it's getting better all the time...

In the timeless words of The Beatles, "I've got to admit it's getting better, a little better all the time."

So yeah, having to move (for the second time in 9 months) sucks and breaking up sucks even more. But things don't stay terrible for long.  The move is over.  Mostly.  There are a few things that I've got to retrieve from the old house but I'm in the new house.  Slept in the new room last night and I'm really feeling good about it.  The roommates are nice and normal and not musicians (not that I have anything against musicians, I just prefer to enjoy their work at a show and not while I'm trying to watch Top Chef or sleep).  There is a sweet kitchen, I'm 1.9 miles from work, and I have off-street parking - anyone who lives in the District and has dealt with the parking situation and the ridiculousness of tickets, booting, and towing will get why that makes me so happy.

As for work, things are going pretty well there.  I've worked a few less shifts lately but that's mostly because it was a night that we're not usually super-pressed for people and I've just had a lot going on in my personal life so taking a few Monday nights off wasn't a huge deal.  But now that I'm getting settled this week should be the last Monday night off for a while and I have to say I'm looking forward to getting back into my normal routine.  So, as I start spending less of my free time panicking about where I'm going to live, I should be able to get better at blogging.

In closing, I would just like to say though that the DC snow trucks suck.  Or at least the people who drive them do.  Because, in addition to having to cross behind the truck in the middle of the street when the driver decided to wait out a red light squarely in the middle of the crosswalk,  tonight I got the delightful sensation of being shot in the back of the leg with a bb gun multiple times.  How is this possible? The moron driver turned on the salt-sprayer as we were crossing behind his truck (which we had to do because of the aforementioned crosswalk-blocking).  So about 50 pellets of de-icing salt shot in the back of my calves while I was trying to run across the street.  This is not a pleasant sensation.  Especially not after standing on your feet for three and a half hours for a concert.

DC snow trucks...you are on my shit-list.

sometimes life is like a giant kick in the ass

So I haven't written in a while and it's not for lack of things going on.  Rather, too much has been going on.

But to update briefly:

— Inaugration was insane.  We had our best week by a lot and were packed.  All the time. For 5 days straight.  Good times but so tired afterwards.

— As a needed break after the craziness of Inauguration week, I went to visit the parents where they now live in Oklahoma.  Oklahoma is a pretty boring place but it was a nice break from the constant busy pace of life in DC.  And I got to do some serious cooking with Mom.  The parsnip soup...oh my lord, the parsnip soup.

— Life outside of the restaurant has been tough: breakup, moving, stress, stress and more stress.  But, thanks in large part to the fact that the staff at Granville's is the best surrogate family I could ever hope for, I am surviving.

— Had a chef meeting the other week that involved my new plan to really step up our game.  We were left off the Washingtonian 100 Best Restaurants list and, well, I was pissed.  Next year, Washingtonian, next year.

More to come later this week hopefully as I start to get big details like where I will live sorted out (that one's pretty crucial).

introductions

Well, due to the fact that the writer of one of my favorite blogs linked to one of my posts on his site (thanks again!), I've gotten some new readers and comments. Which is awesome. And so, it's prompted me to write a post that's a bit of an introduction. The focus of this blog has changed since I first started it and that's largely because my life has changed pretty drastically since I first started the blog.

First things first: my name is Alyse and I live in Washington, D.C. I moved here in fall of 2004 after I left college. When I first moved here, it was to figure out what I want to do with my life. And like most people who are only 20 years old when they decide to "find themselves," my visions of what I wanted to do for a living changed a few times. I got a job as an admin assistant in an office and while I knew I didn't want to do that, I was still pretty unsure of where I was going.

Summer of 2005 my parents moved to the D.C. metro area so my dad could get his second master's degree and I couldn't have been happier. I adore my parents; they are the greatest parents anyone could want. I spent at least two days a week with them and a lot of that time was spent in the kitchen. Cooking has always been Mom and I's thing. A lot of it started when my mom married my dad (who is actually my stepdad but he's always going to be Dad to me). Faced with not only a new dad but three new siblings, I began to miss out on the pleasure of having my mom all to myself. So I found ways to spend time with her and the biggest one was cooking. She's an amazing cook and I learned that if I was in the kitchen with her, it was a time to talk and enjoy her company while also picking up her love of food and cooking (and wine).

The year my parents were here and all the time I spent cooking with my mom made me think that maybe I could cook for a living. I hadn't found anything else that I loved as much as cooking or that relaxed me as much and I was a total culinary junkie. I looked into the idea of culinary school, found one in the D.C. area that was pretty good and very seriously considered going to school. And then I didn't. For a lot of reasons. At the time I wasn't sure I wanted to work in a restaurant for a living because I knew the hours were rough (I'd worked in restaurants during high school and college - serving and hosting). Culinary school is also really expensive and I wasn't sure I wanted to sink $30,000 grand into a year of education if I wasn't sure I'd be down for spending the rest of my life working in a restaurant. So I sort of shelved the idea but it always remained in my head and taunted me.

