Many posts to come...

I realize there has been a huge time lapse since I last posted. My last weeks at the restaurant were a whirlwind and included a dinner in Vitoria where I got to plate with Rene Redzepi (currently the number one chef in the world!). It just may have been one of the best nights of my entire life.

Ol and I have been in Italy this past week, but when I get back, I have many posts that will go up, so I hope you stay tuned.

Alfajores

are the new food loves of my life.

Alfajores are from Argentina. Flo's mom brought half a dozen boxes with her from Cordoba as she has been visiting this past week.

The first month that we arrived in San Sebastian, Flo and I stumbled on a coop in the city that happened to sell alfajores. At first, Flo went wild, but her enthusiasm and excitement fell away fast when she proclaimed them terrible and far from the real thing. (I, of course, devoured mine). Flo told me to "just wait" until her mom got here.

And oh, the authentic, true alfajores were unveiled this evening (at 1:00 AM) following two services of 80 people each (we hosted a major wine tasting event) and they were (and are!) glorious.

Alfajores are like a cookie sandwich. The cookies are made from a cornstarch base, are dry and fall apart with just the slightest pressure of your teeth. I know that hardly sounds appetizing, but really, these two cookies serve just as a vessel for the thickest dulche de leche known to man. Velvety and smooth, it takes its time in your mouth, coating every inch of it like the way hot tar covers a newly paved road.

These alfajores were individually wrapped in silver like little gifts and dusted with a significant amount of powdered-sugar on all sides. Look at Julia's face taking one down! She registered pure bliss.

I just ground 105 pounds of codornices

for the huevo caldo, of which I must make enough for one month by Sunday.

(When our chef de parti told me last evening in Spanish, that I was going to have to make enough caldo for one month by Sunday, he asked me if I understood--not in a mean way--just, did I understand his Spanish. Without evening thinking, I replied, "F-ing caldo." I was terrified until he started laughing hysterically, his face turning bright red, and in English said, "Yes, you understand. HA!")

Just before we left the restaurant today after lunch service, our executive chef told us that he wants to try the caldo with just hare, no codornices to see what it tasted like.

In the past week and a half, I've been affectionately called, Senorita Caldo, because I've now been charged with this stock/broth as Canario is leaving to visit his family and I am the only other person who knows how to do it. The process is extremely labor and time intensive and whenever anyone ever passes me, it is all that I am working on.

The chef de partis of my station, pescados and pruebas (tests/new dishes) were standing next to me when our executive chef delivered this news. As soon as he walked away, they started laughing hysterically.

In Spanglish, my chef de parti said to me (as much), "I don't know if you are religious, but during siesta, you better pray to your God that he doesn't prefer the caldo with hare."

All I could think about was the 3.5 hours it took me to clean, torch, grind and weigh the 105 pounds of codornices, now neatly wrapped in the walk-in.

You HAVE to be kidding me...

Plating my first carnes dish--pigeon!

The slightly inconvenient aspect of working with Canario this week is that I haven’t had the chance to watch a real service. The huevo caldo is so labor and time intensive that we end up missing most of the lunch and dinner services. Finally, tonight, however, I got to be a part of the partida during dinner as the executive chef was pleased, after all of our attempts, with our caldo (success!!).

Immediately, I was struck by how much more difficult it is to plate carnes dishes than primeras dishes. For starters, the carnes partida is extremely limited in space and, as with every other station, overstaffed by two. This means that there can’t be a single extraneous of superfluous movement. Precision is not only key, but also essential. It’s nerve wracking. You have to know where not only your hands, arms and body are moving, but also where your partners’ hands, arms and body are moving. It is a well-coordinated symphony of exact movements.

There are two islands to plate on and people plate across from each other working in the same exact order each time a course or dish is fired. Say for example, there are four plates about to go out—in this case—Aroldo will start (facing the grill) with the upper left, followed by the lower left, upper right and lower right. His partner will trail him by a second, or once Aroldo starts the third dish and Arolodo’s arms are out of the way. There is a pattern for any number of dishes and this pattern is never deviated from.

The second reason plating is so much more difficult in carnes is the temperature factor. Each of the carnes plates (pigeon, egg, solomillo, manitas (pig feet), liebre (hare), and tripe) have a protein and sauce (or sauces) that must be hot once they arrive to the table. Accordingly, we have a very short window to complete the dish and bring it to the server so that everything remains a perfect hot when it is placed on the table.

I don’t know why I’m such a sucker when it comes to watching plating, but when it works well and people do their jobs efficiently, it’s gorgeous. It’s like watching a well-choreographed ballet and reminds me of my seven years in the Nutcracker when I was young. But, in contrast to being a dancer, where you can only feel yourself being part of a larger whole, when it comes to being a cook and plating a dish, you have the added luxury of watching the final product unfold.

I had pathetic written all over my face. I wanted nothing more than to be plating and our chef instructor knew it. When we had just about finished service, he came to me and (via Luis) told me to watch and memorize. He would let me help plate the last pigeon dishes. I was so nervous, but too excited to have shaky hands and knew that if I just took a moment to breathe, that I could do it. I had already memorized what the steps were/are.

The pigeon dish goes like this:

When the previous course to pigeon is fired (salmonete, which is red mullet), snipped brotes (micro herbs) are removed from the timbre (a low-boy—a small, under-the-counter refrigerator) and the toasty is made. The toasty is a dime-sized thick slice of two inch by half an inch slice of sourdough bread, toasted in the oven at 170 degrees celcius for 13 minutes. It is topped with a long cylinder of liver mousse and brought to the station’s mini sous chef at this point.

