The Formation of a Chef, and Pigs (pork roasted with apples and red cabbage)

Years in the restaurant biz will teach you that titles mean very little.  I started cooking in Pocono hotel kitchens when I was a kid.  While the food may not have been fancy, those ladies behind the stove blew out a large quantity of good, family style eats for an unrelenting five months a year.  It was impressive.  They had their weekly menu and roared it out of the kitchen.  Later I went to seafood houses, burger joints, grille rooms and corner bars.  In those kind of places, it was rare that anyone would call himself “chef,” because they were just doing journeyman work.  Get it out, make it consistent, give the customer value.

That changed with Philly’s “Restaurant Renaissance.”  For the first time, high quality ingredients were available from the farms in Bucks, Chester and Lancaster Counties.  New kinds of produce from Jersey started making it to the city.  I remember getting fresh basil for the first time in 1983.  Independent folk like Roy, “The Mushroom Man” showed up on our loading dock with a basket, really a wicker basket, filled with fresh mushrooms that he had either picked or grown.  We bought everything he had.  It took months before he gave us a phone number.  It took even longer to find out that his last name was Bjornson.  He was just the guy who came to the back door with fungus.  Mark and Judy Dornstreich were heroes.  On their Branch Creek in Farm in Perkasie, PA they grew the best baby lettuce and herbs.  My favorite thing that I got from them in the early years was miniature leeks.  Beautiful leeks, perfect, no bigger than a scallion that begged to be braised in fish stock and served with seared red mullet and a buerre blanc.  Their peas, always the first of the year, still make me remember why I love spring.

The downside of the new availability of all this good stuff was that few knew what to do with it.  You learn to cook through an extended period of apprenticeship.  With the explosion of new restaurants, the pipeline of quality cooks was sucked dry by the mid 1980s.  Consequently, entrepreneurs read a couple of Jasper White or Alice Waters cookbooks, got a loan from Dad and called themselves Chef, always with a capital “C.”  And always with a worse attitude than the guys who really knew what they were doing.  The most talented French guys insisted that they be simply called cooks.

Everyone had their own “cuisine.”  I don’t know how many people told me that I would have to be completely retrained to learn their technique.  For one guy, who got quite famous, his Thai-French Cuisine consisted of making a traditional French sauce and hitting it with Tabasco and lemon juice.  Even the paté.  Another, a former pastry cook who went yahoo, put on overalls and killed goats in the alley behind his kitchen.  Elaine Tate was the Inquirer’s food critic at the time.  She was a miserable, barely human thing, a former fashion writer, who panned every restaurant that didn’t have Asian food on their menu.  Me, I was running country French places.  Not much room on the menu for wontons and hoisin, so I got slammed every time she came in my place.  In fact, I got fired twice after her reviews.  Witch!

I was in no mood for this.  I had worked with a guy from Maxim’s.  If you play the Kevin Bacon game, I am five steps away from Escoffier and already had my gig down.  We put up with grand egos, slimy investors and paychecks that bounced.  It was tough to put out a quality product when the owner was wacked, snowblind on the Bolivian stuff, completely out of control.  People who ate out at this time always seem to remember what a creative period this was in Philly’s restaurant history. 

Working cooks, well we have a different take.   We saw lots of bad food.  Does anyone else remember grilled rosemary chicken with a strawberry confit?  Salmon skin, fried and dusted with chocolate powder?  The guys on the line, yes it was almost all men, developed a quick way to weed out the pretenders from the real cooks.  First, you had to have a serious recommendation.  You had to have worked with someone that I got drunk with in the very recent past.  Secondly, you had to know how to boil a chicken, one of the most basic things that cooks do and also one of the easiest things to screw up.  Lastly, finally getting to today’s recipe, you had to know how to roast pork. 

Pigs were sent directly from God to humans for our enjoyment, to be honored and savored.  A pork roast was the most common thing served at the staff meal, which was prepared by junior members of the staff.  The 1^st cooks and the chefs were normally too busy setting up the evening mise en place or doing pre dinner shots and coffee.  If that young cook screwed up his peer’s dinner, he might find his prep trashed or his uniforms customized.   Something well prepared and tasty would win accolades and mercy for most of the remainder of the shift.  Here's a typical staff dinner.

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Pork Roasted with Apples and Red Cabbage serves 10

3# pork loin roast

1 medium head red cabbage, chopped

6 large apples, Jonathon or Braeburn, sliced

1 cup onion, diced

1 cup cider vinegar

1 tbs. salad oil

1 tbs. unsalted butter

salt and black pepper

 Trim any excess fat from the outside of the pork roast.  Season with salt and black pepper.

