The Leftover Foodie

Let's Ease Back Into This Thing Slowly, Shall We?

So.

Hello.

It's been a little while now hasn't it?  Now in my defense I've been a weensy bit busy lately, and I'm glad to report that school is on the verge of being finished (two more months) and "work" is fine.  I'm still more than ready for it to be done so I can start working without the training wheels on anymore, but I've settled into a nice "it'll all be over soon enough" stage, so that's fine for the meantime.

Apart from that I've tried to remind myself that one of the biggest reasons for this whole undertaking is that I used to like cooking at home (yes I conveniently forgot about how bad the the messes were) so I've made it a point to try and do something about that in recent weeks.  I'll maintain that I've been very good about making my kids dinner, but pasta with melted butter is hardly a "post worthy" endeavor, so I've been stuck with my "waaa...  poor me, I got exactly what I asked for" posts.  I've also made it a point to try and do something about that in recent weeks as well...

So with my "new leaf" freshly turned, I present to you the first of a few new posts that have nothing to do with whining or quitting jobs...  This is an actual food post that deals with "food." 

I hope you like it:

ROOTING FOR THE HOME TEAM

One of the "bonuses" of being a culinary student is the added pressure you feel when you have any type of "pot luck" or group dinner thing.  

When you have two kids, this happens a lot.  

So with the start of another school year for Thalia recently, there was the inevitable "getting to know you" dinner at her school and as you can imagine, that meant doing something good, but without being too "show off-y" to wow the mounting tide of expectations that have been rising since last year, and then all summer as Liz politely explained to the parents of the other children that the reason I couldn't be at almost anything was because I was in culinary school and thus too busy to actually make anything for any number of the "parent dinners" that my school or my internship (mostly thankfully) got me out of.

With this in mind, and having just returned from walking through the many markets in Barcelona Spain a couple of day prior (post forthcoming, I swear) and with fall freshly in the air, I decided to walk through our local vastly (and I mean vaaaaaaaaastly) inferior farmers market (I don't just mean this particular one either, I mean ALL of them here in new york) to fulfill the still burning desire I still had in me from Spain to cook what I had just picked up from the market the way I wish I could have done in Barcelona but was unable to due to the lack of a kitchen in our hotel room (there should be "foodie hotels" that have well stocked kitchens in hotel rooms all throughout Europe, right?).

Anyways, (despite my "run on sentence contest" that I'm apparently having) our local Brooklyn Farmers Market is a cute little thing "filled" with what seems to be filled with family-owned conglomerate farms from nearby that despite having exactly the same products at the exact same price as our local Garden of Eden, you get the foodie cred of having been ripped off at a farmers market instead of a specialty store...  So that's cool...

Here's what I picked up...

 

When you're cooking for a pot luck dinner for 25-30 people it's hard to even think about a protein, so I decided to do a side dish of roasted root vegetables.  

Very Fall appropriate I'd say.

 

 

Fennel, leeks, carrots, onions, butternut squash, potatoes, parsnips, turnips, fresh herbs, and apples. 

I took the whole vegetables and trimmed them down to this:

 

And that into this:

 

and that into this:

 

Which in turn became this:

 

 

In case someone reading this doesn't know how amazingly easy/delicious roasted root vegetables are to make, you basically preheat the oven to 400 and roast them for about an hour until they're done.  Now I personally do more than that, so I'll take you through the steps that I do, but it's pretty much that easy...

I start by preheating the oven to 450, and cutting the vegetables into same-sized pieces (vegetables or fruit that don't take as long to cook through I cut into bigger pieces to compensate for cook time).  

When that's done I toss them in a bowl with olive oil and fresh picked thyme to coat them and season them with a bunch of salt and pepper.  

While I do that I heat up a roasting pan on the stove top over med-high flame for a couple minutes till it's blazing hot and then add a blended oil so it doesn't smoke or burn as easily.  When the oil starts to ripple I add the vegetables as evenly as possible and let them sear on one side for a couple of minutes.  

When you start to get good color on that one side give them a stir and add a little chicken stock or water (less than 1/2 cup depending upon how much you're making) so the vegetables don't dry out, and stick them in the oven for 10 minutes, at which point you lower the heat to 350, and then let them go till they're done, about 30-40 minutes or so, but check the bigger pieces to be sure they're cooked all the way through before you take them out (especially if you cut the potatoes too big like I did, because it turns out they take waaaaaay longer than every thing else does).  

In the meantime I brown a stick of butter, add some salt, pepper, thyme and rosemary until it pops and foams up, once that subsides I take it off the heat and add some maple syrup while it's still hot, but not so hot the syrup burns.  

When that's done I pour it over the vegetables and give them a stir when they still have 10-15 minutes to go so that the flavor cook into them...  

When they finish I let them rest for a few minutes and transfer them into a serving dish.  

One of the great things about this dish is that they're just as good hot as they are room temperature, so it's perfect for a pot luck thing or any other situation where you have to travel and don't have a way to reheat or keep hot...

I'll leave to the picture to suggest that they came out great, and they did, but in typical Nate-fashion, they were pretty much the most ridiculously over-prepared thing there, even for how simple they are to make...  

I guess it's better to care too much then not at all (ahem...  I'm talking to you, whoever made those gross quesadillas), but I was hoping for a bit of a homemade-cooking-Battle-Royale with someone.  I mean, I didn't expect a cooking contest that I'd be crowned the King of Parents in, but I was hoping for some sort of "are those better than my -whatever-?" looks or someone eating them and pretending not to like them a little too much.  But I guess that's not how it goes in Brooklyn Heights... 

