I'll bring the hot sauce...

I might be romanticizing, but the food, drink, music, art and other aspects of culture in a place are fascinating, and separate one otherwise indistinct place from another. Since we've moved across the ocean I've pretty much stuck to English and Continental food, with the occasional foray into Chinese, per Honey's newfound interest. I love Southern food, and I still cook a good Southern meal about once a month, but without the stoneground grits, the gorgeous pink turnips stunning array of winter greens, it just doesn't feel, well, Southern.

Of course a lot of major components to the Southern meal can be found in England, and that's what I've tapped whenever culinary homesickness strikes. For New Year's Day, I bought some spring cabbage, English cider, smoked streaky bacon--ham hocks can be found, but it requires more planning than I'd invested--and broke out the black eyed peas that came as part of our flat's furnishings. A little chunky tomato sauce went into the peas, in the hope that Honey would like them if they tasted less like peas. And my gorgeous, gleaming cast iron cornbread pan was pressed into service, along with the stoneground cornmeal from Riverview, smuggled in a Dutch oven back in July.

I should have made pepper sauce months ago, when we emptied our first bottle of olive oil, but I'm indolent at best, and the greens needed something. So I dredged up and modified a friend's hot sauce recipe: Equal parts cider and white vinegar, a good bit of cayenne: at least 4 tablespoons for about 250 mL, and about an equal amount of hot and sweet pimenton, mixed evenly. This is all based on taste, as I sure wasn't measuring while trying to make hot sauce, retrieve cornbread, and dish out peas and greens.

Sitting on the couch and eating for money and luck, with my good smokey hot sauce, humming "Unhappy" by Oukast, I felt comforted, even I daresay optimistic. And honey and won respectably at the casino the next night, so maybe there's something to these old rituals.

Or do you just like the uniform?

When I first decided to walk down the long, doubt-ridden road to chefdom, I was fortunate. I'd already worked for about 18 months, under three very different chefs. Each of them, and at least one of the chefs at the Italian Restaurant gave me The Talk.

The Talk goes something like this:
"So you want to be a chef."
"Yup."
"Do you know what that means?"
"Yes."(Note to aspiring chefs: your answer does not matter here. Get used to that; in the future, you will be given the answer, whether or not you know it.)
"You will never spend New Year's Eve with your friends, Christmas Eve with your family, Valentine's Day with the one that you love, or Mother's Day with your Mom. You will not get a Friday or Saturday off for a party, no matter how important. Every Halloween, people will ask if you're dressed as a chef, and the answer will be no. You'll work 12 or more hours a day. You will get burns and cuts, and still have to work, and the scars probably won't go away. People will scream at you. A lot. You will fuck up. A lot. You will not have a successful relationship, unless you find another chef, or a saint. And no one will understand what it means when you say 'I'm a chef.' They'll think that you cook really well."

There are certain things that I would add to this, though it might scare potential chefs off from the gig.

You might never earn the right to be called "chef." More and more people get called chef--hell, I get called chef--without the responsibilities that real chefs have. You might find yourself as a line cook at 45, and line cookery is a young person's game. Your job is not just to cook: you must manage people and costs. You need to understand what happens in the dining room, and when it's broken, you must fix it. You need to know food: you must know how to fabricate meat, fish and veg, you must know not merely ethnic, but regional cuisines, and you need to know how to create at least a basic version of most dishes on command. You need to get every red cent (or pence) from every item in your kitchen, and you need to be comfortable harassing slackass cooks into doing the same. You need to be willing to stay up until 1 or 2 in the morning as a restaurant chef, and if you want to be a pastry chef, you'd better be ready to wake up at 3 A.M. You need to know how food gets to your kitchen, how to make that path more valuable to your bottom line, and where something exciting is that your competitors haven't found yet. You need to understand that if people call you Chef, everything that comes out of your kitchen has your name on it. You need to taste everything. All the time. And you need to be brutal with whoever made it, even if it was all you.

If you don't want to do that, if you're convinced that surely there's an easier way, I have to ask: Do you want to be a chef, or do you just like the uniform?

Recently, our breakfast commis, admittedly a kid, was bitching about the hours in December. When I put the above question to him, everyone else on the line assumed I was taking the piss, but it's a question to ask not only other cooks, but oneself.

I have a degree in journalism. I was a smart kid. My parents always wanted more for me, and I like to think that I have the mind for this nebulous "more." Nothing makes me feel better than working well in the kitchen, but I regularly burn bread, make basic procedural mistakes, and need advice for simple processes. I want to work my way up the line, but it's impossible both to be aware of my limitations and assume that I can go where I want to.

Being a chef requires both suspending doubt in one's abilities, and being painfully, constantly aware of one's limitations. The best chefs teach you this, and how to overcome it. They punish mistakes, lend confidence in the face of the unknown, and encourage you in your experiments. And even with the best chefs, you'd better be your own worst critic.

Tomorrow, what a chef, or aspiring chef needs in reading materials.

December in 101 words

Landing from Atlanta, straight to work for nine days, sous chef quits, day off, seven days, friends from Brussels get embarrasingly poor service at the restaurant, day off, pork soup, carolers in an empty restaurant, easiest set menu EVER, wine for Christmas, new sous chef, grease fire with 26 guests in the restaurant, the show goes on, hockey game, ordering gifts for family back home, contracting the plague, day off, poker win, slow Christmas Eve, drinking with friends in their pub, waking up to potato pancakes, scrambled eggs, tomato sauce and pecorino and Authentic Mexican and The Essential Cuisines of Mexico.
Happy Christmas!

Information wants to be free; Mission Thanksgiving

I'm visiting Atlanta and have made it to Woodfire, a farmers' market, a friend's restaurant by Oakland Cemetery and Northside. I totally failed at the Highlander, but am about to head to Little's. And maybe Whole Foods.

It's been four months since I possessed the knowledge necessary to eat really well. Having the meager money from my job has helped. But just being able to find good food honestly sold requires being networked through inefficient channels, and that takes time.

