Know Thyself

I had a thought the other day while getting ready for work, ruminating about the stage who trailed my station the night before and the new back-line guy who didn't know what mise en place was and who I've kind of taken under my wing:

I think I might have gotten to the point where I might actually know something about being a cook.

Which is also to say I don't know that much at all.

Lemme explain.

At some point in the past few months, maybe especially since my trip to San Francisco and Los Angeles, and definitely since the start of my current job, I started thinking a lot, A LOT, about who I am as a cook.

When I first started on the pantry station at my first kitchen, I was completely fascinated, if not overwhelmed, by the wealth of knowledge that my bosses and coworkers possessed, the experiences they had, and the energy they had to carry out the hours they were doing every day. It got to the point where the insecure control freak part of my personality would worry that I wasn't good enough to be in this industry because I wasn't _____ [reading enough cookbooks/ eating out enough/ working enough hours off the clock/ staying late enough/ reading this one blog and that site and the other thing/ sharpening my own knives/ talking enough about food/ thinking enough about food/ obsessing over food/ forsaking the other things in my life for this career path... ad nauseum]. You get the picture. I had nights where I went home and cried because I know I didn't give it my all, or I couldn't stop thinking about how I messed up a ticket and let it haunt me for the remainder of service.

Slowly, slowwwwwly, I started to ease up a little. I took work home a little less. I forgave myself a little more. I realized that the nature of our workplace is inherently forgiving in a way: You fucked up yesterday, but look! Here's a whole new batch of people and a whole new service where you can atone for your sins and show them what you're really made of!

And then I met and befriended more cooks and chefs and saw the range of personalities that float in and out of kitchens every day. Some I could relate to more than others, and some were just completely unrelatable. I've had (and keep having) great conversations with cooks about food and work, but found that there were cooks (and even foodies) who couldn't shut the fuck up about food and what chefs they admired and what they wanted and how badass of a line cook they were and how they deserved better and how they were mistreated or taken advantage of or this that and the other thing. They're unable to step outside of themselves or the industry for just a second and see this whole big world that's going on around them, with or without their stellar butchery skills. I came to realize that I didn't exactly fit in with this tunnel-vision, food-is-God worldview, but I got the feeling I wasn't a bad cook for it.

I also found my own level of comfort with the accoutrements of our industry. I got to know the cookbook section of Powell's a little more. On the advice of my first chef I bought The French Laundry Cookbook, and then I found The Devil in the Kitchen, and enjoyed my way through The Man Who Ate Everything and even re-read Kitchen Confidential (less scary and more silly this time around, FYI). My bookshelf found more company more regularly. I found cooking blogs I loved, and instead of being so jealous of food writers who were far more talented than I, I embraced them for their literary skills and their ability to capture what I could hardly comprehend.

I overcame the fear of sharpening my own knives on a stone, and though I still pretty much suck at it, I do a serviceable enough job and am slowly getting better. I made it a habit of eating out at restaurants on my days off, partially as a way of catching up with friends I missed with my insane schedule, but mostly to get a little inspiration and to see what chefs were coming up with in Portland. I came in to work a little earlier, worked a little later, tried (and am still trying) to complain a little less and keep my mouth shut a little more.

And then, somewhere in there, I started to see the everyday a little differently. The minutiae of the grind became something to love. The perfect sear on a steak, hitting the medium-rare beautifully, finding the perfect spoon with which to butter-baste, working faster, cleaner, more precisely yet more efficiently. Picking herbs a little faster than the day before, making the Bearnaise better than yesterday's, being one hundred and ten percent ready for service when the time came.

This is not to say I'm any less hard on myself; in fact I'm probably more so now than when I first started. I still don't consider myself a great cook, and I'm really young in this industry. I'm too slow still, I can work much cleaner, the color on my sear could be more consistent, I need to be better about remembering the six hotel pans I have going in the convex while portioning my pork belly and emulsifying my sauces. I get pissed at myself when I don't do something right. I get impatient, I get short with people, I talk too much, I don't focus enough. I've fucked up enough temps to know I'm not the queen of meat... yet.