Soon enough I found myself working in the booming (at least if you live in D.C.) non-profit sector and while I enjoyed my work more, I was still never really fulfilled by what I was doing. I spent a lot of my free time cooking and shopping for food (the Dupont Circle FreshFarm market got so much of my money) and all of my extra cash went to food, kitchen items, or wine.

The summer of 2006 my parents moved to Oklahoma for my Dad's job and so I was seriously missing my cooking time with Mom. Fortunately for me, in the winter of 2007, a friend who I'd met at debate camp the summer before my senior year of high school (yes, I was a HUGE dork in high school AND college) moved to D.C. His name is Tahir — although I and the readers who've been with this blog for a while know him simply as T — and although we'd met almost 7 years before he moved to D.C., we had kept in touch on a very on-off basis through the years. So he invited me to his housewarming party where I ended up helping out in the kitchen and we discovered that we both loved to cook. We made plans to get together and cook and the rest, as they say, is history. We started cooking together on a regular basis, pushing each other to try bigger and tougher kitchen challenges and trying out our experiments on friends.

Somewhere along the way I decided to start a blog. At first it was simple. Just a note about something I'd cooked recently, maybe a picture or two, and that's all. Soon I started using the space to talk about all sorts of food things: books I'd read, restaurants I'd eaten at, my thoughts on food in the news, wine, and — perhaps the most fun and impressive — my cooking adventures in the kitchen with T. So my life-long love of writing and my love of food and joined to become something really special to me.

Thanks to encouragement from boyfriend at the time I submitted two writing samples for a chance to get a position as a food writer for a D.C. focused blog called, DCist. The editors were crazy enough let me on board and, while it wasn't a paying job, I was super excited to get to write about food and wine and do it in a way that was fun, informative, and let me be a bit sarcastic about it (I love me the sarcasm...as all who know me can attest).

All of that was well and good but I still wasn't happy at work. I spent most of my day getting the minimum amount of work done and then reading food blogs, coming up with ideas for posts, and dreaming about getting to cook for a living. And then a number of things sort of happened that would bring me to where I am today.

First of these was that said boyfriend took me to a little gastropub called Granville Moore's for our first date in March of 2008. Located in the "emerging" (read: gentrifying) neighborhood known as the Atlas District, it's a tiny, tiny place that's known for moule frites (mussels and fries) and a kick-ass Belgian beer list. He knew I loved Belgian beers and that I had recently discovered I liked mussels after shunning them for 13 years due to a bad experience. So he, rightly, assumed that it would be the kind of place I'd be into. He was so right. The food was great, I totally dug the hole-in-the-wall vibe, and the beer list was nothing less than phenomenal. (Just a few days after we ate there, Bobby Flay and his food network crew showed up and challenged the chef at Granville's to a moules frites Throwdown.)

The next thing that happened was that things at my day job (I'd left my previous non-profit and was now working for a food industry trade association) had gone south. I had a new boss with whom I was having a hard time working and I spent most of my nights incapable of falling a sleep or sleeping well because I was so stressed and had so much mental energy from being unhappy, unchallenged, and unfulfilled at work. After realizing that things weren't going to get better, I started looking for new jobs at the end of May 2008. I was focused on finding another non-profit job but the bf brought up the idea of looking for a job in food or wine. I entertained the idea, applied for a few jobs (wine manager, wine sales, event planning) that were kind of in that area but still was mainly looking for another office job.

With some pushing from him I started looking at the possibility of applying for a cooking job. I had no professional experience, had never been to culinary school but I adored food, devoured books about it, knew a lot, and was a pretty quick learner. I would certainly be starting at the bottom and would not get a salary that even approached what I'd get from another office job. But maybe...maybe this was my chance to do something I'd always wanted to do.

The final push into my new career came from a series of events over about two weeks in July. On July 2, while I was talking to him on gchat, the bf sent me a link for a job on craiglist. Granville Moore's was looking for a line cook. And the ad was so different from all the others looking for cooks. No mention of the experience needed or desired, just a few questions: what kind of food do you like to cook, what are your favorite restaurants, and why do you want to work here.

I took a deep breath and wrote. I emailed the chef the answers to his questions and, as for that final question, I was just honest. I love food. I have no professional kitchen experience but I am a good cook, I want to do this for a living and I think I've figured out it's better to be happy doing something you love than to be miserable making a bunch of money doing a job that makes it hard for you to sleep at night.