In other words, I guess not everyone else in the world is as much of a competitive prick as I am...  But that doesn't mean I can't wish that they were...  Or at least pretend that they are so I can continue to overachieve for the sake of this sad, pathetic little blog...  

Who needs friends when you have a blog you write in a few times every now and again anyways?

In all seriousness, the parents are all insanely nice and lovely people, and it's only my self-conscious insecurities that cause me to feel like a teenager hanging out with a bunch of my mom's friends whenever we have a parent thing.  Also the fact that I make less than I did when I was a teenager probably factors into it as well, while they are all seemingly successful "adults" with "careers" and are able to "provide for their families".  

But like I always have to say to myself, "what can you do?"

And really, what can you do?

I know I can get writing a post on Spain, which is long past due.  I'm still very much looking forward to it as it was an amazing time and I can't wait to write about it.  So until then, I hope this eases you back into the flow of things (and by "you" I mean "me") and that the next post doesn't take nearly as long to write and that it isn't nearly as difficult to find a rhythm in...

See you soon my waiting-with-bated-breath-I'm-sure friends...

n*   

Be-eaver It Or Not, I'm Walking On Air, I Never Thought It Would Taste So Goo-ooo-oood...

Get ready to chuckle.

Are you ready?

Get this:

 I ate beaver!

Haha...

Beaver!!!

You know, like a girls private parts?

Get it?

So now that we got that out of the way, can we focus on the the post at hand?

The fact of the matter is that it's true, I did eat an actual beaver, and it was delicious.

Of course I realized too late that I should have been taking pictures after I cooked it, but I'll give you a quick back story.

Of course this tale begins at Chris and Nancy's.  He got a call from a friend that had shot a couple beavers this past winter and wanted to know if Chris wanted one.  He did, and after a week of eating beaver parts, he still had quite a bit left over and figured he'd see if I wanted to take a crack at it.

I did.

With wild animals you have to freeze them for a minimum of 3 months (I'm not 100% sure about that, it may be longer, like 7 months, but a google search didn't immediately answer my question and I'm lazy.)  Anyways, this one, I believe was killed in January, so it had been frozen about 7 months...  

If you've read my blog in the past, you may or may not have read the posts about the virtues of cooking with wood.  Up at Chris and Nancy's they have a ton of hickory trees in their yard and Chris spends about 80% of his life walking in the yard gardening and picking up branches to cook with (and yelling at anyone, say even a dog, for disrupting the piles scattered around the yard in no discernible order.)

Regardless, the wood burns a lot hotter and faster than your average tasteless charcoal, giving you a billion times more flavor, but about 90% less cooking time.  You have about 20 minutes from start to finish, and most of it is with blazingly hot flames and only about 10 minute of "charcoal" cooking.  It's a lot more challenging, but, in my opinion, a lot more fun and infinitely more rewarding.

So like I've done in the past I seared the meat in the flames and then "finished" it with the coals, leaving it nicely charred on the outside but nice and rare/medium rare in the middle...

I also cooked some lamb while I was there for Nancy as she was too squeamish to eat the beaver...

I used a simple marinade of olive oil, sea salt, pepper and fresh herbs left to rest for an hour or so and then grilled it.  

How did it come out? 

Delicious.

It taste like the cleanest beef, or buffalo you've ever tasted.  Full, rich flavor, but really clean and "meaty".  Really, it was like grass fed beef meets buffalo, meets ostrich.  As you can see in the picture there wasn't much fat (where all the flavor comes from) so it tastes pretty neutral.  Obviously the smoke from the fire, the salt, oil, herbs all played their parts, so I'm not saying it was flavorless, it just didn't have a discernible "beaver" taste, it just tasted "good".

We kept it on the bone, giving a glorious almost-rawness right at the bone, and also a chance for making a not-made-very-often-these-days-I'm-guessing beaver stock...  

Now this being a summertime dinner we also had some garden fresh zucchini and of course some grilled corn...

\

Oh, and since I haven't post a picture of my kids in awhile, here...

In case you're wondering, they're eating chicken nuggets...  

Next time I think I'll make them beaver nuggets though...

Also, not that anyone reads this blog anymore, but in a crazy twist of what I've come to just accept as my life, Liz won a trip to Spain that we're going on in a few weeks.

Obviously my dream trip would be a slow meandering starting in San Sebastian and ending up in Galicia, with many, many animals eaten along the way, but since I've never been, and so Liz will like me, I think we're going to "do" Barcelona with maybe a day/overnight trip to Costa Brava, culminating (I'm praying to any and every  god there is) with a trip to El Bulli...  

Just putting it out there, just in case for any crazy reason anyone in the internet world can help with the (I realize) impossible to get reservations, if we can get a reservation anytime in October, we can plan the whole trip around it...  

Maybe I should hyper link more spanish related stuff and drive up that traffic, huh?

One can dream, can he not?

Well, fuck you.  I'm going to anyways...  Next stop after this I'm going to go to school and a knock on old Jacques Pépin's door, see if he'll call up his buddy (I'm just sure) Ferran Adriá and get me in...  

Why wouldn't he?  

And I'm sure an unrefuseable offer from Ferran to come live in Spain along with my family and work with him won't be far behind either...  I'm just sure of it...

Anyways, wish me luck, gotta go...

Farts and kisses,

n*

A "P.S." To My Post From Yesterday

Authors Note:  I wrote this post the day after I wrote the other post so some of the material is a little dated so take it for what it's worth...  Also, I just want to emphasize my profound gratitude to the place I was working for the opportunity it afforded me and restate how sorry I am first of all, for quitting with such little notice (none) and for the fact that it didn't work out in general.  I really do like the chef and the menu along with the people I worked with, it just wasn't the right place for me and the timing worked out in such a way that quitting and having some time with my family was more important and beneficial to my sanity than finishing out an abbreviated notice would have been...  

