Why We Cook

Not that you guys need to be exposed to my existential and culinary rantings any more than you already are, but I don't think I've ever really examined my motivation behind this career, even for myself. I'm also pretty sure that last sentence was a run-on. Even though I don't know what a run-on sentence is...

First and ten, Northwestern!

But seriously, the question is hanging there ... why do we cook? Why do we work this lifestyle?

The decision that brought me to cooking and restaurants was a lot like my decision to play cello instead of violin.

I'm Asian, I have to play a string instrument. I was a chubby and lazy child, sitting down is more comfortable than standing, conclusion; I play cello.

Fast forward 10 years and it's like, "I don't like sitting at desks. Office work destroys my soul. Hey, how about cooking? Oooh! Fancy!"

Well, it was a little more sophisticated than that, but that's definitely how it started. I have a short attention span, and I have a need for real-time accomplishments. I don't want to sit at a desk wearing business casual wondering if my 8-hours is going to have any tangible results. I want to get my hands dirty, I want to eat, I want to play with fire, I want to labor, sweat and toil. I want to put a finished plate in the window after a 4-pan pick up during dinner crush on Saturday and yell, "Halibut! Up!" in a cathartic, bestial roar, only to swiftly return to my fire. I want to know that someone is going to love that plate. I want to see the smile and satisfaction on a diner's face.

And apparently I'm not the only one. I'm not sure if it's because I'm getting deeper in to my career, or if this is an actual phenomenon (not one of my many conspiracy theories of which I would love to indulge you with over a cold Guinness), but my generation seems to love food and cooking. Food is having its own veritable revolution, with the focus on organically grown and home cooked food growing by the minute. Whole Foods and its empire of hipsters is growing to Genghis Khan proportions. And cooking is becoming a respected and desirable profession. College kids all go through an existential crisis these days, not knowing what to do with themselves. They didn't have the sink-or-swim attitude of our parents' generation, where they just had to get a job to make a living. Clint Eastwood likes to call us "the pussy generation." Now we have the luxury of exploring our options, and suffer through decades of questioning our existence. Cooking is a career in which one can "express themselves" and "be who they really are" and avoid the tie-as-noose environs of the office world, and they can truly rebel against the years of their parents' oppressive reign!

If it wasn't clear, that was just a bit sarcastic. All the young American cooks I meet and see seem to be tattooed and pierced up the waz, and like to self-administer heavy dosages of controlled substances. Yeah! I can party, and look crazy and still make money in a fun career! Well, some of that is true. There is a dark side to cooking that has a powerful allure to society's less orthodox members. I blame Anthony Bourdain for inspiring a generation of wannabe rock star cooks. And yes you can do all that, but there are plenty of serious ass cooks out there as well. Guys and gals who can't afford to get hammered before Sunday service because they are pushing the culinary envelope. They are the vanguard of the ever growing food movement and are basking in the limelight of a restaurant revolution. They can't fuck that up too often just because they have the freedom to do benders. They have to work their asses off. To quote Bourdain, they, the young cooks in the restaurants changing American dining, are often "whippet-thin, under rested young pups with dark circles under their eyes; they look like prisoners from a Japanese prison camp, they are expected to perform like Green Berets." I love that quote. That's exactly what I want to be. Bone-tired everyday because I pushed myself to the limit.

So while I do have tattoos, you won't see me in 10 years with a rainbow splattered ink sleeve running from my wrist to neck. I won't be inking "Cook Free or Die" or a pair of forks and knives on my wrists. That's not what cooking is about to me. It's not a cultural rebellion, an existential liberation, or an excuse to party. Cooking is a means to an end. Yes, I love food, I love the absolute rock show and adrenaline rush a good night of service can be, but I am trying to open and run a great restaurant. Whether it will be world-class is up to the pencil pushers to decide, but I want to be able to sleep at night feeling good about my establishment.

I love restaurants. It just took me 20 odd years to realize it. There are many sacrifices and downsides, but to me it is a lifestyle worthy of respect and honor. Now that I wait tables full-time, I have to say my favorite moments are going beyond the call of duty for a customer. Danny Meyer's book Setting the Table has all sorts of hilarious anecdotes of when he was required to go beyond just being a restaurateur. One incident involves him spelunking in to one of his customer's freezers in their apartment to rescue a bottle of champagne, and leave a box of petit-fours. I haven't had anything that epic, but I do occasionally get the opportunity to show how much someone's patronage means to me.

The situation at Futami is rather unique. Our customer base is largely made up of one-time, solo diners from the hotel. We rarely are able to make them regular customers, they probably can't give us a ton of word-of-mouth advertising, but we must treat them well anyway because that is our mission in hospitality. So someone comes in from the hotel, they are spending the odd night in Evanston and they have a lot of dietary restrictions and they have never eaten sushi. I have 5 other tables needing my attention, but I will give him my full services and try to take care of everyone else as well. I answer every question, give as many explanations as I possibly can, and when his food does come there are some things he realizes he can't eat. He feels bad about it, I feel worse; I should have drawn some of my conclusions. Duh, if he doesn't really handle fried food well then he probably isn't going to be able to eat the lemon-butter sauce with the seafood entree. Well, shit. I beg and plead with the chef to serve up a new plate, something steamed and fresh. He gives me A LOT of shit and hate for it. I don't care though because he doesn't know I've been on that side of the window also. As a cook, yes it is annoying to customize menu items for picky customers. But frankly, that's part of the job, and though you don't necessarily see direct benefits from doing so, just shut up and do it. You can grumble about it later.

Anyhow, I bring him a new plate as soon as I can of lightly steamed seafood and vegetables and he is ecstatic. Some fresh sashimi and seaweed salad later, he is thoroughly pleased. He leaves me a great tip, but that isn't what makes me happiest. It's when he comes up to me as I'm closing out some checks and thanks me and apologizes for his fickle diet. And then he tells me he is converted to sushi for life. A wholesome, body tingling buzz runs down my spine. That feels good. I want to be able to make everyone feel that way when they leave my place. That is why front-of-the-house is so important, that is how you earn a customer for life.

Granted, I'm not always a spectacular waiter. Sometimes my own mood swings and frustrations with the restaurant present themselves in my work. I'm not proud of it. And yes, money is a big motivation. But I hope as I mature and grow I can learn to seek and give that kind of hospitality every time someone walks through my door.

And I just hope I can get there. As I mentioned, this life is not without sacrifices. I never had a normal family life. My mother started working when I got home from school, and I would only see her briefly before I had to go to bed. I never had regular sit down family meals, I was generally left to eat by myself in front of a TV. My grandmother never could kick the habit of Chinese women eating after the men, and would do house chores while I ate with Steve Urkel. Afterward I would struggle to communicate with her with my lackluster Mandarin, and scribble down gibberish to make it look as if I had done my homework. My father died when I was 11, and I saw him less than my mother even before then. My sister and I share a pretty sizable age gap, and it wouldn't be until high school that we really grew closer. Yes, the restaurant world has its downsides, and I spent a large part of my childhood minding my own business.

Sometimes, there's nothing I want more than a normal family life. I want to learn how to cook, I love to cook beautifully for customers, but I imagine there would be nothing more satisfying than cooking for your family. At the heart of cooking is love. Wanting to feed and please others is an act of pure love, something that is obscured by the other aspects of restaurant life. A grandmother slaving over a stove may not have a better seafood tomato sauce than Michael White at Marea, but the love it represents will make you remember it as the best meal you've ever had.

So yes it seems ironic that while I want the stability of a family at times that I found the one career that may not allow me to do that. I wish I had a 9-5 sometimes so I can hang out with my friends, have a normal relationship with a female where we could actually go on dates on weekends, have weekends off so I could play ultimate as long as my knees will allow me to. Maybe I won't get a lot of those things, and it will make the already difficult marathon to owning a restaurant that much harder. I hope I don't break before then, because with all my free time now I must admit I am really enjoying being able to see friends and family more, to play ultimate when I want.

But Daniel Boulud shared the same concerns (well ... maybe not about ultimate). And he admitted that yes, you will always want more time with your daughter. But there is a family in the kitchen waiting for you. An incredibly diverse spectrum of people whom you grow close to in the fires of service. That if this life is really for you, it will fulfill you as much and sometimes more than a normal family life could. That there is a way and means to balance everything in life, so long as you have the presence of mind to do so.

So here's hoping.

