It’s midnight and I’m grimacing as I massage my kneecap with a hastily-constructed ice pack. Strangely enough, a flat ice pack doesn’t work too well over a hinge joint, so I had to whack at a bagged version with a hammer just to make it fit around my rapidly swelling patella. In the brief rush we had tonight – a particularly dead Sunday – I found myself working about ten dishes at once and flung the lowboy open to retrieve some nearby condiment. Interestingly, a reinforced steel door making contact with the kneecap hurts quite a lot. A few hours later, I’m staring at a multicolored lump and limping pathetically through my apartment, wondering how many aspirin it will take tomorrow morning for me to appear like a functioning member of society rather than a somewhat exhausted, arbitrarily injured, scarred heap of a line cook. But I got it easy tonight.

As the tickets rang in less than an hour later, I heard a loud gasp. The kitchen – as you might have gathered from previous posts – is often a flurry of profanity, mindless machismo, and over-jacked adrenaline that begins at clock-in and ends when the place closes for the night. So a gasp is almost never a good thing. An angry explosion of cursing typically means a light burn, a quick cut, or a screwed up order. A gasp, therefore, means that there is a problem. I turned from my grill to watch our sauté cook bounding toward the sink with his hand wrapped in a towel. The salmon he was pan searing popped on him, sending a hefty dollop of insanely hot oil onto his middle finger. Steve – a cook who doubles at a place across town working just about every station – turned to him to see how bad the burn was. I looked over at his finger to see the skin around the second joint peeling as if he was stripping off a latex glove.

All guts-and-glory aside, this is why “cooks” and “chefs” get annoyed by the shiny-happy-people, “everyone is a chef” message that is so very popular these days. Back in the day, the term “chef” indicated that you were a leader – someone who trudged his or her way up through the ranks thereby earning the right to be the head of a given kitchen. Being a “cook” simply came with the territory: you were the grill cook, sauté cook, garde manger, etc. You took your beatings just like everyone else and therefore deserved to lead them. Now, just about anyone who picks up a pan receives the moniker of “chef” regardless of whether they can even capably boil water.

When cooks hang out, it often ends up becoming a kitchen version of the famous Jaws scar scene: you look down at the grizzly patchwork quilt of your forearms and hands and compare notes, each knife ding or oil burn the preface to a lengthy discussion of that hellish rush you went through last week, or the time you dropped a fryer basket too quickly into 350-degree oil. Between the high demand, relentless pace, and the potential issues of working in a small place with knives and fire everywhere, it wears on you. Pure and simple, we do the cooking that most people don’t want to do.

It’s not normal to turn out 80 steaks or more in an evening. The one night I did this – and I anticipate doing it more if I continue serving as a grill cook somewhere – was brutal: the dining experience of nearly 100 people depended on my not screwing up an order. I had one order sent back purely because a customer changed their mind on the temperature that they preferred their steak cooked. I was later informed that this was particularly impressive considering the volume of the night. At that point, all I could see was steak and all I could feel was the tingling of my fingertips, callused from checking temperatures all night. Over winter break , on the other hand, I cooked five or six burgers to temperature for some family friends and found myself bored.  I wasn’t moving quickly enough. There was no pressure.

I love the fact that I am currently working alongside some badass cooks who have trained themselves to simply move at an impressive pace under brutal conditions. I’m certainly getting there as well even while working only part-time. This makes it all the more difficult to write this blog sometimes. It’s one thing to tell everyone the perfect recipe for pasta or the best home gadgets to buy to make thing-X, but at the end of the day, it’s awfully hard to convey what – or frankly why – I love working the line. When this blog started, I was just a home cook. Now, only about a year later, I’m planning my schedule around being a grill cook. I don’t even see friends from grad school anymore and when I appear, dressed in a chef’s jacket and covered with scars and burns, they’re normally a bit worried about my mental health.

Despite the gory description above of our sauté cook’s wound, he simply applied some burn cream, wrapped it, and kept working his station. It’s just how it works. The rush doesn’t “wait” for you to feel better – whether that means fifty orders piling up in the machine like an old-school ticker tape or two orders of fries. You just keep moving. Once you adopt that as your standard, it’s awfully hard to do anything else. Never stop cooking.     

