year. Here people want exactly what they had last time. Consistency under pressure. And that’s the reality: a lot of pressure.”
He thought for a moment. “You also develop an expanded kitchen awareness. You’ll discover how to use your senses. You’ll find you no longer rely on what your watch says. You’ll hear when something is cooked. You’ll smell degrees of doneness.”
Once, in the kitchen, Frankie used the same phrase, “kitchen awareness,” as though it were a thing you could take classes to learn. And I thought I might have seen evidence of it, in how people on the line were cued by a smell and turned to deal with what they were cooking, or in how they seemed to hear something in a sauté pan and then flipped the food. Even so, it seemed an unlikely prospect that this was something I could master; the kitchen remained so stubbornly incomprehensible. From the start of the day to the end, the place was frenzied. In fact, without my fully realizing it, there was an education in the frenzy, because in the frenzy there was always repetition. Over and over again, I’d pick up a smell, as a task was being completed, until finally I came to identify not only what the food was but where it was in its preparation. The next day, it would be the same. (By then, I was somehow managing to put in extra days in the prep kitchen, even though I was technically employed elsewhere.) I was reminded of something Andy had told me. “You don’t learn knife skills at cooking school, because they give you only six onions, and no matter how hard you focus on those six onions there are only six, and you’re not going to learn as much as when you cut up a hundred.” One day I was given a hundred and fifty lamb tongues. I had never held a lamb’s tongue, which I found greasy and unnervingly humanlike. But after cooking, trimming, peeling, and slicing a hundred and fifty lamb tongues, I was an expert.
One morning, Elisa went out to deal with a delivery, and I picked up a change in the way the lamb shanks smelled. They were browning in a large pan about ten feet away, and I walked over, trance-like, turned them, and resumed my task. My nose had told me that they were sufficiently browned and would be ruined in a minute. By the time Elisa returned, I’d removed the shanks and thrown in another batch. She looked at me, slightly startled.
It was a modest breakthrough, and I was allowed to cook. The first item, appropriately enough, was lamb shanks. They were followed by beef cheeks, both basically cooked in the same way: browned and braised in a wine-based liquid until they fell apart. Then duck thighs, rabbit ragù, beef tongue, and guinea-hen legs. Once, cooking beef cheeks, I smelled that they were cooked, even though they were meant to remain in the oven for another hour. But I didn’t pull them out right away, which was a mistake and they were nearly burned, but I’d learned I could trust my senses.
8
I FOUND myself needing to understand short ribs, probably because I really didn’t know what they were, even though I was now helping Elisa prepare them every week and even though I recognized their overwhelming ubiquity: just about every New York restaurant of a certain pretension seemed to have them on the menu—and, in fact, has had them on the menu for fifteen years. In this is a rarely recognized thing, that cities have their restaurant dishes, some ingredient or preparation that mysteriously self-replicates (and yet rarely emigrates—until recently, you wouldn’t have found short ribs in Boston or Chicago) through the easy, professional promiscuity of chefs, always hopping from one place to another, never staying long, especially in Manhattan, which was also why Mario refused to give a job reference to anyone who left after working for him for less than a year. (“Why should I? So they can steal ideas it took me a lifetime to learn?”) The short rib lends itself to being appropriated because, in each
He thought for a moment. “You also develop an expanded kitchen awareness. You’ll discover how to use your senses. You’ll find you no longer rely on what your watch says. You’ll hear when something is cooked. You’ll smell degrees of doneness.”
Once, in the kitchen, Frankie used the same phrase, “kitchen awareness,” as though it were a thing you could take classes to learn. And I thought I might have seen evidence of it, in how people on the line were cued by a smell and turned to deal with what they were cooking, or in how they seemed to hear something in a sauté pan and then flipped the food. Even so, it seemed an unlikely prospect that this was something I could master; the kitchen remained so stubbornly incomprehensible. From the start of the day to the end, the place was frenzied. In fact, without my fully realizing it, there was an education in the frenzy, because in the frenzy there was always repetition. Over and over again, I’d pick up a smell, as a task was being completed, until finally I came to identify not only what the food was but where it was in its preparation. The next day, it would be the same. (By then, I was somehow managing to put in extra days in the prep kitchen, even though I was technically employed elsewhere.) I was reminded of something Andy had told me. “You don’t learn knife skills at cooking school, because they give you only six onions, and no matter how hard you focus on those six onions there are only six, and you’re not going to learn as much as when you cut up a hundred.” One day I was given a hundred and fifty lamb tongues. I had never held a lamb’s tongue, which I found greasy and unnervingly humanlike. But after cooking, trimming, peeling, and slicing a hundred and fifty lamb tongues, I was an expert.
One morning, Elisa went out to deal with a delivery, and I picked up a change in the way the lamb shanks smelled. They were browning in a large pan about ten feet away, and I walked over, trance-like, turned them, and resumed my task. My nose had told me that they were sufficiently browned and would be ruined in a minute. By the time Elisa returned, I’d removed the shanks and thrown in another batch. She looked at me, slightly startled.
It was a modest breakthrough, and I was allowed to cook. The first item, appropriately enough, was lamb shanks. They were followed by beef cheeks, both basically cooked in the same way: browned and braised in a wine-based liquid until they fell apart. Then duck thighs, rabbit ragù, beef tongue, and guinea-hen legs. Once, cooking beef cheeks, I smelled that they were cooked, even though they were meant to remain in the oven for another hour. But I didn’t pull them out right away, which was a mistake and they were nearly burned, but I’d learned I could trust my senses.
8
I FOUND myself needing to understand short ribs, probably because I really didn’t know what they were, even though I was now helping Elisa prepare them every week and even though I recognized their overwhelming ubiquity: just about every New York restaurant of a certain pretension seemed to have them on the menu—and, in fact, has had them on the menu for fifteen years. In this is a rarely recognized thing, that cities have their restaurant dishes, some ingredient or preparation that mysteriously self-replicates (and yet rarely emigrates—until recently, you wouldn’t have found short ribs in Boston or Chicago) through the easy, professional promiscuity of chefs, always hopping from one place to another, never staying long, especially in Manhattan, which was also why Mario refused to give a job reference to anyone who left after working for him for less than a year. (“Why should I? So they can steal ideas it took me a lifetime to learn?”) The short rib lends itself to being appropriated because, in each
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