EP6

What It Takes

I can't stress enough how little I know. I grew up in restaurants, I've worked for about a year as a cook, a little more as a waiter. But I think the path to becoming a restaurant owner, a chef-owner, is a long, arduous one. It will take years to reach the point where you can open your own place, and when you do open up and realize a dream, it starts all over again. A learning process starts that will never stop. Or at least you hope it won't.

So that's a great part of the appeal. You can always be improving, you must always be learning. Every time you do something, you can choose to try and do it better the next time. Something as tedious as peeling blanched tomatoes, shelling fava beans can bring to light a whole new dimension when you focus and harness the will to improve. Cooking, management, budgeting, cleaning, all of it. It is a never ending pursuit of knowledge, and a never ending practice session of technique.

The goal for me is to own my own restaurant. I have zero aspiration to be a celebrity, to light up a blogosphere, to become a brand, to own an empire, to be on Top Chef. I don't disrespect any of that, and if it comes to me I won't necessarily say no. But there's too many other things to focus on, there's too many other things to consider first. There are a lot of ideas I have for restaurants. If I can realize a few of them, that'll be many dreams come true. But really, to be able to own and run one respected, good, genuine restaurant will be more than I can ask for in this life.

So that being the goal, I've obviously thought about what it's going to take. What kind of personality, what kind of lifestyle decisions, what kind of education, what kind of people and technical skills it will require to reach that point and hold on. As I said before, I don't know a lot now, but I've dreamed about it obsessively enough that I have a rough idea.

How did I look at it? It starts with education obviously. You look at the best restaurants in the country and you learn their story. How they got there, what they learned, why what they do makes them the best. Overwhelmingly, the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park kept popping up. There are more CIA alumni with Mobil Diamond Awards and James Beard Awards than any other school. So that was an obvious step. At some point, you got to go where the best started, especially because I lack a strong culinary background. I would need as much culinary education in as short a time as possible.

It's also important that I be able to excel at school as well. Nobody enjoys struggling and you can't get the most out of your education if you aren't a little prepared to begin with. You can't learn calculus (what's a slope?) before you've mastered basic arithmetic (this one's fading quick, too). So I took an internship, did a stage, moved myself up to the line, learned the basics, and tested myself in the crush of service.

But restaurants aren't just about cooking. Sure, the CIA can lay the groundwork for you becoming a great chef, but that doesn't mean you know shit about running a restaurant, managing people, managing finances. Coming from a classical music background, there was much of the same story. I knew a lot of really talented musicians growing up. At Juilliard a lot of the students had the potential to be a star, but a few things kept them out of the limelight. Some people just couldn't play in front of a crowd. Their playing fell flat, or they got nervous, or they just couldn't command attention. Some people couldn't manage their practice efficiently. They spent too much time practicing the wrong things, or too little time practicing anything (ding!). Some people just didn't know how to play the game, how to get the favor of the professors, get connections for jobs, go to the right music festivals. My point is talent, and especially specialized talent, can only take you so far. You have to be well-rounded to achieve success.

That was the most important lesson I learned from my brief chat with Chef Bill Kim. Here was a guy I knew had worked his ass off, had earned his chops. He was skeptical of me wanting to go in to restaurants. In his words, my "college degree and classical music background already makes me assume you are weak." He assumed that I was doing this because I had bought in to the fairy tale of Top Chef, of Food Network. I wanted so much to tell him "NO NO NO," I promise I have a more level headed approach to this. It was frustrating for him to have so little faith in me, but really I understand why. And then he said something that was really enlightening.

"When you open your restaurant, it's not about food. Food is a given. There is so much more to restaurants than food, and it starts with knowing how to clean a grease trap."

Food is the main reason people go to restaurants. Yes, that seems like an unnecessary observation to make, but it isn't the only reason. And food is so subjective, which is why kitchens have to deal with people customizing the menu for their own palates. That's just the way it is. Yes, something can almost be objectively delicious, but really there is no such thing as perfect food, there is no such thing as "the best" food. The end goal is to just make people happy.

In your own restaurant, you use food as a medium of expression. You hope it represents who you are, what you like to eat, what you think others should try, what kind of food you grew up with. You hope it's well executed and tasty to others. But not everyone is going to love what you do. So how else can you create a restaurant worth returning to? How do you keep the doors open long enough to expand your career?

You need a personality that will keep you and the people you hire obsessively focused on the goal. You could really use a set of technical skills outside the culinary theater that will help you immensely. Like choosing to be a carpenter or a blacksmith on The Oregon Trail, it'll just make your life easier, make running a restaurant a bit smoother. When your axle breaks, or you need to build a boat, it's better to be able to build one yourself, then pay for someone else to do it. When your oxen drown, it's easier to be able to use a Water-Walking Charm to ford the river, then to find a new beast of burden.

Wait ... shit, I think I forgot how this works ... Start over.

For a kitchen, there are some skills that are very crucial that have nothing to do with food. It's pretty much essential that you speak Spanish. Basic repair and maintenance skills will be extremely useful. Even new kitchens start to break down in unexpected places due to daily use. How to negotiate garbage pick up, how to hire dishwashers, busboys, porters. How to fix an oven pilot light, how to maintain a walk-in cooler. If you're real engineering nerdy, how to fix a refrigerator compressor. How to clean a kitchen hood, how to scour a flat top. And how to clean a goddamn grease trap.

There are a whole set of interpersonal skills you will need. How to lead a team, how to hire the right employees, how to retain them. How to make them believe in you. In the S. Pellegrino's 50 Best Restaurants in the World list, the blurb for Alinea is very simple. After a description of their famous interpretation of a Peanut Butter & Jelly Sandwich, it reads,

"We live and die by the vision of Grant Achatz."

You need to instill that faith. Make them believe that working in this restaurant is worthwhile, is fun, is exciting, is worthy of success. The people that are your employees are the most important cog in the machine of the restaurant.

Then even more intangibles enter the mix. Choosing a location that is going to attract the right crowd, and that will allow you to serve food at the right price. Giving your dining room a personality that is welcoming and complementary to your food, your staff. All sorts of personal touches you hope will add up to something substantial. And luck. Straight up luck. You'll need a lot of it.

The point is that there's more to it than just cooking. Yes, I need to learn how to cook. I need to learn how to cook exceptionally, in fact. But there are going to be a million other lessons I need to learn along the way. I jot down notes, I type up new ideas, I bookmark some great pages in my cookbooks. I can only hope that one day they will coalesce into something substantial.

So forgive my thinking aloud, but I have become lost. It's been about a month and a half since I've cooked professionally. The rote mechanics of wrapping containers in plastic wrap, cutting onions, sauteing greens seems so long ago. I miss it. Though the weather is nice, and the leisure time refreshing, I find myself entering a downward cycle of wanderlust. Time is being wasted, there's so much more to learn. My knife callous is growing soft again. Do you know how many stupid butternut squash I murdered to earn that callous?! The cuts and burns and scars are fading, and as Chef Kim suggested, there's a chance I'm becoming soft.

I turn to you, my friends. To allow me to use you as a soundboard through which I can galvanize and refocus. I needed to write out and remind myself how much work it will take, how much sacrifice it will require to succeed. What kind of skills I will need to sharpen. The Chicago summer is a tempting time to loaf and relax, but I think it's a valuable opportunity to learn. I leave this city soon, I have no commitments. I can be a mercenary cook and work in some kitchens unpaid and really learn some more things, broaden my horizons.

So with hopes of doing some more stages, and writing about it for all you folks I go. Knife bag (or Dexter kill bag, as Paul likes to call it) in hand, baseball cap at the ready.

EP6

Braising

I don't do educational "how-to" guides to cooking very often, because frankly I don't find myself very qualified to do so. Though I read a lot (well, with what English skills I have mastered by now) about food, I eat a lot, and I did at one point cook a lot, I think a cook could spend a lifetime mastering a single dish. Many have in fact, and it is sad that their art is dying out to the evils of mass-produced, industrialized food and even the rapidly growing restaurant business. But that's another post...

I will discuss some things about braising, though. A most wonderful technique, something that becoming proficient at will transform your cooking. Though it does take time, I'm talking more about careful preparation than actually standing over a stove for a few hours. So really, these are perfect set-it-and-forget-it kind of wonders. Kind of.

To quote a man I kind of want to be, I'm going to paraphrase Thomas Keller.

"A filet mignon is a filet mignon - there's little difference between the raw meat and the cooked meat. But short ribs, veal breast - they become completely different entities after they're cooked. They transcend themselves, developing a full, complex, satisfying taste and aroma. What we're doing here is taking cheaper, tougher cuts of meat and transforming them into beautiful, tender, exquisite dishes that are far more satisfying than filet mignon or rack of lamb. Again, to me, these dishes are what cooking is all about. It is a most powerful technique."

