bibbona

ok, lasting memories from the past week or two... riding home on the back of a co-worker's motorcycle in the middle of the night after my first day of work in the tiny town of marina di bibbona and thinking how life has taken me to such completely unexpected places. watching a real tornado swirl over the mediterranean sea and proceed to rain hail on the restaurant and momentarily knock the power out while we hardly stopped cooking lunch for our guests. sunsets. adventures into the mountains to attend farm parties with the best food, friends, community, and homemade wine and beer i could ever hope for (fantastically inspiring, beautiful, must write more about this later). a whole roasted pig. dancing. my last days cooking in colorno until my final exams in october.

i sliced my finger today, so typing is hard. today was my third day in my new kitchen. the rhythm of the day has been getting slightly smoother. everything is in italian. i get slightly more responsibility each day. i like my co-workers. my apartment is a dump. i have a roommate who is a talented cook and a good guy. we can sort of communicate with one another in italian. it's actually really hard to type with this cut finger (don't worry mom it's not too bad).

the internet doesnt work here very well at all, so writing may continue to be haphazard. my new kitchen is busy, hectic, dirty, pretty fun, somewhat confusing, and not fantastically inspiring but i'm gonna give it a little more time before passing final judgment.

this is such a bare minimum update. i'd like to write much more soon. i have very little time though, i've literally been working 13ish hour days, maybe longer. tired. hurt finger. off to bed i go. next time i wanna write about the funny cast of characters i'm now involved in with my new restaurant, the work i do, the food, the scenery, how we all wear these bandanna things at work that look pretty dang good and make me feel like a pirate, other random thoughts, insight, feelings, general brilliance and trueness of heart.

final days in colorno

Just got back from the Adriatic Sea. Got there yesterday and got home today, a quick trip but lots of fun, and my friends and I are getting good at using the Italian trains.

This is my last week here in Colorno. To prepare for tomorrow I'm gonna iron my chefs jacket. I'm gonna clean up my beard. I'm gonna come to the kitchen tomorrow like i always come to the kitchen, professional and ready to do my best (one variable that may change from time to time is the amount of sleep I get, but that's life. also, i've alluded to this before but i'm not the best at ironing things. the bottom line, however, is really attitude).

We're reaching a point now where we can make dishes that taste and look exquisite. But the trick is to be able to do this again and again, exactly the same. The thousandth carrot must look exactly like the first. We have to arrive in the kitchen ready to cook tomorrow just as we arrived ready to cook two months ago. Consistent excellence is what I want, and I'll have it.

changes

Dear internet,
I know that I have been neglecting you. But you knew from the beginning that my heart lies in other places, that it can never truly work between us. I've been busy exploring Tuscan cities, visiting farms, and cooking in the kitchen for goodness sake. So, I'm sorry internet for not paying enough attention to you, but i don't think it can really be any other way.

I found out where i'll be doing my restaurant internship. I'll be at a restaurant called "La Pineta" on the coast of Tuscany, near Livorno. The head chef is named Luciano Zazzeri, and he's been awarded one Michelin star, which is a big deal. I know very little about this place besides the fact that I'll be doing lots and lots of fresh seafood, and that it is literally right next to the water. Apparently, the head chef used to be a fisherman. While searching the internet for more information about where I'll be going, I found a picture of Chef Zazzeri holding a whole huge fish with just one hand while standing in the middle of his restaurant dining room. And that sounds promising, right? I leave Colorno in about a week, and hopefully I will find myself in a place that uses fresh, local, seasonal ingredients, and a place that cooks with heart, passion, and humility. Only time will tell.

I'm feeling sad about leaving my friends. There are people here that I have seen literally every single day for the past nine weeks (not to mention the two months we spent cooking together in new york), and who I would gladly continue seeing every day if I had the chance (also, there are those who i would gladly not see for a very long time, but let's not get into that). We've cooked together, lived in the same house together, and spent our free time together. And I get this sinking feeling in my heart when I think about the end of all of this. But, change always comes, and I will continue forward with an open mind and an open heart, because what else can a person really do. Plus, I am excited for the next adventure (even if I still can't speak Italian very well).

