What Kind of Cuisine Chooses You?

I realize that because this blog discusses two very different topics that I have two different audiences. I think it's funny that a lot of people enjoy either the ultimate or the culinary related posts, and even funnier still that there are a few who like and relate to both. Anyway, my point is I will generally try to alternate between the two and try to keep the ultimate posts as user-friendly as possible, because I know that most people have no idea what we're talking about.

So yesterday, Thursday, I had a brief interview with Chef Jeff Muldrow of Va Pensiero in Evanston. Some of you have eaten there and told me wonderful things. I finally got my chance to eat there during graduation week, and though I was kind of drunk off expensive hooch, I also really loved the food. The restaurant has received great acclaim in the latest edition of Zagat (26/24/25) and was high on the list of places in the "Worth A Trip" category. Chef Muldrow is giving me a tryout on Wednesday (yes, cooks have tryouts ... my life is just one big tryout apparently) and then we'll see where it goes from there. But I'm hoping that this will be a very educational and helpful internship, that perhaps could turn into a paying job somewhere down the road.

Chef Muldrow gave me further encouragement in that I come "highly recommended" from Oceanique, and he was very supportive of me wanting to get more experience before going to culinary school. I was concerned that going to the Culinary Institute of America with my current level of experience would not have been such a great choice. I didn't want to start my career and feel like I was behind or struggling to keep up. Maybe you've never thought of it this way, but you have a decade of schooling under your belt before you head off to college. And though you do largely learn the most about yourself and develop your most crucial skills in college, that base layer is there for you so that you aren't thrown into the deep end. So that's the way I see it with culinary school. Diving right in seemed like a risky move because I was and am so eager to start my career. I remember when I first discovered I wanted to be a chef, that I was seriously considering just dropping Northwestern and going right in to it. Another year at Northwestern turned out to be crucial to my development as a person, and I feel that more kitchen experience will do wonders as well. So here we go, into the unfamiliar world of fine Italian cuisine.

But I was and still am fascinated with French cuisine. It cannot be denied what the French have done for food. Very few cultures have elevated food to such a high level of study and refinement. It was in France that the idea of the restaurant was created, where a la carte ordering was invented. The classique kitchen brigade, the fundamental techniques of French cooking have spread throughout cuisines around the world. Truly, food would not be what it is without the innovations those damned Frenchies have made.

So naturally, I always thought I wanted to go into French cuisine (though what that is today, is hard to categorize exactly). Daniel Boulud advises in his "Letters to a Young Chef" that you must choose a cuisine in which you are deeply knowledgable and passionate about. So what is French cooking now? Well since nearly every high-end American or European cuisine uses French techniques, it's hard to pinpoint the roots. I mean, a cuisine is a representation of a culture, essentially a geographic location. Where people lived, what food was available to them because of the climate, natural resources and biology effectively defined them as a people, as a culture. No one thinks of it that way anymore because you can have tomatoes whenever you want, not just in the summer, you can have cherries grown in Chile while it's still freezing balls in the Northern hemisphere. And because French cooking has now enveloped so many ingredients and foods that are not inherently French, it really is hard to figure that out.

I think that the same is not necessarily true of Italian cuisine. Yes, modern Italian cuisine encompasses ingredients and some techniques that are not originally Italian. But the food is still of Italian flavors. Whenever people think of French flavors it's hard to exactly figure that out, I think of a lot of red wine and cream. When I think of Italian flavors I of course think of tomatoes, olive oil, sharp cow's milk cheeses, balsamic vinegar, basil, etc. Italian food just seems so much easier to categorize.

So what's my point? I'm not totally sure haha ... I think I'm trying to say that I'm about to be hit with some knowledge, and that I'm excited for it. Through all my personal studying of the culinary arts, I have in reality been studying the French culinary arts. When I worked at Oceanique, Chef Grosz was very much of the French school of cooking. He modifies this dish constantly, but here's a picture of his Steamed Maine Lobster with Tropea Onion, Sweet Corn, and Purple Basil.



And what I made constantly; an amuse bouche of salmon ceviche, wrapped in leek, served with curry-carrot essence, basil oil, radish, purple seaweed, shallot and fried beet.

What am I about to learn at Va Pensiero? I get the distinct feeling I'll be reintroduced to my old friend, the broom, for a while and then relearn the absolutely enthralling art of cutting onions and garlic. Then maybe I'll finally learn how real Italians cook pasta.

Sorry if this post was kinda helter-skelter. Hope you all are doing well. Sandblast 2009 this weekend! Perhaps one of my last ultimate tournaments for a while. And it had to be beach ultimate, damn. I suck at beach ultimate.

EP #6