Okay I'm too lazy to go get my French Laundry cookbook to get the actual quote, but it goes something like that. Whether or not he says "powerful technique" is irrelevant to my considering myself a Chef Panda Street Warrior.

Braising is a fundamental and extremely useful technique. It is one of the trinity of French culinary methods (along with sauteing and roasting). Originally it meant to cook over low coals, but what you are doing in reality is cooking something over low heat partially submerged in a flavorful liquid. Anything that improves with time and slow heat can be braised with excellent results. Cabbage, mustard greens, pork bellies, ducks, almost anything. But since I'm an unabashed meat enthusiast I will discuss mainly proteins.

Let's Talk MEEEEAAAAATT

You know nowadays when you go to a bar you have to calculate some ridiculous plot to talk to a strange woman. You have to spend time, money, mental energy on a girl that is likely using you for a drink. Back in caveman days you come home with a haunch of mammoth meat and you are adored, and generally assured a mate. How I see it?

Present
"Can I buy you a drink?"
"No."

Past
"MEAAAATTT!!!"
"Yes."

The point I lost during that whole tangent was that meat is fabulous. Every animal is a complex organism. A pig offers so many varieties of textures and flavors, it is an incredibly versatile beast. But yet, you and I are not so different from them. Once you start thinking of yourself like a cut of meat, you'll understand why braising works so well.

Imagine you are a farm-raised animal. You don't do a whole lot of activity, you eat a bunch, and you tenderize your muscles by drowning them in alcohol. Pretty much your average American college student. After you get rejected by all the sororities you wanted to be in (DAMN YOU KAPPA KAPPA GAMMA!), you get depressed and gain a solid "Freshman 15." At this point in a farm animal's life (right after a pig gets rejected by the all-knowing sorority computer), it gets slaughtered. So imagine you are getting sent to the butcher.

Though you were not particularly active, your leg muscles were still used more than your abs and back. Hence the connective tissues, sinews and muscle fibers are all a bit tougher. Now your squishy belly and less used arms (think of your flabby triceps if you got 'em) are going to be nice and tender. The connective tissues have not been very developed, they're not going to put up much of a fight to the tooth.

Pretty much the same goes for livestock. The muscles the animals use most (legs, shanks, shoulders, bellies are in between) are going to be tough, and they are also loaded with all sorts of muscle fibers that do intricate work. The less used ones (tenderloins, short loins) are going to be nice and tender from the get-go. But just because something is tough to start with, doesn't mean it can't become otherwise. All those tough muscles are loaded with collagen and gelatin. That's what makes up all the connective tissue. These lovely substances melt at low and slow temperatures.

Now remember what makes a good stock have body and luscious mouth feel? Collagen and gelatin. So when you melt out the goodies from a cut of meat slowly, and then those goodies are introduced to a liquid, what do you get? A luscious braising liquid. And wait, we melted out all the tough connective tissue from the meat? What happens to the meat now? Oh right, it's fucking delicious. And tender. And succulent. And mmm... mmm ... good. (Don't sue me, Campbell's)

That's the basic idea of braising, after one or two sorority girl tangents and many expletives later. Got it? Okay, next.

The Basics

So you need low heat, flavorful liquid, and a tough cut of meat. That's the basics. To meet all of those needs you should have a good braising container, an oven, stock and a tough cut of meat.

A good braising container has to be ovenproof. You can braise on the stovetop, but the results are less than ideal. You should braise in an oven. The constant, low-heat environment is exactly what you're looking for. A sauteuse, a cast-iron skillet, a Dutch oven, or a roasting pan are all good containers.

Stock. How many times I got to tell you, you should keep good, homemade stock on hand? Well fine, don't listen to me. The results you will get with good, homemade stock are going to be spectacular. Store-bought stock, the results will still be pretty good. So I guess if you're past the "I have to impress my mate to get laid" phase, you can just use store-bought.

And a tough cut of meat. Just because restaurants shell out a little more for heritage breeds, heirloom animals doesn't mean you can't. Find a good butcher (admittedly rare), buy online, or do what you can with what Whole Foods will offer you. When you make a dish your starring ingredient needs to be of the highest quality. You'd be amazed at what a difference it makes. Some restaurants focus their entire menus on the virtue that they have stellar produce. So don't go cheap on the goods.

Now that you have everything, you can get down to business.

The Basics Part 2

Now the actual cooking requirement of braising is pretty straight forward. You sear the outside of your meat in hot, hot fat. Obviously the crispy component will be taken away by the liquid, but the point here is to get the flavor from searing your meat. Maillard reactions, browning, basically coloring meat = flavor. It seems insignificant but it will pay big dividends later. Just do it.

Then you set up some aromatic vegetables in your pan of choice, you put your meat in, you pour in enough of your flavorful liquid medium to come up about 2/3 of your protein, and you put it in a low oven. A few hours later, voila, braised meat.

It's that simple, and it's that hard. There are a few pitfalls to avoid, and a few ways to improve upon the bare minimum requirements. I'll break it down in to a To-Do list.

How-To-Do-Braising-Good

1) Marinate your meat
2) Protect your meat (optional)
3) Flour and sear your meat
4) Set up your aromatic vegetables and/or herbs
5) Set up your braise
6) Put it in the oven
7) Watch it carefully
8) Let it rest overnight

1) Marination is important. The common myth is that marinades, which always have an acidic component that differentiates them from brines, tenderize meats. This is not really the case. But they do impart flavor and the acidity will do wonders to brighten the flavor profile of your dish. And supposedly, the acids get your salivary glands and amylases working so as to tenderize the meat for you. In your mouth. Yeahhhhhh ... (That was supposed to be creepily suggestive Chris "yeahhhh")

Wine makes an excellent marinating medium. So many ingredients, aspects of time and complexity go in to wine production. One bottle represents a lot of time and effort, and it will do wonders for your food. But alcohol does not do anything good for food. Almost anytime you use alcohol in a dish, you have to cook the raw alcohol off. Raw alcohol affects the surface of proteins and meat, and prevents full absorption of flavors. If you're making a wine or any alcohol based marinade, cook off the alcohol first with your aromatics (remember the risotto lesson? Smell your food, once the vapors don't burn the back of your throat, you know the alcohol's gone). Let the mixture cool to room temperature, and then marinate your meat for 24 hours.

Save your marinade. We're gonna use it.

2) Okay, next. Protect your meat (hehe). Remember this is all optional, but it can really help keep your braise perfectly succulent. Back in the day it was expected to lard your meat. And yes, it is what it sounds like. You take a larding needle, basically a big, fat, hollow needle and sew your meat with lard. The end result is the meat looks like a porcupine laden with fat. As it cooked, the lard melted and basted your meat, ensuring juiciness.

That technique is falling out of favor. It's incredibly time-consuming, arduous and tedious. Something that is easier is to wrap the meat in caul fat. Caul fat is the layer of fat that surrounds a pig's intestines. It looks like a big spider web of delicious, fat. It sticks to itself, it's large, and seems almost custom designed for encasing meats. It's not easy to find, but if you can get some, you can wrap cuts of meat prone to drying out in caul fat, and get fantastic results.

Barring that you can observantly baste your meat, or use thinly sliced back or belly fat from a pig to protect your braise in the oven.

3) Here we go, its cooking time. You don't want to cook your meat at all in the high heat environment of a saute process. You just want to brown it. Dust your meat with flour, season it heavily with salt and pepper, and hit it hot and hard in some canola or grapeseed oil. The high cooking temperature of those oils will serve you better than olive oil, butter or an olive oil-butter combo. There's going to be plenty of cooking coming up but none of it is going to be the high heat needed to brown proteins. You'll need that now, and the meat will give off plenty of fat and flavor. You won't need the butter. Remember basic searing techniques - very high heat, don't move it around in the pan, let the crust develop in the heat.

4) Now take your marinade that you saved. The liquid is going to have some meat proteins in it, specifically albumins, from marinating in the fridge. There will be some solids in your marinade as a result of this. They are impurities, you should remove them. Now separate your liquid and the vegetables. Saute the vegetables in the pan that you browned the meat in, just a little bit to get some caramelization on them. Now you're ready to set up the braise.