But rather than harping on exactly how much I suck, I'm more willing to let a mistake go knowing that I'm making it a goddamned mission to not make that same mistake again. That, I think, is called learning.

This is ultimately about the fact that I'm reconciling with myself who I am as a cook and what my capacity is for the idiosyncrasies that come along with being a cook. In a way I'm glad I came into cooking at the age I'm at now, because I'm surer of myself and what I want than who I was 10 years ago. I've heard chefs and cooks say "Cooking comes first; everything else is secondary," and I simply don't subscribe to that philosophy. I'm not willing to forsake my relationships with friends and family to have a successful career, especially considering what my family and friends have done to help me get to where I am now. I've heard cooks say "You're not a real cook if you can't hold your liquor." I'm not a party girl and I rarely drink to excess, as I need to take care of my body and I have a very low tolerance for alcohol (what can I say, I'm a cheap date!). I'm very, VERY lucky to be able to even work in a kitchen in the first place and I don't take that for granted. I don't make it a habit to pick up every new hot cookbook, but that doesn't mean I don't have a few in mind or that I'm not paying attention. I'm not sure how many more years of line cooking I have in me, but I'm pretty certain it's not enough to want to make it all the way to the top of this particular chain. I know how much time and energy it takes, and while I want to give it all I got, I don't got enough to be an executive chef of a four-star restaurant.

What I do know is I want to keep cooking for people. I want to keep line cooking, at least for a while, get techniques and moves under my belt, and LEARN. I want to continue to be surrounded by cooks who are better than I am, who know more than I do, knowing that simply watching them and working side-by-side with them every day is making me a better cook. I'm figuring out my own pace, my own style, my own preferences. I'm working with what I have, yet I'm pushing myself to be better, faster, more efficient. I'm not mouth-breathingly obsessed with this career and this lifestyle, but I love it and I love that I get to live it every day. I want to be really fucking good at what I do. I have ideas in the works, and I don't need to be the kind of cook that a lot of cooks aspire to be.

And I'm really okay with that.

Resurrecting Five Things

I'm about two months into my new job and things are really good. I've even trained someone else on the station already, as my previous station partner moved onward and upward. I've been having a bit of difficulty shaping my work experience of late into words, so instead I thought I'd resurrect the Five Things I Learned This Week theme. To be fair, some of these have been culled from longer than a week ago, but let's just play pretend, okay?

1. Having a Forschner as a line knife is the way to go. I really don't know why it took me so long to catch onto this idea; you think having my Shun Elite 8-inch chef's knife dropped and tipped TWICE (both times not by me) would be enough to make me run to the store for a cheap-o line knife. Then about three months ago my friend Morgan and I won first place in a grill competition at a zinfandel event, and one of the prizes in our gift basket was a sizable gift certificate to Sur La Table. We finally got around to shopping at SLT last week, and while I don't exactly enjoy browsing the endless amounts of useless products or small-talking with the wide-eyed Food Network-philes cluttering the aisles, we had free money to blow. So along with some other goodies I picked up this handy little Santoku to keep on the line. Forschner makes a good quality product for a great price, and it's been an insanely wonderful difference--not having to babysit my knife, especially since my station is in a high-traffic area.

2. A helpful way to roast squash: Adding white wine and water to barely cover the bottom of your hotel pan before it goes in the oven keeps the squash skins from sticking and burning. Plus the white wine adds a nice aroma.

3. A mis-cooked terrine can go a very long way in family meal. A little baked ziti in earthenware dishes (consuelos?) never hurt anyone.



I threw these together on a slow night one evening, and they did not suck. We snacked on the leftovers for a few days afterwards, and I made my way through a quart of it in my fridge at home. Also: Why use breadcrumbs when you can have buttery baguette croutons? I'm just sayin'.

