Have Blade Will Travel: The adventures of a traveling chef (6 page)

Although traditional food and wine pairing criteria has become more flexible in recent years, different wines have different personalities (Remember, “Wine is a living beverage.”) 
The following guidelines will help in selecting wines that harmonize with the food it accompanies. 

• Dry white wines Crisp, clean, light-bodied white wines are best served with light hors d’oeuvres, white fish, shellfish, and shellfish soups;
  
• Full-bodied white wines Melon, high-fat fish (such as salmon and tuna), spicy fish and chicken dishes, and creamed fish and chicken dishes;
  
• Light red wines Charcuterie (such as prosciutto, ham, and salami), pork, veal, and light, unfermented cheeses;
  
• Full-bodied red wines Beef, game, lamb, and strong-flavored cheeses;
  

Digestifs are beverages consumed at the end of a meal, and are so named for their perceived aid to the body in processing a meal.  A digestif may consist of: brandy or grappa, both distilled wines; a liqueur such as Amaretto or Benedictine; a Port wine; a semi-sweet sparkling Champagne, such as a Cremant.  There are also a number of dessert wines, including a late harvest Riesling, and a number of wines produced from the Muscat grape.  And lastly, you may wish to consider Sauterne, one of the most distinguished of all sweet wines – a bit pricey, but well worth the occasional splurge.

III.
  I worked a part-time job in the mornings that year, Monday-through-Friday, as a chef’s assistant at Morey’s – an ancient and venerable private club in New Haven, whose members were Yale alumni.  The chef was Arthur Meilke (pronounced “mel-key”), a tough old New Haven native who had been out of the state only once – during a stint in the Navy in World War I.  Both his arms were covered with the faded tattoos that he had gotten during the war, and the old codger still puffed away on cigarettes.  Arthur was a genuine tough guy, and I loved working for him. 

One day, the pantry station opened up, and the chef asked me if I could handle it during lunch service.  Of course it was within my skill range, and I was pleased to oblige.  Dinner service at the club was relatively quiet, and did not require a full-time pantry man.

The pantry station set-up was fairly simple: a self-serve Consommé Madrilène station for the waiters, the ingredients for Shrimp Cocktail, Chef Salad, Spinach Salad, Club Sandwich, and a handful of other items.  I also pre-mixed martinis for the bar, and to this day, every time I get a whiff of gin, I am immediately transported back to my days at Morey’s. Chef Arthur and two other cooks handled the hot items:
Hot Roast Beef Sandwich
,
Crab au Gratin
,
Welsh Rarebit Golden Buck
(
Golden Buck
means with bacon),
Eggs Benedict
, and
Corned Beef Hash
.

Early on, one of my duties included sweeping the dining room, and I was fascinated by two notable elements: 1- the names of club members crudely carved into the wooden table tops; and the photos of assorted athletic teams posted on the walls.  The team pictures of the football teams from the turn-of-the-century up through the 1940s were made up of primarily young Caucasian men, with the occasional black face.  In the years after 1950, one could see the teams move from all-white, to partially black, to nearly all black.  I found it quite an amazing reflection of the change of culture.

IV.
Finally, last but not least, it is important to mention Jacob Rosenthal, the President of the Culinary Institute of America from 1965-to-1974.  Rosenthal was a short, bald, slightly hunched-over man, whose physical presence belied both his extraordinary knowledge and professional accomplishments.  

Born in Manhattan, Mr. Rosenthal earned a Master's degree from George Washington University, and a degree in finance from Benjamin Franklin University. He worked as an account executive with Donahue & Coe, an advertising agency, and in the late 1950s, served as a vice president of the Chock Full o'Nuts Corporation.

Other than a Jacob Rosenthal Leadership Award, there is little reminder of his significant contributions to the school. Yet Jacob Rosenthal was largely responsible for putting the school on the global map. Rosenthal was also an internationally acknowledged connoisseur – of caviar, coffee, wine, and ice cream.
.

Rosenthal died on November 12, 1981, at Presbyterian Hospital in Philadelphia, in his 75th year.