5) Take your ovenproof container and lay the meat down in a single layer. Scatter your veggies and herbs around the meat, and pour in your marinade. Now pour in enough chicken or veal stock to just barely cover the meat. If you've been seasoning every part of the way (as you should have been), there should be no need to salt now. Since you're going to adjust the consistency of everything after it's finished, you should be all set to go for now.

6) Now we can talk lids. I've tried a few lids while working in a professional kitchen. I've tried a matching, fitting steel lid. I've tried aluminum foil lids. And I've tried a parchment lid. Generally I agree that the latter two produce the best results. You want some evaporation of the water in your braise, but you also want to be able to protect your meats from the raw heat of the oven. An aluminum foil lid is pretty straight forward. You wrap the top of the vessel with aluminum foil (shiny side up) and poke a few holes in it. But aluminum foil still allows vapors to condense on them and return to the braise, the only virtue being the few holes you poked in it. A parchment lid is a little more complicated, and requires an understanding of geometry I don't necessarily possess. It is Thomas Keller's preferred method and allows free evaporation while offering complete protection to the meats inside. In his words "It's like having lid, but without a lid." It's kind of like making a paper snowflake. A very simple one.

Parchment paper is cheap. Buy some once, and you'll have it for a variety of applications forever. Now get yourself a big square of parchment just bigger than the pot. Fold it in to a triangle. Fold this triangle in to a smaller triangle, as if you were making a paper airplane. Do so again. You'll end up making about 5 or 6 folds. Place the tip of your triangle in the center of the pot as if it were a radius (whoa ho! MATH!) and then snip the tip. When you unfurl the lid you should have a crinkly, papery lid with a hole in the center that fits your braise. You can nestle it right on top of whatever you're working with.

7) Now watch it. It's kind of a set-it-and-forget-it procedure, as I mentioned before, but there are a few things to look for. You should check in on your braise at least once every half hour for a 5-6 hour braise. If it's drying on top, baste a little braising liquid over top. If it's boiling, you need to turn the heat down. It should start at a lazy simmer, and then when the braising liquid begins to thicken, become sort of a thick, slow bubbling. There is nothing sexier than pulling a braise out of the oven and see bubbles struggling to break the surface of a thick, unctuous braising liquid.

8) Alright it's done, just a few more things. Well, how can you tell? Take a nibble. It should be melt-in-your-mouth tender and succulent. It should be so fall-apart-delicious that you have to handle it like a baby when you take it out of the braise. Every cut of meat is different, so if you're following a recipe see what they say. Otherwise you're going to have to check yourself.

So take out your braised meats, set them aside in a separate container, something that's going in your fridge. Strain your braising liquid through a fine-mesh sieve. The herbs, the vegetables, the stray bits of meat are spent, their flavor exhausted. You can munch as you like, but they would be unacceptable for the table in a restaurant. Cook another side of vegetables and starches to go with your braise.

Now braises improve with time after they cook. The flavors have more time to marry in the fridge, and everything will taste better a day later. What's happening are aromatic molecules are being further distributed and combined throughout the mixture. But it's happier and easier to say they are marrying. You can store your meats as they are, or in the braising liquid. I prefer storing them in the liquid, and then the next day the fat will solidify on top. The meat will stay moist, and then you can do what you like with the fat. You can saute some veg in it, you can emulsify it in to the sauce you make with the braise. It's potently flavorful and useful.

How to finish it? Reheat the meat in the liquid until it just becomes warm. Don't cook it, it's pretty much taken as much cooking as it can. Once it's warm you can use reserve braising liquid to make a sauce. It's pretty simple, just reduce it. If it needs richness add some cream or butter, or braised fat. Learn to use your palate to adjust a sauce. If it doesn't quite taste as it should, most of the time it needs a little salt. If it is kind of dull on the palate you're going to need a little acid, and maybe a little fresh ground pepper. If it's too watery you can find a few different ways to thicken it; roux, butter, cream, corn starch. Keep experimenting, keep tasting.

Voila. Braising. It's not so hard, but like with all cooking techniques and pretty much everything in life, it takes a bit of experimentation and practice. The summer months are coming up, so the heavy, luscious feel of a braise may not be what you're craving right now, but that doesn't mean you can't practice for the next Chicago winter. Or that you can't master BBQ pulled pork sandwiches. This is an ancient cooking technique, something that developed from eating out of necessity. Don't call it stewing (completely submerged in liquid, generally small cuts of meat), don't rush it, don't fuck it up. It's pretty hard to, anyway.

Love!

EP6

A New Kitchen

Kind of like "A New Hope" but minus the space smugglers and whiny bitch protagonists.

Boy, we're already starting this one off on a nerdy note.

Anyway, don't let the title fool you. I haven't gotten a new job yet. But I did asked to brave the crucible known as the "stage" (pronounced stAHge, since people keep asking).

Sometimes a stage is much like the kind I did at Oceanique and Va Pensiero. An extended period of employment in which it is understood that you work unpaid in exchange for an education. I worked part-time at Oceanique for about 6 months. I worked part-time at Va Pensiero for about 4 months before I got a job.

Sometimes people consider a stage a short tryout that lasts maybe 1-3 days, and the intent is that it is an unpaid trial period that is meant to assess your viability as an employee. It's a trail where you hang around a kitchen, work and hope for a job. That is what we'll be talking about today.

A stage is part athletic tryout, part audition. You work longer and harder than the rest of the staff, you do everything they don't want to do themselves, you have to prove you're fast and competent, and that you're a personable enough human being that the brigade would enjoy being around you 10-12 hours a day. It's unpaid, punishing and doesn't bear any tangible rewards over the course of the day. That is, unless you get the job. (Well they were kind enough to treat me to as many PBRs I could want. Which is not that many.)

I've only worked in a few kitchens, and they all have followed a fairly similar pattern. You do your prep on the line with a few cooks, dry goods in the back, perishables in the big walk-in cooler, maybe some soft music in the background for morale purposes and a little fun (more often than not, traditional Mexican folk music and polka).

So I was pretty shocked when I was thrown in to the kitchen at Lula. I was introduced to the sous-chef, a wiry guy with patchy facial hair and a Southern twang on his voice, who gave me the grand tour. He's a very nice guy, he clearly gets stages fairly often and has a rehearsed means of crash-coursing them on the kitchen. He leads me downstairs and my brain is having issues taking everything in and processing it. Like many city kitchens, the line and the prep kitchen are separate. All the prep is done in the basement where there are an array of stainless steel tables, and then prepped produce is brought upstairs to be cooked during service. He leads me to the locker room to get me suited up and on the way I pass a whole variety of faces. There's Modest Mouse blasting off an iPod dock and I can barely hear people's names as they introduce themselves, and there are people running around everywhere with ice, vacuum packed goodies, and big pots of braised pork. It is alive, this kitchen is buzzing and I know I'm about to HALO-jump onto a breakneck, no-stop prep train. (In this instance I don't mean the video game Halo, I mean a High Altitude Low Open parachute jump that is used in the military to quickly and quietly insert yourself into a situation from the air. See, I'm not always a nerd.)

So Hunter (the sous-chef) leads me to the locker room (did I mention that the basement kitchen is just about 6'1" high, meaning I bump in to every ceiling fixture along the way? Yeah, way to make myself look clumsy already) and points,

"Jackets, pants, put your shit down where there's space, grab a knife, suit up, get rollin'."

And I do exactly that. Except I probably take 10 min. too long to get dressed. Why? A couple of reasons.

1) I have yet to need to use my own knives in a kitchen, so it takes me a while to decide what I should take, and get them ready to slice and dice. I decide on a chef's knife and a paring knife. Guns up, let's do this.

2) On the way in to the kitchen I acknowledge that for the first time I will be working with women. A lot of small women. Every jacket I seem to find is a tiny garb that would barely cover my thigh in chef whites. Without a mirror, I am self-conscious that my rippling biceps are probably too accentuated by the small jacket. But I risk looking awesome for service and get down to business.

And away we go! Prep time. Whatcha need, chef? Let's do this!

I look over at the white board and I am struck with both awe and fear. It's a beautifully organized board with print-out templates checking prep statuses of items between lunch and dinner, every cook's to-do list, any 86'd items. Everything is accounted for. And I even have a cute little section dedicated to me. Under the word "Stage" is a laundry list of to-do items that I know are going to suck. The words "Shell green almonds" and "Clean stinging nettles" pop out at me. Oh, balls.