And so I waited. That night I got an email from Teddy, the chef/owner of Granville's and he asked me a few more questions and we set up an interview for the following Wednesday, July 9. The day before my interview at Granville's I went into work as usual and spent a lot of the day really excited about the two interviews I had the next day: the one at Granville's and an interview for a job in wine sales. That afternoon my boss called from the office of our HR manager and asked me to come down. I sat in silence while I was told that I was being let go. Effective that day I was no longer employed at the trade association. The details were explained to me, I went back to pack up my desk, and then I left. And I was really unsure about what would come next.

I called my mom from my car and, despite how much I had hated that job and my boss, I started to cry on the phone with her. I had never been fired before, I didn't know what I was going to do for a living, and what was going to happen if neither of those interviews worked out? She calmed me down and we both agreed that it was better that I wasn't still working there and I'd gotten some severance money that should help with things for a few weeks while I found a new job. After I felt better, I called the bf to talk and we decided to go out to dinner at Rustico, one of our favorite restaurants, to celebrate my being done with a job I hated. That night as we waited in the bar for a table, the TVs were tuned to the Food Network because the episode of Throwdown with Bobby Flay featuring Teddy from Granville's was finally airing. That's the great thing about the D.C. dining scene: everyone roots for everyone else and we're all just thrilled when we get any small amount of national recognition (and to wrap up the Throwdown story...Teddy won).

Wednesday morning I woke up and went to my interview for the wine sales job. I felt good about the interview, I know wine pretty well and if there's one thing I can do, it's talk about how great a particular wine is — which is a pretty strong skill for someone interviewing for a job selling wine. I had a bowl of pho for lunch and then went home to change and relax before my interview with Teddy at Granville's later that day.

Around 4:00 I walked into Granville Moore's and met Teddy in person for the first time. He had the sort of personality that just totally put me at ease. I relaxed and he gave me a tour of the kitchen (which lasted about 30 seconds since it's smaller than my parents' master bathroom) and the restaurant and we talked about food. He was funny, sarcastic, self-deprecating and clearly as obsessively in love with food as I was. He'd also worked in an office for 4 years after leaving college and then left it to follow his passion and cook for a living. I knew instantly that I could totally work for this guy and love it. I met some more of the staff, we chatted a bit longer about food, my restaurant experience, the Throwdown, he said he'd call me Friday and then I left.

When I talked to my mom afterwards she asked me what I'd do if I got offered both jobs. The wine sales job was more boring but it paid a ton. At Granville's I'd be making less than I'd made when I first moved to D.C. I told her, with only a little hesitation, that I would probably take the job at Granville's...because, c'mon, I'd be cooking for a living.

Thursday the wine company called and offered me a job. I told them that I was waiting to hear on another offer and that I'd get back to them the next day. I spent another night nervous, excited, and hopeful. When I awoke Friday morning I had an email from Teddy saying that they wanted me to come in that Sunday night and hang out in the kitchen for a shift and see what I thought of it. I wasn't sure if that meant I had the job or no and I needed to get back to the wine people so I called him up and asked if he was offering me a job or if it was a second interview. He said that the job was mine if I wanted it.

And that's how it started. I started working day prep shifts with Teddy (plus a few front of house shifts to make some money since there weren't 40 hours a week available for me in the kitchen) and it was great. I spent time in the kitchen cooking with him, learning, talking about food all day, managing to teach him a thing or two in the process, catching up on D.C. food scene gossip, and having a blast. It felt wrong that they were paying me for it. Things moved up from there. I got to create dishes, they made it on the specials, then onto the menu. I started working the line, and now, six months later, I'm the opening chef three days a week in charge of managing all of our prep and have realized the ultimate satisfaction of watching my dishes go out of that kitchen and satisfy diners.

And so there you have it. The long (but still pretty abridged) story of how I got here. I'm going to skip summing up specials, reading material, and other such things because it's late, I need sleep so I can go battle D.C. DMV tomorrow. But the next post I'll do a bit more of an intro to the restaurant and what we're all about.

inauguration: it's history

So the inauguration is over.  From a political perspective, this was an extremely exciting and important event.  However, from the perspective of someone who works in a D.C. restaurant, I'm extremely happy that it's over.  It was, in a word, madness.  Starting Saturday, we were opening four hours early every day and keeping the kitchen open an hour to two hours later than usual. Friday's prep shift was insane as we worked to get everything set up not only for that night's service, but also to make the prep load lighter on Saturday since the kitchen would be opening at 1:00pm instead of the usual 5:00pm — meaning four fewer hours to get things ready for Saturday night.

I normally love prep shifts because they are the time I get to create.  Line shifts are all about execution: get tickets done, done right, and done as quickly as possible.  Prep shifts are different. The printer isn't spewing out tickets; managers aren't running in to get orders changed because servers put them in wrong; food runners aren't taking the wrong mussels to tables, dropping the tops of sandwich buns, or forgetting to stab tickets.  The kitchen is relatively silent and  it's possible to enjoy the relaxing aspects of cooking.

