In a dreamy shock-induced haze, before falling asleep, my imagination wandered, seeking distraction from pain, while my analytical Virgo-nature dissected the experience, seeking a message. What were the odds that a just-graduated culinarian beginning his first career position would strike a match while standing in front of an antique pizza oven that would lead to a trip through space, scorched skin, and a collision with a stationary wall? A million-to-one? A billion-to-one? I re-thought the steps that led to the fateful event. Walked up to the stove. Lit the match. Turned on the gas. Boom! The staff members later investigated the stove while I lay in the hospital. Their report concluded that a pocket of gas had been waiting in ambush within the gas conduits. No one could have known this, though considering the age of the oven, the odds were pretty good that it would happen again.
Welcome to the dangers of the industrial workplace, young man! You who were at the wrong place at the wrong time performing the wrong task. I wondered if I made a mistake in my choice of profession. Years later, a vivid memory of the incident would remain with me, long after the names of my co-workers and even of the ranch had disappeared. For the moment, all I wanted to do was to sleep and heal.
But I had no leisure for such indulgence. Once back at the ranch, I immediately returned to my culinary duties. My burned skin was gruesome. Peeling and oozing, I felt like a creature from a James Whale film starring Boris Karlov. By working in this condition, I was breaking all the rules of personal hygiene and kitchen sanitation. But not only was this my job, the haunting question – “Can I still cook?” – overrode immediate health and health code priorities. Within a week, I had my answer. I could still cook all right, but not here. I informed the owner of my decision, and he tried every salesman’s ploy to keep me. But the ranch was history. I packed up and hit the road.
On the living room floor of my mom’s home, I laid out a map of New England and began perusing the territory. I considered throwing a dart up into the air, then traveling to wherever it landed. Then I noticed Cape Cod, on the sou th-eastern corner. I had been there the year before, on a long weekend run with some chef-school chums. I liked the look of all the inlets and interesting village names – it kind of looked like the Shire, in Tolkien’s The Hobbit. So I hoisted my back pack, grabbed my acoustic guitar, bid Mom farewell, and stuck out my thumb on interstate 95. Half-a-dozen rides and twenty-four hours later, I found myself awakened by the early morning sun on the edge of a cranberry bog somewhere in the middle of Cape Cod. I rolled up my sleeping bag, and headed out to the nearest road.
Another hitch brought me to Hyannis, the largest town on the Cape Cod. I knew no one there, had no destination, nor any particular goal in mind, short of finding gainful employment. At the southern end of town, a hand-painted sign jutted out into the street. It read, “Coffee, Tea, and Advice.” I knocked gently on the door, opened it and peered inside. I saw what appeared to be a large carpeted room, the walls of which were lined with bookshelves. A stately looking gentleman seated at the far end of the room, looked me over. “New York or New Jersey?,” he asked.
“Why, New York, as a matter of fact. How’d you know?”
“Oh I can spot you guys a mile away. Vestiges of urban smog, perhaps. Please come in.”
I thanked him, relieved myself of the back pack and guitar, and sat down. Over a cup of tea, I explained that I was a graduate of a culinary program, and was in search of a job as a cook.
“What is your line of work?,” I asked
“I’m an architect, and as a matter of fact I’m doing some work for a local restaurateur. I believe he needs cooks in his kitchen. Where are you staying?”
“At the beach, I think.”
“Well, you come see me tomorrow. I’ll have some info for you then.”
I thanked him, then headed back to explore Hyannis. Two days later, with the gentleman’s referral in hand, I hitch-hiked to Osterville, a small village eight miles east of Hyannis. I interviewed with Fran Ricci, the manager of East Bay Lodge, an fashionable-looking restaurant a stone’s throw from the bay it was named after. Ricci was arrogant and detached; I was all enthusiasm. We were hardly soul mates, but there was a factor in my favor. The Lodge had recently hired a classmate of mine who had turned out very well. But then, just as the interview seemed over, Ricci suddenly threw up a red flag. “We don’t want any transients here,” he declared.