I'm reading a book on markets, and just finished a chapter that advocates information's uninterrupted (and thus free) flow in markets, and the existence of entities that facilitate that flow. And I thought about buying locally in Coventry. The terminology of farming and preparation are different. Chemical composition, not ingredient name, becomes the standard, and a constant source of doubt. Knowing as much about the foodways as I do here would certainly make life easier.

So to facilitate the flow of information to the Georgians who read this, here's a link to the Georgia Organics Directory. You can locate nearby markets, CSAs and restaurants, even a farmer if you need one. The printed version has the added bonus of being organized by location as well.

I get to shop because I've been asked to MacGyver a Thanksgiving dinner without a range or oven. My hardware consists of a grill, a smoker, a large outdoor burner, a small sauce burner, a slow cooker, a toaster oven, an electric skillet, a microwave, and possibly a torch. My software thus far is two turkeys of an as-yet-undetermined size, two paper grocery bags of various braising greens, and a few pounds of winter veg: turnips, radishes, parsnips and winter squash. I think I've got a line on some good stuffing. And I possibly have a satellite kitchen.

Now I just need to get a replacement notebook. I have lists to make.

Cowboy caramel, learning new methods and opening a restaurant

I've been at the new job for a couple of days now, and I'm getting used to working again, to riding 2 miles to and from work, new coworkers, a new kitchen, and a new chef.

We start dinner service in a few days, so I've mostly been working on prep for my station while the other cook and the sous chef run breakfast and lunch services. My station is huge: salads, starters, pizzas and desserts. I feel like I'm in the weeds already, even though the chef has instructed the other cook, an incredibly capable chick, that she'll be helping me. I'm trying to keep positive: work this incredibly busy station, and I will get faster, more organized, clearer. My systema will be strong. I'm a natural optimist, but it's a challenge.

The prep list is daunting, and I can't see how it'll all be done before we open. Opening a restaurant, I've decided, blows like a hurricane. It's hectic, the lists have to be completed, and we only got a copy of the menu yesterday. A cook no-called no-showed on my first day, and was standing outside smoking when I rode up the next day. As a cook, I hate having to talk to cooks who are deep in the shit, usually about to get fired. Inevitably, there are the explanations, the rationalizations, the guesses of the clueless, the desperate questing about for some reason to hope, to believe that they won't soon be finding out how exciting the prospects are on the current job market. When it's a good cook who just made some mistakes, I feel bad, and wish that I could realistically offer some help, but I don't make the decisions. When cooks screw over the team out of laziness though, I just want them to get out of my way and let me do my job. Cooks are funny that way; most are pretty forgiving if you aren't a total fuckup, but screw over the team or half-ass it, even once, and you're already operating in the past tense. You're not here anymore, you're just in the way.

But yesterday was fun. We were slow during lunch service, and chef had me clear away my prep during lunch. He doesn't want any prep done during service, and I've got to get ready to transition from prep to service. Then, of course, we had the slowest lunch service ever. So he showed us how he makes risotto, pasta carbonara, and caramel.

We made risotto at Woodfire, and after a year there, I knew how to do it the Woodfire way. Cooking requires discipline, and if you're learning well, there's only one way to do something: the right way. So I tend to approach different methods with lots of skepticism. But I'm here to learn, and even though his method was different, and didn't look like it would work, the risotto was great. The ingredients weren't the super-special produce that we worked with at Woodfire, but it was simple, hearty and delicious. Especially as I hadn't eaten much that day.

The pasta carbonara was good to watch. It's a dish I've tried once, and predictably made scrambled eggs. I was surprised by how much the copious pepper brought to the dish, by the transience of the sauce--within about 5 minutes, it had broken, something to remember for service. It was also a simple rendition, a reminder as we recalled all the gussied-up versions with peas, mushrooms, meatballs, or cream for people who couldn't emulsify with eggs alone, that Italian cuisine is simple, meant to be whipped up at home, and as it's been exported, it's almost baroque in its complexity.

The caramel was for a special dessert on the lunch menu, and the chef made it "cowboy style" with just butter and caramel in the pan. It came together beautifully, and made me want to go home and try it myself. Of course that was before another six hours and a pizza lesson, complete with excited children. More on that tomorrow.

Notes

We got bicycles last weekend. I rode about 13 miles Saturday and Sunday, and I think about 3 today. I can already feel my metabolism kicking up. I can't wait to be able to eat more without getting fatter.

I made quince jam. It's pretty nice, but 1 kilo of fruit makes a LOT of jam. My neighbors downstairs were supposed to get a jar, but didn't answer the door. Which sucks, because I want to try and make something else with quince before the season is over.

Purple-sprouting broccoli has shown up in the markets. I can't wait to get some.

Everyone who's spent time in Europe has told us that we'll miss real Mexican food. There appear to be about three types of dried chiles available in the markets, none of which I've ever seen in Hispanic and Latino markets in Atlanta. On an episode of The Restaurant--which I don't like as much as the first season, for the record--one couple actually served Doritos and green bean and carrot "burritos" to Mexicans. They had no clue why the Mexicans were insulted, and claimed that they couldn't make Mexican food because they didn't have a working oven. Right.

Leaving aside the obvious rant, today I found two sources for dried chiles, posole, masa harina, jamaica, tomatillos, and all the other wonderful things that I need to make actual Mexican food. Now I just need to temper my enthusiasm with some sort of budget, lest I spend my first paycheck on dried chiles.

Oh yeah, one other thing: after obsessing about it for days with no particular cause, I spotted Malabar Spinach at the Carribean stall in the market today. Coventry may not provide all the opportunities that Atlanta does, but the daily surprises are nice.

Thank You, Grandma

When I was a kid, my little brother and I spent at least one evening a week with my mom's parents. Grandma grew up in the tobacco-farming (and last I heard, Nissan-manufacturing) mountains of east Tennessee, and was born smack-dab in the middle of the Great Depression. Theirs was not a rich family, despite the rumoured ownership of a Stradivarius violin--which perished in a fire.

As kids, one of our favorite dinners and Grandma and Papa's was creamed dried beef, known charmingly in the army as "shit on a shingle." Crispy toast, milky gravy, salty dried beef--cut up with scissors, natch--and not a vegetable in sight, it was easy food for kids to love. And last I checked, it cost about 50 cents a serving. I haven't had it in years.