4. Family meal can make or break a night. A good family meal goes beyond simply feeding everyone; it can bring home an awesome night, and bond the crew together in quiet revelry as we sit on the stairs and regain our energy. Alternately, a bad family meal can be downright disheartening, even demoralizing. It's hard to tuck into a half-thought-out pile of something-or-other and feel like you're ready and charged up to get back to the grind. I don't take the fact that we have family meal every single night for granted, and bad family meals have been very few and far between and usually occur under already-strained circumstances (insanely busy nights where everyone is buried); it's just that a little care and attention go a long way.

5. Wearing a button-up shirt and tie on the line is totally awesome. My current kitchen, like my previous one, is an open kitchen, and we've resurrected Tie-Day Fridays--basically the opposite of Casual Fridays. Seeing our entire line in button-up shirts and ties is both hilarious and swagger-affecting. You really move differently when wearing a sharp get-up, and it always puts a smile on my face.

Starting fresh

My current workplace was amazing enough to give me time off right after I started working there to sit my ass on a beach in North Carolina for a week with my lovely family. Besides doing a lot of lounging, napping and catching up, we cooked every meal and ate and drank like spoiled kings thanks in part to the fact that my aunt owns two restaurants and my cousins are the front of house managers and wine buyers for one of them. I've surpassed my filet mignon quota for the year.

Also on hand, thanks to the great fishermen of the East Coast and the most amazing shanty of a fish market on a dock in Topsail Island: blue crabs. Lots of them. Cooked in beer and Old Bay. Maryland would be proud.



The only dreaded part of the trip was the actual traveling; 8 hours on planes and in airports is totally not awesome. I touched down at PDX at 11:30PM on Tuesday and got right back to work Wednesday. In a way it's been great to jump right back into it, but I'm just now kicking the last of the jet lag. Hitting a wall at 9PM during dinner service is far from ideal.

What has been great is knowing I'm finally on a solid schedule. While I was extremely fortunate and happy to take this time off, I like having set hours and days that I can rely on. Is it part of getting older, craving some stability? While the job itself is refreshingly unpredictable in many ways, knowing where you're going to be and when you're going to be there is a small comfort.

Not to say it isn't a little rocky at first; I remember when I first started working at my previous restaurant, the most frustrating thing about the first few weeks was figuring out where everything was located, and my new restaurant is no different. The hotel pans, the China caps, the pint containers, all your various and sundry utensils and every individual ingredient you needed for your station--like an old cat lady who keeps her hair pins in tidy rows on the bathroom counter, every kitchen has its small idiosyncrasies into which you eventually step in line. Most of all, I hate pestering people to ask where things are, but as they say, it comes with the territory.

I can report that even though I'm still very fresh meat, my new job so far has been refreshing and fulfilling and slightly terrifying; in short, all the things I was hoping it would be. I miss my old coworkers a lot, but in my humble opinion, opening the doors to new opportunities and experiences is one of the best parts of cooking.

San Francisco, Part the Second

Go here to read Part One of my San Francisco adventures.

I finally got around to tackling the organization of all the photos I took in San Francisco and LA, thanks to my first day to myself alone in my house in what seems like forever. I had an immense blast on my trip, but I think it says something about how happy I am in Portland that I was surprised with a bit of homesickness by day six or seven.

There's so much going on right now that I want to talk about, including officially starting at my new job last week, but I want to devote a good blog post to that topic so it'll have to wait. Suffice it to say I'm really enjoying being busy again, though my body can definitely feel the effects of eating three rounded meals a day for a week, rather than grazing intermittently and then snarfing down a cold sandwich as fast as I can while standing over a garbage can. I have vacation padding going on for sure.

Onwards, San Francisco!

My solo meal at Coi Restaurant was an incredible, mind-blowing experience that I'm having terrible difficulty summing up in written words.