Prepping for inauguration is not the same.  It's a mad rush to get things done.  Friday was a whirl of making double batches, braising as much brisket as could physically fit on the stove, and trying to see into the future and predict exactly what we would sell most of that night and Saturday.  Guess what?  It's hard to be a cook AND a psychic.

But we made it through.  Saturday night was craziness.  Twenty percent over what would normally be a really good Saturday for us.  Sunday night was a bit more relaxed but still the best Sunday we'd had in a while.  Monday night was Saturday all over again.  I was on the line and we went all the way until the stroke of midnight.  At 10:00pm we were still on a two hour wait.  The sheer amount of fries we went through was...scary is the best way I can think to put it.  Fortunately, Tuesday was a bit calmer.  But Friday through Tuesday we matched what had previously been our best seven day week of sales.

I'm glad it's over and happy to be heading back towards some semblance of normalcy.  More to come later though on the rest of this week.

boys' club

So, although I know at least one reader of this blog is very familiar with the situation/environment I'm about to describe, I'll give a little bit of explanation for those who may not be.  To put it simply: the kitchen (and the food industry at large) is very much a boys' club.

Despite a lot of advances and a lot of really talented female chefs out there, the kitchen remains a pretty tough environment for a woman.  Most of the best restaurants in the world (according to rankings lists and such) have male head chefs, most of the sous chefs, line cooks, prep cooks, and even dishwashers in many kitchens are men.  There are certainly kitchens that serve as exceptions but for the industry at large, the kitchen is still a pretty masculine environment.  In a lot of ways it's like a boys' locker room — girls aren't really wanted in there and if you go in there you better prepare yourself because it's a different world and they're not going to censor themselves or take pains to make you comfortable because, after all, you're on their turf.

So needless to say it can be difficult to be a woman working in a kitchen.  There are a lot of challenges.  I've been lucky for the most part because my head chef started his culinary career in the kitchen of a fantastic female chef and he says that she created an environment that was nurturing, educational, and helped him learn how to be a chef that inspires instead of intimidates.  All of this makes him a fantastic boss and it makes me feel very lucky to work with him.  But in a kitchen you aren't just working with one person, you're working with a group and not everyone in the group picks up on those cues from the top and — should that nurturing figure at the top be gone from the kitchen for six weeks — you will inevitably faced with a lot more challenges.

These challenges come in many forms.  And if you're like me (a stubborn perfectionist who hates to be wrong) you'll look at every challenge as an opportunity to prove yourself. Sometimes this leads to amusing results.  Like when you can't pry the lid off of a tub of pickled vegetables and you tell the boys you need help and they make fun of you.  If you're the stubborn sort, once they quit laughing and say they'll come help you, you tell them that, nevermind, you've got it on your own.  So you go out to the walk-in with a meat pounder and a butter knife and try to take the hammer and chisel approach to working the lid off.  When that doesn't work you end up putting one foot on the edge of the lid closest to you, planting your other foot firmly on the floor, and pulling on the other side of the lid with both hands and all your strength.  It works, but you're wearing about a quart of pickled vegetable juice and for the next 6 hours of your shift you will have brine in your shoes.

Sadly, not all of the challenges will be as amusing.  Somedays the boys' club will make you feel angry, frustrated, defeated and maybe it will even make you doubt yourself and your abilities. Without that understanding and nurturing leadership at the top, you have to fight it out with the boys who've been there longer, have been doing the job longer, and are pretty convinced that they don't need you or your input.  

So the head chef is out for a few weeks and you've gotten a promotion to a role of new responsibility and new opportunity...how do you succeed when the boys leave you isolated and out of the loop?  They talk to each other but not to you.  When you offer help or suggestions, they're brushed aside.  When you ask questions, you are ignored or, worse, snapped at and essentially told that it doesn't concern you.  They go over your head, below you, and around you to get work done but it doesn't seem that they are particularly interested in talking to you.  With the head chef out — the one person who hired you, promoted you, and seems to believe in you — how do you sort it out?

...I'll let you know when I figure out the answers.

Getting Ready for Inauguration

Inauguration is upon us.  The madness started yesterday.  We got in deliveries of enough items to last us through Tuesday since most of our vendors are going to be closed Monday and/or Tuesday and with all the road closures, we're not sure deliveries would be able to get to us if they were open.  We got in 20 gallons of mayonnaise and 8 wheels of Hook's blue cheese.  Our bison farmer came up from Madison yesterday and, in addition to getting stuck in some nasty traffic that caused him to arrive at 7:00pm instead of 5:00pm, brought us 6 cases of fresh ground bison, enough brisket and hanger steak to last us through Tuesday, and what has to be the single largest amount of bacon I've ever seen in one place.  I spent 45 minutes last night out in the freezing cold opening the boxes, organizing the walk-in to find space for it all, and then breaking down boxes.  It was not fun.