That being said:

So I just got back from quitting my job.  

Oh, man I am such a pussy... 

Let me tell you the story.  

So I've been tormented on how to quit for a few days now.  As I wrote last time, it's been really slow and it wasn't going to work out.  Also, I've been working seven days a week for the past few weeks and am in desperate need of a break.  But instead of a break I was scheduled to work two doubles this weekend while my family went for a nice weekend to visit friends in Massachusetts...  Before I got a job working at my old restaurant for more money in less hours, and actually working and learning, I was perfectly willing to do it, but knowing that was there along with the knowledge that this place wasn't for me, I couldn't get my head around working all those shifts for a place that I knew I needed to quit at the earliest possible opportunity.  

So I went through the gauntlet of ideas on how to do it, from not calling or showing up (which is most typical in this industry), to a big dramatic "this place sucks, I'm outta here..."  

So back and forth I went.  

Should I just call in and quit and then go pick up my stuff later?  Should I have some elaborate ruse involving a broken foot and sending in a friend to pick up my stuff?  Should I blame it on them for being slow and not wanting to work for a sinking ship?  Should I call and pretend to be the police looking for my last known whereabouts?  Should I show up drunk and vomit on customers (which is too risky, there might not be any)?  Pretend to be offended by some benign thing that someone says and walk out angrily? 

Wanting to do the right thing (sort of), but also wanting to get out of those two doubles this holiday weekend, I figured I better have some great excuse.  So tossing and turning all night (the same way I've done every other time I've quit a job with no notice, including most recently at my internship) I eliminated the possibilities down to a couple that could work best.  One, the non-confrontationalist approach, was go in and work tonight, and then at the end of the shift (after chef has gone home of course), write him a note explaining that this place isn't working out, and blaming it on it being slow (which it has been) but thanking him for the opportunity type of deal...  

The other "no one's the bad guy" approach was to say Liz booked a really great job, and because of that I had to be home this weekend with the kids.  I mean, what could I do tell her not to take it?  

So down to the wire it comes.

I was scheduled to work at 3:00, so at 2:50 strolled in with the idea that I would work the shift, and then quit under the guise that it was just too slow and that I wasn't happy there...  

For me, it was a way to best avoid a type of conflict that I can't seem to bear.  I don't know why, but I've always avoided pre-conceived conflict in person.  I hate disappointing people, and even though I know we're in an industry where the turnover rate is super high, and most often people just never show up for a shift and people are used to it, I just can't bear the thought of me being that person.  Even when I really, really don't want to be there any more.  

I know it sucks to do just quit, but I also know that it's part of life, it's not like the place is going to have to close because I stopped working there, and I know if the shoe was on the other foot, it's not like they would have given me any notice before firing me.  So I know it goes both ways and that it's just part of the game, but at the same time, I also feel terrible about it... 

So I walk in resigned to the idea that I'm going to work one last shift, and I'm probably going to get yelled at, and I'll be exhausted  tomorrow, but I can slip out never to be seen again...  But when I got there, the chef wasn't there.  

I ask where he was, and was told he was out for a break and won't be back till later.  

Seizing the opportunity I immediately go into a spiel about Liz booking a great job, and that because of that I can't work this weekend, and needed to quit, but really didn't want to...  And shucks, if only chef were there and I could talk to him about it and figure out what to do...  

Pacing back and forth, putting on the most unnecessary  show ever about "what to do, I can't leave my kids alone, nor can I afford a babysitter...  Oh woe is me!!"  And then I get the brilliant idea to write chef a note, apologizing, but "due to unforeseen circumstances I wouldn't be able to work there any more due to a situation that came up with my wife booking a job that started immediately, thank you for the opportunity, and I'll be in to pick up my paycheck in the near future" and hoping that the others would fill in the rest of the story...  

And then I walked out, ran to the subway and have had my phone off ever since...  I know it was a pussy move, but I wasn't going to wait there for him to come back letting the tension build and build, and I knew I didn't want to work, so with all due sorrow and a sincere apology to the staff and the chef, I bid my adieu...

Do I hate myself?  

A little bit.

But am I glad I did it?

Totally...  I really need some time off...

Mostly I'm excited for my new opportunity and making the most of that, in addition to the time off that this allows.    

I'm sure that like most other things, that the guilt and the embarrassment will pass, and that in the long run I'll be glad I did it, so I'm not worried I ruined my life and made a huge mistake.  If I can arrange my time better and have a better balance between cooking, writing and family/personal time I think I need to do anything I can to make that happen, and this seems like an opportunity for that.  Not to mention I'll be making more money, working in a higher profile place, and having many more options in the future.

So yes, I'm mortified right now.  I can't even look in the mirror and I'm pacing back and forth wondering when it'll be safe to turn my phone back on.  But at the same time, I'm doing something that I haven't done in months, which is hanging out with my kids on a thursday night.  As I'm writing this they're dancing and listening to music and they're just laughing and laughing...   

Seems like a fair trade to me...

I'm out...

n*

Oh, Morrissey... You Said It Best, First... Also, Can you go Home For A Third Time?

We all know the lyrics...

"I was happy in the haze of a drunken hour, but Heaven knows I'm miserable now...  I was looking for a job, and then I found a job...  and, Heaven knows, I'm miserable now..."

So I guess that you can figure out on your own that I indeed did find a job, and that, also, it's not that great.