Ok, so my last rant on here not too long ago was on stock and how it is not simply a garbage pail of vegetable and meat extraction for the sake of a supposedly flavorful broth. Now, for the Eastern Orthodox out there, it’s currently Great Lent meaning that if you’re observing the fast strictly, you’re not having meat, fish, dairy, and various other things that go pretty deep into church rules that you can look up somewhere online if you’re into that sort of thing. That means that for a lot of observant Orthodox Christians, there will be a lot of soup made over the next 40ish days. But why settle for boring water based soup when you can (fanfare) jazz it up with a bit of stock?!

The truth is, vegetable-based stocks are incredibly versatile liquids as long as you know what you’re doing with them. Soup? Check. Risotto? Check. Bread? Oh yes, bread too! The trick, however, is just knowing how to make the base stock.

So, at its simplest, vegetable stock works as follows: chop vegetables very finely, sauté lightly in a stock pot, cover with water, simmer, and strain. The end. I still prefer Thomas Keller’s recipe which uses onion, leek, carrot, and fennel for the vegetables. Leeks impart a fantastic mild oniony flavor to just about anything without the harshness one normally gets from a white or Vidalia onion. Fennel gives the stock a little extra “something”: an anise aromatic flavor that makes the stock just a little more elegant. All of that said, you can stick with the basic mirepoix trinity of onion, carrot, and celery and be no worse off because of it.

The other stock alternative is mushroom. Keller’s recipe (below) asks for three separate strainings for a super-refined stock. If you’re lazy, I’m sure you can just simmer it once and strain once, but I prefer the former alternative. Even though the average mushroom doesn’t appear to have a whole ton of liquid in it (as opposed to the above-mentioned veg) there is a ton of flavor to be extracted. Get a pound or so of button mushrooms, run them through a food processor with (again) carrot, onion, and celery, briefly sauté, hit with the tiniest pinch of curry powder (trust me), cover with water, simmer, and strain.

So what do you do with them? Whatever you would normally do with any other stock. Typically, I use regular vegetable stock where I might normally use chicken stock: with lighter-flavored foods. Mushroom – on the other hand – I use where I might normally use beef stock. While hardly vegetarian friendly, I have accidentally used mushroom stock in a beef stew before and actually enjoyed it more than when I used beef stock. Weird right?

Vegetable stocks in many ways show off the versatility of stock overall. You can use either of these in risotto, for instance. If making homemade bread, switch out whatever the recipe recommends for water with stock. You’ll suddenly realize how unreasonably good homemade bread can be. Soups? You get the picture.

So stop buying that canned/boxed/cubed garbage. It’s jam-packed with excess sodium anyway (and not the good type). The lovely veg stock you’ll have after following the recipes I post? Just tasty vegetable goodness. So whatever you choose to make with it, if you’ve got an hour and a bunch of (aromatic) vegetables, you can make stock. Please do so. It will make me, and hopefully you, very happy.

Vegetable Stock (adapted from The Bouchon Cookbook)

1.5lbs (1 large bunch) leeks, white part only, coarsely chopped

1lb carrots, peeled and coarsely chopped

1.5lbs (2 large) onions, coarsely chopped

1 small fennel bulb, trimmed and coarsely chopped

¼ cup canola oil

2 bay leaves

2 thyme sprigs

1 large bunch Italian parsley

Finely chop all veg in a food processor. Cook the vegetables in the canola oil in a medium stockpot over low heat for 5-8 minutes, or until softened. Add bay leaves, thyme parsley, and about 3-4 quarts of water. Bring to a gentle simmer and cook for about 45 minutes. Strain into a container and cool rapidly.

Mushroom stock (adapted from The French Laundry Cookbook)

1lb button mushrooms, washed and sliced

1C sliced carrots

1C sliced leeks

1C sliced onions

½ C Italian parsley sprigs

¼ C canola oil

1/2t curry powder

1 bay leaf

1 large sprig thyme

4qts water

Finely grind the mushrooms, carrots, leeks, onions, and parsley separately in a food processor, pulsing and scraping the sides as necessary. Heat the oil in a stockpot. Add the vegetables and curry powder. Cook for 2 minutes, stirring occasionally, then add the bay leaf, thyme, and 2 qts of the water. Bring to a simmer and cook for 45 minutes. Strain the stock into a separate pot and return the vegetables to the first pot. Add remaining 2 qts of water and simmer for 45 minutes. Strain into reserved stock, bring to a simmer for 45 minutes and cool rapidly. 

