The Meal of Your Life
The Top Chef: Masters Finale was the other night. Unlike many of my fellow fans of the guilty pleasure that is the Top Chef franchise I enjoyed the “Masters” version of the series. To me it seemed more focused on the craft and personalities of the chefs as opposed to some personal Real World-type drama nonsense. The finale in particular was for me a perfect food show. The concept was each chef was to tell his story in the form of a four course meal. The first course would represent his earliest food memory, the second would be the food that made him want to become a chef, the third was to be a dish from his first restaurant and the final dish was to represent where the chef is now and where he wanted to be in the future. It was one of the most enjoyable episodes of any television show I’ve ever seen. If some network actually had the guts to make a series out of this concept focusing on one chef per week, not even making it a competition with all of the contrived drama that that brings I would watch the show religiously, buy the DVDs and annoy the crap out of all my friends by demanding that they watch it.
I had some trouble sleeping last night, and as I lay in bed I pondered the concept and wondered what the meal of my life would be. The first one was easy, the second and third, since I never became a professional cook or opened a restaurant, would not apply but I think a corollary for a “civilian” for the second course would be the dish that got you interested in food and the third would be a dish that your friends and family know you for, that they expect you to cook at occasions. The final dish is the hardest, for me it is could be an empty plate. Why? Because that symbolizes how much I have yet to learn about food and cooking. I’m an OK home cook, people seem to like most of what I make (or at the very least what I turn out isn’t so terrible that they can’t cover their displeasure with politeness) but there’s so much I haven’t done, so much I don’t know how to do. The sad fact of the matter is that my current job keeps me out of the house for far too long on weekdays so the only time I ever get to attempt anything reasonably time consuming or complicated is on the weekends, and if you take away family gatherings and vacations and other social obligations the opportunities are even scarcer. Put it this way: if you decided to learn to play the guitar about 8-9 years ago but you only got to practice an average of one day a week you’d know a few songs, maybe some tricky chords or whatever but you wouldn’t be ready play in even a bar band, would you?
Ah, no excuses DC, you can’t get away with an empty plate. All right, I’ll come up with something by the end.
The first dish I would attempt would be a steak tartare. Now, I didn’t grow up in a household that had a good relationship with food. Far from it. Food and cooking were viewed as necessary evils. My mom was one who did not believe in traditional gender-based roles in terms of household work and therefore rebelled against long, time-consuming types of cooking. She was proud to say that all her daughters were at least told enough about, say, cars to avoid getting ripped off by mechanics and both her sons could cook (as she defined it, anyway) and do their own laundry so there was an upside. In terms of provided tasty, healthy food however what she did was, (sorry mom) a disaster. All the vegetables in the house were from cans; therefore I grew up hating vegetables. I was well into my 30’s before I discovered that I actually liked the fresh versions of many of the vegetables I grew up hating. I’m still rediscovering foods that I always assumed I despised; hell I only learned that I really DID like corn on the cob a few years ago (provided it was fresh-from-the-farm-market corn and a good crop year. This year’s crop seems dry, mealy and not very sweet). Mexican food? I found out I liked it in college after a night of drinking. Growing up Mexican food was Old El Paso tamales out of (you guessed it) a can. Disgusting, but my dad loved them. Cheese? Well, I found out about provolone and fresh mozzarella when I started working at a deli at 17 and as my food interest really took off after I hit 30 I learned my likes and dislikes and I’m still learning. Growing up cheese was Velveeta. Hell, that stuff isn’t even food as far as I’m concerned. Though to be fair we also had Polly-O supermarket mozzarella to make English muffin pizzas (along with Pizza-Quick sauce from a jar) but I always thought of that as pizza topping and not “real” cheese. Yes, I was clueless. I never saw fresh garlic until that late Kaos broke it out one day while making chili; I always assumed “civilized, advanced” homes added garlic and onion to their food in powder form.
Despite all that my mother and father had a few moments of clarity. My dad could perfectly fry up a piece of bacon like nobody else and by all accounts made some damn fine eggs (I still don’t like eggs as a stand-alone food). My mom made good sausage and peppers (really!) which she made with tomato sauce that wasn’t from a jar but rather was from canned crush tomatoes, paste and “doctored up” with onion powder, garlic powder and other stuff from the spice rack. She also made a fine Frosted Flake encrusted oven baked “fried” chicken that I’ve mentioned before. However even before she started making the chicken she used to let me have a treat whenever she was making hamburgers or meatballs.
She would let me eat raw hamburger meat.