Yesterday was our final time cooking in Central Kitchen. We were also there one time last week, and I don't think I wrote about it. I'll jumble both experiences into one and summarize quickly - had to clean a huge and infinite-seeming amount of baby calamari but it was fun to cook them quickly and delicately (they turned out very tender), worked with fillets of red mullet, roasted a bunch of birds that weren't chickens but were similar to chickens, carved the birds up and served the meat, but was able to save a few of the best tiny juicy bites for me and my friends in the kitchen. Teamwork, "Vai tutti!," successes.

I put all of my heart and soul into a risotto the other day in an effort to try and match the risotto our head chef had made for us a few weeks earlier. And i think i came quite close to his example. It felt nice.

This past weekend I was inspired by some very dedicated farmers in Tuscany who make the best goat cheese I've ever tasted. I was also inspired by the stars above me in the town of Siena.

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.

looking down at my hands

There's a cut on my thumb and I don't know how it got there. This isn't so surprising though, since most of the time when I cut myself it's not even with a knife during cooking. I can be clumsy sometimes when it comes to my limbs. This new cut is probably from trying to break apart and eat lobster with my bare hands during our 4th of July celebration this past Sunday.

The very first cut I ever got in cooking school happened in the kitchen, but it was a paper cut. We had a practical exam that day and I was turning through the pages of my textbook to find the necessary recipe for our exam, and i sliced a finger.

I cut myself the other day in class with an actual knife, and I immediately apologized to my partner. "Hey man, sorry, I cut myself." I knew the cut wasn't very bad. It just meant two minutes of me not working while I washed the cut and put on a band-aid so as not to bleed on the food. Our head chef cut himself the other day while demonstrating a recipe, and he didn't even stop what he was doing. He sent someone else to bring him a band-aid and a rubber glove for his hand while he continued with the preparation.

Back to this past weekend - it felt uplifting to be surrounded by cooks who all decided to cook during their free time. I remember back in New York, waking up on a Saturday after having cooked every day that week, starting my morning relaxed and slow, and then all of a sudden becoming consumed by an idea or inspiration and deciding to cook! To my delight, this past weekend, I and my fellow cooks all seemed to feel this way - it was our free time, and we all used it to create something. And the result of our work was a 4th of July feast that lasted for hours.

In other news, I must confess that I spend a moment or two on the 4th of July fondly remembering past nostalgia and nonsense and debauchery by listening to Against Me, "You watched in awe at the red, white & blue on the 4th of July..." If nothing else, we had heart back then.

Also, I miss baseball. And even though the Mets suck, I miss them especially.

sunday

It's July now. I'm sitting on the floor writing this, the table is no longer here because it's gonna be used for feeding tons of people downstairs for our 4th of July celebration. I think we're about to eat very, very well...

I stayed in Colorno this weekend, and it was extremely nice to have a slow couple of days. Sun, sleep, friends. The heat has been thick and humid, and last night we simply sat outside in front of the castle that is our school, amongst many other families and groups of people, little kids running wild, and us drinking wine and watching the river flow by.

In class we've been focusing on food from Sardinia. We made ravioli filled with a semi-soft cow's milk cheese and a little bit of lemon and orange zest. We then fried the ravioli golden, and drizzled the final product with a slightly bitter Sardinian honey. The savory oozing cheese worked well with the contrasting yet complimentary flavors of the honey and zest.

Our chef de-boned an entire lamb for us the other day, leaving the meat completely intact. It was interesting to see this done after just having de-boned a whole rabbit ourselves a few days earlier. All the body parts were basically the same, just bigger on the lamb.

