Doubt. Ambition.
An excerpt from Daily Bread, a story of Spiritual Bankruptcy through the eyes of the food system
If you are just joining, note that this is an excerpt of a book-in-progress, titled Daily Bread, about the spiritual bankruptcy in America as seen through the lens of the food system. All passages are available for free in sequential order. However, all excerpts may be read on their own and it is perfectly acceptable to read one without the other, should you wish.
SCHEDULE CHANGE: Moving into Autumn my rhythms have changed as my days have changed. Every Wednesday I’ll be posting an excerpt from *Daily Bread*. When other thoughts loom and beckon the pen, you’ll have those too.
11/29
I couldn’t sleep last night. Racing thoughts. I can’t seem to “break through”. The notion of feeding people versus doing more than that… I’m realizing… perhaps not sleeping was because I may have broken through. I’ve realized my work in the kitchen isn’t mirroring the audacity of my words. I am considerably safer in the kitchen. What would I make if food were art? Where are the boundaries? The chefs that I admire that have changed the way we think about food do not create recipes to feed people. They create ideas… what type of questions do I need to realize to create the recipes from ideas… Why do we eat? Perhaps I can build ideas by challenging that. Challenging not to be contrary for attention nor for the sake of contrariness but because we’ve strayed so far from the purpose and joy of life with food being at the center. And through food I can present ideas that can begin to address these problems. So on a basic level I must serve people ideas for their dinners.
I often measure my work against the worst tragedy. That tragedy, were it to happen, is my greatest fear and I wouldn’t dare whisper it. But I often ask myself if my work would remain important if tragedy struck. If it would not remain important then it was never important. Is it important that the work I do is important? It is of the utmost importance to me. This work with the pen transcends me. The work with my hands the chopping of wood and the gardening and the building of fences and chimneys sustains me alone in this moment of life this time that is mine. It warms my blood and lubricates the bones. The words are for those who have not yet lived. Because what else do I have to offer? I do often compare my work to the possibility of tragedy. Would I still be compelled to it? The words yes but not the content. My pain and grief would consume me and I’d write about that. I would be compelled to write that. It is all I would feel. And I ask myself often today and yesterday and tomorrow what am I compelled to write? And when that answer is clear to me I wish the words would flow easier but I can’t seem to stop sculpting each sentence it feels like a prison cell of High Art. The Artiste the Artiste the Artiste. If I were so desperate to exhale these words from my lungs to eradicate them from my body like a disease would I not write them more quickly at the expense of High Art? Would content then not be of far greater importance? When faced with tragedy would the words bloom like frost asters across the page or… would they not become the July weeds overtaking the garden? This is the intersection where I find myself gridlocked. I always choose to write to write to write. But the pen won’t budge. I suppose words are a bit like water, yes? To get somewhere they must flow. This writing involves the perpetual removal of eyeglasses and rubbing of eyes. All I want is to scream but the pen will not move without melancholic whispers. I want anger roars. I am a wounded lion. I do not have the confidence of loudness roar. I have great doubt. I have lost my way and I hesitate to offer that because it compels in others the desire to shine their light on my path. But I follow no path. I forge my path even in the darkness with the expectation of reaching some distant place in my mind’s eye. Today I do not see such a destination. What is right? What is wrong? What is necessary? What is important? Was it High Notions that had previously compelled me to action or was I hoping such notions were high enough to be compelling? I wanted importance but that does not mean I found it. I never understood the reality of these ideas meant for the lives to come and not those who are here. My ambitions have made me so alone. So deeply isolated. The pen may be compelled by poetry but it is the heaviness of doubt that paralyzes it. Who would ever wish to fill the world with mistakes? So mortal is such a notion. There are no mistakes in infinity. Yet I sit here trembling. Yet I sit here polishing the words and ideas until there is so little left of them to offer. Yet I do so in hopes of securing their immortality as if the prettier word is longer lasting. And it may be. It seems the whole of my life has been defined by the finding of lines. And the whole of my future is defined by managing their sway and swagger. It is the chill of this October morning blanketed in sunlight and held aloft by the mingling tunes of chirping birds and the melancholic piano playing over the speaker that have me so deeply reflective. That and an interview I gave not so very long ago that has crossed my path again. I heard my high notions fluttering like chickadees. One year later none had withstood time. The failure was so widespread it feels like wildfire burned through me. Listening to that man so confident and logical and intelligent offering glimpses into his world… he feels like a stranger to me. It doesn’t make any sense. And I will continue to abstain from searching for the answers to problems that have been removed from me. The restaurant is gone. The only thing that remains of it is me. I do not seek answers, but forward motion. Any answers concerning the particularities of the business hold no value for me. I lost a considerable amount of money and I have no interest in making it back nor in making more. I need only to be sustained and dollars offer so very little sustenance. The answers I do seek are only related to my spirit. And I wonder what would have become of my spirit had the business succeeded. Now I question all my higher notions and surely their value is not determined by profit or loss. There is also the lingering thought that even now in this meditative pastoral contemplation… it has been suggested that I’ve ventured aimlessly down a dirt road kicking stones… time to start again on the highways and byways… But that does not excite my spirit and there’s no telling it ever will. And my arrival here to the country never seemed temporary to me. It doesn’t make any sense that stranger being interviewed. I don’t feel him. And that is why I question the origin of my high notions. I remember a lot of if only I can do this and if only I can do that if only Manina would catch on so I can create Bar Piedmont and if only Bar Piedmont would achieve two Michelin stars in its first year then then then I can write because then people will listen to me because I have validation who-are-you-to-say-such-things, Why I’m a Michelin chef, of course… Vainglorious sharpener of expensive Japanese knives… But I oh so loved the food with my hands and the fire that cooked it and perfumed the senses and Bar Piedmont wasn’t meant for Them it was meant for me. I traded the pen for the knife and back again. But the pen is trying to tell the story of the knife and it is the knife’s story to tell… No? Yes? I want a wood-burning oven. Next to it I want a place for the live coals to grill and smoke and perfume the room and next to it I want a clean induction top and I want it to have the structure of the world’s best sushi restaurant but I want it to be entirely my American soul. I want twelve seats at a counter. I don’t want to explain dishes. I want to cook the food and disappear into it. Name the bite and state its place of origin and nothing else. Deboned hind quarter of a bantam chicken, raised on our farm. I don’t know anything about pedestals. The best painters may explain painting but they do not explain their paintings. They can’t. That’s why they painted them. I wonder now as we begin to build the infrastructure for the growing of food and raising of chickens to provide sustenance to our restaurant… could that be enough for me when paired with the words? The kitchen draws me like an opioid. All I really want is to feel the land with my hands and heart. I want to absorb the rain falling from the heavens and let it come out of me and back to the earth so it can rise again and fall into me again and I can release it again and grow strong and tall from the warmth of sunshine.
