Have Blade Will Travel: The adventures of a traveling chef Read online

  “I know,” I defended. “But it isn’t done yet. It needs more eggs.” Oops. The smile disappeared.

  “No, it doesn’t need more eggs. You’ve made a valiant try, but I’m sorry young man, that is never going to be Egg Drop Soup.”

  “Oh. You’re probably right,” I replied, my enthusiasm somewhat deflated. “What should I do with it now?”

  “Well, for one thing you’re not going to throw away,” she affirmed. She looked down at the brew. “How many eggs did you use?”

  “Um… one box.”

  “My God. There are a dozen eggs in there?!?” She rolled her eyes in a way I had never seen before.

  “Um. Yeah. About a dozen.”

  “Boy, I hope you like Egg Salad, because you’re going to be eating it for a while.”

  “Oh...um...no problem mom,” I declared. “That’s great. I love egg salad. Especially Egg Drop Soup Egg Salad. Actually, it’s my favorite.”

  Years later, I realized that I had probably been spared serious punishment. I also realized that my experiment was an effort to understand a lifelong interest in food – and I speculated that I had been a culinary practitioner in a previous life. Accordingly, unresolved issues in that life were carried into this one, bringing with them an intense interest in, and attraction to everything of a gastronomic nature. In this scenario the ego insists on nothing less than the reincarnated spirit of Antoine Beauvillier, Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, Curnonsky, Dunand, Li Yü, or some other ancient gastronome of note. But in truth, if that had been the case, there would be little to resolve in this life. For Beauvillier, Brillet-Savarin, Curnonsky, Dunand and Li Yü were among a handful of notable gourmets, restaurateurs, and food writers who had made significant contributions to their craft during their lifetime.

  But for my Theory of Reincarnation to work in this particular case, I would have had to have been involved in the preparation of food in some way during a past life, but without completing a life’s work in that arena. I subsequently theorized that I had been in a more humble position–a kitchen minion in the home of an Etruscan nobleman, circa 500 BC; perhaps an aide-de-camp to Charlemagne in his 9 th-century court in Aachen; or a pâtissier in the Fifth Avenue mansion of Diamond Jim Brady. (In this theory of reincarnation, by the way, there was no exclusivity with regard to either gender or age.) Whether my theory was accurate or not, I concluded that the impact of that first evening in a public dining establishment was probably due to a variety of influences: a past life experience perhaps, combined with a healthy appetite, the excitement of experiencing new surroundings, and a relatively agreeable evening in the company of my parents and two young sisters.

  Just as Rod Serling and The Twilight Zone saved our family from the banalities of sitcom television and the dysfunctional family lies spun from the idiot box in the center of our living room, James Beard and Julia Child saved us from the tasteless, insipid, manufactured substances that our culture mistook for food. The Fireside Cook Book, Beard’s first solo published work, was the first cookbook I used, and it remains on my bookshelf to this day. As a consequence of The Great Egg Drop Soup Calamity, my Mom realized I had significant interest in culinary matters, and put it into my tender hands. That it had been published in 1949, my bir th-year, gave it an added significance. One evening soon thereafter, and under her tutelage, I prepared Veal Parmigiana, a fairly complex dish for a youngster of eight, and it was an undeniable success.

  The Fireside Cook Book was a guide to preparing European-style dishes in contemporary American kitchens, with an American slant. By today’s standards it is a bit retro and somewhat corny, but for its day it was full of personality and fresh ideas. The illustrations, by Alice and Martin Provensen, are also old-fashioned by today’s standards, but they are an indispensable part of the book’s character, and to this day I find them innocent and childlike.

  As for Julia, I was thirteen years of age when she began her show on NET – National Educational Television – the old channel 13 and the precursor to PBS. One rainy Saturday afternoon, I watched as she prepared a lobster dish, taking careful notes as she worked. Ucertain of the exact name of the dish, I wrote down “Lobster au Something-or-other” – though having begun a junior high school class French conversation, I soon understood the proper name, Homard à l’Americaine.