Transients? What had brought that on? Had I pushed an insecure button? Did my enthusiasm translate into cockiness or flakiness? Transient? The negativity hung in the air like a malodorous scent. I peered at him, thinking, “Hey, yo, this life is about as transient as you can get, at least in my universe. We wander around in our fragile bodies, thinking that our seventy-or-eighty-years of life is a really long time, yet in the grander scheme of things it is less than a split second in the middle of the cosmic ocean.” I knew such levity would probably cancel any chance I had of getting hired, so I smiled and yessed him coming-and-going. All that mattered right now was to get hired, and get down in the kitchen trenches.
Thanks to his experience with Malcolm, the other culinary graduate, Ricci offered me a job. I was to start the very next day, reporting to chef Dave Jacobs at 11:00 AM. The salary was three dollars per hour, which was fine by me. By that point, my financial resources had dwindled to a grand total of twenty-seven cents.
That afternoon, I wandered around Osterville, the quintessential quaint southern New England village. Down the road from the restaurant, I secured housing in the form of a small cottage located directly behind a fine old mansion. The husband-and-wife owners of the stately old home rented out the cottages during the summer to help subsidize the cost of maintaining the mansion. The rental was seventy-five dollars per week, but I convinced her of my trustworthiness, and she agreed to wait for the first week’s installment.
At 10:30 the next morning, I walked into the kitchen at East Bay Lodge, asked for Chef Jacobs, and was directed to a large dark-skinned man, with a neatly trimmed mustache. He was broad and imposing, but I noticed a glint in his eye, with I deemed evidence of compassion, perhaps even a sense of humor. He peered down at me and asked, “What kind of experience do you have young man?”
“Just a little bit, chef. Mostly I just graduated from the Culinary Institute of America.”
“Did you now? We have another graduate here this summer. Maybe you know him.” He called for Malcolm, who strutted over from around a corner. Yes, I did know Malcolm, but only from passing him in the halls at the Institute. We had never been in any of the same kitchens, but we shook hands and acknowledged our acquaintance
“Can you make potato salad?,” the chef suddenly asked me.
“Um, yes, I think so.”
“Well then, make me five pounds of potato salad.”
“Yes sir.” I wondered if there was a cookbook hiding in some corner. There wasn’t, however, so half-an-hour later I brought him a large stainless steel bowl containing five pounds of my best improvisation.
He shook the bowl, and looked at me quizzically. “I said potato salad, young man, not potato soup.” It was certainly wet enough to be misconstrued as cold potato soup, albeit the chunky kind. I stood there feeling thoroughly vulnerable, and convinced that I had failed my first test. Some of the other cooks stood around watching and grinning as the scene unfolded.
In a more kindly tone, Chef Jacobs instructed me to strain it through a colander and add enough additional potatoes to bring it up to a drier consistency. He then turned me over to Malcolm’s supervision. Although I had clearly failed with the salad, I’d apparently passed the “first impressions” test. All he really wanted to know was if I could handle a knife, and was willing to work and follow his orders. And I had proven all that, without question.
― ● ―
Excellent Basic Potato Salad
2 pounds (1 kg) Yukon Gold potatoes
1 bunch scallions, trimmed of roots, rinsed, and sliced very thin
2 stalks celery, finely diced
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¼ cup (60 mL) mayonnaise (approximately)
¼ cup (60 mL) plain, 2-percent yoghurt
¼ cup (60 mL) Champagne or white wine vinegar
¼ cup (60 mL) finely chopped cilantro
2 tablespoons (30 mL) finely chopped mint leaves
1 tablespoon (15 mL) finely minced tarragon leaves
salt and fresh ground pepper to taste
4 hard-cooked eggs
parsley sprigs as needed
Peel and cut the potatoes lengthwise in half, then into slices about ¼-inch (.6 cm) thick. Put them into boiling, lightly salted water, and boil until tender, but still slightly firm (8-to-10 minutes). Drain and allow to cool.
Place the potatoes in a mixing bowl, add the remaining ingredients, and gently blend. Season with salt and pepper, and adjust as needed, the amounts of mayonnaise and vinegar.
