During my eight months in New York, I started by renting a very expensive apartment in Brooklyn—in the area known as Boerum Hill. At that time (in 1974), it was an area that was “gentrifying.” I had no furniture to put in it. I was waiting for Cecille to leave Clearlake City, Texas and to move in with me.
But she was having too much fun. She worked for NASA as an editor, cleaning up conversations between Russian cosmonauts and American astronauts living together in the Skylab.
I didn’t realize how much fun she was having. On faith, I started fixing up the apartment. It had a really spacious living room facing the street (on the ground floor), a cute little garden space, and a very handsome kitchen. I started by chopping up about 100 square feet of concrete and dropping it into a cistern that probably dated from the mid 19th century—at least before city water. I purchased a lot of used bricks, which were delivered on the street, and I hauled them across the apartment, through the beautiful French doors, into the garden, and set them in, herringbone pattern.
During the spring, I finished the 9 units required for graduation. I took 3 courses by correspondence: Spanish, Vegetable Crops, and Nutrition. The Spanish course was the best, as I got to practice it at work and the textbook was especially well written. The Vegetable Crops book was poor, and the chapter questions were moronic: basically, you found the part of the chapter that answered the question and parroted it back. I found the Nutrition course to be useful, though depressing. I remember two facts from it: you can live indefinitely on sliced tomatoes and cottage cheese and one slice of cake contains 400 calories that require one hour of hard running to wear off.
Some time during that summer, I did a crazy thing of which I’m proud. Ah, youth. After my dinner shift was over at Quo Vadis, I walked from 63rd and Madison to my place in Boerum Hill. This took 3 hours. I walked through the Bowery, across the Brooklyn bridge, and through much of downtown Brooklyn, arriving around 2:30 AM. I then dropped myself into the bathtub and fell asleep, waking up at around 7 AM in ice-cold water. A life should have adventures like that.
During the summer, I started hanging out with the Rosenbergs. Ben was a friend from college and by spring, he had graduated. So, actually had I. Ben returned to stay with his mother, Marilyn, along with two other brothers. They all lived in a large brownstone on Congress Street in Brooklyn Heights. Marilyn decided that I needed mothering and mentoring, so she graciously invited me for dinner on numerous occasions. And in the fall, I moved in. I wanted to save my money, and Marilyn was a lot of fun to be around. She knew a lot of people and she introduced me to them. For example, I met the New York Times Science editor, who lived down the street.
In the summer, Marilyn got a used Saab. I drove it around town periodically. Once, I was driving on the East Side Highway and the temperature gauge needle moved to Hot. I pulled over at a gas station and asked the attendant what to do. He turned on the engine, opened the radiator cap, and shot cold water into the radiator. It shot back out as a 15 foot geyser. He said, “That’s a hot block!”
At some point in the summer, we drove two of her sons to Dartmouth for summer camp. We rode bicycles all day around the campus, dropped off the two boys, took a nap until 3 AM, then drove back through Massachusetts. I fell asleep. Driving. When I woke up, reflectors on poles were smashing into the front hood; I was plowing the down like blades of grass. Then, quite suddenly, the car lurched left and rolled backwards down an embankment. Marilyn woke up and we crawled out of the ruined car.
We stood on the side of the road and flagged down a passing truck which took us to the nearest police station, which was in Springfield, Massachusetts. As we stood at the counter and described the accident, four officers were sitting around a table, playing cards. We asked if someone could give us a lift to a motel. They said that there was no one available. So, we walked back to the highway and got a lift to a motel. It was about 4 AM at this time. The old man who opened the door took one look at us (a 40-year-old woman and a 24-year-old man) and he told us that he would not rent to people who live in sin.
So, we walked once again back to the highway, thumbed a ride back into Springfield, and I took a bus back to Brooklyn and then wired money to Marilyn. The amazing thing about the story: she forgave me.
They say that insanity is when you make a mistake twice. Years later, I fell asleep at the wheel—this time in Switzerland on the side of a mountain. I came within inches of plunging the rental car into a ravine that was thousands of feet deep. I got out of the car and a man pulled up behind, “Was für ein Dumbkopf sind Sie? Gehen Sie sofort zu ein Hotel! (What sort of idiot are you? Go to a hotel immediately!) Of course, that’s what I was planning on doing, but I wanted to reach Interlaken, which I did.
As summer progressed, I decided that the standing invitation by Patricia to start a business together in Austin, Texas was just too good an opportunity. I could move closer to Cecille. I could live in the southwest, which seemed exotic. And I could start my own business and have fun!
So at some point in the summer, I gave notice. Chef Bernard was really mad at me. He couldn’t understand why I’d throw away an opportunity to become a really well trained chef. And of course, he was very right. But it wasn’t the only opportunity I’d thrown away. Years before, I’d had a chance to be the personal assistant to Arne Larson who had the world’s largest collections of musical instruments, and I’d thrown that opportunity away as well. Now that collection is housed in the Shrine to Music collection in Vermillion, South Dakota. And, I’ve thrown away a lot of other opportunities since.
I bought a Ford station wagon weighing 4400 pounds with a 400 horsepower V8 motor, so big in the back that you could lay a 4X8 sheet of plywood flat in it. I paid $300 to the owner of an air-conditioning business. He used it to haul stuff and then he had given it to his daughter, who rammed the back-end into a tree, breaking the tail-light and the latch on the back gate. Also, the transmission was missing first gear. Otherwise, it ran well.
I taped a duo-tang cover onto the back left tail-light and fastened the gate closed with a coathanger. Ben wanted to come along to visit a friend, so we started out. We drove to South Dakota, stayed with my parents, then drove south to Oklahoma, where we stayed with friends of my father’s, and finally one evening we pulled into Austin. It was dusk and we arrived at Patricia and Joe’s just in time for dinner.
We walked into the kitchen and there, on the table, was a bag of dead pigeons, all with their feathers, and all with a bullet somewhere in their body. Turns out that one of Joe’s fellow professors had stolen a nightscope rifle from a local Army base and shot 12 Austin city pigeons in the park along Lamar, then brought them over for someone to clean. That was my introduction to Austin. We each ate a roast pigeon that night. Park pigeons are very tasty. Too bad they don’t know that in New ork’s Central Park or Venice’s St. Mark’s Square.
We wasted no time getting started. We looked into getting a small business loan, but these are designed for companies that have been in business for 5 years and that lack capital to grow. We made an appointment with a banker, and we quickly learned that banks don’t loan to new businesses unless they have some sort of collateral they’re willing to lose. I was able to borrow money from my father and from my aunt and Patricia and Joe sold value in their life insurance policy in order to raise $10,000. We used that money to start a pilot project that consisted of renting a restaurant at the top of the city’s highest building from midnight until 8 AM.
We started by producing cakes for various restaurants. One of our earliest cakes was an almond torte ice with almond flavored buttercream. We specialized in using fun-shaped molds. I remember delivering a fish-shaped cake complete with almond scales to a sorority party. I walked into a large room just bursting with Texas femininity, complete with feigned helplessness, stunning looks, and the requisite drawl.
During this period, we were researching our next step during the day while producing pastries and cakes for wholesale accounts at night. Sometimes, right around 3 AM, I would get so tired I would disappear into the bathroom. After a half hour had elapsed, Patricia would call in to me to see if I was still alive. I suppose the snores gave me away.
Working in the wee hours of the morning was not easy, especially considering my own clock. I remember getting so tired that things would start to move in my peripheral vision—a garbage can would unexpectedly shift a foot to the left. One of our memories of those early days was of my breaking eggs and separating them to make a cake and throwing the shells into the trash can. I would crack an egg, separate it, then throw the shell over my shoulder into the trash can.
The next day, we delivered a cake to one of the posh restaurants and later got a phone call regarding an almond torte with eggshell right in the middle. One of the egg shells hadn’t made it into the trash can and Patricia, equally tired, had placed the next layer right on top.
In the beginning, I ate at Patricia and Joe’s house regularly. They were extremely generous people and, besides throwing the best parties in all of Austin, both of them were highly accomplished cooks. Joe was a born meat-roaster and smoker. For as long as I knew him, he made the best smoked salmon, smoked anything. Roaster/smokers are born, not made. He was born with the gift.
Patricia really knew how to bring the flavors out of food. The best thing she made, which I haven’t had since even though I’ve tried, is chile relleno. I am not talking about the cheese-filled one, which seems to be the only version one can find in restaurants. I’m talking about roast poblanos stuffed with rice, nuts, raisins.
Patricia had spent a junior year abroad in Mexico, and whoever she came in contact with really influenced her. She also made excellent guacamole and huevos rancheros.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
37. QUO VADIS?
The last semester at Oberlin was bittersweet. I was finally beginning to really like the school. Perhaps I was feeling very much at home at Asia House and enjoying all the cultural offerings of this fabulous school.