I come to this because tonight I attempted Potted Hough. The British are big on potted proteins as a way of preservation. From what I can gather, they are finely chopped meats refrigerated either in a rich stock or butter (in the case of crab and shrimp.) They're usually served cold, but occasionally warmed and served on toast. After riding 8.5 miles today (see the other blog), I was not in the mood to wait until the paltry amount of stock I had jelled, and wasn't convinced that Honey would be in the mood for cold meat jelly after a day spent out in the brisk wind.

Tasting the Hough (Scottish for beef shin, apparently), I felt that I understand why this delicacy had stayed for the most part in Scotland. Highly spiced beef reminds me of medieval recipes involving eight or nine different warm spices, and a dearth of salt or acid. A cook never wants to disappoint, however, and I'm no different. After such a long day, I felt we deserved something nice. So what to do to this tepid beef to make it delicious?

And here the inspiration of Peggy Belcher's thrift food struck me: a slab of toast would save the beef from being a pile of mush on a plate, and soak up the admittedly rich beef broth. I even got a compliment from Honey.

So thank you, grandma, for teaching me about the food of thrift, and how to make something special out of something that most people would ignore.

Things I'm not in the mood to do:

Work on another draft of the menu.

Start dinner.

Clean.

Write emails to chef, former coworkers, and family.
Call the butcher to secure venison mince.

Make gnocchi.

Convince English pubgoers to eat gnocchi, ragu and gremolata.

Correct the seasoning on my pumpkin soup.

Find something to do with a litre of aioli.

Check my bank balance.

Order a new steel, four six pans and a two-thirds pan from Nisbets.

Shower.

Clear my reader.

Go to my second shift tonight.


Things I'm in the mood to do:

Sit.

Eat Crisps.

Watch television.

Make unproductive lists.

I didn't know that it was possible to drool and cry at the same time.

And then I saw this.



Gorgeous, isn't she? I don't know how it'll happen, but I intend to get to The Pit at the earliest possible opportunity.

The photo is off Jason Perlow's blog, Off the Broiler. If you're in the mood for serious barbecue porn, I'd recommend checking it out.


I had my own post, about my lunch, ready to go, but I think I'll wait a day out of deference to the 'cue.

Reading the New York Times in England

We finally got our internet at the flat, so I've been trying to catch up with my reader. This story in the NYT is a good example of the singlemindedness that occasionally infects the people involved in local food movements.


We're optimists, there's no disputing that, and much of the experience of buying local food involves exciting discoveries: heirloom vegetables, unique produce or breeds that you can't find elsewhere--see ramps in the South--items that haven't been bought, and may not have been cultivated for decades, and new foods that some passionate soul has just dreamed up are all part of the experience of eating locally. We just can't understand why anyone wouldn't want these amazing products, or would accept homogenized industrial products instead of something with a funky flavor and an interesting backstory. And of course there's the old chestnut that if we want to make these foods that we love more available, more affordable and more attractive, we must do everything we can to support the people already producing them.


But professionals are not optimists, and neither are passionate, informed amateurs. The flours discussed in the NYT story may be exciting, delicious and the results of admirable community collaboration, but that doesn't make them commercially viable in a wide range of baked goods. I expect that there are many small-scale heirloom millers who read or were interviewed for this story who've stated that Americans just need to stop expecting these amazing products to make Wonderbread.


That's where optimism and infatuation with a unique, exciting food turns into singlemindedness, and singlemindedness is dangerous. Not for the predictable reasons; I don't care if local farmers resemble street-preachers, or get perhaps frighteningly enthusiastic about their products. I expect it. Their job is to sell what they make, and enthusiasm helps.


By insisting that these flours be used for yeast and starter-risen breads, or even for the usual quickbreads, one ignores some really interesting possibilities. What, these farmers, millers and bakers should ask, were these flours used for the last time that they were grown? Tracking down old cookbooks and recipes is a fulfilling pursuit, and by using the recipes to market the flour (and perhaps to produce value-added products themselves), the flour will be more attractive a purchase than something that tastes nice, but might make your loaf fall.


Another possible use for these flours that I see ignored is in dishes similar to arepas, porridges, and farro. Dishes that use wheat as a starch but not for a baked product are delicious and would surely show off the wheat's unique flavors and stoneground texture better than a grainy slice of what should have been sourdough.


The comparison in the article is made between heirloom flours and small-scale cheeses, and the implication is that the variability of these flours should be enjoyed, not a drawback. But cheese is used differently; a different aged cow's milk cheese on a cheese plate won't do any harm to the plate overall, unless it's rancid. Even when cooking, the chemistry involved in cooking with cheese often allows for a little variability, and the practiced cook can substitute one similar cheese for another with little worry that the sauce will break or that the dish won't taste right.


Baking is far more precise, but farmers, millers and bakers are not without options when it comes to marketing and using these flours in recipes that they're already familiar with. Just as the large flour companies test for gluten content (and other factors), so can artisanal producers test their own flour. If they don't want to adulterate their product--and they won't--by blending it with another wheat's flour, then they don't have to; just label the flour with the results of the test, and note which kinds or brands of flour are most similar to the flour they're selling at the moment. No one will then find themselves making a cake with a high-gluten flour or trying to re-create a chewy baguette with milled soft wheat. Customer satisfaction improves, customers come back for more, and lo and behold, heirloom flour becomes one more viable business model in the local food stable.


And darn it, now I really want to make some bread.

What I'm Eating:

Y Fenni cheese: I got this at the Polish deli because it said "cheddar" in the description and was cheap. As the lady behind the counter lifted it, I saw what it was. It's made with whole-grain mustard and brown ale, and makes one hell of a grilled cheese sandwich. I think I'm going to make a gratin of potatoes with it for dinner.

Spring cabbage: Now summer cabbage. This is the closest that I can find to collard greens. When I'm feeling homesick (and industrious)I make my collards recipe: garlic, onions and chile flakes get sauteed, then made into stock with "smoked gammon joint"-- British for smoked ham hocks, but they're freakin' huge-- and British dry cider. Add the greens and braise and you've got the most proper Southern greens you can imagine.

