Normal, for a given value of normal

January. Things... slow... down. People are still fancifully admiring their new year's resolutions and delicious, rich, happy pastry is usually not a high priority. This lull is not unexpected. It is the kind of thing you can plan for, and many kitchens use the time to consider, ponder, plan, test and start prepping. It's also a time where the job gets easier. It's a time where the needs get scaled back. When you're used to running on all cylinders to just keep up with the holidays, you find inexplicable pockets of dead time. You can look around a bit more, take the time to notice the people around you.

So who is around me? Who cooks? It's a question I find interesting because, quite simply, this is a weird industry. We work, for the most part, inconvenient hours. We expect to not take holidays off. It is blue collar, hard labor, and has long term physical effects. According to one BBC article chefs take the lead as far as unhealthy lifestyles go. Can't say I've seen too many examples to the contrary. Little money, little chance of greatness, celebrity or even serious recognition. So what gives?

Only one possible conclusion. We are all batshit crazy.

Oh, there are different types of crazy: chemically induced, DSM-IV recognized, food obsessed, lost... but every one of us is tweaked out in some way. This doesn't make us necessarily bad people (although some are). It just means that if we were forced to sit at some desk, move around numbers and speak cheerfully to strangers, lots of people would get a first hand opportunity to see how crazy we are. Somehow, though, the kitchen is an outlet, a direction. The food gives us a connection to the world, grounding. People who cannot manage a coherent sentence in a party situation can be a social butterfly in this safe place of fire and water and flour and eggs.

I've never met a cook who bored me. Yes, I've met plenty who I wouldn't want to meet up with outside of a kitchen, but all of them had a story behind their eyes. What is interesting is that there is no coherent link, no absolute shared anything. Educated or not, ambitious or not, even skilled or not. Race, color, creed, sexual orientation, family history, religious affiliation, dietary considerations, gender, allergies, whathaveyou doesn't matter. There's a kitchen for you somewhere.

If you're crazy enough.

The Evolution of Flaky Pie Crust

I kinda feel like I have made pie crust for a statistically significant portion of Portland area households having Thanksgiving dinner. This is hyperbole, but what I have done still surprises me given Pies I Have Known.

My first experiences with pie crust were not, of course, my own, but my family's crusts. My mom made pies often, her apple crumb pie a vivid, mountainous memory and the crusts were distinctly undercooked. I loved them that way, soft, pale, laden with apple goo. They did not hold up well on their own, and she never made pies with a top crust. I wonder why.

When I was in college I had a cooking buddy, Amanda. We were a good match because she baked, and I cooked, and neither of us was exceptionally good at the other. Both of us were convinced we had found our specialties. I don't know how her cooking is now, but my baking has improved. She would talk about flaky pie crust, offering suggestions about the importance of cold, refrigerating the bowl. I tried this, and found some improvement, but not enough to warrant regular pie baking.

As I started exploring cooking, I went through a quiche phase. Why quiche? I love eggs, I love stuff mixed with eggs, and had not yet heard of the existence of a frittata. The Silver Palate books suggested pate brisee, my first all butter crust. Holy crap that was good. Having grown up with salt free crisco crusts, it was nice to see the crust could have a flavor unrelated to the filling.

When I started getting serious about cooking, I picked up Harold McGee's masterwork On Food and Cooking. In the continuing efforts to avoid gluten formation, he detailed how to add the ice water, and the importance of letting the dough rest. Now I was getting somewhere.

I didn't make a properly cooked pie crust until I went to pastry school. School, for me, was a great deal of relearning the things I already knew but knew wrong. I learned where pie was concerned, you shouldn't taste raw flour in the crust. That it should have real deep color, because the color also will indicate flavor. Oddly revelatory.

Then came real production. I stopped looking for a perfect homogenous mixture knowing that was the worst thing that could happen. I actually could see how marbling of the butter in the top crust made for beautiful browning, and how a little too much mixing could make a crust shrink and deform. My crust mix looked a lot like my rough puff pastry and in some ways acted like it as well, water creating steam in the bake, causing those sought after layers.

I'm still learning pie crust with each batch. I've made about thirty batches this month, which works out to somewhere around 400 pies. Just me. Scaling, mixing, rolling out and cutting. It's all butter, with salt, kept cold, mixed just enough, rested before rolling. I don't do the baking, but the folks who do know what it means to bake it all the way.