My last semester, I had a magnificent room with lots of sun pouring in through the windows. Outside the windows were quince bushes. I picked a bunch of quinces and then made quince jelly, which is so very aromatic. I deposited the pomace on a sheetpan, believing I could let it dry and gradually turn into fruit leather.
I slid the sheetpan under my bed. It didn’t turn into fruit leather but into fruit flies, and I had to pitch it.
I was ready to leave school, so I moved to New York City with still 9 units left in order to graduate. I decided that my time would be better spent in the city, working. I hit the ground, running. I stayed in a dumpy hotel near Times Square, one in which the primary aroma in the room is of roaches, a common aroma in New York City.
I spent days going from one French restaurant to another, asking about jobs. This time, I didn’t look in the newspaper’s Help Wanted section.
I even had the cheek to walk into the Four Seasons Restaurant, and I spoke with the big chef himself and with George Lang, who was a partner in the group that owned Four Seasons and other big-name restaurants. George Lang told me that I wasn’t ready to be hired by his restaurant although when pressed for what attributes I lacked, he didn’t respond. Years later, when I was a faculty member at Cornell, I met him again. He was considered to be a pioneer in the new-age restaurants of New York.
And indeed, Four Seasons was just that. It had a regularly changing menu. It used fresh ingredients, often using locally grown rather than the old and flavorless California stuff. It was multi-ethnic, reflecting New York itself. And who better to be a chef than a Swiss?
After maybe three days, I walked into Quo Vadis and asked to see the chef. He hired me on the spot. Eugène Bernard, the tiger of Anthony Bourdin’s Kitchen Confidential, the subject of an entire chapter.
I would work for Chef Bernard for a good 8 months. I was, others informed me, “the 200th Poissonier that Chef Bernard had hired in the 11 years he had worked at Quo Vadis.
Named after the Christian book of that name (and the schmaltzy Hollywood movie) that promoted the stereotypes of Christians good, Romans bad, Quo Vadis had opened shortly after WWII. It was the brainchild of Bruno Caravaggi and Gino Robusti, who met in Belgium and who left Europe on one of the last liners out. They were hired in the Belgian Restaurant at the 1939 World’s Fair, famous for its prediction of the use of computers in kitchens. After the war was over, they opened their new establishment on the site of the old Brussels Restaurant, at 63rd and Madison. Within two years, they became known as paragons of politeness, and in 1968, Craig Claiborne had given the restaurant four stars.
Chef Bernard was a tyrant. He yelled. He slammed his fist on the counter. The cook staff consisted of mostly Puerto Ricans. The Saucier was Puerto Rican. Short, pudgy, and very bright, he produced exactly what Bernard wanted. He stood to my right. On my left was the Rotisseur, an old Puerto Rican, who had the knack of cooking everything à point. A Puerto Rican who staffed the Garde Manger; I can’t remember what he produced. I know we sold a lot of hearts of palm salads, I’m guessing with a Sauce Gribiche, Bernard’s favorite. And in the back, in his own room, was the German patissier, who ruled his own turf and wouldn’t tolerate any yelling from Bernard. He specialized in lots of petits fours, such as 1 inch diameter Florentines (the best cookie of all time.)
I was Bernard’s primary focal point. I can’t remember what dishes I produced, other than a luscious lobster dish that involved cutting a lobster live into pieces, sautéing it, flambéing in cognac, extracting it from its shell, boiling down the sauce. Meanwhile I had to do all that with my fingertips, which became hardened, like those of a violinist.
One of my first days on the job, Bernard said, “Make me a shrimp curry.” I had no idea how to do it. I started by sautéing the shrimp (right), then adding some tomato sauce (wrong). He screamed, “You idiot!” and flew behind the line, hitting me hard with his hip and sending me flying into the Saucier. He then proceeded to demonstrate how to make a shrimp curry.
I took the abuse, unlike my predecessors, because I really wanted to learn. Also, I had grown up with a tyrannical male figure, my father, who demonstrated his tyranny in Germanic rather than Gallic ways. And a third reason that I could take the abuse: I was used to it, having worked in three kitchens in France.
Chef Bernard taught me how to actually taste food and to cook, just as Miss Truran taught me how to listen to musical lines, bring out voices, and playing close into the keys. Bernard taught me about the importance of reduction, potentiating flavor with salt, balancing tastes and flavors, accentuating notes (which the French call relever).
Every Saturday morning, Chef Bernard would insist that I stand at my station, he sitting at the “pass” and we chatted. For hours. I don’t remember any of our conversations, but we obviously had plenty to say to each other. I know that one of his favorite conversations was about the superiority of the French over the English language. It was his contention that French verbs were more precise. I suspect that in the culinary realm, he may be right. For example, there isn’t an English equivalent to frasage, which refers to initial stages of mixing a dough when the glutenous proteins are hydrating. Vanner is another one, referring to a careful stirring of a liquid using a wooden spoon.
In the culinary realm, he was my finest teacher. But I had to leave because I had bigger fish to fry. Those fish were in Austin, Texas.
My last semester, I had a magnificent room with lots of sun pouring in through the windows. Outside the windows were quince bushes. I picked a bunch of quinces and then made quince jelly, which is so very aromatic. I deposited the pomace on a sheetpan, believing I could let it dry and gradually turn into fruit leather.
I slid the sheetpan under my bed. It didn’t turn into fruit leather but into fruit flies, and I had to pitch it.
I was ready to leave school, so I moved to New York City with still 9 units left in order to graduate. I decided that my time would be better spent in the city, working. I hit the ground, running. I stayed in a dumpy hotel near Times Square, one in which the primary aroma in the room is of roaches, a common aroma in New York City.
I spent days going from one French restaurant to another, asking about jobs. This time, I didn’t look in the newspaper’s Help Wanted section.
I even had the cheek to walk into the Four Seasons Restaurant, and I spoke with the big chef himself and with George Lang, who was a partner in the group that owned Four Seasons and other big-name restaurants. George Lang told me that I wasn’t ready to be hired by his restaurant although when pressed for what attributes I lacked, he didn’t respond. Years later, when I was a faculty member at Cornell, I met him again. He was considered to be a pioneer in the new-age restaurants of New York.
And indeed, Four Seasons was just that. It had a regularly changing menu. It used fresh ingredients, often using locally grown rather than the old and flavorless California stuff. It was multi-ethnic, reflecting New York itself. And who better to be a chef than a Swiss?
After maybe three days, I walked into Quo Vadis and asked to see the chef. He hired me on the spot. Eugène Bernard, the tiger of Anthony Bourdin’s Kitchen Confidential, the subject of an entire chapter.
I would work for Chef Bernard for a good 8 months. I was, others informed me, “the 200th Poissonier that Chef Bernard had hired in the 11 years he had worked at Quo Vadis.
Named after the Christian book of that name (and the schmaltzy Hollywood movie) that promoted the stereotypes of Christians good, Romans bad, Quo Vadis had opened shortly after WWII. It was the brainchild of Bruno Caravaggi and Gino Robusti, who met in Belgium and who left Europe on one of the last liners out. They were hired in the Belgian Restaurant at the 1939 World’s Fair, famous for its prediction of the use of computers in kitchens. After the war was over, they opened their new establishment on the site of the old Brussels Restaurant, at 63rd and Madison. Within two years, they became known as paragons of politeness, and in 1968, Craig Claiborne had given the restaurant four stars.
Chef Bernard was a tyrant. He yelled. He slammed his fist on the counter. The cook staff consisted of mostly Puerto Ricans. The Saucier was Puerto Rican. Short, pudgy, and very bright, he produced exactly what Bernard wanted. He stood to my right. On my left was the Rotisseur, an old Puerto Rican, who had the knack of cooking everything à point. A Puerto Rican who staffed the Garde Manger; I can’t remember what he produced. I know we sold a lot of hearts of palm salads, I’m guessing with a Sauce Gribiche, Bernard’s favorite. And in the back, in his own room, was the German patissier, who ruled his own turf and wouldn’t tolerate any yelling from Bernard. He specialized in lots of petits fours, such as 1 inch diameter Florentines (the best cookie of all time.)
I was Bernard’s primary focal point. I can’t remember what dishes I produced, other than a luscious lobster dish that involved cutting a lobster live into pieces, sautéing it, flambéing in cognac, extracting it from its shell, boiling down the sauce. Meanwhile I had to do all that with my fingertips, which became hardened, like those of a violinist.
One of my first days on the job, Bernard said, “Make me a shrimp curry.” I had no idea how to do it. I started by sautéing the shrimp (right), then adding some tomato sauce (wrong). He screamed, “You idiot!” and flew behind the line, hitting me hard with his hip and sending me flying into the Saucier. He then proceeded to demonstrate how to make a shrimp curry.
