Cake and Commerce

The Can-o-rama Cantacular! We Can, and We Did!

When an email from Kim O'Donnel went 'round a month and a half ago looking for bloggers and writers and other n'er do-wells to run their own Canning Across America event, I decided that, as a long time canning enthusiast, I would run a small instructional event in the Boston area and make it open to the public. I've always loved organizing and running food-focused educational events, and the Canning Across America weekend - this past Saturday and Sunday, August 29th and 30th - offered me the opportunity to not only organize but teach others how to do something I've found relaxing and rewarding for the better part of the last 15 years.

What I love about canning is its simplicity: cook food, can food, pasteurize food and store. Each step has its own meditative quality: the cooking demands focus and attention; likewise the canning and processing. Within the rigid structure of proper canning procedure is the opportunity for a certain kind of creativity: the process, though static, provides structure for improvisation in the recipe. And because it involves storage, a bumper crop or the sudden availability of a certain fruit or vegetable does not take up space in the refrigerator or demand focused eating session that so often results in palate fatigue.

Ever had to eat your way through 50 lbs of tomatoes? Probably not. Most people I know make sauce and freeze it or can it. And that same principle can and should be applied to the summer bounty as it becomes available and through its peak and decline. Though fairly labor-intensive, the reward can be enjoyed many months later: the taste and memory of summer, the deliciousness of a fruit or vegetable picked at its peak and enjoyed when local freshness is a dim memory. Here in New England, canning summer is a way of lifting the heavy cloak of winter - albeit temporarily - from our meals.

I'm not sentimental about much. but the flavor of a tomato picked in the heat and humidity of an August day in New England and savored in February warms me every time.

And I'm hardly alone in this.

The 24 people who joined me yesterday for our Canvolution Cantacular! (I wanted the name to be as ridiculous as I could rationally share with others without feeling completely idiotic) were also enthusiastic. Some were seasoned canners. Others had equipment but wanted direction. One was sent by his wife to bring back the knowledge. Some came with friends. Some came with spouses and partners. Some were old friends. Many were strangers - to me and each other. And all were uniformly excited and inspired to can at home.

Which is enough to reinvigorate me. I don't really think of myself as a psychic vampire, but after being around these people, I was infused with the spirit to go home and can. And preserve. And put by. And lead another class. And start a canning/preserving challenge.

I charged $10 per person for the class - I figured that I could cover the jars, vegetables, fruits and other ingredients with it. I was wrong - I spent a little more than I counted on because of the cost of berries. But that was okay. For me, the mandate of this class was to share and pass on knowledge and get more people excited about our summer bounty and what can be done with it. And demystify a process that really takes little more than a large pot of boiling water, some new lids, mason jars, and the ability to improvise. Don't have a rack for the bottom of the pan? For years I used a lid or a plate at the bottom of the pan until I finally ponied up the $10 for a rack. Don't have the tool to pick up jars from the boiling water? Tape the end of your tongs with electrical tape. Don't have a lid picker upper? Hot-glue a magnet to a chopstick. Everything else is gravy.

Our Tools and, in the background, some canning books. The thing on the left is a lid holder. I don't recommend it. I've never used it and probably never will.

Our actual agenda for the class came out of a lunch with lacto-fermentation pro Alex Lewin of Feed Me Like You Mean It and Cornelia Hoskin, the Shepherdess of Homegrown.org, which is part of FarmAid. Through Twitter and a mutual friend, I met Nika Boyce, an exurban homesteader with a dozen goats, assorted chickens, and 1000 square feet of garden 1100 feet above sea level, who happens to be a Ph.D microbiologist and a pressure canning guru as well as a prolific blogger (her entry on the Can-o-rama Cantacular is here). I enlisted the amazingly talented graphic designer and friend Michael Fusco to design a simple label for our event. You can see more of his work here.

Alex teaches sauerkraut

Nika talks dehydration with Claudine

That's focus. 

We decided that our all-day affair would not be limited to hot water canning. We'd also teach pressure canning (and it turned out to be a good thing, as several participants had pressure canners but hadn't used them yet) and  lacto-fermentation, a traditional method of wild fermentation that results in healthy bacteria-laden foods that should not be processed. We also wanted to make sure we address other ways of putting foods by: drying, preserving in alcohol and sugar solutions, etc.

And so the day arrived. 24 people. 7 hours. 96 jars. 4 projects. It was a long day, part lecture, part hands-on, part social event. And it was fun!

The day was part hands-on (sauerkraut, mashing up berries, hot-packing jars, cutting up cukes - we were limited by a six-burner stove) and part lecture (don't get botulism, follow these steps, follow recipes for ratios, use commercial pectin if you like but we don't, etc). I showed them my favorite tomato-skin-removal method for canning, one which concentrates flavor, cooks, the fruit, and helps remove the liquid all at once: the dry roast.

Dry Roasting Tomatoes

Set the oven for 375. Place washed and cored tomatoes on a non-reactive sheet pan, casserole, or other baking dish. Bake until skins have broken and some liquid is starting to collect at the bottom of the pan. Place in a tall-sided non-reactive bowl and allow to sit for at least 15 minutes. Tomatoes will kick off more liquid. Skins will slip right off. Use the tomato water in cocktails, non-alcoholic beverages, and as a light flavor enhancer.  Use roasted tomatoes as you would use a cooked tomato. At this point I usually combine them with garlic, chilies, herbs and salt. If I want plain puree, I only add salt and lemon juice, which helps lower the pH below 4.6. The lemon juice also helps brighten up the flavor of the tomato.

We heated up the tomatoes, added herbs from my garden and from Jacqueline Church's container garden, pureed it and then balanced it with salt and lemon juice (about 2T/quart) and checked the pH. We processed our 8 oz jars for about 38 minutes (I usually process my quarts for 45, so we adjusted a few minutes down).

Our pickles were a standard dill, recipe cribbed straight from the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving (highly recommended, a very handy resource for conservative, don't-kill-your-loved-ones canning). We augmented our pickles with a pickling mix I put together at home (just google "pickling spice recipe" and you'll find hundreds of variations) and some dill, pilfered from my community garden (as I drove in to class in the morning, I found my entire car smelled like a kosher deli. Not a horrible aroma, but not quite what I like first thing in the morning after not getting quite enough sleep).

And then there was the sauerkraut. Today it is salty cabbage. In 2 weeks or so, it will be sauerkraut.

Alex showed the group a method that involves intensely kneading the thinly sliced cabbage with salt that rapidly causes the cabbage to wilt, shed juice, and requires no weighting. Alex led by example.

A quarter cabbage filled a wide-mouth pint jar.

A bar transformed by cabbage

(For those in the Boston area who want to learn more about lacto-fermentation, Alex is teaching an amazing-sounding workshop in two weeks: Alex at the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts. If his teaching is anything like his demo yesterday, it is bound to be a fun, interesting, and fast-moving session. Don't miss it).

Nika, who has an arsenal of science knowledge at the ready, wowed the group with a clear, focused and engaging talk on pressure canning, which she does at home to put by everything from soups to beans. She explained pH and sealing and storage, and demonstrated to the group how a canner works and what a properly sealed jar sounds like. I was edified to find out I'm not about to kill my family with my pressure canning practices.

We were doing the wrinkle test as well as taking the jam's temperature

Jam making happened later in the day, after the pickles and sauerkraut and pressure canning and tomato sauce. Some of the participants had to leave before the jam was finished - it took longer than I thought it would to reach 220 F, the setting point for jams and jellies. And, in the process, I learned that I prefer my jams softer than the set they achieve at 220 F.

We used a simple ratio: 2 parts berries (mostly medium pectin blueberries and raspberries, with several pounds of low pectin blackberries thrown in for balance and flavor) to 1 part sugar, with about 1/4 C bottled organic lemon juice per gallon - not much more was needed for the acidic berries.

In the above picture are two pots of jam working at once. One set about 20 minutes earlier than the other, as we managed to squeeze it onto the stove while we were still canning tomatoes. Yvette holds the candy thermometer patiently, waiting for it to hit the 220 F degree mark. In the end, our jam passed the wrinkle test before it hit temp.

And then we packed the jams, one 8 oz jar at a time.

