Saturdays are crunch nights at Oliveto, the Italian restaurant in Oakland where I interned the last six months.

On this particular night, the first patrons are all arriving at the same time: 6 p.m. The upstairs dining room is slammed.

As the service staff punches orders into a computer, a machine in the kitchen starts printing tickets, "chicka, chicka, chicka."

Before the evening is over, the line cooks will have served several hundred plates, and each cook will be drenched in sweat.

Paul Berglund, the restaurant's chef de cuisine, is working this night as the "expeditor," a traffic cop for the line cooks. He looks at each ticket as it comes in, then yells out orders.

"Mark - four halibuts. Raiden - four sausages and a deuce on the pigeons. Sebastian, one escarole, two crostone, one frisse and a salami plate."

Then he turns to Christa Chase, who is working the pasta station that night. "Christa, fire four mostaccioli, three cannelloni and six ravioli."

A few minutes later: "Fire one pappardelle, two fettuccines and two gnocchis."

Chase will be a blur for the next two hours, throwing fresh pasta into boiling water and finishing multiple sauces in separate pans. She has a cheat sheet of ingredients taped to her station, but she doesn't have time to read it. Like a soap opera star, she must memorize her lines instantly.

Since I started interning at Oliveto, I've been in awe of the line cooks. It takes a rare combination of skills and temperament to excel at this job and not flame out.

To succeed, a line cook must be well-organized, physically adept, completely focused and always thinking one or two steps ahead.

"At some point, 'Supercook' takes over and intuition kicks in," says Kelsey Bergstrom, a sous chef at Oliveto who was recently promoted from line chef.

"You know the fish is 20 seconds out. You just know it. And you pull that fish and plate it just as it is done."

To continue reading, with a slide show and a video of cooks, go here.

As I sign off, I must thank a few people for my apprenticeship and this blog.

I have to start with Paul Canales, my friend of 47 years.

When I approached Paul out off the blue last year and asked if he would consider me for an internship, he didn't hesitate. The executive chef of Oliveto said yes and he kept saying yes even after his better judgment probably made him aware of what a stupid idea this was. (Old friend, dredging up embarrassing old stories, hapless home cook, journalist in the kitchen, etc.)

I also was embraced by the owners of Oliveto, Bob and Maggie Klein, who knew me less well. They supported nearly everything I wanted to do (except, perhaps, chronicling some of the more extreme pranks in the kitchen).

Speaking off the kitchen, I can't begin to thank everyone there. A special shout-out to Paul Berglund, Brian Murphy, Curtis Di Fede, Kelsey Bergstrom, Carmen Tejeda, Adelino, Tigre and many others. All of you tought me so much, not just about cooking, but about character.

(In other words, you all are characters, which helped bring the story alive.)

I owe my cooking apprenticeship, in part, to the Capitol Corridor trains.

If California didn't have a rail connection between Sacramento and the Bay Area, there is no way I could have commuted to Oliveto five days a week.

Driving Interstate 80 daily? Not a chance.

Commuting 160 miles daily between Sacramento and Berkeley was both an adventure and a challenge. After several months, it became more of the latter.

Every day, I'd ride my bike down to the Amtrak station in Sacramento, which is about 1.5 miles from my house. If you were standing on G Street at about 7:30 a.m. on a weekday, you might have seen me speeding by, trying to make it to the station for the 7:40 train.

Once aboard, any hint of stress washed away. Each Capitol Corridor train has closets where you can hang your bicycle and lock it up. Each day I'd bring my laptop, USB modem and coffee thermos. As the train passed over the Sacramento River by the Yolo Bypass in the early morning light, I'd get some writing done and check email, sipping coffee and watching the scenery.

Feeling wistful, I stopped by Oliveto the other week. I only wanted to stay long enough to chat with friends, clear out my locker and depart with my shoes and my knife bag.

But when I entered the kitchen, I wasn't ready for any abrupt goodbyes. And so I decided to grab a white jacket and an apron, and work for a few more hours.

My first task, assigned by chef de cuisine Paul Berglund, was to peel and finely mince four heads of garlic for a beef ragu he was preparing.

The garlic didn't take long - perhaps 20 minutes. When I started at Oliveto, such a task might have taken an hour or more.

After that was done, Berglund assigned me to slow-roast a few trays of Early Girl tomatoes. This was a moment of culinary convergence.

At home, my wife and I had accumulated a bumper crop of homegrown Early Girls and Brandywines. Roasting them had come to mind.

But until my serendipitous locker-clearing visit to Oliveto, I had never learned the restaurant's technique for slow-roasted tomatoes.

My visit provided further evidence that hanging around a kitchen can be a transformative experience.

Slow-roasting is a fine way to process tomatoes at the end of the season.

The caramelized, shrunken tomatoes exude the intensity of Italian sun-dried tomatoes or the finest imported tomato paste.

Here's the basic technique: Take 6 to 8 pounds of tomatoes and cut them into uniform sizes. If you have Early Girls, you can slice them in half. Bigger tomatoes, such as Brandywines, must be cut into quarters or eighths.

Heat your oven to 350 degrees. Line a sheet pan with parchment, and lay the tomatoes skin-side down on it. Sprinkle the pieces with sugar, then salt, then olive oil, then sprigs of fresh thyme, as you see to the left.

