It's stuff like this

A lot of cooks complain about things in the kitchen, but they find ways to reward themselves. Sometimes those rewards are blowing the week’s pay at the strip club, like our saucier did on Friday night. Or having familial relations with as many waitresses/cooks as possible, a favorite pastime among some of our cooks. Or chain smoking a series of cigarettes and downing countless cocktails, like all our cooks do.

For me, though, the reward to working at a fast-paced kitchen is that I get to see and learn all kinds of cool stuff I’d be hard-pressed to see or learn elsewhere. The latest incarnation of this is working with whole pigs.

Exhibit A: We now have a new dish on garde manger, a pork head-cheese roulade wrapped with sardines and garnished pickled onions, radicchio, chives fried prosciutto chips, and onion-preserved lemon relish. The dish isn’t one of my favorites—I’ve never been a big fan of sardines, for one; the roulade is ridiculously big, for another—but the prep work involved is interesting.

Once a week we have to brine pig heads. I’m talking whole pig heads that have been sawed perfectly in half. You see the tongue, the brain, the beady little eyes, the floppy ears. They have different expressions (of the four heads I brined last week, two seemed happy to have been killed, one looked bored, the other terrified). It's like a scene from a Nine Inch Nails music video.

The brine is a mix of about ten gallons of water, mixed with several pounds of sugar, salt, chili flakes, peppercorns, celery seeds, and cloves. A cup of curing salt is added to the mix to add color and prevent botulism. It’s brined for a week, and then braised.

After the meat is fall-off-the face tender, it is separated from the fat and skin, and then the “good” parts of the skin (i.e., the parts without hair) is added back to the meat, along with numerous spices. The braising liquid is reduced to gelatin, poured over the meat/skin, and formed into a terrine, which is then rolled with the sardines. Voila, a head cheese roulade.

The head cheese is tasty, and I’ve learned that apparently the eye socket is the most highly prized cut among chefs. Didn’t get to taste it myself (my garde manger compatriot got one, and the chef de cuisine the other from the initial pig head), but I hope to soon.

Exhibit B: This last Friday I got to see chef butchering a couple of suckling pigs. Seeing him take a knife and carve out the breastbone and ribcage of those beasts made me yearn to learn more about butchering. Not in a gay way, or a psychotic way, but rather in a “I want to be that impressive” way.

It’s stuff like this that pumps me up about going into work, keeps me sane while on the line, and stays with me as I hump my knives back home to Jersey on the PATH train.

The inspiring chef

I know I've dubbed this blog The Aspiring Chef, but I’m not sure it’s apropos. After all, I went into this field with the very real possibility that it would be a short-term diversion from the world of writing.

There is a part of me that would love to be a chef. The power to create my own menu is alluring, and I’d love not to be the recipient of screaming (frankly, I don’t think I’d like to be the screamer either). Wifey has talked about opening up our own place eventually, but the financial risk involved keeps me from embracing that possibility wholeheartedly. After all, three out of four restaurants fail in the first couple years. Or so I was told in culinary school.

There are certainly other downsides to being a chef. For one thing, there is a mountain of responsibilities that have nothing to do with cooking, including worrying about crooked purveyors trying to sell you crappy produce/meat/fish; the constant number-crunching of food costs; flaky employees who don’t show up for work; rent; garbage disposal; power problems; etc.

Indeed, for many chefs, it seems, expediting—the act of organizing the soldiers during the rush of service and ensuring dishes go out on time and in an adequate fashion—is the primary responsibility. Creating new dishes is also a duty, but actual cooking? Fugghedaboutit.

I think what I really want to aspire to is to know all I possibly can about food. How to cook it, how to properly eat it and savor the flavors, where it comes from, why people like or dislike it. And most importantly, how to fix it.

For me, the most impressive thing about the more practiced cooks on my station is their ability to discern a problem and then within seconds know how to repair it. It’s not often that a good cook will throw out something and start over, especially in this economic climate.

If a vinaigrette looks too shiny, it probably has too much fat in it, so add a little stabilizer like xanthan gum and emulsify the hell out of it with an immersion blender. If that Meyer lemon puree is too sweet and thin (because yours truly added too much simple syrup), quickly chop up some oranges and lemon segments and add it to the puree. Fix it.

Mostly the thing to which I aspire is to avoid that look of panic or fear when somebody I want to impress looks at a dish I created and quizzes me about it. I want to be able to discuss the dish and all its components with complete confidence. I aspire to be as inspiring as those other cooks with whom I work.

It will be a while until I get to that point. My learning abilities seem tied inevitably to screwing up; I need to ruin something early on before I’m able to perfect it later. The good thing is that where I work I have lots of opportunities to work with new dishes I never would conceive on my own, which is helping me push my own boundaries and reduce my fear factor.

Tis the season

Recent studies have shown a pretty high intake of salt, blamed mostly on processed foods. There’s no doubt that eating that Big Mac (31% of the suggested daily intake of sodium) or even a Lean Cuisine (often 14% to 29% of the daily intake) is going to up your salt consumption. But let me tell you, eating out ain’t gonna help much either.

If there’s one thing that novice cooks fail at, it’s seasoning food correctly. When I first started at the restaurant, I was constantly being told to season more aggressively. In fact, some dishes I’d have to season every component; in the lobster appetizer I’d have to season the cheese, the tomatoes, the pickled eggplant, the lobster, and then finish with sea salt.