Salsiccia Piccante and an unnamed Pecorino: Honey and I went to the Leamington Spa food festival on Sunday, and since Honey's favorite dessert is charcuterie and cheese, we picked up a big piece of salsiccia and a pecorino that I've never had before. Unfortunately, there are more pecorinos than there have been Italian governments, and I was remiss in writing down the name. We had a very Spanish dinner that night of salumi, cheese, and wine, with some gazpacho from the soupery. Mine's better, but it was a nice easy dinner.

Fried noodles with crispy belly pork and ginger and green onions: I suck at ordering. My instincts are good, but servers are never fast enough to keep me from second-guessing myself and ordering the most esoteric thing on the menu. Thus I have gotten mackerel when I should have ordered pork, tried to eat flat noodles in a broth with chopsticks, and all sorts of other nonsense. But after multiple visits to our local noodle bar, I was resolved. I would get the belly pork. I would order it with fried, not soup noodles, and I would not fuck it up with some crazy sauce. I stuck to my resolution and the result was the realization of a culinary dream.

What I'm Reading:

Simple Chinese Cooking: Honey saw a wok at IKEA for three pounds and his eyes lit up, so after a week of improvised noodle dishes (good for leftovers at the worst, awesome at best)I checked out this book. We made sweet and sour pork as a kind of special night in, and the Mongolian beef doesn't suck at all. Oh and there's a deep-fried egg recipe that rivals Theatre of the meat for it's entertainment value. Some of the recipes are a little less than traditional--the sweet and sour sauce uses chopped and sliced veg instead of pureeing the whole thing, but I've never minded the difference.

Writing at the Kitchen Table: I had to turn in French Country Cooking, and when I found this biography of Elizabeth David, I got all excited. Unfortunately, like so many good writers, the personality that comes through her books seems superior to the personality she actually had. She seems to have led an interesting life, born out of a wealthy family that could support her traveling, and her hatred of the traditional obligations of said wealth. But hey, maybe it gets better.

The River Cottage Meat Book: Another one that I promised to just go ahead and buy, but it's seeing a lot more use than the Taste of Britain, which is interesting if one has the context to use it, and poorly indexed. I wish there were more butchery in it, but it includes what looks a lot like a recipe for the belly pork mentioned about. As well as a few other tempting ones.

And today I'm checking out The Pauper's Cookbook, and Prue Leith's Cookery School. We'll see how they treat me.

Local Find: The Farmers Market!

According to a website that has been consistently out-of-date, there was a farmers market last Thursday at Spon Street. I awoke hopeful, but dubious. Spon Street is very pretty, where they relocated all of Coventry’s remaining medieval buildings after the severe bombing during World War II. It’s now home to a few fine-dining restaurants and generally working-class pubs with convenient access to the nearby clubbing district. I haven’t seen much of it during the day, but it doesn’t get much foot traffic. Sure enough, when I showed up at 9:30, I found no farmers market.

Fortunately I’d been informed that there was a weekly “French market” in Kenilworth, and as the day looked pretty, and Kenilworth is always scenic, decided to go check it out. But if there had been a market, surely it hadn’t just disappeared, right? Any smart organization would have at least tried a better location. So I headed for the upper precinct. It may be a bit of a detour, but the window shopping is nice.


I got just past the library, almost to the fountain in the middle, when a glorious sight appeared: Pavilions, tables in front, striped awning fabric behind. I could see tomatoes. And bread! There was a farmer’s market after all! Of course I’d forgotten my camera, and I’ve been meaning to introduce more photojournalism to this little blog. So I turned around and hot-footed it to the flat, and made it back, camera in hand.
There was plenty of good stuff: crates and crates of eggs: chicken and duck, produce covering the ubiquitous spring onions, cauliflower, spring cabbage, tomatoes, strawberries, red currants and raspberries, sausages, smoked and cured meats from Tamworth pigs, lamb, pork and beef, artisan beers, ciders, fruit wines and cordials, bread, and the sign that excited me the most: cheese.


Sure, we had cheese at home. But it wasn’t farm-made. I got some traditional Warwickshire Truckley, smoked. It’s great, even if the smoke is unnecessary: pungent and chalky, just a touch flaky. I’m only sad that I didn’t buy the walnut bread to go with it.
I also got some spring cabbage, the closest-looking thing to collards. Hopefully since they’re both Brassicas, the flavour will be similar. And a giant smoked ham hock. I’m going somewhere with this, in case you haven’t picked up on it, and I’m trying to convince myself that it’s not worth going back for some of that artisan beer or cider. And next time, I’m trying the blue cheese.
I picked up a flier too, which seeks to convince the customer of the special nature of the products: all are produced within 30 miles, unless they’re a value-added product like honey, cider, bread or sausage: then the producers can come from up to 50 miles away. A producer (farmer, butcher, cider-maker or brewer) has to staff the booth to answer customers’ questions.
I don’t often write about the actual argument for local food: Honey and I debate it regularly, and it comes down to finding value in products that are grown or made near to you, in being able to talk to a farmer about his or her practices and products, and in believing that the symbolic statement of buying at a market like this outweighs the economic statement of buying from a chain supermarket.
I obviously find value in these points. An item’s place of production affects its flavour. It’s why I’ve bought Spanish olive oil for years, why I like South American wines, and why, after years of buying local Southern produce, I got really interested in Southern food.
Now that I’m somewhere unfamiliar, I seek to understand it through the food. I think that if I eat enough of these emulsified sausages, grassy onions, soft breads and sharp cheeses, I’ll come to understand what makes West Midlanders feel comforted and at home, and maybe, just maybe, I’ll come to have the same sentiments.

BOOKS

All of mine (save The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook) are on the slow boat to England, along with everything else that I though I could go six weeks without. And I'm still unemployed. So what's a cook to do?

Why, hit the library of course. I have to limit what I check out, as I have a near-pathological problem with turning in books on time, but my new routine is to come in, grab three books, open up the laptop and take notes. Unfortunately, the library has wireless, and I have no discipline. So while I've been trying to get my reader to below 1000 stories, my three books have mostly sat unread.