Chapter 4

Feeding the Cape Cod Proletariat

Newly graduated from culinary school, I accepted a job to serve as chef at a dude ranch in Narrowsburg, in southeastern New York State.  One afternoon, following a one-hour power nap, I headed into the kitchen to fire up the ovens for the evening’s meal.  Arroz con Pollo was the primary course, and I had planned to utilize the upper unit of two stacked pizza ovens to complete their cooking.  The ovens looked as though they had been manufactured sometime around World War I – old enough to require a match in order to light them.  So, I struck a match, held it to the burner, and turned on the gas. A split second later an explosion catapulted me through the air, slamming my body into a wall twenty feet away, leaving me with first-degree burns over my face, neck, and arms – any area of skin not covered by my short-sleeved chef’s jacket.  My eyelids, eyebrows, and most of the hair on the front of my head had also been singed off. 

I was conscious, but dazed. 
“I’m so hot! I’m so hot!,” I shouted. 
The sensation of heat was so intense I felt as though I were on fire. 
I remember thinking that purgatory was not a place where souls were sent after this life to expiate their earthly sins. 
Purgatory was in front of a double-stacked pizza oven, installed in 1918 at a dude ranch a hundred miles northwest of New York City.

Hearing the explosion, several staff members rushed into the kitchen.  Two ranch hands picked me up and quickly led me to an automobile, while another administered ice packs to my face and arms.  Off we sped, towards the county hospital twenty country miles away.  There, an amiable, but over-worked rural physician could offer little help beyond assurances that I would survive the ordeal.  He administered a minor tranquilizer to help me to sleep through the night. 

In a dreamy shock-induced haze, before falling asleep, my imagination wandered, seeking distraction from pain, while my analytical Virgo-nature dissected the experience, seeking a message.  What were the odds that a just-graduated culinarian beginning his first career position would strike a match while standing in front of an antique pizza oven that would lead to a trip through space, scorched skin, and a collision with a stationary wall?  A million-to-one?  A billion-to-one?  I re-thought the steps that led to the fateful event.  Walked up to the stove.  Lit the match.  Turned on the gas.  Boom!  The staff members later investigated the stove while I lay in the hospital.  Their report concluded that a pocket of gas had been waiting in ambush within the gas conduits.  No one could have known this, though considering the age of the oven, the odds were pretty good that it would happen again. 

Welcome to the dangers of the industrial workplace, young man!  You who were at the wrong place at the wrong time performing the wrong task.  I wondered if I made a mistake in my choice of profession. Years later, a vivid memory of the incident would remain with me, long after the names of my co-workers and even of the ranch had disappeared.  For the moment, all I wanted to do was to sleep and heal.

But I had no leisure for such indulgence.  Once back at the ranch, I immediately returned to my culinary duties.  My burned skin was gruesome.  Peeling and oozing, I felt like a creature from a James Whale film starring Boris Karlov.  By working in this condition, I was breaking all the rules of personal hygiene and kitchen sanitation.  But not only was this my job, the haunting question – “Can I still cook?” – overrode immediate health and health code priorities.  Within a week, I had my answer.  I could still cook all right, but not here.  I informed the owner of my decision, and he tried every salesman’s ploy to keep me.  But the ranch was history.  I packed up and hit the road.

On the living room floor of my mom’s home, I laid out a map of New England and began perusing the territory.  I considered throwing a dart up into the air, then traveling to wherever it landed.  Then I noticed Cape Cod, on the sou th-eastern corner.  I had been there the year before, on a long weekend run with some chef-school chums.  I liked the look of all the inlets and interesting village names – it kind of looked like the Shire, in Tolkien’s
The Hobbit
.  So I hoisted my back pack, grabbed my acoustic guitar, bid Mom farewell, and stuck out my thumb on interstate 95.  Half-a-dozen rides and twenty-four hours later, I found myself awakened by the early morning sun on the edge of a cranberry bog somewhere in the middle of Cape Cod.  I rolled up my sleeping bag, and headed out to the nearest road.

Another hitch brought me to Hyannis, the largest town on the Cape Cod.  I knew no one there, had no destination, nor any particular goal in mind, short of finding gainful employment.  At the southern end of town, a hand-painted sign jutted out into the street.  It read, “Coffee, Tea, and Advice.”  I knocked gently on the door, opened it and peered inside.  I saw what appeared to be a large carpeted room, the walls of which were lined with bookshelves.  A stately looking gentleman seated at the far end of the room, looked me over.  “New York or New Jersey?,” he asked. 

“Why, New York, as a matter of fact.  How’d you know?”