And every restaurant uses salt liberally. You have to. If you want to properly sweat out aromatics for a soup, you don’t want to have to keep stirring. Just throw in some salt to draw out the water and prevent carmelization. This also concentrates the flavor of whatever you’re cooking. And salt to finish is used primarily for texture—sea salt is crunchy.

Just something to think about next time you’re turning your nose up at McDonald’s and eating out at a nice restaurant.

Brief starfucking

We have a number of celebs and VIPs come through the kitchen, and with the exception of two reviewers, it's never really caused a stir in the kitchen.

The other night, though, we were visited by Beyonce and Jay-Z. I won't say it caused a commotion, but for the first time cooks were trying to peer out the small porthole in our door to sneak a peak. Turns out Beyonce likes to play with her food (the crab dish comes off my station). She also wrote "WOW" with the remainder of her risotto, and created a smiley face with the leftover chocolate tuille from her gianduja.

The beginning is the end is the beginning is the end

It’s been a while, but for the last few months I’ve been going through a bit of a crisis: do I really want to do this?

There have been days where I’ve been elated to work at what is one of the best restaurants in New York. There are days when I am envious of “normal people” and their ability to enjoy weekends and daylight, rather than spending their time indoors.

And then there are days where I’m terribly depressed at how shitty a cook I can be (a fact that is sometimes verbalized by my peers, although not so directly). But mostly there is a monotonous repetition that I’ve settled into at Marea, which has numbed me to a lot of my angst.

My usual day consists of arriving just before or during the lunch rush, and hitting the ground running with the massive prep list. Often that means picking through crab (very tedious, as the peekytoe meat we get is riddled with opaque, celophane-like shells); killing and cooking upwards of twenty lobsters; cleaning said lobster shells for soup/stock and portioning the meat; making the Granny apple gelee for the crab; making the salmoriglio sauce and salsa verde; candying fennel; butchering hamachi and rolling into roulades using our “meat glue” active; making chive and basil oils; and too many other tasks to list.

Some of these duties are kind of relaxing. For example, I enter a state of zen while slicing paper-thin sheets of lardo for our sea urchin crostini appetizer. Other jobs are very laborious, like the salsa verde, which is essentially gremolata. It involves washing and fine-dicing seven bunches of parsley, as well as tarragon, basil and mint, then making a paste out of lemon zest and garlic, mixing that with anchovy paste, and combining it all with olive oil. A lot of prep for something that is doled out on the side with our whole fish.

And it all begins anew the next day.

Repetition has helped hone some of my knife skills, though I am still far from good. It has also helped improve my plating so that I can get out almost every dish on my station well under a minute (the sea urchin crostini takes time, but toasting bread can only be done so quickly). But it also causes boredom. There are only so many times you can wash lettuce before you get bored. Fortunately, dirty joking with the Latinos in the prep kitchen and mariachi music gets me through those times.

The other plus is that we change our dishes every month or so, which means I get to watch as the chefs dabble (some of them have come from molecular havens such as wd-50 and Eleven Madison Park, which is why we sometimes incorporate chemical cooking into our routine). And I also get to pick up new techniques, also a plus.

After all the soul-searching I’ve done, I am back firmly routed to my “gunna be a chef” path. That may still change—I am debating with wifey a six-month trip abroad to work in a foreign kitchen, either Italy or Asia, and I’m still thinking about corporate cheffing or food writing eventually if and when I want to have kids—but for now, I’m going to stick it out.

There will surely be ups and downs in my career, and I’m now more than ever convinced the culinary lifestyle is a breeding ground for alcoholism, sex addiction, drug abuse and mental instability. I’m sure I can come out the other side without having to worry about those things, but hopefully I also come out with a greater appreciation of food, rather get burned out by the repetition of simple tasks.

The NYTimes review

It's official: Three stars.

The gray lady's new reviewer, Sam Sifton, has granted Marea three stars in today's paper. Two of the dishes I prepare were mentioned: the lobster salad and the ricci with lardo. We actually were given copies of the review late last night in the kitchen, which prompted a BBQ party in the crudo bar after service (some dawdling diners had to put up with we rapscallion cooks invading their civilized personal space).

So what does three stars mean? It means the cooks are proud of their work, but have a bit of a chip on their collective shoulder regarding not getting four stars. However, getting four stars might have driven some business away, whereas three stars means we'll probably be swamped with reservations for a while.

More importantly, those three stars make some of the harder days working at the restaurant all worthwhile. And the timing couldn't have been better: this week I officially end my externship and receive my first paycheck. I, like Marea, am now a somewhat legit part of the culinary world.

Living the vida malsana

You know, this is a bad life, right?”

These were the words of encouragement given to me by a fellow cook at the restaurant this week following a particularly hectic service. I was initially puzzled—I mean, we get to work in an exciting atmosphere, occasionally sample great food—but I caught on quickly to what he meant.

Cooks live miserable lives and are distracted from their misery only through the grace of alcohol, drugs, sex or other vices. I learn this every night when, after service and during the laborious clean-up, I dream only of one thing: a frosty Budweiser from the family walk-in fridge (we always keep several cases on hand). Marie Antoinette should have told the masses to drink Bud instead of eating cake. Believe me, it calms your anger.