Those who stuck around until the end - 5 pm- were rewarded with jars of Massachusetts Mixed Berry Jam. Blueberries, blackberries, and raspberry made for fabulous bedfellows.

It was a long day. And the bounty was abundant.

To see more coverage of the event, check out the following blogs:

• Nika's Culinaria: http://nikas-culinaria.com/2009/09/01/fun-canning
• The Musing Bouche: http://themusingbouche.wordpress.com/2009/09/01/yes-i-can
• Homegrown.org: http://homegrown.org/blog/2009/09/canvolution-can-o-rama-cantacular/
• Hungry Bruno: http://hungrybruno.blogspot.com/2009/09/can-o-rama-cantacular.html
• Sticks Spoons Spokes http://dinadina619.tumblr.com/post/178986982/can-o-rama

So what next?

At the end of our 7 hour canning marathon we discussed our next event: a holiday preserving class featuring, among others, Yvette from Queen of the Pantry  as well as a canning exchange - yep, that's right. Bring 6 jars, trade, leave with 6 completely wonderful things made by your canning compatriots. We'll probably run that event the second weekend in November, just in time for holiday gifting. It will likely be a little more than $10 to cover our costs, but we'll figure it out by committee when we get closer to the date.

More immediately, however, we have some plans!

That's right. We're going to launch a monthly preserving challenge. There are tons of baking and cooking challenges...we're going to start something that focuses on seasonality, local produce, and preserves. We won't be strictly canning. We'll try out some liqueurs, some cordials, some more and less elaborate pickles, chutneys, sauces, jams and jellies. We'll post more about this soon - hopefully later this week so everyone can get their liqueurs going (hint hint).

I want to thank everyone who came out - you guys were great, I loved meeting all of you- and everyone who made this possible: Henry, Claudine - thank you so much for everything, without your help this never would have come together; mom for putting up with my clutter and bad attitude; all the farmers who cut me deals on produce; Alex and Nika for co-teaching and giving up their time to spread the gospel; Cornelia for being so supportive and doing good work through homegrown.org; Ronnie for letting us use his space; and my friends for being so supportive by actually showing up.

Book Review: Spiced by Dalia Jurgensen

I am about the same age as Dalia Jurgensen, the author of the new kitchen memoir Spiced. When I was learning to cook and having the wind knocked out of me by my instructors and classmates at culinary school in Vermont, Ms Jurgensen was a interning at Nobu and spending her weekends enrolled in culinary school. For about five years she and I followed a similar path - we both bounced from restaurant to restaurant (she exclusively in New York, I in Boston, Vermont, Northern California and Atlanta), both ending up in charge of our own pastry kitchens within a few years of launching our careers.

In those five years, I worked in 7 different bakeries, cafes, and high end restaurants and hotels. I didn't keep track of Dalia Jurgensen's history and moves as I read her book, but I suspect her numbers were similar. Unlike the workaday 9-5 world, getting ahead and gaining new skills in restaurant kitchens often means bouncing from job to job seeking more responsibility and greater opportunity. Sometimes change is brought on by kitchen burnout and fatigue. Other times it comes in the form of a phone call from an old friend and an opportunity to shift gears.

By the time I finally shifted gears and quit the kitchen for a new career in cheese and cheesemongering, I had grown weary of the kitchen and the person I had become:  a mean, self-involved 'bottom feeder'. I indulged in behaviors that attracted the dregs of society. I found myself dating kitchen creeps, the intellectually challenged, men who were, by their own admission, mentally ill, married men - all, to a person, cooks. My mouth was filthy and I was fiercely protective of my space in the kitchen. I directly caused two pastry cooks to flee the kitchen where I was working, terrorizing them and sabotaging their efforts to succeed by intimidation and bad-mouthing. Amongst my non-cooking friends, my stories were legend for their absurdity, and I was a great storyteller of personal kitchen travails. But I was hating the person I had become; cheese allowed me to recalibrate, renew, and re-emerge as a passionate and dedicated food professional, though I had a long way to go before my skin thinned I became a genuinely nice person again.

So while I learned about milk and cheesemaking and aging and purchasing and loving cheese, Dalia Jurgensen continued to dominate the pastry kitchen in New York City.

Reading Dalia Jurgensen's memoir, I suddenly had flashbacks - largely unpleasant -  to my time in the pastry shop. As she detailed her experiences, I remembered my own. Burned things in the oven during my first job? Check. Worked for exacting, somewhat cruel bosses? Check. Had after hours exploits with colleagues? Check. Worked on all-women lines in high-end restaurants. Check. Burned, maimed, cut various appendages? Check. Worked for a nutty European? Check check. Skin so thick you could take even the most vicious hazing? Sure. Daily mockery of staff and self? You betcha.

Long after I quit the kitchen, Ms Jurgensen was garnering rave reviews in national publications, romancing her boss, and helping to open up new restaurants in New York. What I had no stomach for - the needless competition, the repetition, the often-cruel work environment, the braggadocio, the prospects of garnering fame for desserts  - fueled Ms Jurgensen's passion and her career. Unlike me, she had the temperament for the kitchen. I found the repetition boring. I found the banter - at least in kitchens where I worked that had the space and time to talk -  insipid and aggravating (my least favorite workplace, a highly acclaimed 'French Country Bistro' in Boston, had an insufferable Sunday night line staff, all women, who, during downtime, talked about chick flicks and shopping). I found the lack of humanity in the kitchen frustrating and ironic - how can your food have soul when you don't allow your staff to have one? I wanted challenging projects and connection, and the kitchen seemed to offer it only superficially. Quitting the kitchen was, in hindsight, the best career move I've ever made. To this day I have little love or patience for the egos of professional chefs.

One of the cliches of self-realization is Socrates' statement that "unexamined life is not worth living". The same can be said of memoirs - the unexamined life is not worth reading about. A writer who has spent a great deal of time in self-reflection can bring so much more to the story than someone who has just been and done and writes simply of being and doing. One of Jurgensen's flaws as a memoirist is that - at least in this work - she avoids genuine self-reflection and documents her exploits in a style similar to the "what I did on my summer vacation" reports of childhood, with the addition of a few salacious diary-style details. Insights are rare and most of the book details a straight-line narrative without much pause for significance or meaning or even self-understanding. I found myself vexed by Jurgensen's storytelling and structure; her story of rise and stumble and rise again is interrupted, at the end, by several long and boring chapters about her time at Veritas, where she spends more space talking about kitchen nicknames and tomfoolery than she does about her own story, which plods along at the sidelines.

For those who have cooked professionally or are voracious readers of kitchen memoirs, Jurgensen's Spiced offers nothing new or noteworthy. Jurgensen's voice isn't particularly distinctive, and her story isn't particularly unique or remarkable. She lacks the ability to write dialogue in a way that is engaging or natural, and many of the characters in her memoir come off as one-dimensional or superficial, including herself. She glosses over details of her own life, details that would have, presumably, shed some light on her inner life. As a result, she isn't a particularly empathic protagonist, and I found myself hoping she'd quit the kitchen to spend time learning something new about the world or herself on a commune in Tennessee, a yoga retreat in India or a dairy in Switzerland. Anywhere, actually, as long as it didn't involve cooking or baking.

For anyone considering a career in the kitchen, however,  Spiced is a must-read. While it isn't adding anything new to the genre or particularly insightful, it does present a very realistic picture of life for women in a  professional kitchen. Dalia Jurgensen does have a great memory for details, especially of her pastry; her descriptions of her creations are vivid and lovely and will help the pastry novice understand the effort and planning behind a great dessert.

I'm going to pass on my copy of Spiced to Maggie, a college senior who is going to be attending pastry school in a few months. It will certainly give her a preview of what her life will be like for many years.

Foodbuzz 24, 24, 24: The Humble Egg Dresses for Dinner

Eggs are the wallpaper of the food world.

They're always around but seldom noticed. In 94% of US homes, eggs are kept on hand as an ingredient, though called on from time to time to serve as a centerpiece, usually in breakfast or lunch.