              Chicken stock…not a chicken garbage can…sigh…

I read an article today that I agreed with from a sustainability point of view but disagree with pretty vehemently from a cooking standpoint. The article argued in favor of making stock out of the scraps remaining after peeling or trimming various vegetables. The main idea of the piece is that instead of simply throwing out these pieces of theoretically usable product cook them down into what the author calls a “stock.” In theory, this is a great idea for the sustainability minded out there. We do waste a lot – there is hardly any denying that. What the author is creating, however, is not stock. It’s more of a bizarre compost broth. Which is fine if you like that sort of thing. As you can probably gather, though, I don’t.

Naturally it should be well known that I love stock for so many reasons – including for instance the sheer length of the process and attention to detail it requires (when making veal stock, for example). One of the major reasons why I love stock is its versatility: stock should be, in essence, a moderately flavored blank slate. This allows you to have a ready supply of meat or vegetable-flavored liquid for making into endless varieties of sauces, rice dishes, soups, braises, and the like.

My principle gripe with the above article, then, is the simple fact that it is creating exactly what it places so carefully in parentheses: a garbage-like stock. Input: garbage = output: garbage. If the base of your stock is comprised of normally discarded parts of a vegetable due to inedibility or poor taste, how would boiling it (also a cooking technique error – stock should be “simmered” so flavor is extracted gradually from the ingredients) make these ingredients any better? Peel a carrot. The peels oxidize in a matter of minutes, turning brown and unappetizing in appearance. As Chef Michael Pardus noted in Michael Ruhlman’s first fundamentals class at the CIA, if people want them so badly, put them on top of their salad (see The Making of a Chef).

Secondly, the author recommends adding several ingredients that would take away from the potential purity of the stock itself, more from a flavor perspective than a simple “quality of input.” Oregano and rosemary are intense-tasting herbs that when steeped, release incredibly strong and distinct flavors. It is not inherently a problem to use them in stock. The question is, however, will you eventually be using that stock in something that will taste good paired with oregano? Say you used the stock for a Thai dish that used flavors like ginger, cilantro, and star anise: the oregano and rosemary would most likely clash significantly. It is better, then, to stick with neutral-flavored herbs like parsley, thyme, and bay leaf.

There are, of course, a few additives that completely baffle me: vinegar and oil, for instance. Vinegar raises the same issues as listed above: will you eventually want an acidic flavor in your food? The author notes that “oil soaks up flavor better than water.” Whether this is true or not, the oil will float to the surface of the water (that old “oil and water” gag, you know?). Oily stock = oily sauce, soup, etc. Add fat later if you want it in there (in a roux or as a finishing monte au beurre)! Also, the entire point of making stock is to make water gradually absorb the flavors of bones and/or vegetables! So who cares if oil “absorbs flavor better?” Vodka does too – I don’t want that in my stock.

Naturally, I learned how to make stock through various texts like the CIA’s The Professional Chef, Thomas Keller’s The French Laundry Cookbook, and Michael Ruhlman’s Ratio. Maybe I’ve just laid myself far too “haute” foundations. I know, however, from simple experimentation and regular cooking that having a neutral stock allows for a stock with greater flexibility in the kitchen. I can make blanquette de veau with my veal stock as well as a strongly-flavored pho. I can also make risotto with any of my stocks and get a similar result: the variable becomes not the stock, but what I do with it later. I already know that my base stock is pure and flexible: I don’t have to worry whether the apple core that I threw haphazardly into my stock pot six weeks will make a hearty risotto taste like breakfast if that’s not what I’m going for.

So, please, treat your stock kindly. I appreciate that people want to make stock and not just waste various portions of their vegetables. But keep the compost heap out of your stock pot. 

(I started this post last week, and have realized that I have a ridiculous backlog of writing. Let’s get some of them posted! )

I had previously intended to post a short piece on here about forethought and planning. This past weekend, one of my closest and oldest friends came to visit me for a few days. As we don’t get to see one another all that terribly often, I decided that I wanted to go all-out with my cooking. I didn’t just want her to enjoy a good meal, but my hope was that she would come away from some of the things that I made with a different understanding – why I cook the way I do, the type of foods that inspire me, etc. I think this has been a rather successful endeavor. As I’m currently writing this (while temporarily stuck on campus for my assistantship), she is most likely still sitting on my couch, glued to Michael Ruhlman’s Ratio, amazed that cooking and baking can be broken down so simply and brilliantly into extremely flexible formulas.

