Kitchenese: A Cook's Journal

 Making food was always fun for me, but about fifteen years ago, I sort of fell into my career as a cook. It's been a long strange journey so far, but I am still (mostly!) loving it. Right now I'm living and cooking in the high desert of New Mexico. The nights can be hard, but the satisfaction is high, and the possibilities are endless. Here are some assorted bits and pieces from my days and nights on the line.

[kitchenese]

Resurrecting this account from the dead to post a tenderloin trimming video I made long ago but never got around to posting. Here’s part one and I’ll post parts 2 and 3 momentarily

Hope you all are well! I miss this community and kitchen life, I’m on a whole other wavelength these days

[kitchenese]

Just got the news that I’m back on for Elk Camp this fall!! One of my very favorite cooking gigs - the last time I went, I got a lesson in how to skin and gut an elk!

[kitchenese]

I asked him to go get a chub and this was how he decided to do it. Going down was easy but not so much coming back up... 🤣

[kitchenese]

Merry Christmas y'all! Guess who's back on the line! This new place is the most chill job I've ever had, as you can probably tell from my holiday attire 🎅🏼

[kitchenese]

Look what I found on a walk around my neighborhood this morning - about 6 different kinds of acorns! I've been looking into how to turn these little fall offerings into food, and I will report back after some experimentation 👩‍🔬

[kitchenese]

So Marcello’s closed its doors today after ten years in business, and two months after I started. I don’t know what to think. The nonsensical phrase that kept occurring to me all night was “it’s like a dead hooker” and the coworkers I mentioned that to seemed to agree it fit, in an odd sort of way. Buyers in expensive suits and gold chains, wearing overpowering cologne and overly gelled bad haircuts, were led by the owner through the kitchen all night, looking at equipment, buying cases of rough cuts from the walk-in, dismantling us bit by bit.

We sweated and struggled through an extra busy night, as if word had gotten out that we were closing our doors and people were eager to cash in their gift certificates. I swore my way through the entire night of service. At the end, it was me and John (my favorite of my burgeoning work family) and Jesse, tackling the mountain of dishes that comes from closing a restaurant for the last time. I stripped off my coat, and dug in to the mess in the dish pit, to the dulcet tones of Metallica as select members of the front of house got slowly, raucously drunk and brought us shots of the best stuff in the house. It was bittersweet that on my very last night here with these people I would feel much closer to them than I’d managed so far.

*** I wrote the above a month and a half ago while slightly tipsy at 2 AM, watching my coworkers stumble homewards for the last time. I still don’t know what to think. They told us three days before we closed that it was happening, and being that our slated last day was April 1st, I was convinced until the end that it might have been an elaborate joke.

No joke.

I haven’t found another job yet, partly so I could have some extra time to focus on the end of the semester (did I mention to you guys that I’m back in school to finish a degree that has nothing to do with culinary arts at all?) and partly because I’m just feeling kind of burned by Marcello’s. I’ve never had a restaurant close out from under me. It’s been rather disorienting.

It’s hard to keep this girl out of the kitchen though, and in addition to my small catering business, I’ve had a few cooking related gigs that I’m eager to share with y'all, including: a seven month stint as the executive chef of a B&B that came at the height of the chaos in my life and thus did not get mentioned here at all, followed by a tiny dip into Culinary Arts classes, another round at Elk Camp, and a Victorian literature inspired project for one of my English courses.

[kitchenese]

Got to participate in a dinner for the annual induction ceremony for the Albuquerque Bailliage of the Chaîne des Rôtisseurs gastronomic society! Here’s some of the guys (okay honestly most of the guys) on my new crew.

[kitchenese]

Just for the record

Aside from a minute to snap a photo, all the content I create for Kitchenese is done on my personal time, not on the clock at work. I don’t take a lot of time to set up my shots, they’re pretty off the cuff when something catches my eye, with maybe a moment to neaten the background. Most of my posts are written late at night, when I’m home, unwinding and reflecting on the day. I’m not live blogging from the line. That would be unprofessional. I don’t keep this blog for pride or vanity. It’s simply my chronicles of life at work on the line, and the frustrations and triumphs. It’s a measure of my growth. It’s the memories that play through my head. Most of all, this is a personal project that’s very near to my heart - I call it a journal for a reason.

[kitchenese]

For tonight’s special

[kitchenese]

My new chef introduced me to our meat rep today while I was cleaning tenders, and then he called me a “tenderloin technician”. Do I even have to tell you how much I’m glowing?? I’m moving into doing a lot of butchering at this place, and let me tell you guys, I love dismantling animals. I’ve loved it ever since I learned to clean my first tenderloin at a summer job when I was fifteen. For those not in the know, first photo is my tender butchering set-up: scrap/stock pan, usable scraps for skewers pan, tender chain pan (for cleaning and using later), and pan of cleaned tenders. Second picture is one tenderloin fresh out of the package, and one completely cleaned. Takes me about seven minutes to clean one down right now, but I’m hella rusty still.