“Oh I can spot you guys a mile away.  Vestiges of urban smog, perhaps.   Please come in.”

I thanked him, relieved myself of the back pack and guitar, and sat down.  Over a cup of tea, I explained that I was a graduate of a culinary program, and was in search of a job as a cook.

 “What is your line of work?,” I asked 

“I’m an architect, and as a matter of fact I’m doing some work for a local restaurateur.  I believe he needs cooks in his kitchen.  Where are you staying?”

“At the beach, I think.”

“Well, you come see me tomorrow.  I’ll have some info for you then.” 

I thanked him, then headed back to explore Hyannis.  Two days later, with the gentleman’s referral in hand, I hitch-hiked to Osterville, a small village eight miles east of Hyannis.  I interviewed with Fran Ricci, the manager of East Bay Lodge, an fashionable-looking restaurant a stone’s throw from the bay it was named after.  Ricci was arrogant and detached; I was all enthusiasm.  We were hardly soul mates, but there was a factor in my favor.  The Lodge had recently hired a classmate of mine who had turned out very well.  But then, just as the interview seemed over, Ricci suddenly threw up a red flag.  “We don’t want any transients here,” he declared.

Transients?  What had brought that on?  Had I pushed an insecure button?  Did my enthusiasm translate into cockiness or flakiness?  Transient?  The negativity hung in the air like a malodorous scent.  I peered at him, thinking, “Hey, yo, this life is about as transient as you can get, at least in my universe.  We wander around in our fragile bodies, thinking that our seventy-or-eighty-years of life is a really long time, yet in the grander scheme of things it is less than a split second in the middle of the cosmic ocean.”  I knew such levity would probably cancel any chance I had of getting hired, so I smiled and yessed him coming-and-going.  All that mattered right now was to get hired, and get down in the kitchen trenches. 

Thanks to his experience with Malcolm, the other culinary graduate, Ricci offered me a job.  I was to start the very next day, reporting to chef Dave Jacobs at 11:00 AM.  The salary was three dollars per hour, which was fine by me.  By that point, my financial resources had dwindled to a grand total of twenty-seven cents.

That afternoon, I wandered around Osterville, the quintessential quaint southern New England village.  Down the road from the restaurant, I secured housing in the form of a small cottage located directly behind a fine old mansion.  The husband-and-wife owners of the stately old home rented out the cottages during the summer to help subsidize the cost of maintaining the mansion.  The rental was seventy-five dollars per week, but I convinced her of my trustworthiness, and she agreed to wait for the first week’s installment. 

At 10:30 the next morning, I walked into the kitchen at East Bay Lodge, asked for Chef Jacobs, and was directed to a large dark-skinned man, with a neatly trimmed mustache.  He was broad and imposing, but I noticed a glint in his eye, with I deemed evidence of compassion, perhaps even a sense of humor.  He peered down at me and asked, “What kind of experience do you have young man?”

“Just a little bit, chef.  Mostly I just graduated from the Culinary Institute of America.”

“Did you now?  We have another graduate here this summer.  Maybe you know him.”  He called for Malcolm, who strutted over from around a corner.  Yes, I did know Malcolm, but only from passing him in the halls at the Institute.  We had never been in any of the same kitchens, but we shook hands and acknowledged our acquaintance

“Can you make potato salad?,” the chef suddenly asked me.

“Um, yes, I think so.”

“Well then, make me five pounds of potato salad.”

“Yes sir.”  I wondered if there was a cookbook hiding in some corner.  There wasn’t, however, so half-an-hour later I brought him a large stainless steel bowl containing five pounds of my best improvisation. 

He shook the bowl, and looked at me quizzically.  “I said potato salad, young man, not potato soup.”  It was certainly wet enough to be misconstrued as cold potato soup, albeit the chunky kind.  I stood there feeling thoroughly vulnerable, and convinced that I had failed my first test.  Some of the other cooks stood around watching and grinning as the scene unfolded. 

In a more kindly tone, Chef Jacobs instructed me to strain it through a colander and add enough additional potatoes to bring it up to a drier consistency.  He then turned me over to Malcolm’s supervision.  Although I had clearly failed with the salad, I’d apparently passed the “first impressions” test.  All he really wanted to know was if I could handle a knife, and was willing to work and follow his orders.  And I had proven all that, without question.