last week was a good week

hello world. it's too bad that the times i find to write to you are generally when i'm totally exhausted. i'd like to be more zing-bang-boom if you know what i mean, but i feel like a turtle right now. s-l-o-w.

in any event, here i am, safe and sound, happy and healthy, rough and tumble, wiggle and jiggle, wild rumpus with pancetta. i was on the island of Elba this weekend, and it was absolutely beautiful. i know i like to use hyperbole (a lot) but in all honesty, it was breathtakingly beautiful. mountains and sparklingly clear blue sea. and i drove stick-shift successfully through curvy mountain roads with steep cliffs. at night i drank wine under the stars with the very dear friends i've made since starting school, i swam, explored, ate very good seafood, and didn't get sunburned. perfecto.

last week we had central kitchen twice. the more the better as far as i'm concerned. it's the best way to learn. doing the same task over and over again under time pressure in order to feed 200 people is the way to internalize that task very well. I now feel very confident working with lamb shoulder, rabbit, and any type of bird (chicken, pheasant, pigeon, whatever). also, if anyone needs help preparing string-beans or tomatoes for a very large crowd, just let me know.

On Monday after central kitchen, our chef looked around and said, "well, we were almost in the shit today." And it was true, we just barely got the food out in time. and it was fine quality, just a little too close to missing lunch for comfort. we heard lots of "vai vai vai" that day in the kitchen, which means "go go go." On Friday we did much better, getting the food ready with enough time to spare that we got to individually plate and serve certain dishes. our chef had this in mind as a goal for us that day, and accomplishing that goal felt really good.

we focused on food from Calabria last week, which was a lot of fun. spicy! there's a product in Calabria called Nduja (pronounced inn-doo-ya) that is leftover pork meat scraped from the bones after a pig is fabricated, then mixed with pork fat and a significant amount of spicy pepperoncinio pepper. We ate the nduja on slices of crunchy bread, and it tasted like creamy pork fire. delicious. also, the version we had was apparently some sort of mild version. woah! Also, if you're a foreigner and you want to marry a woman from Calabria, you have to first successfully eat a healthy dose of nduja in front of the woman's father. so, if you don't like spicy food, do not fall in love with a woman from Calabria.

On Thursday we sat wide-eyed while a guest chef from Friuli, Antonia Klugmann, put on a show. She dazzled us with dish after dish, simple dishes with so much flavor and creativity, using local and seasonal ingredients (some of which came from the woman's own personal garden). a seppia dish using lemon and fresh chamomile (so fragrant). a beet salad with cherries, caramelized radishes and shallots, beet greens and stems, and fresh wild fennel. a sausage dish featuring seared pieces of fresh pork sausage from Slovenia, a homemade honey mustard, and lemony greens called wood sorrel. I could go on, but i don't think my words could do justice to her dishes. she cooked with heart and humility, grace and poise, warmth and precision. i think my body is tired from being inspired and speechless so often. or maybe it's just the lack of sleep.