With the decline of the economy and the recession, the egg has come into sharp focus as a cheap source of high quality protein, fat, and nutrients. One egg has approximately 75 calories, contains 6 grams of protein (mostly in the all-albumin egg white) and...211 mg of cholesterol, along with a host of vitamins and minerals. On its own, an egg is tasty, though rather plain. When coupled with other ingredients, the egg transcends the everyday and becomes one of the stars of the culinary world. Souffles, custards, quiches, meringues, macarons and macaroons, challah, brioche, buttercream, mousse, sauce anglaise, ile flotant...all benefit and thrive thanks to the frothy miracle of eggs.

Eggs are also a traditional symbol of the spring. Major world religions symbolically celebrate renewal and sacrifice through the ritual preparation and consumption of eggs. Easter, Passover, and Nawruz (the Iranian new year), for example, all feature eggs on the holiday table. 

So what better way to celebrate new beginnings than a Foodbuzz 24,24,24 with good friends, good food, and eggs?

Five miles from my house, located 21 miles west of Boston, is a small free-range egg operation, Pete and Jen's Backyard Birds, run by Pete and Jen, two agriculturalists with a passion for organics and real food. Here's their egg-laying brood enjoying an early spring day:

Pete and Jen sell their eggs around Boston. They also have a small 24-hour store, little more than a storage shed stocked with their products (beef, pork and eggs) with payments made on the honor system. I picked up 6 dozen eggs there over a few days to make my dinner happen (I ended up using almost 60 eggs - I spent $30 on eggs alone).

Pete & Jen's eggs are extraordinary. The ladies of the laying brood are treated exceptionally well, given organic grains, and pastured for the bulk of their laying life (in the winter it gets a little chilly). The eggs are not inexpensive, but there is great value in knowing that the product is consistently great and the chickens that lay them have not been raised in battery cages or abused. And maybe, just maybe, as in the case with wine, a higher price increases the enjoyment of the eggs. For me, the satisfaction of buying locally-produced and pastured eggs is worth the price of entry.

In Massachusetts, where I live, we are accustomed to buying brown eggs, which perhaps we were cajoled into by the sing-songy jingle that ran on local television for what seemed like decades and decades: "brown eggs are local eggs and local eggs are fresh!" Pete and Jen's eggs are mostly brown, with a few pastel-colored eggs thrown in for seasoning.

With my eggs purchased, I set to work thinking about my menu. I wasn't sure exactly what I would make, though suggestions came in from friends and family, all eager to influence the menu.

What I ended up with was a synthesis of their suggestions and my ideas. When I cook, I make food I'd want to eat - I like it fairly simple but interesting enough to hold my interest. I don't need new or flashy, I just need balance: textures and flavors must both stand out and work in harmony. Sometimes I succeed. Sometimes I don't. Most of my work is improvisation, and at the last minute I'll adjust the plate.

The centrality of the egg made planning easy; additional proteins had to match the egg preparation in some way, not fight it or leave my guest wondering why I served it. I did not want the additional elements on the plate to drown out or over-accessorize the egg.

The menu came together one rare free morning this past week as I sipped a coffee at my local coffee roaster, Karma Cafe. It evolved and simplified over the following days to a tidy plated 5-course meal:

The Humble Egg Dresses for Dinner: March 28th, 2009

Menu

Steamed Japanese-style egg custard with miso-cured Arctic Char, chili-lime hijiki salad and sake-infused yogurt

Cassoulet strada with flageolet beans, home-made chicken sausage, duck confit and rich chicken broth

Poached egg with pan-seared scallops in a spicy bay and curry leaf beurre blanc with mango chutney

Egg and caramelized onion napoleon with sauteed foie gras and cepes, pickled shallots and frisee salad

Toasted almond semifreddo with lemon curd and creme chantilly

Of course I didn't have the menu together in time to send out to the guests. They'd have to just trust me. Or something.

I spent a few hours each night after work pulling together pieces of the meal. Since dessert was frozen, I was able to make that ahead. I cured the char three days ahead. I made the sausage a week ahead. And you know the drill...

One of the more labor-intensive parts of the meal I assigned to my friend (and dinner guest and dinner sous chef) Mary Reilly, a personal chef and caterer who blogs at Cooking 4 the Week. Neither of us owns an egg-topper (popularized by Stefan on last season's Top Chef) though the Japanese egg custard - chawanmushi - was to be steamed inside an egg shell (thank you Mary for that suggestion). So Mary, dremel tool in hand, took to her basement and drilled open 24 eggs, sending burning, stinking pieces of egg and shell all over her walls (and clothes and eyes and hair).

I'd like to think her sacrifice was not made in vain.

On Saturday the 28th,  Mary arrived at noon to help me with preparation. What would have been an unbelievably stressful day of solo cooking was elevated to a merry, social, food-oriented gossip session once Mary pulled her catering van into the driveway.

Unlike me, Mary is unbelievably organized. She immediately grabbed Post-it Notes and wrote down each course on a single piece of paper. Without which I would have really struggled to put the plates together.

Mary gave helpful advice about the plates and made quick work of slicing, poaching, chopping and prepping. I'd never pulled off a meal before with such a capable second. It was a real pleasure to have her there.

At five o'clock the guest began to arrive, some with children in tow.

I asked my guests to bring something to honor the egg. Sam and Leslie and their two kids Malcolm and Eleanor brought the preparations for wax-resist Easter eggs. Melissa and her daughter Azusa brought egg-shaped cookies and a drawing of two Easter eggs. Mary and her husband Dave volunteered to make Pisco Sours for the guests, made, of course, with egg whites.

Adam and Bekka, newly arrived in Boston with their 4 month old Elliot in tow, added an Adam-penned ode to Bad Eggs (click on it to enlarge and read all of its bad eggy goodness).

Mom opened up the wine.

With the kitchen still in a state of near-chaos, Dave and Mary began whipping up Pisco Sours while the kids started their Easter-egg party:

Photo courtesy of Sam

The Pisco Sours, made with Peruvian Pisco Rum, lime juice, simple syrup and egg whites and topped with delicious Fee Brothers whiskey-barrel aged bitters, was a refreshing palate opener and a great contrast to our snacks - a cheese and blueberry jam-filled brioche and cheesy custard bites (a renaming salvaged these failed gougeres).

The blueberry-cheese brioche

photo courtesy Sam

photo courtesy Sam

Once the kids were occupied and the Pisco Sours were downed, the adults were ready to eat.It was almost 6 pm.

First Course: Steamed Japanese-style egg custard with miso-cured Arctic Char, chili-lime hijiki salad and sake-infused yogurt

The steamed custards, hidden in a pan covered in aluminum foil (our ad hoc steamer), were ready to go. We prepared a few extra, just in case any of them broke or failed.

photo courtesy Sam

Mary and I  plated up the first course and Mary garnished the plates with chives from her garden:

And, finally, at the table, accompanied by Peter Michael Clos du Ciel Chardonnay, 1995:

The custard, made from a combination dashi broth (kelp and bonito) and chicken reduction with mushrooms, contained three surprises: tiny shreds of local storage parsnips and shiso leaf, and a sauteed cepe. The egg was held on the plate by a simple Spanish tortilla with an indent cut in just for the occasion.

Second Course: Cassoulet strada with flageolet beans, home-made chicken sausage, duck confit and rich chicken broth

The next course had a touch of the silly: a cassoulet strada. Strada is a simple savory bread pudding made with a royale batter, which was, for many years, my mother's staple for Sunday brunches. I decided to dress it up a bit by turning it into a vehicle for duck confit, my own chicken sausage, and buttery flageolet beans. The plating was, arguably, even sillier than the concept: a round of bread pudding held aloft by a round of sausage, casing removed, standing like a tower above a moat of rich duck and chicken stock reduction. It was so very...1997. The crunchy pea greens, tossed in a delicate, low-acid chestnut honey vinegar, toned down the fattiness of the dish and were a welcome contrast to the softness of the strada.

photo courtesy of Sam

photo courtesy of Sam

Third Course: Poached egg with pan-seared scallops in a spicy bay and curry leaf beurre blanc with mango chutney

A few months ago I made a spicy lentil curry with fresh curry leaves. It was aromatic with cardamom, ginger, chilies, bay leaves, cumin seeds, and a large handful of curry leaves.  I decided that the aromatics would make an elegant and interesting beurre blanc. The color, created by the use of turmeric, was a shockingly bright, egg yolk-yellow.

