January and Everything After

About a minute ago, I realized I could blindly identify the difference between Delta and United’s chosen orange juice selection. No better time to start the blog up again than now, I’ve got 14 hours to kill. The next few entries will attempt to encompass the past six months. It turns out to be more of a diary than this blog is meant to but it’ll get back to the kitchen as soon as I do. Enjoy.

Shortly after my blog found its way to management, I was called into the office. I knew something was up when I got to work and was told to head to the basement, past the car-park garage and into the creepy corner to cut six 50 LB bags of Idaho potatoes into fries, then par cook them. Okay, so I had stepped on a few toes recently…err ankles and knees, but I didn’t expect to take over Eric’s, “Executive Fry-Cook” duties. Long-story short: I was told to stop writing because it was jeopardizing my job. I’d offended a few people, no less than the Sous-Chef and Food and Bev Manager and it was working its way over to the GM, who I didn’t exactly make out to be the most intelligent person on payroll in the last entry.Well, I kept my job. I clearly stopped writing. I had a lot of balls writing about the person I respect most out of any one I’ve ever worked for and their “daunting” job. It took a lot of audacity and undeserved arrogance, actually. I can’t thank the Exec Chef (whose name I’m no longer allowed to use) enough for putting me in my place that day. More importantly, I can’t thank the Sous Chef enough for allowing me to follow him around the kitchen like white on rice this past season, even after insulting his job.

Unfortunately, after being told I couldn’t write about the kitchen anymore, I didn’t document my time as much as I should have, but I can tell you that my boring Mondays and Tuesdays got better. I made pet projects- some of which got totally shot down, and some like my pomme soufflés- which became like an inside joke to the Monday crew. Pomme Soufflés potatoes have to be nursed into their soufflé-abilities by leaving them in a cool dark place for weeks. The best ones to use have those little green and purple sprouts coming out of them. I nursed them far too long. Twice. Their home was moved from the dry goods shelf outside the produce cooler, into dry storage and later into Chef’s office so we couldn’t lose sight of them for round three. Eventually they didn’t even work, but when the Las Vegas Chef Edmund Wong from The Bellagio came to do an event and coincidently needed a “pomme soufflé cook,” guess who Chef S came to? This girl. I got my pomme soufflés after all.

I’m lucky. So is the guy that I previously poked fun at for cooking dog food. We work for some bad-ass chefs and after being verbally slapped, I am grateful every day I that step foot in that kitchen.

On Mondays and Tuesdays, the kitchen was empty outside of me, one other cook and Chef S. The restaurant was closed outside of the bar station- mine. On a busy night, I’d hear the printer seven or eight times, but for the most part, I used to think time had actually stopped it was moving so slow. I hated Mondays and Tuesdays until I turned the kitchen into my own classroom. I wanted to master all the pasta on the menu from start to finish.

Ravioli, rigatoni, spaghetti, squid ink tagliatelle, lumache, and gnocci filled up Mondays and Tuesdays. I can’t think of anything more satisfying than finally getting 90 yolks and 4 lbs of flour to come together to form a beautiful golden ball of pasta dough- even if my forearms now resemble a UFC fighter’s. The first few times I cranked out pasta, I’d have long ribbons draped across my body, up my arms, landing on my shoulders, and folding in all the wrong places…like the floor. When I finally got comfortable with the Emilio-Miti pasta machine, I couldn’t get enough of it.

Even when I went home, I couldn’t get my mind off pasta. I went out and bought an Atlas hand crank pasta machine and continued the work at home. I snagged a piping bag from work and made beautiful Rendezvous squash angolotti for my dad’s birthday dinner, taught my step-mom’s little buddy how to make cute bow-tie shapes and tried to impress a date with smooth mushroom and sherry filled ravioli. Any excuse I came across was a good enough excuse to make pasta.

Mondays also let me hang out in pastry. Just for reference, bacon panna cotta is really an asinine idea, but I’ve got buttermilk panna cotta nailed. I can bang out cheesecake pretty darn well, too. Mondays taught me pate brisee, Bolognese and pate...I deboned an entire Mangolista pig! Those Mondays I once joked about taught me everything I know.

Work threw us on a 6-week unexpected-unemployment bender. While the seasonality of my location allows me to ski powder and hike to the top of Highlands Bowl with spare time to hot-tub before work, it also means that when the season ends, so does your job. I took the time to visit schools, head to Australia and Africa, and gain a few pounds on the way.

A Quick Cross Country School Tour

Boston

Anyone that’s ever stepped foot in a kitchen has asked themselves at least ten times, “WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING HERE?”

