I like eating at home because it’s comfortable. I like being alone with my girlfriend. I like it when a few friends are around. There’s no discomfiting check business at the end of the meal. If I were a different writer, I might—right here—also start waxing on about the spiritual bounty, sense of togetherness, and holy spirit of communion that comes from eating with friends and loved ones at home. I won’t, though.
The perception of home cooking is that it’s maybe a bit boring, which I don’t buy. Obviously it can be. But mastering a few fundamental principles (generally speaking, low heat for eggs, high heat for most other things; it’s done before you think it is; it’s never as hard as you think it’s going to be; when you’re sautéing, don’t play with the food—it’ll let you know when it’s time to flip it, etc. etc.) keeps it from being dull. I have a lot of cookbooks, and I use them. I’ve got some fundamentals down and my timing isn’t as bad as it used to be. I have Thomas Keller’s The French Laundry Cookbook, Bouchon, and Ad Hoc At Home and I’ve made things successfully from all three. And I’m not a genius.
Still, that tasting menu at Per Se is 12 dishes long. I couldn’t ever do it at home. No space, no access to those ingredients, not enough time. But, also, I can’t make dumplings at home that are going to taste like they do from that place in Chinatown. I know I’ll be eating those dumplings again long before I could ever think of going to Per Se. Even if I could bring myself to go. The conflicts are never resolved.
The author at home
Friday, March 11, 2011
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Face First, Straight into My Own Limitations--PT. 1
Despite all the glamour and romance of its flash and adrenaline and motion, I knew all along that my career would never unfold in a restaurant kitchen. This set me apart from my peers at the Culinary Institute of America, most of whom took it as a given that their path would lead straight to the line and go from there. It wasn’t that I was immune to the glamour and romance. During those moments in class when everything was in full swing, I really dug the camaraderie of cooking as part of a team. I dug the physical push of it all. I liked the sweat. I liked the heat. I liked the heft of a sauté pan in the hand. The levels of testosterone in my blood seemed to double when I was cooking against a deadline. I could understand that Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential was really a grease-streaked “Ode to Joy” and not just a nicely lurid expose.
But at the same time, there was another thing that set me apart from my peers: I was pretty old. Not ancient: I’ve got all my teeth. I know where my car keys are right now. Retirement is still several decades off. But I was a lot older than the other students. Sometimes, during class, I’d find myself pressing my hands into the small of my back, where the muscles were becoming antagonistic. Sometimes my feet, on which I’d been moving for hours, would plead for mercy. And one day, I went to lift a mammoth pot sloshing with many gallons of stock, felt tensions and weaknesses in my body where I hadn’t felt them before, and decided to ask someone nearby to give me a hand. I don’t know: maybe anyone would have needed assistance with a pot that heavy; I was still holding my own, still pretty fit and strong, but the evitable was starting to become in-.
And I was old in another way, too. Being yelled at made my hackles twitch. Being ordered around stoked some pretty dark impulses. Being a codger meant I’d been on my own and independent for a long time, and I’d put a premium on precisely not having to answer to anyone. Yeah, yeah, yeah: I know we all answer to someone. But I’d done my best to minimize it when I could, even if that effort was frequently unsuccessful. Still, I don’t think it takes an analyst to see a common theme among some of the people I idolize: Miles Davis, Jimi Hendrix, the Grateful Dead, John Cassavetes, Bob Dylan. No one told Miles Davis anything, especially not that he could only wear jeans to work on Casual Fridays, or that he had just 30 minutes for a lunch break.
Somehow, before culinary school, through a weird leap of logic, I began understanding that cooking could be freedom and emancipation. Freedom and emancipation from a desk, from a fluorescent-lit sepulcher built around a pulsing computer screen, from (sorry, Joseph McCarthy) an alienation from my own labor. Cooking was the best manual job there was.