Serve garnished with quartered or sliced eggs and parsley sprigs
― ● ―
Malcolm introduced me to the other members of the kitchen. Billy Byrd was the Sous-chef, (Sous = under), an Air Force veteran of twenty-years, who immediately picked up on my youthful enthusiasm, and took me under his wing as his own unofficial apprentice. He kept me running most of the summer, and I learned plenty. Twenty years later, my basic tomato sauce – Larousse All-Purpose Industrial-Strength Tomato Sauce – is modeled directly after the Billy Byrd Industrial Red Sauce he taught me that summer.
― ● ―
Larousse All-Purpose Industrial Strength Tomato Sauce (Yields 1 gallon)
½ cup (180 mL) olive oil
1 large Spanish onion, peeled, and quartered
1 large leek, root and outer leaves removed, and very-well-rinsed
3 large celery stalks, trimmed and well-rinsed
1 small carrot, peeled and top removed
1 bulb garlic, cloves peeled
½ bunch fresh basil, leaves only
1 bunch parsley, stems removed (and reserved for stock)
1 pound ground pork
2 quarts (2 liters) tomato purée
1 six-ounce (180 mL) can tomato paste
1 pint (½ liter) chicken stock (or water)
salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste
Grind the vegetables, garlic, basil and parsley through the medium-holed plate of a meat grinder (or in a food processor).
Heat the olive oil in a heavy-gauge pot over medium heat, and sweat the ground vegetables (sweat = sauté covered) for 10 minutes, stirring frequently. Add the ground pork and ground herbs, salt and pepper, and continue cooking.
Add the tomato products and chicken stock, using the stock to rinse out the tomato cans, and blend thoroughly. (Deposit the cans in the recycle bin.)
Simmer the sauce, stirring frequently, for 3 hours – skimming and discarding any impurities that collect on top. Adjust seasoning, allow to cool, then cover and refrigerate until ready to be used.
― ● ―
Wayne was the baker. He and Paul – the latter an experienced production man generally referred to as First Cook – formed a sort of Frick-and-Frack team. Both were married and were good friends outside of work. Wayne made one of the best sticky pecan buns I’ve ever tasted, but he was unwilling to part with his recipe. Paul was strictly a mechanic, which made him an extremely important member of the crew. I suspected he found my particular passionate approach rather humorous.
Richard was the pantry cook, a tall, quiet, zany character, who wore a wool cap trimmed with fur all summer. No matter that the kitchen temperature soared to 120-degrees behind the range, and probably 85-degrees or more around the corner in the pantry, his cap always stayed on his head. Smitty-the-dishwasher was a seventeen-year-old local kid from the blue-collar side of Osterville, with one year still to go in high school. Caught up under the tail-end influence of the sixties cultural revolution, he was our token hippie-teenage-mutant, forever stoned-out on weed, who always had something good to say about everyone and was loved and appreciated by everyone in return. There was also a bevy of lovely waitresses, a feast for the eyes, and ranging in age from nineteen-to-forty-something. The younger ones were mostly college students earning money for school. The older ones were mothers and wives, veterans of the restaurant trade, all gracious and possessing the camaraderie and sense of humor that comes with years of experience in the restaurant business. And finally, there were the owners of the establishment, Bob and Leah Keston.
Mr. Keston was quiet and very business-like. He played wandering host in the restaurant at night, his quiet , low-key personality contributing to the restaurant’s ambiance. He kept his distance from the affairs of the kitchen, leaving such matters to his manager, Fran Ricci, the one concerned with the issues of transience and the human condition. Mrs. Keston was an entity all her own. She had originally come to the restaurant as a waitress, following a divorce. She and Keston, a widower, had begun dating and were eventually married. I heard unpleasant stories about her ambitious nature, yet she struck me as attractive, and a highly suitable working partner for Keston. She certainly played hostess and ran the front of the house effectively enough. It wasn’t until late in the season that the less appealing elements of her character – and those of her husband – became evident.