So let me confirm your suspicions by saying, yes, I did find a job, and yes, it's not that great, but, I've already found another, better job.  

More on that later.

First a brief consolidation of time/admission-of-egg-on-face since my last post. 

I quit my internship.  Rather unexpectedly too...

I was looking for an excuse to leave but was planning on giving my two week notice, and was really hoping for a little time off in between the internship and a job, but a job fell in my lap, and sort of without thinking about it, I jumped at it.  The bad thing is that I sort of didn't give notice, which sucks, but they also weren't paying me, so I don't feel too too bad about it, the fact that I'm about to do that again, but this time I do feel a little bad about it is another story...

But more on that later...

So the new place is/was a really nice little place.  I really like the menu and the chef.  Without divulging too much information, I'll just say that the problem isn't necessarily with what the place is, but where the place is.  It's a lovely little place, unfortunately in a very "touristy" part of town, and almost all business is derived from walk ins, and because of this it's often not very busy, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I was making on average 10 things a night, often times with 30 min to an hour in between.  What's worse, the people who work there are worried about what's going to happen in the slow season coming up...

Not good...  Not good...

But I harbor no ill will to the place, and hope for it's success, I just don't fell like working/going to school seven days a week so I can make 10-20 salads a night...

Also, it's football season, but let's pretend that isn't a driving force behind my leaving, and pretend that it's strictly a business decision...

And in truth, it mostly is.  I would have "happily" worked sundays at the place where I was interning as a job, and I can name 50 restaurants off the top of my head that I'd give up watching football to work for. 

So for what it's worth, I do appreciate the place for what it did, which is give me an excuse to leave my internship, get into a restaurant and prove to myself that I'm capable of working on the line, and although it wasn't very much money, it was more than zero...

That being said, however, having had one day off in the past three weeks I can say from experience that I don't want to work seven days a week forever...

So that brings us to yesterday, which isn't neccesarily a lot of time since leaving my internship and writing my last post, but enough time to realize that changes need to be made.  

So yesterday I went and talked to the chef of the restaurant that I waited tables at for five years and worked out a deal with them which will hopefully bring my little "poor me" session to a close.  I'm going to go work for them part time a few days a week while I'm in school, and upon graduation I'll have the opportunity to work at one of their other restaurants in a bigger, more full time role...

So what I'm hoping this means is that I'll be able to work enough to work and make a little money, but not overexert myself and burn out while I'm in school, but after graduation, the sky becomes the limit as far as potential if I apply myself...

Also I get to work at a restaurant where I know a lot of the chefs already, along with all the front of the house friends that i've made over the course of my time there...

So it seems like a win/win situation for me...  I've been up all night thinking about it, and it makes a lot of sense and seems like a good move.  I won't be on a line for now, but I'll be in a kitchen cooking, and between that and school, I should be ready to hit the ground running when I graduate...

Plus, if I quit the job that I have right now (which I plan on doing today), I'll have a little break in between, which I so desperately need.

And the super bonus in all of this is that I can potentially have weekends off, thus eliminating the guilt I'd feel watching football if I only had sundays off and didn't spend the day with the kids...

Also, also, I'm hoping this schedule will be more conducive to my writing, which is one thing that all of this has really helped come into focus as something I really need/want to be doing more of.  Having not written much lately has really contributed to the frustration that I've been feeling.  I plan to write more posts here as well as schedule time for other projects that will hopefully balance the cooking/writing battle waging in my subconscious...

So here's to hope for better, more sanity filled days...

n*

An Exasperated Mind (Sadly NOT Starring Jennifer Connelly)

As I tarry on in this proverbial "first step" of a thousand step journey (definitely one of my top 10 favorite "journey" related proverbs) I can slowly begin to feel frustration working it's way into the edges of my consciousness.

I'm rapidly approaching three months at my internship, and apart from the well deserved self-congratulation of feeling slightly less retarded, and my own personal opinion that I've moved into the realm of deserving minimum wage as opposed to nothing, not much has changed as far as my prospects are concerned.  And as awesome as it is to feel like a character in a Coen Brothers movie ("Vernon here has a job!  Vernon has prospects, he's bona fide!"), in real life it's beginning to feel like a bit of a drag.

The good news is that there is a definite possibility that the chef at my place at least as much as likes me.  I can feel somewhat confident of this due to the sad account of about a month ago he walked straight up to me, which (ridiculously) makes me nervous and sweaty, and asked me, "Hey man, when do you graduate from school again?"

Me:  (realizing this is the wrong answer to give) "Not until January, chef...  A long time..."

Him: "It is a long time..."  he walks away.  Over his shoulder he says, shaking his head, "That is a long time...  Ten fucking people will probably quit between now and January..."

The cooks that were down there with me assured me that this was a good thing.  It seems he was at least thinking of hiring me.

And it was a good thing, with the wrong answer...

The next day the first of about ten cooks came in for a kitchen trail, all of which had vastly more experience than I do, and two of whom were hired.

Awesome.

Oh well, there's like a billion restaurants in the city, right?  One of them will hire me, won't they?

So far, sadly, the answer is, no.

I know I keep harping on this fact, but it's one that I still really can't get my mind around, but we're talking about an $8 an hour manual labor job.  

The artistry and talent of cooking in a kitchen doesn't even come into play for at least a year or two of toiling in the Garde Manger or other entry level positions at which point a chef "might" decide that you're not as much as a dumbfuck as everyone thinks you are and "might" ask your opinion on a dish. 

 These are all really big "mights."

