from behind the stove

Becoming

The past few months have been a whirlwind for the restaurant. We have received some amazing press. Business is up 40% from last year. We have paid off all of our debts and are now completely debt free. When I set back and look at all we have done in these first 3 1/2 years of being open, I am amazed considering we started out pretty humble.

When we opened the doors there were only 2 other people who really believed in us beside ourselves: Jen's dad and my mom. My old boss gave me 3 years before I would come crawling back for a job. Many people I knew in Vegas didn't take us very serious when we moved away. I think more than a few expected to see us back. And since we were completely unknown here in Traverse City, no one gave us the time of day for the first few months. We have had to fight and scrap every step of the way. Saying we opened the restaurant by our boot straps is a gross understatement. We spent most of the initial investment of just a few thousand dollars on opening costs and began our new venture with less than $2,000 in the bank. Not the best business advise I would give anyone, as it is usually advisable to have at least 6 months projected revenue in the bank before even thinking of opening a restaurant.

Ours was not a typical restaurant opening. We didn't have a big budget; our opening staff was me, my wife Theresa, Jen, and my son Calvin. The pans we used, and are still using, were not bought new, instead they all came from our houses. They are a hodge-podge of 5 or so different brands. Jen often comes back from the thrift store with new find, and we add it to our small collection. Many of our pans don't even have handles. Our dishes were not, and still aren't, fine china. Theresa and Calvin had never worked in a restaurant prior to us opening. Their training consisted of a Knute Rockne inspired speech, a few dos and don'ts, and a good luck; then off we went. From there we simply winged it, solving problems as they cropped up, hoping like hell whatever the next issue would be wouldn't cost to much, or that our guests wouldn't notice. We opened the restaurant with no backup plan. We had no choice but to make it work. We thought we had a pretty good thing and hoped everyone else would think so also, so we decided to just do what we do and let things naturally happen from there.

Now 3 1/2 years later we are much more established and stable, but our style hasn't changed. We are not a restaurant one goes to if they are looking for a well polished performance. Our style is much more organic (pun intended, mostly,...well, really more like 70/30, OK 60/40) than that. We do, and let the cards fall as they may. I am infamous for leaving for a catering and having no idea where said catering is, but I know we'll get there on time. I don't mean to say we don't plan, which we do, it's just that we plan differently from most everyone else and then just let things happen. It's how we opened and it's still how we do it. Our staff has, for the most part, become used to the seat of the pants approach we use. Most of them don't even have to carry paper bags to breath into anymore since they are learning, ever so slowly, that it just works out if we let it. I wouldn't recommend this approach to everyone, but it works for us.

Now, as a self professed obsessive type, I must admit that at times I wonder if I shouldn't get more worked up about our bit more laid back style; if perhaps we should make more of an effort to be more polished. Each time I think about I come to the same conclusion: no. And I'm going to tell you why.

I'm not an end of the road kind of guy. I don't care if I ever get to my destination. For me the important thing is in becoming. The most important thing I look for in my cooks and wait staff is are they in the process of becoming. Give me someone who wants to be and I can make them a cook. But no matter the talent, if a person thinks they have already arrived, then there is nothing I can do with them. I would rather have a teenager in the dinning room fumbling awkwardly but trying like hell than someone who can't be taught. Polish comes with time, and I am a patient person. There are some who think we are moving to slow but I keep saying that in the long run we will be better off if we focus on getting better and not being perfect now.

I like our kind of restaurant. I like the fact we have blemishes. I like it that people can come in to eat and not feel any intimidation. I believe our shortcomings are just important as our successes. Years ago I was a perfectionist in the kitchen. In the process I have had two nervous breakdowns and I am sure the stress I put myself under to attain an unattainable goal has taken a couple years off my life. Now-a-days I am happy to look out into the dinning room and see happy people, knowing full well that we could do better and with full confidence that tomorrow we will.