The unhealthiness doesn’t end at post-service substance abuse. The job itself is unhealthy. You work long hours on your feet, sometimes lugging back-breaking amounts of food up and down stairs, with little nourishment and sometimes less fresh water. Dehydration is a necessity for a good night’s work, it seems; if my piss isn’t a bright yellow when I stumble home, I know I’ve had too much time to drink water during service.

If you work the grill station, you’re likely to have burned-out forearms that look as though they are inflicted with some kind of skin disease. If you work prep, sharp knives are your best and worst enemies (mine happens to be the French mandolin, however). If you work the fry station, you could get splattering oil on you at any time. Pasta seems a relatively safe haven (maybe I should reconsider my previous comments), but I’m sure they have their own hazards.

Hell, even getting ice for the oyster station this week proved a hazard for me. The hinge on the ice machine apparently had broken earlier in the day, and when I opened it the door crashed back down against the bridge of my nose.

But despite that my hands now look like an old leper’s, despite that I see my wife maybe one night a week, despite that I usually eat a sandwich or leftovers at 1 a.m. for dinner, despite that I find myself licking my lips when I pass a liquor store, I’m still enamored with the profession. For now, anyway.

Keeping the home fires burning

“Do you still cook at home, or do you get sick of it?”

I hear this frequently when I tell people I’m now working at a restaurant about 70 hours a week. I guess it’s like the old saw about the ice cream clerk despising ice cream because he’s around it all the time. For the record, I’d never, ever get sick of ice cream.

And I’m not sick of cooking at home. Granted, I have less time to do it, but it’s still incredibly satisfying to whip up a new meal for wifey and have her critique it. Or to put together a three-course menu for some friends or family.

Last weekend I had the inlaws over for their first meal at my Jersey City table. I think it was pretty good. They’re Italian, so I kept with the Roman theme. For cocktails I made homemade bellinis, courtesy of the Venicians, and served that age-old antipasto of thinly sliced cucumber, cantoloupe balls and prosciutto with a little fresh basil oil.

Then I moved onto a grilled calamari salad with haricot verts (okay, I’ll cut the bullshit; green beans), asparagus strips, fried capers and a white balsamic citronette.

Next came an attempt to reconstruct an item from the restaurant’s menu: an acorn squash soup. I steeped a lobster in boiling water to cook the meat, and sautéed the shells briefly to begin a lobster stock. The stock cooked for a few hours on low heat ‘till it was crazy flavorful. Then I strained it and added to a puree of acorn squash and a little cream. The golden delicious liquid was then poured over sautéed porcini mushrooms, acorn squash cubes, and thinly sliced lobster tail to make the soup.

The entrée was pretty simple: sautéed lemon sole with green-onion-and-ginger oil, and an eggplant coulis. Then store-bought Italian butter cookies (got lazy, as I often do, when it comes to dessert).

By the end of the meal, I realized I had killed about half of one of my now-precious days off cooking, but it was worth it. Unlike some chefs out there, I’m not one of these guys who thinks about food and cooking all the time, but I do like to think about it outside of work. As a cook, you don’t really have to bring work home with you, but it’s nice to practice in your lair and keep the home fires burning.

On tilt

In poker, even the best players sometimes experience what is known as “going on tilt,” becoming frustrated by previous bad beats or stupid bets. What follows is more stupid bets, poor plays, and inevitable downward spiral of anger. A good way to avoid going “on tilt” is to remain detached and unemotional by each hand.

The same could be said about working the line in a kitchen. During my first full week of working the garde manger line at Marea, pulling 14-hour shifts, I went on tilt. Wednesday we had a particularly busy lunch crowd—Mario Battali decided to stroll in with several friends, a party of 12 that ordered a tasting menu, etc. We also expected a large dinner crowd, so our prep list was hefty.

All the pressure, including having Chef Michael White watching as we prepped oysters for Battali’s party, flustered me and caused my downward spiral of mistakes.

Within the space of an hour I managed to:
-- Cut my ring finger on the mandolin during prep.
-- Screw up shucking about 10 oysters, forcing me to throw all of them out in front of a disappointed chef.
-- Forget to add all the components to the lobster salad, forcing it to come back for a replate.
-- Drop an “on the fly” mackerel tart (i.e., an order that needed to be done right away). -- Drop the replacement mackerel tart, causing the other line cooks to relegate me to slicing garlic for a sauce the grill station needed.
-- Slice open my index finger mincing said garlic.
-- Spill mignonette near the oyster station.

In retrospect, I’m glad this happened. It helped me to realize that to work the line I need to remain calm, even when the world ends. After that day’s dinner service I apologized to my fellow GM line cook, and he told me that “everybody screws up here at least once a day. It happens.”

The next day one of our sous chefs dropped a whole batch of pork jus on our station right before lunch service. He screwed up. It happened. He cleaned up the mess and got back to work. People noticed and commented on the screw-up, but twenty minutes later nobody could have cared less.

And so it begins...

I am not yet a chef, but I am now officially a cook. As a graduate of culinary school, I consider myself ready to be a professional cook. And I am indeed “working” at a restaurant as such, though for no money. Until the cash arrives, the cook title is unofficial, but I can still throw my new titular heft around.