When the course is actually fired, Aroldo grabs a pot of pasta rings—they call it calamari pasta, because the rings look and are the exact thickness of calamari—with two spoonfuls of carbonara sauce. He leaves this on the grill for one second, grabs the necessary amount of plates and places them on the island where we plate. While he returns to the grill to bring the carbonara to a boil (and hence reduces it), I spray the plates with gin (yes, gin!) and wipe them clean with a white napkin stacked on my right. At this point, I also bring the plate of brotes and place them either on the servers’ tray or in the middle of the island depending on how many plates we are sending out.

During this time, our chef instructor is cooking the pigeon. It takes only a few moments. Our station’s mini sous chef is warming both the pigeon sauce and farse that will fill the pasta. Once the pigeon is cooked, our chef instructor tells us to plate and Aroldo throws a pinch of chives into his diminutive pasta pot. He starts with the upper left and places once ring of pasta, with a fork, in the exact center of the plate. Once he has finished two dishes, I start with the farse, which Canario has warmed and placed in front of me at the end of the grill. First, I fill the ring of pasta and then drop a very tiny amount above the ring, swiping my spoon through it to the right, creating a mini rainbow. I move off to the right (to the short end of the island, Aroldo has already moved back to the grill to fill a small, square tray with potato and black truffle espuma (foam)) and Canario moves in with the pigeon sauce. He drops two long lines of sauce on either sides of the ring and drops the pot behind him once he has finished. Our chef instructor has already left a tray of cooked pigeon just next to where Canario will leave his pot and he brings it to the island. Each piece of pigeon must be picked up with a fork, slightly dabbed and dried on a pile of small, square white napkins and then placed on top of the pasta ring. Aroldo is dropping three penny-sized coins of espuma, from left to right, just ahead of Canario’s pigeon dropping. Once Aroldo moves to his right, to the next set of dishes, I move in from the short side of the island and drop three brotes on each plate—one brote per espuma coin. The brotes are set leaf side down, stem side up on their plate so that they can be grabbed immediately and rapidly. Aroldo moves out and Canario and I finish the dish. I grab a warm toasty by a fork and one hand from a small tray that has been left by our chef instructor in the middle of the island and lay it, at a diagonal, on the pigeon and plate. Canario grabs a small tin of sautéed chanterelles and black trumpets to scatter over the dish, which has been reheated by the guy who works on liebre, and I sprinkle each plate with a finely crumbled hazelnut cookie in the bottom right hand corner.

I took the first tray that I plated out to the servers. You have to make eye contact with our chef instructor before doing so, saying aloud the table number so that he knows you have heard him. When I brought the tray to the designated drop off point, it was Antonio, our sommelier, who was there to receive it.

“Mesa ocho,” I said.

“Mesa poro?” he asked, taking the tray from my hands.

“No, mesa ocho,” I said again. The servers like to play with me given that my accent is even less than sub-par.

“Si! Mesa poro!” he said again.

And then I realized what he was saying—mesa marijuana.

I did what I do in any tense situation and started laughing out loud, uncontrollably. It was going to be a while before people stopped playing with me for moving on to a new station. They love the fact that I am so nervous. I returned to the kitchen and was told by my former chef de parti that I could start smiling at midnight, once the service was over. My new chef de parti, just raised his eyebrows at me and seemingly gave me the death-stare.

Lesson learned

My new chef instructor is 29. This is remarkable given his talent, presence and command of our station (don’t get me started on the 23-year-old chef of pescados…Lord, I feel old). It’s clear that the guys in our partida want to be like him, please him, and gain his trust. I feel exactly the same.

In the middle of making our eighth batch of seemingly improved huevo caldo, (Canario’s 40-something), our chef instructor came downstairs, looked at my pan and immediately removed it from the fire. It was an incredibly inconvenient and perilous time for him to do something like that—I had just finished deglazing with sherry and was about to add the caldo. I was frightened that the hour’s worth of work it took to brown the meat and develop the fronds in the pan would be wasted—the sherry continuing to cook and then burn in the very hot pan that was now off the fire with no liquid to bring down the temperature.

The next thing I new, our chef instructor was barking at someone about going upstairs and Luis and within a minute, Luis, a Mexican man my age appeared downstairs. I looked at him quizzically, nervous that he was going to replace me in helping Canario, not able to determine why he would be needed until he replied to my look, “I’m here to translate.”

I couldn’t believe it! I was so happy I almost cried. Honestly. Our chef instructor wanted me to understand. He wasn't going to talk around me, through me or over me. He was going to talk to me and I couldn’t have been more appreciative.

Had I tried the caldo?

No.

Why not?

And my brain immediately leapt forward. I knew where he was going before he even started going there.

This is the base of the new caldo, he exclaimed. How can you not know what it tastes like?! Did I taste the caldo yesterday? Did I know how much the caldo could differ from day to day depending on Monday, his mood and his attention span? How would I be able to control the flavor of the resulting caldo if I didn’t know what my flavor base even tasted like?

And he said—via Luis—I don’t care if you use 12 liters or 20 liters of caldo to get two liters that tastes right. And during that process, I want you to taste the caldo over and over and over again so that you know it, know how it’s changing and know when it’s right. And today, when you think it’s right, I want you to bring some upstairs to me and we will taste it together. Do you understand? I want you to stay here and reduce this and taste it until it’s right—until it will make the perfect caldo. Do you understand? Because if you add this caldo to your pan right now, you are going to have a really sh!tty sauce when everything is said and done. And if you can’t identify when the caldo tastes exactly right, you’ll never be able to make a consistent caldo from day-to-day. Do you understand?