I settled on a poached egg atop scallops - I figured that the butter and the yolks would bring down the heat of the sauce with the fat. When broken up, there would be an interesting interplay between the sauce and the yolks, which had nearly identical colors.

A la minute we pan-seared scallops, whisked the butter into the beurre blanc (which I then spilled and Dave very kindly cleaned up after me...turmeric is an ordeal to clean up!), dressed up a few more pea greens (oops, I forgot to think ahead on my garnishes), and set a two-day chutney on the plate.

photo courtesy sam

Dave takes a picture:

Barely a drop was left on the plates:

At this point we switched to a bottle I'd be holding on to for a while: E. Guigal La Turque Cote Rotie, 1994. It was disappointly spent. The qualities I had been so fond of in the mid-90s were all but gone (a day later, it has opened up a bit more and has a great finish, but the front end is muddled and dull).

Fourth Course: Egg and caramelized onion napoleon with sauteed foie gras and cepes, pickled shallots and frisee salad

After watching my former boss David Kinch create a napoleon from cabbage on a recent Iron Chef America, I decided to make an egg napoleon. I thought back to childhood breakfasts my mother would make on special Sundays: eggs scrambled with caramelized, almost burnt onions and smoked salmon. Because the onions took so long to cook, she didn't make the dish often.

I combined the idea of the napoleon with the caramelized onions from my mom's egg dish. I made thin layers of egg (into which I beat heavy cream, salt, and pepper) by cooking them, crepe-like, in a brand new non-stick pan,  and spread each of them with caramelized onions. I built up many layers so it looked like a stacked crepe, and then cut it into squares:

I bought an entire "B" lobe of foie gras (the remainder lives in the freezer now) and Mary cleaned it up and sliced it into small pieces, so that each person would receive two on their plate. I cooked shallots in a strong Doktorenhof  elderberry wine vinegar and chilled them down. I tossed frisee in vinegar and after we cooked the foie gras, I added some of the fat to the frisee and vinegar to make an impromptu dressing. I sauteed a few more cepes and served them alongside the foie gras.

Before sending the plates to the dining room, we garnished it with chopped thyme, grated egg white and grated egg yolk.

Dave takes a picture of the egg napoleon plate:

Dave's picture of the egg napoleon plate:

Me taking a picture of the plate, captured by Sam (note to self: long bell-shaped sleeves are not okay for plate-up):

And my view of the plate:

And my view of the finished, totally finished, plate:

(I'm not wild about still-crunchy shallots, whether or not I cooked them).

Final Course:Toasted almond semifreddo with lemon curd and creme chantilly

I love semifreddo. The cold/soft/melty texture, made by combining whipped eggs and whipped cream, is light and fanciful and satisfying.

I also love lemon curd. I love its tartness, its texture, and, when made with Pete & Jen's eggs, its fluorescent yellow color.

I also love almonds. I love almonds in all its' forms: paste and marzipan and raw and toasted and milk and brittle and cookies and frangipane etc. I've never met an almond I didn't like.

So I combined them.

From the outside, the semifreddo was, well, boring. It had a dull yellow color, a product of the yolks in the whipped meringue and the toasted almonds. It was round, providing absolutely no visual interest. To give a hint about its contents, I placed a dollop of lemon-curd infused creme chantilly on it and added a drop of pure, unadulterated lemon curd to the side.

Once hit with a fork and broken into, the semifreddo revealed its contents: two chewy, slightly crunchy almond meringue cookies and cool disk of lemon curd wedged between.

I enjoyed my dessert so much (I have a wicked sweet tooth) that I ate most of Leslie's plate while she was off with the kids, and dug into Mary's plate (luckily for me she doesn't have a sweet tooth) once Leslie's was gone. When Leslie sat back down at the table, she called me out.

Guilty.

At 9 pm our meal was finished. We spent three hours at the table, the kids somehow keeping themselves busy in a house with virtually no toys (how a 5, 7, and 9 year old managed to entertain themselves for that long will remain a mystery - though a near-endless supply of cookies may have something to do with it). The adults were, as far I could tell, satisfied but not stuffed. Even I was pleasantly full.

Thank you to all who came to dinner - Dave, Adam, Bekka, Elliot, Sam, Leslie, Eleanor, Malcolm, Melissa, Azusa, Mom and Mary. I hope we get to do it again soon!

And Mary, thank you so much for helping me. It couldn't have happened as smoothly without you.

Sam, Dave, and Mary - thank you so much for taking pictures. Your work supplemented my own and filled in major gaps in my documentation process.

Mom, thank you for letting me take over your kitchen and your home. Your patience is appreciated more than I could possibly express without sounding disingenuous.

And Kio, thank you for your generous gift of tomago maki. I added it to the chawanmushi plate. Everyone loved it!

Recipes:

First Course:

Miso-cured Arctic Char

• 1/2 lb Artic Char or other fatty fish
• 1 heaping tablespoon red miso
• 2 T Sake or Soju
• 2 t Salt
• 1 t Sugar

Combine miso, sake, salt and sugar. Spread on top of char. Wrap char in plastic wrap and then place in ziploc bag.  Skin side up, place about 1 lb of weight on it (a box of butter will do) and place on a flat surface in the refrigerator for 2-3 days, checking once a day to make sure the cure is evenly distributed. Flip at least once a day. Slice thin and serve with creme fraiche or yogurt sauce.

Lime and Sake Yogurt for cured fish

• 3 T Plain yogurt
• 1 T sake
• 1/2 lime, zest and juice

Combine all three ingredients. Serve with Char or similar fish.

Chili-lime Hijiki with Burdock root

• 2 T Hijiki
• 2 inch section of burdock root, peeled and julienned
• 1 T sesame oil
• 1 t vegetable oil
• 1/2 lime, zest and juice
• 1 t Aleppo pepper (or other mild chili)
• 1 t soy sauce
• 1 t mirin
• 1/2 t sugar
• salt to taste

Cover hijiki with hot water and allow to rehydrate, about 5 minutes. Pour off excess water.
Place vegetable oil and sesame oil in hot saute pan, add hijiki and sautee until shiny. Add burdock root. Cook for about two minutes. Add remaining ingredients. Cook for an additional 2-3 minutes. Balance flavors with soy, lime, or salt as necessary. Serve at room temperature or chilled.

Chawanmushi steamed in egg cups with parsnip and shiso

• 10 eggs, topped (tops removed)
• 3 whole eggs
• 1-1/2 C stock (mine was 1 C dashi plus 1/2 C mushroom chicken stock)
• 1 t soy sauce
• 1 t sake
• 1 t sugar
• 1/2 t salt
• 1" parsnip section, finely shaved into thin slivers, raw
• 1 shiso leaf, fine chiffonade
• 10 pc mushroom of your choice, very small, sauteed (I used cepes)

Combine eggs, stock, soy sauce, sake, sugar, salt. Whisk together, do not overwhisk. Strain mixture through china cap, chinois, or strainer.

Prepare a steamer basket.

Using strips of aluminum foil, create egg holders. Make sure they are secure. Place eggs in egg holders.

Place a small pinch of parsnip, a piece or two of shiso, and one mushroom piece in the egg cup. Pour in egg mixture so it is almost, but not quite at the top. Place in steamer.

Steam 10-15 minutes, or until custard is no longer translucent. Serve in an egg cup or edible cup holder (I use cooked potato cubes or Spanish tortilla) and eat.

Second Course

"Cassoulet" Strada

• 5 Eggs
• 3 C milk
• 1/2 loaf sliced fresh baked bread - I used sourdough, but use what you have (gf is fine)
• Salt & Pepper to taste
• 1/2 C slightly overcooked flageolet beans
• 2 confit duck legs, meat removed and shredded
• 2 sausages of your choice (I used chicken), thinly sliced, casing removed if possible
• Bread crumbs for topping (gf crumbs are fine)

Preheat oven to 350.

Line a 9 x 9 baking pan with parchment.

Whisk together eggs and milk. Add salt and pepper.