12/4
Already a new month. Excited and making progress on the Winter Cellar Salad featuring the New Jersey citrus. Dehydrating the yuzu rind and using the innards for a shrub to give the acidity and sweetness to the dressing and using some of the juice (yields little) for freshness and extracting the pectin from the seeds hoping it will be enough to emulsify the dressing without the use of mustard. Will work on the other elements today. Also made “cups” using the limequat halves… candied them in maple sugar.
Put flanken ribs on the menu. The beef all retired dairy cow coming from a friend of a friend just down the road. The quality of the meat is excellent. Going to try to render some of the fat in the sous-vide to make the eating experience better… then placing on the very hot grill inside the oven…
12/6
Lancaster just sent their expected winter availability list. I’m losing some availability but it’s exciting to look forward to the new challenges. We will go deep into root vegetables and young green varieties and mushrooms and brassicas. It is actually quite nice. I look forward to these “limitations” every year. Time stops and with few ingredients. I can master them. There is no hurry. Not a new crop every day. I can put my head down to work.
(Midnight):
Today was a whirlwind. Arrived at Manina at 9 to catch up… a lot of things undone and ingredients not being used… It’s hard. I’m just one person. I have four, five, six new dishes on my list to create with the ingredients waiting and there are the ingredients I have no plan for. Hello kiwis from Heinz and Gabrielle. I’m lucky to get half a dish completed. Perhaps I’m working inefficiently. But every corner I turn there’s something unexpected waiting for me. This morning I see there are no pies. I’m the only one there in the mornings and the pies can’t be baked in the afternoon because the oven is too hot and the live fire burns them. So I have to bake pies but next to the apple filling I find unseasoned pumpkin puree and it’s nearly expiring… I’m suddenly working on a new dish that wasn’t among the six I have planned. I am very happy how it turned out. I made caramel with sorghum and a bit of maple and folded that into the pumpkin with eggs and fresh ginger. It really was wonderful the sorghum… everything tasted so natural but it was still very much a dessert. Chef Tom remarked, “This is what they should mean when they say Natural flavor.’” It was so far removed from any standard pumpkin pie. Noelle said it reminded her of sweet potato pie… And that’s because people aren’t used to tasting pumpkin. The sorghum really brought that out.
At any rate, wanted to get to my list but the 20# of ground pork and beef was staring at me and we are out of pepperoni so I needed to see if I could maybe figure out a fresh pepperoni alternative to hold us over as the other finishes curing. I made a spicy summer sausage, smaller, with mounds of red pepper. Got that started its compressing in the walk-in fridge and tomorrow it'll need to be laboriously stuffed into a casing and smoked. And then the 20# of cranberries have been neglected… so I made fruit pate by cooking it all down with maple sugar and pectin and placed it in the dehydrator… finally I was able to get the lamb bones into the oven for stock for the carrot dish that I’ve been working on for several weeks. While they roasted I took the time to rewrite the menu for dinner service. I ended up working on the carrot dish all service in between expediting and finally had something worth considering just after 10:30PM. I’m glad for that because the day would have ended sourly. The black noble carrots are so deep black they look burnt! The lamb broth really brought out their sweetness. The dish seems like spring but I have the lamb and carrots so I’ll use them. The carrots are very good although they perhaps haven’t developed their potential having not converted all their starches into sugar in the ground over winter but what do I know of black nebula carrots but that they are delicious now? It was a delicious dish with the sweet coal black carrots and iron earth lamb broth and bits of fatty lamb meat. But Chef Tom and I didn’t want more after a couple of bites. There was so much carrot, which is the point of the dish, carrots with lamb, but the flavor and texture overwhelmed. Something else needed to balance it. It doesn’t need more richness. Something clean and not greasy. Crisp to break the texture. I had already been half-considering using the tiny tiny hakurei turnips with their tops those wonderful meaty and snappy greens and marble sized bulbs… they worked wonderfully and gave the dish life. It was one of those that felt so quintessentially of the time and place even if one may think spring with carrots and lamb. But it still isn’t finished. Needs something—I think herbs. Will try some cilantro tomorrow. Then there’s:
-brussels sprout pancake
-smoked rockfish
-rockfish risotto
-half duck
-oyster & black salsify stew
Leave it for tomorrow. Tired so very tired the drive home so far. Best get to it.