Green almonds are under-ripe almonds. They come in compact, fuzzy green shells and need to be cut away with a paring knife, but be careful to not damage the tender nut (actually stone fruit seed) inside. They need a quart of them. I see two sheet trays (big, rectangular metal trays that probably measure about 36x24) in the walk-in loaded with green almonds. Well this should be fun. Too bad I drank a hipster cup of coffee and am jittery with caffeine and nicotine. Coupled with my slightly rusty knife skills, I murder a handful of green almonds before I start shelling them cleanly. Oh what I would do to cut some onions.

And then stinging nettles. Without going to Wikipedia, what I know about stinging nettles is that they are a North American plant that does exactly what its name implies. Sting you. It's covered in hairs and irritating oils that give you a painful case of the minor burn-sies and powerfully itchies. You need to double up on latex gloves to clean them. But once they are washed and cooked, the poison is inoculated and they are a hearty, tasty green vegetable. But staring at a giant box of them, and the possibility of a wicked case of hives, I am a little disheartened.

But prep work is refreshing. It's been awhile since working with food. The basement is hot, there's a huge staff of young, fun-loving restaurant workers joking around, but getting down to business (culinarily). The sous-chef is taunting people with a butchered lamb's head. A 5 foot Mexican woman is tending to a most delicious pot of braised pork shoulder, and is making quesadillas for staff meal. The very attractive intern from culinary school is making chef's whites look good (I guess a fairly passive action), and sharing the workload with me. And a whole slew of cooks are bustling around, and I am shaking hands and smiling a lot, dodging hot pots of stock, and banging my head on the fridge door.

It's good to be back. Back in a kitchen, experiencing new things, talking, learning, thinking about nothing except expertly extracting an almond from its furry pod (alliterations, high school English!). Being in a place where the clock blurs away, and the application of manual labor releases stress. Focusing on nothing except trying to absorb every smell, taste, sound, and sight of the kitchen.

Yes, it's good and what a wonderful kitchen to experience! Two staff meals a day. A staff meal, as I've described before, is usually an amalgamation of scraps and a meaningful application of economy, but here it just seems so good! Quesadillas with pork trimmings, black beans and rice with cilantro. For after-service meal some leftover BLTs, turkey sandwiches, guacamole and a fantastic chicken and black eyed pea soup, and a mediocre potato salad made by yours truly. There's PBR cases stacked to the ceiling, staff enjoying a smoke and a drink after scrubbing down the kitchen. This place has a reputation as being a place cooks love to cook in, and I can see why. It's foreign for me to work with people my age, speak English, to work with women (only kind of distracting), in a casual environment that really puts out great food. It only reinforces my desires to open casual restaurants, places minus pretension but plus great food, great wine.

It is an eye opening experience. Even if I don't get the job I think I need to start setting aside my weekends to work in kitchens again. I forgot how much I missed it. Perhaps I can spend my time doing just that. Being a mercenary cook whose price tag is just a little education, a chance to work, a chance to practice. Maybe it's possible to do a little time in a lot of restaurants, collecting experience and compiling an education from the whole city of Chicago.

So what did I learn? The importance of staff. The universally integral, absolutely essential importance of having good staff and treating them well. I could go on and on, but basically if you have good staff, you treat them well, you hold on to them, they are more valuable than anything else your restaurant has. And if they love to show up to work, if they have the energy and passion to put in their best day after day, then that is the hallmark of a great restaurant, a great chef. Someone who can lead, create an environment both welcoming and challenging.

It's also nice to have plenty of beer on hand.

Even if it's dirty hipster wine.

Sorry, Brendo, no offense.

Mua haha!

EP6

Refinement

So now that my back-of-the house shenanigans are temporarily put on hold, I still have got another job and it allows me to practice the other side of the restaurant.

I've written a few posts about front of the house machinations, but as you can imagine it is just as if not more important than having good food. Restaurants, at the end of the day, are about hospitality. About making someone feel good and allowing them to have a great time with the people they love. Although exceptional food will draw people to your restaurant, they are going to eventually turn away if you serve it in an unprofessional or unfriendly manner. Customers can be difficult to please, but a lot of the time they don't ask for a lot, just a little attention to detail. If you give that to them they will love you, but if you neglect to do that it really leaves a sour taste in their mouths no matter how good the food. An important matter I learned from the film Gladiator. Please the mob or Russell Crowe will kill you.

I've been reading Danny Meyer's Setting the Table, which is a part-autobiography, part-business consultation book about the art of hospitality. It's a pretty fascinating read if you enjoy restaurants, and quite entertaining to boot, but the most important thing I've gathered from it is the following description of honest hospitality,

"Within moments of being born, most babies find themselves receiving the first four gifts of life; eye contact, a smile, a hug and some food. We receive many other gifts in our lifetime, but few can ever surpass those first four. That first time may be the purest "hospitality transaction" we'll ever have, and it's not much of a surprise we'll crave those gifts for the rest of our lives."

If you think about it and you take away all the pomp and circumstance around fine dining; all the fancy service rigors, and you just got that at a restaurant; eye contact, a smile, a hug and some food, then you would be pretty happy. (Well I don't know about the hug since there are so many people averse to unfamiliar human contact these days. We're probably talking about a metaphorical hug here. Unless you are an adorable grandmother, do not try to hug your customers. Unless they are regulars, European and/or smell attractive. Or if they seem irresistibly huggable [examples include chubby babies])

Okay, slightly off track. My point is, I've tried to catalog all the behaviors and all the actions that would constitute good service, and I've tried to perform them perfectly throughout a shift waiting tables. But frankly, it seemed difficult and so tiresome, and not necessarily effective. Of course there are some rules you must follow, but my fellow servers at Futami do just fine without any serious interest or training in restaurants.

So my thought now is that if I can relate every action to those first four gifts then I can not only simplify my actions, but also give off a sense of more honest hospitality as well.

The Importance of Hospitality

There are hundreds of little rules that constitute proper service. I feel that my adherence to these rules can make me a little cold and robotic in the dining room, which is a problem many fine dining establishments have. Despite clearing plates perfectly, decanting wine and delivering pitch-perfect menu descriptions, a diner can feel like it's a rehearsal with no soul at best, and pretentious and frigid at worst. I think the days of tuxedo'ed waiters calling everyone madame and monsieur are over. With the popularity of good food growing every day, it is more crucial than ever to eliminate all that snooty highfalutin business and make sure you can garner a wide fan base. If your kitchen puts out honest, good food then your wait staff needs to serve it honestly and goodly (I'm not getting spell checked on that word ... "goodly" is a word?!).

That being said though you still need to do your job. Danny Meyer likes to talk about his "51% Rule." Anybody's job in the restaurant comprises of 49% technical proficiency, and 51% emotional proficiency. The ability to read a customer's desires and make them feel welcome and nurtured is that much more important than being able to carry and serve plates properly. But as you can see, they are nearly even in significance. You still need to do the job right, or you risk leaving a bad impression, and losing an otherwise regular customer. The difference is that emotional proficiency can't really be taught, but technical proficiency can ... more on that later.

I don't really do restaurant reviews because a) I'm too poor to eat anywhere of real significance, and b) I don't feel qualified to properly critique another restaurant. But I do want to mention a few things about a restaurant I recently dined at. I was really looking forward to it, I had heard so many great things, and was about to shell out premium cash in the hopes of liking the food, and maybe getting an unpaid internship there. But a few mistakes have really made the memory of the place bittersweet.

Our server was friendly, a wholesome guy who didn't give off any airs of superiority or anything like that. The whole staff did a good job of seeming real and honest to form. But as soon as we had ordered we encountered a few missteps.

The table next to us was the only confirmation we got that there was a bread course before dinner. Bread courses are important in my opinion, because portions are often modest in high-end dining, so in order to not make your customers feel gipped with hunger, a bread course can help line their stomachs. Plus bread and butter is a simple yet delicious treat. A warm sourdough or baguette with some sweet cream butter, and a glass of red wine is one of my favorite things to eat. And because we were pretty hungry, we were not going to pass up on that. Unfortunately we had to ask for bread. If bread is complimentary then it should be just brought out, why would we have to wait 10 minutes for bread and then finally have to ask for it? If there is some baking fresh, then that is fine, just let us know. Otherwise, just bring it.

So we asked for it and it finally arrives, and it is some of the most disappointing bread I've ever had. Dry, crumbly, cake-like with no chewy gluten-ness or flavor. The butter was clearly straight from the fridge and could not be spread. I mean these are all little things that can do a lot for a diner. Good, warm bread and room temperature butter are not a lot to ask for and yet make a world of difference in flavor, and setting the tone for the food and atmosphere. Strike one, in my book. (There were a few slices of sourdough amongst the pile of Wonder bread that were decent, but it makes you wonder ... why such an oversight on the chef's part?)

