Week(s) in review, #1

An annotated list of lessons learned, 9.8-9.25

Produce

Cover onions with plastic wrap after they've been prepped, even if the container they're in already has a cover. The walk-in will stink to high-heaven otherwise, and the butter will start to smell like onions. Eggs will also absorb that stench.

Need to practice small-dicing carrots and celery. Takes forever. Onions are easy, but become faster with their mirepoix friends.

Corn roasted in a wood-burning oven, tossed with only olive oil, chili flakes and salt, is magical. I wouldn't eat it in December, but it so goddamn amazing right now!

The way we see foods affects the way we taste it. Family meal at the shop included a salad with bits of golden beets that had been scooped out by a very small melon baller. It took a minute or so for me and another cook to figure out they were beets. Mini mind trick.

Don't be a hero -- wear gloves when handling chillies. 

Meat and fish

SKIP IF SQUEAMISH: When a lobster dies, its tail curls under, making it nearly impossible to get out all the meat. To keep the tail from doing this, stick a six-inch skewer up its... yup... butthole. They react in ways that are not surprising. "They are just fucking bugs," said my sous, "Just giant fucking bugs!" Don't know how cool am I with this, or just how necessary it is. Follow up with other sources. 

Pig brains are not fresh unless they pop out of the brain case immediately. I'm guessing the same goes for other animals... question mark.

Learning how to butcher just takes practice. Except for size and quality, the anatomy of one pig is just like another. Lymph nodes taste bad.

More lessons learned

Steam burns hurt like a bitch, and you never forget that.

Warm, marinated olives should be made at home for the best snack ever.

Learning something new, no matter how simple, takes at least twice the amount of time you think it does. Tea service at a wedding reinforced this idea for the billionth time. Now I just need to get myself to actually put this into practice more effectively.

Come out of shell and ask questions at restaurant. Otherwise misunderstandings happen.

I, as a non-list maker, must make lists with this job. Must make a habit of writing things down more often. Must. Otherwise misunderstandings happen.

Try compression ankle supports and socks. Foot goes numb if moved wrong, tend to turn ankles. Ankles hurt like a mother after a hectic catering shift. Stupid Danskos are too damn high for me. Run those down, then replace them with Crocs.

If you feel tired, or are hitting a wall, remind yourself you could have it way worse. You could be a lobster with a half-foot skewer up your ass.

Humbled by blood and brains

For the first time yesterday, I helped butcher a whole animal -- actually, a few animals. Two lambs and a pig, thus far the most incredible experience of my internship. Sorry I have no pictures -- I don't know how squeamish my audience is.

This might sound morbid, and I know my veggie friends will curl in horror at my next statement, but it was generally an enjoyable experience, if not full of teachable moments. Butchering forces you to be incredibly attentive, incredibly thorough; to feel the meat with your fingers in order to recognize the different textures of the different muscles, or to feel the seams along which to separate those muscles so that you don't waste any part of the animal. An err in cutting along the ribs could mean a ruined tenderloin, and wasted -- note this -- not product, but life. 

This is where shit started to get real.

You'll start with, say, a whole pig carcass, and it's an eerie thing. You shave it, you feel it, examine it, you treat it delicately. This animal's about to be cooked; it experienced pain so that we could enjoy it. And here it is, on your stainless-steel table, lifeless.

I had the honor of segmenting the pig's head. With a hacksaw, I first sawed off the snout and then skull in half, following a vertical line in between the eyes. Then I took out the tongue, my fingers feeling the ridges on the top of the pig's mouth and the tendons connecting the tongue to the bottom of the mouth. Yet another strange, indescribable feeling when you're an intern doing it for the first time. It took all of two minutes, but it was gruesome.

I kept reminding myself that I was thankful someone slaughtered this pig, hopefully humanely as possible (it's what we aim for at our restaurant); that it led a good piggy life, and I would be thankful to prepare and enjoy it.

But I wouldn't enjoy it. The slaughterhouse made a massive gaffe, and the head didn't match the carcass. The head wasn't fresh, so all of that loveliness we would normally use to make headcheese -- i.e., the entire head, minus the brains and eyes -- were unusable.

Know how I found out it was unusable? Chef tried to simply pop out the brain with his index finger, which should happen easily if the animal was killed recently. No dice.

I had just defiled an animal, one whose lifeless peepers stared me in the face, to no avail. That idea hit me like a wrecking ball at full force.

This journal entry isn't exposing anything new. But I think it provides some insight into why nose-to-tail eating has become popular. We're human, we form bonds with animals. We're also hypocritical, because we eat many of those animals. But if those animals are raised the right way, they can be incredibly healthy for us*; the least we, as humans, could do is show respect for a creature that nourishes us well. Maybe that's why Catholics say grace before a meal, because my grandmother couldn't bear the thought of catching a lamb's blood while her mother killed it. And what better way to show appreciation than to use all of the animal, and not be forced to cringe at the sound of half a pig's head hitting the side of the green bin?