Oido, oido, oido. Yes, I understood. I also understood that this was what I came here for. I wanted to make the best caldo I possibly could.

Carnes, Canario, and Caldo

Somehow I was more excited than nervous the morning of my first day working in carnes. I think this was largely due to the fact that I wasn’t dealing with so many unknowns as I was the very first day I started at the restaurant. I have been perpetually sleep deprived since January 12^th, but I actually woke up before my alarm (or any of the other five that go off in my room every morning) Thursday morning. OK, so clearly, I was really excited—new mis-en-place, new recipes, new methods, new techniques, new chefs. In all honesty, I couldn’t wait. And this feeling supplanted any other that I might have had.

Being a woman in a kitchen is difficult. I don’t say that to elicit any feelings of pity or even empathy; I mention it simply as a matter of fact. When it gets down to it, there just aren’t that many women in the kitchen—anywhere—and I don’t think there ever will be. The sheer amount of hours required of a cook and atypical schedule (working when everyone else is playing, playing while everyone else is working) poses a challenge for women if they want to have a family. At the end of the day, this is how I see it. I can get over and put aside the grueling physical demands of a kitchen, the inherent boys club and the perverted nature of restaurants. For women, there is no question that these aspects certainly make working in a kitchen a more challenging and perhaps less desirable environment, but I truly believe that women pursue other food industry endeavors to permit the space and time to have children.

In any event, as a woman in a kitchen, I am constantly hyper aware of my sex. I was the only woman in the kitchen at db (aside from those that worked in pastry) and I constantly felt an added pressure when it came to proving myself. I spent the first months doing everything for myself when it came to physical work—climbing on top of counters to reach stuff, lifting crazy heavy buckets and pots, and most importantly, refusing help of any sort—in order prove to the guys that I worked with that I was capable of doing what they could do. After a certain period of time, when I had made it clear that I was strong—physically and mentally—the guys at db cut me some slack and help was forced on me. Interestingly enough, I’ve been shocked by the ways the men in this kitchen insist on doing more physical work than the women in the kitchen. In fact, when it came time to take our very heavy bucket of pots and pans to the dishwasher (it always takes two people) in primeras, for the most part, it was always and only a job for the hombres. But what’s shocking to me is how un-sexist it felt. I’m sure that if I analyzed it enough, I would realize some inherent sexism in this, but the attitudes of my coworkers and chef instructors indicated otherwise.

What’s different about this kitchen is that there is definitely a feeling that women can’t hack it at the top. I would be very interested to know just how many women have been offered a contract (i.e. a paying job) in the restaurant, in the back of house. Aside from one woman who works in carnes and one who works in pescados (whose responsibilities are limited to carrying trays to the front of house drop off point), the remainder of women work in primeras and pasteleria. I know this is not by coincidence.

So this was my trepidation heading into carnes. I would be the second woman to work in the station and my chef instructor and chef de parti are both incredibly and very powerfully masculine. I didn’t want to be cast aside or regulated to some seemingly unimportant, boring task. Lucky for me, Canario, the former mini-sous chef of primeras, now works in carnes. He always used my mis-en-place as examples for our partida, commenting (positively) on my knife skills. I guess, in some respects, I have some “kitchen cred” with him. He knows that I am capable despite the language barrier (and despite being female). I was nervous that I was going to have to spend the day watching my new partida-mates doing mis-en-place as opposed to doing any actual work, but Canario immediately took me under his wing. He called himself the boss and me, the assistant.

Canario works on the egg dish (“huevo” is how it’s referred to), which they’ve changed completely this past week. The dish is comprised of a paper-thin slice of a bresaola looking meat, a sous-vide cooked egg, two half-dollar sized mushroom slices topped with olive oil and salt, a pea shoot, truffle royale cream, and codorniz (small bird)-based caldo.

The caldo has been going through a lot of trial and error. Our executive chef just hasn’t been pleased with the results. Canario was working on version X (think 42) when I arrived Thursday morning. Our first task? Brown ground pigeon and codorniz meat in a casserole pan the size of a saucer that kids use for sleds. We weren’t allowed to use but the tiniest amount of oil, which meant that we literally couldn’t walk away from the pan for a second. We had to constantly scrape and scrape and scrape the bottom of the pan to make sure that nothing stuck or burned. The stoves that carnes and pescados use are Charvets and make two opposing islands on their end of the kitchen. You can access and work from all four sides of the burners, grills and salamanders. They are amazing. I regard them as true pieces of art and places of worship. Canario and I were on opposite sides of each other, which allowed him to simultaneously watch my pan and his. I wanted so desperately to be doing everything right, which was difficult considering that my chef instructor was lording over me and my pescados friends kept coming over to comment on how red and sweaty my face was (it was my first time back in front of the hot line!)—no one was going to make my first day on this new station easy, but they teased me in a semi-loving and gentle manner.

After we browned the meat sufficiently, we removed it from the pan, sweat shallots, star anise and black pepper in butter, deglazed with sherry and added in “caldo Monday” which is the general chicken stock that Monday, the chef de parti of Monday (remember detention for primeras?) makes. Once this liquid came to a boil, we removed it from the flame, added it to the pot of meat and cooked it in a pressure cooker for two hours. When it had finished, we strained the mixture, reserved the liquid and reduced it down to the desired consistency. I. Couldn’t. Believe. I. Was. Really. Cooking.