To add to that, our kitchen is freezing.  The kitchen is in a part of the building that was added on to the original structure so it has never had the best heating and cooling.  So basically cold air pours in to the bottom of the kitchen (which is above our outdoor patio) and then our commercial grade hood pulls all that cold air up through the kitchen.  It doesn't help that we're going through some of the coldest weather D.C. has seen in the last five years.  I've decided that I'm going to need to get a long-sleeved chef's jacket to wear over the many long-sleeved shirts I already wear since the short-sleeved jackets aren't working so well.  I am also going to need to wear two pairs of socks in the hopes that I can keep at least some of the feeling in my feet.  

These next four days are going to be unreal.  The kitchen will be staying open till midnight starting tonight and going through Tuesday night.  The bar will be opening at 1:00pm Saturday through Tuesday and that will include the kitchen having to turn out fries for customers in addition to getting prep done between 2:00pm and 5:00pm.  Thankfully I have tonight off and I'm off all day tomorrow.  However, Sunday the insanity begins: in for prep at 9:00am, prep until 4:00pm and then host from 5:00pm until whenever the wait subsides (hopefully around midnight at the latest).  Monday night is a line shift and Tuesday I'm serving.  Jeebus help me because I'm pretty sure tonight and tomorrow are my last chance for sleep until Wednesday.

Specials

Beef Rib-eye with Balsamic Cherry Reduction: Our "beer guy" (although he's really so much more), Pat, makes these bourbon-kriek soaked cherries for the bartenders to use in Manhattans that are unbelievably good.  So today I decided to use some of them.  Balsamic, bourbon cherries, and steak.  Yum.

Grilled Rockfish with Lemon Basil Vinaigrette:  I loved the lemon basil aioli from last week.  I decided to try it a bit differently since I thought a lighter vinaigrette might work better with grilled rockfish (I think aioli works better with the fried fish).  I liked it, but not as much.  I still need to sort out the exact lemon/basil balance I want.

Reading Materials

I'm still working my way through The Man Who Ate Everything by Jeffrey Steingarten.  I am sort of reserving that one for helping me survive my Sunday night hosting shifts.  Steingarten's wit makes it easier to answer 58 phone calls about whether or not we take reservations and 15 phone calls that require me to explain that we are NOT located on the 1200 block of H Street NW and that there is a big difference between NE and NW in the District.

So since I'm reserving that for Sundays, I tend to read other books during the week.  Since today has been a long day, I've been enjoying Melanie Dunea's wonderful book My Last Supper which has 50 famous chefs talk about what the ideal meal, setting, music, guest list, and etc. would be for their last supper on Earth.  The photographs are wonderful and the book always inspires me (doesn't hurt that there are recipes in the back including Thomas Keller's perfect roast chicken).  Whenever I'm having a day where I'm tired, frustrated, and starting to question myself, I always look at this book and it reminds me of what I love about the business I'm in and how, even for the most talented chef, it's important never to stop deriving joy from good food, good friends, and, mostly, being able to do something you love every day.

pushing through

Sometimes there are those days when you're on the line and you're just firing on all cylinders and everything is working perfectly.  Those days are rare.  Sometimes you have those days when the occasional snag pops up but you roll with the punches and at the end of the night you realize that nothing was that bad and you made it through all the incorrect tickets, items needed on the fly, and small missteps. Those days are more common.  

And then there are the days like yesterday.  You're feeling good when you show up for your shift.  You knock out the prep you have to do.  You get your station set up.  You get other people's stations set up.  The service starts off slowly and so everyone wanders out of the kitchen.  You're the only person in there when the first few tickets come in and you jump on a station that's not usually yours, get the tickets done, send everything out, and you're feeling pretty good because whether or not everyone else is in the mood to work, you are and you're ready for a good night.  Once things pick up, it's business as usual and you're rolling with the punches and making sure everything is getting out on time - whether that be with the rest of the food on the ticket or on the fly because the server forgot to put it through.

And then suddenly you hit that moment when, regardless of how good you're feeling, someone else isn't and they're determined to take it out on you.  It's amazing how one person's bad mood can bring an entire shift down.  They're having a bad day and so they snap at you.  You in turn get frustrated and maybe you even shut down a little bit.  By the time service is over and you've cleaned the kitchen and are walking out the door, it's obvious to everyone that you're not in the same mood you were in when the shift started.  So what happened?  To put it simply, you hit a block and you stopped.  