But my feet hurt and I was stubborn. Seventy-five, 90 hour weeks: that emancipation ultimately doubles back on itself. One night during my school externship at Tabla, when everything that could go wrong went wrong, and one of the sous chefs stood over me, cursing at me, physically pushing me, screaming out my incompetence for minute after minute after minute without letting up, a stretch of time so bad I had tears of frustration and rage in my eyes, I vowed this would never happen again.
A love for the act of cooking, and an anti-authoritarian streak; these were tough inclinations to marry.
But at the same time, there was another thing that set me apart from my peers: I was pretty old. Not ancient: I’ve got all my teeth. I know where my car keys are right now. Retirement is still several decades off. But I was a lot older than the other students. Sometimes, during class, I’d find myself pressing my hands into the small of my back, where the muscles were becoming antagonistic. Sometimes my feet, on which I’d been moving for hours, would plead for mercy. And one day, I went to lift a mammoth pot sloshing with many gallons of stock, felt tensions and weaknesses in my body where I hadn’t felt them before, and decided to ask someone nearby to give me a hand. I don’t know: maybe anyone would have needed assistance with a pot that heavy; I was still holding my own, still pretty fit and strong, but the evitable was starting to become in-.
And I was old in another way, too. Being yelled at made my hackles twitch. Being ordered around stoked some pretty dark impulses. Being a codger meant I’d been on my own and independent for a long time, and I’d put a premium on precisely not having to answer to anyone. Yeah, yeah, yeah: I know we all answer to someone. But I’d done my best to minimize it when I could, even if that effort was frequently unsuccessful. Still, I don’t think it takes an analyst to see a common theme among some of the people I idolize: Miles Davis, Jimi Hendrix, the Grateful Dead, John Cassavetes, Bob Dylan. No one told Miles Davis anything, especially not that he could only wear jeans to work on Casual Fridays, or that he had just 30 minutes for a lunch break.
Somehow, before culinary school, through a weird leap of logic, I began understanding that cooking could be freedom and emancipation. Freedom and emancipation from a desk, from a fluorescent-lit sepulcher built around a pulsing computer screen, from (sorry, Joseph McCarthy) an alienation from my own labor. Cooking was the best manual job there was.
But my feet hurt and I was stubborn. Seventy-five, 90 hour weeks: that emancipation ultimately doubles back on itself. One night during my school externship at Tabla, when everything that could go wrong went wrong, and one of the sous chefs stood over me, cursing at me, physically pushing me, screaming out my incompetence for minute after minute after minute without letting up, a stretch of time so bad I had tears of frustration and rage in my eyes, I vowed this would never happen again.
A love for the act of cooking, and an anti-authoritarian streak; these were tough inclinations to marry.
Face First, Straight into My Own Limitations--PT. 2
I did pretty well at the CIA. My GPA put me near the top of my graduating class, and generally, the food I put out seemed to be pretty good.
But I dodged a bullet while I was there: I never did any real line cooking.
Every student works in two of the CIA’s campus restaurants. This means virtually every student will do some line cooking. Line cooking is a skill, something you get trained to do, and a lot of my peers were trained to do it, and do it efficiently. Most of them had some real experience at it anyway, either working in restaurants before they came to school or at their five month externship midway through their studies. I didn’t. I was a prep cook at my externship and, while I was at the two CIA restaurants, I was a prep cook at the first, and prepared the staff meal every day at the second. I didn’t mind; I got decent at butchering chickens and filleting trout, and preparing mass quantities of food that the other students ate before they were line cooks for the evening. I had also decided that my own shining path would lead to cooking privately and doing catering. Catering would be like having a pop-up restaurant every time you did a gig, and cooking privately seemed an idyllic way to cook for a living without the inhuman hours. No getting screamed at. No severe hierarchies. And much better money...
So when I realized I wouldn’t be doing any line cooking, I was a little wistful that a whole skill set was getting away from me, but I figured ultimately, it didn’t matter that much.