Before she came down, I was incredibly attached to my planned menu for the weekend. My goal was to make a roast chicken on the day she arrived as it is a relatively low-maintenance dish that is always welcoming and delicious. The following day, I would cook off the duck confit preserved in my fridge and serve it with a Dijon cream sauce and Brussels Sprouts (from the Bouchon cookbook). Sunday would be a great day for the hearty blanquette de veau or veal stew that I’ve been meaning to make from Bouchon as well. Finally, a la Cooper’s Tavern in her home of Madison, WI, I would cook a version of their pork belly macaroni and cheese. With the exception of the blanquette, which I have never made, these would all be great and relatively simple dishes that I could casually cook while we enjoyed our time together.

Problem: while “prior planning prevents piss-poor performance,” there are always variables in cooking that one has to take into consideration. What if, for instance, the person you are cooking for is not a fan of a particular ingredient? What if (worst case scenario) they are allergic to it? The important thing to do is to think on your toes, adapt, and continue to produce at an optimal level.

While on a journey to Jungle Jim’s in Cincinnati, my friend commented that she has not necessarily acquired a taste for Brussels Sprouts. My gut reaction was to momentarily panic: I was planning to make them in only a few hours. Cooking is not, however, about adhering blindly to recipes. While on their way out seasonally, various winter squashes are still available all over. The sweetness of butternut squash, therefore, would contrast very nicely with the duck confit I was making that evening and would interact wonderfully with the Dijon cream sauce, assuming I seasoned both correctly. Brussels sprouts therefore became a roasted butternut squash puree.

Problem two, however, was close behind. Blanquette (at least in the recipe I was planning on) requires a cut of veal like breast or shoulder that will braise particularly well. Despite their absurd amount of food, the few veal breasts remaining were average-looking at best, and shoulder was completely unavailable. Luckily, not far away in the meat case were several beef tenderloin roasts, all of which were the proper size for 2-3 people, and reasonably priced. I had seen several recipes recently (particularly Eric Ripert’s in Avec Eric, which I eventually chose) for roasted tenderloin with a red-wine reduction alongside some basic but incredibly tasty roasted fingerlings. A rapid change in plans (and the purchase of some really nice looking rosemary and purple fingerlings) led to one of the most delicious dishes I’ve made in a long time.

I have been spoiled the past two weekends by visits from people more than willing to sample my various culinary experiments. At present, they are two of the people I most enjoy cooking for, in part because they simply appreciate the effort, but also because in those moments where I know that I’ve cooked something special, watching them enjoy it is incredibly gratifying. This makes me all the more inclined toward planning, so I can continually produce such a great response. Sometimes though, this can be a stumbling block. The key is not to get bogged down by adherence to what you intend to cook, but rather to be prepared for what you can cook. Recipes can be great, but “going for it” and just cooking can be even more rewarding.   

It’s one in the morning and I’m just getting home. I have a small but particularly uncomfortable cut on my right thumb from fumbling open a can during the rush. There are two or three dark red oil burns on my left hand from last Wednesday when I multi-tasked and worked both the grill and fryers while the fryer cook tended to the sauté station. My ankles – one of them in particular from a cross country injury that never healed – as well as my knees are creaking and popping as I walk through the door. I know that tomorrow morning, I will be repeatedly stretching my back from the last few hours of dish tank work I did when closing the restaurant. The rush was relentless. I repeat to myself, jokingly as we tend to do on the line, “I love my job, I love my job, I love my job.”

The truth is that I do enjoy working the line in a serious way. It is often brutal and unforgiving work. Last night, for instance, was a non-stop barrage of orders that lasted about three hours. I worked the flat-top griddle, which at the restaurant I work is about 3 ft. by 3 ft. in size. On a normal evening, I am able to keep it well organized: the meats for sandwich #1 go toward the back, the ones that take less time over to the right, and the rest is up front for quick and efficient access. That all went out the window. The trouble with the flat-top station is that you are either cooking nothing, or you are cooking more than you can possibly fit on the surface. The “sections” of sandwich meats become piles. The “timing” becomes more a question of asking for the “next sell” and giving the person doing expo an ETA of about a minute to a minute and a half. You are sweating. You are ducking down, spinning, turning and moving, hoping that the rush just calms down long enough for you to catch your breath.