Then appetizers come, and they are quite tasty. I will go on to say that I have no real gripes with the food at this restaurant (minus the bread), it was all well done, but the serving of it was not. And there is another, just slight oversight here. At fine-dining restaurants it is almost universally accepted that you can split anything, and the kitchen will split it for you. It is annoying to do in the kitchen, getting several apps fired split can really slip up your rhythm, but it really makes a big difference to your customers. Our waiter didn't ask us at all if we'd like to have our appetizers split, which probably makes him popular with the kitchen, but not so much with the customers. I didn't ask for them to be split, and wasn't even sure I wanted them to be so, but just going the distance to ask makes a big difference in my mind.

Another small thing that some cooks don't understand is the presentation of plates. I'm not talking about how pretty the arrangement of food is on a plate, I'm talking about bringing a plate to a diner. It has to be set down gracefully, the correct dish placed before the diner who ordered it without asking (There is nothing more unprofessional then going up to a table as a waiter and asking, "So who had the chicken?" You have to let a diner know you were paying attention to them), and most importantly, they have to be there when you bring it. The table next to us was a middle-aged couple and the woman got up to use the restroom. The runner came out at an inappropriate time, and instead of returning to the kitchen to wait, he set the plates down anyway.

Now they didn't seem bothered at all, in fact most people wouldn't be. But having a plate put before your eyes for the first time, something that sounded so delicious on the menu, and to have the aromas just barely waft to you as it is put down is a wonderful experience. Why would you deprive a customer of that? If I'm excited for the scallops dish, I want to see it for the first time delivered to me, to see my expectations realized by beautiful plating. I don't want my fellow diner to have to wait to start eating until I get back, I don't want my food to get cold at the table, I don't want it waiting there for me as if it were an afterthought of the staff. All the work the chef has done to make beautiful plating, and to deliver food at just the right temperature is lost. The diner comes back from the restroom and the only thought I can gather is, "Oh here's my food ... thanks for waiting for me."

Then a dangerous pitfall for all restaurants. Time. Too much of it between courses. When you're working on the line, in a hot kitchen, you barely have any perception of how much time is elapsing in the dining room. If you are crushed under the weight of tickets you aren't paying attention to how long a diner is waiting, you are relying on your wait staff and especially your expediter to do that for you. And sometimes dishes just take a while, especially when you're busy. The waiters have to mitigate the damage and try to make a diner feel cared for in the process. But instead we were left waiting without explanation. The restaurant wasn't crazy busy, and all I can wonder is .. what's going on? The waiter was not to be found, and even a passive-aggressive "look around," where diners will search the floor for their waiter clearly signifying a "what the eff?" attitude yielded no results.

When the food did come, we were pleased. I will defend the food, it was very good. Not mind-blowing but definitely 4-star quality. But all I can remember when I think of that restaurant were all the little mistakes they made. A more casual diner may not have noticed, but I do believe the overall experience would have been dampened for them. That is the power of subtlety, something I believe in more than anything else. A collection of minor and subtle events throughout a night will accumulate powerfully, whether positive or negative. Though I will admit that diners tend to notice negatives more than positives, all the more reason to always be on point.

It's the Little Things

I think people who know me well enough would say that I have a fair obsession with details. Little details and subtle actions in all aspects of life both concern and attract me. My room is clean and neat, but it has a purposeful and minor disarray to suggest that I am organized but not a machine. My playing style in ultimate is conservative and detail focused; I try to do all the little things right, and maybe I don't get the glory of the big play, but I know I am helping my team. When I slice a duck breast or ribeye steak to order I like to sprinkle a little sea salt on the bare slices, so that the juices pearl on the surface and the flavors bloom. I think decades of subtly feminizing the Asian male in media has ruined the American perception of them as viable men and mates. I think I could write a novel about the injustices I have perceived as an Asian-American, but to not risk sounding like a conspiracy theorist I'm just going to stick to restaurants...

Anyway, my point is you have to pay attention to the little things in the kitchen and in the dining room, because your care for details will pay big dividends in the long run. A few examples,

You bring all dishes for a particular course at once. You don't bring entrees while there are still appetizers on the table.
You never clear a plate until all diners are finished with that particular course. It's not that it's that awkward, but it does affect the pacing of the diners.
When you clear a plate from a table you never bring the plate above a diner's eye level.
You crumb or clean the table after each course, you bring new silverware and plates. It's definitely important to me to be able to have a clean tablecloth to put my hands on and enjoy coffee with dessert.

That all seems like common sense, that all seems like minor necessities, but this far from comprehensive list goes very far to make diners feel an overall dining experience was cared for. The real difficulty is that even if you did everything perfectly, a diner may not specifically notice. They will most assuredly feel like they had good service, but as I mentioned before it can seem soulless. And as I also mentioned, whereas a collection of positive service will largely go unnoticed, a single negative action will vilify you in the eyes of your diners. But mistakes will happen, you just have to recognize the opportunities to go the extra mile. You have to know when and how to either redeem your restaurant in the eyes of the public, or to make them recognize your heartfelt consideration for their experience.

He's Going the Distance

My favorite anecdote in Setting the Table is Danny Meyer's recounting of one of his first run-ins with a powerful NYC food critic. Through the restaurant grapevine and a little extracurricular research, he discovered that this certain critic disliked white wines that were served too cold. He also knew that this critic preferred Northern Italian wines. So on the night this critic was set to dine in, Mr. Meyer set aside all of his Northern Italian whites in to a malfunctioning wine cooler that kept the bottles a bit on the warmer side. But through some either bad luck or bad information, the critic orders a French wine instead. Knowing that this bottle was likely too chilled for the critic, Meyer runs to the cooler and attempts to incubate the bottle for a few minutes between his legs. As the critic is left wondering where the hell is wine is, and Meyer's loins begin to freeze over, he finally deems it acceptable and sends it to the table. Much to his dismay the critic finds the wine too warm.

Even though his efforts were in vain, you can appreciate the sentiment of a passionate restaurateur. He is going the distance to please his customers, and ultimately that is what restaurants are all about. Every restaurant is different, but every single one relies on a certain number of regulars. More often than not these regulars will either develop or have special needs outright. If you cater to them and meet these needs the first time, they will reward you with a lifetime of patronage. If you neglect them even once, you risk losing that customer's faith forever.

My mother is particularly good at this. For as long as her restaurant has been open the reviews say pretty much the same thing, "The staff's service is completely redeemed by the charming owner, Cathy Huang." I will be the first to admit that our restaurant's servers are less than hospitable. For some reason training Chinese people to smile and build a little personal connection with customers remains difficult. But my mother really goes the distance for her large list of regulars, and to gain the loyalty of first-timers. One of her most frequent and devoted regulars has a daughter who is severely, deathly allergic to a laundry list of ingredients. My mom has a set of woks and pans devoted specifically to her. My mom has the science of catering a condo development party down to a T. Every rich, Jewish real estate development on the North Shore of Long Island has a party catered by her at some point throughout the year. She knows to prepare a ton of easily prepared dim sum and dumplings for her customers during camp visiting weekends, so parents can take some microwavable Chinese food to their kids at sleep-away camp. She not only knows, but loves to nurture people and make them feel welcome. And that is the difference. Doing it is one thing, loving to do it is another. But as I mentioned before, emotional proficiency can't be taught.

You either love it or you don't. Restaurants aren't for everyone, but they can find the most unexpected people. The feeling you get from giving genuine care, and receiving sincere thanks in return is a rewarding one. Even if you are very good at pretending to care about your customers, eventually your disingenuous actions will fail you. That is why an ability to read and be empathetic towards others can't be taught. You have to want to do it, and your customers are keenly aware of the difference.

I'm an easy-going diner. I rarely have specific requirements. But I know some people do. I don't blame them. I sometimes get frustrated when they act like spoiled children, but that's my stubbornness reacting as well. I hope as I mature I will learn to emanate the kind of genuine hospitality my mother can. But until then perhaps I can fume in a kitchen and use my cleaver to take out frustration on some poor dead animal.

EP6

The End

I don't really believe in happy endings. But generally, if you go to a good school, you worked decently hard, kept organized, it is believed you would eventually find your way to a stable happiness. Life has its ups and downs, the Dalai Lama says it oscillates; no one lives in harmonious satisfaction or miserable depression for long, eventually you come back to a homeostatic point. You get a job, you get married, you have kids, and the story goes on... you reach peace, things work themselves out.