But then again, maybe it would. To be a skilled line cook means you have speed and precision on your side. If you have speed and precision, you can do some pretty complex things in a very short amount of time. You can manage many tasks at once, and each one will be performed well. I had gotten infinitely faster than when I first walked into school, but probably not quite fast enough. Nor quite as precise.
But I dodged a bullet while I was there: I never did any real line cooking.
Every student works in two of the CIA’s campus restaurants. This means virtually every student will do some line cooking. Line cooking is a skill, something you get trained to do, and a lot of my peers were trained to do it, and do it efficiently. Most of them had some real experience at it anyway, either working in restaurants before they came to school or at their five month externship midway through their studies. I didn’t. I was a prep cook at my externship and, while I was at the two CIA restaurants, I was a prep cook at the first, and prepared the staff meal every day at the second. I didn’t mind; I got decent at butchering chickens and filleting trout, and preparing mass quantities of food that the other students ate before they were line cooks for the evening. I had also decided that my own shining path would lead to cooking privately and doing catering. Catering would be like having a pop-up restaurant every time you did a gig, and cooking privately seemed an idyllic way to cook for a living without the inhuman hours. No getting screamed at. No severe hierarchies. And much better money...
So when I realized I wouldn’t be doing any line cooking, I was a little wistful that a whole skill set was getting away from me, but I figured ultimately, it didn’t matter that much.
But then again, maybe it would. To be a skilled line cook means you have speed and precision on your side. If you have speed and precision, you can do some pretty complex things in a very short amount of time. You can manage many tasks at once, and each one will be performed well. I had gotten infinitely faster than when I first walked into school, but probably not quite fast enough. Nor quite as precise.
Face First, Straight into My Own Limitations--PT. 3
Gerard Viverito was one of the first instructors I had at cooking school. He was the fish guy and he taught us the fine points of identifying aquatic specimens and butchering them. He was a tough bastard and we were all frightened of him. He was also one of the best educators I’d encountered and I admired his intellect immensely. He was known as a monster of a cook. And he was almost exactly my age.
After I was out of his class, I’d bump into him at the supermarket or in the hallway. I began to get to know him a little better and, by the time I graduated, I was pleased to count him as a friend.
I was also pleased when one day he emailed me and asked if I’d work a party he was catering a few towns over in Millbrook, New York. I agreed with no hesitation. That was how I found myself running face first into my own limitations.
When we got to the party site and set up in the kitchen, the first thing he had me do was sear crab cakes. The party was all about kids and the menu was supposed to be kid-friendly; so there were crab cakes, chicken satay, sliders, and a few other crowd-pleasing items. When I put the pans on the heat, we had a few hours before the party began.
“Don’t cook these,” Viverito said to me, referring to the crab cakes. “Get me good color, but don’t cook them through. They’re going into the oven right before we serve them and I don’t want them dried out.”
“Got it,” I said. I splashed some oil into the pans—four of them—and started searing. I probably had 25 crab cakes going.
“You’re cooking these!” he said a few minutes later, visibly annoyed. “I told you: just color them. Into the pan and out. In and out. In and out.”
I was jostling the four pans. They were smoking from the high heat. Oil was splattering all over the place. Okay: In and out. In and out.
I was not fast enough. I put in a new batch and let them sear for a second. Then I went to flip them. By the time I got done flipping them over, the cakes in the first pan were already past done.
Viverito was at my side, bumping me out of the way. “Jonathan, man, you’re killing me here.” He pulled two of the pans away, removed the crab cakes, and placed the two pans into a nearby sink. “Don’t work with more pans than you can handle.” I finished searing the rest of the crab cakes exactly as specified, wiped up the oil, wiped out the pans, and asked, “Okay, what’s next?”