Advice for young chefs

Almost a year ago I wrote a post giving some advice for young line cooks. Today I would like to take a moment and give some advice for chefs who are still somewhat new to their positions. To say it is a huge step going from line cook to sous-chef to Chef is an understatement. I took over my first kitchen at the ripe ol' age of 24, which is much, much to young to be in charge of a professional kitchen. I had only one sous-chef position before my first Chef position. Boy, O' boy, was I lost. Needless to say my learning curve was a steep one at that. I really didn't get a good hold on my position until I had ran two or so other kitchens. So, with that said, here is some advise I wish I would have been given:

1) Be passionate that borderlines on the obsessive. The passionate part goes without saying. If you are not passionate about your food, get out. You are doing no one any good; not yourself, not your employer, not your cooks, not your guests. A chef with no passion is worthless. Now, as to the borderline obsessive part, this is where good chefs and great chefs part ways. It's easy to be a good chef. It takes a rabid, obsessive, single-minded, maniac to be a great chef. In his memoir's, Escoffier said it would be difficult to recount the number of hours he spent in the kitchen after everyone had gone home trying new flavor combinations and new dishes. Great chefs live food and nothing gets in the way of this obsession. It is entirely up to you just how far you go and how well you do in your career.

2) Get used to being tired. A chef who is not tired, is a chef who is not doing his/her job. Eight hour days? Those went out of the window when you were a line cook. Now your average day is 12-15 hours. Sleep is optional. There is never enough time to do all that needs to be done. Your to-do list is never finished. You will go home tired and you will wake up tired. That is what the kitchen demands. If getting your 8 hours sleep is important, you might want to consider another career path. Personally, I live on an average 4-6 hours and am doing just fine.

3) Never stop learning. Now that you have attained the coveted position of Chef it does not mean in anyway that you have "arrived". No, you still have a long way to go. I look back at my early days as Chef and just can't believe myself sometimes. Keep reading cookbooks. Keep learning from other chefs. Don't tune your cooks out, they can often times teach you a thing or two. A chef who doesn't read cookbooks is like a writer who read other novels. You cannot advance in your position in a vacuum. Keep up on current trends. Learn new techniques. Push yourself everyday to learn something new.

4) Stress. It's best to become its friend now, otherwise it will be your nightmare later. I read an article some years ago that was discussing the most stressful jobs in the United States and professional chef was up in the top five, right alone side of air traffic controllers, tramua doctors, and police officers. The stress you felt as a line cook and sous-chef is nothing to the stress you are going to feel now. Now, everying is your problem and your fault. The customer wants what they want, when they want it. It is your job to give it to them. Are you up to it?

5) Do not hang around with your crew. Your are the boss now. You are the taskmaster whose job it is to crack the whip. Those working for you are no longer your friends. They are your cooks. You cannot maintain the respect of your crew if you go out with them. There has to be a gap between you and your crew. It is the job of your sous-chef to fill that gap, but you must remain somewhat aloof.

6) Be firm. Disicpline is not an option in a well ran kitchen. It is the job of the Chef to set the standard and it is the job of the Chef to make sure that standard is met with each and every plate. You can only do this if there is a firm disicipline in place. Get it known right away whose standard they, the cooks, are to follow. YOURS. Firm dicipline does not mean abuse. Mario Batali was once asked about his opinion of chefs who spend their time yelling and screaming at their cooks. His answer was spot on. He said that a chef who finds they have scream at their cooks is a chef who has not properly trained them. There is no place in a kitchen for abuse or personal attacks, no matter what you may see on T.V. or have personally seen in your own training. Being abused by a chef in your early career does not give you the right to abuse. The cycle of abuse stops with you.

7) Be firmly in control of your kitchen. The buck stops with you. If the food is brilliant, it is because of you. If it is a flop, it is because of you. You are the leader. Your cooks will only go as far as you lead. If you don't lead, then the assylum is under the control of the inmates, and that is never a good idea. See everything. Hear everything. Nothing should get past you. Learn to pay attention to every detail. Not a plate leaves the pass with you tasting it and seeing it; and it doesn't leave the pass if you don't approve of it. You tell the cooks what to do, not the other way around. Every kitchen has it's own pulse. It is your job to find that pulse and use it to conduct your cooks in their jobs. I let it be known that my kitchen is NOT a democracy. It is a theocracy, and I am god. If you are young, this is not as easy as it sounds. My first few kitchens found me as the youngest cook, and it was tough. It will take sometime to gain respect from your older cooks, but stay with your guns. Listen to the older cooks, but don't let them tell you how to run your kitchen. You are going to make a lot of mistakes, so make them with authority.

8) Trust your crew, but have a plan B ready. Some chefs micro-manage, I don't. I trust my crew to do their jobs. I've trained them the right way and they know not to deviate from the path. BUT, always have a plan B at the ready. Trust your crew to do their jobs, but have a plan if they don't.

