of the rush when I would here, "merde!!" then out of the corner of my eye see him turn around, put his thumb or whatever on the flat top, sear said cut and keep going. There are times when I'll notice myself bleeding or see a new burn blister and not be sure where it came from, but that Pierre was way to manly for me.
One of the hardest lessons for young cooks is to learn how to use their knives without cutting themselves every 10 minuets. I had one young cook who had all ten of his fingers with Band-Aids on them. I was surprised he could still hold a knife. At first they cry and whine about their cuts and burns, spending time with their poor little fingers in a bowl of cold water after they burn them to take away the sting, all the while the older cooks making pop shots at him about needing to toughen up. Oh, but what a glorious day when he can show his first scar when everyone is comparing theirs.
First aid is a vital skill any chef needs. Take him to the clinic to get stitches? Well, we got the bleeding stopped, sort of, and he seems to have gotten over the shock. He'll be fine, besides, we are way to busy to go missing a cook for a couple hours. Buck up buddy and welcome to the club.
What would be your last meal on earth?
It would be very simple with no pretension and it would have to be served family style. There would be duck confit served with a salad made from those perfect little French green lentils from Le Puy. I absolutely love a good roasted chicken, so I would get a couple from one of the Amish farms here in the area and roast them with some carrots and potatoes. I cannot forget cheese and with so many amazing ones now being produced in
What would be the setting for the meal?
Around an old large wooden table in my backyard on a lazy early fall Sunday afternoon. There would be everyone’s kids running around and playing, their happiness would bring so much joy to such an occasion. After dinner we would just sit around talking with each other into the night. And I would be smoking my favorite pipe as we talked.
What would you drink with your meal?
I would have
Would there be music?
Yes, my favorite band of all time is Human Drama. Their music would be playing through out the whole day.
Who would be your dinning companions?
That’s easy, my family and closest friends would be there.
Who would prepare the meal?
I would have to do the cooking, it is in the kitchen where I find my solace and it being my last meal and all, what better place to end(?), but with that said, I would want my wonderful wife, my son Carlos, who also is a chef, and my sous chef Jen, all in the kitchen with me preparing the food.
I would be interested in hearing what your answers to these questions would be.
I keep a list of the five worst dishes I have ever created for those times when I start to get a little to uppity about how good I think I am. They are all found early in my career but they were all so bad I can still remember to this day how bad they really were. They are as follows in no particular order:
1) Asparagus Consume. This looked very much like dirty dish water and tasted almost as bad.
2) Foie Gras Crepe Souffle. Think of a greasy, very thin pancake with some egg stuff in the middle of it. Nice.
3) Grilled Pear Cactus with Black Bean Sauce. Just when South Western Cuisine could not get any worse I popped this flavorless wonder on an unsuspecting public.
4) Cream of Barley Soup. Yes, I now know barley has a ton of starch in it and it's a very bad idea to hit it with an immersion blender. The best way to understand this one is to open a pail of wall paper paste and dig in.
5) Cherry Clafouti. A truly magnificent dish when properly made. I misread the recipe and doubled the amount of flour. Needless to say it had an impressive bounce. I have made it with success a number of times since my first attempt but the first one was bad enough to warrant a place on my list of five.
When I was younger I was too insecure about my cooking abilities and much too embarrassed to recall these dishes to anyone else but now that I have grown older and a much more secure in my cooking I can let the world know without caring what anyone thinks and lately I have started to look at this list in a different light.
My wife and I were reading through Dr. Gregory Stock's The Book of Questions recently when we ran upon a question that asked which consecutive three year period of my life have I seen the most growth. After some thought I answered the last three. I am 40 years old and one would think that significant growth should have taken place in my earlier years but no, the last three took the prize, with the last one and a half seeing the most.
Just like my list of five worst dishes, I also have a list of the five worst personal mistakes, ranging from quite early in my life up to the somewhat recent. Now, I am not going to share that list with the world but be assured I am more troubled about these items than those committed in the kitchen. What's good about cooking is if you totally mess up a dish it is easy to just toss it and chock it up to experience and begin again, but in life things don't always fix so easily, some of the ingredients that made my life so good are too rare and expensive as to be found again and used to make another batch.