Canario speaks less English than I do Spanish (practically impossible), but the remarkable thing is that we are able to communicate with each other really well. This requires a lot of effort on both of our parts—I’m talking broken English and Spanish, some Spanglish, wild, over-exaggerated gestures, Pictionary, and lots of noises. It also necessitates a complete casting aside of inhibitions and embarrassment. For instance, when we stared on the umpteenth batch of the huevo caldo this week, which involved cleaning out the pigeon and codornices and then grinding the meat, our “conversation” went something like this:

Canario: “AHHHH-LEX!”

Me: “Si?”

Canario: “Yo (pointing to himself) areba (pointing upstairs), tu (pointing at me) aqui (pointing to the floor).”

Me: “OK.”

Canario: “Tu, medico codornices (holding a codorniz in his hands, miming cleaning its guts and insides out, which he likes to mime because it looks perverted). Despues, tu brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr (raising his clasped hands in the air and pushing down through it as though it were incredibly heavy and pushing back).” And then, holding an empty hotel pan under the meat grinder, he motioned to it saying, “One, choo, chree! Valle?”

Me: “Si. Despues film?”

Canario: “Si! Siempre! Muy bien.”

Me: “OK, are you coming back downstairs?”

Canario: “No entiendo.”

Me: “You (pointing at him) areba (pointing upstairs) ahora. Despues, you (pointing at him) aqui (pointing at the floor) conmigo?”

Canario: With raised eyebrows and wide, comprehending eyes, both arms pumping in the air, “Si! Si!”

Me: “Hasta luego.”

Canario: “See you latcher?”

Me: “Si.”

Canario: “Yes, we can. Obama.” His favorite phrase.

And that’s pretty much how we converse. In sum, Canario wanted me to clean and grind the meat while he went upstairs to do mis-en-place.

Because the new huevo caldo is a process and takes such an enormous amount of time, Canario and I stayed in the downstairs kitchen cooking most of the way through the lunch service. I was slightly bummed—I didn’t have a chance to see the dishes and how they were plated or—at the very least—the way the station gets set up and where things are hidden and stored.

But I didn’t have much to complain about. I got to cook for real. I was working on a new recipe and being given the chance to develop it based on the feedback of the executive chef. So really, I had nothing to complain about. And—everything to thank Canario for.

Finger Limes

I've had a number of chances to sample the sauce that is plated on the oyster dish. The base is a simple sage hollandaise--egg yolks and clarified butter in which sage leaves have steeped. Folded into this foundation is a spinach puree, chopped walnuts and oysters, fresh orange juice and red and white grapefruit pearls.

Unfortunately, I've repeatedly felt like the sauce lacks any acidity. The orange juice and grapefruit pearls do not provide enough tang to balance the thickness and richness of the yolks. Obviously, I have not shared this opinion within earshot of our chef instructor or chef de parti. My palate felt validated, however, when our executive chef, after reexamining and sampling the dish decided to add the bids of finger limes, or citrus caviar, to the mix. Funny, considering that the restaurant is almost entirely focused on and loyal to authentic Basque cuisine. (Finger limes come from Australia.)

The inside of the fruit is beautiful and delicate. Pearls of sea foam green radiate from an inner star pattern within a dense, muted brown exterior. They are diminutive in size, but grand in flavor. Their taut skins pop immediately in your mouth, sending an explosion of tartness to isolated areas on your toungue and cheeks.

It is not the first time that I've come in to contact with finger limes, but for some reason I find myself mildly obsessed with figuring out ways I can use them at home. In a fresh green salad, fruit salad, in a salad dressing, sprinkled over grilled lobster, mixed with pulled, cold crab, on top of cupcakes....

Hard Core Kitchen Lines

"OSTIA! Get out of here! Get away from me! I don't want anyone next to me when I cook! I don't even want GOD with me when I cook! OSTIA!"

(Said in the heat of the moment by the 23-year-old, chef de parti of pescados. I. Loved. It.)

Too many cooks in the kitchen?

A common topic of conversation between us cooks is how there are just too many people in this kitchen. At the lowest level, when people fight for mops and brooms, it is both infuriating and asinine. Compared to a typical restaurant kitchen, we might be overstaffed by three (times).

But this is not a typical kitchen—it is ranked 33rd in the world on San Pellegrino’s 50 Best List and has three Michelin stars. I’ve often wondered how it is that a restaurant of this caliber can maintain the quality and consistency at an extraordinarily competitive level with such an inane amount of people in the kitchen. Where’s the give? What is compromised? Clearly, from the perspective of a Michelin inspector—nothing.

When it gets down to it, there are a select group of people from each partida—pastry, fish, meat, primeras—that have generally just one task to focus on during service. If a dish has six different components, it is common that six people will work together to plate that dish. And being awarded that one task—at this level, in the midst of such competition—feels like gold. It's like the freaking Olympics. Being charged with just one duty and job during service allows for the necessary repetition that evolves into perfection. People are intent, focused and borderline obsessed with nailing their one task over and over again. Consistency, in this respect, is maintained. Or so the logic goes—I’ve been doing the canelon foam for two weeks now and I made a huge error in the middle of plating for a table of 15 during the lunch service.

