Suffer For Your Craft

Suffer For Your Craft

By @ChefCornwall

Your hands hurt, your knees are stiff and aching, and your head is starting to pound as you clumsily reach for the snooze button on your alarm clock. The incessant beeping has stopped, and now you struggle with the lid of the ibuprofen bottle. There is a cut on both your thumb and fore finger of your right hand. The knuckle on your left ring finger displays a large abrasion. You brush your forearm against the bed as you try to stand. The sting reminds you of the purplish red burn striped across it. You stand up mumbling to yourself, “suffer for your craft” as the ache in your legs reminds you of last night’s service.
The smells, sounds, and feelings still linger in my senses; hiss of shallots sizzling in a saute pan, heat of flame as Marsala catches fire, chatter of the printer issuing tickets, dull thuds of pans and the sharp ring of plates on stainless steel. Shouts spilling out in the organized chaos.
“behind you”
“coming out hot hands”
“fire two crab cakes and a stuffed chicken”
“pantry I need drawn butter and three egg yolks in a steel bowl”
“careful that plate’s hot”
“dragging a filet six with a top 14 crab oscar”.
“can I get an expo to take this fucking food out before it dies in the window”

This is a normal morning following a normal night in my life as a chef.

I often wonder why I (or anyone in the food industry) put myself through the mental, verbal, and physical abuse night after night. It is definitely not for the money. Chefs like Emeril Legasse and Bobby Flay can achieve celebrity status but for the majorities that’s a pipe dream. We are paid just enough to furnish an unextravagant life. We are millions of workers in a service industry. We are paid to serve. Yet the industry attracts people from all walks of life from the ivy leaguer whose daddy paid $75,000 for two years at the CIA (the Culinary Institute of America of course not spy camp) to the high school drop out. Who is simply there because the restaurant needs a warm body to execute a menial task. Actors, gamblers, college graduates, sociopaths, writers, alcoholics, veterans, burned out construction workers the culinary world has them all. The old cliché definitely rings true. I love my job because I meet the most interesting people. Maybe it’s the chance to get paid to play with knives and fire while occasionally being furnished with free booze.
I wonder why I allow my wife to become a stranger four days out of the week. I know her only as the woman who sleeps next to me. Her sandy red curls fall softly on the pillow as she breathes deeply in her sleep. I remember this before exhaustion completes its grasp. We exchange words briefly at night and in the morning. We both never fully comprehend the other, one still wiping the sleep from their eyes while the other has the fresh energy of the day. I hate the waitress that wears her perfume. I am excited by the scent and turn expecting a pleasant surprise, but I am only fooled by own senses. The special will now have to be something strong; yes saffron, but I will also need something sweet to remind me of her kind blue eyes. Vanilla. “Hey Mac, lets run the Sablefish with a saffron vanilla reduction. Use the mussel stock and some Fume Blanc then just add butter until it tastes right”. That will ease the pain for tonight.
I take her into the kitchen with me every night at service. It is unholy place filled with fire, sweat, blood and many night tears. I find their salinity an excellent source for seasoning. I strive for a perfection that will never be fully achieved. It is the same futility that coincides with Hollandaise sauce; if it is too hot it will break, if it is too cold it will coagulate and the perfect temperature invites bacteria. It is in her honor. She deserves it.
I cook with the same intensity every night. A passion to please. It is mostly a selfish pleasure because it is never for the customer. Most often for me and always for her. The special I create must be a focus of beauty and simplicity. It is my tribute, my David, my Sistine Chapel, except it will not stand the test of time it will only last minutes after it is created. As soon as it is born it begins to die just like her and I.
When I am with her the necessity of fate to invade irony into one’s life persists and the kitchen is with me as well. The two can never truly be separated because they are unequivocal passions that weave my life together. I grab her hand and walk quickly to the opening of the mall, “will you slow down?” she asks exasperated.
“I am going slow.” I say to her not realizing that I keep my kitchen pace every where I go as if I’m constantly burdened with another deadline that must be met. My pace slows, but only for a minute before I unconsciously quicken the pace again. I have the list in my hands and if we deviate from the list I must let my disapproval known, “that’s not on the list”. She will grab the list and tear it up because she knows how much that will damage my sense of orientation for the day.
When I walk into my professional kitchen the first thing I need, after a cup of strong coffee, is my prep list. In a kitchen you must understand that your whole lively hood of being successful and some what sane revolves around lists. There is a list for everything, I even have a list, listing all my lists. I start with my prep list because that will set the tone for the day and decide my mood. Will I be nice Chef who likes to joke and play or will I be the hardass that has to make sure everyone is working at top speed for the entire eight hours. Then you move on to the production list, an order list, a produce list, a fresh seafood list, sushi order list, an equipment list, an inventory list, a daily specials list, a time off request list, an employee phone list, a purveyor list, and even the pad I always carry in pocket is a list of ideas for new lists.
My wife has always had a love hate relationship with food. I believe it is the irony persisting in her life that led her to marry a chef. She told me the first time she realized strong emotions for me was during a conversation about edible flowers. On our first date I cooked her dinner. I made her Pork Chops with a pizziaoili sauce on top of creamy gorgonzola polenta accompanied by crispy egg plant fritters. I did not know at the time she was a vegetarian with an eating disorder. She ate the whole plate, I did not find out till weeks later she was a vegetarian and was fighting to overcome anorexia. She says I saved her but I believe it was her who saved me.
