Have Blade Will Travel: The adventures of a traveling chef (7 page)

― ● ―

Excellent Basic Potato Salad

2 pounds (1 kg) Yukon Gold potatoes

1 bunch scallions, trimmed of roots, rinsed, and sliced very thin

2 stalks celery, finely diced

¼ cup (60 mL) mayonnaise (approximately)

¼ cup (60 mL) plain, 2-percent yoghurt

¼ cup (60 mL) Champagne or white wine vinegar

¼ cup (60 mL) finely chopped cilantro

2 tablespoons (30 mL) finely chopped mint leaves

1 tablespoon (15 mL) finely minced tarragon leaves

salt and fresh ground pepper to taste

4 hard-cooked eggs

parsley sprigs as needed

• Peel and cut the potatoes lengthwise in half, then into slices about ¼-inch (.6 cm) thick.  Put them into boiling, lightly salted water, and boil until tender, but still slightly firm (8-to-10 minutes).  Drain and allow to cool. 
  
• Place the potatoes in a mixing bowl, add the remaining ingredients, and gently blend.  Season with salt and pepper, and adjust as needed, the amounts of mayonnaise and vinegar.
  
• Serve garnished with quartered or sliced eggs and parsley sprigs
  

― ● ―

Malcolm introduced me to the other members of the kitchen.  Billy Byrd was the Sous-chef, (Sous = under), an Air Force veteran of twenty-years, who immediately picked up on my youthful enthusiasm, and took me under his wing as his own unofficial apprentice.  He kept me running most of the summer, and I learned plenty.  Twenty years later, my basic tomato sauce – Larousse All-Purpose Industrial-Strength Tomato Sauce – is modeled directly after the Billy Byrd Industrial Red Sauce he taught me that summer. 

― ● ―

Larousse All-Purpose Industrial Strength Tomato Sauce
(Yields 1 gallon)

½ cup (180 mL) olive oil

1 large Spanish onion, peeled, and quartered

1 large leek, root and outer leaves removed, and very-well-rinsed

3 large celery stalks, trimmed and well-rinsed

1 small carrot, peeled and top removed

1 bulb garlic, cloves peeled

½ bunch fresh basil, leaves only

1 bunch parsley, stems removed (and reserved for stock)

1 pound ground pork

2 quarts (2 liters) tomato purée

1 six-ounce (180 mL) can tomato paste

1 pint (½ liter) chicken stock (or water)

salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste

• Grind the vegetables, garlic, basil and parsley through the medium-holed plate of a meat grinder (or in a food processor). 
  
• Heat the olive oil in a heavy-gauge pot over medium heat, and sweat the ground vegetables (sweat = sauté covered) for 10 minutes, stirring frequently.  Add the ground pork and ground herbs, salt and pepper, and continue cooking.
  
• Add the tomato products and chicken stock, using the stock to rinse out the tomato cans, and blend thoroughly.  (Deposit the cans in the recycle bin.)
  
• Simmer the sauce, stirring frequently, for 3 hours – skimming and discarding any impurities that collect on top.  Adjust seasoning, allow to cool, then cover and refrigerate until ready to be used.
  

― ● ―
 

Wayne was the baker.  He and Paul – the latter an experienced production man generally referred to as First Cook – formed a sort of Frick-and-Frack team.  Both were married and were good friends outside of work.  Wayne made one of the best sticky pecan buns I’ve ever tasted, but he was unwilling to part with his recipe.  Paul was strictly a mechanic, which made him an extremely important member of the crew.  I suspected he found my particular passionate approach rather humorous. 

Richard was the pantry cook, a tall, quiet, zany character, who wore a wool cap trimmed with fur all summer.  No matter that the kitchen temperature soared to 120-degrees behind the range, and probably 85-degrees or more around the corner in the pantry, his cap always stayed on his head.  Smitty-the-dishwasher was a seventeen-year-old local kid from the blue-collar side of Osterville, with one year still to go in high school.  Caught up under the tail-end influence of the sixties cultural revolution, he was our token hippie-teenage-mutant, forever stoned-out on weed, who always had something good to say about everyone and was loved and appreciated by everyone in return.  There was also a bevy of lovely waitresses, a feast for the eyes, and ranging in age from nineteen-to-forty-something.  The younger ones were mostly college students earning money for school.  The older ones were mothers and wives, veterans of the restaurant trade, all gracious and possessing the camaraderie and sense of humor that comes with years of experience in the restaurant business.  And finally, there were the owners of the establishment, Bob and Leah Keston. 