  Lobster Americaine – as it is commonly called in English, was the creation of Pierre Fraisse, the proprietor of Peter’s, a restaurant on the Passage des Princes, Paris, in 1854. Fraisse, who had lived and worked in the United States, had innovated the dish for a wealthy American patron, and later offered it, along with a number of other American dishes on his menu at Peter’s. Fraisse also introduced Turtle Soup, as well as the custom of slicing roast beef at tableside to the customer’s specifications. Peter’s was later sold, renamed Noel Peter’s, and became known for pioneering the concept of a “plat du jour” which changed daily.

  Aside from Miss Julia’s pronunciation of Homard à l’Americaine, there was something else I failed to understand, or at least to register. The homard she was cutting up was alive. She wasn’t sadistic. She simply had no choice. The naturally occurring enzymes in the lobster’s digestive tract begin to decompose its flesh the instant the creature expires, literally disintegrating it within a few hours. So Julia’s dish, like all lobster dishes, required that its primary ingredient, the lobster, start out alive. Like most ten-year-olds in 20 th-century America, I had no conception of the ordeals innocent creatures suffer to become ingredients in culinary masterpieces. Children of agricultural or hunter-gatherer cultures grow up taking all that for granted, but not city-bred kids like me. As I watched, my entire focus was on learning the method of preparation being demonstrated by the affable Ms. Julia. It would be several years before I developed the empathy to recognize the slaughter and was forced to deal with it.

  ― ● ―

  Homard à l’Americaine

  4 – 2-pound (4 – 1 kg) lobsters

  ¼ cup (60 mL) olive oil

  1 shallot, peeled and minced

  ½ cup (120 mL) Spanish onion, finely chopped

  2 stalks celery, finely chopped

  3 garlic cloves, minced

  1 cup (240 mL) Cognac

  1 cup (240 mL) dry white wine

  1 bay leaf

  1 bunch parsley stems & 2 sprigs tarragon, tied together with cotton twine

  6 vine-ripened (or equivalent canned) tomatoes, roughly chopped

  ½ pound (¼ kg) unsalted butter, cut into ½-inch (12 mm) pieces

  salt and cayenne pepper to taste

  ½ cup (120 mL) parsley, finely chopped

  On a cutting board on top of a small pan, cut the lobsters in half, and separate the tail from the main body. Split the tails in half, then remove the claws, and crack with the heel of the knife. Cut the body into about eight pieces, saving all juices that runs out of the lobster. Season lightly with salt.

  Heat the olive oil over a medium flame, then sauté the lobster pieces for several minutes, or until they turn bright red. Remove from the fire, and transfer the lobster pieces to a serving platter. When cool enough to handle, remove the meat from the tail and claws, and cut into 1-inch (25 mm) pieces. Set the meat aside, discard the claw shells, and reserve the tail shells and body pieces.

  Sauté the shallot, onion, celery and garlic in the olive oil for several minutes. Add the cognac, ignite, and allow the flame to die out. Add the white wine, the herbs, tomatoes, any juices collected when cutting the lobster, and the lobster shells to the pan. Cover, and gently simmer for 20 minutes.

  Strain the sauce through a fine sieve, making sure to extract all of the liquid. Return this sauce to the pan, and bring to a boil. Add the cut up butter, stirring continuously, under all of the butter is incorporated. Add the tail and claw meat. Season to taste with salt and cayenne pepper. Serve on an appropriate platter, using the tail shells to hold the lobster and sauce. Garnish with parsley sprigs.

  NB: There still exists today some dis
agreement over the true origin of Homard à l’Américaine. Some contend that the contemporary name is a corruption of Lobster à l’Armoricaine, in reference to its roots in Brittany, the nor th-western-most region of France, and the location of a mountain mass known as the Armorican massif. Brittany is well known for many lobster dishes, given its proximity to the North Atlantic, but it is not known for tomatoes. This dish, raw lobster sautéed in olive oil, and simmered with tomatoes, onion, garlic and parsley, is found in pre-19 th-century French cookbooks – notably Jules Gouffé’s Le Livre de Cuisine, published in the late 1860’s. Until the 19 th-century, tomatoes were scarcely known outside of the Mediterranean region, giving further credence to Gouffé’s name for this dish – Homard à la Provençale. Provence, a region of France located on the Mediterranean coast, and a celebrated gastronomic region – well-known for an abundant use of tomato, garlic and olive oil. Chef Michel Reculet, at the celebrated Parisian restaurant, Noël et Peters, made famous a dish entitled Homard à l’Americaine, about 1860, supposedly for a distinguished American diner. August Escoffier (1847-1935), the father of modern French cooking, contended that an unnamed cook created Langouste de la Mediterranée at Le Restaurant Française in Nice, then exported the Provence-style dish to the United States when he opened a restaurant there by the same name. It was then re-imported to France with the new name. I tend to side with Escoffier, because of his reputation, although the truth of the matter is probably somewhere between Noël et Peter’s Homard à l’Americaine, and the Langouste de la Mediterranée created by an unnamed cook.