But I did allow myself to check out Elizabeth David's French Country Cooking yesterday, and it lives up to its reputation. It even made me, the avid fish-avoider, walk to the market to see what comes out of these cold waters. The answer: after 2:30 on a Thursday nothing. The market closes early.

Today I'm sharing my little table with: Le Cordon Bleu's Complete Cooking Techniques, The Taste of Britain, and Complete Italian Cookery Course by Ursula Ferigno.

I've been pleasantly surprised by the selection at the Coventry library. Last week I got to cozy up to The River Cottage Meat Book, and I keep finding slim little surprises, like French Country Cooking, tucked away between the tomes that everyone wants (Larousse Gastronomique, I'm looking at you here).

But this is an apprentice cook's blog, and when an apprentice cook is unemployed, I feel that it's only seemly to keep up the learnin'. Here's why I chose to invite these books to my table today, and what I'm learning from them:

LCB Complete Cooking Techniques: I need to buy a technique book, really I do. I've been told somewhere close to a thousand times, and I know that it's true, but these things tend to be huge and expensive, and there were always other things (food) that my meager salary went toward. Now that there's no salary, it's a lot harder to justify spending 30 quid on a technique book. But I only worked my way up to fry station at Woodfire, and I've got to get comfortable with cooking fish and meat at the restaurant level. So today I'm refreshing my memory on how to clean and fillet fish and how to cook meat and fish. I like this book. It's not huge, it's got lots of good information, and it 17 pounds instead of 30, though it takes a typically British indifferent attitude to meat temperatures, and don't ask about fish. I should really buy one of these...

The Taste of Britain: I should not be reading this today. I already looked at it last week. But it's SO GOOD. There's professional organizations, resources for cheese, local specialties, all the sorts of things that make cooking locally exciting. I have limited time, but darnit, I want to read this sucker cover to cover. And it's beautiful too, complete with the embossed hardcover and ribbon to mark one's place. Unfortunately, it's expensive, so here it stays. Maybe I'll buy it for myself for Christmas.

Complete Italian Cookery Course: I have an interview at an Italian restaurant tonight, so I'm trying to bone up on my Italian cooking. And I'm surprised by what I remember: how to make risotto and gnocchi, pizza dough, some basic pasta sauces. I've got my fingers crossed and have found myself muttering to the universe all day: "Please don't let this place suck." This book, for practical reasons, may come home with me.

And damnit, now I'm hungry.

Good Things to Eat in England:

Strawberries: The weather is cool and wet here, so strawberry season lasts and lasts here, a nice contrast to Georgia, where the strawberries show up for oh, five minutes. They're aromatic, sweet, and definitely live up to their reputations.

Sausages: I'm used to simple country-style sausages with a coarse textures, but the English-style sausages tend to be emulsified, and far less seasoned. The flavor is deliciously porky and smooth. And they serve them with gravy, like they know what I like.

Mature Cheddar: We picked the cheapest one (that still met my high standards, admittedly) off the shelf at Tesco, and I feel like we cheated somewhere. It's amazing. I've been making more grilled cheese sandwiches than can possibly be healthy. Chop up some spring onions, melt them with the cheese, and I'm in my own special version of heaven. This cheese is sharp, crumbly, and still melts beautifully.

Mustard: I have not seen near enough mustard in British food here, which is a damn shame. The stuff is thick, dark brown-yellow, just like the crayon in the big 64-pack (we didn't have any high-falutin' 96-packs when I was a kid. You used your imagination.) and it's got a heat that might give wasabi a run for its money. I first got the idea of its greatness when we were eating at the cheap pub nightly, and I put the stuff, straight from a Heinz packet, on my burger. I was shocked at how fresh it tasted. Now I've got my own little jar of Colman's, the good stuff, and it makes me weep tears of joy. And pain.

Beer: Go ahead, tell me beer's not a food. Just try it, punk. Most real ales here are called bitters, and they're hand-pumped: work in a good pub for awhile and you'll have one normal arm, and one Popeye arm from pouring the stuff. No, it's not always ice-cold. It's not meant to be. But it's delicious. Thick, flavorful and mellow, even the IPAs. I tried a ginger beer in April that was subtle and lovely, and I can only hope they carry it at our local during the fall beer festival.

There's so much that I haven't yet tried properly: the beef, the lamb, a cheese called Hereford hops that's a creamy cow's milk cheese coated in (of course) hops. I hear cherries are coming into season, as are tomatoes, and I intend to see how tomatoes do without some serious heat. And I saw something called Spring Cabbage the other day that looks suspiciously like collards.

My culinary coup thus far has been, of all things, a salad. I didn't have much for it, but I made a mustardy vinaigrette, crumbled some cheddar on chopped Little Gem lettuce, and lo and behold, a triumph.

And hey, I found buttermilk after all. Now I just need a soft wheat flour...

So long, Hometown

I am an Atlantan. I was born at Northside Hospital and raised in Buckhead. Early adolescence was spent between the rich greenery of the city's sunken parks--those half-block interruptions whose creeks made them useless for houses--and the consumerist banality of Lenox Mall. I walked to Oxford books and spent hours reading in the kids' playhouse. I graduated to Little Five Points and Virginia Highlands.

My first apartment was a 600-square foot shoebox a block from City Hall East on the unglamorous, ungentrified stretch of North Avenue between Peachtree and Poncey Highlands. I lived in Home Park for two years, walking to find parties, offering to trade Jack Daniels for ice cream to the ice cream man who cannily drove the streets on the long summer days, and battling it out with slum lords, one of whom had a dead, poorly-buried dog on her property when we moved in.

I went to Georgia State, and took a certain pride in the street vendors, tacky clothing shops and tables that took over Broad Street in the warmer months. Downtown seemed metropolitan, even if it was only a mini-metropolis. After school, I'd head up to Buckhead and ply my trade, convincing conventioneers to part with their expense account money for my books.

I've been to shows at the Roxie, the Tabernacle, Variety Playhouse, Smith's, Chastain and Lakewood. I favor Landmark Midtown Arts Cinema--dubbed the Little Drunken Monster by my old roommate--over the Big Purple Monster up I-85. I've played Sunday trivia at the Highlander, our go-to bar when we meet friends from the northern neighborhoods. I think Atlantic Station is a terrible disappointment and an eyesore.