I've been thinking a lot about the way we carry ourselves as cooks, and the way we are taught to carry ourselves as cooks. Uniforms must always be ironed and pressed. The men can't have stubble. We are trained implicitly to carry our heads high, to exude confidence, and to embody skill and professionalism. Now, my uniform may not always be completely free of wrinkles (perhaps it rarely is), but I like this way of thinking, and I like this way of carrying myself. We are skilled. We are professionals.

days go by

Time is speeding up. Each week has a pattern and a rhythm that I now know well. I suspect that time is going to keep going faster and faster until i'm off to the next adventure, the next challenge.

I handed in a sheet of paper yesterday stating my preferences for the type of restaurant i'd like to stage at. I wrote about local and seasonal cuisine, farms and farmers, cooking with heart and humility, food that is rustic, creative, and accessible all at the same time. I wrote about my desire to become an expert pasta maker.

I feel a gravitational pull towards the south of Italy, Puglia or Campania, we'll see if I end up there.

I worked with a whole octopus today, and then later a whole rabbit. And that sentence makes me smile, because of how completely comfortable and relaxed I felt all day long. I know that I would have felt differently six months ago. But today was simply business as usual, as I've already worked with both those animals before. The octopus got stewed with fresh tomato, garlic, and olive oil for over two hours. It released a lot of liquid during that time, creating a flavorful broth that tasted like fresh summer tomatoes, the sea, and garlic. I never needed to add any salt. Later, I butchered the rabbit (which, interestingly, didn't gross me out too much - rabbits have basically the same parts as pigs, cows, and lambs, and butchering a whole rabbit offers a good opportunity to learn how many of the animals we eat are structured). The rabbit meat was later seared and then braised in a sauce with fresh tomatoes and olives. The meat was delicious and tender. I remember being a little uncomfortable the first time I ever ate rabbit, but today I got very good feedback on my dish from our head chef and so then proceeded to happily eat the whole plate of food I'd just made.

I had a risotto that changed my life today. And I'm not sure how to begin explaining its perfection. Tons of tiny details that, when examined one at a time may seem inconsequential, but when taken together created something that should be used as a model for all other risotto. Our chef explained that the stars of the show should always be the rice and whatever other main ingredient or ingredients are being added. Often times, people cook their risotto rice in broth or stock, and so the true taste of the rice becomes masked. And our chef proceeded to cook his risotto using water instead of stock.

The risotto pot always had just enough liquid to prevent the rice from sticking and burning, and never more than that. He said the rice must always be dancing, and that this is how a maximum amount of starch gets released, allowing the risotto to be as creamy as possible.

At the end of the cooking process, butter and cheese are traditionally added off the heat. In Italian, this moment is called Mantecare, and it's a crucial step. But, the trick is to add butter without having the final product taste like butter, and to add cheese without having the final product taste like cheese. These ingredients are added to help bring the dish together, but not to overpower. The final product should taste silky, with a balanced melding of flavors. Our chef used a few drops of white wine vinegar to help balance the butter, and the acidity elevated the dish, and without leading to a final product that tasted like vinegar.

At the end of class today, I told our chef that he raised the bar for risotto as far as I'm concerned. He said that often times, when he tells a class that they will be preparing risotto, the reaction is a groan - everyone has cooked risotto before, why do it again. But, he said it is not about how many times you've cooked risotto, it's about how many times you've tasted the perfect risotto. He said that this is a taste that must be ingrained in your mind, just as the visual image of the risotto's creaminess should be ingrained in your mind. He said that risotto should ideally be cooked with a wooden spoon and with a copper pot. Everything counts, he said.

On monday we were back in central kitchen, and I did pasta with a lamb ragu for 200 people. I spent a lot of time de-boning lamb shoulders, trimming away fat, and then cutting the meat into tiny cubes. The final dish was really flavorful and delicious, and it was a cool feeling to know that every single little piece of tender, juicy lamb that was eaten that day was the result of my work.