But I don't think that it all necessarily ends up okay. We like to hope so, like to tell ourselves that, but I don't believe it. You have to make your own happy ending, you have to make your own peace with the world.

And as cliche as it is you must always remember, the only thing you can expect is the unexpected.

I had all sorts of things to write about. Lots of exciting things that happened in the kitchen. I was growing quite happy with my job, looking forward to everyday with a contained excitement. There were things to be practiced, new things to learn and improve at, people to chat with, jokes to be made, good food to eat (especially cookies). I felt I had finally transitioned to being a cook on the outside and in my heart. Waiting tables seemed bothersome, now it was all about doing the honest work of cooking.

And I no longer struggled everyday like I had when I first started. That first month, December, was such a busy month. I had so much personal shit going on and having the Chef yell at me for being slow and constantly being behind was killing me. So many times I wanted to break down and quit. I wanted to walk out of the kitchen. I doubted myself thinking I had made a huge mistake, this was not the career for me, I can't handle it. And then an even more depressing thought rose; if I thought I had loved to cook and I can't handle it, now what do I do?

But I tend to be a bit dramatic when acclimating to new environments. By the end of February it had worked itself out. I was enjoying the kitchen, I was starting to get close and enjoy hanging out with the guys. My Spanish was getting better, there were jokes to be had, food to talk about. I breezed through prep, I made great family meals (they discovered I'm really in to curries, and the poor gringos suffered from the spice .. or so I'm told), the weather was starting to be beautiful. That old kitchen with its outdated equipment, warped pots and pans was just fantastic on a nice spring day. The windows were opened, the breeze rolled in to refresh you as you sweated over a hot burner, the radio was going. During employee meal we'd go outside and eat on the terrace. I was starting to get very comfortable. My original exit date of early July seemed not so necessary anymore. Maybe I'll stay a bit longer, learn a bit more. Why not? This is a good job, I'm learning a lot, maybe this is a valuable education to be had.

And then life shuts the door on you.

Easter Sunday 2010 was the last dinner Va Pensiero will have served. After 13 years being owned by Chef Jeffrey Muldrow the doors have been closed. The restaurant was owned and run by Peggy Ryan, now an instructor at Kendall College, for years and years before that. But unfortunately it is no more. The "hidden North Shore jewel" is gone for the foreseeable future.

I don't think it has really hit me yet. When NUT lost at Regionals last year rather abruptly on Saturday I was quite cheerful and optimistic. What a great season I thought, an unfortunate end, but such is life, right? And I kind of feel that way now. I knew the time was going to end, perhaps it came sooner than I thought, no big deal I'll just start my summer plan a few months early. Maybe this is a sign that I was getting too comfortable, a divine nudge to get me going to culinary school and on to the next phase of the plan.

But when it came to do the End of the Year banquet and I got up to give a short speech about what the team meant to me, what the season had meant to me, I found myself choking up and fighting back tears. My briefly prepared speech fell apart, I rambled off something about proper squat form and I sat back down, torn up inside.

It was over. College ultimate, something that meant more to me than almost anything was done. I only got a little more than 2 years out of it, I felt robbed of the time I deserved.

Perhaps I'm still not coming to grips with not being a college ultimate player anymore. The point is it took me a few weeks to realize the gravity of the situation.

It's ... over.

At least with the ultimate team I knew I'd see most of them again at some point. The cooks, the waiters, the chef ... that isn't necessarily the case. No more conversations about getting fat, no more talking about opening a taco stand, no more almost cutting yourself because you were too busy checking out the hostess for the 15 seconds she steps in the kitchen. No more having the cooks laugh their asses off at me because I was actually the only one who cut myself. No more buying band-aids for the first-aid kit.

I've said it before in this blog, but I really don't do goodbyes very well. It hasn't hit me yet, but I imagine it will soon. All the inane conversations I miss so much from doing road trips to ultimate tournaments are what I miss the most. I get the feeling all the silly chatter that goes on in the kitchen, and horsing around on slow nights and joking knife-fights are what I will miss the most also.

But such is the nature of the business. It is cruel and ruthless and perhaps one of the worst sufferers in a down economy. I've seen restaurants close, my mother's own restaurants in fact, and frankly there's nothing you can do. You see the snowball in the distance and you hope it doesn't start accumulating mass, but sometimes it just becomes too big of a mess. You cut your losses and run.

I don't want to divulge too many details, but basically shit got bad. I feel bad for all the employees. I knew my days there were numbered, but the other guys were pretty set on that restaurant for life. My chef devoted 13 years of his life to that restaurant, my sous chef about 10 years, some of the other cooks and waiters came with the building when my chef took it over. This restaurant is ages old and has been a hidden Evanston gem for decades. And it all comes crashing down in an instant. A life's work erased, a kitchen full of one person's vision and hopes and dreams vanishes.

Excuse my penchant for the dramatic but I can't help but feel awful. For all the employees I've come to consider a family, for my chef, and for myself. What an ominous turn of events. What if this happened to me? On the phone it sounds like my chef is taking it like a man. He's gunning up and looking for a job after he's been his own boss for over a decade. But to see something you poured so much of your soul in to disappear? I'm not even taking this very well, I couldn't picture myself being so composed after a life-shattering event like that...

But alas I have a plan and it was a plan I had in motion from a while ago. I knew I would leave Va Pensiero at the end of June, I knew I would take the summer to try new things and get as much diverse experience as possible. It's back to being an intern or a "stage" (pronounced stAHge) in some 4-star restaurants. It's time to take myself up on the challenge of working at a fishmonger, or a butcher shop or a bakery and learning something that I may not be able to learn the same way in culinary school. It's time to go back to Futami and start taking waiting tables pretty seriously because that's my main job as of now.

So there is hope for me yet. And I hope for the best for my once coworkers. But as April brings cold rains and gloomy skies I can't help but notice the downcast nature of this event. It's sad and ironic that just after I write a post about getting it back in gear that suddenly I no longer have a place to practice my craft.

I'll take a week. Do my stupid taxes, get my bank account together, and start formulating a plot. But for now it's time for me to pack my knives and go.

Wish us all luck,

EP6

Edit: http://linecook415.blogspot.com/2010/03/stage-guide.html

One of my favorite blogs, some perfectly timed advice for being a good stage. If you were ever interested in doing that sort of thing. Here's to hoping I have learned enough.

Grilling

I apologize for the lack of posts. March was a crazy month. But the good news is I have so many near-complete posts that I can pretty much Scatter Shot all of them to you in the next few weeks like in Contra (oh boy I just lost most of you). I'm going to blame my lack of writing mainly on my mini vacation, which involved going to Alabama to see Ms. Ali Frederick and Mr. Robert McMenamin get married. Congratulations guys! Love you and the great city of Birmingham.

So I took a brief hiatus from cooking. Being a cellist growing up there was a famous saying by Gregor Piatigorsky that went something like, "If I don't practice for a day, I notice. If I don't practice for 3 days, my wife notices. If I don't practice for a week, my audience notices." I'm not sure if that was actually Piatigorsky (who was a cellist), or if that was a stock phrase all the professors at Juilliard used to force upon us, but the point remains. If I don't cook for a week, what happens exactly? Since I'm not close to mastering anything and my actions depend on focused daily repetition, am I going to go back and suck ass?

Well good thing they let me warm up by putting me on my most familiar station.

Oh wait, they decided to try me out on grill on a Friday. Great.

I've watched grill and felt its presence since day one. It is fucking hot. It is uncomfortable to put your hand a foot away from the flame, it is downright painful to put it within 6 inches. Just being around the grill requires you to hydrate continuously. A piece of meat will get dark, black grill marks in under 15 seconds on our grill. On my first day ever they had me roast red peppers on the thing. I used the extra long tongs because it hurt to reach towards the back of the grill. Now I am a bit more comfortable with the heat, which gives me hope that I'm building a tolerance and the cooks will no longer call me "Manos de Puto" or "Bitch Hands," but the grill remains daunting. I know how all the dishes work, I've worked the station on a slow night, but the chef decided to keep a skeleton crew for Friday and see how it went.