9) Make yourself a place of sanctuary. I cannot overstate how important it is to have a place you can go to and get away, if only for a few moments. My office downstairs is my place. It's a hoval, but it's mine and I go there often when I just need a moment away. Ever wonder why the Chef sometimes disappears into the walk-in cooler for extended periods of time? Because the cooler often provides a quick repose from the chaos outside.

Good luck. You're going to need it.

My Crew

We were closed for a couple days last month for a very large wedding dinner we had been contracted to do. The first day we were closed was for prep purposes. One just doesn't wake up the day of such a large event and pull all that food out of a hat; no, prepping for a party as large as the one we were getting ready for (410 guests) requires a good 18 hours work prior to the actual day. We had our usual kitchen crew plus a couple other cooks we hired on mercenary terms, so all in all there was 10 of us cooking for the party.

The next day we all arrive to the restaurant at 8:00 am to make the final preparations needed before departing to the site of the wedding. After 4 more hours work we were ready to go. All the preliminary work was done, the vehicles were packed and it was time to leave. As Jen and I were walking to our cars I happened to look over see the other 8 cooks of our team walking together as a group to their cars; I had to stop and just smile.

There they were, a rag-tag bunch if I've seen one. There was my sous chef, in whom I see a lot of myself at that age; intense, motivated, singly driven by food. I've three kids younger than 18 in my kitchen. One has been with me since he was 13. He's a Jewish vegetarian who, at the drop of a hat, will taste a dish of pork to make sure it is properly seasoned. One is an 18 year death-metal musician with hair down to his waist and plays a wicked set of drums. The last one just barely 17, wide eyed and just a little bit innocent. I've reassured her mom that the kitchen will take the innocence away and she should be foul mouthed and jaded in just a few short years. I think mom was hoping I was joking, but I've seen it to many times. Hell, I credit growing up in professional kitchens as the source of my own foul mouthed jadedness. I, and so many like me, learned my social skills from the sketchy mercenary like cooks who were my elders as I was coming up through the food chain. Lastly are my two interns. Freshly out of cooking school, full of ideas, with an entire career ahead of them. I remember that stage of my own career. If you would have asked me back then I would have told you I was pert-near the best damn chef on the planet. Now I look back and shake my head because I now understand just how little I knew then.

As I drove out to the catering site I got to thinking about my current kitchen crew and of past crews I've been a part of, or have been the chef of. Kitchen workers, cooks and dishwashers alike, are a breed apart, though no two are alike in any way except they share the common trait of cook, which is a trait that, from personal experience, typically means they can't fit into proper society with it's proper jobs and professions. Most cooks have something about them that just isn't right, and trying to put your finger on just what exactly it is is like trying to define time, we all know what it is, but nobody can define it; that is how I describe the typical cook. I've had cooks who were former nuns; former gang members; either just released from prison or on their way in; freshly out of the French Foriegn Legion; going to plumers school. Well I think you get my point.

So, that's my crew. Not a one of them on the same page, until...until you get them in the kitchen, then they come together as one to produce beauty. They are all these different cogs who, by any enginenering defination, should no mesh, but when put into the confines of the kitchen have the ability to put aside differences and cook. I've had cooks in the past who literally hate each other. Who would rather go out back and beat the shit out of each other and spit on the other's grave before saying a kind word in return. But on the line during a busy dinner rush I've seen these very cooks work together like they were made for each other.

The longer I am in the kitchen, the more I understand what Guy Savoy meant when he said, "The restaurant is the last civilized place on earth." The very nature of the restuarant creates unity. Everyone from the wealthiest of customers to the lowliest of dishwashers(who, by the way, are the most important people in the kitchen, but that is for another post) are united by one thing; a plate of food.

That one plate of food is what brings all of us together everyday. It's that one plate of food that has brought us together since we first discovered fire and cooking. We cooks, no matter our differences, come together each day and night, put our differences aside for the single purpose of providing you with a plate of food. And it has been like that since the very first cook. We might no play well in the sandbox with the other kids, but give us a mud pie and we will bring all the other kids together.

 

Finally

Last year, June 23 to be exact, I received a telephone call from the Traverse City Police Department informing me we were no longer allowed to let people BYOB at the restaurant anymore.  That phone call began the hardest, most challenging year of my life.  That one phone call almost sunk the restaurant. 