She wants to cook with me because she believes it will bring us closer together. She gathers the ingredients bright green celery, round yellow onions, crisp purple carrots, lean ground lamb and buffalo, and aromatic fennel. Everything starts fine until I forget that I am cooking with my wife and this is supposed to be for pleasure.
“Those cuts are to big, I said small dice”
“When I said salt I meant Kosher not table”
“Quit stirring the meat you’ll break down the collagen”
“No, I’ll carmelize the fennel”
By the time I realize what I am doing it is to late the damage has been done. The dish may turn out just has I imagined it, but the most important ingredient was mishandled and is already starting to wilt.
It is frequent that late into the evening I sit languishing the insomnia that my profession by nature provides. It was upon one of these occasions I witnessed a replay of Nathan’s Coney Island Hot Dog Eating Contest. The contest took place 4th of July 2007 the defending champion five time winner, Japan’s Takeru Kobayashi was squared off against American hopeful Joey Chestnut. It was like watching a bad foreign movie. You didn’t fully understand what was going on, but could not look away. The two men masticating at top speed hot dog to hot dog. It looked as though it was going to be a photo finish until at the last moment Takeru vomited all over national television. Joey Chestnut had won. The crowd went wild spectators rushed the stage and wrapped him in an American flag. While fervently chanting, “Chestnut, Chestnut, Chestnut”. I was almost caught up in the moment excited for America to be back on top. Then I realized is this what all my years of hard work and training have supported. For the world to recognize America for gluttony and consumption.
I was disappointed in myself and the rest of the consumers who ruin themselves with hot pockets and Mcdonalds. Shouldn’t something that sustains life on earth be more sacred, revered like the sacramental wafer? It is in these moments of clarity that I know this juxtaposition of edible ideals is not an insult to my profession but a testament for my need to help educate. The need to understand that food should be considered a craft guided by skillful hands and not rude organic material to be pumped out on an assembly line.
It is consumption that drives most people to food not appreciation. The taste of a tomato is no longer vibrant it has been degraded by commercialism to a thing of mere pulp and texture you find in the grocery store. Mangoes, bright red strawberries, tender orange tangelos, blood red pomegranates, luscious nectarines, tiny kumquats, tart sweet lemons, tomatoes, and pineapples all lined up in perfect columns or stacked with the grace of the ancient pyramids in focal displays. I find it odd that the technique to sell food is to take it completely away from its natural element as though oranges grow in perfect lines or cantaloupes spring up in pyramidal design. It is our convenience conditioned states that we so readily take without question what is supplied to us. If you want a mango you can easily go to the grocery store and purchase it, but when you arrive home and begin to engorge yourself on the delicacy do you think where it came from? The chances are you don’t know. If it is winter the mango most likely traveled from Mexico or South America where pesticide laws are less strict.
In the summer time perhaps you are lucky enough to find heirloom tomatoes from a roadside vendor or farmer’s market. Take a bite. Now you remember. Maybe you are on a farm at your grandparents or in the backyard with your mother or a picnic with friends, that one bite takes you back. Transported through time on flavor itself. The aroma of spices like cinnamon and clove almost always remind people of the holidays and time spent with family and friends. Smell and taste are direct links to the past. The power of food is immense. It can delight and disgust.
Food is emotionally charged, a chef who cooks without emotion or passion cooks without flavor. Ingredients must be treated like people, handled properly and not abused so they can reach their full potential.
My wife is the most important ingredient in my life and still I have to remember to slow down take my time. Handle with care and use the proper accompaniments to produce the greatest flavor. The possibilities are endless anything can be achieved. If I want the elements I can have them in one course if I desire. I would start with a fresh Kumomoto Oyster paired with a fine sparkling water to bring me back to the ocean I use to play in as a child. Then move to classically prepared escargot to provide the earthy taste of a warm spring afternoon when the rain has just stopped falling and finish with a flaming Dr. pepper. A flaming Dr. Pepper is similar to a Boiler Maker in the sense that it involves dropping a shot of alcohol into a glass of beer. The shot of alcohol in our case is Amaretto with a floater of Bacardi 151 on top. You light the shot on fire then drop into the beer and the chemical concoction amazingly enough tastes like Dr. pepper. Enjoy all this while inhaling subtly flavored oxygen like the kind you find at a chic downtown Manhattan oxygen bar and our tour is complete. I have mastered then consumed all four elements in one meal. I have ingested the world around in an attempt to understand the mysteries that elude the common human consciousness.
Why do I suffer for my craft? It is a craft that alienates me from the outside world and often from my family. While the rest of society is enjoying Christmas or Thanksgiving I am focused in creation of food for their table; a slave to my work, a tyrant for quality from those who surround me. I am sensualist in the constant enjoyment of the flavors and the feelings I have created. I am a painter who watches his masterpiece become born only to see it die in hope of approval. I am a teacher of knowledge that surrounds us all, only a need to accept it to learn it. I am a pupil constantly being taught by the arduous task of being kind to food, my always trusting and stunning wife, painful trail and error, the wisdom of family, untainted bliss of children, eccentric colleagues, the unyielding loyalty of friends and the blindingly fast changing world around me. These are the stones I use to build upon my craft.
Most of all I am a chef. I cook from my heart and deliver to your senses. Food is my tool and taste is my canvas, “table five orders up!”.