Beaten, Seared, and Sauced

by Jonathan Dixon

  In Skills II, each of us had roasted a single chicken, prepared two servings of potatoes and vegetables, made just a cup or so of sauce. Now we’d be doing ten to fifteen servings each class. This was daunting, but not because of the quantity—roasting many chickens is not much more difficult than roasting one, and the only foreseeable difficulty in making mashed potatoes for fifteen instead of two was that peeling took longer. The problem was in trying to organize the activities of four people so that things flowed in a unity of effort rather than resulting in unruly clashes and collisions.

  At 2:00, according to our syllabus, Coyac would lecture for about forty-five minutes. At around 3:00, we’d begin cooking. Things needed to be ready around 5:30, and the doors opened to the public at 6:00. Just before the lecture, Sean, Carlos, Joe, and I stood around our steel worktable. We’d gotten cutting boards for ourselves, bains-marie for our equipment, and some plastic containers for our trash.

  “So who does what?” Sean asked the other three of us. “How do we do this? Do we each take a turn at everything? Does one person tackle one thing?”

  Carlos said, “Nothing here is difficult. Peel some potatoes. Break down some broccoli. Peel some carrots. We’ve got two hours. There are four of us. This is nothing.”

  “Fucking easy,” Joe said.

  “Yeah, it is easy,” I said. “But let’s all of us truss up the birds and peel the potatoes. That’s the pain in the ass stuff.”

  Coyac called us over for lecture and went through, step by step, the process for prepping and cooking the chicken. His accent lost its murk the more he spoke. The oven, he informed us, must be preheated to 500 degrees. The ten chickens were to be trussed, then placed in an oiled pan. The chickens would then be roasted in the farthest reaches in the back of the oven for twenty minutes, and basted periodically. Mirepoix—celery, carrots, onions—would be placed in the pan and, when the juices gathered and spilled from the cavity when a chicken was tipped, and those juices ran clear and were not streaked with red, the chickens were to be removed from the oven, placed on a sheet tray, and kept near the stove until needed.

  After the lecture, we started. Coyac had told us to get the chickens in immediately, so I hurried. There are a thousand ways to truss a chicken, but my way was not Coyac’s way. “No, no, no, no, no, no, no,” he intoned. He cut a length of string from the spool on our workstation, picked up my knife, and cut my truss away. He made deft motions with his hands and the bird was hog-tied. He began muttering as he worked: “Dammit … shit, shit …” and so on. “There,” he said to me, “that is how you truss a poulet. Did you remove the wishbone?”

  “Uhhh … ummm …”

  “Oui or non? Oui or non? Oui or non! Hurry up!”

  “No, I didn’t remove the wishbone.”

  “Dammit!” He slashed at his handiwork with my knife. “So not for you following directions? This is great. Fantastic. Why I get out of my bed I don’t know.” He had the wishbone out. “Why I bother I don’t know. Did you season the cavity? It doesn’t look like you seasoned. Watch me season. What is this shit?” His face glowed crimson, his eyes bulged to the point of popping.

  I watched. He cut another length of string and trussed the bird, picked it up, and tossed it into one of the pans. It thumped and bounced.

  “Come on, come on, let’s go, let’s go!!” He shook his hands at me. I grabbed the next bird and started cutting away the wishbone. I left too much flesh attached and it snapped as I was pulling it loose.

  “Dammit.” He hung his head, shook it, and walked away to the next table. My teammates had stood watching the whole exchange. They each grabbed a chicken and began removing the wishbone.

  I mentioned to my team while we were working that I really liked making sauces, and the three of them were in immediate agreement that the pan gravy would be my project. When the birds were done, I’d have to boil off the liquid in the pan, and remove the bulk of the fat. I’d continue cooking the mirepoix until it caramelized, then singer—sprinkle flour over the whole mess to make a quick roux. I’d add chicken stock. I’d bring it all to a boil, strain it, and simmer until it was done. I’d also attract Coyac’s attention. I’d been watching him as we prepped the chickens and nothing escaped his notice. It was actually somewhat incredible. He could have his head down, attentive like a surgeon, focusing on someone’s work and making comments, and as someone else moved to drop shallots into a hot pan, he’d snap his head up and yell that the pan was too hot before they were even near it. You had the feeling that you could never take—never even ponder the idea of taking—a shortcut because of some sixth or seventh sense he had, a culinary ESP with which he could anticipate what you’d do minutes before you did it.