I live in Inman Park, where I walk to the grocery store, the bank, the bars and the liquor store. I like Manuel's (Man-yoo-uhls, not Man-wells) for the history and the liberalism, but prefer Cafe di Sol and the Yacht Club for the atmosphere and quality of food and drinks. Fox Bros. may not be the best barbecue in the city (except that it is), but it's our local meat and two, and it's damn good. I buy groceries at Little's where I chat with Lisa and Maria about raw milk and local politics. We're even getting married in the neighborhood, where I'm sadly discovering a dearth of hotels.

I know Candler Park, East Atlanta, Kirkwood and Cabbagetown. I can tell you the boundaries for Garden Hills, Peachtree Hills, and Peachtree Heights, and the difference between East Buckhead and West Buckhead (money vs. lots of money).

I'm fond of the South, but I love Atlanta. The old truism holds that it's a great place to live, boring to visit. We don't have big landmarks or tourist attractions to draw anyone outside of the Southeast. A dozen other cities have the equivalents of the Zoo, the World of Coke, and Centennial Olympic park. The aquarium and the High are noteworthy, but not terribly unique. But for the daily activities, we have plenty of interesting and great options, usually affordable to boot.

The people are friendly and driven, and there's always someone putting together something that's worth going out for. I watched Atlanta's part-and-parcel skylines grow, and recently be rendered snaggle-toothed by the tornado.

New York and London are huge. They have everything. But when I'm there I feel like I'm in a game that's too rich for my blood; there's so much, the barrier to entry is pretty high for a mid-twenties cook who wants to retire someday. Atlanta is welcoming and modest; there are plenty of places where I can go for great food, drink, and entertainment.

I love the food here; we get fresh produce from one of the great agricultural regions in the country, and a stronger sense of place than you'll find elsewhere. We have Buford highway, with authentic Latino and Asian restaurants and markets. I can't afford the fine dining, but I know that it's a strong market.

I love the summers: the heat is so intense that it feels supernatural, and when we aren't in a drought, intense, pouring thunderstorms cut through and remind us what it's like to be cool and wet. Air conditioning wafts from open doors in the summer like perfume, and we wear sandals, shorts, sundresses and hats to keep cool; the expanse of bare skin bespeaks the easy, relaxed pace that we bring to our recreation.

I'll miss tomatoes and biscuits. I hear that they have tomatoes in England, but I'm convinced that they can't be finer than ones that I've got growing in my friends' backyard now. We've been getting our first tomatoes at Woodfire, and the farmer characteristically undersold them as "not that great." They're small, red pear-shaped ones, red round ones, tiny ones, Sungolds, and we're putting them everywhere. Summer to me is tomatoes, and summer is my favorite season. They're so intense, so uniquely tomato-ey. You can't substitute for a tomato if you ate the last one, you just have to season your food with your tears.

Biscuits were one of the first foods I learned to make, and I can smell them at a distance of 100 yards. I love the tanginess of buttermilk biscuits, the way that butter melts into them, their tenderness, and the rise they get out of what seems like so little leavening. I prefer cut buttermilk biscuits, but I still remember my grand-aunt showing me how she made "drop" biscuits in a cake pan. They mostly steamed with little crust, and they pulled apart at the dinner table. Tenderness, again, was the watchword; a biscuit's inside should yield, should lovingly accept butter, gravy or jam, while just maintaining its structural integrity. There's no buttermilk in England, and White Lily's changing its formula anyway. I think that I'll cry at least once over my missing biscuits.

I'll miss Southern accents: the drawls, the soft "t"s that sound to me like a combination of warmth and humor. I'll miss greens, barbecue and country ham, cold salads with mayonnaise dressings, did I mention biscuits? Cause I'll really miss those. I'll miss peaches so juicy that within two bites my chin is running with it, I look like an untended three-year-old and I've managed to drip juice between my toes.

It's not all bad. I won't miss living in the one liberal enclave in Georgia. I won't miss a governor who would rather go fishing than fund transit. I won't miss the good old boy network that's frustrated me for as long as I've been cognizant of politics. I like the tea, and lemon curd is delicious(it would be great on biscuits). I haven't learned how to make scones properly yet, but I'm convinced that I can. Despite Tony Bourdain's assertion that butchery is dying in England, I've come across at least one shop that looks like a good place to learn the art. The farmland is gorgeous and close to where we'll be living. Foodroutes are well-traced, even in supermarkets. And lamb. I love lamb and England has wonderful lamb.

Beer in England is a craft, and as a beer-drinker, I can't wait. There seem to be more real ales than nights to try them. I'll love my coffee being espresso again, the richness of expression in the language, and the strawberries.

I've cried a lot these past few weeks. After so many years it seems like nowhere else will ever feel like home. I hope I'm just being sentimental.