My graduation—a grand buffet in which every student in our class of 15 had to prepare one or two appetizers or desserts—was a blast. Most of the dishes were very good, and I think I held up nicely with my peers. I put together an “Italian-style” ceviche of grilled octopus. It included the regular additives of lemon and lime juice, but also included grape tomatoes, finely diced fennel (and fennel fronds for garnish), garlic zest, red onion, Italian sweet pepper, blood orange puree and oregano.

I’m a huge fan of ceviches, both because they’re easy and usually delicious, and I think this one went over well. I was denied my original intention to use baby octopus and garnish with lemon balm. Oh well.

The second dish was a beef cheek ravioli with a spicy marinara dipping sauce. While the ceviche took very little time to produce, this was a long-term dish. I had to start the beef cheek braise the day before (braising in demi-glace, orange zest, mirepoix, nutmeg, tomato paste and garlic). On the second day I strained the liquid (saving a bit for my dipping sauce), pureed the meet with some ricotta, parsley, more orange zest, balsamic vinegar and basil oil. The mixture resembled cooked brains, all gray and gushy, but they were all goodness and flavor.

I then rolled my own pasta for the ravioli. And therein lay my main problem, one that always seems to plague me: I underestimated how much dough I needed. So I had to rush to pump out some additional dough as the clock ticked away, chewing my fingernails as I waited for the dough to rest in the fridge.

Theoretically I could have gone ahead with my original plan, to bread and fry the ravioli, but I deep-sixed that and simply froze and boiled the pasta. The result worked fairly well, though my pasta was a tad too thick for some refined tastes, and the presentation was a little awkward. Basically I jammed one ravioli each in a small dipping cup, and then drizzled a little dipping sauce on top. Again, it was tasty but strange to eat at a standing cocktail party.

At the end of the night, which is another way to say the end of eating and beginning of drinking, we got our chefs hats (mine broke when they tried to put it on my giant melon head), a copy of Larousse Gastromique, and a pat on the back.

And so I go into the world of cooking for real. School’s out, time to get working. Time to get cooking. Time to make money doing so.

Do the right thing: eat less fish

It’s such a hassle to do the right thing. You may say you’re going to be a strict locavore, for example, and eat food that is grown only within a 30-mile radius from your home; chances are you’re going to slip and eventually eat something that was shipped from elsewhere in the United States or abroad.

When it comes to fish, my favorite protein, doing the right thing can be especially difficult. Consider the tuna, which is now overfished (but may soon receive some protection). It was apparently considered a “garbage fish” among the Japanese for sushi purposes until very recently. Now, however, tuna is sold for tens of thousands of dollars at Hunt’s Point and the Tsukiji fish markets.

Consider, also, salmon. To eat wild salmon from anywhere except Alaska is an ecological no-no. But locavores and other hippies say that farmed salmon is also a no-no because it is fed high levels of corn. Such fish are often white, and then “tinted” pink with food coloring to make it more appealing to Joe Consumer.

Many fish restaurants need to included endangered fish species to attract customers, though some, like Le Bernardin, do the right thing and keep threatened fish like monkfish and blue fin tuna off their menus. Other restaurants may be doing the right thing unintentionally by switching crappy fish for endangered species that are in high demand, or so says this researcher. Think the Komodo Dragon scam the Marlon Brando flick, “The Freshman."

One great resource to figure out which fish are okay to eat and which aren’t is the Environmental Defense Fund’s Oceans Alive site, which tracks fish populations. Check it out, and try to pass on Chilean sea bass next time in favor of some Artic char next time you have a chance.

What is love?

In cooking, you can be technically proficient—even masterful—and yet still produce a failed meal. You also can be sloppy in your knife skills and presentation, and yet create a wonderful, rustic dish. The cliché is that the difference between a good and mediocre chef, or dish, is that love is obvious in one and absent in the other.

Since embarking on my culinary adventure, I’ve grown exceedingly tired of hearing “you need to cook this with love” or “this dish is missing love” or some other variation. If some of the best sonnets are unable to truly define the romantic idea of love, so what hope does some stupid hunk of charred animal carcass or sautéed vegetable have of conveying the culinary version? I thought using the word love to describe cooking was silly.

Until recently.

To graduate, I’m required to complete a short internship at a restaurant. I’ve chosen Marea, a new Michael White restaurant in Columbus Circle that specializes in fish. It has a crudo bar, some amazing Southern Italian creations and is gunning for the coveted four stars from the New York Times. It’s even rumored that my former man-crush Eric Ripert of Le Bernardin has eaten there, telling the kitchen that he’d have to “fire up my own staff” to match some of the dishes at Marea.

Since working at Marea, I’ve helped manage the garde manger station, prepping and plating appetizers, soups and salads, as well as shucking oysters. I’ve seen the love there. Whenever I try to finish something quickly and it is not perfect-looking or tasting, I’m chastised with a “soignée!” from the line cook. Which is French for “make it look elegant, you buffoon! Make it taste awesome, jackass!”

I’ve seen the love elsewhere, as well.

In class today, we cooked some of Thomas Keller’s meals (the end portion of the curriculum focuses partly on “cuisine from great chefs”). This is the guy who created the French Laundry in NoCal and Per Se in Manhattan. A god amongst men, in other words.