  I’d tipped one of the chickens so the juices gathered and spilled from the cavity. They were mostly clear, but with rivulets of red. Five minutes later, I tipped again and the juices were entirely clear. Out came the chickens and over came Coyac.

  “Okay, allons, let’s go, come on …”

  I knew I was supposed to be making the gravy, but I wasn’t certain that the next few seconds in his mind were the same as in mine, so I hesitated.

  “Let’s go!” he yelled, bumped me aside, and pulled the pan that had held the chickens to the top of the stove’s burners. He cranked the heat up and stood back. I pulled my scraper from the bain-marie, shook off the water, and tended to the mirepoix. Coyac didn’t move.

  “Leave them alone,” he said. “You’re not helping them out any. Okay. Now, pour off the fat. Okay, good—no, not so much, leave some in the pan. That’s too much. More. More. Good. Stop. Where’s your flour? What the … get the damn flour! Fast, fast! Come on, move it, dammit! Sprinkle it over the pan. No, no, no, no, sprinkle it—you’re dusting it. A little energy here, come on. Okay, go on—it’s not going to stir itself. Let’s go! Now! Do you see—it’s like making a brown roux, just like it, keep it cooking … a little more … watch the color now, see it: from blond, from blond, from blond to brown. Do you smell it? Remember that smell, go ahead get your nose in there, remember the smell, remember the color … now, a ladleful of stock … whisk it, whisk it … why waste that much energy? Whisk it like this … good, more stock, more, more, whisk it … beautiful, beautiful … season it … come on, don’t be so damn timid …”

  I strained the gravy into a saucepan and let it simmer. Coyac took a tasting spoon and dipped it in. He brought it to his mouth. Then he slammed his hand on my back; my lungs fluttered and my clavicle squeaked. “Very good,” he said and walked away.

  We addressed ourselves to vegetables, a job that could have been done by one person, but none of us wanted to look idle. We broke the broccoli down, peeled off the outer skin, blanched it in boiling salted water, shocked it in ice water, and set it aside to drain. We peeled carrots, cooked them in stock and sugar, removed them upon tenderness, and reduced the liquid to a glaze. We peeled and boiled the potatoes, pureed them with butter—tons of it—in a food mill, and set them to rest in a double boiler.

  It was curious how the CIA dealt with vegetables. They did not hold pride of place on any one of the school’s menus. With something like broccoli, or with green beans, they were cooked to the CIA’s estimation of doneness, which, depending on the chef, often meant hovering on the near side of mush. And these vegetables were not permitted to stand on their own; they were invariably chaperoned to the plate with thick butter sauces. Or, if you had spinach or kale or collards, they were cooked beyond recognition in the company of a pork product—bacon, ham, tasso. The protein was the star of every dish, and protein was usually a supporting actor as well.

  At 5:45, Coyac was back to show us how to plate the meal. The potatoes went into a plastic pastry bag to be squeezed onto the plate. One half of a chicken, cut into two pieces, was nestled against the potatoes. Gravy was poured around the perimeter, and three ounces—specified by Coyac—of each type of vegetable went on the opposite side of the chicken. Coyac’s example plate was full of symmetry and
height. My plate, Sean’s plate, Carlos’s plate—each looked smeared and lumpen. Joe’s looked really good. At 6:00, Coyac yelled that the kitchen was open, and the first few students walked in. At 6:15, each station had gone through all of its food. We’d been instructed to hold back a few of our chickens for our dinners. We made up our own plates—I went nuts with the gravy, because I couldn’t stop looking at it as I ladled it over my food; I’d made it and it had been given the slap of approval—and went into the adjacent dining room to eat.

  Coyac’s step-by-step direction through the making of the gravy stuck with me. I thought about it on the drive home, and the next morning when I got up to do homework. I’d heard the dictum “cook with all of your senses” a few dozen times, and I’d encountered Fernand Point’s aphorism “Success is the sum of a lot of small things done correctly” just as often. Watching the color of the roux so closely, drilling the scent of the roux into my memory—it all coalesced.