I asked it enough to send in an application to grad school. I got in. I knew, and still know I want to work with food. I looked into a Masters in Gastronomy at Boston University. It had incredibly interesting classes including Food Writing for Print Media and concentrations in the masters program allowed you to focus on Communication, Business, History, and Food Policy and they even offered a conjoined culinary degree. As interesting as it seemed, I couldn’t figure out what the degree actually gave you credibility to do. When I asked the academic advisor what direction students usually head after graduation- He had no clue. I had no clue. This combination looked bleak. I checked out the culinary program. It sounded like I might get some experience with an Easy-Bake-Oven and then Jacque Pepin was going to come in at the end and congratulate me on my success at being a fully functioning idiot, now armed with a knife. Maybe their culinary program wasn’t right for me either. Keep looking…

Since Boston was my first stop out of Aspen, where interesting food ceases to exist, I wanted to get my hands on any remotely ethnic food. I took my Dad, brother and one of his co-workers out to the boonies to eat Thai. My brother eats thai for breakfast lunch and dinner. Not out of choice but because his boss happens to be the size of the airplane I’m riding in and got that way via thai food. He mandates that Chas tries a new thai joint every single business trip. In sales, there are a lot of business trips. To Kentucky. Thai in Kentucky. You can imagine how excited he was when I told him about the hole-in-the-wall thai place I found. The food was good, not great. But off the beaten path enough for me and my Dad. I ate a Bonh Mi all the way up Commonwealth Ave and then shot down to Little Italy to pick up a decent prosciutto sandwich and stumbled upon Neptune’s Oysters- the best place I ate in Boston. If you’re lucky enough to snag a spot at the bar, get a little card to check that allows you to check off all the beautiful oysters you want shucked right in front of you. The selection is outstanding.

To polish Boston off, I had a pretty good pizza with the Vegan pilot CJ. My first experience with vegan food went over well. I don’t suggest eating vegan food for pleasure but this pizza was edible. Partially because I had gone on a run before he picked me up and was about to eat my arm. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought vegans tortured themselves because of some sort of healthy eating argument. Read an ingredient list to that fake pepperoni on the pizza and you’ll question every vegan’s IQ. I’ve never knew so many chemically formed foods were edible, but they prefer this over plain old protein and dairy…for health reasons...Okkkay...good luck with that.

New York

Between schools, I popped into every spot that tweet-happy hipsters rave about, only to come to one conclusion. The general mass of people are stupid. Porchetta was the first stop. After waiting in line for a half hour, I ordered the only sandwich offered, Porchetta! I was expecting this sandwich to be “life-altering,” as someone at work once explained it. I bit into plastic- plastic which was actually supposed to be in there. Turns out it was a “crispy” pig ear. If you’ve ever seen those pig ear treats you give a dog that takes them three days to pull apart- same idea. I just had a root canal a few days before and chomping on cement seemed like a poor-idea, so I looked next door to Cara Cas. I ate something incredible called an Arepa which is like a Venezuelan fluffy pita. I’m not sure how an almost inedible sandwich can cast a shadow over better food just across the street, but it seems that a quality meal is not what makes a restaurant the next buzz. I came to the same conclusion at Momofuku. The food was good enough, but not much more than that. Definitely nothing that should drive millions of people to buy David Chang’s Momofuku Cookbook, like I did. It seems that places to eat are no longer popular because they are good, but good because they are popular. What will hold a restaurant afloat when it’s no longer a Four-Square hot spot and food is just mediocre? Maybe this is why the average lifespan of a restaurant is less than four years.

A little later, upon Chef S’s recommendation, I ended up lurking around Times Square for what turned out to be an incredible night at the most secretive, underground sushi spot in New York City. Underneath a totally unrelated Japanese restaurant lies Sake Haji Bar (sorry, but the place is so obscure that they don't have a website) where I bellied up at the bar for a little of ”a picture #3 and 2 picture #9s, throw in a #19…” It was great. I was confused about what the hell I was eating but I was happy. The food was great and there wasn’t a tweeter in sight.

Convivio was the best dinner I’ve had in a long time. The one pasta dish I had "Mallorddus" with Sardinian saffron gnochetti, crab, and sea urchin was so delicious I wanted to walk back into the kitchen kiss everyone. Prep cooks, line cooks, chefs- Dishwashers, I didn’t care! The more I understand Italian food, the more I love it. I used to hate it’s simplicity. Pasta. Sauce. Garnish. Bread. Two of my favorite things to get my hands on now are pasta and bread dough. It’s the simplicity of the food that demands it be done with precision, and yes- love. Indian food, a past-time fav, can be smothered in cumin, coriander and ten other spices until your not sure if it’s chicken or pork- but it’s good. Take my recipe for spaghetti dough. Egg yolks and flour. My recipe calls for 90 yolks and 4 Lbs of flour. Imagine the fluctuation of flavor when you change the yolks from Rendezvous Farm eggs locally harvested two days ago to store bought gathered in a warehouse and delivered in a Sysco truck. That pasta will taste so dramatically different. That’s what I’m learning to love about Italian cuisine. You can’t hide anything. You’re food is only as good as your ingredients.

I needed to eat at Jean-George and Eleven Madison Park while I was in NY. The only things that blew me away at either was the service. Eleven Madison Park was so on point, the service functioned like a well oiled machine. Quite the opposite at Jean-George, it was unbelievable. It became increasingly evident how important service is to the dining experience as a whole. What was consistent at both was the cold feeling that white-table cloths gave the dining rooms. Every time I finish dinner, my dress is pushing my rib cage into my vital organs. I think rubbing your tummy and moaning is frowned upon anywhere that covers their tables in white. I just can't be comfortable there.