Now this is the sort of thing that would get child welfare called on your ass in the 21st century. Back in the 1970’s however my mother had it in her head from God-knows –where that eating raw beef was somehow, “distinguished”. I have no idea where it came from and I never knew her to do it herself but she let me do it. So as a kid, a big treat for me was a bit of raw hamburger sprinkled with (of course) a bit of onion powder. There were days I would sneak into the kitchen tow or three times before dinner and steal a bit more out of the package than perhaps she intended which I would cleverly cover up by flattening out the remaining meat in the package and rewrapping the plastic. Mom always cautioned me not to eat too much of the raw meat for fear of “worms”, whatever those were. That raw hamburger has informed my protein-eating preferences to this very day. I prefer just about every animal you could name cooked to medium rare at most. It was a happy day when I learned that trichinosis dies at 140 and I could have my pork a little pink in the middle. Hell, if rare chicken was safe I would eat that too. I stand by my belief that if you’re going to order steak well done just order something else. You’re wasting a perfectly good piece of animal.
Course two would be a tough decision because there were two key happenings that increased my interest in cooking. The first was when the late, great Kaos started his fall chili days. A chili day was an autumn Sunday where you showed up at his place at say, 11am and he already had one or more pots of chili going on the stove, bubbling away. You hung out all day sampling the chili and drinking beer and the chili, be it traditional or a white chicken version was made from all fresh ingredients. He even insisted on buying blocks of cheddar and grating them himself rather than buying bags of shredded cheese. The tastes were a revelation, and the time spent together as fun as any great meal should be. I was inspired by these gatherings to try to make my own chili and actually, I don’t think I’ve nailed it yet. It’s been fun trying though. The second moment, the one that gave me the final push into full-blown food open-mindedness was at a book signing. Back at the turn of the century I became a fan of the original Iron Chef program on food network. Besides the fun camp factor I was fascinated by all the exotic ingredients, the breaking down of whole animals, and the incredible visual impact of so much of what those guys did. Well, after the show caught fire in the States Masaharu Morimoto who was the one chef from the program based in this country was tapped by Food Network and Fuji TV to do a book tour flogging a companion tome to the series. The Mrs. and I attended a signing at a kitchen supply joint up in Paramus. The line was huge, and Morimoto brought snacks for his fans. We each got a small piece of raw, marinated salmon. It was an incredible revelation. Based on the experiences I’ve had since then I’m sure I’d just think it was a pretty good piece of sushi but back then I had never tasted anything like it. This was the final clue that there was a lot out there I had never seen or smelled or tasted and I wanted to try all of it and I wanted to try to learn to cook as much of it as possible.
So how the hell do I combine the two?
Well, I thought about fish stew but I haven’t tried that yet. So probably I’d cheat and do a between-courses amuse of a single small slice of smoked salmon, capers and smoked paprika mayonnaise on a piece of toasted home-baked bread. Then I’d serve up a bowl of the current spicy-but-not-hot chili that I make that so delights the Mrs.
Course three would represent a failure that led to a success. For the first several years after the Mrs. and I bought a house I would have a summer cookout where I would make pork ribs. I tried different rubs, different methods and to me they would always fall a bit short. People would say they liked them, and really I would grade them as “not bad” but they definitely weren’t what I would call good. So I walked away from the ribs and the rub for a while and instead, just this past weekend I smoked a Boston Butt on my grill for five hours with nothing but salt and pAfter it cooled a bit I shredded the meat (at fell apart beautifully) and tossed it in a pot with my own homemade barbecue sauce (ketchup, soy sauce, apple cider vinegar, dry mustard and some other spices) and a little water over low heat.
It was possibly the best meat dish I have ever cooked. I don’t often blow my own horn, but I can’t remember getting pulled pork as good as that from any barbecue joint I’ve ever visited, even the vaunted Allen & Sons in North Carolina. So there’s your third course.
All right, the fourth course? The “where I am now and where I’m going” course? Well, after some thought I came up with a simple dish that I’ve eaten but never cooked. However I have some of the necessary protein in my freezer. It is representative of the way I’ve eaten for the last few years and also a way I should cook more at home: Roasted bone marrow and parsley salad. This is the signature dish of Fergus Henderson’s awesome St. John restaurant in London and the first time I had it I wasn’t blown away by the flavor and wasn’t sure what the hype was about. I came to realize over time that while it was a good dish it was more the idea of the dish that was an ideal than the execution itself. That is, that one can get a perfectly satisfying meal out of every part of the animal. When I went back to St. John knowing what to expect I enjoyed the dish more. You poke the marrow out of the bones, spread it over a piece of toasted bread, a sprinkle of sea salt and some of the parsley and you have a wonderfully balanced little sandwich. It is the way humans ate until the middle of the 20th century and it is hopefully the way we will eat again in the future. It is, finally a symbol of what I hope to do for a long time: expand my horizons, learn more technique, and embrace both the simple and the complex in equal measure.