I love old, Russian movies, especially the silent ones.  Don't ask me why.  I'm not even sure; I just do.  One of my favorites is the Andrei Tarkovsky film, Andrei Rublev.  In the last act, "The Bell", the Grand Prince sends out couriers to find a master bell maker to cast the main bell for a new church.  They come to the hut of a renowned bell caster only to learn from his son that the man has died.  His son, Boriska, lies to the couriers by telling them that his father had passed down the secretes of bell casting to him just before he had died, and he was granted the job of casting the important bell.  This last act, which lasts about an hour, is tense.  If the boy fails and the bell doesn't ring, he wouldbe beheaded.  No pressure, right?  To make things harder, the workers, the tradesmen, and everyone else who is supposed to be helping him don't make it any easier by refusing to work when they need to; by raising prices; by throwing up road blocks through every phase of the bell's construction.  Finally the bell is ready to be consecrated and rung for the first time.  The Grand Prince and his escorts are present along with the entire village.  The time comes to ring the bell; the tension is high.  The Grand Prince reveals he doesn't think the bel will ring.  Young Boriska wonders around the site obviously worried.  And then, BONG, BONG, BONG...ring out in a grand blagovest.  The villagers cheer.  The Grand Prince turns his horse around and leaves pleased with results.  Boriska collapses on the ground and begins to cry.  It's over.  The bell sounds beautiful.  He keeps his head. 

On Friday of last week when the FedEx lady came to the restaurants back door and handed me an envelope that contained our long awaited liquor license.  As the FedEx lady left the above scene played through my head.  I felt like Boriska.  No, I didn't collapse on the ground, but my hands were slightly trembling when I opened the envelope.  As I pulled out the license the sense of release I felt was a bit overwhelming.  It's finally over.  What an epic this past year has been.  We have over come obstacle after obstacle.  We have jumped through hoops.  We have spent more money than we have.  But, we got it.  If anyone ever wants to question the importance of wine in a restaurant, send them to us.  The question has been answered loud and clear.

I wrote a post some time ago about waiting.  I would like to suggest that you read it here because it hits the nail on the head.  I hope you noticed it was written in 2009.  This past year the restaurant has been in an hibernation.  Now all the pieces are in place.  We are through waiting.

So, we would like to thank all of you who supported us this past year.  We look forward to showing you what we can do when one arm isn't tied behind our back.  Expect great things from us.  We welcome you to join us on this next phase of the life of The Cooks' House.

 

What I Learned From Waffles

A couple Mondays ago I was at the restaurant early doing my paperwork when I got hungry.  Going into the kitchen I started tooling around looking for something to eat.  As odd as it might sound, there are many times I get hungry at the restaurant and can't find anything that catches my fancy. I don't know how many times I've gone home hungry.  My dear friend Athena has a great story about me along these lines, but that's for another time. I'm sure many of my restaurant colleagues can agree with me here. 

So there I am going through the reach-ins looking for something, anything, to eat when I happened onto the buttermilk waffle batter we use for our take on the classic southern dish, chicken and waffles.  Plugging in the waffle iron, I got to work.  Now, I can't have waffles without bacon, so I pulled out some of the best damned bacon on the planet; Elmer's,from Maple Ridge Farm.  Elmer is the owner of the Maple Ridge.  He's also part of the Amish community down by Manton.  When I say his bacon is the best, I mean I usually have a tissue handy to wipe the tears of joy from my eyes as I eat it. 

So anyway, I put a skillet on the fire, got it hot, then put about 6 pieces of the bacon into it.  With the bacon frying, I fired the waffle and got a pot of tea brewing.  It was about 9:00 in the morning.  There was no one in the restaurant but me.  Because the sun was shining through the kitchen window I didn't bother turning on the lights.  The hoods were off, leaving the only real sound that of the bacon frying.  It was perfect.  One of those rare moments when I felt OK with the universe around me.  I dare say it bordered on mystical.  It was as if my kitchen, if only for a brief moment, was a temple.  I experienced what Freud called,"the oceanic feeling",  which he describes as a sense of indissoluble union with the great All, and of belonging to the universe. 

What made it so special this time?  I make waffles everyday.  I cook pounds of bacon every week.  But for some reason that moment was special.  For that moment it was just me and my breakfast.  Bank account balances were meaningless.  The next day's menu was unimportant.  The epic we now know as our pursuit of a liquor license was no where to be found.  For that brief moment, I was cooking for the sake of cooking.  I was cooking for no other reason than because I wanted to.  For that brief moment, my food didn't have to have meaning, or reason.  I wasn't cooking for a guest.  I wasn't cooking to pay the rent.  I wasn't cooking because there was an order hanging.  I was cooking...because.  For a brief moment, I found freedom again in my food.  Nothing else mattered.

