As I sit on my swiss-ball-turned-desk-chair facing my bookshelf-turned-desk listening to my kind-of-gay-but-fantastic track of "Total Eclipse of the Heart" by Bonnie Tyler I wonder what the future holds for me. In the words of Thomas Keller, this "may be the most exciting time ever to be a cook and a chef in America." Things are moving really fast and I've been taking time to recenter myself lately and the obvious question arises; What next?
The current plan is to work at Va Pensiero through Northwestern graduation, which would make my total time there amount to about a year. So many chefs suggest staying at a place for at least a year because that is the minimum amount of time required to pay back the restaurant's investment in you. When you get hired as a cook, especially when you're a rookie cook like myself, you need to be trained, to be taught, to be fed, and after 5-6 months you start becoming an efficient part of the team. You hopefully become someone who is dependable and skillful enough to contribute to the restaurant, to execute the restaurant's vision. So for the risk and time that my Chef has taken upon me, I think I owe him at the very least a year. Young cooks are moving faster these days, too fast as many will complain. They will stay 5 months, learn everything they can and move on. Old school chefs might have stayed 1.5-2 years, but I think there simply isn't time for that anymore in this day and age. One year strikes a balance I can work with.
And then I will take a hiatus to learn some things before culinary school, chill out, play ultimate and enjoy the Chicago summer. I think the most important things I could learn are better knife skills, prep efficiency and the process of 4-star standards. I'd like to take an internship at a butcher shop and get better at taking apart animals. I'd like to know what it's like to prep in a restaurant consistently doing a 150+ covers a day while maintaining 4-star standards. That requires not only efficient prep but perfect prep, and to combine those is a difficult skill to learn. Those are things I could take with me to school so that I have an easier time showing those bitches whats up.
Ah but there comes the dangerous pitfall. Arrogance. It doesn't seem to serve any purpose in my opinion, other than to ameliorate the symptoms of insecurity. But that can be solved with just plain ole' confidence. Confidence is the key, and it takes years to develop, every stage leading up to that one being as awkward as puberty. Arrogance doesn't get you anywhere in the cooking world because you will immediately be put in your place. There is someone always doing it better than you are. Usually.
The industry is growing at an alarming rate. I've mentioned this before, but this generation of young adults, more than any other, are discovering cooking as a viable profession. It is gaining considerable respect and it's a good alternative for those shunning office jobs or dealing with a personal existential crisis. Good food is becoming more and more important as the onset of America's obesity epidemic threatens to close its fist. Being a cook, a chef, a restaurateur seems like a potential path to celebrity (those with those intentions in mind are in for an unpleasant surprise though). The food world is no longer something you were forced in to and couldn't get out of. It's a respectable and decent career choice.
And for that very reason the competition is going to be ferocious. This is good for diners, foodies and people all over America. You'll be getting the best of the best. But this is difficult for all those hopeful chefs. It is going to be a a more crowded pond to survive in. You could give it your all, be exceptionally creative and talented and things just might not work out. You could fail even though you have not failed yourself. That's the nature of the business. You have to accept a few ignorant bastards on yelp.com could ruin your business because your waiter had a bad day. You have to accept that there's a hip new restaurant with models-serving-food drawing all your clientele down the street. You have to accept that to survive is to do so unconditionally, regardless of circumstances.
So there are many of me out there. Young, energetic, somewhat sharp of mind and ambitious cooks who are seeking glory out there in the dining halls. There are many who have had infinite more experience than me, have that Midas touch where all food turns delicious under their hands, or have had better training than me. I don't know what to expect when I get to culinary school, I will only expect to humbled. If I find out otherwise I will be pleasantly surprised, but I have to prepare for the fact that there are talented people out there ready to push me out of the way if I can't keep up.
All I've ever known of cooks have been Mexican cooks. Indefatigable, persistent survivors who used the colorblindness of the kitchen to succeed in this country. My sous chef Chuy doesn't know why force-feeding ducks makes foie gras taste so good (force feeding carbohydrates causes them to be broken down and accumulated as natural sugars and fat in an engorged liver... kind of like what most of Americans do to themselves), but he sure as hell knows how to saute it to crisp perfection in the shortest time possible. They are efficient cooks and even if they lack the "passion" or language skills to deeply pursue culinary knowledge, they know how to get shit done.
So I'm curious what kind of cooks I will encounter out there. These young American cooks who combine great passion with encyclopedic knowledge and proficient technique. I kind of fear them, but that's the kind of cook I think I can be. If I just have more time and I focus better on my training. I tell myself every week that I have to do better than the last. More uniform dices, cleaner plates, more efficient motions ... you have to tell yourself as a cook that there is no such thing as convenience, you have to do it the hard way because that makes things taste better.
I'm nervous now much like the way I used to be on the ultimate field. I would withdraw, be fearful, nervous of doing anything out of my limited comfort zone, not have fun. But I am comfortable now to be myself out there, to be bold and do things out of faith rather than knowing. Can I reach this point in cooking? My brain tells me certainly, my heart tells me maybe. There's still so much I don't know.
But the nice thing about being a cook is that there are always a few ways to gauge your progress. Your chef, if they are a good chef, will be riding your ass in to the ground. The less they bitch, the better you are doing. The chef used to taste every single pasta dish I put out as quality control. He no longer does that. There is no such thing as soaring praise in professional kitchens, it is just the absence of criticism you must take comfort in. And then there are your customers. Capricious, difficult and endowed with a sense of entitlement bordering on blue-blooded obnoxiousness, they will give you a very real calibration of how you are doing.