I'm planning on seeing an animal slaughtered. Not because I want to, be because, if I eat and prepare meat, I have to. It's the only way to actually understand where our food comes from, to truly understand why we should be respectful of the beings we enjoy at dinnertime. And maybe I'll become a committed vegetarian... we'll see.

So perhaps the way I've described this experience doesn't make it sound too enjoyable. But working slowly and carefully with something that was once living is humbling and meditative. And now I am one giant step closer to understanding how that meat gets on my plate.

I wasn't expecting the restaurant industry to do this to me. 

*An animal's diet can alter the fats, compounds and minerals in the meat it eventually provides. Corn provides empty calories, but pigs allowed to forage on nuts tend to produce fat and meat that is higher in those brain-boosting, omega fatty acids. More on this later, I'm sure of it. 

...and what did you learn today?

One of my colleagues asked me this today.

And I could come up with only one concrete answer: the recipe for pickling liquid!

But concrete answers cannot sum up the day for an intern -- or any cook for that matter.

Starting out means doing some trivial things. It means lots of mirepoix brunoise; it means taking on two cases of corn, or entering bean purgatory to shell those delicious flageolets. And while they sound boring, those mundane tasks shouldn't be scoffed at. By the time I'm done with this internship, I will be able to destroy cases of corn, quickly. But ideally, my skills shouldn't stop with corn: I'll have a better feel for my tools, what processes work best for which task, a better feel for my hands, maybe even become more ambidextrous, and if I'm lucky (which I am), my colleagues will let me know when I'm doing something wrong. These abilities should spill over into everything else I do, and their development never ends. And it will hopefully translate to an intuitive feel for food, one day...

I haven't yet worked a full dinner service, so when I get home, I am only mentally exhausted. This is also a result of the learning process that cannot be explained in recipes. If I can lift my head up from my current task, I watch one of the sous chefs breaking down fish, and muster up the focus to go back to what I was doing. That is hard for me. Then there are little internal notes that begin to pile up: peer into the cooler or walk-in, take a mental photo; look at prep list; read yesterday's menu; read today's menu; look at recipe, note ratios; ask what ingredient goes with what, on what dish, think about how that works; stay for line-up, taste, analyze salt, acid, bitterness, fat, umami; train your palate; taste everything you touch; remember what that produce tastes like, because it's at its peak, and this kitchen has the best; take notes. Oh, and complete all your other tasks.

Writing a thesis challenges you intellectually, but not in the upfront, honest way a kitchen does. There's no B.S. here; you can't skim paragraphs, or argue your way out of a bad dish. You're starting out, and no matter how much you've read, you're still an inexperienced cook, and you will learn from everyone else. 

So be humble, and take in everything. 

Between absurdity and evolution

There is a certain Top Chef contestant, fond of mollecular gastronomy, who has a show on Netflix. He said something profound, providing the inspiration for this post:

So, this is the table where I'm supposed to serve the anti-gravity pizza?

I understand that sometimes, cranberry beans are just not enough.

Not to your liking?

Or that sometimes, you want more than pretty, tasty, at-their-peak-in-August tomatoes, properly confit-ified.

Just admit it -- you want to dive face -first into them

I understand that a restaurant's evolution typically means following trends; that the words and principles organic and sustainable are now givens. But how does a chef, or even a lil' ol' cook, know when they're being truly cutting edge, or whether they're in the process of digging themselves so far into a fadhole they won't be able to climb out? How does a restaurant evolve and stick around?

Could it be that food forming, foams and hovering pizzas will make 2012 issues of Art Culinaire look really hilarious?

This entry wasn't written by a bitter, California cook. Sous vide, foams and food forms are popular for a reason -- because when these techniques are applied correctly, they provide a tasty, enjoyable dining experience. Let's first examine the villainous espuma. Its presentation purposes freak me out a little, because it eventually starts to decay into a slimy texture that is... well... something I'd rather not have on my food. But from the taste bud's perspective, foams should be a treat. They should provide more dimension to the dish (taste, texture, mouthfeel), and capture the very essence of whatever ingredient the foam is made out of. Sous vide cooking provides meat with a wholly unique texture -- one student described sous vide Salmon as "warm sashimi." It's something I happen to like, a lot. 

But there's little reason for us produce lovers to be scared by machines and hydrocolloids. No chef will be able to work with a tomato in March and produce the best tomato dish, ever; if your purveyor provides you with terrible beef, you will not be able to sous vide it into the best beef dish possible. The best product can live without immersion circulators, anti-griddles and gelatin, but the niftiest of gadgets, compounds and synthetic emulsifiers can't truly make a chef happy without the best product.

The chefs who are currently innovating in this city, successfully moving beyond the jargon of organic, seasonal and sustainable truly understand this concept. Take a look at Dominque Crenn's current menu, and you'll find it loaded with the proper Summer goodness: blackberries, huckleberries, melon, tomatoes. And it's okay to do more with delicious product -- gorgeous product that will definitely be seasonal, and all the better if farmed without pesticides, or raised without growth hormones.  

For now, I'm happy to devote myself to truly understanding those basics that all chefs respect, inside and out. One step at a time.

More to come.