Draft #2

Introducing the chef

***This is a segment of a yet-to-be-titled novel-in-progress. Subject to much change. It would be a mistake to try to piece this together with draft #1 to make sense of it. And draft #3 and #4 and #5 etc. will follow similarly.***

After hoisting the crate of vegetables and cooler of fish from the truck bed he managed them inside the restaurant and onto the Black Walnut bar where they awaited his evaluation. He patted down his parchment white cotton apron, smoothing it over his slightly protruding belly, then leaned back onto the red brick wall facade of the wood burning stone oven and crossed his arms. The fire was crackling against the back wall of the dome, and yesterday’s soot was beginning to burn off the white clay bricks. A French oven. Larnage clay. He stroked his trimmed brown and slightly greying beard, but his body remained otherwise motionless. The twelve-seat tasting counter restaurant was nearly silent but for the day’s first fire and din of the undercounter refrigerator across from him. He prefers monastic silence. Suddenly, he straightened his posture and reached forward for the large navy plastic cooler. Three large blue catfish, all between 20 and 30 pounds. One small snakehead, about 10 pounds. Six blue crabs. Having determined what size containers he'd need for processing he quickly shut it again, pushing down the crabs with the lid, and moved purposefully toward the storage room, allowing his brown leather clogs to drag on the grey, black, and white speckled resin floor beneath them.

Six crabs into a metal half hotel pan with perforated lid. Tongs to avoid their September claws. And into the undercounter refrigerator they go to slow their central nervous system. Decent thing to do. They will be immolated, after all. Then, having filled a large plastic container with ice water, he sent the catfish and snakehead for a plunge as he considered the vegetables. Terrific, wonderful, superb, sublime, delightful month for vegetables. The summer bounty colliding with fall. Lovely, lovely. Jimmy Nardello peppers, jalapenos, big and beautiful red slicing tomatoes not the heirlooms no, no always mushy to tell the god’s honest truth and cracking and rotting for six bucks a pound no thank you but the Lucid Gems and Blue Beauties haven’t been all bad this year not too bad for a salad or BLT or chilled tomato soup it was nice in August the third course was a BLT sandwich alongside the chilled soup, they never expected it for three hundred bucks a meal excluding the alcohol of course, but best BLT they’ve ever had, and me too, for that matter, but it wasn’t really a BLT in any sort of traditional sense, of course. Squash blossoms, small Lodi pumpkins, sunchokes, Badger Flame beets, small Caraflex cabbages, Rosa Bianca eggplant, ground cherries, rattlesnake beans, foraged dandelion greens and pawpaws, red raspberries like Queenie’s jewels—long live the Queen!—Italian prune plums not very sweet this year best to get into the dehydrator to become their namesake a little spot of brightness in a winter agrodolce, honey crisp apples, chive blossoms, regular and Delfino cilantro, Genovese basil, pineapple sage, lemon verbena, dill, and handful of wild yarrow. But one could not discern the chef’s pleasure, as he leaned against the brick oven, facing this bounty with arms crossed and pensive frown. Suddenly, he pounced forward again, this time securing the herbs within two shallow and lidded white plastic containers, on top of a barely dampened linen towel he uses for this purpose alone. Labeled and dated. Slid into the undercounter refrigerator, top shelf, left side. The remaining vegetables, excluding the tomatoes and pumpkins, were placed in larger, clear plastic lidded containers, sans dampened cloth, labeled and dated, and taken to the reach-in fruit and vegetable refrigerator in the storage area. On a full sheet tray, he placed a dry linen towel, then the tomatoes, and slid them onto a speed-rack in the small temperature-controlled larder, just through the storage area. The small pumpkins followed suit. That’s settled.