I grew up watching and obsessing over college football (War Eagle!) and one of the things that always defined the Southeastern Conference was tough defenses and offenses that relied on a running game.  Because of that combination, one thing that was always talked about was "yards after contact" or the number of yards a running back could gain after the first defender attempted to tackle him.  Often times you'd see a running back get hit by one defender and he would spin, fight and push to stay up.  But it wasn't just staying up that mattered — he kept pushing.  Still on his feet he'd surge ahead to gain more yards.  The really great running backs could do this despite having to break one, two, three tackles.  They simply pushed through.

It's no different when you hit an emotional or mental block in the kitchen.  Sure, the chef snaps at you and you want to shut down.  But you have to look ahead and think about all the yards you can gain after contact.  Sure, it might seem like shutting down punishes the person who yelled at you unnecessarily, but really, you're only punishing yourself and everyone else who wasn't involved.  So no matter how tempting it is to stop when you hit that first block, resist the urge and keep on pushing through because when you do, you're giving yourself the chance to recover the service and have a great shift.

Notes:

— Last night was the night of the braised brisket sandwich and the blueberry salad.

— Lately our hanger steaks look like they were butchered by, as Teddy put it, "a blind 5-year-old with a butcher's knife"; it makes breaking them down and portioning them a real pain in the ass.

— I think rapini is my favorite vegetable ever, which is huge since I'm obsessed with vegetables of almost every kind.  But red chili flake is a must with sauteed rapini; otherwise it just doesn't taste right.

— The closer we get to inauguration week the more I start to think that it's going to kick all of our asses.

a change of direction

So because my schedule is so weird it's been hard to keep this blog focused on what I cook at home.  Mostly because I don't cook at home as often and when I do it's usually pretty simple or I'm not thinking and forget to take pictures.  Based on that reality check, I've thought about refocusing the direction of this blog.

One of my favorite blogs to read is called line cook. and it's become a favorite because of its honest, thought provoking, and hilarious take on the life of a restaurant cook.  So while it's highly unlikely that I will have as many deep insights or hilarious moments to share, I do think that blogging about cooking at work and that aspect of my life will better accomplish the intended purpose of this blog: to chronicle things I discover, learn, and love about food and cooking.  I'll still have some stuff in here about non-work cooking but since work is where I do most of my cooking it makes no sense to exclude it from what I write about.

This week was a long one: 52 hours on my feet, 27 of which came in just two days (Friday and Sunday).  Weeks like this make me feel lucky that I do get one weekend day off and yet, my Saturday still involved a trip to Granville's so I suppose it doesn't entirely count as a day off since I apparently can't seem to stay away.

Despite being a long week, it's been a pretty good one at the restaurant.  This week has been the week of sauces.  Gotta make a sauce for the côte du jour and the poisson du jour each day and, as small as it is, I have to say that this is one of my favorite parts of being the opening chef.  

I've always loved sauces because I think that, while a protein can be perfectly tasty on its own, the right sauce can often add the perfect accent.  I also think that sauces can be difficult and are an important test of a cook's skill for two big reasons.  The first is that making sauce is an exercise in balancing texture and there's a very small area of perfection and a vast ocean of wrongness on either side.  A sauce that's too thin is messy, weak, disappears within the dish and, at its worst, makes everything a soggy wreck.  A sauce that is too thick, on the other hand, is goopy, ugly, unevenly distributes flavor to the food, and has an extremely unpleasant mouthfeel.  But a sauce that has found that perfect niche is heaven: velvety, rich, luxurious, and is the perfect accent to the food.

Aside from the texture issue, there's flavor to contend with.  Making a sauce that tastes good on its own is one thing but it's not necessarily the best thing.  The sauce should be flavored and balanced to suit the food it's accompanying.  Finding the right balance of fat, acid, salt, sweetness, etc. to match whatever the sauce is accenting requires constant adjustment, tasting, and refining.  It's why, in kitchens that operate on the traditional French brigade model, saucier is an extremely important job and is often where one of the strongest cooks will be stationed.

So, that said, I'm taking this new opportunity of being opening chef three days a week to perfect sauces.

Specials for the week: (this part is going to be something I'm using to chronicle the specials I came up with for that week...if nothing else to help me remember those that were really good and which ones didn't work)

Grilled Beef N.Y. Strip with Dijon Cumin Vinaigrette — did this sauce with both the beef ny strip and a bison sirloin; there's just something I love about the tangy flavor of dijon and the smokiness of cumin matched together

Fried Rainbow Trout Filet with Lemon Basil Aioli — probably my favorite sauce of the week; lemon plus fried food = classic, lemon and basil aioli = rich AND refreshing

Arugula, Goat Cheese, Macerated Strawberry Salad with Strawberry Lemon Vinaigrette — strawberries + goat cheese = heaven

Grilled Bone-In Duroc Pork Chop with Chilli Cream Sauce — roasted poblanos, rehydrated guajillos, garlic, cream, cumin, and coriander; this sauce reminded me of something and I can't figure out what it is but I loved the flavor

What I'm Reading: The Man Who Ate Everything by Jeffrey Steingarten.  He's one of my favorite food writers (his columns are my favorite part of Vogue and one of the main reasons I subscribe) and easily the best judge on Iron Chef America.  A collection of various essays and pieces he's written over the years, the book is funny, smart, educational, and a beautiful tribute to fantastic food writing.

a slice of fall

It's been a while since I've written anything and it's certainly not for lack of cooking.  I worried for a while that if I cooked for a living it might cause me to become less enchanted with cooking at home.  But that's not the case at all.  It's changed the way I cook but in no way has it diminished my love of cooking or my desire to spend time in my own kitchen.