Place a layer of bread at the bottom of the pan. Cover with thinly sliced sausage. Add another layer of bread. Cover with beans and duck. Cover with a final layer of bread. Pour egg mixture over top. Place in oven.

At the 30 minute mark, spinkle bread crumbs over top to create a thin layer.

Bake until strada is no longer wet when pushed with your fingers. Allow to cool ten minutes and serve. Tastes great cold.

Third Course

Spicy Beurre Blanc (butter sauce) for Seafood or poached eggs

• 1 large piece of ginger (about 4 ounces, peeled)
• 6 chilies (I used dried arbol - go with your preference)
• 2 T clarified butter or oil of your choosing
• 3/4 t cumin seeds
• 1/2 t ground asafetida
• 6 cardamom pods
• 15 curry leaves
• 5 bay leaves
• 1/2 teaspoon turmeric
• 1/2 t salt
• 1/2 cup white wine
• 4 oz butter, room temp

In a food processor, combine ginger and chilies until a uniform paste is formed. In a saucepan, heat oil. Add cumin and cook until it turns red and aromatic. Add ginger/chili mixture and saute for about 5 minutes, or until chilies darken a shade. Add in cardamom, curry, bay, and turmeric and saute for another 2 or 3 minutes. Add salt and white wine. Simmer until white wine is reduced by half. Strain.

Return strained mixture to heat until it simmers. Remove from heat. With a whisk, beat in the 4 oz of butter one small pinch at a time, until a uniform butter sauce forms. Use immediately.

If you do store it, you will need to re-emulsify it.

Fourth Course

Egg and Caramelized Napoleon

• 5 eggs
• 1/3 C heavy cream
• 2 T milk
• Salt to taste
• Fat, preferably clarified butter or duck fat
• 1-1/2 cups caramelized onions (about 4-5 medium-large onions), chopped up

Barely whisk together eggs, cream, milk and salt.

Spread a piece of parchment next to your stove on a flat surface such as a sheet tray or a cutting board.

On medium heat  place an unscratched non-stick pan (I used a small one) on the stove. Add the fat of your choice (I used duck fat). Ladle in about 1/3 cup of egg mixture.

Cook until the egg has just set. DO NOT OVERCOOK or your will get very rubbery eggs. The ideal is no color at all.

Using a spatula and your fingers, loosen the egg sheet from the pan and slip onto parchment (or bang it down). Spread with about 2 T of the caramelized onions.

Repeat until you have used up all the egg and onion, finishing with a topping of egg. Allow to cool.

Slice into desired shape when cool. Can be served room temperature or gently heated in an oven or a microwave to reheat.

Fifth Course

Toasted Almond Semifreddo with Lemon Curd

Decide ahead which mold you are going to use for your semifreddo. You can use anything you like, really. You just need to know for the almond meringue shape. I used a 3" round, which was huge. Line your mold with parchment - if you don't, it will be very hard to remove your semifreddo without melting it too much.

Make ahead:

Almond Meringue cookie (approximate recipe - I can't quite remember what I did!)

• 1 C sugar
• 1/2 C egg whites
• 1 C ground Almonds
• 1/2 t salt

Preheat oven to 225 degrees.

Trace the mold you are going to use onto parchment paper. You will need two layers per semifreddo (or more, if you are working with a loaf pan and like meringue), so trace it enough times to produce the requisite number of pieces you'll need (number of molds you are using x 2 at least). Place on sheetpan(s), marker side down (no icky ink on your meringue, please).

Combine sugar, salt and eggs and in a double boiler whisk over heat until about 140 degrees. Whisk until soft peaks form. Add in bitter almond extract. Fold in almonds. Pipe immediately into traced mold template.

Bake for 1.5 to two hours, or until dry. It will soften up in the freezer over time. Just don't overbake or burn it.

If you are not using it right away, store in an airtight container. Holds up to 3 days.

Lemon Curd (approximate recipe)

• 5 egg yolks
• 1 C sugar
• 1/4 t salt
• Zest and Juice of two large lemons, approximately 1/2 C
• 4 oz butter

In a bain marie (double boiler) over simmering water, combine the butter, egg yolks, zest, sugar, salt and juice. Stir constantly with a wooden spoon until thick. Push through a strainer to remove zest and and coagulated egg.  Use immediately or store in an air-tight container in the refrigerator until ready to use.

Toasted Almond Semifreddo

• 3 whole eggs
• 1 egg yolk
• 3/4 C sugar
• 1/2 t salt
• 1-1/3 C heavy cream
• 1/2 t vanilla extract
• 3/4 C toasted almond flour (toast almonds and grind them or use almond flour and gently toast in a skillet over medium heat, stirring constantly until light gold in color)
• 1/2 t bitter almond extract
• 1 T B&B Liqueur

Combine eggs and salt and sugar in bowl of stand mixer and whisk over a bain marie until sugar is dissolved and mixture feels hot to the touch. Mix on med-high speed until cooled and slightly firmer than ribbon stage. Fold in almonds and B&B Liqueur.

Whip cream with almond and vanilla extracts until almost firm - do not overwhip.

Gently fold the egg mixture into the whipped cream.

TO ASSEMBLE THE SEMIFREDDO:

In your parchment-lined mold or molds, place a meringue cookie.

Spoon in enough semifreddo mixture to cover it.

Using a pastry bag, place a dollop of lemon curd in the center of the mold (or, if you are using a loaf pan, put a long thick line down the middle). Cover with semifredo.

Place another cookie on top of the semifreddo, and spoon more semifreddo over top to cover. Freeze for at least 6 hours before serving.

Remove from freezer at least 5-10 minutes before serving to allow semifreddo to soften up.

Enjoy!

O.N.C.E. - A locavore (more or less) dinner in the middle of Winter

It's amazing how a cover of tablecloths, wine glasses, plates, glowing candles and the night can do to change the ambiance of a space. In a non-descript Thai restaurant in the middle of Union Square in Somerville, MA that was shut down for the night, locavore and private chef JJ Gonson* of Cuisine en Locale, staged a $50 per person, 10-course banquet on a snowy Sunday night to a capacity crowd. She calls these meals "O.N.C.E." - One Night Culinary Events. She plans the menu and sends and email out to her list and posts about it on her blog. Guests are treated to one of JJ's wholesome, extravagant meals, usually for a bargain price. Each dinner has a different theme - this one focused on the dead of winter, one of the more challenging times of the year for executing culinary variety and artistry. She had planned two seatings - a buffet for families and a more formal sit-down plated meal for adults.

When she told me about the event, I wanted desperately to attend. My current state of unemployment makes that virtually impossible, so instead I worked for JJ as her front-of-the-house 'manager' - which in my case meant awkwardly greeting guests, fumbling attempts to count and recount diners, forgetting courses for an entire table, and trying to keep everyone's water glass full.

It took hours to get to this point, though, half of which I missed by sleeping through the night. Overnight, JJ and her team labored to prepare many of the courses, from the delicate lobster ravioli that took 6 hours from start to finish, to a hearty country pate with star-shaped pastry dough. By the time I arrived at the Cuisine en Locale base camp about 5 hours before the first seating, the prep kitchen was empty of life and the bags and pans and bins were full and waiting to be taken to the Thai restaurant for the evening's meal. The only hint of what was to come was contained in a notebook, with a list of 'to-dos':

Lining the walls were the bags and pans and bins:

I wandered around for a few minutes, peeked in a pantry, looked at the refrigerator and tapped my fingers before JJ showed up. I had made a stop for Shaw Farm Dairy ice cream (read the ingredients carefully before you buy - not all flavors are all-natural) and milk for her and wanted to make sure I picked up a few things before heading to the restaurant to set it up for the dinner.

JJ showed off her racks of lamb, which she had acquired from Stillman's:

I helped her portion out her ravioli into bags:

She showed me her pate, too - apparently she's been really into making forcemeats since her return from Paris a few months back. This one was made in celebration of Pork Day - it was made with pork liver and loin and a few other cuts. I didn't try any (as I do not partake of the four-legged beast) but friends reported it was delicious.