And I think after reading his recipes (truffle custards), cooking some of his food (butter-poached lobster) and eating more of it (vine-ripe tomato sorbet), I have an idea of what love means, at least in the culinary sense and within the boundaries of my own sensibilities.

Culinary love is when a chef spends an inordinate amount of time and effort to create something seemingly insignificant with food, but which yields an enormous amount of flavor, complex taste and beauty. It is taking hours to create something that initially makes people say “all that for this?” and then converts them merely to guttural mumbles and groans and belches. Something that gives someone, so to speak, a culinary boner.

But perhaps the biggest difference between food that is cooked with love and that which is cooked without is the attitude of the chef. If the chef is constantly excited and challenged by food, attempting to extract and enhance every bit of flavor and then discover yet more, then he or she loves food. If the chef sees food as too many of us often do, a comforting, familiar, boring piece of sustenance, then love is absent, and often a cut-rate lust replaces it.

I like to say that I love food, and love cooking. Hopefully this is a long-term marriage rather than a cheap, lustful dalliance.

The last temptation of the culinary chef

This week I finished up my penultimate module in school: pastry. My professor began the module stating he would attempt to convert some of us “bone roasters” away from the culinary world and into the strange world of pastry.

I admit I was somewhat curious about whether I would be better off pursuing a life of pastry. I enjoy reading Michael Laiskonis’ blog, where he often goes on tangents unrelated to the pastry menu at Le Bernardin. I’m also much longer in the (sweet) tooth than I was a few years ago, though I try not to indulge too often for fear of diabetes. And there’s something immensely therapeutic in taking a rolling pin and smashing a pate brisee as hard as you can.

Ultimately, though, the culinary side is just much more exciting, and everybody who comes into a restaurant eats your food. Not everybody who comes in will order dessert. Further, pastry cooks often spend the evening service plating very simple dishes, most of which are very nearly completed. The main reason I want to remain in the culinary world, however, is that line cooks and chefs seem to get more respect than pastry chefs.

In many kitchens (at least, that I’ve seen), pastry chefs are considered the rival gang to the culinary “bone roasters.” There’s a constant playful banter in chefs de cuisine mocking the easy-going approach that many pastry chefs have, the fact that they occupy less space but also less responsibility, and need to adapt their menus to fit the “real” menu, the one for dinner.

Still, pastry was a fun experience, if for no other reason than to learn how to make bread and pizza dough, as well as to properly craft a truffle.

I’ve taken stabs at making truffles countless times, and the results have ranged from passable to awful to tastily sloppy turd-looking treats. Maybe it’s because I usually put way too much alcohol in my truffles. Or maybe it’s because I’ve never used tempered chocolate to enrobe my little turds. So, in the interest of helping others avoid turding their truffles, here’s the modified recipe from school.

Chocolate truffles
4 oz. cream
4 oz. milk
3 oz. orange-flavored syrup
12 oz. semisweet chocolate
4 oz. dark chocolate
1 oz. butter
2 oz. Cognac

To make the orange syrup, simply boil 3 oz. of water, 3 oz. of sugar, and about a tablespoon of orange zest. Simmer it for maybe 20 minutes, then strain and cool slightly, but make sure it doesn’t get too gloppy.

Bring to boil the cream, milk and syrup, stirring to incorporate, then cool down to 90 degrees (or slightly warm). Separately, melt the chocolates and cool them to roughly the same temperature. Whisk the cream into the chocolate, then whisk in the Cognac and butter, making sure it is smooth. Spread out the “ganache” onto a cold granite slap, or else a metal sheet pan (I like to put down wax paper first). Refrigerate for about 30 minutes, then pipe out the truffles or roll them with your hand (you may want to cool the ganache further if using your hands, as it can get sloppy). Chill the truffles again briefly to set.

To enrobe, coat the truffles with tempered chocolate. To make tempered chocolate, melt chocolate to about 115 degrees (it should be uncomfortably hot), then cool down to 85 degrees, then rewarm for a minute or so to no more than 90 degrees. After enrobing in tempered chocolate, roll them in a mixture of cocoa powder and confectioner’s sugar. Dust off excess and chill.

West meets East

Ah, the chow of the Orient. Or, as it is called by the politically correct, Asian food. I’ve always loved it, though I’ve been terrified to cook it. I mean, who the hell knows really how to deal with lemongrass and ginger, right?

I’m not talking about God-awful General Tso’s chicken, which is sometimes passable but usually downright greasy. I’m talking about amazing Chinese noodles, hearty dumplings, and highly seasoned pad thai. I’m talking about grabbing takoyaki (fried wheat-octopus balls), which fellow Chef Arthur introduced me to in the East Village. I’m talking about using ample amounts of fish sauce, which is my new best friend. I’m talking about sushi-grade fish, baby.

Well, now thanks to some exposure to these culinary delights at school, I’m no longer terrified to dabble in Asian cuisine. In fact, most Asian food is fairly simple. It usually involves cooking with oil or ghee (over-clarified butter that has turned slightly brown and smells nutty), as well as curry pastes made from freshly toasted and ground seeds. Vegetables are thinly sliced for fast wok cooking, and proteins are red cooked (quickly cooked to “brown” the outside, then reserved, then added back in once everything else in the wok has cooked). Result: some of the most flavorful food ever. It’s no secret that fusion cuisine began with melding Asian and other regional cooking flavors.