Mother's Day
Today I worked 14 hours. It's the only day of the year that we're open for lunch, and as I stumbled in at 9, it looked pretty insurmountable. Especially when I was informed that the tartar sauce I'd made at 11 pm on Saturday had sat out all night, and I needed to repeat the entire process.
I've worked ten-hour days most Sundays, coming in to bake bread at noon and then working my normal station, and as a server, doubles were a way of life, especially on busy days, and especially especially during the Christmas season. When I spent a week at Scotty's, I'd come in at ten and work lunch and dinner. But of course servers usually get a break, and at 29 South I usually got an hour or so between service. But not today. We had about 250 on the books, an intimidating number to cooks who are used to 100 or so reservations on weekends. Plus, spring has sprung. This means beautiful spring vegetables (the carrots are particularly nice), wild salmon, softshell crab, and for good measure, chef put wood-roasted prime rib and his ridiculously tasty crab cakes (featured, as best I can tell, once a year) on the menu. In short: wildly popular dishes, and lots of people. I for one, was scared.
It all went better than I'd imagine. both services were well-paced, and though all the cooks were worried about double-shift-related fatigue, judicious amounts of caffeine, banh mi sandwiches and five-spice roasted duck kept us going. The most striking image of the day: between services, we were all gathered along the line, munching our sandwiches. We're a small restaurant, with a small kitchen and a small staff, but it seemed very full with all of us in there: Chef, our chef de cuisine, sous chef and pastry chef, all of the cooks, all lined up on about 20 feet of line and prep. Chef took that moment to thank us for putting in a day's hard work, and it was perfectly timed: between the quality of the sandwiches and his obvious gratitude, we weren't ones to complain.
So happy Mother's Day, moms of the world, and thanks for doing a job that I personally can't imagine as fun, although my mom is great about highlighting the really rewarding bits. My parents made a surprise visit themselves about an hour before Honey and his mom had their reservation. Dad liked his shrimp and grits, which is high praise from a man who, once he has his recipe established, rarely approves of any others. And mom ordered the crab cake that I was about to send out to her anyway. And Honey and his mom ordered spectacularly. I couldn't have been happier about having family in the restaurant.
What I've learned:
It takes me 35 minutes to grate onions, chop cornichons and capers, zest two lemons and juice several more in order to make tartar sauce. I'm pretty sure it takes less time at 10:30, when I'm motivated to go home.
I can reheat vegetables for the saute cook without screwing it up. Go fry cook!
Sometimes amateur's nights don't suck. Especially when I'm cooking, not serving.
After 14 hours, even making a fruit plate (a point of pride), will become tiresome.
My theory about small doses of caffeine sustained me. But never insult a server who's not only made you coffee, but warmed the mug, by refusing cream or the mug. Even if both are in easy reach of your station.
If one has given up refined sugar, eating two Kripy Kreme doughnuts isn't advisable. Not even a little.

Food in Media: Notes, and a Rant

Chef has given me an extra day off, which means that I have 24 hours of leisure time before worrying about packing for a short trip across the pond, making the apartment look like a civilized person lives here, and dealing with the bacon that I'm curing. Mostly, I've wasted it, though I made a nice dinner for a couple of good friends tonight. And then I started reading my Google Reader. And then I got my new issue of Food & Wine, in which Atlanta, yet again, got the shaft.

This month's issue included a "Go Guide" of places to go all over the world. The first entry in America's alphabetical list, as always, was Boston. And dammit, I'm tired of it. I'm tired of hearing about how Atlanta is a great place to live, a lousy place to visit. I'm tired of hearing and seeing Southern food disdained as nothing but fried chicken and chitlins. I'm dubious that travelers never find themselves in Atlanta wondering where to eat. We've got some great restaurants. Not just good, great, and although I haven't experienced enough of the world to say it confidently, I think we've got some world class restaurants. I work at Woodfire, which I consider one of the greats. Where else? Off the top of my head, I would say Pura Vida, Bacchanalia, Quinones, Agave and Five Seasons brewing There are plenty of others that I really like, but unless I've worked or eaten in them a few times, I won't give a pass. I'd like to eat a JCT, for example, and wouldn't refuse a dinner at Restaurant Eugene or Watershed.

But every time I get a national publication that purports to list the major American cities, and their best restaurants, Atlanta doesn't make the cut. I mean, Phoenix/Scottsdale qualified, despite the fact that none of F&W's choices served Southwestern food. In fact, there were two Sushi bars. Two. In Phoenix. American Express Publishes F&W, so surely their people have skymiles cards. Can't they come give us a shot?

RANT

Click on the link and read the article. Done? OK. Italians have a strong culinary tradition, to put it mildly. The one thing that has sustained Italians over centuries of political and economic uncertainty has been an amazing agricultural tradition, which argues for the resilience of a society with strong agricultural footing, economically speaking. They're proud-WAY proud-of their food. We get it. As an American cook reading this article, I'm unsurprised, but pissed off.

I've listened to servers bitch about Mexicans in restaurants, and wondered if they were blind or just stupid. I've heard laypeople bemoan that adults from other countries and not teenagers (the children who are our future) work the line, wash the dishes, clean the place, and do jobs that Americans, with our until-recently-famous work ethic, don't want. But I hate it.

I've recently wrote that in cooking "there are strict rules to follow." That's not a lie, and chefs are very clear about what those rules are. Anyone who is proficient in the language, willing to learn, and supervised can produce any dish that will please any grandmother of any nationality. Ever. It's ridiculous to refuse to eat at a place where the labor, or even the chefs, didn't grow up cooking your pasta carbonara. If the chef is well-trained, you won't be left wanting. I would guess that plenty of French and Spanish chefs make pasta in Italy, to the accolades that locals withhold from Turks and Jordanians.

Xenophobia pisses me off. Racism leaves me apoplectic. I don't care if you're talking about food or people in the streets. It doesn't fly. Ever. Cooking is science, and those of us who do it aren't that special unless we have a flawless palate and a genius for innovation. Dear Italy: You're not so special. Get over yourselves.

I Wasn't Gonna, Honestly

But, well, I posted it to an email list recently, and these two articles seem worthy of comment.

Article 1 gives encouraging news to those who've been insisting that surely organic farms could yield as much in the long run as non-organic, and that the richer (in available nutrients) soil would translate into more nutritious food.

Here's a simplified version of the argument: in order to produce vigorous plants organically, farmers have to cultivate the best soil possible for their crops. Soil that's rich in available nutrients for plants (nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium) not only encourages healthy, productive plants, it means that those same plants are able to make their fruit chock-full of the nutrients that we eat fruits and vegetables for: vitamins, minerals, and micronutrients which are the darling of nutrition studies lately. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that non-commodity crops are where organics really excel among production and nutrition.

Article 2 presents an imperfect version of an economic argument for non-industrialized food. Mine won't be great, but here goes: the government currently subsidizes crops such as corn, rice, soybeans and peanuts, crops traded as commodities and used to produce industrialized food. Commodities are designed to be identical regardless of the climate, area or methods used to produce them. Emphasis is on yield at all costs: dumping nitrogen into the water supply, producing a crop with low nutritional value and shipping and processing yields with fossil-fuel intensive methods are considered the norm.

Subsidies and the prevalence and profitability of industrialized food encourage monoculture, a type of farming that historically fails, decimates the soil and terrain, and requires greater and greater quantities of nitrogen-based fertilizers to be dumped on crops.