Mr. Keston was quiet and very business-like.  He played wandering host in the restaurant at night, his quiet , low-key personality contributing to the restaurant’s ambiance.  He kept his distance from the affairs of the kitchen, leaving such matters to his manager, Fran Ricci, the one concerned with the issues of transience and the human condition.  Mrs. Keston was an entity all her own.  She had originally come to the restaurant as a waitress, following a divorce.  She and Keston, a widower, had begun dating and were eventually married.  I heard unpleasant stories about her ambitious nature, yet she struck me as attractive, and a highly suitable working partner for Keston.  She certainly played hostess and ran the front of the house effectively enough.  It wasn’t until late in the season that the less appealing elements of her character – and those of her husband – became evident.

There was an all-purpose handy-man, Jose Castillo, a veteran of the Spanish Civil War.  He was a friendly man of medium stature, hard-working, probably pleased to be living his relatively stress-free life after witnessing the horrors of his earlier life.  He shared stories with me, about his life in the late 1930s, having been captured and imprisoned by Franco’s fascist army.  He told me how he and his compatriots would take out the interior of their bread, sculpt it into small figurines, let them dry, paint them, then sell them through the prison guards – using the money to purchase cigarettes.  The other practice Jose told me about was blowing cigarette smoke into a bottle, then re-inhaling that smoke later on, in order to conserve their minimal supply of cigarettes.  (Yuck.)

I am sorry to report that Jose was diagnosed with throat cancer that summer, and though he had his voice box removed, he died some months later.  Very sad. 

Back in the kitchen, I was on a roll.  This particular summer was turning out to be the busiest in the ten years of Bob Keston’s ownership, and I worked from 11:00 AM until nearly midnight, six days a week.  Malcolm, my former classmate, used me to his own advantage, which was fine at first, since working and learning were my sole priorities.  The harder and longer I was pushed, the more and faster I learned.  But I was soon to discover that the most important lessons of that summer were not necessarily of a culinary nature.

Malcolm was a star.  In the eyes of the manager and the chef he could do no wrong.  He felt free to be brash and aggressive, strutting an arrogant confidence in the rough, competitive environment of the production kitchen.  Early in the summer, he bragged to me with typical cockiness, “I’m going to be an Executive Chef within five years.”  I had no reason to believe that he would not achieve that goal, and at the time I did not have that kind of focus.  I had not yet developed that kind of confidence and would have been happy just to get through this summer without disgracing myself.

But Malcolm had a head start on me in more ways than one.  During the previous spring, he had begun working at East Bay Lodge on weekends, and had proven himself reliable and hard-working, two essential assets as far as the management were concerned.  Next to him I seemed to lack focus and assertiveness, not at all the stuff of which stars are made.  I was keenly aware of the kitchen community’s perception of our differences, and it was painful to bear.  I had every intention of overcoming this impression and demonstrating my own reliability and skill, but I knew it would take time to convince the management and other members of the kitchen brigade.  I wondered why the Culinary Institute hadn’t included a course on how to do this – something like
Commercial Kitchen Realities 101
– Territorial Imperatives in a Production Environment.  So I began formulating a course of my own.

Part I went into effect immediately – disengage mouth; dress professionally (chef’s coat, checked pants, neckerchief, clean apron, industrial-strength shoes); arrive at work a bit earlier than scheduled; punch-in precisely at scheduled time; be the last man out of the kitchen; obey orders; and learn as much as possible.  Ironically, this humble plan led directly to my first major confrontation of the summer.  Since Malcolm was the young star player and I was the new kid on the block, it was assumed by all that Malcolm should earn more than me.  I didn’t expect to become independently wealthy on three-dollars per hour, no matter how hard I worked, so I never gave who-earned-how-much a thought.