Ideally, you have the luxury of camaraderie. The kitchen staff in some cases is referred to as a “crew” and spoken about – particularly by Anthony Bourdain – in pirate-like terms. I feel like the characterization is rather apt. The line has to move like a well-oiled machine. In most cases, a dish requires the work of at least two people. Sometimes, it requires the work of the whole line. Regardless of the dish, with everyone moving so quickly, cooks need to be able to at least be able to move together, rather than bumping and jostling one another at every turn.

Yet simultaneously, the line needs camaraderie mentally. It is almost inevitable that multiple people operating in a particularly small space will eventually get annoyed with one another. With that said, the second that this prevails over the necessary synchronization of the line is the exact moment when “shit hits the fan” and people find themselves “in the weeds.” In the immortal words of Sgt. Barnes from Platoon, “When the machine breaks down, we break down.” I personally find that this is remedied by the simple act of helping out the guy next to you. I don’t necessarily care what political battles you’re fighting with the guy three men down the line – that’s your problem. In an ideal situation, this will promote an idea of “one good turn deserves another” – i.e. “I’ve got your back for now, so maybe you’ll help me out later when I need help.”

It’s hectic and often overwhelming, but I love it in the strangest way. I look forward to continuing on and doing it in a culinary school environment in the near future. Right now though, I like what I’m doing. To hell with any drama; I just want to cook.  

A food photo fail. The case of the missing pork loin commences…

There’s a reason for this terrible picture, which I will get to eventually.

Pork loin typically sucks. There, I said it. I say “typically” because more often than not, it is prepared incorrectly. Pork loin is the muscle of the pig that runs along the ribs, from which both “pork roast” and “pork chops” come. The complaints are all pretty typical regarding this cut of meat: too dry, no flavor. There is, of course, a reason for this. First of all, we’ve bred fat out of our pigs in this country. It’s a tragic and hypocritical stance held by some out there that “all fat is bad.” Meanwhile, fast food chains pop up like wildfires left and right, yadda yadda yadda. Secondly, though, ¾ of the natural fat on the animal is trimmed off so it can be neatly packaged by your supermarket “butcher.” Finally, the bones are removed even from most pork chops. If we’ve done our homework, though, we know that “bones = flavor” and “fat contains flavor.” 

So, of course pork loin fizzles into a dry mass of boring white meat, leaving piles of sawdust-like-fibers with the first slice. There’s no fat or bone on it, thereby taking away all potential moisture from the piece of meat itself. Unless you prepare it correctly. Here then, ladies and gentlemen, is the way to rock your feeble, pork-devoid world, with glorious deliciousness. Keep in mind that I don’t actually know the science behind all of this; if you want that, purchase a copy of Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen. You will learn much.

1) BRINE! One method is simply to brine the pork loin. This works for basically any cut of meat, but the purposes for the brine vary (you can brine a beef brisket and then turn it into pastrami/corned beef, for instance). The main idea is to place the meat in a solution with a ratio of 20 parts water to 1 part salt. After you do that, you can add just about any flavor component you want depending on what you’re making. The basics are aromatics (carrot, onion, celery), herbs (rosemary, parsley, thyme, bay leaf), some spices (black pepper, coriander), and sweeteners/acidic components (honey, sugar, lemon). Depending on size/weight of the meat, time will vary. But simply rinse, pat dry, let rest for a bit, and cook. The meat will be juicy even when exposed to high temperatures (think grilling, roasting, broiling, or frying).

2) Add fat, somehow! Most classical French cookbooks like La Guide Culinaire or Larousse Gastronomique will recommend a process called “larding” or “barding” which is exactly what it sounds like: wrapping whatever you’re roasting in fat. Ever had bacon wrapped anything? Pretty great, right? Also there are a number of other methods for adding fat where it previously was not including methods like cooking confit, where meat is poached in fat very slowly, rendering it juicy and fall-apart tender without fail (duck is the most popular, but pork belly is another great way to do this).

See, not that hard! Tonight I opted for a variation on #2 which was cooking a pork loin in dairy fat. There is apparently an Italian method of slowly braising the loin in heavy cream and milk, which does the exact same thing as the above ideas. Add a little bit of lemon zest, pepper, and sage and you have a ready-made cream sauce. Which once again brings me to the terrible picture: while slicing the loin post-cooking, I snacked on a small piece that fell off. My eyes lit up and I promptly plated (over polenta) and ate, realizing only later that I planned to blog about the wonders of brining and larding. So in other words, pork loin doesn’t suck. But certain methods are awesome, and will alleviate all forms of suck that various cuts of meat are unfortunately subjected to.