“Nice,” Viverito said, looking at the last of the cakes I’d just done. He piled up a few large trays of small, thin hamburger patties. “Same deal with these: I just want color. Don’t. Cook. Them.” For some reason, I fished the third and fourth pan from the sink and set them on the burners, too. I waited for all the pans to heat, and started getting color on the burgers, not cooking them. But these things were thin; I could tell they were cooked before they had colored. I cranked the heat higher and started in on more.
“What is it about this concept that you’re not getting?” He was at my side again. “Didn’t I just say, ‘Don’t work with more pans than you can handle?’”
I ditched one of the pans and kept cooking. The rest of the night went well. A few weeks later, he hired me again, and that went fine, too.
But I was bothered beyond measure that things had gotten away from me, that I had lost control of what I was doing. Line cooking. Juggling many things at once. Finishing cooking school without that missing skill was like owning a computer and not knowing how to access the Internet.
Afterwards, while I was cooking us dinner, I turned to my girlfriend and said, “I think there’s no avoiding it: at some point I need to go back to a restaurant for a little while. There’s something crucial I missed at school. If I’m going to make a go of this, I need to fill that gap.”
So I’m going to have to fill that gap. More to come...
After I was out of his class, I’d bump into him at the supermarket or in the hallway. I began to get to know him a little better and, by the time I graduated, I was pleased to count him as a friend.
I was also pleased when one day he emailed me and asked if I’d work a party he was catering a few towns over in Millbrook, New York. I agreed with no hesitation. That was how I found myself running face first into my own limitations.
When we got to the party site and set up in the kitchen, the first thing he had me do was sear crab cakes. The party was all about kids and the menu was supposed to be kid-friendly; so there were crab cakes, chicken satay, sliders, and a few other crowd-pleasing items. When I put the pans on the heat, we had a few hours before the party began.
“Don’t cook these,” Viverito said to me, referring to the crab cakes. “Get me good color, but don’t cook them through. They’re going into the oven right before we serve them and I don’t want them dried out.”
“Got it,” I said. I splashed some oil into the pans—four of them—and started searing. I probably had 25 crab cakes going.
“You’re cooking these!” he said a few minutes later, visibly annoyed. “I told you: just color them. Into the pan and out. In and out. In and out.”
I was jostling the four pans. They were smoking from the high heat. Oil was splattering all over the place. Okay: In and out. In and out.
I was not fast enough. I put in a new batch and let them sear for a second. Then I went to flip them. By the time I got done flipping them over, the cakes in the first pan were already past done.
Viverito was at my side, bumping me out of the way. “Jonathan, man, you’re killing me here.” He pulled two of the pans away, removed the crab cakes, and placed the two pans into a nearby sink. “Don’t work with more pans than you can handle.” I finished searing the rest of the crab cakes exactly as specified, wiped up the oil, wiped out the pans, and asked, “Okay, what’s next?”
“Nice,” Viverito said, looking at the last of the cakes I’d just done. He piled up a few large trays of small, thin hamburger patties. “Same deal with these: I just want color. Don’t. Cook. Them.” For some reason, I fished the third and fourth pan from the sink and set them on the burners, too. I waited for all the pans to heat, and started getting color on the burgers, not cooking them. But these things were thin; I could tell they were cooked before they had colored. I cranked the heat higher and started in on more.
“What is it about this concept that you’re not getting?” He was at my side again. “Didn’t I just say, ‘Don’t work with more pans than you can handle?’”
I ditched one of the pans and kept cooking. The rest of the night went well. A few weeks later, he hired me again, and that went fine, too.
But I was bothered beyond measure that things had gotten away from me, that I had lost control of what I was doing. Line cooking. Juggling many things at once. Finishing cooking school without that missing skill was like owning a computer and not knowing how to access the Internet.
Afterwards, while I was cooking us dinner, I turned to my girlfriend and said, “I think there’s no avoiding it: at some point I need to go back to a restaurant for a little while. There’s something crucial I missed at school. If I’m going to make a go of this, I need to fill that gap.”
So I’m going to have to fill that gap. More to come...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)