I took the abuse, unlike my predecessors, because I really wanted to learn. Also, I had grown up with a tyrannical male figure, my father, who demonstrated his tyranny in Germanic rather than Gallic ways. And a third reason that I could take the abuse: I was used to it, having worked in three kitchens in France.
Chef Bernard taught me how to actually taste food and to cook, just as Miss Truran taught me how to listen to musical lines, bring out voices, and playing close into the keys. Bernard taught me about the importance of reduction, potentiating flavor with salt, balancing tastes and flavors, accentuating notes (which the French call relever).
Every Saturday morning, Chef Bernard would insist that I stand at my station, he sitting at the “pass” and we chatted. For hours. I don’t remember any of our conversations, but we obviously had plenty to say to each other. I know that one of his favorite conversations was about the superiority of the French over the English language. It was his contention that French verbs were more precise. I suspect that in the culinary realm, he may be right. For example, there isn’t an English equivalent to frasage, which refers to initial stages of mixing a dough when the glutenous proteins are hydrating. Vanner is another one, referring to a careful stirring of a liquid using a wooden spoon.
In the culinary realm, he was my finest teacher. But I had to leave because I had bigger fish to fry. Those fish were in Austin, Texas.
36. BAKERY INTERNSHIP
Cecille and I flew to Vienna together. She had arranged with a former college roommate, Patricia, that we could stay with Patricia and her husband, Joe. He was there on a Fullbright. Friends of theirs vacated a large apartment on Praterstrasse, so we were able to rent it for $500 per month. This was an enormous sum of money back then, but we were able to live frugally; I lost only $500 over the summer.
I reported for work soon after we arrived. Schlögl u. Faber was a large wholesale/retail bakery on Rennweg. I started to work at 4 AM, so I had to get up at 3 AM and walk several miles, starting on Praterstrasse, past the Stadtpark, then left on Rennweg, past the Hotel Belvedere.
On the way, I passed another bakery, and once I peered inside. It was really old-fashioned. Pastries were set to proof on planks of wood, which were held on long, horizontal poles that spanned the width of the bakery. So, proofing was not done in proofing rooms. The whole bakeshop was a proofing room.
My bakery was shaped like a two-story horseshoe. On one side was the bread bakery. And the second floor were the bakers’ quarters. Everyone slept together in one room on metal cots lined up. Oh the leg of the horseshoe was the retail shop, the cake decorating area, the pastry ovens, the cake batter mixer, and the sheeter for rolling out the pastries. Above us, lived the women.
One day, at the end of my shift, I heard a violin. I looked up at the womens’ quarters to see a lovely young woman playing the violin while sitting in a window. In Vienna, women spend a lot of times at their windows. There are even cushions designed for sitting in the windows; they are called Fensterpolstern.
Between the legs of the horseshoe were storage and bread crumbs and croutons manufacture. One of the major items made by the bakery were breadcrumbs, an important ingredient in Viennese cuisine. They are the foundation of Apfelstrudel, of some dumplings, and of Wienerschnitzel.
My main job was manufacture of golatschen. I made 2,000 a day with another fellow. Golatschen, filled with powidl (red plum), topfen (sweetened cheese), or mohn (poppyseed paste) are Viennese “Danish.”
At this point, I need to give my customary lecture about “Danish.” The dough was invented in Vienna. In fact, in Denmark, Danish dough is called Wienerbrød or Viennese bread.
The croissant and the baguette (which we call French bread) were also invented by the Viennese. Croissants and Danish are very much related, as they are made with yeast-leavened dough that is sheeted or rolled out with butter to make multiple layers. In France, all pastries made with croissant or Danish doughs are called Viennoiserie.
There are more than several stories about the origin of the croissant. One has it that Viennese bakers heard the Turks tunneling under the city’s walls and sounded the alarm. A Viennese baker eventually developed the pastry to commemorate the victory against the Turks. Another story talks about a Polish general who, hired to defeat the Turks, was paid in coffee. He established coffee houses and developed the croissant to go with the beverage.
Neither story is likely to be true, but they’re still fun to tell.
The golatschen (called kolachi in the old Czechoslovakia) were unimaginative visually. Made of squares of dough topped with a dollop of filling which was then enclosed by folding the corner in, the flavors were distinguished by cutting a circle, a square, or a rectangle of dough and gluing it over the corners to seal them together. The two bakers I worked with once asked me, “Do you think we could make a go of it making golatschen in the U.S.?” Being an agreeable sort, I responded, “Why not?” In retrospect, however, I believe that golatschen would never sell. This is because Americans want to see their fillings. They want them displayed. To us, seeing a big blop of cherry preserves is better than hiding it inside the dough. We want to see value, we want to trust, but verify.
Viennese, on the other hand, are content to trust.
An alternate interpretation, less economical and more psychological is as follows. Vienna is the home of psychoanalysis, as Sigmund was Viennese, after all. In fact, Freud could never have succeeded if there weren’t a lot of neurotic women who wanted to employ his services. He found, then, that they tended to hide their feelings. In the U.S., in contrast, we tend to show our feelings, and we have less need for psychoanalysis. Thus, the Viennese hide their fillings and their feelings, whereas we Americans display our fillings and our feelings. I don’t believe a word of it. But pop psychology is entertaining.
We also made apple strudel. Not the housewife method, which involves pulling the dough until it is so thin you can read the Wiener Zeitung through it. Instead, we rolled the dough out and enclosed apples and bread crumbs inside. We sold it to the coffeehouse at the Stadtpark. We sold it for 15 cents a portion and they sold it for $2 per portion. It was good, but not great.
We made punschkrapfen. Now there’s a fun item. Definitely blue collar. You take all the scraps of cake and puff pastry and you mix them with sugar syrup and rum. The sugar syrup we made from candy scraps we purchased from a nearby candy factory. And the rum, well, it tasted a lot like Uhu Glue. We lined sheet pans with cake (biscuit) and smashed the brown paste on top, then we put another sheet of biscuit on top of that. We put a sheetpan on this and then jumped up and down on the sheetpan to press the layers together.
This cake and punsch sandwich was cut into cubes, dipped into pink fondant, and sold individually as a POS item at the cash register. Years later, I tried to make and sell this item—in Texas, in D.C., in New York. Americans won’t buy stuff like that. It’s too sweet, too rummy, too unfamiliar.
There were four of us working in the sweet goods bakery. Technically, we were considered to be Zuckerbäcker, because we made cookies, cakes, and pastries. One of us decorated the wedding cakes; he was the head Zuckerbäcker. Another specialized in cakes.
He had a mixer all to himself. He made typical Austrian tortes. The nusstorten, made with hazelnuts, almonds, or walnuts, were basically biscuit type batters with nut flours replacing half the wheat flour. A Haselnußtorte for example was made with hazelnut flour and iced with whipped cream.
This of course was not the cream from cows. It was really what we call in the U.S. baking industry a “topping”. We made it by heating milk, sugar, and egg yolk together like a crème anglaise, then homogenizing palm oil margarine into it. It actually tasted pretty good. We chilled this in milk tanks, then whipped it as needed.
The cake baker also made an Obsttorte. This consisted of a yellow cake iced with whipped cream and topped with a very attractive fruit gelée mandala. He would arrange sliced fruit (mostly canned) in a ring on top of the cake, then mix a carrageenan solution with a calcium chloride solution plus a fruit flavored syrup to make a gelée that set into a limpid stained glass window.
The vast majority of bakeries in Vienna sold pastries made with shortening. Only the very best such as Demels used butter; this was one of the oldest and best bakeries in Vienna. It was owned by a Swiss company and it was frequented only by the wealthy.
I remember reading an article in the New York Times once about Danish in Copenhagen. They were visiting one of the best bakeries, and they stated that none of the Danish were made with butter. They got brushed with butter as they came out of the oven. How sad.
At some point during the summer, one of the local T.V. stations decided to do a story about an American college student spending the summer making Viennese pastries. They walked into the shop, looked around, sniffed, and said haughtily, "Dies ist kein Demels" (This is no Demels,)
They came with their camera crew, and the bigshot said, “Here’s what we want you to say. I’m a pre-law student at Yale university. I got this job through the Austro-American Student Society. I am so glad to be here, learning about the glories of Viennese pastry.”
I responded, “I am not a pre-law student at Yale university. So I cannot say that. Certainly I got the job through the AASS and I am certainly glad to be here.”
He responded, “Well, then say nothing. We’ll say it for you.”
That evening, I was walking by an appliance store and I saw the story in the window. This experience made me realize how undependable the media sometimes are. Although there are many ethical people in the business, I have no doubts that many stories we hear or read are deliberately altered to fit what the viewer or reader wants to hear.