While I've been busy with the crusts, our sous chef has been busy with the filling and forming, perfectly crimping crusts, piling fruit high. I asked her if she ever made pie at home. She said yes, but she never made crust, she just took home some from the bakery.

Not bad for someone who didn't manage to mix a decent crust until she was in her 30s.

something to think about

Second, third, fourth, how ever many hands this passed through, I found it in this post on Alinea at Home, and she got it from a friend who read it from an interview with fashion designer Isabel Toledo:

"Craft takes time, and therefore it is luxury. You cannot do an amazingly well-made garment without taking time—not just the time it takes to make something but also the time it took the maker to come up with the idea. That is all luxury, and that has been lost because we're trying to make things faster and faster, cheaper and cheaper. The consumer tends to lose track of what luxury is."

A quick Shout Out

My sweet friend SisterDiane (Diane Gilleland) does a podcast and blog about all things crafty, particularly if it involves building community through social networking, supporting independent crafting or the joys of plastic canvas. She is not a cook, which makes her a nice conversational change of pace in my world, but she does appreciate cooking as a craft.

She decided she wanted to do a podcast on cooking and interviewed me about things like finding inspiration for cooking after doing it all day and how to avoid burnout; I'll probably explore some of those ideas here more later, because they are interesting topics. For now, though, I'm just going to mention this and go back to finishing the next video post.

Coming soon, upsidedown cake!

What Gourmet Magazine did for me

I started putting together a list of memories tied to the magazine- a long list - to try and portray just how important it has been in my life. Thing is, if I had to say just one thing about this magazine, there is really only one story I could tell.

My mother was dying from cancer. We all knew it. Brain surgery had just revealed more tumors, it was in her bones, it was a matter of time. Not much time. I was spending my days in a regular pattern. In the mornings, I would go to work. I couldn't skip out due to a project deadline. My boss, being a decent human being, gave me my afternoons. I would leave work, drive the hour to the hospital, sit with my mom, my dad, and various other grieving friends and family, get in my car and drive back.

But I wouldn't go home necessarily. Sometimes at home, sometimes at the home of good friends, I would cook. I grabbed various copies of Gourmet, flipped through for anything that sounded interesting, and cooked. Pork tenderloin? Now was the time to try it. Gratins? Sure. Crazy, elaborate over the top dishes using ingredients I had never dared to buy before was exactly what I needed.

I wasn't hungry. I tasted what I made but I don't remember eating much. That was not the reason I cooked. What I needed through those long days was that moment when I served dinner. When we gathered to eat those meals I put together, that was where I found that food isn't just about sustenance. It was then about finding good, constant things, the comfort of friends, and just knowing that there was more to the world than just the job, the drive, the hospital.

It's not everyone would have done. Indeed, it was probably one more reason that when I did decide to change careers, my family was completely unsurprised. But at the time it was how I got through each day. One could say that I could have found that with some other task, some other magazine. All I know is that when I realized that I needed to cook, to keep my world in focus, that was the magazine I grabbed from my shelves. It could have been something else, yes, but I'm glad it was Gourmet.

the giant annoying brick wall that is looking ahead

The first kitchen I worked in, I was paired up with Bill, who, in addition to being the oldest guy in our kitchen, was a career prep cook. Not a sous, not a chef, but certainly a prep guy that could be relied upon to cover for an overly enthusiastic kitchen puppy like I was. I never asked him, then, why he stayed at the level he did, I was too busy trying to learn, trying to keep up. I didn't know that was the kind of thing I should be trying to learn, too.

I imagine that military folks, coming to the end of their enlisted time and suddenly considering they may want to go career may go through something similar, but I could just be making this up.

So the question of the day is "Where is this taking me?" or, better perhaps, "Where do I want to go with this?" (See, passive vs active voice, I get it.)

This would be easier if I were younger. I could take the time to work some really terrific places, enduring less than ideal living situations. I could work a lot, 36/8. Really build up a resume, a repuation and then take it to wherever. The reality is, I'm not. I don't want to dorm up with three other people. Yes, as odd and far reaching a dream as my $14 saving account may suggest, I would like to own rather than rent. Of course, I have some aches and pains and things that tell me that physically 36/8 just isn't an option (or at least not one for the long term) I have more than just me to consider, too; my sweetheart has endured two multiple time zone moves now, I think I've used up that get out of jail free card.

Stability is not what you come for in this industry. Sure, there are varying degrees of slippery slope but things can slide at any time. All tied up in the question of what do you want in your career is the bigger question of what are you willing to risk? And don't kid yourself that it's just professional risk. How important is that house to me? Important enough that I should give up the idea of my own shop? What do I save up for?