I touched eternity with a waffle.  How simple.   In the process I've discovered a mistake I've been making all along.  I've mistaken cooking as the end and not the means; the path for the destination.   Paul Tillich termed this mix up, idolarty, if I can use a religious term, which he defined as, "absolutitzing the symbols of the holy, and making them identical with the holy itself."  I made cooking the absolute, not the symbol.  I mistook cooking as "the great All, when it really is just a vehicle for experiencing.  Cooking gives me access to the grace of life.  It's not life itself.  In this simple correction of a mistake long made, I have a much better understanding of why I cook.

I  suspect that whatever I do in life can serve the same purpose as my waffles did not long ago.  Cooking just happens to be the most readily available to me. I cook because it's what I do.  I cook because sometimes the stove unviels to me life as beautiful as I believe it is.  Cooking doesn't have meaning; cooking let's me find meaning.  I guess my bigger question would be, what do you do that let's you find grace within life?

The Twenty Fifth Seat

OK, so we are in the home stretch for getting our liquor license.  If all goes well we should have it by the middle to the end of June, which will mark the end of a very difficult year.  Yesterday the inspector who is doing the final investigation came in to set an appointment with us and give us a list of things he would need to give his approval.  He seems a very nice man is wants to make the rest of the process as painless as possible, which is a nice change of pace.

The number of seats required by law came up and he said we needed to have 25 seats to qualify.  "No problem", I said with a big smile on my face, "we have 28."  I was pretty proud of this moment because it was us who got the state law changed down to 25; not to mention we have put in a good deal of blood, sweat, and tears getting the restaurant up to the 28 seats we now have. 

"Umm, benches don't count", came his reply, "the seats have to be physically countable to 25.  You will have to take the benches out and replace them with chairs." 

I think I briefly lost consciousness.  The world went blurry for a moment and I could have sworn he said benches don't count.  "What? Benches don't count?"  He had to be joking.  Both Jen and I laughed because we thought he was.  No, no joke.  Looking around the restaurant I quickly counted 7 "seats" that were now un-countable, taking our official seat count down to 21 and leaving us now 4 seats short.  I felt like throwing up. 

If I had a bomb strapped to my chest at that moment I would have pulled the pin.  All I could say was, "You have GOT to be f*cking kidding me!".  In retrospect, that isn't exactly what one should say to the person who holds ones destiny in his hands, but as Theresa and Jen have pointed out many times to me, I do have a mild case of turrets syndrome and sometimes I just can't help it.  Jen could see I was going to implode and quickly stepped in.

Besides being  a darn good chef, Jen has other attributes that make her presence very important in the whole operation.  One of these being the ability to pull out things out of her back side in a tight pinch; remind me next you see me to tell you about her great Dover sole save of 2005.  Sensing I was about to say something really stupid, she piped in with, "The law says benches don't count as seats, but it doesn't say we can't have a bench, right?" 

"Right", said Mr. MLCC inspector.

"So if we can fit in 4 more chairs we can keep the bench?

"Yes"

"No problem", she says.

You see, the bench that runs along the wall is important because it allows us a great deal of flexibility.  We can set 4 deuces or push the tables together and make it a table of 14, so when he said we needed to get rid of the bench and replace it with four chairs I was dumbfounded.  Sure it solves the official seat count but it screws us on flexibility.  Good think Jen stepped in when she did.

So when he left we went to work figuring out how we could fit in four more chairs without cramping the guests.  Sure, in most restaurants four extra seats are a cinch to fit in, but let's not forget we aren't most restaurants.  Four extra seats is no easy feat for us.  After about an hour of trying different ideas we were still 1 chair short.  Our solution?  Great question.  We are going to take one chair, a special chair if you will, and paint on the back in nice lettering, "The Twenty Fifth Chair", and put it at the end of table #2.  This chair will never be used, ever.  It's only purpose in life it to get us to 25 official seats we need to get our liquor license.  Problem solved.

So when you come in around the end of June, or thereafter, and see a chair pushed up to table #2 that is not being used, you'll know why.  It's our special chair.

Let's make a batch of Mac-n-Cheese...