This reminds me of an interview that Bill Moyers, whom I idolize, conducted with Sarah Chayes. She quit her NPR job because her stories about Afghanistan were being consistently distorted to match what listeners want to hear. She’s living in Kandahar province, working with Afghani women to link villages to Western markets.
Sometimes I would wander over to the bread area, which was right across the central area where the delivery vans pulled in. In the breads area, they had two very large mixers with bowls of perhaps 500 gallon capacity. They would meter the flour directly into the bowls from a silo overhead. Flour was pumped into the silo from the street. Every morning at close to noon, right before the bread bakers quit, they would leave a hundred pounds of dough in the bottom of the mixing bowl and then meter the flour and salt onto that. That way, every batch had a slightly sour flavor.
Acetic acid, produced by the bacteria in the sour, is an excellent anti-staling and anti-mold agent. Acetic acid releases hydrogen ions that drive down the pH and change the solubility of proteins in the gluten matrix. This makes the bread softer and it stays soft longer. The acetate ion inhibits mold cell wall formation. It is a preservative similar in function to propionic acid that has been the traditional bread mold inhibitor.
We used eggs from Czechoslovakia. At that time, it was a Communist state, and the state-run farms produced cheaper eggs than the privately owned Austrian farms. However, they were not refrigerated, nor were any eggs in Europe for that matter. The whole refrigeration practice started with the growth of large poultry farms. As more and more hens were “cooped” up in cages stacked many rows high in large buildings, Salmonella, which was traditionally limited to ducks and other waterfowl, became endemic in chickens as well. Refrigeration became necessary to damage Salmonella cells so they could not grow in the human gut.
Also, modern egg production techniques and supermarkets demanded increased consistency in quality.
However, in those days, the eggs arrived in cardboard crates and before we used them, we cracked them open. This was usually the responsibility of someone who was paid a very low salary. There was a Yugoslav girl who had the egg-cracking job. She would sit at a table in the courtyard and crack each egg into a small bowl, then transfer it to a larger container. This way, if there was a green egg, it did not get mixed in a ruin the entire batch.
When hens are allowed to run free, they lay their eggs here and there. The person who gathers the eggs might miss one for weeks and then one day find it. If it’s also cracked, it’s almost a sure thing that you will have a green egg. And it stank.
The Yugoslav girl also was responsible for dusting the Apfelstrudel with confectioner’s sugar before they were sent out to their destinations. One Saturday morning, she dusted the entire weekend’s production with baking powder. I never saw her again.
Cecille and I had plenty of time to enjoy ourselves. We went on numerous jaunts with our friends, Patricia and Joe. I remember visiting Neusiedlersee which is right on the border with Hungary. This large lake is only about 8 feet deep at the deepest spot and it is rimmed with reeds.
We also visited Lenz, the town on the Danube that is famous for the classic cookie, Linzeraugen. This is a butter sandwich cookie with a filling of raspberry, plum, or apricot jam. The top cookie has windows cut out of it and it is dusted with confectioner’s sugar for maximum color contrast.
I reported for work soon after we arrived. Schlögl u. Faber was a large wholesale/retail bakery on Rennweg. I started to work at 4 AM, so I had to get up at 3 AM and walk several miles, starting on Praterstrasse, past the Stadtpark, then left on Rennweg, past the Hotel Belvedere.
On the way, I passed another bakery, and once I peered inside. It was really old-fashioned. Pastries were set to proof on planks of wood, which were held on long, horizontal poles that spanned the width of the bakery. So, proofing was not done in proofing rooms. The whole bakeshop was a proofing room.
My bakery was shaped like a two-story horseshoe. On one side was the bread bakery. And the second floor were the bakers’ quarters. Everyone slept together in one room on metal cots lined up. Oh the leg of the horseshoe was the retail shop, the cake decorating area, the pastry ovens, the cake batter mixer, and the sheeter for rolling out the pastries. Above us, lived the women.
One day, at the end of my shift, I heard a violin. I looked up at the womens’ quarters to see a lovely young woman playing the violin while sitting in a window. In Vienna, women spend a lot of times at their windows. There are even cushions designed for sitting in the windows; they are called Fensterpolstern.
Between the legs of the horseshoe were storage and bread crumbs and croutons manufacture. One of the major items made by the bakery were breadcrumbs, an important ingredient in Viennese cuisine. They are the foundation of Apfelstrudel, of some dumplings, and of Wienerschnitzel.
My main job was manufacture of golatschen. I made 2,000 a day with another fellow. Golatschen, filled with powidl (red plum), topfen (sweetened cheese), or mohn (poppyseed paste) are Viennese “Danish.”
At this point, I need to give my customary lecture about “Danish.” The dough was invented in Vienna. In fact, in Denmark, Danish dough is called Wienerbrød or Viennese bread.
The croissant and the baguette (which we call French bread) were also invented by the Viennese. Croissants and Danish are very much related, as they are made with yeast-leavened dough that is sheeted or rolled out with butter to make multiple layers. In France, all pastries made with croissant or Danish doughs are called Viennoiserie.
There are more than several stories about the origin of the croissant. One has it that Viennese bakers heard the Turks tunneling under the city’s walls and sounded the alarm. A Viennese baker eventually developed the pastry to commemorate the victory against the Turks. Another story talks about a Polish general who, hired to defeat the Turks, was paid in coffee. He established coffee houses and developed the croissant to go with the beverage.
Neither story is likely to be true, but they’re still fun to tell.
The golatschen (called kolachi in the old Czechoslovakia) were unimaginative visually. Made of squares of dough topped with a dollop of filling which was then enclosed by folding the corner in, the flavors were distinguished by cutting a circle, a square, or a rectangle of dough and gluing it over the corners to seal them together. The two bakers I worked with once asked me, “Do you think we could make a go of it making golatschen in the U.S.?” Being an agreeable sort, I responded, “Why not?” In retrospect, however, I believe that golatschen would never sell. This is because Americans want to see their fillings. They want them displayed. To us, seeing a big blop of cherry preserves is better than hiding it inside the dough. We want to see value, we want to trust, but verify.
Viennese, on the other hand, are content to trust.
An alternate interpretation, less economical and more psychological is as follows. Vienna is the home of psychoanalysis, as Sigmund was Viennese, after all. In fact, Freud could never have succeeded if there weren’t a lot of neurotic women who wanted to employ his services. He found, then, that they tended to hide their feelings. In the U.S., in contrast, we tend to show our feelings, and we have less need for psychoanalysis. Thus, the Viennese hide their fillings and their feelings, whereas we Americans display our fillings and our feelings. I don’t believe a word of it. But pop psychology is entertaining.
We also made apple strudel. Not the housewife method, which involves pulling the dough until it is so thin you can read the Wiener Zeitung through it. Instead, we rolled the dough out and enclosed apples and bread crumbs inside. We sold it to the coffeehouse at the Stadtpark. We sold it for 15 cents a portion and they sold it for $2 per portion. It was good, but not great.
We made punschkrapfen. Now there’s a fun item. Definitely blue collar. You take all the scraps of cake and puff pastry and you mix them with sugar syrup and rum. The sugar syrup we made from candy scraps we purchased from a nearby candy factory. And the rum, well, it tasted a lot like Uhu Glue. We lined sheet pans with cake (biscuit) and smashed the brown paste on top, then we put another sheet of biscuit on top of that. We put a sheetpan on this and then jumped up and down on the sheetpan to press the layers together.
This cake and punsch sandwich was cut into cubes, dipped into pink fondant, and sold individually as a POS item at the cash register. Years later, I tried to make and sell this item—in Texas, in D.C., in New York. Americans won’t buy stuff like that. It’s too sweet, too rummy, too unfamiliar.
There were four of us working in the sweet goods bakery. Technically, we were considered to be Zuckerbäcker, because we made cookies, cakes, and pastries. One of us decorated the wedding cakes; he was the head Zuckerbäcker. Another specialized in cakes.
He had a mixer all to himself. He made typical Austrian tortes. The nusstorten, made with hazelnuts, almonds, or walnuts, were basically biscuit type batters with nut flours replacing half the wheat flour. A Haselnußtorte for example was made with hazelnut flour and iced with whipped cream.
This of course was not the cream from cows. It was really what we call in the U.S. baking industry a “topping”. We made it by heating milk, sugar, and egg yolk together like a crème anglaise, then homogenizing palm oil margarine into it. It actually tasted pretty good. We chilled this in milk tanks, then whipped it as needed.
The cake baker also made an Obsttorte. This consisted of a yellow cake iced with whipped cream and topped with a very attractive fruit gelée mandala. He would arrange sliced fruit (mostly canned) in a ring on top of the cake, then mix a carrageenan solution with a calcium chloride solution plus a fruit flavored syrup to make a gelée that set into a limpid stained glass window.