Stepping up my game at work is all well and good, but I'd like to know what I am stepping up to do.

not exactly a farmer cook

There are certain food absolutes you learn early, hear often. Respect your ingredients. Fresher is better. Know where your food comes from.

In a professional kitchen, this can translate to recognizing the giant truck when it pulls up with your order, or actually visiting farmers, or even doing it yourself.

At home is a different story. At home you are free to explore the whims of your mind and stomach, and not have to worry so much about whether or not the berry yield will last you until January. I have an idyllic vision of what I like my home kitchen to be. It involves, among other things, a home garden with endless fresh herbs, happy vegetables and a cat napping under some heirloom variety of something.

Reality check: I live in an apartment, and I kill plants. Herbs that are "easy to grow" die at my hands. Our little patio gets sunlight only late in the Oregon afternoon. But I try. I can tell you lots of facts about plant needs. I know the difference between xanthophyll and chlorophyll. Facts, however, do not translate into vegetables. I bought my plants this year expecting to soon be throwing away depressing half dead specimens. I threw away the snap peas first.

Why did I go to this expense with a budget stretched thin enough? Because every time one of those plants died, I felt I was somehow failing as a cook. I know what to do with these things when they arrive triple washed and shrink wrapped. I should be able to do better than that, I felt. At home, especially, I should be able to go straight to the source. Sun and soil and water can translate into flavors we can't replicate. As good as my strawberry shortcake may be, it's a biscuit and cream without the berries. And I know the best berries can never see the inside of a fridge, can handle only a few minutes of travel and will never see the supermarket shelves. How good of a cook can I be if I can't get the best ingredients? So I try again.

This summer, I have learned something. The more I ignore plants, except to water them, the better they do. I've actually gotten to make tarragon vinegar with my own tarragon and so far I've harvested exactly one tomato (It was on the plant when I bought it) but it looks like there should be a jalapeno and a cucumber soon. I'm excited for each morning as small as the bounty may be. And each time I cook with these plants, I'm aware of all it took for them to get to where they are. Was that the best tomato ever? No. But I cooked it the best way I knew, and the result was very good. I'm learning. The next one will teach me more.

red rubin basil, the most beautiful basil I've ever seen.

Five years in

Five years ago this month, I changed careers.

How do you articulate a life changing event? An incident so personal, so entwined with the person you become, regardless of success or failure?

My first day I was delirious. Giddy. High as a kite and soared on that emotion for hours afterward. I have a record of it somewhere in the bowels of the internet and reading it this week, I smiled.

Someone asked me last weekend what it was like, to work in the business. He wasn't sure if he could handle the work. Was it really like what they show on tv? Could it really be that bad?

No, I said. It could be a helluva lot worse. It could be sitting on the side of a major city road during rush hour repairing a cake the fell over inside of the car on the way to an event. It could be going to work at midnight to be ready for a six am shop opening on the day of Christmas Eve. Discreetly ignoring the boss's drug use. Putting your feet up during the train ride home in hopes that you will still be able to walk on them when your stop arrives, if you don't fall asleep and miss your stop. The sinking feeling when you find out that because of business your hours are going to be cut, again. Keeping your head down, continuing to work and saying absolutely nothing while someone has a complete meltdown next to you. Days where you see no daylight. Nights that seem inhumanly hot, humid and endless. Equipment failures that happen at all the wrong times and menial, repetitive tasks that you perform (hopefully) perfectly, endlessly, day in and day out. Having that insane compulsion to push longer, harder, no matter the circumstances, for no good reason other than personal pride.

So, he said, after I wound down, Do you like it?

No. I love it.

Still.

My breakfast is better because I use a scale.

There is nothing I dread more in a recipe than the words "3/4 c. brown sugar, packed".

Seriously.

I almost never baked growing up. I was notorious for being the one who screwed up the toll house cookie recipe. Oh, I could cook. There was no question how I felt about food. My nearest and dearest saw my chosen profession long before I quite my job and went into food service. But baking? Was I sure?

A scale changed my life. My world opened. I have not looked back.