My loins fortified by this new knowledge, two weeks ago I cooked up a flavorful Thai shrimp-and-snow-pea stir fry for wifey (it looks like Doc Holliday’s vomit, but it tasted awesome, due to the ample coconut milk and freshly made red curry paste). I also whipped up a few days later a nice chicken with plum sauce, which is about as easy as you can get. Here are the pics and the recipe:

Plum sauce

5 red plums, roughly chopped into 1 inch pieces
½ small white onion, medium dice
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 ½ piece of ginger, minced
1 tsp toasted coriander seeds, ground (you can simply smash them since they will get strained later)
1 dried chili, seeded and minced
½ piece of lemongrass, smashed and minced
½ cup Mirin (dry sherry works as well)
3 T brown sugar
1 tsp rice vinegar
2 T soy sauce
1 tsp cornstarch

Toss all the ingredients, except the plums, into a small sauce pot and bring to boil, then simmer for about 30 minutes. Add the plums and simmer for about another 30 to 45 minutes, until the liquid is deep red and the plums are very soft. Separately, mix the cornstarch with about an ounce of cold water. Add it gradually to the pot and stir to thicken the sauce.

Pass the sauce through a chinois or fine mesh strainer (or you can use women’s pantyhose, you weirdos). Drizzle over whatever you want; I sauteed some chicken breast and steamed bok choy, and garnished with a little orange zest, but fish would go great with it as well.

The Unassuming Chef

There are institutions, and then there are institutions.

When I trailed at Gramercy Tavern last month, I knew who Chef Michael Anthony was, I knew the reputation of the place, I knew what to expect of the food. Earlier this week I did an impromptu trail at Chanterelle, a French fusion place in SoHo. I had heard great things in terms of how they treat their employees, but—since they would not be able to take me on as an extern in September, due to renovations scheduled during that month—I didn’t bother to read up on the chef/owner, David Waltuck.

Laziness can make for some interesting introductions. I entered the restaurant via the service entrance during what would normally be the lunch rush (Chanterelle shuts down for lunch during the dog days of summer). Introduced myself, changed quickly into my chef whites and checks, and brought my knives into the kitchen, expecting plenty of prep work.

The genial, frumpy looking gent working next to my station immediately assigned me some very basic duties: lightly peeling asparagus, shelling fava beans and chick peas, mincing garlic and shallots. Possessing passive-aggressive social skills, I remained silent for twenty minutes and prepped like a robot. Then began to make chit-chat with the Chef Nice Guy.

“So, how long have you been a chef?” I asked.

“Oh gosh, about 30 years or so,” Nice Guy replied.

“Wow, you must have worked at a slew of amazing places, right?”

“A few, but I’ve been here a while.”

“Really, how long?”

“Uh….about 30 years or so. I own the place,” said Chef NG, slightly embarrassed.

In a business where head chefs usually have the crispest aprons, the loudest mouths, and seek out the most glamorous jobs, Chef Waltuk was a breath of fresh air in the typically stench-ridden kitchen. This guy has won a number of James Beard Awards, opened Chanterelle in the late 1970s to a glowing four-star review by The New York Times, and here he’s working at a small wooden table, doing menial tasks.

Despite the lack of glam, he still puts out one hell of a menu. The assortment of Japanese fish looked great, his sous chef’s preparation of duck smelled wonderful, and I loved the taste of his potato risotto with foie gras (they mince up the potato to resemble rice). Some of the presentations could have been touched up, perhaps, but I was still fairly impressed. Too bad I won’t be able to extern there, but I wouldn’t mind having my first culinary job in that kitchen, especially since all the cooks were easily the nicest bunch I’ve encountered since embarking down this road.

The stand-out for me—granted, I didn’t taste very many dishes, unfortunately—was the Steamed Zucchini blossom filled with a mouse of chicken, Madeira and black truffles. It looked bizarre, like some kind of exotic sea fruit, but the taste was pure French decadence.

The lesson learned: you don’t have to be a show-off, media-hungry goon like David Chang to put out amazing food in the restaurant food.

A rant against marketing: Why can’t wines be simple?

Bear with me on this one. First, a bit more about my pre-culinary life. I was a journalist, yes, but I also was forced to write some marketing copy at my first job. Perhaps “forced” is too strong a word, as I wasn’t exactly churning copy for Kim Jong Il. But it was a requirement, and I despised every minute of it.

The hippies got it wrong: money is not the root of all that is evil, marketing is. It’s essentially the legal form of lying, designed to get people to buy things they don’t need or that are of crappy quality. Snake oil salesmen were famous for it, cigarette companies perfected using marketing for evil in trying to hook kids on cancer, time-share salespeople are annoying experts at it, and Hitler was a master at it, using propaganda to blame everything on the Jews.

And winemakers do it, too.

Wine-producing countries are obsessed with classifying their wine in different ways, and all the different ways are seemingly designed to be as confusing as possible. Italians have myriad classifications, Germans ramble as only Germans can with their precise eno-definitions, and the French … well, the French are the French.

Now, winemakers are certainly better than greasy-moustachioed salesmen hawking swampland in Florida, but they still sometimes market one thing as another, and rename willy nilly to make a simple wine seem extravagant.