The reality is that it's like any other art.  You have to stretch canvas and clean paint brushes for another painter for a few years before you even begin to have a clue how to paint, despite talent level.  You have to play your guitar for a few years to build up the callouses and learn chord progressions, you have to write a million words before you learn to write, throw a million pitches before you learn how to pitch...  I mean pick your cliche here, but it all basically boils down to the fact that you have to learn to be a technician of an art before your talent and drive can propel you to greatness...  Or in my case propel you to the heights of $10 an hour or more (some places pay $12!)

The sad thing is that it isn't the low pay or the long hours that's frustrating, it's the lack of even being able to do it. 

Most places hiring want a minimum of 2-3 years experience in 3-4 star restaurants for their entry-level job openings, and with this economy (a phrase I thought we voted against when we voted for Obama) they're getting hundreds of applicants that fit that...

And if that's not enough of an obstacle, most places want you to work full time, which means 6 days a week at about 10 hours a day, and because I'm in school, I can't do that.

It's somewhat ironic that I went to school in order to get a good job, but right now the biggest thing holding me back from getting a good job is me being in school...  

I mean, where's Alanis Morrissette when you need her? (this is a question that has been unable to be answered since about 1998)

Also adding to that "Jagged Little Pill" is the fact that I over qualify for every single front of the house postings...

I know this is temporary, and that I'll be balls deep in the shit soon enough, but it's becoming more and more humiliating asking Liz for $2 for a cup of coffee everyday.  I mean, I'm 33 years old and I have to have my friends pay me to hang out with them in the way of them buying me beers after class...

I know I'm doing the right thing, and paying my dues and all that, but I'm over it.  This, of course, is compounded be the fact that school is basically becoming a restaurant job that I pay $300 a class for, so it's not just that I'm working 30+ hours a week at my internship for no money, I'm working over 50 hours a week for negative $900...  All with the ultimate reward of paying it back with an insane amount of interest over the next 10 years $8 at a time...

Happily, due to an either legendary bout of denial, or the saddest bout of stupidity in history, I'm really not regretting my decision, nor has my confidence wavered on my abilities nor paths chosen.  I'm really just hoping that this all goes away soon. 

It's possible that it's just a super combo of shit right now, and craigslist sure isn't helping, but I'm ready for the next step on this little sub-journey that I'm taking, Universe...

As always I remain your humble servant,

n*

Happy Birthday, High School Graduation Date!

First of all...

WOOOOOOAAAAAAHHHHHH, have I been busy.

Just to keep you the tiniest bit abreast of my life's happenings lately, I'm still in school, where I got a 95 on my midterm, I was led to believe this was an almost impossible dream by my Level 1 and 2 instructor, so I take it as a point of pride that I accomplished such a rare feat, even if two other people in my class did so as well...

Anyways, I start level 4 today, am sporting a 94.5 average for school so far, and seem to be doing pretty well.

Great for me!

I'm also still at my internship, which is going well.  I feel like 40% less of a fuck up now than I did at the beginning, and that's definitely worth whatever I would have made at $8 an hour otherwise.  So that's great too...  

I'm pretty close to being finished with the internship portion of my education and moving on to my next phase of Minimum Wage Greatness...

Good stuff...

Good stuff...

But the reason I've chosen today to break my (I'm sure) deafening silence, is that my 15 year High School Reunion was this past weekend!

"Sadly" I missed it, but with out dredging up too many as-yet-still-unresolved issues I have about my last two years of High School, I thought I'd share one picture with you that sums up my high school experience at good old Carthage Central...

Great job, cake decorator! Worth every penny, I'm sure...

There are so many ridiculous things about this cake that I don't even want to ruin it for you by continuing to write about it...

Needless to say, I have my new screensaver, and an ever growing appreciation that, despite the occasional stress dream/nightmare, I'm not in High School anymore... 

See you in the hall after third period where I'll be avoiding the redneck jock who wants to beat me up and thinks I'm gay because I stole his girlfriend (even though to be fair, high school girlfriends are pretty gay)...

Laters,

n*

Sorry

So

Sloppy

I don't know Chef, I wish I knew...

The other day at my internship I was slicing meat on a newfangled deli slicer, and in the midst of slicing various meats either too thick, too thin, or with an invisible layer of plastic still on it that I didn't see, the head chef, whose name we'll just call "Chef" came up to me and asked me a question.

Now, this is a big deal for a guy so far down on the food chain as to be almost non-existent.  So when he asked me a question, I should have been smart enough to realize that he didn't want me to answer him, he just wanted to say words to someone to show his displeasure in a situation. "I don't know Chef, I wish I knew" was all that was required of me to say, but instead I tried to answer.

Stupid.

Not that he got mad at me or anything, I just shouldn't have answered a question that didn't need an answer.  I mean, it's not like he had just decided to become my friend, and wanted to hear what I thought.  I'm smart enough to know that.  I should have just shaken my head in disbelief and maybe then he wouldn't have been reminded of the fact that most interns are dumbfucks that should never be spoken to outside of "I need those four cases of tomatoes broken down."  Or, "Can you come in on your day off this week?  We need four case of tomatoes broken down."

Not that either of those things have happened, I'm just saying that my purpose for being there is other than answering rhetorical questions that a frustrated, overworked, thin-on-patience-as-it-is super busy chef asks some empty chef's coat standing close enough to him that it registers not who I am, but what I am, which is a guy in chef's whites that should be smart enough to not irk his ire by having the nerve to not only look him in the eye, but then to try an formulate a half cocked, retarded answer...

Are you picking up on the subtle vibe that this was humiliating?