In a restaurant so much of the work is about time.  Sure things need to be done right and they should look appealing and taste delightful but there is always that I take joy in spending 4-5 hours on my days off creating a meal.  While it may not involve me spending every minute of those 4 or 5 hours in the kitchen, I've come to enjoy the little luxuries of home cooking: reading for 45 minutes while a chicken roasts, watching a movie while tomato sauce simmers away for hours, lingering over a glass of wine before doing the dishes, savoring a luxurious dessert wine and not having to worry about the next item on the prep list or the next ticket in the window.

Another way that working in a restaurant has changed the way I cook is that, while I've always enjoyed cooking for others, I'm learning to take joy in cooking for myself.  Restaurant cooks spend a lot of time trying to please others and cook to the tastes of a customer.  Less salt, no salt, add onions, no onions, substitute gruyere cheese for cheddar, add both gruyere and cheddar, no bread, sauce on the side, use oil instead of butter, etc.  With so much time spent trying to make the diner happy, I find that it's nice to come home and cook exactly what I want.

So all of that said, I've certainly been doing a fair amount of cooking.  Some of the things I've made lately include:

- Thomas Keller's Favorite Roast Chicken

- Maryland Rockfish with Oyster Mushroom and Black Truffle Cream Sauce

- Red Curry and Coconut Risotto

- My Perfect 4-hour Red Sauce

- Sweet Corn Risotto

- Eggplant and Zucchini Fries

- Lasagna Bolognese

- Pasta with Tuna and Roasted Pepper and Caper Tomato Sauce

I'll certainly be posting more about some of these items as I continue to perfect my red sauce and my lasagna, however, tonight I just want to mention the dish I had this evening since it was the perfect supper for a lazy Saturday and the fall weather we've been having lately.

Butternut Squash and Rapini Pizza

Another trend in my at home dining is that I've been cooking more meatless meals.  This is largely for two reasons.  First, I work in a restaurant now so I'm kind of poor these days and since meat is expensive, I enjoy creating meals out of vegetables and grains.  Now that fall is upon us, I have been craving butternut squash.  The sweet and creamy taste of butternut squash just says autumn to me.  So this weekend I decided to make a pizza that would celebrate the delicious flavor of my favorite fall veggie.

Since - as I've noted many times before - I'm not too big on the baking, I decided to go ahead and use some pre-made pizza dough.  So I hit up one of my favorite Italian spots, Vace, and bought some of their pizza dough.  When it comes to buying pizza dough, I generally opt to go with a place that actually sells pizzas (and it's always good to sample the merchandise, so you know it's delicious).  Most any pizza place will sell you some dough for a few bucks (cheap huh?) although a lot of grocery stores sell pizza dough as well.

Once I had the dough it was time to figure out the toppings.  I knew I wanted to make a white pizza (i.e., no red sauce) and I knew I wanted butternut squash but what about the rest of the toppings?  First I rolled out my dough on a floured board and then I sprinkled some cornmeal on one side and then, flipping it over so the cornmeal was on the bottom, placed it on a sheet pan (the cornmeal helps prevent sticking to the pan).  Then I spread olive oil and minced garlic all over the crust.  For the cheese, I put on some shredded smoked mozzarella.

Next came the veggies, I added thin slices of butternut squash that I had roasted in olive oil and red chili flakes.  Then I put down some rapini that I had chopped and blanched.  The finishing touches were a little bit of fresh goat cheese crumbled on top and a dusting of red chili flakes.  Right before putting the pizza into a 500 degree oven I brushed the crush with some olive oil and sprinkled it with a little kosher salt.

I baked the pizza on the top rack first until the cheese began to melt.  Then I transferred it to the bottom rack so that it would get nice and crisp.  Once the cheese was melted and bubbly and the crust was nice and crisp I removed the pizza from the oven and let it rest for a minute or two.  I cut myself two slices and took a bite.  The sweet butternut squash, smoky mozzarella, and slightly bitter rapini were a fantastic combination of flavors.  The small, tangy pockets of goat cheese sprinkled all over the top added another layer of flavor and the crust was buttery, crisp, and salty.  In short, it was my perfect fall pizza.