Damn you Saveur. You win again.  

A friend from my time in Russia recently contacted me asking for a recipe. In a lot of ways this does my heart proud. All I really want to do at the end of the day is point out the simple fact that we all have to eat, so why not do it to the best of our abilities? So if someone comes to me looking for ideas or random suggestions on how to cook (even for the sake of delicious nostalgia), I feel like I’m doing people a pretty nice service.

He asked about pelmeny. A little bit of background is necessary here. Just about every culture has some form of “dough stuffed with meat.” The Italians have endless versions of this in the form of ravioli, tortellini, stozzapretti (a recent favorite of mine), and agnolotti (ditto). The Chinese have all sorts of phenomenal dumplings. Germans have maultaschen, which are definitely one of the most delicious and under-recognized forms of filled pasta. The Russians, however, have pelmeny, a form of filled pasta so very near and dear to my heart.

Pelmeny are essentially tiny round ravioli that end up shaped almost like small bells, filled with meat. There are several varieties, but typically the filling is something along the lines of pork, beef, or veal forcemeat seasoned with dill, or cumin, or just about any other spice that the Russian populace has absorbed from a neighboring country over the past millennium. More often than not, they are served with a heaping of sour cream (or Smetana, the far more delicious Russian version – that I am pleased to find is logged in Microsoft Word’s dictionary for some reason).

When I was in Russia, these were a constant go-to as supermarkets sold them in frozen form, very often in bulk. If you are living in a communal apartment setting, rest assured, if someone hears a pot of water boiling, they can assume that there is either tea or pelmeny in the near future. Six A.M. and just returning from the bars? Oh, indeed, there are pelmeny. Even if hot/clean running water wasn’t always something assuredly on hand, pelmeny, Smetana, and dried dill were always somewhere close by. They are one of my many comfort foods and I completely understand how, almost five years after I lived in Russia, I still have friends who miss them dearly.

So for a good friend from the Great White North and many others, here is how I make my pelmeny when I really need them. Forgive all of the inconsistent measurements, but let’s be honest, it’s a recipe from the Old Country…there are no measurements.

Go-to Pasta Dough (adapted from Thomas Keller/Michael Ruhlman’s recipes – makes 1 lb)

12 oz flour

8 oz eggs (about 6 yolks + 1 whole egg)

1 T olive oil

1 T milk

Place flour in a large bowl. Form a well in the middle and add the eggs. Slowly mix the eggs and other ingredients, gradually absorbing more flour with each turn. When all ingredients are absorbed, transfer dough to a lightly floured surface and knead until dough is smooth. Wrap and refrigerate for about 1 hour.

Filling

1lb beef, veal, or pork (or a combination of each)

1 egg

Dill, to taste

Cumin, to taste

Salt and pepper

Combine all ingredients. Roll out pasta dough until very thin. Place a small ball of filling on dough, spacing the filling out by about 1 ½-2 inches. Fold dough and form into small “purses” (or just roll as desired). Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Boil until cooked through, about 4-5 minutes. Serve with sour cream and more dill. It’s a Russian recipe, after all.

Behold, pelmeny. 

I have a lot of random stuff in my kitchen. Recently, for instance, I acquired a stovetop smoker for Christmas. This is naturally pretty awesome, because I desperately miss having a grill nearby to make glorious pork shoulder or brisket whenever I want. But there are a number of other devices and whatnots that are floating through my kitchen that seem to always serve a practical purpose no matter how random they might appear.

1) Plastic squeeze bottles: There’s something wonderful about having these nearby. While they might seem to resemble sketchy picnic ketchup bottles, they’re way more practical than that. I use them first and foremost for oil: while most bottles come with pouring spouts, they make it far too easy to over-pour. When dealing with olive oil or grapeseed oil (which, if you’re buying the good-quality stuff, costs a bit of money) you want to regulate the amount of oil you’re using as much as possible. Squeeze bottles help alleviate this a bit: basically, you will have a thinly coated pan without the danger of it becoming a ¼ inch puddle more fit for searing a cut of meat than simply sautéing some vegetables. In addition to oils, they also make great vessels for distributing sauces. It’s not totally necessary, but would you rather have an amorphous blob of sauce, or a nice zigzag, evenly laid out across a plate? Sometimes the extra bit of panache makes all the difference.