We set up the trays, the plates, the micro-herbs, the spatulas, plate wipes, pimenton oil, paintbrushes in the central kitchen (where we plate big tables) with rhythmic perfection. I had three back up sauce pots of foam ready to go and my foam partner stationed across the island from me. Once the canelon was laid and the pulpo placed at its ends, we started dropping perfect spheres of foam. When I reached the ninth dish or so, I was nearing the end of the foam in my pot and dropped an enormous amount of liquid on the plate. It pooled alongside the canelon, leaking evil-like from the foam’s underbelly. My heart stopped, but my hands kept plating, my brain conscious of time that I didn’t have. My chef instructor walked behind me, screaming at me while I continued to drop spheres of foam on the remaining plates, effectively maintaining a shadow-like distance until I had finished. And when I finished, the verbal beating only intensified. It’s not that I didn’t know that I had made an error. It’s not that I didn’t understand what I had done wrong. It’s not that I hadn’t heard her say these things one hundred times before. But she needed to scream at me—it’s part of the shtick, the performance, the training.

The most important thing we learn here is not necessarily about food, technique, or method. What we learn here is confidence and how to execute under pressure. Had I looked up at any one of the 120 eyeballs that were intently staring at me during that moment, I might have lost it. It’s about staying calm, collected and graceful. It’s about moving fluidly and deliberately with controlled movements. It’s about learning how to perform in front of an audience. It’s about saying, “Oido,” (I hear you, I understand) and projecting confidence. Without it, there are two extraneous staffs of passionately hungry individuals to do what it is that you have been assigned to do.

In the beginning, the chefs tear us down, shred us to pieces and wipe us clean. They turn us into canvases as blank as every white dish we plate on. When they feel we are ready, they give us one task at a time, one component at a time, adding to us, layering on us, shaping us, perfecting us until we become fully functioning—a chef de parti, a composed dish.

I won’t be here long enough for that to happen, but I’m happy and proud that I’ve worked hard enough to be given the opportunity to at least start down that path. Perhaps the amount of people in this kitchen is not inane. Without them, the pressure wouldn’t be as great. Perhaps there is a method to this madness. When I watch the unparalleled cool and precision of the current chef de parties, I don’t doubt that we could use even more cooks in this kitchen.

Spain's brightest young chefs

A group of some of the most exceptionally talented cooks in our kitchen, proved their creative genius outside of the restaurant before heading out to celebrate Carnival Sunday evening in Tolosa...

Carlos, Malaga, Canario, David, Pablo

Dying for Goose Barnacles

When I first came into contact with percebes at a tapas bar with my roommate, Deborah, she told me that people die trying to harvest them. Deborah is from Galicia, an autonomous community (as it's been described to me) in northwest Spain, where most percebes are collected. They depend on intertidal motion for feeding and consequently grow on coastal rocks where the tide constantly moves in and out.

I couldn't understand why and wasn't sure if she was exaggerating until I came across this video of percebes harvesters. I almost couldn't watch certain parts. Harvesting percebes should be classified as an extreme sport.

I also feel much more comfortable paying the seemingly hefty sum it costs to purchase this delicacy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9dLEQFZIew

ET Foamed Home

Finally, I got it.

Plating the last canelon dishes (for six) this evening, I nailed the foam.

Luis was wrong. The secret? Grab a little liquid on the spoon, pull it to the side of the sauce pot and let it drain just before plating. The foam slides off the spoon as easily as a small toddler flying down a waxed slide.

My chef instructor said "Venga," when I had finished plating, which meant the tray was ready to go and I had done my job well, at last.

I still hate it and I still stared at Linguini longingly, enviously and jealously all night even though he brought back fresh Italian buffalo mozzarella from his trip to Turino this past weekend where he visited his family.

Cider House Rules

I had one of the most fun dining experiences of my life Monday night. It illuminated everything that I love about eating and sharing meals with people.

The Basque country is known for its 60 some-odd cider houses throughout the region. Dating back to the 11th and 12th centuries, cider making is a tradition with deep roots in this part of Spain. The season is short; it begins in January and ends abruptly in March.

Seven of us braved the unyielding Basque rain (perfect weather to stuff yourself) and drove, via taxi, through the hills of outer Lasarte until we reach Sidreria Zelaia. It was difficult to understand just how massive the indoor space was from the small door we entered that billowed smoke as we hefted it open. Directly in front of us were two chefs manning a specialty charcoal grill with the most beautifully marbled and dense chuletons slowly turning into perfect rare on its sizzling planks.

The dining hall, as it may be called, is one large, open space with three rows of waist-high harvest tables spanning the length of the room. They were minimally set with a cotton napkin, fork and knife per place setting. There was an orange, cozy glow to the packed room, with loud laughter and chatter filling the arched ceilings.

I was in heaven. The tables do not have chairs—you are expected to stand throughout the entire meal. Immediately I noticed how tables of strangers were intermingling, talking across the room and to the adjacent table next to them. It was magical.

The idea is that you grab a glass from a hutch situated at the arched entranceway that leads to the cider room and barrels. They are gigantic and made me feel like I was on a movie set where props had been enlarged to inhuman proportions. I felt dwarfed. I didn’t count the exact number of barrels that lined the garage-like room, but there most have been at least twenty. The biggest barrels are called kupela and can hold more than 1000 liters.

People congregate with their glasses of cider in the corridor made by the two rows of cider barrels, to talk and drink. The “tap guy” pulls a diminutive toothpick from an equally small hole in the end-face of the barrel and a large stream of liquid shoots out onto the cement floor (where people pitch their cider if they feel like it has gotten too warm). You must catch the end of the stream with your glass and walk toward the barrel to better aerate the cider. People line up to do this, getting unintentionally splashed by the person before them. You end up with only a finger’s width or two of cider in the glass.