 He unsheathed his Deba knife and ran it slowly over a water soaked 6,ooo grit stone, carefully dried it with a folded kitchen towel, then set it down at the top of a hard rubber cutting board placed on the prep sink for fish butchery. Cats first. Need to get the bones into the fire for broth. From the top drawer of his black metal toolbox, left of the undercounter refrigerator, he removed skinning pliers. Set those parallel with the Deba knife. Hoisted a cat out of water, patted him dry, down onto the cutting board. Two scores on both sides of the fish just below the head plate with the Deba knife. Wiped the knife clean. Set it down where he’d picked it up. Left hand pointer and middle finger securing the fish inside the eye sockets. Squish. Peel back the grey blue slimy skin of the head with skinning pliers in the right hand beginning at the scores. Drop the pliers pick up the knife. Carve out the cheek meat. Substantial bites, tender. Set aside. Score the fish under both sides of the ribs. Wipe Deba clean. Pliers to skin the body of the cat, tearing it from the flesh, turning him around and working the skin down. Voila. Pliers down. Slide the Deba knife into the filet at the rib bone, then working it off along the spine gently to the tail. Perpendicular slice. Wipe knife. Return to the rib bone and run the Deba along the underside taking care not to puncture the inner organs. Wipe knife. Place aside the first cleaned white filet. Ikejime. Best to euthanize the fish on site directly after catching. Insert the spike between the eyes into the head to immediately render it braindead. Exsanguination, or bleeding out: using the still-beating heart to push out the blood that spoils the fish by seeping into the capillaries and into the muscle tissue. Make clean incisions at both gills then the artery at the tail and place the fish in water to bleed. Lastly, insert the shinkei wire into the spinal cord through the tail to prevent further nerve signaling and delay the onset of rigor mortis. Fish left to suffocate in coolers creates a breeding ground for bacterial spoilage and compromises the flavor and texture of the meat.

After the filets have been removed, peel back the remaining flap of skin from the belly. Cut below the rib, following the bone up along the collar to the other side to remove the whole belly. Take care not to puncture the inner organs. Roe. He’s a she. What a wonderful little treat. Wipe knife. After cleaning with water at the sink, he placed the cheeks and fillets and belly and roe into a white plastic fish tub lined with linen and onto the bottom shelf of the undercounter refrigerator to keep cool while he worked the others. Bones torn clean from organs and chopped and into cast iron stock pot. Guts discarded. Repeat with remaining two fish. Cover the bones with filtered water and not a drop more. Add whatever green tops are left of yesterday’s onion harvest, a pinch of salt, not too much. Return the lid, slide into the front left of the oven. That’ll be 400 degrees, Alex. The chef confirmed this with the infrared thermometer: 404. Never make a stock by reducing the liquid. Place the desired amount of liquid into the stock pot in comparison to the mass of bones, then cover and place over a delicate flame. Do not allow the essence of the fish to escape in the steam of the water.