 Heat the oil and butter in a large roasting pan.

 While the pan is heating, deeply core the red cabbage...

 and chop it into 1/2 inch chunks.

 Sear the seasoned pork roast on all sides.

 Roast it for 20 minutes at 400° F.

Peel and core six apples.  Slice them thin, about 1/4 inch.

 Dice the onions, then...

sauté them in the oil and butter.

 Add the apples.  

 Remember to compost the peelings.

 When the onions and apples have cooked down...

add the diced red cabbage.  Sauté the cabbage until it wilts.

Add the cider vinegar.  scrape the bottom of the pan to release the caramelized bits.

 Reduce the oven heat to 350° F.  Return the roast to to the pan.

Roast the pork until it is 160° F.  About one hour.
Remove the roast from the oven.  Rest for 10 minutes.

 

Slice the roast and serve on top of cabbage.

Your Culinary Salvation (chicken stock, Avgolemono soup)

Ok, admit it, because confession is good for the soul.  You threw away the turkey carcass on Thanksgiving.  You probably didn’t even pick the meat off of it before it went in the trash.  There, didn’t that feel good?  You are not off the hook yet.  Redemption only comes after you show a willingness to change from your previous bad behavior and that’s what I’m here for, to offer you a chance at culinary salvation.

A continuing theme in the Fresh Fun Food Blog will be making stocks, soups and sauces simply.  My methods will show you how to get the most flavor and nutrition out of things that might have been tossed out in the trash.  Onion and carrot peels are a good example, similarly the turkey carcass mentioned previously.  When you learn to think at the stove, you will have learned to recognize where flavor comes from and how you can best exploit the ingredients in front of you.  Following is a recipe for chicken stock that can easily be adapted, using that turkey carcass instead of the chicken bones.  Since the turkey has already been cooked, there is no need to soak it in salted water, simply add it to the pot with the vegetables.

Chicken stock is one of the most overused ingredients in American kitchens, particularly when making soups.  It has its place, but if you are making a carrot or broccoli soup, wouldn’t you rather taste the vegetables instead of reduced broth.  Water is cheaper and makes a cleaner tasting, brighter flavored soup.  With that rant out of the way, you really should make your own stock.  Used properly, it makes a big difference in your cooking.  A Greek Avgolemono soup recipe is included.  The technique of tempering eggs is a little tricky, but the result is worth the effort.  Since you have made a nice stock, why not show it off with an egg and lemon enrichment.

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Chicken Stock

2 pounds of chicken necks and backs

2 large carrots, roughly chopped

1 large Spanish onion, roughly chopped with the skin

the bottom three inches of a head of celery, washed, cut in half

sprig of parsley

sprig of fresh thyme or ½ tsp. dried

2 cloves of garlic, crushed

2 bay leaves

4 black peppercorns

1 ½ gallons cold water

1 tbs. kosher salt

In a large basin, soak the chicken bones in cold salted water for one hour, in order to draw out any remaining blood, which would cloud the stock.  Drain the water and rinse the bones with cold water after soaking.

Add the bones, the carrots, onion, celery and water to a large, heavy bottomed stock pot.  Turn on high heat.  When the water boils, skim any scum that rises to the top, lower the heat.  Add the parsley, garlic, bay leaves and peppercorns.  Bring the stock to a low simmer.  Simmer the stock for 90 minutes.  It will have reduced by 1/3.

Remove the stock from the heat.  Strain the liquid through a fine strainer, reserve the liquid and throw away the remainder.

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Avgolemono Soup

1 quart chicken stock

2 egg yolks

the juice of 1 lemon

salt and pepper

½ cup cooked white rice, cooled

Combine the egg yolks and lemon juice in a stainless steel mixing bowl.  Heat the chicken stock to boiling, season with salt and pepper.

With a whisk, mix the eggs and lemon juice.  Using a ladle, slowly add 1/2 cup of the chicken stock to the egg/lemon mix, stirring constantly to temper the eggs, cooking them by bringing them slowly up to temperature.  Continue to ladle the stock into the eggs and lemon.  It will thicken slightly.

When approximately ½ half of the stock has been enriched, stir the egg mixture into the rest of the stock.  Return to the heat, but take care not to boil the soup.  The eggs will scramble in the soup.  Add the rice and serve immediately.