There is no pressure here. I experienced instant happiness, ease and joy. This is a roll up your sleeves, be messy, have fun, and dig in kind of meal. It’s about being social, sharing food and really, yourself, with everyone around you. The physical set-up facilitates a mini pop-up community that is intimate and warm.

The servers bring heaping plates of food at their leisure. We feasted on chorizo, tortilla bacalao, bacalao with green peppers and fried onions, the absolute best chuletons I’ve ever had in my life, queso, membrillo (quince paste) and tuile-like cookies. I loved looking at the other tables and seeing piles of walnut shells and cheese rinds scattered and left without thought—the remnants of a good time.

We attacked each plate like vultures—tearing the steaks apart, gnawing on their bones, sopping up the chorizo fat with torn pieces of thick bread. There was no pretense, no manner code to abide by, no worry about sharing food and forks and glasses. We went back for glass after glass of the soft, sparkling, apple cider. There was a lot of laughing. We made friends with the table to the left of us and with a group of old men at the cider barrels.

If I could, I would eat like this every night; this was and is my perfect culinary heaven.

French Toast Dinner

Last night, I made French toast for my roommates. Aroldo had requested in my first weeks here that we make pancakes together at some point over the next three months, so I had Oliver bring a jug of maple syrup from home when he visited.

In any event, I said I would cook dinner last night for everyone. I really only had to come up with a vessel for the maple syrup and I love French toast, so it was an easy pick. Simple, homey, delicious and easy to execute for a group. I made a simple custard with heavy cream, eggs, vanilla extract (couldn't find beans), cinnamon, sugar and rum. In addition, I found icing sugar (as they call it here) some strawberries and a couple loaves of brioche.

My greatest amusement came from the way my roommates continually inspected the maple syrup that I had warmed and put in a mug in the center of our kitchen table. They looked at it like it was fungus and stared at it with a mixture of disgust and intense curiosity. I laughed when they kept daring each other to try it. Finally someone took the plunge, stuck their finger in, and took a lick. "Bueno?!?" everyone asked.

It was slightly unnerving to be cooking for all eleven of my roommates. I didn't expect to feel any pressure, but I did. I guess it came out OK, because unbeknownst to me, Julia took this picture and sent it to her mom in Brazil. (It doesn't have any syrup or butter on it...I let them dress their French toast as they wished.)

ET Foam Home

When I returned Wednesday following Oliver’s visit (having said goodbye on the steps of the Hotel Maria Christina and driven back through the pitch black streets of San Sebastian to Lasarte by a taxi driver who thought I was criminally insane given all of my tears and quiet blubbering) I discovered that I had been moved from making the canelon and frying oysters to doing the canelon foam (I managed to hold back my tears in this instance). Alessandro, a young Italian who bears an uncanny resemblance to Linguine from Ratatouille—we actually call him Linguine—had been promoted to my space during my Sunday absence. That’s how this kitchen works—you miss one day and someone else is all up, over and in your you-know-what. I can’t say that I wasn’t disappointed. I do the most cooking in our group and I worked hard to get there. I couldn’t help but feel like our chef instructor was punishing me.

Foam might look whimsical and fun on a plate but it’s a downright pain in the you-know-what to get from liquid to airy, perfect, spherical-ness on the plate. The canelon foam is comprised of sauce Americaine, butter, heavy cream, vegetable stock and lecite. Before it can be buzzed with the hand mixer to make the actual bubbles, it must be warmed so that it is extremely hot to the touch—just enough so that you can’t let your finger rest in it for more than a second or two. The medium-sized sauce pot that holds the liquid must be tipped at an angle towards you, the hand-held mixer placed vertically above the mixture. It all looks easy enough—I’ve watched my colleagues make the foam for exactly 61 services now. When I took the hand-held mixture to the liquid for the first time, I sprayed myself everywhere. It was incredibly embarrassing. I mean—you don’t spray things everywhere in this kitchen. Staining your apron and jacket is like wearing a big sign that reads I SUCK.

Luis, from Puerto Rico, immediately jumped to my rescue, trying to minimize the amount of “You are so stupid, what are you doing,” type comments that were flying with astonishing rapidity out of our chef instructor's mouth by taking control of the pot and hand-held mixer. He showed me how to buzz the top of the liquid delicately, incorporating just enough air to create the necessary sized bubbles.

The next hurdle was plating the foam. When you buzz the liquid base, the entire mixture does not turn to foam. The idea is to create slightly more foam than you need—it is entirely dependent on how many plates are going out. This newly created layer ends up floating on top of the liquid base.

We use a special sized sauce spoon to plate. Luis told me to graze the foam with the spoon. I could not grab any liquid whatsoever. This takes a little while to feel out—it’s difficult to initially determine just how deep the layer of foam is. (I thought, for instance, that it was much deeper than it actually was as evidenced by the liquid that dropped from the spoon before the foam even got to the plate. I received the requisite and consequent verbal beating from our chef instructor). The foam must look like two almost perfect spheres that rest on either side of the canelon. Guess what? Spheres my a--. My first attempt looked like elves’ hats. Also, getting the foam to actually slide off the damn spoon is no picnic either. I kept thrusting it downward, willing it to move toward and onto the plate, and ended up violently hitting the plate in the process. Another huge error—I made unnecessary noise while plating. Another verbal beating ensued.