The problem was that Malcolm was on salary while I was paid by the hour, and since I was putting in so many hours, it was inevitable that a week would come when I earned more than he.  This was in no way my fault – I simply worked the hours as Chef Jacobs assigned to me.  He would inform me each night at what hour he wanted me in the kitchen each morning, usually by 11:00 AM, and I would work from then until eleven-or-twelve at night, along with all the other kitchen staff.  Multiplied by six days, I was totaling close to eighty-hours each week, and at the rate of three-dollars per hour, my gross salary at one point in the summer exceeded Malcolm’s weekly salary of $200. 

One afternoon, without warning, Manager Ricci stomped into the kitchen, marched up to where I was working, and – right there in front of everyone – berated me for the transgression of having earned more money than Malcolm the previous week.  Ricci had caught me off guard, and though I tried to explain that I had merely done as the chef had instructed me to do, Ricci continued haranguing me with directives to keep my hours down.  I did not understand the public humiliation.  What did this turkey have against me anyway?  Why didn’t he simply go to the chef?  Part II of my special curriculum was born on the spot –
Commercial Kitchen Realities 201
– Dealing with Intellectually-and-Emotionally-Deficient Managers. 

Meanwhile, back in the Malcolm zone, it was now clear that he regarded me as intruding on his turf, which he guarded with great hostility and antagonism.  His every move, nuance, and expression clearly communicated a dread of losing his star status to me.  When he wasn’t busy showing off his terrific abilities – slicing three cases of fresh zucchini très rapidement without even having to look at his hands (“Golly, Mal!” I thought, "how skilled you are!") – he kept a sly eye on me, making sure that I had no chance to excel.  Initially, I accepted his territorial imperatives.  But the more skills I acquired, the more I seemed to threaten his inflated yet painfully vulnerable ego.  I began to realize that he was as lacking in inward confidence as I was lacking in outward flash. 

As the days and weeks ticked by, and Malcolm struggled harder and harder to keep me down, the strain grew fevered.  I searched my soul, seeking a way to change the adversarial relationship he had created.

It all came down to a difference of philosophy.  With Malcolm, life in the kitchen was all about competition, and there could be only one winner.  But I saw the kitchen as a community – a small one, but a community nonetheless.  Every community must have some form of government, and I saw that government as idealistically democratic: from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.  I imagined the group working together in harmony towards the common goal of professionalism and culinary excellence – and having fun doing it!  God, I loved to cook.  To me, cooking was no mere matter of placing food on a plate, and the passion pulsed deep in my veins.  It ran far beyond the act of placing food on a plate.  Cooking was a sensual experience, an act of giving, a creative passion, a benevolent vocation.  Eating was more than consuming fuel for the body – it was a spiritual experience, a moment when people of all races, colors, flavors and creeds, could set their differences aside, at least for an hour or so, and “break bread” together. 

I even laughed at my own romantic idealism.  “Hey man,” I thought to myself, “ease up on the astrological fricassee.  It’s only a summer job.”  But that didn’t change my feelings.  Let’s kick out the jams and have a blast cooking up a feast for the restaurant masses!  That was my philosophy then and it still is now.  Yet as the days and weeks ticked by, the battle of young egos grew in fever and pitch.  And I continued to search for a way to change the adversarial relationship we were trapped in, to one of fraternity and esprit-de-corps. 

The first step was to put Malcolm’s approach in a more positive context.  Malcolm had a stubborn-Yankee mind-set, along with a streak of independent non-conformist.  He was a native of New Hampshire, the home of the Green Mountain Boys, that band of rowdy patriots who had been so instrumental in the victorious outcome of the War of 1776.  I marveled at the New Hampshire state motto, exhibited clearly on the state license plate – Live Free or Die.  I tried to see his individualism as a direct reflection of the fiercely independent spirit of New Hampshirites, a cultural relic from the 18 th-century.  Though it was not easy to budge his hard Yankee persona, I endeavored to demonstrate that that I was not competing for the community’s respect, and that there was plenty to go around for us all.