Nothing to do with this story, but almost immediately afterward I was told that the meat was too thick and couldn't be used so I had to throw out an entire salumi's worth of meat and start over.  Then when I did get the slice right, I left a plastic wrap on the meat that I didn't see, and the other big chef came over to help me as I was taking waaaaaay too long, and when he saw that there was a thin layer of plastic on each and every slice, was none too pleased.  I didn't catch exactly how many times he said the words "Dude, why did you slice this with the plastic still on?" as I lost count after about 30, but it was a lot.  Being an intern sure can be fun.

Anyways.  

The point to this story is that although I shouldn't have answered it, or if I did, I should have answered it in a short definative answer (see title of post) instead of a rambling, too-many-details-about-myself answer that he walked away from half way through, but I kept answering anyways, literally offending the people left in the area who hear my answer, (take a deep breath) is that it was a really good question.

He asked me, "Hey, you worked in the front of the house for all those years.  Maybe you can tell me why the front of the house is incapable of doing anything with any soul..."

See title of post for perfect answer.

Maybe I could have said "I don't know Chef, that's why I got out of the front of the house."

That's it though.

Instead I rambled on about how they don't appreciate how easy they have it.  How crazy it is that I used to make so much more money in such fewer hours and didn't realize how much harder the back of house is. 

At this point he left. 

I, however, kept on answering by explaining how the front of the house doesn't put their heart and soul into it the way the back of house does (there were only front of house people in the room at this point) and how the waiters don't care about anything except making money.  

At this point I heard audible groans from my newly never-to-be-friends and realized that Chef had long since departed so I stopped talking.

But the question stuck.

Let me explain for any of you who may not know, that the "front of the house", or Front of House are the waiters, the buss boys, bartenders, managers, Maitre D's, hosts, etc.  The "back of the house", or Back of House, is (obviously) the chefs, cooks, prep cooks, dishwashers, etc.

Again, in case there is anyone reading this blog for the first time and may not know, I had been a waiter for the last 15 years, and recently started culinary school to move to the back of the house. 

So the question of why the front of house can't do anything with soul, is a really interesting question for me.

It sort of goes to the heart of why I wanted to move from being a waiter to a cook.  There really is no soul in the front of house.  

My best theory, which is what I was trying to explain when I answered, is that for the front of the house, being a waiter, or a bartender, or manager or whatever is just a job.  

Usually a waiter (or whoever) is trying to be something else like an actor or writer (or failed comedian).  Maybe they're finishing school, or out of work from another industry that they are trying to get back into or need a break from, but almost no one wants to be a waiter and it's impossible to put your soul into something you don't want to be doing.

Even if you don't mind it, are good at it, and make pretty good money doing it.  You're body is there, but only the fraction of your mind that it takes to remember specials and punch orders into computers is there with you.

This isn't a bad thing necessarily, but in most cases, it's a reality.  

I recently read a book on Le Bernardin in which it says that they only hire professional waiters with no outside ambition other than to be excellent waiter.  

I'd bet you there is soul in the front of that house.  

I'm sure it's the same thing with some of the other three and four star restaurants.  But those are by far the exception to the rule.

I used to think of waiting tables as going to the ATM.  You go, you get your money, and you go home.

I was/am a good waiter that has worked in some really good restaurants, but the ones I preferred were the ones that you could give the least amount of yourself to, but still make okay money.  And that was specifically because I didn't want to give my soul to waiting tables.  It was a job, I was saving my soul for my writing or comedy or whatever.  

The back of the house on the other hand, at least the back of the house in good restaurants (I'm not talking about the fry guy at Hardee's here) are there because they want to put their souls into it.  You don't work 100-hour-weeks at $8-$10 an hour for years and years on end if your heart and soul aren't into something.

One of the biggest surprises for me in this transition has been not only how much harder it was than I thought it was going to be, but how working in a kitchen with a bunch of other people pouring their souls into cooking food that is inevitably going to be shit and pissed out, makes you want to work harder and be better as well.  It's not competitiveness necessarily, although that's a big part of being in a kitchen, but it's more of an environment that demands perfection, and you either deliver, or you're gone.

It's fun to be in a kitchen like the one I'm in.  There's defiantly a slight fear-of-god aspect to not have the sous chefs or worse the chef-chefs yell at you, but there seems to be a genuine desire by (most of) the people who work there to do a really good job.  It's expected.  It demands the heart and soul of everybody there and if you can't deliver that every shift, you won't make it.  That's just not true of the front of the house.

As a waiter, I wanted to be good enough to make the most money, or have the highest sales.  I was one of the top dogs at the places that I worked at because I was fast and knowledgeable and got good tips. But I never had to put my soul into it.

As an aspiring cook, I'm the slowest and least knowledgeable person there, and literally the lowest guy on the totem pole, but I have to put my entire soul into it.

Guess which one I'm happier doing?

If you need me, I'll be in the basement breaking down four cases of tomatoes...

n*

I Wanted This?

Last summer I worked two, occasionally three days a week and made anywhere between $450 to $600-ish in less than 20 hours a week.

This summer between school and my internship I work 6 days a week and make ZERO dollars in just under 50 hours a week (generally).

Last summer I strolled the city streets, watched lots of movies, read a ton of books, and spent many long weekends out of town, where I'd usually "rush" back into town on Tuesday, just in time to start my grueling schedule of Tuesday and Wednesday night.

This summer I get a monthly Metrocard, and I make it my bitch.

It's generic the difference a year makes...

Last summer I was also a lost miserable soul (career wise) looking for anything outside of the restaurant industry to believe in.