Generally, I don't get many complaints. It took me a few days to work out cooking ravioli to perfect doneness, the corners were a bit hard. Sometimes I make the ravioli when I get there at 2 PM and they are relatively fresh and cook quickly. Sometimes they are made a few days beforehand by the prep cook, it all depends on how busy we are. Then they are frozen en masse and take longer to cook. So knowing the order time, cooking time, ravioli condition, water temperature and bringing it all together at the right juncture of all four took some trial and error. I've gotten it down now for the most part. People love the potato-garlic ravioli infused with black truffle (to be fair the Chef has made the sauce for the past few weeks ... porcini-madeira glaze one week, chianti braised lamb ragu the next).
But I think there's an even better gauge than your chef (they can be temperamental, let's be honest), or your customers (even more temperamental).
Clean plates.
On slower nights I can watch the dishes go to the dishwasher. If I see plates minus the food they went out with, I know something is being done right. If I see clean, clean plates, plates that have been wiped dry with crusts of our rosemary-foccacia bread, then I know I'm definitely doing something right. And on the flipside, watching a waiter shovel half an uneaten dish in to the garbage? Bad news bears, friend.
So yes, clean plates. As a cook you must always ask yourself this; is it delicious? Are people unable to control their appetites with your food? Good. Drug those sons of bitches with the robust, natural flavors you develop. If you can make something so good it can't be left unfinished, then that is a truly successful dish.
The same goes for employee meal. I love making employee meal. I would make it everyday if I had the time to do so. One of Thomas Keller's first cooking jobs was being in charge of employee meals every day for a yacht club. Apparently they have those in country clubs and hotels where there are small armies of cooks and bakers. I would love that job. What a wonderful way to practice. There isn't the crushing pressure of failing a customer, and in turn your chef. You get to experiment and learn to economize upon the food scraps of the kitchen. But he also noted how meticulous he was and what he learned from this experience. He goes on to say,
"Can you be passionate about cooking at this level? Staff meal. Only the staff sees it. If you can make great food for these people, create that habit, have that drive, that sincerity, and keep that with you and take it to another level in the staff meal, then someday you'll be a great chef. Maybe."
I don't want to jump to any conclusions, but I sure as hell love making family meal and making it right. To their credit, the Mexicans focus on economy. They were taught to waste as little resource and money as possible for the benefit of the restaurant. So we get a lot of pasta with tomato sauce, a lot of old sauteed vegetables, and a lot of strange stews made with fish scraps. I kind of take a small liberty and try and go the extra step with family meal. I make jalapeno mac and cheese, I make filet mignon tacos (I might be the reason we need to order a lot more paprika/chili powder, but these are excellent when we have the scraps to make them), red onion quiche and tarragon chicken fricasee. Those have so far been my most popular dishes, and there's nothing more rewarding than seeing people coming back for seconds (especially the hot Romanian hostess ... I figure eventually I'll go up to her and be like, "You know ... I made those tacos. No big deal, just doin' my job" and she'll fall madly in love with me. Or something). And I will plan ahead to use some valuable scraps. The night before I was inspired to make the fricasee we roasted about 20 half chickens for a party. We had about 7 leftover and a whole sheet tray of juices and chicken fat, or what I like to call culinary gold. I poured them off into a container and let them sit covered in the fridge overnight. The next day I was greeted by about 4 cups of flavorful chicken juice and an inch of solidified chicken fat. Yum. The coolest thing is that the juices will gelatinize so I get a big block of delicious chicken jello. Then it went something like this.
First I pulled off the meat from the leftover chickens by hand, saved the skin and bones and made a quick stock with them (Sometimes I will make faux-chicharonnes with the chicken skin by patting them dry and frying them in hot, hot oil ... kind of time consuming though)
Heat up the chicken fat, heavily brown onions, mushrooms, garlic (onions are free game we get so many, and we had some mushrooms for our tagliatelle dish that were going south)
Deglaze with white wine (we use a standard 2007 pinot grigio for all cooking purposes, and we run through like a bottle a day... I used about half to deglaze), and cook off the alcohol
Throw in your big block of chicken jello and small diced potatoes and let them stew for a bit (we also had some leftover dried herbs which I added at this point, and I added a little bit of my quick stock to have enough liquid to properly stew ... you could use water, but an actual chicken stock would be best)
After those are stewed for a bit the starches from the potatoes have thickened up the liquid a little and flavors are beginning to meld nicely, I add a touch of heavy cream to smooth out the flavors and add richness, and then a few squeezes of lemon juice to brighten them
Then I add the pulled chicken meat and sliced tarragon (The chicken was already cooked so I didn't want it to overcook in the stew, more reheat it .. and the tarragon, which is quite an expensive herb, was leftover from Valentines Day and couldn't possibly go to waste)
And then adjust the seasonings with salt and pepper, adjust the acidity with lemon juice, and adjust the richness with butter or cream ... mine needed a bit more pop so I added a handful of cracked peppercorns, the kind you freshly crack with a saute pan.
Overall it was a success. It went wonderfully with Tabasco sauce (which is the no. 1 condiment in our kitchen, next to Valentina Hot Sauce) and I was not offended at all by its use. The hot acidity of the Tabasco was wonderfully complementary. As I saw waiters walk by and swipe a crust of bread through the dregs of the stew, I knew I had hit it on the money. The anise perfume of tarragon is just irresistible.
So will I be a great chef one day? I don't know, maybe. There are certainly many out there trying to do the same, if not better. I do know I love the smile on employee's faces when they get to eat something new, something that isn't leftover linguini with weak tomato sauce. The rest will have to fall in to place as we go.
Orale.
EP6
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