  For years, I never cared for Neil Young’s Tonight’s the Night very much. It had a drugged, drunken haze in its favor, but it had always sounded out of tune and clumsy to me until one day—one bleak, snowy afternoon alone in Brooklyn—I felt compelled to put it on and it struck me that it was one of the best things ever committed to tape. It was agonized and emotionally white-hot, and it was some of the realest stuff I’d ever heard. But I had not been ready to really hear it before that afternoon.

  I really heard those dictums and aphorisms now, and I assimilated Coyac’s step-by-step instruction into it in a way that I was incapable of before that specific hour of class. This was somewhat exhilarating, because it was a lesson that wouldn’t leave me, and the thrill of discovery and understanding is unlike anything else.

  When a piece of beef or pork or chicken is done cooking it has a specific feel to it when pressed with your finger. When a chicken breast is sautéing, and it’s done, there’s a nearly undetectable but distinct scent and very subtle sound. There is a color a green bean will take on when it is at the perfect doneness.

  ON SUNDAY AFTERNOON AT 5:00, I turned on Iron Chef America to watch Kent and Kevin Rathbun, chefs from Georgia and Texas, respectively, go at it with Bobby Flay. The secret ingredient was elk. I knew two things about elk—that it was a lean meat, and that I’d never tried it. I imagined it must be something akin to venison, which I had tried, but still wouldn’t know what to do with it, if asked.

  The Rathbun brothers made elk carpaccio with a cilantro glaze and dried peaches; elk and fennel meatballs with cabbage carbonara; chili-seared elk strip loin with blue cheese grits and beer barbecue sauce; and a few more dishes, each paired with a wine. What got to me—and I was a tiny bit upset, even as I was knocked out while I watched—was how far beyond my own thinking these guys operated. I was making progress in the kitchen, but I still wasn’t an advanced culinary thinker. These were not dishes concocted by Ferran Adrià or Heston Blumenthal—Futurist food, science fiction food; instead, they were relatively traditional: meatballs, grits, beer barbecue sauce. But there were a lot of flavors being balanced, a lot of deceptively simple complexity on the plates.

  Nelly and I had some kale in the refrigerator that I imagined we’d sauté with some garlic and olive oil. We also had chicken breasts, which could be sautéed too, and served with a pan sauce of reduced wine, stock, and butter. We had a selection of starches: rice, a handful of organic fingerlings, an assortment of dried pastas. Almost six months in school, with shelves full of a few dozen cookbooks, and my thinking was still conservative: visions of plates filled with a protein, a starch, and a vegetable.

  The next day at school, we were eating dinner together. It had been poaching day, and I’d given away my portion of salmon and hollandaise and hit up another kitchen for my supper. When I arrived back at the table, everyone had just started talking about Iron Chef from the previous night.

  Adam said, “I’ve eaten at Kent Rathbun’s place—Abacus—and it was pretty good. Actually, really good. But I don’t know—it seemed like a safe menu. Carpaccio? Yeah, okay, fine, whatever. Not real ambitious. Meatballs?”

  “Bobby Flay must have sucked harder than usual, because that food didn’t look so exciting,” someone said. “I could do blue-cheese grits. And fuck Bobby Flay, by the way.”

  “The food on that show is almost always mediocre,” Brookshire said. I was already annoyed at him because when I’d been making hollandaise earlier, he’d appeared at my shoulder (Coyac was engaged elsewhere) to remark, “I’ve never really seen hollandaise sauce quite like that. You’re a definite trailblazer, playing with the classics that way.”

  I opened my mouth. “Yes, all right, everyone at the table has a bigger dick than Bobby Flay or the Rathbun brothers or myself, since I thought it was pretty damn fascinating. But if everyone’s such an Escoffier in bloom, why the fuck are you here and not out there running a kitchen? I wish I could have come up with that menu—either Flay’s menu or the other guys’—but I can’t so, you know, I’m here.”