After checking out JJ's prep, I ran over the restaurant and began rearranging tables (my apologies to anyone who felt squished that night - we didn't have much space to work with). Within an hour JJ and her team arrived with the prep and started planning out the sequence of their meal. Here's what they ended up with:

To the best of her ability, JJ sourced local ingredients for the dinner, as she does for all of her cooking. Grains remain a challenge for those of us in Massachusetts - there's not much here at all, and what there is is hard to find. So JJ used Texas rice and Italian pasta and Midwestern wheat flour. She threw in a bit of Florida citrus - from a small grove, of course. Otherwise, most of the ingredients were local - cheese, vegetables, lamb, apples, cranberries, squash, pork, lobster, seaweed.

Before the crowds arrived, JJ set to work in the borrowed kitchen. The team wears brown - that's the official un-uniform of Cuisine en locale. I didn't know this ahead of time and by chance I was decked out, head-to-toe, in brown. JJ thought it was serendipity. Which is was to an extent. Truthfully, half my winter wardrobe is brown, so there was a 50% chance that I would be wearing brown.

In the hour before service began, Henry and I jumped in the car and hit a few stores looking for simple tablecloths to cover the Formica tables. Attractive natural-fiber tablecloths were prohibitively expensive, so we settled for some rather ugly light blue polyester cloths that were met with JJ's stinging disapproval. "I'll never use them again," she sighed as I forced them on her at the end of the night.

The first seating - which began while the sun was still in the sky - was a simple camp-style buffet for families: mac 'n cheese, sauteed cabbage, some squash. It was a simple way to start out the evening, requiring only minimal prep and service.

For dessert, JJ served up a massive apple grumble- a combination of apple chunks, cranberries, oats, and sugar. She paired it with Shaw Farm Ice cream.

At 6 pm the dining room cleared and we reset it for our 7 pm seating. We cleaned, moved tables (again), redecorated the tables. JJ and crew - which included her right hand Bonnie, Arun the engineer, Darius, and Eddie the dishwashin' machine, set to work getting prepping the formal meal.

Arun and Darius slicing bread for the pate course.

When JJ's guests started arriving at seven, I went into disorganized hostess mode. I had counted the number of tables incorrectly and was short three seats. Luckily, one table pulled a no-call/no-show and we were able to accommodate everyone. The restaurant took on an air of civility as wine glasses were brought to tables and wine was uncorked.

(That's my friend Alex on the far left. Hi Alex!)

The first course came out quickly once the seating was worked out. One of JJ's signatures is a filled savory profiterole. Don't call them gougeres!

I missed photographing the soup course - it was a fragrant  vegan seaweed soup. Likewise I missed the pate course, though I did capture it whole. Before JJ cut into it, she had me present it to every table and explain what it was. Of the 37 guests, only 3 passed on it. The rest cleaned their plates.

Meanwhile, in the kitchen, JJ, Bonnie, Arun and Darius plated up the next course - a raw salad with pea sprouts, sunchokes & beets with an umeboshi dressing.

Next up - lobster ravioli. JJ made these ravioli as pure as could be - just lobster, seasoning, and essence of lobster, made from a lobster stock and reduced to almost nothing. She sauced it with a little butternut squash and vanilla essence:

This ravioli, was, from the perspective of time, effort, and ingredients, may have been the highlight of the meal. She had a few left over and I was able to indulge in one. It was packed full of lobster flavor.

The lobster was followed by an intermezzo - a simple grapefruit and fresh mint palate cleanser. It was refreshingly acidic.

Next up: Stillman's lamb. JJ made a rub of various nuts - pistachio and almonds, I think, with plenty of salt and pepper. Though I didn't taste the lamb (again, no four legged animals), I did sample the rub, which was just perfect. She served it alongside a sunchoke and arborio risotto and a beach plum-Grand Marnier sauce.

JJ single-handedly portioned out the lamb, chop by chop:

The team garnished:

And the guests enjoyed:

The third-to-last course was a duo of cooked salads - one based on sweet potato, the other kale:

During this course, JJ asked her guests if they wanted to keep going. They had already eaten 8 courses. A unanimous "MORE" was the response. So JJ complied.

Next up: Mac 'n Cheese, made with local Gouda and cheddar, and scented with truffle oil:

At this point, JJ and Bonnie and Eddie were starting to feel the burn and were exhausted. It was nearly 11 pm, 4 hours since the diners first sat down.  My shoes were beginning to torture my feet - I hadn't sported heels in months and my 4" heels were wearing the balls of my feet into achy lumps. I had been serving and clearing every course, along with John, and making sure no one went thirsty. The water filter was in back of the kitchen, so there was a lot of lap running between courses.

Finally dessert arrived - plated apple grumble with Shaw Farm Dairy ice cream. I noticed not a drop was left in bowls when I cleared the tables for the last time.

By 11:30 the room was empty.

By 12:30 am the room was returned to its normal, pre-O.N.C.E. state. There wasn't a trace of locavore left.

To find out more about JJ Gonson and her food, check out her website and sign up for her events announcements: http://www.enlocale.com/

To read about a diner's experience of O.N.C.E, check out The Basil Queen's Blog.

To read another diner's perspective, check out Richard's post.

*full disclosure: I've known JJ for about 23 years, as her sister Claudia is my closest friend.

The irony isn't lost on me - Big Business owns my soul

"We are enslaved by speed and have all succumbed to the same insidious virus: Fast Life, which disrupts our habits, pervades the privacy of our homes and forces us to eat Fast Foods."

-From the Slow Food Manifesto

Carlo Petrini, the founder of the Slow Food movement, is in the US right now promoting his book, Slow Food Nation: A Blueprint for Changing the Way We Eat. This past weekend he came to Chicago to speak as part of the Chicago Humanities Festival, a week long series of lectures, events and arts in early fall focused around a single theme (unsurprisingly, 2007 is environmentally themed).  I had three tickets to his lecture. I purchased them months ago, the moment the event was announced via the Slow Food email. Yes, I am a member of Slow Food, and I have been, off and on, since 1996. I am, thankfully, no longer the youngest person in the room at events.

Slow Food was started by Carlo Petrini as a direct response to the cultural imperialism of the fast food multinationals, who, by providing fast, cheap, convenient and industrialized foods, have out-competed local and traditional foods and foodways, leading to the decline of health, environment and tradition. The organization is active in 50 countries and has over 80,000 members, including 12,000 in the USA, according to the website.

Their mission is summed up in the following, also from the website:

...[O]ur mission is to create a robust, active movement that protects taste, culture and the environment as universal social values.

Sometimes Slow Food events feel more like a fancy dress party than an activist-based organization focused on food. But nevermind. At least they do -with some success - call attention to the plight of declining traditions at the hands of modernization and industrialization, despite occassionally insulting argiculturalists and farmers, historians, artisans  and consumers in the process.

So how sad and ironic was it that I could not attend the Carlo Petrini lecture, one I had planned on attending for two months, because I had to work at the National Restaurant Association Show that same day?

The NRA is the antithesis of Slow Food. It supports big agriculture, fast food, industrial food and just about everything I despise about modern eating habits and foods: speed, convenience, portability. It includes as members commentators in Nations Restaurant News who dismiss the Center for Science in the Public Interest as quacks and praise the right-wing hysteria of the Center for Consumer Freedom as fair and balanced. Sure the CSPI's favorite tactic for promoting change is the lawsuit, but it works and brings attention to the issues at hand, such as added trans fats, companies that market directly to children, obesity in the US and the still-under-regulated supplements industry. The NRA also has two political associations, GO! Network, which helps individuals monitor their legislators' records on restaurant and food-related issues, and NRA-PAC, whose express purpose is to make congress "pro-restaurant." There's also the SAFE Fund, designed to provide money for Big Restaurant to 'fight back' against new laws or proposed legislation that could hurt profit or make financially onerous demands. Here's a blurb from the website:

Save American Free Enterprise (SAFE) serves as a catalyst to mobilize, educate and execute the restaurant industry's political efforts at the state level in cooperation with the National Restaurant Association (NRA), state restaurant associations (SRA), multi-unit companies and allied partners.

This is not a fund for small restaurants, Chef-owned enterprises, or any number of independents who may operate under a different set of beliefs from the NRA and its allies.