The vast majority of bakeries in Vienna sold pastries made with shortening. Only the very best such as Demels used butter; this was one of the oldest and best bakeries in Vienna. It was owned by a Swiss company and it was frequented only by the wealthy.
I remember reading an article in the New York Times once about Danish in Copenhagen. They were visiting one of the best bakeries, and they stated that none of the Danish were made with butter. They got brushed with butter as they came out of the oven. How sad.
At some point during the summer, one of the local T.V. stations decided to do a story about an American college student spending the summer making Viennese pastries. They walked into the shop, looked around, sniffed, and said haughtily, "Dies ist kein Demels" (This is no Demels,)
They came with their camera crew, and the bigshot said, “Here’s what we want you to say. I’m a pre-law student at Yale university. I got this job through the Austro-American Student Society. I am so glad to be here, learning about the glories of Viennese pastry.”
I responded, “I am not a pre-law student at Yale university. So I cannot say that. Certainly I got the job through the AASS and I am certainly glad to be here.”
He responded, “Well, then say nothing. We’ll say it for you.”
That evening, I was walking by an appliance store and I saw the story in the window. This experience made me realize how undependable the media sometimes are. Although there are many ethical people in the business, I have no doubts that many stories we hear or read are deliberately altered to fit what the viewer or reader wants to hear.
This reminds me of an interview that Bill Moyers, whom I idolize, conducted with Sarah Chayes. She quit her NPR job because her stories about Afghanistan were being consistently distorted to match what listeners want to hear. She’s living in Kandahar province, working with Afghani women to link villages to Western markets.
Sometimes I would wander over to the bread area, which was right across the central area where the delivery vans pulled in. In the breads area, they had two very large mixers with bowls of perhaps 500 gallon capacity. They would meter the flour directly into the bowls from a silo overhead. Flour was pumped into the silo from the street. Every morning at close to noon, right before the bread bakers quit, they would leave a hundred pounds of dough in the bottom of the mixing bowl and then meter the flour and salt onto that. That way, every batch had a slightly sour flavor.
Acetic acid, produced by the bacteria in the sour, is an excellent anti-staling and anti-mold agent. Acetic acid releases hydrogen ions that drive down the pH and change the solubility of proteins in the gluten matrix. This makes the bread softer and it stays soft longer. The acetate ion inhibits mold cell wall formation. It is a preservative similar in function to propionic acid that has been the traditional bread mold inhibitor.
We used eggs from Czechoslovakia. At that time, it was a Communist state, and the state-run farms produced cheaper eggs than the privately owned Austrian farms. However, they were not refrigerated, nor were any eggs in Europe for that matter. The whole refrigeration practice started with the growth of large poultry farms. As more and more hens were “cooped” up in cages stacked many rows high in large buildings, Salmonella, which was traditionally limited to ducks and other waterfowl, became endemic in chickens as well. Refrigeration became necessary to damage Salmonella cells so they could not grow in the human gut.
Also, modern egg production techniques and supermarkets demanded increased consistency in quality.
However, in those days, the eggs arrived in cardboard crates and before we used them, we cracked them open. This was usually the responsibility of someone who was paid a very low salary. There was a Yugoslav girl who had the egg-cracking job. She would sit at a table in the courtyard and crack each egg into a small bowl, then transfer it to a larger container. This way, if there was a green egg, it did not get mixed in a ruin the entire batch.
When hens are allowed to run free, they lay their eggs here and there. The person who gathers the eggs might miss one for weeks and then one day find it. If it’s also cracked, it’s almost a sure thing that you will have a green egg. And it stank.
The Yugoslav girl also was responsible for dusting the Apfelstrudel with confectioner’s sugar before they were sent out to their destinations. One Saturday morning, she dusted the entire weekend’s production with baking powder. I never saw her again.
Cecille and I had plenty of time to enjoy ourselves. We went on numerous jaunts with our friends, Patricia and Joe. I remember visiting Neusiedlersee which is right on the border with Hungary. This large lake is only about 8 feet deep at the deepest spot and it is rimmed with reeds.
We also visited Lenz, the town on the Danube that is famous for the classic cookie, Linzeraugen. This is a butter sandwich cookie with a filling of raspberry, plum, or apricot jam. The top cookie has windows cut out of it and it is dusted with confectioner’s sugar for maximum color contrast.
Monday, September 20, 2010
35. SUMMER IN PARIS, 1972
There is no more earthly city more beautiful than Paris, France. When I arrived after one semester back at Oberlin, I was rarin’ to resume my exotic life as culinary traveler. On the flight over, I met a farmer from Iowa who was on his way to somewhere in Africa—to teach people how to use miracle grains and how to use a tractor. At the time, I was merely curious and not prone to regard such statements with a measure of skepticism.
However, this chance meeting gained in importance later in life, as you will read later in this book.
The first day in Paris, I looked in the help wanted ads and went to the first job. I was hired on the spot, conditioned on whether I could get some work papers. Being young and not thinking ahead (I was more Ron Weasley than Hermione Granger), it never occurred to me while back in the U.S. that I might have some problems with the papers situation.
I went to the Ministry of Labor (or whatever it’s called). Essentially, I spent three days there. I waiting in line after line. Every time, I was told to switch to another line. Finally, I was told to take the elevator to the 4th floor. Here, I waited in yet another line. Finally, a man said to me, “Look, the reason you’re here has to do with your expired green card. If you want to work in Paris this summer, here’s what you should do. Become a student. This entitles you to three months’ employment without a green card.” He continued, “My suggestion is to enroll at the Alliance Française.”
That’s what I did. All summer, I took classes, which were very simple, as they were intended for a lower level of language development. However, it was a great experience nonetheless, as the classes contained people from around the world—around the French colonial world, that is. An added bonus: Alliance Française sponsored trips. I went on two: one to Mont St. Michel, and the other to Chateaux de la Loire.
It was on the trip to Mont St. Michel that I met Cecille, who was to become my first wife. We (the group of students) spent the day on the island. We ate lunch at la Mère Poullarde, which was famous for its souffléed cheese omelettes, cooked in pans with 4 foot handles directly over the fire in a fireplace. And we also ate agneau de pré salé—roast leg of lamb from animals that had been fattened on the salt marsh grass that lives along the estuary of the Rance river. I have always loved lamb but having consumed the world’s most famous lamb, I’m sorry to say that I cannot remember if it was all that special. I need to go back.
The relationship between diet and meat flavor is relatively unexplored. Years later, when a graduate student at the University of Maryland, certain researchers along the Beltway were exploring the idea of feeding cattle shredded de-inked newspaper (in this case, “all the news that’s fit to eat.”). When you taste today’s milk, you notice that it is particularly bland. When you taste the milk of a farm that allows cows to graze, you notice the herbal flavors. I believe that the marketing story behind the special sea grass flavor of agneaux des pré salés probably rests on sound science.
On the way back to Paris, Cecille sat next to me on the bus. We said nothing to each other for hours. Then, someone in the back became ill and there was a call for plastic bags. Cecille asked me if I had one to which I replied, “No”. She then asked if I was German. “No”, I replied. “Swedish?” “No.” “Then, what?” I replied, “I’m an American, like you.” She was astounded. At that time, my spoken French was really good. Most French persons thought I was from Alsace, as they speak fluently but with a German accent.
So, that was our introduction. She was working in Paris for an Egyptian as his personal secretary. According to her, he hired her for her golden hair (which was dyed that way.) And, she spoke French and English with that pleasant Texas twang. So, she was good for business.
Cecille and I spent much of the summer doing things together. I was in love, really for the first time in my life. As everyone knows, first love is the purest. It’s like a drug; it feels really good. And you can never get enough of it.
I worked all summer at Le Petit Zinc. This was actually part of a group of businesses. Also included was a deli that specialized in horsemeat, a German restaurant called Le Muniche, and a bar, Le Bar Americain. All four businesses shared a single kitchen, which was located in the basement, right next to the street. When you stood at the grill, you could watch feet on the sidewalk.
I started doing grillwork and fried foods. I was responsible for putting out grilled sardines (yum!), something I haven’t had in years but which is truly one of the best of all foods. I also served pig’s ear and tail, which were boiled, breaded, and deep-fat-fried.
The grill was just opposite the bathroom, which was a Turkish toilet (hole in the floor) separated from the grill by a door. When cooks went into the toilet room, which was just a small closet, we sometimes would pour a little alcohol under the door and light it. More young persons causing trouble.
While I worked the grill, I usually kept a bottle of Coke on a shelf. I would add ice cream to it to make a Brown Cow. My cook-friends thought it was OK-tasting and they loved to say the name because it reminded them of my favorite expression at the time, “Holy Cow!” They would parrot it with “Horry Cow!”