When I look at that list of five worst dishes of all time two thoughts come to mind. First, success as a chef comes from throwing away a lot of mistakes, and second, it's not the fault of the ingredients that make a dish bad but the choices the chef makes in preparing those ingredients that makes a dish great or not.
An old woman once said, "When I look back at all the sins in my life I smile, but when I was stupid I cannot forgive myself." If only I would have learned as quickly in life as I did in the kitchen I would still have some of those masterpieces to share.
"Teaism is a cult founded on the adoration of the beautiful among the sordid facts of everyday existence...it is essentially a worship of the imperfect, as it is a tender attempt to accomplish something possible in the impossible thing we know as life." This quote comes from The Book of Tea, a classic treatise on tea by Kakuzo Okakura, and I think it is a true paradigm in my approach to cooking and life in general.
The Tao Te Ching teaches us that the best place to live is in the middle since we are made up of both heaven and earth, since we live neither in total perfection or total baseness. That place in the middle is where the "imperfect" abides that Kakuzo Okakura speaks of. True happiness comes only when we understand we will never reach the summit of perfection and when we keep ourselves out of the pitfalls found on earth. Happiness, not only in my cooking but also in my life, comes when I am able to see the imperfections in my food and in my life, and smile. When I no longer see imperfection as a negative thing but see it as what it means to human, to be alive.
It is a fine line to walk when allowing for the imperfections that naturally creep in and at the same time striving to be the best cook I can be. I have started this post several times only to find I was unable to finish it for what ever reason. Often I just did not have the words to express what I wanted to say or I found myself forcing a meaning that was not there. So I have spent some time thinking, often over a cup of tea, about what it means to worship the imperfect. What is it about tea and the culture of tea that gives us the ability to see the beauty amongst the sordid facts of life? While I will probably never completely understand, I think I may be starting to. To make a good cup of tea requires more than just boiling water and throwing in a tea bag. A good cup of tea comes from care given to the whole procedure, from choosing quality tea leaves, to finding good water, to providing appealing cups and a nice pot, to taking the proper time, to drinking in the company of good friends. Making good tea requires the tea maker to focus on the tea and nothing else. When the tea is made, to enjoy it takes focus, relaxation and peacefulness. Making and enjoying tea requires contemplation and over time the habit of making tea spills out into ones life, and for me, into my cooking as well.
When I spoke of Sysiphus and his meaning to cooking I said I have come to believe that it was the task that was important and while I still believe that is the case, I would like to add that not only is the task important but how we go about the task. This it the lesson I have learned from tea. Making a cup of tea is not as important as the attitude and care I use to make the cup. My happiness comes from tackling the Sysiphien task of the kitchen (and life in general) with a cup of tea.
Last night, as often happens, I got hungry around 2:00 am. As I often do in such cases, I opened the refrigerator door and stood there waiting for some inspiration. Nothing. So I closed the door, got a glass of water and reopened the door hoping something magically appeared in my absence. Nothing.
In times like these the ol' pb&j comes to the rescue. A perfect food if ever there was one. Think about it, two slices of bread, a layer of peanut butter (creamy, thank you very much), and a layer of jelly (actually, I prefer jam). There you have it, heaven.
I think the peanut butter and jelly sandwich has a bad rap amongst foodies. My old boss used to cringe when he saw me munching down on one. But if made with great bread, fresh peanut butter and homemade jam it takes on a whole new meaning. Much of what we consider to be mundane food is mundane simply because it has never been taken seriously enough to be given proper preparation.
There have been in recent times foods that have made it out of the culinary basement and found themselves among greats like foie gras and truffles. Joel Robuchon has commented that he made his name on his mashed potatoes. Macaroni and cheese has been seen on serious menu's for a few years now. I love what Escoffier had to say, "One can but deplore the arbitrary proscription which so materially reduces the resources at the disposal of the cook...and one can only hope that reason and good sense may, at no remote period, intervene to check the purposeless demands of both entertainers and their guest in this respect." He wrote this in his "Le Guide Culinaire" in 1907 concerning the manner in which chefs and gourmands decided which fish was suitable for the table.