I do think I would change a few things next time though.  For one thing, I would add a little molasses or maple syrup to the roasting squash, just to get another layer of sweetness.  I would also change my cheese.  I love the smoky flavor of mozzarella but fresh mozzarella has too much water I think and the texture when it melts isn't exactly what I'm looking for so next time I would probably use a smoked gouda.  But on the whole, a delicious fall dinner and a perfect way to enjoy pizza without having to go out or order in.

farewell dinner for Taylor

Farewell dinners are always sad, especially when it's for a great new friend you wish you'd gotten to spend more time with this summer, however, if you're gonna send a girl back to the grind of law school (at Harvard no less!) you may as well make sure you send her off with a good meal.  So when it came time to make a goodbye dinner for Taylor this past Saturday night, T and I decided to do our best to make it one to remember.  

Saturday morning T decided to be awesome and procure some fab raw materials for our meal.  He got swordfish and scallops from BlackSalt, perhaps the best fishmonger in the DC area.  The first time I used their scallops, on Degustation Day, they looked so beautiful and smelled so fresh and perfect that I wanted to eat them raw.  But I resisted (although I think they would be divine in ceviche) and so course one of our dinner for Taylor was my bacon-wrapped scallops with serrano chile and garlic sauce.  They turned out delicious, as always.  I generally try to avoid patting myself on the back but I really do love this recipe.  If I had to pick one dish that I'd want to represent the best of my culinary skills with, this would probably be the dish.  They are smoky, sweet, salty, and spicy.  

As a great pre-dinner drink (and also along with our first course), I picked up a bottle of 1 + 1 = 3 Cava.  This sparkling wine is from the same producers of one of my favorite rosés.  It's light and refreshing, not sweet, but not super-dry and intense like some champagne.  And, more importantly, it's the only sparkling wine I've ever seen T drink and enjoy.

But enough about that, on to course two!  So T decided to prepare the swordfish by searing it with a fantastic spice rub and three different sauces.  The first was a delicious relish of corn and roasted red pepper that was smoky, sweet, and super light.  It complimented the fish without competing against the spices in the rub or the meaty texture.  The second sauce was a mushroom cream sauce made with matsutakes.  The mushrooms were dried and then rehydrated which made them a bit tough but the flavor they gave to the cream sauce was smooth and earthy.  The third sauce was the real standout.  T made a gooseberry gastrique that was tart, spicy, sweet, and basically heavenly.  He used similar spices to the mix I put in strawberry rhubarb sauce from Degustation Day since we discovered that allspice, star anise, and cinnamon together with fruit is a wonderful thing.  This gastrique's slightly sweet, tart flavor complimented the spice rub on the fish in a phenomenal way.  I could have had double portions of just the fish and that sauce it was so good.

As amazing as the fish was, we did pair it with two sides.  The first was a salad I made of tomatoes, basil, a sauteed shallot vinaigrette, and chunks of the always amazing fresh mozzarella from Blue Ridge Dairy (yay local producers!).  This is a take on one of my favorite summer foods, insalata caprese.  A traditional caprese salad is usually just tomatoes, basil, and mozzarella arranged and drizzled with some very good olive oil and a bit of salt and pepper.  However, I decided to give mine a bit of a twist by making a shallot vinaigrette.  I minced some shallots and sauteeed them in a bit of butter and olive oil until translucent and soft.  While I let them cool down, I whisked together some dijon mustard and champagne vinegar.  To that mix i added some salt and pepper and then streamed in oil (I was using canola since we were low on olive oil) in the classic vinaigrette ratio of about three parts oil to one part vinaigrette until I achieved a nice emulsion.  To finish, I tossed in the shallots, whisked some more to combine and then poured the dressing over the tomatoes that I had cut up and put in a bowl with some basil.  I let the tomatoes and basil sit in the fridge and soak up the vinaigrette and just before serving I added the chunks of mozzarella.  It's a simple salad but really fresh and it tastes like summer in a bowl.

Our other side dish was one that T made.  He made divinely smooth chipotle mashed potatoes that were creamy and rich with a subtle hint of smoky spice.  But we couldn't stop there.  With the deep fryer sitting on the counter just calling out to us we decided to experiment.  I kneaded some flour into the mashed potato mixture and fried small bite-size balls of the mashed potatoes.  They were the perfect bite and definitely something I would not mind having as an appetizer with any meal (we filed that one away for our restaurant menu).

Once dinner was done it was time to sit back, relax, and enjoy the rest of our time with Taylor.  T fired up the hookah and we enjoyed a serving of one of the most sublimely smooth dessert wines around.  All in all, a fantastic meal and a great evening.  Now we'll just see if it can be topped when Taylor comes back to visit in October.

interesting news from France

Recent news from France shows that rosé is the new favorite wine of the French.  Which makes me smile.