So try this—fill a bowl with liquid detergent and water the next time you are washing dishes and create some serious bubbles. Get out your favorite spoon and give the process a whirl. If you did it in half of a second—you’re a half of a second too slow. (Actually, if you did it in half of a second, call me, I’ve got a job for you and your newfound culinary genius).

Clearly, I got too comfortable working canelon and oyster. I longingly stared at Alessandro all service. I was jealous, envious and frustrated. But I guess this is what it’s all about—our chef instructor knowingly pushed me out of my comfort zone. It was the last thing I had left to learn in primeras. I dare say that she wants me to get it right because any time I looked to Luis for help she told him to back away and demanded that I do it.

And I will do it.

Eating at the Restaurant WITH OLIVER!

I had been counting down the weeks, then days and lastly hours until Oliver arrived in San Sebastian and so had everyone else in the kitchen. This place is amazing in the respect that you have absolutely no privacy. None. I’ve never seen anything like this. Our entire kitchen knows EVERYTHING about EVERYONE whether it’s true or not. Perhaps it’s due to the fact that we spend a minimum of 73 out of a weekly 168 hours together or that we both work and live with far too many people in the physical kitchen and in our respective flats. We are constantly exposed—physically and emotionally—there is never any relief. We can’t go to the bathroom without asking, we can’t cut ourselves without—at the very least—a head chef knowing, as we have to ask for bandaids and medical supplies. What’s astounding to me is just how much the four head chefs know about each and every one of us—our personal lives, what we did Sunday night, an hour ago, or really, at any moment. It’s almost like being on the Truman show, except we are aware that everyone is constantly watching us.

For instance—

Flo met her current boyfriend the second week after we arrived. They had their first “romantic evening” on a Monday. On Wednesday morning (our Monday), the four head chefs openly discussed Flo and Paco getting together in the center of the kitchen, calling out to both of them in their respective stations (primeras and pescados, across the kitchen from each other), asking questions and teasing them. I think it’s part curiosity, part amusement and mostly wanting to make it known that nothing can get past them. Paco works full-time at the restaurant and I got the feeling that they were making sure that he knew that they were watching him. Nothing could, should, or can affect his performance in the kitchen. In a sense, once you join this kitchen full-time, all of your business becomes their business.

In any event, that’s a long way of saying that everyone knew that Oliver was coming to town. During the lunch service on the day that he arrived, our executive chef called me into the center of the kitchen to tell me that I could eat with Oliver at the restaurant that night and that I didn’t have to come in on Sunday. I felt lucky. It was the best gift anyone could have given me—Ol and I now had almost a full day more together than we had expected.

I never imagined that I would have the opportunity to actually eat at the restaurant—to experience being a diner and a patron. To be honest, I felt jaded. Working in the kitchen is demystifying. I know how each dish is put together—how most of the components get from conception to physical form. I couldn’t imagine that I would undergo any feelings of wonder or awe or bewilderment—feelings that you certainly hope to have when eating at a three star Michelin restaurant. But I was determined to approach the evening with an open mind.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. From the moment we walked up the steps and into the grand mahogany double doors, on which and through which I had never walked previously, it felt alluring and enchanting. Maybe it was because it was the first time in six weeks that I had seen my husband, but I was overcome with how glamorous and luxurious it felt to walk into the space. We were greeted by the maître d, Felipe, one of my roommates, Wander, and the sommelier, Antonio. They greeted us in English with many, “Good Evenings!” I couldn’t help myself and laughed out loud. I’m used to seeing Felipe in some terrible European button down at a bar, Antonio standing next to him, singing loudly with one arm pumping the air, and Wander in his fuzzy fuchsia bathrobe and black and orange Polo Sport flip-flops. Their seemingly civil, refined and genteel manner was ironic and comical. These were not the heathens that I had spent the last six weeks getting to know. They helped us take off our coats and Felipe even offered me his arm as we walked to our table. I was in disbelief.

The first thing that struck me was how eerily silent it was. Oddly enough, the restaurant doesn’t play any music in the dining room. It was unnerving. Oliver and I felt like we had to whisper. The environment was as stiff and heavy as the perfectly pressed and pristine white tablecloths blanketing the dining tables.

Much to our surprise, our executive chef created a menu for us that included almost every dish in the restaurant. They had also arranged a wine pairing for almost each course.

Everything happened so fast and I developed a new respect for my colleagues in the front of house. (I later learned that Felipe is the youngest maître d, at 25, of any three star Michelin restaurant in the world, and that the restaurant’s service is considered to be practically perfect by some of the harshest industry critics.) They worked in perfect harmony—communicating with their eyes and silent gestures, dropping plates with white-gloved hands at precisely the same moment. I am certain that the amount of elapsed time between courses was exactly the same. When I accidentally dropped a bit of sauce on the tablecloth, Jose emerged from nowhere, swiftly and gracefully covering the soiled corner with a square of fresh linen, not having said a word, not making me feel embarrassed. In fact, he operated so smoothly and quickly that I didn’t fully recognize what he had done until he had left the table. Everyone expressed genuine concern for how well we were enjoying ourselves, the food, the wine, and the experience overall.

The diners spanned a large age range—some were as young as Oliver and I and others were older, perhaps around seventy. The dress covered an equally diverse array—some casually clad in jeans, others dapper in immaculate, handmade suits. We fell somewhere in between.

While I didn’t necessarily experience feelings of wonder and bewilderment, Oliver did. It was all over his face and I surprised myself by how excited I was to explain each dish and how it was made. My moment, so to speak, was more of an “Aha!” moment—I realized just how much I have learned in such a short period of time. I also gained a much better understanding of how and why our tasting menu is laid out the way it is. I could follow the method and reasoning and determine why we were having what when.