  Chapter 2

  The French Chef Enigma Thing

  About a year after the dinner at Ho King, our family structure changed dramatically – when my parents separated and eventually divorced. As the sole male member of my household, many responsibilities were moved onto my shoulders. Since my mother was now compelled to work to support the family, it became my task to have dinner ready when she returned home from work. While the divorce did not sit well with me by any measure, I was initially able to rise to the challenge of helping to run the household.

  Mom taughtme a basic repertoire of dinner dishes – and this would be where the French naysayers might stand up and intone, “Zut alors! No wundair you Americans cannot kook!” While French youngsters were learning to sauté fattened goose liver, lard beef filets, roll out puff pastry, and simmer Pot au feu, I was learning Creamed Tuna on Toast, Baked Knockwurst and Potatoes, David's Special and William’s Glop. (Glop?!?)

  But the difference is more a matter of terminology than technique. Still, though Creamed Tuna was an elemental dish, it did require preparing a roux – a butter-and-flour paste – then blending in milk, bay leaf, salt and pepper in order to create a cream sauce, thus conveying to me, at the age of eight, a basic understanding of classical French sauce-making.

  The Knockwurst and Potatoes, a tribute to my mother’s Teutonic roots, gave me a chance to explore the possibilities of cooking inside an oven, and was clearly several notches above the proletarian “hot dogs.” And finally, there evolved a dish named in my honor – in truth, invented by my mother – though she has insisted ever since that we created it together. I clearly remember the evening she directed me through its creation, as well as the story that presaged the evening – a cherished tale from the family history, and which laid the groundwork for my soon-to-come effort. Here’s my mom, sharing a story from her newly-wed days:

  “During our early days in Los Angeles, David’s father learned that he had some distant cousins who also lived in Los Angeles, and was encouraged to contact them. The Williams’ owned a spaghetti factory and were quite affluent. He telephoned, and he and I were invited over for Sunday dinner. David was just a baby then, so we left him in the safe hands of our landlady, got dressed up, and headed off for our dinner rendezvous. En route we speculated about what was in store for us for dinner. Knowing how well off my husband’s cousins were, we imagined being served Pheasant Under Glass, perhaps a Roast Squab, or at the very least, a juicy steak. We laughed about it in great anticipation, and were certainly hungry enough in those days.”

  “After an hour’s drive, we arrived at the cousin’s home, an expansive estate, and met them for the first time. They were quite gracious and the four of us chatted over Pimm’s Cup cocktails and hors d’oeuvres. We eventually moved to the dinner table, where it was quite amazing that we behaved ourselves and didn’t dissolve into uncontrollable laughter. For dinner consisted of a casserole containing ground hamburger, diced canned tomatoes, cheese, and elbow macaroni. Tasty, of course, but hardly what we expected. And so, it became a standard for us, and a precursor to David's Special. And in honor of our cheapskate cousins, whose faces and names were quickly forgotten, we named it William’s Glop.”

  I have always cherished that tale, though there’s more. Here’s Mom again, with Part II, entitled How I Turned My Son Into A Chef: “I remembered how my mother had squelched any pleasure I ever had in cooking, because she had to supervise closely everything I did, and it always had to be her way. The cake batter had to be beaten exactly one-half-hour, the flour had to be sifted and folded in exactly the way she showed me, and so on. As a result, I hated cooking, was a complete novice when I got married, and turned into a nervous wreck whenever I had to prepare a meal. With all of this flashing through my mind, I encouraged my son to be creative in the kitchen.”

  “One hot summer day, as the kids and I were driving home from the beach, the inevitable daily question arose: ‘What’s for dinner Ma?’ So with the tale of William’s Glop fresh in our minds, I pulled out some ingredients – rice, hamburger, canned tomatoes, basil leaves from the garden, and some cheese for grating. David was only about ten years old then, but somehow we just put it all together, and named it David’s Special.”