What are your four courses?
I had some trouble sleeping last night, and as I lay in bed I pondered the concept and wondered what the meal of my life would be. The first one was easy, the second and third, since I never became a professional cook or opened a restaurant, would not apply but I think a corollary for a “civilian” for the second course would be the dish that got you interested in food and the third would be a dish that your friends and family know you for, that they expect you to cook at occasions. The final dish is the hardest, for me it is could be an empty plate. Why? Because that symbolizes how much I have yet to learn about food and cooking. I’m an OK home cook, people seem to like most of what I make (or at the very least what I turn out isn’t so terrible that they can’t cover their displeasure with politeness) but there’s so much I haven’t done, so much I don’t know how to do. The sad fact of the matter is that my current job keeps me out of the house for far too long on weekdays so the only time I ever get to attempt anything reasonably time consuming or complicated is on the weekends, and if you take away family gatherings and vacations and other social obligations the opportunities are even scarcer. Put it this way: if you decided to learn to play the guitar about 8-9 years ago but you only got to practice an average of one day a week you’d know a few songs, maybe some tricky chords or whatever but you wouldn’t be ready play in even a bar band, would you?
Ah, no excuses DC, you can’t get away with an empty plate. All right, I’ll come up with something by the end.
The first dish I would attempt would be a steak tartare. Now, I didn’t grow up in a household that had a good relationship with food. Far from it. Food and cooking were viewed as necessary evils. My mom was one who did not believe in traditional gender-based roles in terms of household work and therefore rebelled against long, time-consuming types of cooking. She was proud to say that all her daughters were at least told enough about, say, cars to avoid getting ripped off by mechanics and both her sons could cook (as she defined it, anyway) and do their own laundry so there was an upside. In terms of provided tasty, healthy food however what she did was, (sorry mom) a disaster. All the vegetables in the house were from cans; therefore I grew up hating vegetables. I was well into my 30’s before I discovered that I actually liked the fresh versions of many of the vegetables I grew up hating. I’m still rediscovering foods that I always assumed I despised; hell I only learned that I really DID like corn on the cob a few years ago (provided it was fresh-from-the-farm-market corn and a good crop year. This year’s crop seems dry, mealy and not very sweet). Mexican food? I found out I liked it in college after a night of drinking. Growing up Mexican food was Old El Paso tamales out of (you guessed it) a can. Disgusting, but my dad loved them. Cheese? Well, I found out about provolone and fresh mozzarella when I started working at a deli at 17 and as my food interest really took off after I hit 30 I learned my likes and dislikes and I’m still learning. Growing up cheese was Velveeta. Hell, that stuff isn’t even food as far as I’m concerned. Though to be fair we also had Polly-O supermarket mozzarella to make English muffin pizzas (along with Pizza-Quick sauce from a jar) but I always thought of that as pizza topping and not “real” cheese. Yes, I was clueless. I never saw fresh garlic until that late Kaos broke it out one day while making chili; I always assumed “civilized, advanced” homes added garlic and onion to their food in powder form.
Despite all that my mother and father had a few moments of clarity. My dad could perfectly fry up a piece of bacon like nobody else and by all accounts made some damn fine eggs (I still don’t like eggs as a stand-alone food). My mom made good sausage and peppers (really!) which she made with tomato sauce that wasn’t from a jar but rather was from canned crush tomatoes, paste and “doctored up” with onion powder, garlic powder and other stuff from the spice rack. She also made a fine Frosted Flake encrusted oven baked “fried” chicken that I’ve mentioned before. However even before she started making the chicken she used to let me have a treat whenever she was making hamburgers or meatballs.
She would let me eat raw hamburger meat.