...and get it right this time!  The three star Michelin chef, Guy Savoy once said that the restaurant it the last civilized place in the world, and that great cuisine is festive, joyful, and poetic.  I couldn't agree more. Ever since we, humankind I mean, discovered cooking, we have been gathering around food.  Before the discovery of cooking it was everyone for themselves, but cooking brought a disassembled people together, giving us a great evolutionary advantage over our competitors.  In his fine book, "A History of Cooks and Cooking", Michael Symons argues that it is the cooks among us who have paved the road for us to become a civilized people, and that to be truly human, we needed to learn to cook.  He argues that cooks have taught us to share, since that is what a cook essentially is, one who shares.  Cooking makes us civilized.

Cooking is what orginally brought us together.  The very act of cooking transforms us because cooking unites us.  A carrot is just a carrot, but when it's part of a stew, it adds its flavor and becomes more than it could have been separtely.  Cooking is what binds us together in an act of communion.  And, as the philosopher Andre Comte-Sponville argues, while there are a great number of things a society can do without, no society can do without communion.  Come-Sponville defines communion as sharing without dividing.  The simple act of offering someone something we have cooked, binds us together in a way nothing else can.  In giving what we cook to someone else, we don't lose it, we expand it. What makes cooking so beautiful is that it can take two people from different parts of the world, different languages, different cultures and bring them together.  Cooking can bring enemies together.  Cooking can reunite old friends.  Cooking can do all these things because of what it does, it unites what was originally separate.   As the comedian Dennis Leary says, "Great folks, get into the pot.  Get into that great big melting pot because we're all making stew."

When I walk d own the isles of a market I don't see seperate items; I see recipes.  I don't see semolina flour, eggs, cheese, milk, butter, bread crumbs, onions.  No, I see macaroni and cheese.  Maybe macaroni and cheese is the answer to world peace.  Maybe if we got together and cooked more we would get along better.  You can't share something you've cooked with someone else without leaving something of yourself with that person;  you just can't.  Perhaps it is time to quit looking at each other as separate ingredients in the isle and start seeing each other a part of the human recipe.

This is good for me to write.  As a professional cook I can become hardened to thetask that has been set before me, the task of uniting.  All of us could use a reminder every once in a while to cook somethingand share what is yours with someone else.  That's what cooks have done for hundreds of thousands of years.  That's what you can do now.

 

Towards a true local cuisine

The restaurant is quickly coming up on it's 3rd anniversary and as I look back over these past three years I am pleased to see our progress in championing local foods.  We are very involved with many of the farm to table initiatives here in Northern Michigan.  We sponsor a local community garden.  We ask farmers to grow us foods that are on the Great Lakes Foods at Risk list.  During summer months our menu is 100% Michigan and never gets below 75% even during the coldest, bleakest months of winter.  In short, we try very hard to walk our talk.

Under "The Cooks' House" on our sign are the words, "local sustainable cuisine".   We chose those words very carefully because the last thing we wanted to be was a cliche or just jumping on a band wagon.  In our minds the two can only exist as a pair, for each feeds the other.  So when someone asks us the kind of food we serve we tell them...local-sustainable.  We believe in local food because of the quality of the ingredients we can get from it.  Our food is produce/product driven.  Our food is good because of the ingredients we get, not because of us.

But for sometime now, I have had a nagging feeling that we can do better.  While we use foods grown and produced in our wonderful state, I still have to wonder if we are truly local.  What does local mean?  That's the question I've been asking myself for little over a year.  One dictionary defines local as, "pertaining to or characteristic of, a certian place or location".  I like that.  Local food then can be defined by two distinguishing marks: 1) It must pertain to it's place or location.  2) It must be bear the characteristic of it's place or location.  These are two sides of the same coin.  Local food pertains to it's place by taking on the place's spirit, and it is charateristic of the place by being grounded in the place's terroir.

The spririt of the place means many things, but basically it is the personality of the place; the magic of the place.  To discover this takes time.  One has to do more than exist in a place to discover it's personality; one has live in and engage the place on it's own terms.  We have to use all our senses to understand it.  What does it smell like?  Sound like?  Look like?  How it tastes will have everything to do with traditional foods.  The place's likes and dislikes in food.  It's attitude towards food and eating in general.  Get to know the people, the customes, the attitudes, the aesthetics, and you will begin to understand the spirit of a place.  A place's personality will have it's definable elements.  Is it cosmopalitian?  Rural?  Progressive?  Conservative?  Hip?  Artsy?  There will also be those undefinable elements.  Elements we just can't put our finger on, but somehow understand anyway.  Elements you just feel. 