Despite being (or maybe because of the fact that I was) the only solo diner in the restaurant and the youngest by at least 10 years, everyone from the host, my server, the sommelier and Daniel Patterson himself was incredibly warm and generous. In fact, I received a few extra courses and glasses that I didn't order. Maybe I'll barrage you with descriptors and photos a post or two down the road, but for now I'll say this dish changed my life:


soft-cooked egg, creme fraiche, chives, caviar and brioche

Listed on the menu as "California caviar, traditional garnishes," taking my first bite of this resulted in an overwhelming visceral response that I've never had before. The sweetness of the egg, white and yolk almost the same velvety consistency, the salty crunch of the brioche, the tartness of the creme fraiche and the briny popping of the caviar... it was almost too much, and in the best way possible. I took a lot of notes during my dinner, and of the egg I wrote, "Egg - 63 degrees C - 45 min to 1 hr, circulator in shell. FREAKING OUT. NEAR TEARS." It's true, I nearly cried. And then I blessed Daniel Patterson with a verbal-diarrhea-like spout of praise for his egg. Poor dude was just trying to deliver the next course and got showered with all sorts of "I just have to tell you that, well, the egg I just ate? OHMYGOD. Amazing. I don't even know what to say, I've never had an egg like that in my life!" Etcera etcera yammer yammer.

At the end of the meal, even though I was clearly crazy and couldn't stop yammering, they let me in the kitchen!


That's a clean-ass kitchen

Sarah, my server, introduced me to all the cooks as "a fellow cook from Portland" and they warmed up right away. The cooks were super-nice and the guy with the beard (sous chef maybe?) explained all the stations to me and how they recently redid the middle line, general nerdy cook chat. Soooo awesome. I cabbed it home, riding on a cook nerd high.

One thing I garnered from this trip, especially during all my solo time in SF, was how much the cook brotherhood/sisterhood carries over from city to city. There was tremendous respect for what's going on in Portland, culinarily speaking, and I had some awesome resources thanks to Chad, Richie, Matt, Mike (my gracious host in SF) and every server and bartender I met in SF.

The next morning I woke up determined to make it a four meal day. Breakfast at Tartine was a great start, and totally worth the 20 minute wait in a line out the door:


Hello, morning bun and ham and cheese croissant!

A relaxing morning spent perusing the sidewalk traffic on the Mission, and then I met Mike downtown at Katana Ya for shio ramen with BBQ pork:


love me some noodles

and then spent the afternoon wandering around Golden Gate Park:


look! I found hippies!


because I felt like it

Can I just say that having an iPhone makes traveling alone the best thing ever? I had a little too much fun getting lost in the jungle-like backwoods trails of Golden Gate Park and thanks to the GPS made my way out with nary a scratch, found the best transit route to my dinner destination and hopped the bus back to the Mission in half an hour's time.

My destination? Early dinner at Delfina:


Calamari and white beans? Yes please!

I sat solo at the bar without a reservation and must have gotten there at just the right time because 10 minutes after I was seated the house was packed. I got a primo seat next to the kitchen and watched four women rock the hot line:


I love this shit

...while I chatted with the friendliest bartender ever, talking about Portland and cooking and whatnot. She surprised me with a plate of house-cured anchovies, courtesy of the kitchen. Definitely a great little meal.

A post-Delfina trip to Bi-Rite Creamery resulted in a marvelous scoop of Ricanelas: cinnamon ice cream with Snickerdoodle cookie crumbles (!!!). Their other much-touted flavors, the salty caramel in particular, proved less than impressive. I've been spoiled by this guy's ice cream for too long now, and he sets the standard by which I judge all mint chip, salty caramel and butter pecan flavors. I have yet to meet its equal.

Then Mike and I met Matt at Nopa for a highly anticipated late-night meal:


Mike repping East coast style, ready to devour the Nopa pork chop

I was still sated from dinner number one, but between the three of us we handled some flatbread, olive oil poached tuna, corn, tagine and pork chop nicely. That pork chop especially rocked my world. I only wished that I had been hungry enough to devour what looked like an awesome burger, and I also regret not saying hello to the kitchen. By the time we were done, however, I was suffering some major food coma and the kitchen was in full clean-up/shut-down mode. Next time, I promise!