You need a scale to bake. Especially if you bake regularly. Why? Well, I'm not going to rehash arguments made elsewhere. To sum up, scaling is easier. Scaling entices you to play with things. Scaling lets you see how it goes together, not just what. No, rather than go through all that, I'm going to make my own version of grapenuts-like cereal. Now, if I followed the recipe I found, I would have to dirty up a whole bunch of measuring utensils. Instead, I pulled out one bowl, preheated my oven to 350 and then dumped in my bowl:

470 g whole wheat flour
58 g barley flour
65 g buckwheat flour
220 g brown sugar
7 g salt
5 g baking soda
5 g cinnamon
10 g vanilla extract
475 g buttermilk

I love a tare button.

Ok, I would have dumped it in my one bowl if I wasn't dealing with recipe conversion and innovation. Since the recipe I had was not created for a kitchen with a scale, I was forced to convert. Forced to dirty many cups and various sized spoons, pack brown sugar. How hard are you supposed to pack it anyway? Why does my cup of flour weigh something different from that other person's cup of flour? Why has no one ever made a half tablespoon scoop a regular addition to those little spoon rings? I muttered darkly through this process, knowing I won't have to do it again.

And I had to deviate from the text. In the real trademarked cereal, the ingredients (a seriously short list) note both wheat and barley. All the internet recipes I found just had wheat. Wheat is nice, but barley adds sweetness and flavor and why not add it? I had the buckwheat, so, why not add it as well? Those weird numbers are actually a half a cup each, the way I measured them. So inconsistent! But I know that since I scaled them, next time it will work out the same as this time.

I mixed it all together and spread it on a silpat, but I'm sure parchment paper and a little pan spray would work fine. I baked it on a sheet pan for about 20 minutes. I let it cool, then raked it into pieces with a fork and my hands because who needs a food processor anyway. Then it got the granola treatment- I divided the crumbs from one pan into two pans, to give them space to brown and get crunchy. Baked for an hour at 300, with lots of stirring (which I continued to do with the fork to help further break up the clumps), they smelled like cinnamon rolls and looked like, well, breakfast cereal. They cooled into the dense crunchy clumps that I adore with my yogurt only better.

And next time? I'll only need to wash one bowl.

rhubarb ginger ale and intuition

People seem to be talking a lot about intuitive cooking lately. You have books like Ratio which hope to inspire more of it. You have the great chefs who talk about a cook's intuition and its role in creativity. Then you have just regular people who are working on their own skills and realize that at some point you have to put the book away and just cook.

The Amateur Gourmet did a post on making your own ginger ale where he put the book away. To sum up, he had a recipe for the world's greatest ginger ale, in my humble opinion, and he just sort of put it together with what he had. It turned out great. This is the kind of subtle inspiration I love. You have a formula, a basic idea, a technique, a structure and then you just play around it.

I had some rhubarb. I thought, that would be good with ginger ale. And then I thought that I like honey with rhubarb better than sugar. So why not replace it? Well, honey can be a little strong, so why not cut the honey with agave? Sugar free rhubarb ginger ale?

Well, why not?

Now, I work in a professional kitchen, so I've learned one thing about these kinds of experiments that you don't always learn at home: You need to be able to replicate something good. Take Notes. So these are my notes:

175 g chopped rhubarb - 1 good stalk
100 g chopped ginger
150 g agave
50 g honey
350 g water

simmer to syrup, taste and adjust, 15 minutes +, rhubarb mushy. Strain. Chill. Mix with club soda/spark h20.

What you don't see with these notes are the cross outs, the scribbles. I started with 50 grams of ginger and after first taste, dumped in 50 more. I could have gone higher. There is a note about adding a squeeze of lemon, which would probably be nice. The word "strawberry?" appears and I'm sure that would really be nice. I may do that one next. I may do strawberry on its own. Someone else may have added more honey but I don't like that much sweet. I didn't even note the syrup consistency because I eyeballed it. It wasn't important, compared to the flavor. I could make this again with the notes I have, but I could do a lot more as well.

It is bare bones, not really a recipe, but I think that may be the best thing about it. It encourages adaptation. What is the most important part of cooking intuitively? Why is it so attractive? Because there is a chance that you will come up with something really good or really awful. Recipes can fail, yes, but that sort of failure is personal, you are more likely to blame yourself - what did I do wrong? The recipe must be right (although eventually you learn that isn't true.).

If you have no recipe and you fail, it raises more questions. Why did this not work? What can I change? Will it work if I do this instead? And if you succeed, those same questions are there. Why did this work? Will it work if I do this instead? What can I change? Freedom to fail and learn so you can fall and rise up again. Freedom to just cook, to just play. That is why you develop your intuition.