The NRA is, in short, a vehicle for big business. It supports the restaurant industry through lobbyists and other political means. It doesn't take a stand on additives or food ingredients or health. Those things only become issues once they reach the 'tipping point' in consumer and operator consciousness and when fighting those issues makes them look bad. The NRA is political, opportunistic and capitalistic to the detriment of public health and the environment. Yes, I'm generalizing, but a walk-through of the NRA show pretty much confirms that any attention the NRA gives to these two issues (and anything else outside of corporate profitability) is lip-service. Additionally, at last year's show, the speaker of honor was, guess who, George W. Bush.

Sure, the NRA features well-known chefs who do demos during the show, and also sponsors some culinary scholarships and contests, but at its heart, the NRA is a conservative industry group with strong ties to our current administration.

Yes, I'm part of the problem as a big food employee. And just like people who ride planes and drive cars and buy carbon offsets to ease their consciences, I'm going to give to Slow Food's Annual Fund to balance out the evil I am helping to visit on the world. And you should too!

Mindy Fox: Cooking Sustainably outside the Restaurant

Name: Mindy Fox

Job: Cookbook Author, Journalist, Editor and Food Stylist

Culinary Training: Self-Taught

Several years ago Mindy Fox, a Salamander Restaurant-era friend who still cooks professionally, albeit as a cookbook writer, editor and food stylist, called me with a dilemma. After a successful dinner party, one of her guests, an aspiring private chef and caterer, had emailed Mindy a link to her website. Mindy was surprised to discover that her dinner party menu had somehow found its way onto the guest's website as an 'original' menu. Feeling plagiarized, Mindy wanted to know what I thought she should do. I could only register my disbelief. With little recourse for dinner party plagiarism, Mindy opted to strike the offending guest from her invite list. A worse punishment is unimaginable; Mindy Fox really knows how to throw a dinner party.

I took a picture of Mindy's refrigerator during a recent visit to Mindy's home:

Mindy does the majority of her shopping at the Farmers Market in Union Square. For Mindy, this isn't just a trend or fad; as long as I have known her, this is how she approaches food - sustainably and with respect.

Mindy's approach to food and cooking was developed over her professional career. When I met Mindy in 1996, she had already been cooking for several years. Mindy's life in food began by chance. A recent college graduate unsure about her career path in a struggling recessionary economy, she took a job as a server at the Casablanca restaurant in Cambridge, MA. She spent long hours in the kitchen walk-in, talking with the chef about food and learning about the ingredients. After many months, she decided that she wanted to be in the kitchen, not just serve food. The chef advised her to find work in a place that would provide broad training and help develop her skills. She found work at a busy, high-end catering company and stayed for two years.

Yearning for greater challenges, she took a job as a line cook at Salamander and worked her way through every hot station in the restaurant. After 2 years there, she was ready for more responsibility and left to take a sous chef position at a boutique catering company. Over the next several years, she held catering jobs, private chef positions and freelance chef positions. While she loved working with food, adored the adrenaline rush, the choreography and craft of cooking, and the order and organization around preparing and serving food, there was something missing.

Contemplating a career change, she talked with a friend who told her to look around her apartment and tell him what she saw. Copies of Saveur Magazine were strewn about the house. "Then go get a job at Saveur," he advised. She laughed. There was no way she could get a job there, she thought. All the same, she decided to go for it. It was a long shot but it was worth trying.

An informational interview and a formal interview later, Mindy packed up her apartment and moved to New York for an unpaid 6 week intership in the editorial department at Saveur. Two weeks later, a position opened up and Mindy was hired as an assistant editor - her dream job. Beside exposure to some of the best food writers and editors in the industry, Mindy connected with people and organizations deeply involved with the sustainability movement - in particular, Earth Pledge, which supports sustainable architecture and design and sustainable agriculture and cuisine. Two years later, Mindy left Saveur and joined Earth Pledge as communications director and head of the sustainable cuisine program.

Over the next three years, Mindy built their Farm-to-Table sustainable resource, which provides a single source to locate farmers, vintners, artisan food producers in the US, which will be expanding beyond the original New York and New Jersey area to include 25 metropolitan areas thanks in part to a grant from Food & Wine magazine. Mindy still is involved with the foundation as a member of the Farm-to-Table board of advisors.

Perhaps the most serendipitous work Mindy did while at Earth Pledge was to interview Samuel "Sambo" Mockbee, MacArthur fellow and the founder of the Rural Studio. The interview was included in the Sustainable Architecture White Papers, published by Chelsea Green in 2001. Although I'm not sure of exact details, I know Mindy became close to Sambo and his family. Tragically, Sambo passed away less than a year after the white papers were published. Mindy, devastated by the loss of her friend, spoke at his memorial, where she made the acquaintance of one of Sambo's proteges, Steve Hoffman. She knew within a month that he was 'the one'. They were married in 2003.

Mindy now edits, writes, develops recipes, and does food styling as a freelancer for magazines, including Food & Wine and Everyday with Rachael Ray. She has ghostwritten 3 well-known cookbooks and has edited others. She has developed recipes for books by Chris Carmichael, Lance Armstrong's personal trainer. Her current project,  a collaboration with Chef Sara Jenkins, daughter of Nancy Harmon Jenkins, will be the first to give her marquee credit as a co-author. The Elements of Flavor will be published by Houghton Mifflin in 2008. She is also working on a book with Karen DeMasco, pastry chef at Craft in New York City. Her own cookbook comes out in 2010. You can read about it here: Mindy Fox's website.

Mindy's husband Steve, meanwhile, has been growing his architecture practice in New York City. He renovated my mom's kitchen and even managed to use some sustainable materials (despite her lack of interest in saving the world).

Mom has become friendly with Mindy and Steve and so when we recently were visting New York, they invited us over for dinner.

Here are some images from that night.

The porgy and mackerel she made was fantastic - so simple, prepared with fennel greens parsley, lemon and garlic and salt and pepper. She served a gorgeous salad and a farro and fennel heart side.

Dessert was pecorino and pears with local honey.

Is there a place for women in the professional kitchen?

This afternoon I hosted two incredible culinary friends in my house for a brief visit. All three of us had been cooks, and none of us were currently employed by a restaurant, yet all remain firmly entrenched in the world of food. Mindy is a cookbook author, food journalist, and food stylist, and Gail is Food & Wine Magazine’s Aspen event majordomo and a judge on one of my favorite food tv shows, Top Chef. As we discussed the next round of Top Chef casting, I mentioned to Gail that I had received a mass email from Women Chefs and Restaurateurs (the WCR) asking members to consider applying to be a contestant on the show. I deleted the email immediately – I haven’t cooked professionally in years and value my privacy. The idea of being a competitor in an internationally syndicated show horrifies me.

I had forwarded the email to a few people, but no one took it seriously. Most of my girlfriends who cooked have long since quit the restaurant kitchen, and no one has any interest in going back, star chef craze or not. “I really would like to see more female contestants,” Gail said. “We want women who can really cook, who are actually experienced. I’d love to see a woman be the next Top Chef. But we just don’t have enough women trying out. Sure, we get lots of 21 year olds just out of culinary school, but they aren’t ready.”

And then the conversation stopper: “There just aren’t a lot of women with a ton of experience trying out for the show. Just look at us. All three of us (Mindy, me, gail) have quit the kitchen, probably all for the same reasons.”

What were our reasons? I know why I quit: boredom, lifestyle, income, and a repetitive stress injury, as well as intolerance of the gigantic kitchen egos of my colleagues.

But I had no idea those factors would drive me away from cooking as a profession when I left culinary school to pursue my chef dreams.

Name: Linsey

Job: Innovation in a major food company

Culinary Training: New England Culinary Institute, Vermont

My first internships had been good learning experiences – I worked in the fairly intellectual but frustratingly political kitchen at Salamander Restaurant in Cambridge, MA, and then later in the uppity and cliquey Hamersley’s Bistro in Boston. Over the course of the year, I worked as a pastry extern, as a prep cook, and as a line cook. I had no desire whatsoever to return to the pastry shop after a searingly bad experience working under Arnis, who seemed to have an axe to grind with everyone in the kitchen. He bullied and insulted and used silence to intimidate. I despised every minute in his pastry shop and prayed I would get hit by a bus on my way to work each day. He made me pit cases of cherries, a task that took only a day but caused a year of shooting pain and caused permanent damage to my wrist. He didn’t care. He seemed incapable of empathy.