I slept off the food coma and after a solid 5.5 hours of sleep crawled my way up and at 'em to the Ferry Plaza Saturday Farmer's Market:


peppers!

Though the place was already bustling, I arrived early enough to beat the crazy tourist contingency and wandered the stalls for about an hour before I started to get claustrophobic. Fortunately I found respite on this "public viewing" platform that sits above the ferry pier itself. Not too many people seem to know about it, as it was practically empty:


Did I mention the weather was stunningly gorgeous during my entire trip?

I sat under the sun, looking out on the water and over the stalls of the market, and enjoyed my last few hours in San Francisco. I closed the book with porchetta from Il Cane Rosso, packed my belongings, and BART-ed my way to SFO...but not before grabbing some goodies for the flight to LAX:


Fuck yeah, chicharrones and peach/nectarine!

I hope to make it back to the city before the end of the year. I was worried four days on my own would be too much time, but it turned out instead to not be enough. Nicely done, San Francisco; you have a lovely city and you definitely lived up to the hype.

next stop, Los Angeles!

I'm on vacation, dammit!

I know I've been awfully slow about writing up the rest of my SF trip, but I have some things for a new blog post in the works that hopefully will come to fruition in the next few days. In the meantime, I've been relaxing with wonderful friends in LA and eating just as much as (if not more than) I was in SF. Can I just say it's a funny feeling to be sitting down for rounded meals on a daily basis? 'Cause it totally is.

I'm working on getting my photos and notes all put together so I can share the rest of my trip with ya'll, including a visit to Osteria Mozza from which we just got home. Holy effing raviolo. Stunning, really.

Los Angeles has been a mix of nostalgia and newness, along with realizing how far I've come since I last lived here, three years ago. The inception of this blog was during that time in LA, and it was a formative time for me. I've loved being here during this visit, and seeing some of my best friends in the world has been amazing, but I'm not gonna lie... I'm getting homesick for Portland.

I can't wait to officially get started at my new job, and in celebration of the new place, I bought this necklace that I found at Popkiller in Little Tokyo. I still can't believe I found it, it's so perfect, and it may give you a hint as to where I'm working...


meat cleaver as seen by Osteria candlelight

See ya soon, Portland. It's been too long.

Embracing the tourist in me

Dear San Francisco,

I'm totally in like with you. Bashful tourist too cool to take photos, be damned!

It started with a picnic at Mission Dolores Park:

strawberries from Bi-Rite and quiche and zucchini bread from Tartine

and, later that evening, dinner at Fish and Farm, helmed by the awesome and infinitely talented Chad Newton:

the best gnocchi of my life thus far? Very possibly



The next day I met my new friend Matt at Ryan Farr's stand, 4505 Meats, at the Ferry Building Thursday Market:


where I quickly ordered (and devoured the crap out of) a Zilla dog combo:

Hot dog with kimchee, scallions and pork rinds. Yes please!

and wandered around the market stalls ogling the summer produce:




I spent the afternoon at the Museum of Modern Art, whose rooftop contains a Blue Bottle Cafe, where I had a most delicious New Orleans style iced coffee. I was positively blown away by the current Richard Avedon exhibit:

a very morose Marilyn

as well as an exhibit featuring Robert Frank's "The Americans". Seeing those photos shook me to my core. I left SF MOMA thinking, 'Holy shit, these people made something incredible. I want to do something, I want to create something, I want to make something!'

I met an old dodgeball friend for a drink at 15 Romolo:

that there is a steep road to navigate in heels, I'll tell ya what

before heading to Coi for what was one of the most transformative dining experiences of my life. The tale will have to wait for the moment, as I have some Bi-Rite Creamery to get to before heading to Nopa for late dinner.

to be continued...