France – One of the granddaddies of wines, the Premier Cru, means something completely different in several regions. In Burgundy, it could mean a high level of wine quality from a single vineyard. However, if there is no vineyard name on the bottle, it could also mean a blend of wines from several vineyards. In the Bordeaux region, it is the highest within a separate classification of wines called the Grand Crus.

Italy – Ever one to be provincial, Italians seem stuck in the city-state mentality when it comes to wine. In the north, wines adopt Germanic labeling (i.e., they go on and on about which winemaker, the name of the owner, his zodiac sign, etc.). In the south, they go crazy and label wines pretty much however they like. Case in point, Chianti. Now, these wines should be simply from the Chianti region, but because in the early 1900s Chianti became a hot wine, the region was “expanded” to include wines from neighboring regions. Then, because the Italians were worried the Chianti name lost its cache, they renamed true Chianti as Chianti Classico. Got it?

Spain – The Spanish try to use a number of names to pump up the importance of their wines. They might call a basic Rioja an “Imperial” wine, or a sherry as an “Entity.” Very weird, and ultimately it says nothing about the quality of the wine, just the Kappaesque attitude of the winemaker.

United States of America – U.S. classifications are plain vanilla. A domestic wine may list the state in which it was bottled, the state in which the grapes were grown, the region, the winemaker or simply say a product of the United States of America. Caveat emptor.

Due to all the marketing mumbo jumbo, I end up sticking to a few regular wines. Failing that, I just pick up a bottle of whatever, drink it uncritically, and ramble on much like good ol’ Orson here. I suggest you just find a wine you like, stick with it, and do the same.

Fourth of July feast

They say that imitation is the best form of flattery. Screw imitation, I prefer out-and-out idea-theft. As in, I volunteered at the Fancy Food Show a couple of weeks ago, snagged a great gazpacho recipe from a top tapas restaurant, and passed it off on my own table for some friends on the Fourth of July.

Gazpacho, a Spanish soup made with tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and other vegetables, is easily one of my favorite soups (second only to that other cold soup, vichyssoise). To make it the “real” way, you are supposed to grind the vegetables using a mortar and pestle, and use soaked bread and olive oil to finish it. The authentic version is damned good, but I just use a blender and have dabbled with several variations over the years.

I once tried a habanero gazpacho, and forgot to wear gloves while handling the nuclear chilis. Result: some nasty burns near my eye when I scratched and itch there with my juice-covered hand. I made a pretty good watermelon gazpacho a few years ago that I should probably revisit. And now I have Mercat, an East Village tapas restaurant, to credit with a beet and strawberry gazpacho.

Beet and Strawberry Gazpacho
2 beets
8 strawberries, washed and sliced
3 tomatoes, peeled, seeded and chopped
2 cucumbers, peeled and chopped (plus some small dice for garnish)
½ carrot
1 red pepper, roasted and skin removed
3 celery stalks
1 white onion
Sherry or red wine vinegar
Extra virgin olive oil

Wash the beets, place in sauce pot, cover with cold water and bring to a boil, simmering until tender. Remove the beets when cool enough to handle, skin them and chop. Chop up the other vegetables. For the red pepper, put it over a burner on the stove to char the skin. Make sure it turns black all over, but take care that it doesn’t turn gray—a sign that you’ve potentially made the vegetable into a carcinogen.

Blend all the ingredients, with a dash of vinegar (the recipe calls for sherry but I cheaped out and used red wine) and a little olive oil. Season it if necessary. I thought the mixture was a little thick, so I put it through the fine-mesh strainer (or chinoise) and use a ladle to push out the liquid. Then I returned about ½ of the remaining pulp to the liquid and gave it a quick stir.

Refrigerate the mixture, and serve cold, with some croutons, small diced cucumber and thinly sliced strawberry. Drink copious amounts of beer and sit outside to enjoy sun.

Trailing triple play: Dovetail, Gramercy Tavern and Cru

It’s been a busy week for the Aspiring Chef. Worked on Sunday and today at the Fancy Food Show, helping at the Spanish section’s demonstrations of Serrano ham carving, tapas preparation and olive oil tasting. I had some friends over on Saturday for a dinner party, during which I braised some short ribs (good stuff), made a sweetbread marmalade (turned out mediocre, in my opinion) and an ugly but tasty pistachio cake.

And I did three days at three different restaurants: Cru, Dovetail and Gramercy Tavern.

Overall, I liked Dovetail the best, though both it and Cru were somewhat slow in terms of patrons. Dovetail had a lot of interesting food, and apparently is known for its sherry selection. But while I came for the work (manning the amuse bouche station, an inglorious job of plating three mini-apps and fresh cornbread), I stayed for the food. The roasted sirloin with beef cheek lasagna was particularly tasty, as was the brioche bread pudding with bananas, bacon brittle and rum ice cream.

I had less luck at Gramercy Tavern on the work side—for legal reasons, they don’t allow first-time trails to do anything but stand, watch and taste—but I was fed quite well. Stuffed, even. Gramercy is a legendary staple in New York, and while their look is a little dated, their food was pretty good. I was told that one of the signature dishes of executive chef Michael Anthony is the smoked trout with cippollini puree and pickled onion vinaigrette. It was easily my favorite. Some of the other dishes were a little boring, but I picked up some cool presentation tips (more on that later).