The Hyde Park CIA was frightening. I ate at their on-campus restaurant Catarina and was scared for the students in the kitchen. Whatever Chef was back there teaching them wasn’t teaching them much and was letting them get away with a lot. Every three weeks, another group of these students graduate, and every three weeks, another group enters the CIA system. The CIA definitely turns out some great chefs, but I’m looking for a more personal education, much less systematic. The location of the CIA also forces students to live in useless Hyde Park, mostly on campus. This way culinary school much more resembles a typical college campus with dorms, cafeterias, and study halls. Students resort to drinking in their dorm rooms, eating poorly, and starting their weekends after class gets out Thursday morning. I’m not really a college student anymore. I’ve already done my fair share of dorm-drinking. I've outgrown that lifestyle, luckily. I'm ready for a more serious school.

The French Culinary Institute was fantastic. The butcher who is an FCI post-grad, and I went on the tour where I sat in on a few classes and he got chased around by the flamboyant admissions advisor who still emails me asking me to say hi to “Chef Mark” for him. The walls were studded with pictures of Wylie Dufrane, David Chang, other famous NY chefs. I watched the Chefs watch their students. I watch the students watch the Chef. There was a mutual respect. The students were all working hard with their heads down. No toque-wearing CIA brats here. Just kids trying to get that damn bruniox right. I could learn there. I probably will.

Napa

Well, it turns out the CIA is the CIA no matter what side of the country they are on, which is too bad because the CIA in Napa occupies one of the most beautiful hillsides I’ve ever seen. I’d love to attend school there if I thought I’d get a great education.

While in Napa, I accidentally found myself in The French Laundry kitchen where I also accidently found myself without words in front of Timothy Hollingsworth. Great. We took a stroll through their garden across the street, finding all sorts of vegetation basking in sunlight waiting to be picked for a place on one of the stunning plates that walks out of TFL kitchen. There is nothing more farm-to-table than TFL garden and kitchen. I was in awe- I want that some day.

I want people to be able to physically see where there food came from when they look out of my dining room. That’s so damn cool.

Ad Hoc…hmm…is it sacrilegious to insult Thomas Keller? Well, I don’t believe in god or celebrity chefs for that matter, so in that case Ad Hoc was a disappointment. I’ve eaten a better salad in my front yard. So could you. Grab some grass from the cracks in the sidewalk and you’ll be better off. But don’t forget some O.O. and S&P because they forgot that, too. Cooks and chefs alike worship the entire TK team, myself included. But I can’t respect Ad Hoc as much as I’d like to. The concept of the family meal strikes a chord with me, it’s eventually the style of food I’d like to put out. But please, pay attention in the kitchen. Good news though, someone in marketing has been paying attention- there is an entire line of Ad Hoc condiments by William Sonoma coming soon!

We stopped into each TK outpost. Bouchon, Bouchon Bakery. We left Bouchon late enough the night before to see worker bees prepping croissants in the wee hours of the night at Bouchon Bakery- we returned just a few hours later for some fresh baked goodies. Everything tasted as good as it looked.

San Francisco

A16 is one tweet-happy place that didn’t let me down. The hype they have is deserved. I wish I ate there when Nate Appleman was still Executive Chef, but nevertheless, the food was good. The pizza was stellar. Wood-burning ovens are so awesome. Quote me on this- If and when I ever have my own kitchen, there will be a wood-burning oven in it. I highly recommend that book I linked to above. The opening story is inspiring and learning about how they pair their wines with food, more like pair their food with wine is incredible. The passion through the writing in the book is so evident that it rubs off on anyone that reads it.

I visited Delfina based on two Chefs recently telling me was one of the better meals they’d ever eaten. Nothing flashy about the food or the dining room, but the kitchen put out most ideal plates I could imagine. Every bite made me want to be a better cook. One day, I want my customers to reach dessert and order another round of pasta, just like I did.

Finally, at the end of the School Tour Trip- I’ve got some conclusions. Grad school isn’t for me, at least right now while I am passionate about physically working with the food. When I told Chef about the possibility of grad school, he told me to look at all of the classes that interested me in the curriculum and read books on the topic to teach myself, which I’ll do. He also told me to do that with cooking, but I just can’t. I wish I was disciplined enough to teach myself to be a better cook- but right now I need a leader and a teacher. I want someone that knows more than me to guide me through the steps and correct me when I’m wrong. I want to ask questions, I want answers and I don’t want to look at an index to find it. What I want right now is to learn to cook very well. In fact, I want to be the best cook everyone that knows me knows. My dad always insisted that I needed to know the basics before I could ever really cook. He must have suggested reading Mastering the Art of French Cooking a hundred times, but I never took him seriously. He was right. If I am going to grow I need to start with a foundation, and that's what I'm going to do- build a foundation in school in...New York!

After a short stint back in the kitchen in Aspen, I'll be en route to school and you'll be reading a blog about the joys of culinary school. Oh, and I start on a new station when I get back to work- garde manager. Every day I'll be putting plates in the window made up of produce from my farm. I can't think of anything better than that.