Several of the cooks were Basque, so they spoke a language unrecognizable to any other European. The Basque language pre-dates Indo-European languages.
Besides speaking a very foreign tongue, they loved to cook in lots of oil. So, instead of sautéing in a quarter inch of oil, they preferred a half inch.
My Basque friends were always inviting me to visit Le Moulin Rouge, the red-light district, where we could each find a prostitute for cheap and watch naked women prancing around on stage. I have to confess that I never sinned once, never even accompanied them. I am not proud of that. Although, in retrospect, getting some gonorrheal disease just for a few minutes of ecstasy just isn’t worth it.
We switched cooking stations regularly. I also did prep for the salad station. We made our own lemon-walnut oil dressing. Really excellent. We would juice the lemons and pour the juice into a large glass bottle without cleaning out the old dressing. During the hottest days of summer, the lemon juice would ferment. It was common to see a large, foam plug rising up out of the salad dressing bottle.
For Le Muniche, we roasted suckling pig. It was tender, moist, and we cooked the skin until it turned golden and crackly. We made a sauce with juniper berries, black pepper, and beer.
For Le Petit Zinc, I was regularly prepping Raie Grenobloise or poached skate wings in a black butter sauce. Skate wings are covered in really tough skin with raised, flinty bumps—like coarse sandpaper. One side is white (the underside) and the other very dark grey (the top side). I would put the cut up wings in a large rectangular kettle along with lots of black pepper, bay leaves, salt, water, and white wine. I would bring it to a boil and simmer until done, then put the kettle in the walk-in. When the fish was ordered, you stuck your hand through the gelée, grabbed a piece, brush off the gelée, peppercorns, etc, peel off the skin, and then heat under the salamander. While it heated, you heated butter until almost black, then added vinegar, diced lemon, small fried croutons, and capers, and poured this sauce over the fish.
The texture of skate is stringy and lean. But it’s very good. You can often find it in the better Japanese restaurants.
For Le Bar Américain, I had to make potato chips every afternoon. This involved slicing potatoes thinly, dropping them in ice water to make them curl, then drying and frying. Like any kettle-fried potato, they were crunchy, oily, and marvelous. We used peanut oil (huile d’arachide) for its excellent flavor and high smoke point. Apparently, in those days, there were no peanut allergies. The rise of food allergies in the last 40 years is one of the great mysteries of our civilization. It’s probably a canary in a coal mine in that we do that something is wrong with the way we are living, but we’re not sure what it is.
In Le Muniche, we served a Tarte Flamande. This was a tart crust filled with a Béchamel sauce studded with sweated leeks. We also served Steak Tartare. Named after the Tartars who rode horses, drank horse blood, and dined on them when they keeled over, this specialty was composed of ground horsemeat mixed with a raw egg yolk and the usual parsley, onion, pickle accoutrements. Another specialty was Bismark Herring. We layered raw herring fillets in a stone jar with sliced vegetables and then coated it with oil. A fillet of herring was served with sour cream. We also served Boudin Noir or pork blood and liver sausage. We would grill it and serve it with fried onions and apples.
Every cook was assigned the task of making lunch for the employees. Since I already was a chef tournant (rotating cook), I rarely was assigned this task. However, I did get the honor once, and boy, did I blow it. I was giving a large number of pork brains. I poached them, breaded them, and fried them in butter and served with noodles (!). Unfortunately, I did not follow the French aphorism, “Quand c’est noir, c’est cuit.” They were undercooked, possibly still pondering.
The owners of these four businesses were doing quite well financially. At some point in the summer, the kitchen and dining room were blessed with some new equipment: two reach-in-freezers, five microwave ovens, and two garbage compactors. The freezers were added so that the restaurants could plate up food and freeze it ready to serve. The microwaves made heating tarte au flamande and boudin noir faster and more efficient. I usually use this story to illustrate the difference between a priori and a posteriori knowledge. The owners did a mind experiment and saw a vision of food plated, frozen, reheated in the microwaves and served. They based their purchases on a priori thinking. However, they then found that you can’t freeze sauces as they made them onto food. The blood thickened Coq au Vin sauce or the Beef Bourguignonne sauce would curdle when thawed. The same is true of roux: because of the retrogradation of amylose in starch, freezing such a sauce and then thawing it results in a facsimile of diluted snot. So, I then conclude that with this new a posteriori knowledge, it’s a good thing they had purchased the two garbage compactors.
In August, I was assigned a new job: to replace the pastry chef. He was going on the customary 1 month vacation, and I, being a pliable type, willingly trained with him. I made the usual Bourgeois French fare: Mousse au Chocolat, Tarte aux Quetsches, Tarte aux Pommes, Profiteroles au Chocolat, and Ile Flottante. I immensely enjoyed being replacement patissier.
I returned to Oberlin at the end of the summer and enjoyed the next year of classes, which were mostly in Botany and German, although I also remember taking a course in Sumerian and Babylonian writings. I never took an Art History class at Oberlin, even though that’s one of the strongest fields.
During the spring of 1973, I arranged with the Austro-American Student Association to work in Vienna in the summer. They were able to find a job for me at a little known bakery in Vienna, called Schlögl u. Faber, which has since burned down under suspicious circumstances.
However, this chance meeting gained in importance later in life, as you will read later in this book.
The first day in Paris, I looked in the help wanted ads and went to the first job. I was hired on the spot, conditioned on whether I could get some work papers. Being young and not thinking ahead (I was more Ron Weasley than Hermione Granger), it never occurred to me while back in the U.S. that I might have some problems with the papers situation.
I went to the Ministry of Labor (or whatever it’s called). Essentially, I spent three days there. I waiting in line after line. Every time, I was told to switch to another line. Finally, I was told to take the elevator to the 4th floor. Here, I waited in yet another line. Finally, a man said to me, “Look, the reason you’re here has to do with your expired green card. If you want to work in Paris this summer, here’s what you should do. Become a student. This entitles you to three months’ employment without a green card.” He continued, “My suggestion is to enroll at the Alliance Française.”
That’s what I did. All summer, I took classes, which were very simple, as they were intended for a lower level of language development. However, it was a great experience nonetheless, as the classes contained people from around the world—around the French colonial world, that is. An added bonus: Alliance Française sponsored trips. I went on two: one to Mont St. Michel, and the other to Chateaux de la Loire.
It was on the trip to Mont St. Michel that I met Cecille, who was to become my first wife. We (the group of students) spent the day on the island. We ate lunch at la Mère Poullarde, which was famous for its souffléed cheese omelettes, cooked in pans with 4 foot handles directly over the fire in a fireplace. And we also ate agneau de pré salé—roast leg of lamb from animals that had been fattened on the salt marsh grass that lives along the estuary of the Rance river. I have always loved lamb but having consumed the world’s most famous lamb, I’m sorry to say that I cannot remember if it was all that special. I need to go back.
The relationship between diet and meat flavor is relatively unexplored. Years later, when a graduate student at the University of Maryland, certain researchers along the Beltway were exploring the idea of feeding cattle shredded de-inked newspaper (in this case, “all the news that’s fit to eat.”). When you taste today’s milk, you notice that it is particularly bland. When you taste the milk of a farm that allows cows to graze, you notice the herbal flavors. I believe that the marketing story behind the special sea grass flavor of agneaux des pré salés probably rests on sound science.
On the way back to Paris, Cecille sat next to me on the bus. We said nothing to each other for hours. Then, someone in the back became ill and there was a call for plastic bags. Cecille asked me if I had one to which I replied, “No”. She then asked if I was German. “No”, I replied. “Swedish?” “No.” “Then, what?” I replied, “I’m an American, like you.” She was astounded. At that time, my spoken French was really good. Most French persons thought I was from Alsace, as they speak fluently but with a German accent.
So, that was our introduction. She was working in Paris for an Egyptian as his personal secretary. According to her, he hired her for her golden hair (which was dyed that way.) And, she spoke French and English with that pleasant Texas twang. So, she was good for business.
Cecille and I spent much of the summer doing things together. I was in love, really for the first time in my life. As everyone knows, first love is the purest. It’s like a drug; it feels really good. And you can never get enough of it.
I worked all summer at Le Petit Zinc. This was actually part of a group of businesses. Also included was a deli that specialized in horsemeat, a German restaurant called Le Muniche, and a bar, Le Bar Americain. All four businesses shared a single kitchen, which was located in the basement, right next to the street. When you stood at the grill, you could watch feet on the sidewalk.
I started doing grillwork and fried foods. I was responsible for putting out grilled sardines (yum!), something I haven’t had in years but which is truly one of the best of all foods. I also served pig’s ear and tail, which were boiled, breaded, and deep-fat-fried.