First, a preface .. grilling is sweet. It has long had associations with manliness, facial hair and killing animals. It is essentially the first cooking technique mastered by humans. All you needed was a spear, an open fire, a woman to drag in to your cave for post-gluttony cuddling and you were a happy Cro-Magnon fool. Unfortunately, backyard barbecues are now most common in the suburban homes of the neutered, modern male, but grilling remains a way to reconnect with a man's forgotten primal nature (more adjectives please). Since it is said that 1/12 people on the Asian continent are descended from Genghis Khan, I'm going to pretend and picture myself riding a horse (which would be awesome), chasing ruminants on the steppes (which would be awesome), and raining down hot fire/arrows in the hunt (which would be awesome), and grilling them for a post-pillage feast (which would be awesome ... minus the wake of destruction I leave in peasantry lives).

So you would think I would start growing facial hair almost immediately by working the grill on a fairly busy night, understaffed and unpracticed, right? Unfortunately what little facial hair I do have was singed off as I stepped up to the plate. When I reach in to turn meats and veg I have to squint to ease the heat from searing my eyeballs (on second thought, this may be the evolutionary advantage of tiny, Asian eyes... I've always wondered...). And it isn't long before I'm juggling a ton of dishes and there are things being grilled everywhere. Because the grill is so hot, an expensive piece of meat will become toast if you neglect it. A pasta sauce you can fix at almost any stage of the game if you mess it up. A venison loin that goes beyond medium cannot be salvaged. It is garbage, to be given to a dishwasher to be eaten or thrown out (game like venison are still wild animals and have not been bred to have fatty, marbled meat, so overcooking is even more unforgivable when working with game). So precision is extremely important. There is an understood degree of waste for training a cook, but I wanted to prove that I could combine all that theoretical knowledge I've gathered from reading about food with the limited technical proficiency I have.

I want to mention two dishes in particular that gave me a hard time.

Whole Mediterranean Sea Bass Baked with Salt Crust, Filleted Tableside and served with Grilled Vegetables, and Salsa Verde

Balsamic Marinated Ribeye for Two, Sliced Tableside and served with Confit Shallots and Root Vegetable-Fontina Timbale

These are our two big dishes that are brought out on carts to the table, and served by the chef or a waiter captain. They are really quite tasty and eye catching, as I've heard the aroma and sight of these dishes coming out of the kitchen turns a lot of heads in the dining room. Unfortunately, they are absolute bastards to prepare.

Butchering a small fish like a sea bass isn't difficult, unless you have little to no practice with it. Oh right, that's me. I had to break down 7 whole fish on top of all the other shit I had to do that day and I knew it was going to take a long time. I'm sure I will talk about this at length some time in the future, but know that it is a pain in the ass if you are bad at it. Fish are slippery bastards and require a knife sharpened to mythic ninja sharpness to filet properly. Just keep that in mind the next time you buy or catch a whole fish. Frankly it may just be easier to use your axe to chop the head off, batter and fry the whole bitch. (How's that for culinary integrity!)

The salt crust is a simple thing. It's just egg whites whipped in a stand mixer until they become a meringue essentially. But replace all the sugar with salt. The lecithin and albumen proteins in the egg white form networks around air is it is whipped and gets an almost cloud like texture. Unfortunately it's very easy to mistake for meringue or whipped cream and trying to taste a salt crust is well ... a really unfortunate experience.

Anyway, the process for baking a whole fish goes something like this.

1) You get yourself a "tony" pan, which in our kitchen is a thick, cast-iron, rectangular pan about 10x15, and hose it down in non-stick spray (I have no idea why my chef calls it a tony pan)

2) You put your fish down, you season each filet lightly, you make sure the thyme and lemon it's stuffed with isn't poking out so it burns, but is protected in the fish's cavity and allowed to perfume the whole thing

3) You put the fish in the pan and smear on the salt crust, the goal is that the salt crust protects the flesh of fish (which is delicate and prone to overcooking), and shouldn't transmit an overly salty taste to the fish

4) You throw it in the hot-hot convection oven (runs at about 475 during service) and set the timer to 15 minutes

5) When it's done you take it out (duh) and pour a little water in to the smoking hot pan, this helps the fish separate from the pan so it's like a quick deglaze except we aren't building sauce

Then it's ready to go. That sounds really easy, right? Pretty much a "set it and forget it" kind of deal, right? Well a few things complicates the process.

1) A lot of times the stupid waiters will "order-fire" a whole fish, which means the diners aren't having appetizers and the first thing they will be eating is a whole fish. Get that fucker in the oven and out in to the dining room ASAP. Well despite the stupid waiters telling the stupid customers that it takes a long time, they bitch and complain anyway about how long it takes. Our oven is running pretty much at max temp, there's nothing we can do to make it go faster except maybe increase the atmospheric pressure of the kitchen, so shut the fuck up.

2) Oven real estate is valuable. It's a big fucking oven but the whole kitchen uses it. And almost everything from the grill goes in there at some point. So when you are juggling 3 beef tenderloin entrees, a venison, 2 whole fish, a ribeye, and the pantry is working the apple tarts and the budinos, and the saute is working a few Amish chickens ... things get crowded and everyone is opening the door at a different time and changing the temperature and cooking time. It's hard to hit a perfect medium rare when the door gets opened every minute and there are desserts and proteins stealing heat from your steak. So when a fish should ideally cook in 15 minutes, sometimes it can vary, and it only takes a minute or so to make the difference between perfect, flaky fish and translucent, jello-like fish.

3) Oh and finding space and time in the oven for all your dishes is difficult, but timing all those dishes themselves is also a pain in the ass. The oven has one timer built in and the grill cook keeps one electronic timer near his station. Two timers for having up to 6 dishes working at once is kind of an issue, especially with such heat sensitive foods. Assuming no one messes with your timer for their dishes you'll have 2 reliable clocks and then you'll just have to rely on your internal clock from there. Have I forgotten about some things before? Maybe. But some cuts have better margins for error than others. Just remember to rest your meat for god's sake.

Anyway, the ribeye has similar problems. It takes a long ass time to cook (12-15 minutes depending on temperature) and it needs to rest a lot longer. The timbale that comes with it is also kind of a hassle because it is prepared in a disposable tin ramekin that causes a lot of sticking. Before heating it you have to cut it out, hose it with non-spray stick and hit it with a few pats of butter to make it luscious. Surgically removing a baked food item from its casing and then sending it back in the oven during the crush of service = annoying. Stabbing yourself through a tin cup = extremely possible. Being a big, clumsy Asian with man paws = ...not my fault, I swear...

So accounting for all of that, how did I do? My sous chef, Chuy, had to jump in and help me a little bit because I sold ALL of the whole fish. That is extremely unusual because it's pretty expensive and to sell 7 in one night is rare. Then we realized it was Good Friday and a lot of people weren't eating meat. FML. My hands were a little raw from basking in so much heat, I know some things weren't perfect. I turned out a grilled calamari dish that wasn't perfect, I know it in my heart but unfortunately didn't have time to fix it. Some of the pumpkin polenta may not have been in the perfect ratio of cheese/butter and polenta but ... generally I got not complaints. Chuy likes to make fun of me for being slow and clumsy a lot of the time but at the end of the day he knows I care and he encourages me a lot. He tells me I did very well for my first time. I didn't get any complaints, and only the first fish was slightly undercooked, I had to put it under the broiler for a second. As I was diving in and out of coolers and manning the grill my chef would periodically ask me,

"How do you learn to swim, Eric?"
"Throw me in the deep end, sir!"

And that was that. I'm guessing I'm either lucky or I have a preternatural sense for what medium rare is.

I'm being kind of a girlface and complaining a lot, but actually it was a really fun experience. I think a lot of the appeal of cooking is sometimes getting in the shit and fighting your way out. It requires a level of concentration and efficient movement that can be really exhilarating (if you're into that sort of thing). Time flies, there's heat and pans everywhere, it's fun as shit. And I like learning and practicing this kind of stuff. Curiosity and an insatiable desire to learn are important attributes for a good cook. You are always exploring your boundaries and thinking about how to do something better. Now I know many of you guys scoffed at that saying, "Eric/Panda ... in to learning? Are you kidding me?!" But just because I felt honing my Halo skillz was more important than Introduction to Modern Cosmology doesn't mean I don't like learning. I just like learning about certain things.

And anyway, me and Wilson are the #2 doubles Halo team at Northwestern and I know the escape velocity of earth is 11 km/sec, and the nearest galaxy is Alpha Centauri at 4.37 light years. So I win.

Hah! Taste it.

Except I just admitted that me and Wilson are the #2 doubles Halo team at Northwestern in a public forum.

Damn... I lose.

Back to the routine!

EP6