We were invited back to the kitchen at the end of our meal. I was stuffed (not uncommon for me, I realize) suffering from a disconcerting heartbeat and abnormal pulsing throughout my body. I was also drunk. I hadn’t had that much alcohol in one evening in months and it was circulating through my blood stream rapidly. It wasn’t exactly the state of mind and being I needed before introducing Oliver to Spain’s most decorated Michelin star chef in botched French.

Standing in our kitchen in dress clothes was an experience in and of itself. Everyone stared at us—Oliver mentioned under his breath that he felt like a zoo animal. Even though I had been permitted (invited even!) to eat at the restaurant, I felt guilty. I knew just how hard they had worked that night, how tired they were, how they had one more busy service to gear up for and how the last thing they wanted to do was scrub down and clean. By contrast, I was overly content, on my way to a beautiful hotel and could sleep as long as I wanted. Having spent six relentless weeks inseparable from a staff that is truly generous, kind and caring with one another, the evening became bittersweet when I entered the kitchen. I was grateful to be the recipient of the intense care and consideration that went into making our meal and slightly distressed that I hadn’t been there to participate.

Our executive chef took our hands in his and made sure that we had enjoyed everything. Oliver was also greeted by my chef instructor and one of the four head chefs that oversees primeras. Given the language barrier, our conversations were brief, but I think we were able to express our gratitude and awe through gestures, smiles and rosy cheeks.

Food Porn—Chuleta

Spain's T-Bone. Check her out.

Dry aged here.

Sliced as pintxos to share.

Crisped fat.

Cooked perfectly rare. Oh lord.

On the Issue of Cleanliness

Being away from home and familiarity can be a good thing. For me, it’s been positively challenging on myriad levels. I observe a different way of living and working on a daily basis and think about how I might want to mentally and physically change my approach to both when I return home. For instance, in the case of how conservative those around me seem to be when it comes to resources and consumption, I hope I can be just as such come April back in Brooklyn. When it comes to the issue of cleanliness in our kitchen, however, I’m not sure if I am incredibly uptight and slightly OCD as an individual or perhaps as an American, or if I have the right to be somewhat horrified.

Just as service started this afternoon, Malaga (a kid from Malaga, Spain—shocking), hopped into the center of the kitchen and plopped himself down at the central table. One of the four head chefs pulled out a sewing kit and a bottle of alcohol and iodine. After donning a pair of latex gloves, he had Malaga put his leg up on top of his knee and began to puncture (with a needle from the sewing kit) what looked like a boil on Malaga’s leg. Immediately, blood started to spurt out everywhere--the head chef even joked about how the blood might reach his eye. Realizing that he didn’t have anything to absorb and wipe up the blood, he shouted for plate wipes (small square cocktail napkins) and began dabbing away. He never took off his apron nor his chef’s coat and put bloody napkin after bloody napkin on the table.

What amazed me beyond this unhygienic and stomach-turning scene was that our executive chef had cooked a small plate of kokotxas and opened a few bottles of wine for one of his good amigos who happened to have stopped by. They didn’t flinch nor seem to notice what was taking place.

While this might seem like an isolated incident, there are daily practices that stun me. Perhaps New York City has an incredibly strict health code, which I now have an unending amount of respect and admiration for, or perhaps culturally, Americans are too preoccupied with dirt and germs, but here are some things that really, really, bother me in no apparent order—

There are no hand-washing stations and the act itself is not enforced. We are lucky if there is a bottle of dish detergent soap on the sink for us to use after going to the bathroom. The same sponges, mops, rags, buckets and brooms used to clean the toilets and showers are used to clean the cooking equipment that stays within our stations (that does not get sent to the dishwasher). The mops, brooms and buckets are stored outside in a huge dumpster where they are never able to dry (especially considering how much it rains here). We’ve served four-day old lobster. We’ve never thrown out the panko that we use to bread the raw oyster—with egg whites. In fact, it is my job to add more panko to the vessel when it is getting low. We use thick, blue, paper towel-like cloths to cover our mis-en-place—things like lettuces and chives that we don’t want to dry out. Those cloths are used minimally for one-week until they smell and then we are permitted to throw them out. Each station has a special, incredibly soft, blue towel used to wipe the plates that gets rinsed after every service, but then folded and put back in the refrigerator—again, not able to dry. We do the same with cheesecloth. Produce is stored on the floor of our walk-in (no the bottom shelf, I’m talking straight floor) with the lobsters. The water bottles that we drink out of that the restaurant provides to us are saved (not washed) and re-used to store and freeze stock. I guess that’s not terrible if the stock is then boiled at some point. I may or may not have seen individuals rounding up all of the half-empty water bottles, consolidating them, and then storing them in the large walk-in. After witnessing this—I have made sure that every bottle of water I take is sealed.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that in the case of kitchen cleanliness, I don’t think my “American-ness” or inherent OCD is repulsed and turned off by these practices, it’s just my common sense. Where is Spain’s health department?? (Although I am not applying this to the country at large!)

I know I'm behind the Times

so to speak...

but I was excited to learn that NYC has a new Basque inspired resto!

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/16/dining/reviews/16rest.html?ref=dining

Why I love having Spanish roommates...

When Deborah went home for the weekend to visit her grandmother she can back with this--

Fresh cheese and wine...

And homemade chorizo...I mean, really...

Improving My Txakoli Pour

Look at the height!