The grill was just opposite the bathroom, which was a Turkish toilet (hole in the floor) separated from the grill by a door. When cooks went into the toilet room, which was just a small closet, we sometimes would pour a little alcohol under the door and light it. More young persons causing trouble.
While I worked the grill, I usually kept a bottle of Coke on a shelf. I would add ice cream to it to make a Brown Cow. My cook-friends thought it was OK-tasting and they loved to say the name because it reminded them of my favorite expression at the time, “Holy Cow!” They would parrot it with “Horry Cow!”
Several of the cooks were Basque, so they spoke a language unrecognizable to any other European. The Basque language pre-dates Indo-European languages.
Besides speaking a very foreign tongue, they loved to cook in lots of oil. So, instead of sautéing in a quarter inch of oil, they preferred a half inch.
My Basque friends were always inviting me to visit Le Moulin Rouge, the red-light district, where we could each find a prostitute for cheap and watch naked women prancing around on stage. I have to confess that I never sinned once, never even accompanied them. I am not proud of that. Although, in retrospect, getting some gonorrheal disease just for a few minutes of ecstasy just isn’t worth it.
We switched cooking stations regularly. I also did prep for the salad station. We made our own lemon-walnut oil dressing. Really excellent. We would juice the lemons and pour the juice into a large glass bottle without cleaning out the old dressing. During the hottest days of summer, the lemon juice would ferment. It was common to see a large, foam plug rising up out of the salad dressing bottle.
For Le Muniche, we roasted suckling pig. It was tender, moist, and we cooked the skin until it turned golden and crackly. We made a sauce with juniper berries, black pepper, and beer.
For Le Petit Zinc, I was regularly prepping Raie Grenobloise or poached skate wings in a black butter sauce. Skate wings are covered in really tough skin with raised, flinty bumps—like coarse sandpaper. One side is white (the underside) and the other very dark grey (the top side). I would put the cut up wings in a large rectangular kettle along with lots of black pepper, bay leaves, salt, water, and white wine. I would bring it to a boil and simmer until done, then put the kettle in the walk-in. When the fish was ordered, you stuck your hand through the gelée, grabbed a piece, brush off the gelée, peppercorns, etc, peel off the skin, and then heat under the salamander. While it heated, you heated butter until almost black, then added vinegar, diced lemon, small fried croutons, and capers, and poured this sauce over the fish.
The texture of skate is stringy and lean. But it’s very good. You can often find it in the better Japanese restaurants.
For Le Bar Américain, I had to make potato chips every afternoon. This involved slicing potatoes thinly, dropping them in ice water to make them curl, then drying and frying. Like any kettle-fried potato, they were crunchy, oily, and marvelous. We used peanut oil (huile d’arachide) for its excellent flavor and high smoke point. Apparently, in those days, there were no peanut allergies. The rise of food allergies in the last 40 years is one of the great mysteries of our civilization. It’s probably a canary in a coal mine in that we do that something is wrong with the way we are living, but we’re not sure what it is.
In Le Muniche, we served a Tarte Flamande. This was a tart crust filled with a Béchamel sauce studded with sweated leeks. We also served Steak Tartare. Named after the Tartars who rode horses, drank horse blood, and dined on them when they keeled over, this specialty was composed of ground horsemeat mixed with a raw egg yolk and the usual parsley, onion, pickle accoutrements. Another specialty was Bismark Herring. We layered raw herring fillets in a stone jar with sliced vegetables and then coated it with oil. A fillet of herring was served with sour cream. We also served Boudin Noir or pork blood and liver sausage. We would grill it and serve it with fried onions and apples.
Every cook was assigned the task of making lunch for the employees. Since I already was a chef tournant (rotating cook), I rarely was assigned this task. However, I did get the honor once, and boy, did I blow it. I was giving a large number of pork brains. I poached them, breaded them, and fried them in butter and served with noodles (!). Unfortunately, I did not follow the French aphorism, “Quand c’est noir, c’est cuit.” They were undercooked, possibly still pondering.
The owners of these four businesses were doing quite well financially. At some point in the summer, the kitchen and dining room were blessed with some new equipment: two reach-in-freezers, five microwave ovens, and two garbage compactors. The freezers were added so that the restaurants could plate up food and freeze it ready to serve. The microwaves made heating tarte au flamande and boudin noir faster and more efficient. I usually use this story to illustrate the difference between a priori and a posteriori knowledge. The owners did a mind experiment and saw a vision of food plated, frozen, reheated in the microwaves and served. They based their purchases on a priori thinking. However, they then found that you can’t freeze sauces as they made them onto food. The blood thickened Coq au Vin sauce or the Beef Bourguignonne sauce would curdle when thawed. The same is true of roux: because of the retrogradation of amylose in starch, freezing such a sauce and then thawing it results in a facsimile of diluted snot. So, I then conclude that with this new a posteriori knowledge, it’s a good thing they had purchased the two garbage compactors.
In August, I was assigned a new job: to replace the pastry chef. He was going on the customary 1 month vacation, and I, being a pliable type, willingly trained with him. I made the usual Bourgeois French fare: Mousse au Chocolat, Tarte aux Quetsches, Tarte aux Pommes, Profiteroles au Chocolat, and Ile Flottante. I immensely enjoyed being replacement patissier.
I returned to Oberlin at the end of the summer and enjoyed the next year of classes, which were mostly in Botany and German, although I also remember taking a course in Sumerian and Babylonian writings. I never took an Art History class at Oberlin, even though that’s one of the strongest fields.
During the spring of 1973, I arranged with the Austro-American Student Association to work in Vienna in the summer. They were able to find a job for me at a little known bakery in Vienna, called Schlögl u. Faber, which has since burned down under suspicious circumstances.
34. BACK AT OBERLIN
I returned to Oberlin after completing the stint at Hostellerie Bourguignonne. This time, I had some sense of where I was going. I was determined to finish my education, this time in Biology, since that’s the closest science to cooking.
I arrived in January. Instead of staying in some non-descript dorm, I applied to live in Asia House. By now, I had the wanderlust, and the world’s cultures all appealed to me. The first day I moved into my room, I had lunch with Maheema Devadoss, the house mother. I had never been this close to an Indian woman before, and I was totally enchanted. Her daughter, who was maybe 8, bounced up and down on my bed. I felt at home. And, I had South Indian food for lunch, complete with a very spicy coconut curry and idli, which are steamed rice cakes punctuated with a myriad of black mustard seeds. I had never seen spices used in this way! The French were so conservative with spices.
My roommate was an English major who played the classical guitar—quite well. He was so thoughtful. He smoked cigarettes, but he did this outside and put the butts in a glass jar. I was so grateful to live with someone who was so considerate.
I took lots of biology courses during my remaining two and a half years at Oberlin. I also minored in German, as it had appealed to me so much.
On Sunday afternoons, I religiously joined a group of hard-core botanists who hiked local forests with one of Oberlin’s greatest teachers, Dr. George Jones, who died in 1998 at the age of 100. He reminded me so much of Miss Truran, my piano teacher, who had taught me so much about the interpretation and performance of music. Dr. Jones could pick up even a scrap of a leaf and identify it; he was the Sherlock Holmes of botanists!
In order to stay centered, I worked for the dining service, making pastries. I made a lot of éclairs, I remember that. Usually, I worked in the wee hours of the morning.
I remember one morning I was making éclairs. The kitchen was l-shaped, and I was piping out éclairs in one leg of the “l” while boiling sugar and water to make caramel in the other. Well, at 2 AM, time has a habit of passing faster. While piping, I heard a small explosion. I rounded the corner, and on top of the stove was the pot that used to contain the caramel in process.
However, it wasn’t caramel. It was a giant, black cylinder with a lid perched on top, rising slowly, inexorably out of the pan.
I turned off the burner and threw the pan in a snow drift and forgot about it until later in the spring, when I gave it a proper burial in the garbage can.
Living at Asia House was a real privilege. It was a tight-knit community. Even though I was “French”, I still felt a thrill being there. I got to eat lots of Asian food, as many of the students were really good cooks.
I remember eating “Pepper Water”, a South Indian version of Mulligatawny soup. It practically melted the container it was served in. I remember learning that in Chinese families, the bottom of the rice pot, where the rice was a golden brown and crispy, was the best part. Years later, I connected that bit of crisped rice with the starch reaction, dextrinization, in which the hydrolysis of starch molecules causes a breakdown of large starch molecules into much smaller dextrins, which are sweet and soluble. No wonder people thought it to be the best part—same reason that the crust of French bread is lustrous, sweet, and wheaty in aroma and flavor.
I remember cooking for 120. Many of us Asia House residents took turns cooking for the others. I don’t remember what I cooked, but I do remember the dessert, which was most memorable. Being the ambitious type, I decided to make my own ice cream and my own cake for the dessert.