Now this is the sort of thing that would get child welfare called on your ass in the 21st century. Back in the 1970’s however my mother had it in her head from God-knows –where that eating raw beef was somehow, “distinguished”. I have no idea where it came from and I never knew her to do it herself but she let me do it. So as a kid, a big treat for me was a bit of raw hamburger sprinkled with (of course) a bit of onion powder. There were days I would sneak into the kitchen tow or three times before dinner and steal a bit more out of the package than perhaps she intended which I would cleverly cover up by flattening out the remaining meat in the package and rewrapping the plastic. Mom always cautioned me not to eat too much of the raw meat for fear of “worms”, whatever those were. That raw hamburger has informed my protein-eating preferences to this very day. I prefer just about every animal you could name cooked to medium rare at most. It was a happy day when I learned that trichinosis dies at 140 and I could have my pork a little pink in the middle. Hell, if rare chicken was safe I would eat that too. I stand by my belief that if you’re going to order steak well done just order something else. You’re wasting a perfectly good piece of animal.
Course two would be a tough decision because there were two key happenings that increased my interest in cooking. The first was when the late, great Kaos started his fall chili days. A chili day was an autumn Sunday where you showed up at his place at say, 11am and he already had one or more pots of chili going on the stove, bubbling away. You hung out all day sampling the chili and drinking beer and the chili, be it traditional or a white chicken version was made from all fresh ingredients. He even insisted on buying blocks of cheddar and grating them himself rather than buying bags of shredded cheese. The tastes were a revelation, and the time spent together as fun as any great meal should be. I was inspired by these gatherings to try to make my own chili and actually, I don’t think I’ve nailed it yet. It’s been fun trying though. The second moment, the one that gave me the final push into full-blown food open-mindedness was at a book signing. Back at the turn of the century I became a fan of the original Iron Chef program on food network. Besides the fun camp factor I was fascinated by all the exotic ingredients, the breaking down of whole animals, and the incredible visual impact of so much of what those guys did. Well, after the show caught fire in the States Masaharu Morimoto who was the one chef from the program based in this country was tapped by Food Network and Fuji TV to do a book tour flogging a companion tome to the series. The Mrs. and I attended a signing at a kitchen supply joint up in Paramus. The line was huge, and Morimoto brought snacks for his fans. We each got a small piece of raw, marinated salmon. It was an incredible revelation. Based on the experiences I’ve had since then I’m sure I’d just think it was a pretty good piece of sushi but back then I had never tasted anything like it. This was the final clue that there was a lot out there I had never seen or smelled or tasted and I wanted to try all of it and I wanted to try to learn to cook as much of it as possible.
So how the hell do I combine the two?
Well, I thought about fish stew but I haven’t tried that yet. So probably I’d cheat and do a between-courses amuse of a single small slice of smoked salmon, capers and smoked paprika mayonnaise on a piece of toasted home-baked bread. Then I’d serve up a bowl of the current spicy-but-not-hot chili that I make that so delights the Mrs.
Course three would represent a failure that led to a success. For the first several years after the Mrs. and I bought a house I would have a summer cookout where I would make pork ribs. I tried different rubs, different methods and to me they would always fall a bit short. People would say they liked them, and really I would grade them as “not bad” but they definitely weren’t what I would call good. So I walked away from the ribs and the rub for a while and instead, just this past weekend I smoked a Boston Butt on my grill for five hours with nothing but salt and pAfter it cooled a bit I shredded the meat (at fell apart beautifully) and tossed it in a pot with my own homemade barbecue sauce (ketchup, soy sauce, apple cider vinegar, dry mustard and some other spices) and a little water over low heat.
It was possibly the best meat dish I have ever cooked. I don’t often blow my own horn, but I can’t remember getting pulled pork as good as that from any barbecue joint I’ve ever visited, even the vaunted Allen & Sons in North Carolina. So there’s your third course.
All right, the fourth course? The “where I am now and where I’m going” course? Well, after some thought I came up with a simple dish that I’ve eaten but never cooked. However I have some of the necessary protein in my freezer. It is representative of the way I’ve eaten for the last few years and also a way I should cook more at home: Roasted bone marrow and parsley salad. This is the signature dish of Fergus Henderson’s awesome St. John restaurant in London and the first time I had it I wasn’t blown away by the flavor and wasn’t sure what the hype was about. I came to realize over time that while it was a good dish it was more the idea of the dish that was an ideal than the execution itself. That is, that one can get a perfectly satisfying meal out of every part of the animal. When I went back to St. John knowing what to expect I enjoyed the dish more. You poke the marrow out of the bones, spread it over a piece of toasted bread, a sprinkle of sea salt and some of the parsley and you have a wonderfully balanced little sandwich. It is the way humans ate until the middle of the 20th century and it is hopefully the way we will eat again in the future. It is, finally a symbol of what I hope to do for a long time: expand my horizons, learn more technique, and embrace both the simple and the complex in equal measure.
What are your four courses?
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