Terroir is a French term that refers to the special charateristics that the geography, climate, and geology of the land a certian place will bestow upon what is grown there.  I'm thinking not only of the flavor of what is grown but what actually grows in a given region; the barks, weeds, grasses, berries, sprouts, shoots, etc., that can be found in the local region.  For me it's not only usingwhat the local farmers grow but also using what Mother Nature herself grows.  It's what naturally grows in a given region that defines the terroir for me when thinking of local foods. 

So a true local cuisine will be a product of it's place.  It is often said if you want to understand a place, eat it's food and that is because a place's food is what naturally comes from the people who have lived there and now live there.  It is a cuisine that takes what is offered and makes something of it.  It is something that often takes generations to develop. A place's food is something that is natural to the place; it can't be forced.  It has to appear on it's own and according to it's own terms.  It is what god would cook if he so was inclined.

So this is the direction Jen and I have been wondering towards this past year or so.  We are wanting to find someone we can put on staff who will go out foraging for us.  We have enlisted the help of our good friend Penny Krebiehl who is an expert in permaculture hoping she can teach us some of her whiles and ways.  We want to discover the cuisine of Northern Michigan.  We want to listen to the spirit and terroir and help it find it's way onto a plate.  The beauty of our continued quest for an even more local cuisine is it will take us a long time to get there.  We have years of learning ahead of us.  Our food will evolve many times before we reach our goal.

Salt...know it, use it, live it

About 8100 years ago people began using the most important ingredient in any kitchen; salt.  Salt has a rich and varied history.  It has been used as a seasoning, a preservative, a currency, and reasons to go to war.  In most Slavic countries offering someone salt and bread when they come into your home is a sign of hospitality; in some cultures salt is used in funeral rites. Fun fact: Salt is the only rock we eat.  Getting enough salt in our diet is very important for staying healthy, as long as we don't over due it.  But, it is the culinary use of salt I am interested in today, more specifically, the use of salt to season our food.

Recently I had lunch at a local eatery and, as is usually the case with most restaurants I go to, the food was bland, which is the reason for today's post.  I cannot overemphasise the important role salt plays in making a dish taste good.  I heard one chef say that cooking without salt is like eating in black and white; whereas cooking with salt is like eating in color. 

The 5 primary tastes of the tongue are: 1) Sweet, 2) Bitter, 3) Sour, 4) Umami, and 5) Salty.  Every dish the cooks makes must find the right balance of all of these tastes in order for the dish to be made well.  Since this is a post on salt I'll just stick to that.  I don't how many times I have heard cooks, both professional and amateur, proudly proclaim to me that their food is so good that they don't need to add any additional salt; that the natural amounts of salt present is just enough.  Wrong, wrong, wrong, and bullshit!  You can make a masterpiece of a dish.  You can make the best dish the cooking world has ever known, but if you don't salt it properly, the world will never know.  The dish will be bland and boring.  I would guess that 90% of flavor problems can be solved with proper salting.  Salting is the first problem to be solved when adjusting the seasoning in a finished dish.  You simply cannot move onto the other problems if the salt issue has not been dealt with. 

So, how do we know when there is enough salt in the dish?  This is one of the most difficult techinques to learn in all of cooking.  It takes 1000's of dishes and years of practice to master.  It helps to learn it from someone who has mastered it, but I'll try to give you the basics here.

First there is the matter of what kind of salt to use.  I am partial to the bigger flakes of kosher salt.  I like the grain size, the taste, and the versatility.  The bigger grains don't dissolve as quickly and so form sort of a nice crusty-crunch on the outside of meats.  If I want smaller grains I just have to grind the salt gently between my fingers as I sprinkle it on whatever I'm salting.  Kosher salt also has a nice clean taste.  Some people prefer sea salt and I can't argue with them on this.  I actually prefer grey salt, which is a salt that comes from the north of France that is made by evaporating the water out of the Atlantic Ocean, for seasoning fish as the natural brininess of the salt pairs well with the fish.  But I do not like, and strongly council you against using, iodized salt. 

Second, salt throughout the entire process, not just at the end.  All you want to do at the end of the process is adjust the seasoning to it's final state.  By seasoning throughout you are ensuring a more rounded seasoning because the salt is allowed time to cook out it's sharpness.  Sometimes a salty sharpness is welcomed in the finished dish, which is a different problem, but not every time.