What constitutes "proper" food? If I am a lover of great cooking, does this mean I can't partake in a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with out guilt or running the risk of the food police taking me to task? I like bean burritos and baloney sandwiches also, does this mean I can't consider myself a true cook or one who knows what good food is? I don't think so. I think it would surprise the general public what chefs eat when they are not at work or out in a restaurant.
Much of what is means to cook is found in taking risks. It's really to easy to put foie gras on the menu all the time. I like it when I see dishes like cookies and milk on a dessert menu. It says to me this is a cook who thinks the simple and mundane deserves some time in the lime light.
Like Escoffier, I think we limit ourselves in our resources when we make arbitrary decisions about what is proper and what is not, and I think the key is to use great ingredients and make them correctly. It doesn't matter what the dish is called but how it tastes.
One of the great chefs in the latter 20th century was Marco-Pierre White. In the late 80's and through the 90's he was one of the chefs who set the bar for the rest of us. He was a brilliant cook who took the quest for perfection as far as one could. In the end he had this to say as one of the primary reasons for hanging up his apron, "The nonstop process of refining dishes and striving for perfection was exhausting. I didn't want to push myself anymore. Even when you have three stars, you still have to keep raising your game. People look at you as the top chef and their expectations become greater. It's all about taking yourself as far as you can. It can seem never-ending." This quote comes from his autobiography The Devil in the Kitchen. If you haven't read it yet, then go out and get yourself a copy.
The last sentence is what caught my attention and has me made spend some time thinking about the pursuit of perfection in the kitchen. Chef White was one of the gods, so when when he says anything about the kitchen we lesser mortals should set up and take note. Why do chefs who cook at the highest levels continue to do so if they know they will never reach the goal of perfection? Why do chefs put themselves under so much pressure to perform? Why are they willing to spend so much time away from their families and friends in their pursuit? How can we explain their relentlessness in the face of such an unattainable quest?
I have spent not a few hours thinking about this and have finally found a solution in the myth of Sysiphus. For his craftiness and trickery in dealing with the gods, Sysiphus was condemned to an eternity of rolling a massive boulder up a steep hill only to have it roll back down again as he reached the top. Albert Camus in discussing Sisyphus points out that the real test was not in rolling the stone up the hill, but in the time spent walking back down the hill to only begin anew his appointed task.
Even though Sisyphus had an impossible task ahead of him, Camus believed him to happy, "I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy."
The cook who pursues perfection is much like the anti-hero Sisyphus. He has a task ahead of him that will never find completion. But I believe it is the task that is important, not the goal. In spite of the fact they will never cook the perfect dish, great chefs cook anyway.
In a recent post I spoke of the lowliness of cooks and about our ancestral heritage being slaves and the poor. Today I would like to continue that line of thought but with a focus on one person and what he can teach us who share his profession. His name was Euphrosynos. He was a monk in the ninth century living in an Amorean monastery. His parents were poor and were unable to offer him any sort of education, the fate of many cooks as we have seen.
Because Euphrosynos was uneducated when entered the monastery he was regulated to the kitchen, and, so the story goes, he was not well treated. The older, more educated monks treated him poorly and even berated and abused him at times, but through all of this, and in spite of all of this, he continued to cook and eventually found his salvation in the kitchen.
Now, don't worry, this isn't a religious education class. What I want to focus on is the existential aspect of the story. We cooks find our "salvation" in the heat of the kitchen. For Paul Tillich, an existential theologian, who by the way did not believe in God, salvation was defined as the fulfillment of the ultimate meaning of existence. Sartre would say we define ourselves, who and what we are, by what we decide and how we act in this life. This is the way I approach my life in the kitchen. It is in the kitchen I find meaning and truth. While cooking is not the ultimate meaning of life, it is the vehicle which allows me to search and at times find what life is about.