2) Ring molds: Pure and simple, they make things happy and round. Want a potato pancake to actually be round? Ring mold. Want to stack things and make them look badass? Ring mold. Any dessert? I mean, come on, if any course should look good, it’s dessert. Ring mold. I got mine in Spain, but seriously, they’re everywhere. They cost about $3 each…just buy them.

3) Fluted pastry cutter: It’s not difficult to make ravioli, but making them look nice is a totally different story. Sure, Vetri’s agnolotti make mine look weak as hell, but I can at least spruce them up with a bit of a nice border. Pappardelle? Why not make them look shnazzy? Additionally, you can use it for…well…pastry, hence the name.

4) Kitchen tweezers: Never heard of them? Neither had I as of about six months ago. I went to a cooking demonstration where Chef Todd Kelly of Orchids at Palm Court (in Cincinnati) was showing a crowd how to make blue cheese beignets. While making the accompanying salad, Chef Kelly tossed the greens with a pair of massive tweezers rather than tongs. I picked some up about a week ago and have not been disappointed. They are exactly what they sound like: giant tweezers. But you can pick up ingredients with only a slight pinch rather than grabbing them with whole tongs. You can toss ingredients without having to grasp any of them. Less roughness on your ingredients makes for better dishes. They are an interesting and incredibly useful tool.

5) Finally, because I wanted to have an even five, the scale: This isn’t really bizarre to most serious cooks, but a lot of people overlook it. If you are baking, it should be the only measuring cup you will ever need. Making charcuterie? Cups are almost irrelevant. I had a manual scale for the longest time, but determining anything exact was very difficult. I got an Escali digital for Christmas and I’ve used it every single day since. It is a necessity for anyone cooking or baking with any frequency.

So go buy some weird stuff! You might even enjoy it. 

Whole goat leg from D’Angelo’s

A few days ago, I was contemplating a post on breaking down a rabbit along with some thoughts on foods and ways of preparing them that have fallen by the wayside over the past several generations. I read an article the other day however, that was simultaneously disheartening and inspiring.

Most people no longer have exposure to a fantastic local butcher. Naturally, some assume that the person behind the supermarket counter, clad in a sterile white coat and walking in and out of a deep-freeze, is some sort of butcher, at least moderately trained to do something with meat. These are not the people I am referring to. Rather, I am talking about those trained to dispatch, clean, break down, and prepare a given animal for food consumption. There aren’t too many left that are even trained to do this with the “big three” (chicken, pork, and beef) let alone the vast array of other animals the public forgot they could still eat.

D’Angelo’s (which is to say, the man who is always there, Sonny D’Angelo) in South Philadelphia’s Italian Market is one of those butchers. The unassuming shop toward the end of the 9^th Street portion of the Market has a relatively standard storefront for a butcher shop with a few additions that might seem just a kitschy addition to passersby: a boar’s head, a snake skin, and an antelope skull. Sure, there is the meat company “Boar’s Head,” but when was the last time anyone from that place has even seen a boar let alone sold it?

Entering the shop however, you realize why D’Angelo’s is a bit different: they do sell wild boar. They also sell rattlesnake, alligator, python, elk, duck, rabbit, turtle, and just about any other creature that has ever walked the earth. My dad and I went in once in pursuit of alligator for jambalaya and were offered three different cuts. Another time, Sonny lamented that he couldn’t offer us antelope loin, and would instead have to fabricate a roast from a portion of the leg. The only display cases in the shop contain at least ten different house-made sausages and several types of charcuterie including lardo, guinciale, wild boar and duck prosciutto, and an obscenely good wild boar salami. Before Christmas, as he sold 1 ½ lb. lobes of grade-A Hudson Valley foie gras, Sonny gladly split a lobe for my father and I which I happily turned into torchon the following day.

Another article described him as imposing – a relatively quiet, rarely-smiling, massive-handed man clad constantly in a flannel shirt, looming behind a buckled wooden block and wielding a giant curved knife capable of splitting a whole ham as if it was a tomato. I guess that’s imposing and all, but frankly, as long as you have a basic idea of what you want, Sonny D’Angelo does nothing more than provide. No nonsense, just good quality and knowledge to back it up. And it could all disappear.