The farmers, the companies that sell their seed and buy their product (often the same, considering global ownership of multiple levels of production) and the consumers who buy industrialized food don't pay the costs of environmental damage from their methods, nor do they support farmers who produce ready-to-eat food in the way that subsidies support commodities.

In case it isn't evident, this is not an economically feasible model. The government must pay, via taxes, not only to produce commodity crops, but also to clean up the mess they make, and must pay more as commodity crops inevitably yield less and less.

Local food, sold ready to eat, usually at farmers markets or through CSAs receives no subsidies. The cost of transport to urban areas is built into the actual price of the food one buys. Further, the people who farm the food pay far less for seed, and little or nothing for distribution of their crops. Thus, while the cost for a bag of local sweet corn may be higher than that of a box of corn flakes, more goes to the farmer, stimulating the local economy and evening the keel in uncertain economic times.

I won't make the argument that we shouldn't buy tropical fruit in winter, or that we must sort less- or non-perishables such as olive oil and flour from our neighborhoods. Trade is generally good for everyone involved, but when you're trading with a large multi-national company, you're not giving as much of the product price back to the producers. Since we arguably want the producers of food we like to continue making it, such tradeoffs should be carefully considered.

Furthermore, as less-processed food becomes more profitable and accessible to people with lower incomes, sustainable production will be more attractive in economically struggling markets where agriculture is a newly developing industry.

Many people believe that rising commodity prices are good for increasing the demand for local, sustainably produced food, particularly produce and meat; I'm among them. I would love to see fewer children raised to only drink their milk through cereal straws, fewer adults dieting via Lean Cuisine or Atkin's certified products, and more people taking a holistic view of their food. Why is it that colonics and intensive juice fasts are reasonable, but fresh fruits and vegetables a burden?

The Tough Stuff: Softshell Crabs

We first got softshell crabs into Woodfire around last September. I was working cold station, so I didn't work with them much. They were still on the menu when I started training on cold station, but I didn't prep them, I just used them.

"Prepping" softshells is something of a euphemism. They arrive live, like many shellfish, and it's the cook's job to dispatch them. Oysters never really got to me, dumping lobsters in boiling water was old hat; we used to go crabbing every year on vacation, and somewhere my parents have a picture of my brother and I gleefully displaying Freddy, Betty, and Morris, a trio of post-boil blue crabs that we prepared when I was about 5.

Prepping softshells has three steps, in the eloquent words of our grill cook: "Face, ass, lungs." As in, that's what you cut off with a pair of scissors. First the face, across the front of the body, then the apron, then the lung sacs or "dead-man's fingers" as my sous chef was happy to inform me. I began to suspect that some of my fellow cooks were enjoying my inaugural crab-killing, especially the expected squeamishness: Chef even had one cook cry when she killed softshells.

I learned that I'd be working softshells about an hour before I got to them, so I tried to prepare myself. I asked exactly how I was supposed to do this, thought about it, and took the time to clear my station so nothing would be in the way.

The box down in the cooler was heavy, and too large to fit up the narrow stairwell with my knuckles, so I lifted from the bottom.

Crabs are cold-blooded, so their time in the cooler had them pretty lethargic, for which I was grateful. The sous walked me through my first. I cut parallel to the points, taking off the face. A green gel--with which, I informed the sous, I was not cool--oozed out. I turned it over, folded down the apron and cut it off as the legs and claws waved lazily. The top shell pulled disturbingly easily off of the bottom, and the lung sacs snipped out easily, leaving a little bit of sediment which wiped away.

The first few were tough. I know my crustacean anatomy well enough to know that they have a rudimentary nervous system, but probably don't have nerves equipped to feel pain. I have no qualms about eating pork or beef, which come from animals that are obviously far more sentient. I knew that if I worked quickly, they wouldn't warm up enough to be active, which I assumed was better for the crabs, and knew was better for me. None of these intellectual comforts made cutting off the face of a living creature sit easy with me. The crabs began to warm up and move more with each iteration. But it's true that unpleasant tasks get easier with each repetition, and eventually I was churning along like a pro. Chef came by, we chatted about the plating, and he examined the crabs, which he hadn't seen yet. At least I tell myself that that's what he was doing. He reached into the box and turned them with his hand, sing-songing "Wake up little crabs! Wake up for Stella!" I immediately wished that I hadn't mentioned my concern that they'd get "fiesty."

But I didn't cry, puke or get the shakes. The saute cook used to work fry station, and assured me that while it was initially difficult, she'd "made her peace" with it. It's not fun to kill something, but the reality of food is that for some of our favorite things, an animal must die. And in ten years, I'd rather be a chef who's aware of this through personal experience than one who's never done the hard thing.

I expect tonight to have nightmares about faceless zombie softshell crabs chasing me and squeaking in high, reedy voices "Braaaains! We want you giant mammalian braaains! Why did you kill us?" As with the killing itself, I tell myself that comfort lies in mental preparation.

Quickie: Top Chef and Catalan Salad

The cooks love to talk Top Chef. Love it. The shit-talking that goes on about the contestants is on par with the shit-talking that we do about each other, and the challenges are fun little intellectual exercises for cooks prepping the same stuff day in and day out.


But my attention waned over the past two seasons. The show became more slick, and while the caliber of the chefs has increased, so have the egos and the attitudes. I'm a low-key person by nature, so this has been a turnoff. But the challenges are fun and it's inspiring.


What bugs me about it lately is the amount of branding. The chefs now are transported in Toyota Highlanders, as Padma informs us, they await the verdict in the Gladware dry storage room while drinking beers that looked like Michelobs instead of the anonymous (and not profitable) glasses of wine. And I swear I heard the product placement guy gasp with glee when one of the chefs drew Velveeta as an ingredient. It seems unnecessary for such a popular show to be so committed to greater and more specific product placement.


For lunch I made the Catalan Salad recipe that I've shared. Despite having to prepare the dressing by hand when our blender didn't work, it was awesome-spicy, nutty, nice and thick, I nearly ate it with a spoon. I threw it on some frisee from Crystal Organics. I think I'm going to eat more than an entire day's worth of veg in one sitting. I'll also probably reek of garlic all night.