  “Years later, during his second year of college, he announced that he wanted to study cooking – which reminded me of his interest in cooking dating back to his earliest years. He went on to become a very creative and able chef, authored a couple of cookbooks, and I like to think that some of the credit for all this belongs to me, because his sisters and I ate his creations with great gusto!”

  ― ● ―

  David’s Special (Serves 4-to-6)

  1 medium red onion, peeled and medium-diced

  ½ pound (¼ kg) ground beef chuck (15% fat content)

  ½ pound (¼ kg) ground pork

  salt and pepper to taste

  6 cloves garlic, peeled and pressed

  12 basil leaves, cut into fine strips

  the leaves of two sprigs of fresh thyme

  ¼ cup (60 mL) capers, drained

  1 cup (240 mL) Basmati rice

  12-ounce can (360 mL) diced tomatoes in juice

  grated Pecorino Romano cheese as needed

  Sauté the onion and ground beef and pork over a medium flame, stirring frequently, until the meat is fully cooked. Season lightly with salt and pepper. Add the garlic, herbs, and capers, and cook another few minutes.

  Add the rice and stir, blending well. Add the tomatoes, and blend. Cover and simmer over very low heat for 30 minutes, or until the rice is fully cooked.

  Adjust seasoning with salt and pepper, and serve with grated cheese.

  ― ● ―

  If terminology was the primary difference between what I was preparing and what my counterparts over the pond were creating, then it was simply a matter of adjusting the terminology. Thus, by shedding the old nomenclature, I was able to lay claim to the most advanced culinary repertoire of any eight-year-old-future-chef-of-the world in the United States of America – or anywhere, for that matter. Et voilà, my first répertoire!:

  La grande cuisine de jeune Davide, cuisinier Americain (The Great American Cooking of young David)

  Blanquette du thon, sur la croûte. (Creamed Tuna on Toast)

  Saucisson Allemande rôti, à la fermière. (Roasted Knockwurst with Potatoes)

  Le plat du jour à la façon du Davide, aussi connu
si hachis William. (Special of the Day in the Style of Davide, also known as William’s Glop)

  Now, it is undeniably true that Le plat du jour à la façon du Davide, aussi connu si hachis William sounds more impressive than David’s Special, also known as William’s Glop. And imagine what it would be like if prepared tableside – flamed with a bit of Kentucky Bourbon (Kentucky Bourbon?... French Bourbon Kings?... see what we are up against?!?!) by a waiter dressed in a tuxedo who would offer – in a thick accent – to grate some ancient, hard goat cheese from central Italy (alla Romano) over the top.

  Michel Guerard’s Cuisine Minceur, published in 1976, was a milepost along the road to a more defined and self-assured “American” cuisine, and a watershed in my own culinary evolution. Guerard’s “cooking of slimness” was heralded at the time as an innovative contribution to “nouvelle cuisine.” But in truth, it was little more than a publicity agent’s well-timed market strategy.

  Nouvelle cuisine is not a modern phenomenon. It dates back to the 5th-century BC, its principles established by Archestratus, a Greek poet born on the island of Gela, who wandered the shores of the Mediterranean Sea writing commentaries of his experiences in verse, including his philosophical musings of the relationship between food and physique. Even the title of Guerard’s book was a misnomer. Minceur means “slimness,” yet his recipes were only slightly lower in fat, and he achieved those reductions by corrupting traditional dishes in absurd ways. His Sauce Béarnaise for example, substituted some of the butter content with diced tomato and mushrooms. Since when does a Sauce Béarnaise contain tomato and mushroom?

  At a time when my colleagues and fellow aspiring chefs regarded Auguste Escoffier’s Guide Culinaire as an essential presence in our personal libraries, such corruptions represented transgressions of epic proportions. While we were cutting our culinary teeth and formulating our professional philosophies, this wanna-be-famous-in-every-American-household import was busily destroying his own classical tradition. A Béarnaise is a Béarnaise is a Béarnaise, and anyone wishing to cut down on the fat content in his or her diet should simply avoid sauces that consist primarily of fat – in the case of Béarnaise, egg yolks, hot clarified butter, essence of tarragon – and choose to eat something else.