Finally, Cru, a West Village restaurant that some have said is on the skids. I had the pleasure of working with outgoing chef Shea Gallante, who is now going to work for David Bouley. A lot of folks had credited Chef Shea with the prior success and accolades at Cru, but sous chef Scott Riesenberger (who also worked at Gilt) definitely seems like a great chef, too.

But enough name-dropping BS. The food at Cru was as good as Dovetail, I thought, even though they did significantly less business. But I was most impressed by the plating (which was very beautiful). One plate, for example, was sauced to look like a flower, with stems, leaves and budding “blossoms” of scallop.

Each of these restaurants taught me a thing or two about plating and presentation, some of which I’ve also been taught in school. Here are a few tips: that might be transferable to home cooking:
-- The most heavily used utensil is not a pair of tongs, a fish spatula or some fancy Asian tweezers. It’s a saucing spoon. I’ve seen chefs use it to baste fish, flip all types of protein, transfer everything to plates, taste, etc. Frankly, I think most line cooks seem born with a saucing spoon in one hand and a folded up rag in the other to hold hot dishes and sauté pans.
-- Never put an even-numbered series of items on a plate. Always go with an odd-numbered amount.
-- Height on a plate is very important. At Cru, for example, they twist a lemon confit-like appareil so that it blooms upwards. Microgreens are constantly bunched together like ‘70s afros. And meats should lean against sturdy lesser ingredients so they look like collapsing buildings.

Pinkies out

No food discussion this time, but rather one about fermented grapes. Now I’m legally bound to state that I’m a beer man, not a wine aficionado, but I’m glad that I get six free wine appreciation classes as part of my tuition. That’s because I know virtually nothing about wine, except I can tell halfway decent wine from bile.

Oh sure, I knew a little about tannins, the element in wine grapes that imparts a bitter, astringent aftertaste. I knew how to to swirl and sniff a wine, even though I managed to accidentally snort some wine during the class. But precious little else.

A good chef should know about wine pairings, even if he or she prefers the true nectar of the gods, beer. A good chef probably should know that every state in the Union now houses its own wineries, not just New York and California. And a good chef might want to know how to determine an older wine from a fresher wine.

Here are a few tips I learned in our class for what to look for in a wine. The class was mainly an introduction to wine basics, and we tasted mainly whites and sparkling wines, so some of these “rules of thumb” probably don’t apply to other reds.

Color. You can usually determine a white’s age by its color, by holding the wine glass at an angle and looking with a white background. They typically progress from greenish-tinged to yellow to gold and finally to brown. The younger the white, the more likely it is to have a fruity fresh taste. For champagne, older vintages should be easier to uncork, because the pressure of the bubbles forces the cork into a more cylindrical shape, rather than tapering off inside the bottle.

Smell. If you smell an oak-like scent, it’s most likely been aged a while. Again, younger wines will smell more fruity and acidic.

Taste. This all depends, but older wines traditionally have more “complex” flavor. There are several definitions to what a complex wine constitutes, but the one I’ll use is that when you swish it around, it has a beginning, middle and end to its flavor. It can start out tasting like apples, then seem a little oaklike in flavor, and then finish with a little bitterness. Or it could taste like several citrus fruits blended together. Or it could taste like fancy vinegar. Taste is more in the eye of the beholder than beauty when it comes to wine.

Gone nerding: Another trail in the (vacuum) bag

Last week I worked a two-day shift at Aldea, a “modern Iberian” restaurant in the Flatiron district run by George Mendes. I think it’s more modern and less Iberian, and while I took a day to warm up to it, I think the food is still pretty amazing.

I think I’ll always remember Aldea because it was my first foray into the world of nerd cooking. Or, more properly, molecular gastronomy, which merges mad science with classic culinary technique. Ferran Adria of el bulli fame is the godfather of the movement, but others like Wylie Dufresne and now Mendes have taken it and run apace.

The two molecular gastronomy techniques I saw firsthand at Aldea were sous vide, which is taking the process of vacuum-sealing food and cooking it in low-temp water, and spherification, which is basically the process of making everything into a water balloon.

First, sous vides. I was told by a line cook there that if they could, they’d sous vide everything on the menu. I must admit the vacuum bag machine was cool, and I’ve been told sous vide meat tastes pretty good (I didn’t taste any at Aldea). There are drawbacks to trying this at home, though, including massive amounts of botulism bacteria.

The second process is no easier for the home cook, but it is safer. It involves using chemical or natural emulsifiers like sodium alginate (seaweed and other stuff) or calcium chloride to “poach” a liquid, creating a thin skin around it. The result is a liquid that pops in your mouth when eaten like a rotten grape. Ok, it’s much better than it sounds.

At Aldea, they use this method to create little mushroom ravioli for a consommé dish. The flavor was okay if you like mushroom stock, and I didn’t taste it with the rest of the dish’s ingredients, but the texture was incredibly interesting and worth trying out. If I had an ample supply of sodium alginate handy, that is.

The best thing about the experience at Aldea is that it’s an open kitchen. So when I was sweating like a pig and had my dirty side towel at the ready, it was for all to see. A photographer from the Village Voice even came in before service on the second day to take some shots.

Good thing I wore my best chef’s coat and not the one I stained pink in the laundry a few weeks back.