Like our ancestors, cooks of today are still often looked down upon by those for whom we cook. I'm not referring the superstar chefs who have attained celebrity status, they are a small minority. I'm referring to those of us who cook in anonymity. I can not recount the times I have been made to feel like someones personal servant, or the times, when talking to a table, thinking to myself that these people would not even acknowledge me if I were not the chef. I have always told young cooks to cook for themselves because if they cook for fame or acknowledgment or to keep the boss happy or or or..., they will not find fulfillment. They will not find meaning or, if I may, salvation. When the kitchen is approached existentially there is meaning and truth and beauty to be found.
Saint Euphrosynos is the patron saint of cooks because he has been through the same trials and tribulations as all other cooks have and has come out in the end finding that truth, however you may define it, can be found while stirring pots.
"Now we have by and large been taught these points about which trades and occupations are to be thought of as decent and which ones disgraceful: these trades are...fishmongers, butchers, cooks, poultrymen and fishermen." Cicero, the famed Roman rhetorician.
The above quotation from Cicero sums up the typical historical opinion about cooks. Cooking has always been relegated to the lower strata of society. Cooks came either from the poor or slave classes, the wealthy and noble thought of cooking as being far beneath them. Two of the most important chefs in modern cookery were both born into poor families. Antoine Careme's family was so poor that his father made him leave home at the age of 13 to find a job. He would go on to become the first 'celebrity chef'. Carame was the chef who codified what is now known as Haute Cuisine. Auguste Escoffier's family was not nearly a destitute as Careme's but he was none the less part of the laboring class as his father was a blacksmith. Escoffier was largely responsible for the development of modern French cuisine.
The cult of celebrity chefs is only a very recent phenomena, one this cook wishes would go away. I long for the days when we cooks were just cooks. It is only in the past 20 years or so that it has become 'cool' to be a chef. In fact, in earlier days it was not the chef that people came to see, but the Maitre d'Hotel that people would come to see perform.
Ironically, the vast majority of those who cook food at the highest level would surprise the average person. I think I'll let Anthony Bourdain take it from here, "Are they young, ambitious culinary school grads, putting in their time on the line until they get their shot at the Big Job? Probably not. If the chef is anything like me, the cooks are a dysfunctional, mercenary lot, fringe-dwellers motivated my money, the peculiar lifestyle of cooking and grim pride." Yea, my kind of people.
I for one am proud of the rag tag group of people who have made up my cooking ancestors. I am proud that they have been slaves, poor, and laborers. I am proud of the fact that the upper-classes have found the job of cooking to be distasteful, all the while feasting on the fruits of their labors.
The next time you are having dinner in your favorite restaurant, take time to step into the kitchen and thank those responsible. They don't get much of that.
Here is a beautiful passage from the book, "My Country and My People" by Lin Yutang
"In the years, they have had plenty of time to drink tea and look at life quietly over their teacups, and from the gossip over the teacups they have boiled life down to it's essence. They have had plenty of time to discuss...to ponder over their achievements and to review the successive change of the modes of art and life and to see their own in the light of the long past. This became the 'mirror' which reflects human experience for the benefit of the present and future."
Thank you Mr. Yutang.
I had a young cook working for me a few years ago who had not yet discovered the shear joy of cooking. She was always wanted me to give her exact measurements. How many tablespoons of this or how many cups of that, when what I was trying to teach her was to feel the food. I wanted her to learn to listen to the dish. To understand when the food says, "alright, that's enough."
You see, we cannot cook without heart. A recipe is not something to be followed with scientific detachment. If we cook like that the dish will never have character. The book of Genesis tells us, [T]he LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. The cook must breath his/her soul into the dish in order for it to live, and if not, the dish remains lifeless, dead. The breath of life comes not from the cook book, but from the cook.
My obsession with cooking began with an epiphany I had after cooking myself a pan of popcorn on the stove in my childhood home when I was 11 years old. I have since moved beyond that simple dish but my love and fascination for the magic that happens every time I step behind a stove has never wained. I invite you to journey with me as I explore what it means to cook.
Subscribe to
Posts [Atom]