Not long after the holidays, the above articles came out announcing the potential closure of D’Angelo’s shop due to 3 of the 4 D’Angelo brothers’ decision to cash out on the family business and retire. Sonny was the lone dissenter, but despite his objection, he still lamented the simple reality that he might not be able to hold out much longer. Even the greatest artisans, unfortunately, do not live forever. The question is who fills that void when the likes of a Sonny D’Angelo are gone?

Luckily, the most recent news is that D’Angelo’s lives another day as one of the other brother’s weighed in favor of continuing the business. It’s sad to think that someone with this level of knowledge and skill might one day disappear. Yet it is equally disheartening to think that the very art that D’Angelo practices might be fading away. The only thing to do is support local businesses like these and the people that keep them going. And if you’re one of the people interested in being the next D’Angelo or someone like him, I applaud you.  

Somewhere, an aging Southern housewife asks a British male model how to core a head of lettuce. On a soundstage not far from Central Park, two award-winning chefs of Italian heritage seem to cringe as they find themselves outnumbered by those in favor of “leaner” meatballs. A guy wearing a flame shirt hawks a flamey chef’s knife while telling you how “crazy” his 500^th burger was. A successful restauranteur “shockingly” shows up to “throw down” with the locals who, surprisingly, always win. This stuff is not for me.

When I tell people I want to be a chef, I’m certain that some picture me in fifteen years or so, standing in front of “my kitchen” telling everyone how to cook an egg or make homemade soup. There was a time in the golden age of cooking shows (when people just cooked) that this seemed like a viable opportunity. I mean, what better way to get people to cook better in their own homes? By now though, it seems as if the true cooking shows have been relegated to webcasts, YouTube channels, and the annals of history.

Back in the day, there was this lady called Julia Child. Alright, you’ve all heard of her. But seriously, everyone who cooks with any seriousness misses Julia and would gladly trade about 10 Rachel’s, Guy’s, and any other variety of schmaltzy nonsensical hosts for just one more year of her simplistic brilliance. Even Bourdain at his most bitter and snarky in Kitchen Confidential declared that despite all of his classical training and reliance on Escoffier, it was Julia Child’s fantastic ability to make archaic French techniques sensible for the home cook that he kept coming back to. She was a bit goofy, chatting with her lobsters or laughing like a madwoman while flipping a crepe, but at the end of the day, dammit, she just cooked.

Even the TV culinary competition – arguably the last bastion of television representative of what cooks actually do – has become catchy and a bit ridiculous. I grimaced as I watched Chopped last night: Ted Allen revealed the “basket ingredients” of lobster, followed by hot dogs, potato chips, and concentrated lemonade. Naturally, the theme was something having to do with “classic American foods,” yet I couldn’t help but wonder if the reaction of a true chef would be to throw out half of the ingredients and walk off set, declaring the combination absurd and television for television’s sake.

So, Eric, you jaded bastard, is there anything you do like about televised food things? We’ve got it: you enjoy ripping on easy targets! Ok, you’re right. I still enjoy the Iron Chef series and Bravo’s Top Chef. Both have their thematically corny moments, but the cooks involved do manage to eventually get down to business and make some hardcore creative dishes with very limited time, all in a kitchen that isn’t their own.  That’s pretty impressive.

Most of the cooking shows I truly enjoy anymore aren’t really shows or aren’t even on TV. Eric Ripert (aka the one from Le Bernardin, basically the most renowned fish restaurant on planet earth) hosts “On the Table” and “Avec Eric,” the former on YouTube and the latter on Hulu, both of which feature the chef’s straightforward approaches to making fantastic food. I also love when Martha Stewart features chefs like Daniel Bouloud and Thomas Keller. Keller gladly comes on Martha’s show and, rather than telling everyone they can cook using a bunch of shortcuts, offers a recipe for potatoes pave, a dish that takes anywhere from two to three days. It’s ballsy and uncompromising to do something like that for the sake of good food and it’s nice to see a chef not buckle in front of the spotlight just to please the crowd.

So if in ten years you see me on “Eric Souder’s Hipster Bars, Poutine Dives, and Assorted Douchebaggery” chowing down on the world’s largest cheeseburger, swearing it’s all in the name of fine dining, please, put me out to culinary pasture. That’s a plea, nay, a demand.