Snakehead. Like blue cats in their invasiveness to the Chesapeake Bay. Filets. Cheeks. Roe. Limited belly meat. When fileting, take care around the air bladder, which the snakehead uses to breathe on land where it can survive for several days. Ah, there is another roe sac. Naughty little wench. I see poached invasive roe on tonight’s menu on Alsatian rye—from Elias—toast points with hollandaise and dill. Lovely little nibble. I think I’ll place one small, assembled bite over a generous portion of clover. Will need to pick from the yard. Dressed with salt and just a few drops of Keepwell merlot vinegar. No fat. Eat all of it up, my good man, you’re mouth partakes in an environmental justice. Ha. Ha ha ha. I can’t figure out why any of this is important. It makes the fact of my being compelled to cook, and to cook with such vigor, all the more curious to me. Why must I do this? You’ve reasoned with yourself countless times—you cook like painters paint, not like how writers write, so go be free. But of course I know all of that, my good man, I just have trouble actually believing it. I think I’ll also do catfish and snakehead cheek beignets with the Jimmy Nardellos. The chef removed a small black moleskin from his back right pocket and stepped several feet to the right of the sink, where his station had already been set the night before—rubber cutting board, folded towels, knives, a few small stainless-steel containers for various salts, butter, spoons—and began scribbling with the pen clipped to the apron below his chin. Lovely. He returned to the sink, washed the cutting board of the fish remnants, changed the trash bag to avoid any fishy smell from lingering in the dining room, placed his clean knife back in its sheath, and walked out the back door destined for the dumpster. Gearing up to be a sultry September day. Lovely. He returned with a few oak logs for the fire taken from the woodshed to the left of the garden to hold him over until his porter, Mr. Cook, arrived.  I’ll juice the Jimmy Nardellos and fold it into the beignet batter. I’ll roast Jimmy Nardellos over coals, let them cool, juice them, then add that juice to deeply caramelized Jimmy Nardellos with a drop of maple syrup and the sardine garum. Brighten with Keepwell apple cider vinegar, blitz it all then pass it through a fine sieve until the texture is perfect. Red beignet. Red sauce. Small white plate. It will need cilantro. I want it fresh, but I don’t want the bright green to distract from the red on red. Perhaps it’ll be fine. The Delfino is a suitable garnish. Though it’ll need to shine. Drop of Georgia Olive Farms olive oil with apple cider vinegar and a pinch of Cape Henlopen sea salt. Voila. A good dish. A good dish in thought. One of those that crumbles apart an hour before the guests arrive. Best to get to work on it now. Will keep the charcoal sweet corn with the house churned butter—Guernsey girls—and fermented blueberry sauce. Nod to Mr. Redzepi in Copenhagen. I’d like to follow that with the fish roe on rye with hollandaise, but that doesn’t seem like a good fit, the sour salty blueberries into the rich eggy sauce. Perhaps the reverse. Swip-swap. Yes. That’ll do just fine. But, no. Too heavy. The bite isn’t a bite, it's nearly an entrée. I should make it an entrée. Butter poached roe sliced over a thin rectangular piece of Alsatian rye toast with a 63 degree yolk, no white, and a generous pour of hollandaise finished in front of the guest. Surf and turf. Bottom feeder and dust bather. Wait. Why didn’t I think of this: eggs on eggs. But what of the sweet corn? The chef placed that dish off to the proverbial side for a moment. Two new dishes needed to be worked immediately, and he felt he was already running out of time, although it was 7AM and the guests wouldn’t arrive until 6PM. Everything must be completely finished, stations set, and a cup of rosy lee in my hand promptly at 5PM. I want to greet the guests personally tonight. I want to be bored for forty five minutes until the first ones arrive. Please dear god I pray to thee, Amen. But what about the clover? He was often envious of the popular Kaiseki style tasting menu. He yearned for the precision, stability, reliability, structure. There’s no structure in American cuisine. No restraint. How to bring an Eastern view to the Western world? But, it isn’t my view. But it is my view, that is, restraint, to consider the complexity of the land. It is not my people’s view. They are not of this land, they just trample over it. Why do you cook people food if you hate them so much? But who’s cooking people food? Me? I’m sorry, you must be mistaken. I’m saving the world… The idea that everything I do culminates in people eating makes so little sense to me that I frankly can’t believe it. There must be something else in the works. Food must be code for something. There’s a war going on. Nothing is at it seems. He put the electric kettle on, ground coffee beans until course, poured them into the stoneware French press made special for him by the Still Pond potter, Doug Sassi. Pop the button flipped. 212 degrees. He wet the grounds with the boiling water and let them sit for a minute while tapping his toe. Tap. Tap tap tap tap. He swirled the grounds, then filled the press up to the top and peered into his moleskin as it brewed. I’ll repeat the salad, still have lovely Mizuna lettuce: Roasted random sized pieces of Badger flame beets, ground cherries—those tiny little tomato-esque orbs filled, seemingly, with pineapple juice—a few thin slices of honey crisp, a sprinkling of cured black walnuts—cracked with Grandpa’s Goody Getter—clover, Delfino cilantro, tangerine lace, a few tiny squares of watermelon compressed in Keepwell soy sauce and Casa Carmen Cabernet Franc, two thin slices of bitter melon, roasted Lodi pumpkin seeds and an apple cider vinaigrette: a cornucopia of seasonality. Will have Rich assemble components when he arrives. The chef paused to record the notes into his moleskin. Eighth course, first dessert, leaning savory: half of a deeply roasted Lodi pumpkin, PA maple syrup, smashed to tiny bits roasted hickories and black walnuts, apple cider cooked down to syrup, and marshmallows made with last year’s dried and ground marshmallow root and house honey. The guests will roast their own marshmallows with live coals placed in front of them, toasting them to their liking. But first a palate cleanser of watermelon and basil shaved ice.

He took the crabs form the undercounter refrigerator and placed them in a cast iron stockpot then doused them in a few good glugs of Casa Carmen Viognier and handfuls of sea salt. Cover. Slid into oven. Set timer for fifteen minutes. Crab cocktail on a slice of salted Mexican sour gherkin with a pinch of the dried chili powder and salt blend. Serve as the first course trio of snacks alongside last of the season cantaloupe wrapped in house cured country ham, and buckwheat and Lodi pumpkin tart. There’s a change. Fish cheek beignets will be the bread course. How daring. No sauce. Instead, roast the Jimmy Nardellos over the coals and juice, as before, then cook the juice down until syrupy and fold into house churned butter with sardine garum, let set in the fridge. The chef scribbled in his moleskin.