A full Fresh
Fun Foods class schedule
is posted. I need your help spreading
the word. Feel free to spam all you
friends with the link.
_____
Writing
these blogs can be a trap. I’ve been
trying to document the good and the bad in my time in kitchens. Consequently, there has to be time for
reflection. I’ve had to sort through a
bunch of old bosses, recipes and bad trips, hoping to arrive at a coherent way
to present my own culinary history in a way that is engaging, while also
avoiding multiple statutes of limitation and never letting anyone know where all
the bodies are buried. It has not been
easy. I hope it has been fun for you.
I lived in
Rochester, NY for a few years back in the early 80’s while a bunch of my
friends were going to RIT. At the time I
was a competent American style cook. I
could use a knife, work a full board of checks, that kind of thing, but I really
didn’t know much about real food. I
could make chili and thought that I was the man. I got a gig working at a place called
Casablanca, an odd hybrid rock and roll club/lunch spot/Greek restaurant. It was run by three brothers, Bill, George
and Chris Petsos. Their father, Stavros
cut meat and generally made himself useful.
Louis (use the French pronunciation) Bel Aire, a mean drunk, washed
dishes in his Sméagol-like
hole of a dish room. His “precious” was
the dregs of customer’s drinks which he would collect and swill, making him a meaner
drunk. As I hung around Casablanca, I
learned their story and grew to respect them.
Apparently
their whole village in Macedonia had immigrated to Akron, OH on the promise of
jobs sometime before WWII, a classic example of pull migration. Like in The Grapes of Wrath the agent promised
work never materialized, so the group packed up and moved to Rochester, where
over the years, in spite of the difficulty of getting any decent fish, they
pretty much took over the restaurant biz, running a few high end places on Park
Avenue and dozens of bars and diners all over town. The boys opened Casablanca in the late 70’s
as a fancy place serving Mom’s recipes and stuff like flaming cheese. Chris ran the kitchen, George the front of
the house and Bill was the head guy.
They had a stipulation in their lease that they would be the only food
service place in the big strip where they located, however landlords being the
slime balls that they are, a TGI Fridays opened 20 yards away on a different
parcel, immediately bludgeoning them with cheaper food, a shiny exterior and
wall to wall advertising.
They didn’t
stand a chance. Business dropped to
zero. Rather than pack their tents
again, the Petsos brothers pivoted, opening a rock club that had surprisingly
good food, considering that I was one of the folks making it. They booked mid level acts like Johnny
Winter, the Psychedelic Furs, John Hammond Jr. and the Legendary Blues Band on
their tour after Muddy’s death. Bands
considered Rochester a payday between Chicago and NYC. This is where I first heard Albert Collins,
the Texas great, the “Master of the Telecaster” or “The Iceman” (because he cuts
so deep into your soul), a beautiful, humble, sweet musician who toured with
his wife. She used to kiss me every time
I visited backstage until Albert’s passing in 1993. Most would have shuttered the place. Within 6 months they were in the black.
The Chef,
Christos, was demanding, however he treated me with great respect at a time
when I was not as reputable as I am now.
I was not a very good cook at the time.
He went out of his way to teach me, helping me appreciate well-prepared
food and by his manner demonstrating what it meant to be a cook. I consider my time with Chris to be the
beginning of my professional cooking trajectory and I’ll never forget his
kindness when my closest friend died in a car wreck and I became completely
unreliable for some time. He continued
to pay me, even when I didn’t show up for work.
I’d like to
present one of Chris’s sauté dishes. Even
after all this time, it holds up well. One
time I heard an interview with Son House, the primal Delta bluesman who also
spent some years in Rochester. He was
asked to play the song that reached furthest back in his memory and he banged
out “Stack Lee,” about a paddle wheel riverboat from the 1840’s. This is a dish that is imprinted in my
DNA. Like “Stack’ it is probably the
earliest sauté that I remember and hasn’t lost its value. Try it. You’ll find it has simple ingredients, straightforward
technique and a bright fruit flavor. The
recipe is for one, because that’s how we cooked at the sauté station. You can easily expand the recipe.
And thanks
to Stavros and the Petsos brothers.
_____
Chicken
Cynthia
1 5 oz.
chicken breast, skinless
2 tbs. flour, seasoned with salt and pepper
1 tsp. salad
oil
3 tsp.
unsalted butter
6 green
grapes, cut in half
10 orange
segments
1 oz. white
wine
1 oz. orange
juice
1 tbs.
chopped parsley (everything got parsley in those days)
salt and
pepper
Deeply peel
an orange, removing the zest and bitter white peel. With a paring knife, segment the orange,
cutting the fruit away from the membranes.
Reserve the segments, squeeze the membranes to get the juice for the sauté.
Preheat the
oven to 400°. Heat a 10 inch sauté pan
on high. Add the oil and 1 tsp. of
butter. Dredge the chicken breast in
flour, coating it completely. Brush off
any excess flour. Season it with salt
and pepper. When the butter has melted
and turns a hazelnut color, you will know that the pan is hot enough to sear
the chicken properly. Add the
chicken. Cook on one side for 2 minutes,
turn and cook on the other side for 2 more minutes. Finish in the oven for a further 8-10 minutes,
until the chicken is cooked through.
When the
chicken is cooked, remove it from the oven and keep warm while you prepare the
sauce. Dab the grease from the pan with
a paper towel. Return the pan to the
stove on high heat. Add the grapes and
the orange segments and the orange juice.
Reduce the juice by half, stirring to scrape up any browned bits stuck
to the pan when the chicken cooked.
Add the
white wine and again reduce by half.
Remove the pan from the heat, put the chicken and any juice that has run
out of it in the pan and stir in the remaining 2 tsp. of butter, slowly
incorporating it with the pan juices. Adjust
the seasoning with salt and pepper. Add
the parsley and serve with rice pilaf.
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