After 6 months the chefs allowed me to move into a line position, where I was finally freed of Arnis’ tyranny. The move to a new station (hot and cold appetizer), combined with a healthy dose of psychoactive medication made life at Salamander enjoyable. In the mornings I worked at a café on the other side of Cambridge as a prep cook. I’d bike over to work at Salamander and start all over again. The 16 hour days were getting to me, and my boss at the café knew it. She knew the owner of Hamersley’s for a number of years and made a call on my behalf. The next day I was there, interviewing for a structured internship. The pay would be $9.00 an hour, which was significantly more than the $6.50 I was earning at Salamander. There was a weekly rotation, with turns in the pastry kitchen, the open line (a hot station where soup and small appetizers were produced), and the prep station. It sounded like a good deal, and a huge change from the work I was doing at Salamander. So I jumped ship…which only later turned out to be a very bad idea.

As an intern in Hamersley’s, I had to learn everything all over again – new dishes, new people, new rules, new plate ups. Things started out well – everyone, initially seemed pleased with my performance. And then one day, they weren’t. A soup was sent back because a strand of my hair somehow escaped my braided ‘do and made its way into the dish. I knocked over a $50 bain marie full of sherry reduction and glace de veau. I fell down the stairs with a lexan full of ingredients. I made family meal for the staff on Sunday nights, and forever lived in infamy after putting out a pizza made with cream cheese, curry, and anchovies (I was only allowed to use leftovers). I didn’t get along with a number of the cooks, who made no attempt to hide their contempt for me. Someone decided to tell the chefs that I was ‘disparaging the restaurant’. The three sous chefs along with the Chef called me in to a private meeting to confront me. When I asked what they heard I said, no one could give me an answer. I scratched my head trying to figure out what I possibly could have said, but never figured it out. Did offering a scoop of ice cream to a server constitute an affront to their sensibilities? Was I too candid? Or was someone just looking to get me in trouble? It was horrible.

But it wasn’t only bad for me. I remember giving one of the waitstaff a small sampling of something I was preparing in the kitchen. She was caught by the chef who figuratively boxed her ears as he accused her of ‘stealing’ from him. His success came from offering a product people liked eating and managing a very tight inventory and labor schedule. If you wanted to eat family meal, you had to clock out first. There was no eating on the company dime. Inventory was managed with pathological thoroughness – by Sunday night, there was almost nothing left in the downstairs refrigerator where all the ingredients and mise en place were kept.

The one perk we did enjoy was a ‘once a menu’ dinner on the house. Every time the menu changed, the cooks were allowed to come in – with one guest – and eat a comped meal. It was a small pay off for a lot of suffering.

What astonished me the most was the line was run on Sunday nights, when the chef was off, usually at his weekend house. One of the chefs de cuisine ran the restaurant with unusual latitude, allowing us a psychological break from the tyranny of the chef. But in place of the chef was a strange pecking order, one which I still cannot understand, even in retrospect.

You see, other than the Chef de Cuisine, there were no other men in the kitchen. It was five women and one man – something I had never experienced before. I expected bonding, sisterhood, and fun. Instead there was cattiness, anger, and jockeying for status. With horror I watched as a friend who worked the station next to me flailed – she was, it seemed, always “in the weeds” – and the cooks stood back and watched. No one jumped on her station or helped her out. They just leaned back, clicking their tongs, and watching. I didn’t have the skills at that point to help out, so helplessly I watched. In all fairness, she didn’t ask anyone for help – in part because she knew the others disliked her, and, more likely, because she didn’t want to look weak or incapable. She was fired three months later. They didn’t offer an excuse – they didn’t like her and they dismissed her without warning.

It was more than I could take. I decided that I couldn’t stay there – I needed to go back to culinary school and finish my degree and the atmosphere was killing me. After a quick – and horribly insulting – exit interview with the chef, during which he said, in the worst sense, that I had a “long long way to go, and that if anyone asked, [I was] an intern at Hamersley's, [I] was not a regular employee,” I was back to school. Don't worry Gordon, I never told anyone that I was one of your cooks. I would have sooner shot myself in the right hand or stuck it down the disposal and flipped on the switch.

Six months later, my coursework complete, I showed up at David Kinch’s restaurant as a six-dollar and hour intern, both hands intact. I was ready to take my place on the line…and then I saw the kitchen. It was tiny, with barely enough room for the four cooks who were there at night to put out the seasonal, French and Spanish-influenced California cuisine Sent Sovi was known for. There was no room for me on the line, no room for me on even the salad station. The only place where I could be fit in was the pastry shop. Just a week before I arrived the pastry chef gave her notice; she was leaving to take a more lucrative job as a pastry chef at a country club. With only internship experience in the pastry shop, and a solemn vow to never bake again, I was suddenly thrust into a position I was not ready for – the sole pastry chef at Restaurant Sent Sovi.

As soon as I completed my internship hours and was given a full-time job, Sous chef Kajsa Dilger took me aside to tell me that I needed to avoid the trap that so many women in cooking fall into – the pastry track. She criticized women who went into pastry. It was typically girlie, and in her mind, a culinary cop-out. She urged me to push to get out of the pastry shop, to find another job as a line cook, to be better than the average culinary grad. I heard her…but I felt helpless. I was actually starting to enjoy my work as a pastry chef. Kinch gave me all the space I wanted to create signature desserts, as long as I kept his favorite tart on the menu. It was a fair trade. But I still couldn’t make it work for me, working as a pastry chef without a mentor.

I ended up taking a job at the Four Seasons under an eccentric Austrian who had been trained under the apprenticeship system. I worked for him for more than a year, but didn’t enjoy my work there. We were short staffed, and I worked nearly 16 hours a day during the holidays. He was an unhappy guy and took out his frustration on the cooks. I started getting bored, and one day, after a fight with him, he switched my schedule and job description and made me the overnight baker. For two weeks I went to work at 11 pm and finished at 7 am. It was hell, and it was a cruel punishment for my insubordination. Was I so awful a person that the only way to deal with me was to exile me to the night kitchen? The executive chef didn’t think so – he brought me with him to the Beard House in New York city to play the role of pastry chef at his big debut dinner. That just made things worse with the Austrian.

Soon thereafter I asked to be transferred to the hot line…and was given the fish station.

I was bored. I was bored to death. I was bored of the routine, of the days that blended together, of the mindless work involved in prepping mise en place, cooking a meal, and breaking down the station. I didn’t like the social life, felt isolated by my work hours, and didn’t really relate to the guys on the line, who poured corn starch down their pants before service so they wouldn’t chafe. I wasn’t challenged, and there wasn’t anything I could do about it. Sometimes I screwed up; my ability to cook skate was laughable, and I struggled to cook it without it falling apart. Sometimes I banged pans after putting up a dish, just to vent. That earned me the ire of the executive Sous Chef, who told me never to do that again. I was bored, so bored.

And so I got a second full-time job…which led me a career in cheese and away from the kitchen. I have never regretted that decision, but I have wondered if my experience was typical of women everywhere or just me?

Never once did I think that the way I was treated had anything to do with my gender. I was never given special treatment, and had all the same opportunities as my male colleagues. And yet in the long run, despite my love of food and cooking, found the kitchen to be frustrating, repetitive, and unfulfilling. Was that something other women experienced, or was that a special ‘me’ thing? Why, I wonder, do so many women quit the kitchen? What is it about line cooking that drives women away from cooking and toward other career paths? Is it the work or the environment? A combination of the two? Something completely different? And why is it that of all my female friends who cooked, only one, Michelle, is still in the restaurant kitchen?

Almost every serious cheese person I know cooked at some point. Many of my colleagues from Artisanal cooked – when I was a buyer there, everyone who worked in the caves had a culinary degree and started out in the kitchen. Many of the cheese buyers I knew from Whole Foods were disillusioned ex-chefs and cooks. What drove them out? Why did they quit?

In the next few months, I intend to find out. If you are a lapsed cook, I’d love to know what made you leave the kitchen. And are you happy that you did?