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.

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.

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.