I found that something, strangely enough, further in the restaurant industry, specifically in the kitchen of the restaurant industry, where my "calling" was waiting quietly for me to put down the wine key and pick up a knife.  

Even with the long hours, no pay and mind-numbing amount of accrued debt, I still feel a billion times better about myself now than I did around this time last year.

So I apologize (again) for my seeming lack of recent effort on the blog, but when I say I've been really busy, I mean I've been really busy...

So to keep those of you who care up to speed on my life developments I offer you this, my one free hour this week, in which I'll try and describe the many changes happening internally and (externally if you count cuts, and new weird callouses on my hands)...

First school:

School has been going great.

In addition to the new friends and new recipes I've been making and learning respectively, I've actually been getting good grades and (thus far anyways) perfect attendance.  98 on my last evaluation, which is pretty good considering I feel that I still have a lot of areas I can improve in (mostly cleanliness, and efficiency, my flavors and techniques are pretty solid for the still-pretty-new-in-the-game stuff that we're learning).

So while there are certainly frustrations and feelings of being held back by the curriculum and the level of skill in some of (but by no means the majority of) my classmates, I've realized that I have to keep my eye on the prize and concentrate on doing a good job now, but definitely looking forward to the more advanced levels.

If I get around to it, I'll throw in a couple of pictures of some of the better looking things I've made in class...

here:  

This is a trio of Spanish Tapas served "American" Style (admittedly the plates used for our "plating lesson" left more than a little something to be desired).

It's a Flounder fillet flash-cooked in a salamander and dressed with a garlic and guindillas pepper oil with a splash of sherry vinegar- Catalan-style spinach with apples, raisins, and toasted pine nuts- and Patatas Bravas...

Part Two:  My foray into the back of the house.

The bigger and more back-pain-causing news is that I started interning at a really great restaurant last week.

I honestly figured that the low pay of, along with the impression of "not needing to be highly intelligent in order to fulfill the job requirements of" a line cook, combined with my connection to the restaurant would land me a sweet $8-$9 an hour job somewhere, just by "wanting to".

Several phone calls and exactly as many "no, sorry's" as friends I have in the industry really opened my eyes the the complete bafflement of how hard it really is to get a job in a good kitchen.  

Despite the embarrassingly low pay, and the intolerably long hours, a "lowly" line cook job requires a lot of skill and knowledge that people in good restaurants won't give to someone with little or no experience.

So after many more inquiries and phone calls, I finally got two opportunities to come in and do a kitchen trail for "entry level line cook" positions.  Turns out "entry level" means "less than three years, but more than one."

Awesome, I have zero.

So cutting to the old proverbial chase (one of my favorite chases to cut), let's just say that I was offered an opportunity to do an internship at a restaurant with a great pedigree, thus giving me my first official "job" in a kitchen!

It's a funny thing going from the front of the house to the back of the house.  As a waiter we viewed the line cooks basically as monkeys in the zoo.  They were fuck ups that were too lazy to do anything else with their lives, and that's why they were working 100 hours a week for peanuts, while us big bad, awesome waiters were making 10X as much as them in a third of the time.  

We would even laugh at them when they complained about it.  

We thought their job was so easy and basic that we would dream of the simplicity that working the line seemed to entail.  

Chefs were to be respected, but cooks were lower than bussers in terms of how restaurant hierarchy went. 

However, about 8 years ago my opinions of bussers, and therefore line cooks, changed forever, and I vowed to never think I was better than anybody else because I was a waiter and they were "just" a busboy or runner (or dishwasher, or porter, or host, or manager, or anything).

I was put in my place by a busser who was working a lot of double shifts at a restaurant I was working at because he needed to fix a pump that had broken in the pool of his house in Venice, Italy.  

Yes, that Venice, Italy...and yes I said pool.

Turns out this "just busser" was living and working in New York for a few years to party and hang out before he went back to his insanely wealthy family in Italy.  I've also worked with bussers that were doctors or lawyers in their home countries.  Most of them send money home to their families and will retire and live great lives in a few short years, while I have nothing to show for my many years of making twice as much as them except a huge beer gut and an impressive music collection.

So I never underestimated line cooks after that, nor did I disrespect their life choice, but I never really got how impressive it was either. 

Let's be clear here and know that I'm not talking about all line cooks in all places but really good line cooks in really good kitchens in really good restaurants.  

They do a lot more skilled work than anything I've ever done as a waiter.

As a waiter, we complained about setup or sidework that took 20-30 minutes.  

Cooks come in 4-5 hours before the dinner shift starts to set up the food for their stations.

The "entry level" position in the hot line of a kitchen is garde manger.  A garde manger basically does salads and cold apps.  What that means is that one cook has to come in and cook every single vegetable and tear every piece of lettuce, not to mention make whatever sort of whatever that the restaurant has for appetizers on the menu.

It's not "rocket" science (lettuce joke!), but it is a lot of work that has to be done in a short amount of time so that he or she can go up and start "really" working making all the salads and cold apps for every person that comes into the restaurant that night.

200-300 covers later, that ends up being a lot of "just salads and appetizers."

It's impressive.

It's difficult.

It's repeated in every station up and down the line depending upon how big the restaurant is.

So my job as an intern has been to be everybody's bitch.  If someone needs beets cut for the beet app, I'm cuttin' 'em.  Someone needs baked potatoes peeled and cut in to little "rustic sized" pieces?  I'm peeling baked potatoes with a knife and breaking them into rustic little bite sized pieces.

It's grueling, it's rewarding, it's educational, and above all else it's tedious.  I call my job as an intern tedium ad nauseam.  