The ice cream was made with a crème anglaise that I froze in a salted snow drift outside the kitchen. Of course, it took a bit of stirring while standing there in boots and winter clothing.
The cake of course was genoise. I drizzled all the cakes with rum-scented simple syrup, and covered the ice cream with meringue that I piped decoratively on the outside. As is customary, I embedded egg shells in the meringue containing rum fortified with Everclear (to make it burn well). I had students standing in the dining room and flambéing on cue
.
Nobody burned their hair or called the fire department. I’m sure it was all totally illegal but in a building that always smelled of marijuana and incense, what does “legal” mean?
I arrived in January. Instead of staying in some non-descript dorm, I applied to live in Asia House. By now, I had the wanderlust, and the world’s cultures all appealed to me. The first day I moved into my room, I had lunch with Maheema Devadoss, the house mother. I had never been this close to an Indian woman before, and I was totally enchanted. Her daughter, who was maybe 8, bounced up and down on my bed. I felt at home. And, I had South Indian food for lunch, complete with a very spicy coconut curry and idli, which are steamed rice cakes punctuated with a myriad of black mustard seeds. I had never seen spices used in this way! The French were so conservative with spices.
My roommate was an English major who played the classical guitar—quite well. He was so thoughtful. He smoked cigarettes, but he did this outside and put the butts in a glass jar. I was so grateful to live with someone who was so considerate.
I took lots of biology courses during my remaining two and a half years at Oberlin. I also minored in German, as it had appealed to me so much.
On Sunday afternoons, I religiously joined a group of hard-core botanists who hiked local forests with one of Oberlin’s greatest teachers, Dr. George Jones, who died in 1998 at the age of 100. He reminded me so much of Miss Truran, my piano teacher, who had taught me so much about the interpretation and performance of music. Dr. Jones could pick up even a scrap of a leaf and identify it; he was the Sherlock Holmes of botanists!
In order to stay centered, I worked for the dining service, making pastries. I made a lot of éclairs, I remember that. Usually, I worked in the wee hours of the morning.
I remember one morning I was making éclairs. The kitchen was l-shaped, and I was piping out éclairs in one leg of the “l” while boiling sugar and water to make caramel in the other. Well, at 2 AM, time has a habit of passing faster. While piping, I heard a small explosion. I rounded the corner, and on top of the stove was the pot that used to contain the caramel in process.
However, it wasn’t caramel. It was a giant, black cylinder with a lid perched on top, rising slowly, inexorably out of the pan.
I turned off the burner and threw the pan in a snow drift and forgot about it until later in the spring, when I gave it a proper burial in the garbage can.
Living at Asia House was a real privilege. It was a tight-knit community. Even though I was “French”, I still felt a thrill being there. I got to eat lots of Asian food, as many of the students were really good cooks.
I remember eating “Pepper Water”, a South Indian version of Mulligatawny soup. It practically melted the container it was served in. I remember learning that in Chinese families, the bottom of the rice pot, where the rice was a golden brown and crispy, was the best part. Years later, I connected that bit of crisped rice with the starch reaction, dextrinization, in which the hydrolysis of starch molecules causes a breakdown of large starch molecules into much smaller dextrins, which are sweet and soluble. No wonder people thought it to be the best part—same reason that the crust of French bread is lustrous, sweet, and wheaty in aroma and flavor.
I remember cooking for 120. Many of us Asia House residents took turns cooking for the others. I don’t remember what I cooked, but I do remember the dessert, which was most memorable. Being the ambitious type, I decided to make my own ice cream and my own cake for the dessert.
The ice cream was made with a crème anglaise that I froze in a salted snow drift outside the kitchen. Of course, it took a bit of stirring while standing there in boots and winter clothing.
The cake of course was genoise. I drizzled all the cakes with rum-scented simple syrup, and covered the ice cream with meringue that I piped decoratively on the outside. As is customary, I embedded egg shells in the meringue containing rum fortified with Everclear (to make it burn well). I had students standing in the dining room and flambéing on cue
.
Nobody burned their hair or called the fire department. I’m sure it was all totally illegal but in a building that always smelled of marijuana and incense, what does “legal” mean?
33. THE PASTRY AND THE DRIER
By the time I had worked my third job in France (Hostellerie Bourguignonne, that is) I knew how to make puff pastry. When I came home, I was anxious to demonstrate the glories of the Pithivier.
We were staying at my Aunt and Uncle’s house in Willamette, Illinois. Like most American kitchens, hers had no space for rolling out dough.
So, I did it in the basement—on her drier. I think several loads of laundry later, she was still pulling out bits of dough.
The pastry is filled with an almond cream. In the pastry world, it’s called frangipani. This means “French bread” but it’s named after a French nobleman and has nothing to do with the flower. The pastry itself actually commemorates the kidnapping of King Charles IX on the way back from visiting his mistress. He was kidnapped near the village of Pithiviers by a band of Huguenots. The pastry commemorates the shape of the carriage wheels.
My effort failed miserably. First, I thought I could make puff pastry with the margarine in the refrigerator. Wrong. Any soft margarine should be avoided at all costs as the very property that makes it easy to spread on flimsy bread prevents the layers of dough from remaining separate. Second, I used rum flavor, which tastes somewhat like airplane glue.
We were staying at my Aunt and Uncle’s house in Willamette, Illinois. Like most American kitchens, hers had no space for rolling out dough.
So, I did it in the basement—on her drier. I think several loads of laundry later, she was still pulling out bits of dough.
The pastry is filled with an almond cream. In the pastry world, it’s called frangipani. This means “French bread” but it’s named after a French nobleman and has nothing to do with the flower. The pastry itself actually commemorates the kidnapping of King Charles IX on the way back from visiting his mistress. He was kidnapped near the village of Pithiviers by a band of Huguenots. The pastry commemorates the shape of the carriage wheels.
My effort failed miserably. First, I thought I could make puff pastry with the margarine in the refrigerator. Wrong. Any soft margarine should be avoided at all costs as the very property that makes it easy to spread on flimsy bread prevents the layers of dough from remaining separate. Second, I used rum flavor, which tastes somewhat like airplane glue.
32. THE GOOSE IN THE GARAGE
During the years that I was traveling back and forth between South Dakota and France, I was especially enamored of the idea of animal husbandry. I had this notion that if you eat meat, it is the height of hypocrisy to not know how to raise animals, tend them, and slaughter them.
When I visited my parents in Vermillion, South Dakota, I would make a point of purchasing live fowl at a local farm. I enjoyed processing chickens, cutting their heads off, tipping them into a funnel to collect the blood (very good for sauces, especially Coq au Vin).
One Christmas, I drove with my mother to a local farm to purchase a goose. We walked into the farmyard, which was covered in frozen mud. Dozens of guinea hens strutted about and when we approached them, they suddenly flew into a leafless tree, where they literally became new leaves (black and white in coloration.) I had cooked lots of guinea hen in France. It has a red flesh reminiscent of pheasant and a gamy flavor.
But we weren’t there for guinea hens. Besides, the only way to capture them was to shoot them out of the tree. Instead, we bought a goose. The farmer put it in a gunny sack and we drove back home.
I asked my sister, Joanne, who was 7 at the time, to help me with the goose. She had no idea what was in the sack. We both knelt on the floor of the garage, I took a pair of scissors, cut a hole in the bag, and out popped the bird’s head. I promptly pushed it onto a block of wood and cut it off with a large, French knife.
My sister was utterly traumatized. She didn’t know what I was up to, and this sudden transition from life to death was very shocking. She has never forgotten that incident.
When I visited my parents in Vermillion, South Dakota, I would make a point of purchasing live fowl at a local farm. I enjoyed processing chickens, cutting their heads off, tipping them into a funnel to collect the blood (very good for sauces, especially Coq au Vin).
One Christmas, I drove with my mother to a local farm to purchase a goose. We walked into the farmyard, which was covered in frozen mud. Dozens of guinea hens strutted about and when we approached them, they suddenly flew into a leafless tree, where they literally became new leaves (black and white in coloration.) I had cooked lots of guinea hen in France. It has a red flesh reminiscent of pheasant and a gamy flavor.
But we weren’t there for guinea hens. Besides, the only way to capture them was to shoot them out of the tree. Instead, we bought a goose. The farmer put it in a gunny sack and we drove back home.
I asked my sister, Joanne, who was 7 at the time, to help me with the goose. She had no idea what was in the sack. We both knelt on the floor of the garage, I took a pair of scissors, cut a hole in the bag, and out popped the bird’s head. I promptly pushed it onto a block of wood and cut it off with a large, French knife.
My sister was utterly traumatized. She didn’t know what I was up to, and this sudden transition from life to death was very shocking. She has never forgotten that incident.
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