Third, when it comes time to adjust the final seasoning here is what you do:  As you taste the dish you are looking for a lack of flatness.  This might sound a bit strange, but I think of it as licking cardboard.  When something is flat, cardboard is the first thing I think of.  I know it's no longer flat when that imagery is gone.  For you it might be something different, but that's what works for me. Lack of flatness is the best way to describe it because sharpness is a completely different problem to be tackled once the dish has been salted correctly.  Look for this lack of flatness towards the back sides of your tongue; if it needs more salt you will feel it there.  You will know that it is salted correctly when you no longer taste the flatness there.  A word of warning, however.  You don't want to taste the dish more that 5 or 6 times in the final seasoning process.  After 6 or so tastes the palate begins to go numb and if you are not careful you can over season without realizing it.  Try to keep it under 5 tastes if possible. 

Under salting is a problem that a vast, vast majority of cooks out there do not tackle, but it is the most important problem if you want you food to taste amazing.  Proper seasoning is one of those characteristics that separates great cooks from mediocre cooks.  Learn to adjust the salt correctly and you will automatically be cooking better than most.

I'm Back

The philosopher Thomas Nagel once wrote, "Most people feel on occasion that life is absurd, and some feel it vividly and continually".  I am one of these people who feel it vividly and continually, and I have felt it for more years than I can remember.  To say that I spend time thinking about what all this means would be an understatement.  The fact is, I have spent the better part of 20 years trying to figure out what life is all about and what it all means, and believe me when I say that I have ran the gamut in trying to pin point what it is that I feel in such a profound degree.  Almost every book I read touches on it in some way; almost everything I do feels the effects of this central theme of my life.

I've been quiet here lately but that doesn't mean I don't have anything to say, on the contrary.  It's just I don't know how to say it.  I've been writing this post in my head for a couple months now, and have started it more than a couple times, each time deleting it because it just wasn't what I wanted to say.  I'm hoping today I get finally get it down.

The above quote from Thomas Nagel sums it up nicely for me.  Albert Camus pointed out that once a person confronts the absurd, he/she can never just let it go again; once confronted, the absurd will remain forever at the forefront of life.  Over the past few months I have finally understood what has been plaguing me for all these years.  It's not that I didn't know it intellectually, this part I've know for many years now, but not until somewhat recently did I know it deep down inside.  I finally get it, you could say.   Now, since the kitchen is the one place where I can confront life on terms I can understand, it is within these walls I try to answer the big questions of life.  My food and my approach to cooking sheds light on the overarching themes in my life, and that is why I started this blog, to explore why I cook, and in extension, why I live.

In a nut shell, the absurd is the conflict we feel when we desire inherent meaning in life and our inability to find it.  You can say I have tried so hard looking for meaning in my food in the attempt to understand meaning in my own life.  If I can find meaning in a saute pan, then perhaps I can find meaning in waking every morning.  But alas, I can't find meaning in my food, and this is the reason I have been silent on the blog for a couple months.  I've been trying to figure out, what now? 

My realization that cooking has no inherent meaning leaves me with two choices: 1) Quit cooking, 2) Cook anyway.  The first choice isn't really an option.  It might have the appearances of an option but at closer examination it is easy to see it is merely a mirage.  What would quiting cooking actually solve?  It doesn't get rid of the problem.  In fact, quiting cooking actually means I accept defeat, and this isn't something I do easily. The only thing quiting cooking would accomplish would be to put the problem off a little longer.  Eventually I would have to face it.

So, I cook.  The question before me then is how do I cook?  And I'm not talking about technique here.  I mean, how do I approach the kitchen now that I understand there is no real meaning there?  For me this is the crux of the issue.  Everything hangs on the balance of it's answer.  There is always the danger of nihilism setting in when a person is confronted with this question, but I am not a nihilistic person, nor am I a fatalist; much to my surprise, I discovered the opposite.  It is on this edge I have been perching for these past few months;  what now?  This what now in the kitchen will answer the what now of my life.  If I can understand what the absurd means to me as a cook, then I am sure I can understand what the absurd means to me as a person.

 Even now as I type I am still unsure what this means to me and my cooking.  I've been working on this version of the post for 29 days, and when I re-read it I don't seem to have said much as far as resolution is concerned.  But I want to post this anyway, even in it's unfinished form, because I need to move on to other things.  I do, however, feel a very profound sense of freedom; the freedom to be authentic.  I hope to flesh out some consequences of my past few months musings in the next couple posts, but for now this is going to have to due.