[kitchenese]

The last six or eight months have been rough, and my whole life has been turned inside out (I'll tell you guys all about it sometime) but I have two days down at the new job now - a fancy chophouse called Marcello's. My soul is still in turmoil, but work has always been a balm for my mind and my mood, and this job is soothing me about as much as I can presently be soothed. I think the smile will tell you how much I missed working the line though. I got a chance to show off my tenderloin and fish butchering skills today, and my new chefs made me feel like a rockstar for it ☺️

[kitchenese]

Here in my native New Mexico, my very favorite time of year has come - green chile season! A unique statewide culinary event, each fall brings the harvest, the long lines, and the roasters.

These chile peppers are grown in Hatch, NM, and most New Mexicans will accept no others. The volcanic soil there produces incomparable heat and flavor. Similar to Anaheim peppers, New Mexico chiles have been selectively bred by NM State University to be fleshier, spicier, and more suited to canning.

To acquire your green chile like a proper New Mexican, head to the grocery store and choose a 10 lb case (or two!) of your heat preference. Green chile comes in mild, medium, hot, and extra hot - they are not kidding about the extra hot!

Once you’ve paid for your chile, go outside and join the line to get roasted. These guys will be outside any place selling chile by the case, armed with homemade roasting barrels, hoses, and trash bags. They’ll load up your chile, and watch the skins blacken to a perfect crisp over blasting flames before hosing them down to remove most of the skins (some say this takes away too much of the chile's heat, but it’s so much less work for you later). Once this process is finished, the chile is wrapped in a trash bag for the trip home. This both holds in the heat, and steams loose the remaining skins.

When you get home, grab some gloves, a folding table and some chairs, and two or three of those who will share in the fruits of your labor - get to work over a newspaper covered surface. Rub the skins loose, then slice the stems off and deseed the chile. You don’t have to get every seed or piece of skin, just most of them. Do not rinse the chile again.

If you got the hot or extra hot, this process is probably going to burn your eyes and make you choke some, be warned. And whatever you do, for the love of God, do not rub your eyes until you wash your hands at least a half dozen times, gloves or not.

Portion your chile into snack size ziplocs, label with the heat level and the date, then put those into gallon ziplocs and fill an entire shelf of your freezer with chile to last you and yours until next September, with any luck.

Nothing compares to the flavor of fresh roasted green chile - a little bit like a roasted bell pepper in texture, but with a bite of spiciness that slowly and pleasantly spreads til it’s making you sweat, and a little smoky char to balance the sweetness.

Some of the green chile pods are allowed to ripen to a full red, which are then dried and made into sauces, but that’s a post for another day. The official state question is actually, “Red or Green?” and if you’re ever in New Mexico, make sure and try some of both!

[kitchenese]

Just got some Merrell kitchen shoes on sale. So far they feel okay, if a bit tight. We'll see how they hold up. Going to be hard to beat my old Mozo shoes though, the Spider clogs were bomb and they lasted though more than a year of hard use. What kind of kitchen shoes do you guys recommend? They have to be skid-proof, waterproof, and solid-toed, of course. I usually go for clogs with a little heel, that extra half inch helps a lot when you're small!

[kitchenese]

Oh, By the Way

Awhile ago, I started a little side blog to showcase some of Tumblr’s collected kitchen wisdom - for chefs and cooks of all levels of skill, from the home cook to the aspiring chef, even the experienced professional may find some new little skill. It has enough posts to share now, so here you go! Hope you all find this a useful resource! Kitchenese Cooking School

[kitchenese]

Hiatus-ish

Suddenly and weirdly, for the first time in my working life, I'm not working in a kitchen. Life has intervened in the past six months and I'm currently running a tiny dive bar (my first front of house job ever). I won't lie to you guys, despite the relative freedom, I kind of hate it, especially having to talk to every damn customer who walks in the door. I feel bad that I haven't been posting too much here to Kitchenese, but it's hard to feel like I'm a real cook when I'm not really cooking, besides the occasional dinner party. I watch my time-lapse videos and wonder if that's really me and if I can still hustle when I need to again. I have a few Taormina memories still to post, and I'm looking into the sparse amount of kitchen work here in the mountains, but odds are good that I won't be back on the line until next year when we move back to Hawaii. And that really bums me out. I miss having a crew. I miss the heat and the stress, I miss the order and the chaos. I miss having my hands involved so intricately in my work. I miss plating. I even miss hearing the damned ticket printer. When I sleep, I'm still there, working in the literal restaurant of my dreams four or five nights a week. I used to hate my work dreams, but now I find them oddly comforting.

[kitchenese]

A throwback time-lapse to my last night working in Hawaii, running the line with Naomi-san. I'm going through some big changes right now in my career, but more than anything I wish I could just go back to Taormina.

[kitchenese]

Somehow I snagged a sweet gig as a cook for an elk camp in Colorado - 18 hunters and me in the mountains for a week in a cabin with only sporadic electricity. We got up here Friday, and the hunt opened yesterday - four down on the first day, which means fresh elk tenderloin for dinner tonight!

[foodmsquared]

This is amazing @kitchenese What an opportunity! And in Colorado… so unique. How do you guys transport the dead animals? And how do you avoid maggots growing in them within the hour?

[kitchenese]

The elk are transported in quarters in a U-Haul when we leave camp at the end of the week. I was concerned about the meat rotting as well, but we're at 9,500 feet at the cabin, and at this time of year, it is cold! During the day, it barely gets to 50 F, and the nights are below freezing - so the bodies just hang there, all week. I've heard from a few of the hunters that it improves the flavor as well.