  “I think I’m sensing career-changer insecurity,” Brookshire said. “And older-guy crankiness.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah—I am old. In fact, if I’d been a more sexually precocious fourteen-year-old, I could be everyone’s dad. But you know that old cliché about wisdom and experience? It’s a cliché for a reason. I fucking wish I were your age and doing this. I wouldn’t have the massive ego. You should deflate that massive ego. It’s a real hindrance, trust me.”

  Adam was measured. “Jonathan—no one’s saying any of those guys aren’t good cooks. But you have to realize that maybe some of us could have come up with those dishes. You know what I mean?”

  “Yeah, so shut the fuck up, Grandpa,” someone said.

  I DON’T THINK ANYONE realized how easy Coyac had gone on us the first few days. We’d been ready on time the initial day because the menu was so basic, but as class went on, we’d opened late for service three or four times in a row, and Coyac’s temper was beginning to fray.

  On frying day he swooped in like a Valkyrie.

  Frying was a little trickier than roasting or poaching or sautéing—each of those corresponding dishes could be done a little bit ahead, and the roasted beef or chicken, the salmon or sole, the chicken breast with fines herbes sauce could be reheated when it came time to plate. The fried dishes needed to be done almost to order; the panfried pork cutlets our team was cooking had to be started just a couple of minutes before service began and cooked steadily until they were gone. They needed to be breaded just before cooking, and the oil would need to be changed out at least twice. It wasn’t an insurmountable schedule, but it did require some timing. Plus, we needed to make a sauce to go with some green beans, and cook spaetzle.

  The spaetzle, Coyac said, needed finesse. The batter needed to be just right. It needed to go into the boiling water in the proper quantity so we could make enough of it to serve and serve it on time, but not so much that the water lost its boil and made the spaetzle soggy. After it was drained, the spaetzle would be sautéed in butter until browned perfectly. Seasoning was essential. When he walked us through it, the instructions sounded more like warnings.

  Carlos and Joe were working on the vegetables and the pork. Joe pounded the cutlets thin, and Carlos trimmed the beans. I got the sauce going—vinegar, shallots, and wine reduced and then added to a measure of sauce espagnoles, seasoned, and finished with a good chunk of butter. Sean gathered up what we’d need for the spaetzle and when he’d gotten everything, I joined him.

  Coyac was at our side before we even started mixing. “You guys work like pigs,” he said. “Look at this,” he said as he gestured at our table. There was flour all over the place, green bean tips scattered across the table surface, piles of crumpled plastic that Joe had used for the pork, rogue pieces of shallot, and an empty container of wine vinegar on my cutting board. “I don’t care if it’s all your mess”—he pointed to Sean—“or none of your mess, but you do not let your station get like this.” He looked at me.
“What’s the matter with you? How can you work like this? Do you live like this at home?”

  He moved to Joe. “Why is this pork still out? Put it away. Put it away. Now! Come on, let’s go. Where’s the spaetzle batter? You haven’t done it yet? Oh, for God’s sake. For God’s sake. Come on! Why is that sauce at a boil? You know what ‘simmer’ means? What does it mean? Tell me.” I opened my mouth and then closed it. “Okay, we can look it up after you turn the heat down. What? Do you need an invitation? Turn it down! It’s probably burned already.” He walked away, then turned back. “Before you do one more thing, clean that table. Wash your cutting boards, wipe that table down. Change your bains-marie. There’s no way you’re going to be ready for service. I can’t believe this.”

  I felt a flush of heat in my face. All of us kept our heads down and did what we were told. Later, Sean and I stood over the spatezle batter.

  “It’s too thin,” I said. “I think we need to thicken it up.”

  “No, it’s too thick. I was about to thin it out.”

  Coyac yelled from behind us, “The spaetzle is fine!” Then he screamed. “Cook! Cook! Cook!” We did.

  Two tables over from us, Ox and a guy mysteriously named Twitch were teamed with Lombardi. Ox and Twitch were both nice guys but prone to making a lot of mistakes. A lot of mistakes. Since the first class I’d been watching Lombardi, pained to the core of his love for order and efficiency, throw his hands up and look like he might be on the verge of weeping. Ox and Twitch were handling the spaetzle and had just finished boiling and draining it when Coyac appeared at their table. Coyac wore a look of complete incomprehension on his face. He stood getting redder, lips open, hands tensing into fists at his sides.