There was an all-purpose handy-man, Jose Castillo, a veteran of the Spanish Civil War. He was a friendly man of medium stature, hard-working, probably pleased to be living his relatively stress-free life after witnessing the horrors of his earlier life. He shared stories with me, about his life in the late 1930s, having been captured and imprisoned by Franco’s fascist army. He told me how he and his compatriots would take out the interior of their bread, sculpt it into small figurines, let them dry, paint them, then sell them through the prison guards – using the money to purchase cigarettes. The other practice Jose told me about was blowing cigarette smoke into a bottle, then re-inhaling that smoke later on, in order to conserve their minimal supply of cigarettes. (Yuck.)
I am sorry to report that Jose was diagnosed with throat cancer that summer, and though he had his voice box removed, he died some months later. Very sad.
Back in the kitchen, I was on a roll. This particular summer was turning out to be the busiest in the ten years of Bob Keston’s ownership, and I worked from 11:00 AM until nearly midnight, six days a week. Malcolm, my former classmate, used me to his own advantage, which was fine at first, since working and learning were my sole priorities. The harder and longer I was pushed, the more and faster I learned. But I was soon to discover that the most important lessons of that summer were not necessarily of a culinary nature.
Malcolm was a star. In the eyes of the manager and the chef he could do no wrong. He felt free to be brash and aggressive, strutting an arrogant confidence in the rough, competitive environment of the production kitchen. Early in the summer, he bragged to me with typical cockiness, “I’m going to be an Executive Chef within five years.” I had no reason to believe that he would not achieve that goal, and at the time I did not have that kind of focus. I had not yet developed that kind of confidence and would have been happy just to get through this summer without disgracing myself.
But Malcolm had a head start on me in more ways than one. During the previous spring, he had begun working at East Bay Lodge on weekends, and had proven himself reliable and hard-working, two essential assets as far as the management were concerned. Next to him I seemed to lack focus and assertiveness, not at all the stuff of which stars are made. I was keenly aware of the kitchen community’s perception of our differences, and it was painful to bear. I had every intention of overcoming this impression and demonstrating my own reliability and skill, but I knew it would take time to convince the management and other members of the kitchen brigade. I wondered why the Culinary Institute hadn’t included a course on how to do this – something like Commercial Kitchen Realities 101 – Territorial Imperatives in a Production Environment. So I began formulating a course of my own.
Part I went into effect immediately – disenga
ge mouth; dress professionally (chef’s coat, checked pants, neckerchief, clean apron, industrial-strength shoes); arrive at work a bit earlier than scheduled; punch-in precisely at scheduled time; be the last man out of the kitchen; obey orders; and learn as much as possible. Ironically, this humble plan led directly to my first major confrontation of the summer. Since Malcolm was the young star player and I was the new kid on the block, it was assumed by all that Malcolm should earn more than me. I didn’t expect to become independently wealthy on three-dollars per hour, no matter how hard I worked, so I never gave who-earned-how-much a thought.
The problem was that Malcolm was on salary while I was paid by the hour, and since I was putting in so many hours, it was inevitable that a week would come when I earned more than he. This was in no way my fault – I simply worked the hours as Chef Jacobs assigned to me. He would inform me each night at what hour he wanted me in the kitchen each morning, usually by 11:00 AM, and I would work from then until eleven-or-twelve at night, along with all the other kitchen staff. Multiplied by six days, I was totaling close to eighty-hours each week, and at the rate of three-dollars per hour, my gross salary at one point in the summer exceeded Malcolm’s weekly salary of $200.
One afternoon, without warning, Manager Ricci stomped into the kitchen, marched up to where I was working, and – right there in front of everyone – berated me for the transgression of having earned more money than Malcolm the previous week. Ricci had caught me off guard, and though I tried to explain that I had merely done as the chef had instructed me to do, Ricci continued haranguing me with directives to keep my hours down. I did not understand the public humiliation. What did this turkey have against me anyway? Why didn’t he simply go to the chef? Part II of my special curriculum was born on the spot – Commercial Kitchen Realities 201 – Dealing with Intellectually-and-Emotionally-Deficient Managers.
Have Blade Will Travel: The adventures of a traveling chef Page 5