In addition to helping every single cook there that needs help with exciting things like filling two quart containers with picked thyme (that's thyme leaves with no stem, and two quarts takes at least a couple hours to fill).  Or there have been gallons of tripe stew that needed to be portioned off into exactly 230 gram servings (where I have to be sure that each one gets about the same amount of carrots, tripe, and sauce).  As time consuming as these are, I've also been getting fun little "projects" from the sous chefs like peeling the skin off of hundreds of roasted peppers and then cutting them into not too big, but not too small pieces.  Or my new personal nemesis; cases of tomatoes that need to be cored, scored, boiled and then shocked, peeled, cut in half, scoop the seeds out with a fish scaler and then arranged on a sheet pan...

It takes hours.

Mind you this is in addition to all of the things I'm doing to help the other cooks for service, so this usually turns my scheduled 10 hour day into a 12 hour plus day...

Also, remember I'm doing this for free.

Now you might think that I'm telling you this to garner sympathy or to complain and say that it isn't fair. But I assure that I am not.

I knew exactly what I was getting into, and as tired and sore as I may be, I love every second of it.

As much fun as school has been, I've always known that the real education was going to come from the mountains of potatoes (or tomatoes in my case) that I'd be peeling and the thousands of tiny cuts I'd be getting on my calloused-in-weird-new-places hands.  

This is where chefs are formed.

This is where you learn that your knife can make cuts that you didn't know it, much less you, could make.

This is where the scars and burn marks start collecting that say "I am a cook, you may not respect that, but everyone else with these scars and burn marks does, and those are the only other people whose respect I care about."

I may not be getting paid while I intern, but I'm gaining knowledge that I'll have for the rest of my life, and when I do finally transition into that glorious world of being paid slightly above minimum wage, I'll have a slew of "when I was an intern" stories that every cook loves to tell when sitting around a (cheap) bar after work trying to drink away the pain of standing over a tiny area prepping their stations all day because the new intern isn't even close to as good as they were when they were an intern...

It's great to be a part of one of those traditions that will never die.

Hakuna matata, mother fuckers, circle of life and all that...

n*

My Heart Bleeds Finely Crafted Metal

Even since I was a kid, I've always loved knives.

Yes, my father was in the Army so maybe I was predisposed to like all things "death-y" but as cool as guns and missiles and cannons and tanks and F-14's are, I've always had a special-kind-of-boner for knives.

I mean, what non-idiotic kid didn't think Snake Eye was the coolest GI Joe?

He was a fucking Ninja.  

I mean, come on...

Before I scare anyone into thinking I was some death bent weirdo kid with random bones and posters of weapons in his room, let me assure you that I didn't stab things or torture animals or anything.  

I just always liked the way they looked and the magic way a sharp knife cut innocent things like tree branches and sisters...

Probably Rambo had a lot to do with it as well.  I thought survival knives were pretty cool for a good portion of my life.

Even before I decided to do it for a living, I was always the one waiter that was in the kitchen buying knives from the reps of whatever company was there.

So it isn't totally surprising to me that I managed to love the only other profession/hobby outside of "pirate" where knives are worshiped as much as they are in the kitchen.

So when Korin did a knife sharpening demo at school a couple weeks ago, I was powerless to resist the undeniable power-over-me allure that multiple really sharp knives have, and I got a pretty sexy new chef's knife.  You know, cause I'm a "chef" now.

So here it is, my new best friend...

   

I can only assume that this means "awesome new knife" in Japanese...

I'll admit that it's a little bit ridiculous to put a picture of an Asian knife on a bamboo cutting board.  I mean, what exactly am I trying to say?  "Look how Asian I am?"  

It's a pretty knife though...

And one more time because it might be the coolest picture ever...

 

So will it cut my hand or fingers off?  I don't know.  More than likely I'll do something stupid like drop it, or mess it up beyond recognition when I try, feebly, to sharpen it.  But I love it.  And when you love something, sometimes you drop them and break or chip their blades.  That's what love is.

Sadly, I have to go.  There's a "pretend to be a chef for a day" opportunity that I'd be retarded to be late for...

So until next time, enjoy being jealous of my knife.

Loves and kisses,

n*

Spring Means... (At Least It Used To...) Part Three: Newly Obtained Culinary Skills Unleashed

Chicken.

Always cooked it, never really knew how to take it apart.

Well, one level of culinary school fixed that up real good and now I can quarter, halve, truss with a needle or just a thread...  I can do all sorts of nasty things to chickens I couldn't do before.  

And I love it!

There's something primal and sickly satisfying about taking a backbone out of a whole bird...  All those bones and cartalidge are no match for a sharp ass knife and a dude (or dude-ette) that knows how to work it. 

So it was particularly satisfying to not only take apart a bird, but then to be able to ghetto rig a grill to cook it on which put me in a rare pantheon of manliness that few douchey city dweebs like me get to experience that often.

Picture #1:

See how great that looks, all cleaned up and what-have-you.

So the coals were so perfectly burning from the shad bake that it seemed a shame to let them go to waste, so instead of grilling on the grill, I made this over them:

I shoveled the coals into a pile and put a rusty old grill top on top of some stones and then cooked the chicken on it...

Was it good?

It was chicken, who cares?

And thus ends the epic adventure that was this post...

Now that I've written it I can rest assured that the internet will take over and fix the Shad problem, and we can expect "back to normal" levels next year... 

Thanks internet...

See you next time when I do something I haven't really done on this blog for a while and "cook."

We'll see how that goes...

See you then, and enjoy the nice weather (if there's nice weather where you are, if not then...  hope it gets better?)

Have good Memorials...

n*