Place your tray in the oven. Leave it there for 30 minutes, then check. If your tomatoes are dry, like some Early Girls, you might need to add a bit of water. Turn the temperature down to 275 degrees.

Continue to roast until the tomatoes have collapsed on themselves and their sweet-salty juices have reduced to the consistency of a light syrup. This might take an hour. Pull from the oven and allow to cool. When done, they will look like those in the pan above to the right.

Serve roasted tomatoes in a salad, or use them as a base for pasta sauce. You may also can them or freeze them - to be reminded of summer, even in the coldest of months.

The photo at top shows simple roasted tomatoes with ricotta salata, olive oil and sprigs of thyme.

Next to his desk in the Oliveto back office, Chef Paul Canales has taped a diagram that captures the restaurant's reverence for pork.

The diagram shows a hog divided into sections, such as the shoulder and the leg. All of these sections are labeled "good," except for the belly. It is labeled "real good."

Pork is a constant at Oliveto. The menu revolves around it.

On any given day, prep chefs can be seen breaking down a hog into various cuts - shoulder, loin, leg - and then processing them into porchetta, pancetta, scallopine, sausage or salumi.

For an uninitiated guest to the kitchen, it can be startling to see a pig's head simmering in a stock pot or a chef hefting a hand saw on one half of a 200-pound carcass.

Yet if you want restaurants to be respectful of the meat they serve, extracting every ounce of flavor and using all parts of the animal, then these scenes shouldn't shock you. Many chefs run far tidier kitchens by relying on industrial meat processors to do their butchery, delivering meat cuts that are shrink-wrapped and ready to cook.

To read the rest of this post, with more photos and a rundown on how Oliveto processes a whole hog, go here.

No matter how humble they appear to be, nearly everyone who cooks likes to have their egos stroked.

Sure, cooking by itself is fun, but public appreciation is even better.

As Barbara Kafka once wrote, "Food is about loving and giving and performance and applause."

Yesterday, I cooked at a food event in Yolo County, where I knew there would be plenty of loving, giving and performance. I just wasn't sure about the applause.

Paul Canales, the executive chef of Oliveto, had asked me to fill in for him at a fundraiser for the Yolo Land Trust, a group that has been preserving farms in Yolo for more than 20 years.

My assignment was to make panzanella - tomato and bread salad - and grill a bunch of peaches.

It sounded fun. It also sounded scary. I had never grilled a peach before. I didn't know how many people would attend or line up at our booth.

I also learned I'd be facing some stiff competition -- including food from Chez Panisse in Berkeley and Waterboy, Mulvaney's, Grange and Lucca in Sacramento.

Fortunately, I had the faith of two loyal fans. Paul Muller, seen right, a founder of Full Belly Farm in Yolo and a longtime supplier of Oliveto, provided the peaches and a trailer grill.

My wife, Micaela, seen in the photo above, agreed to work as an assistant.

To our delight, the event was held in a shady walnut grove at the Elkhorn Basin Ranch, and the afternoon was as cool as an autumn morning.

The ranch itself is a story worth of a post. Several agencies and non-profits, including the Yolo Land Trust, combined to preserve the 1,500-acre tract and protect it from the development. The ranch sits east of Woodland, and a few miles north of Interstate 5, right across the Sacramento River from Sacramento International Airport.

When we arrived two hours before the event, Micaela and I thought we'd have plenty of time to prep our peaches and salad.

Of course, we didn't. People started arriving promptly at 3 p.m, hungry and thirsty. It was around then we learned that up to 500 people might attend.

"We can do this," I said to myself, trying not to panic. I brushed olive oil on the peach halves that Mickie had sliced, and started grilling them on a medium-hot griddle that sat above the flaming coals.

Soon there was a small line at our booth. Then it became a large line. Some people wanted to meet the Chef Apprentice. Others seemed attracted to the novelty of peaches on a grill, and wanted to know what I was glazing them with.

"Just a little mixture of peach juice, sugar, salt, cinnamon and sherry vinegar," I replied.

It was a line I repeated a few dozen times. People really were curious.

(Just for the record, I neglected to mention the secret ingredient. It was sweat -- dripping from my brow over the hot fire).

People also gobbled up the panzanella. The night before, I had torn up three loaves of Bella Bru Pugliese bread, mixed them with basil-infused olive oil, and then toasted them in the oven. At the event, I sliced up red onions and cucumber, marinated them in red wine vinegar, and then mixed this concoction with a mixture of Full Belly tomatoes and the golden croutons.

All in all, it wasn't a bad swan song for the rookie. My friends and customers were satisfied, as was my ego.

Food is indeed about loving and giving, performance and applause. On Sunday, I enjoyed a bit of all four.

For a recipe on grilled peaches, go here. For a recipe on panzanella, go here.

Top photo by Paul Deering, bottom one by Stuart Leavenworth.

Grilling peaches and plums sounds easy, and it is, with the right heat and equipment.

The goal is to sear the flat side of the split fruits at just the right temperature, so their sugars caramelize but don't burn.

Then you flip the flat side over, apply a glaze to it and leave the fruit halves on the heat long enough to set the glaze, without burning the skin side (bottom) of the fruit.

I'm hardly an expert, since I have done it a total of once. On the other hand, I grilled a few hundred split peaches and plums in my single experience, so I know more than many cooks.

You have a few choices here. If you are using a charcoal or gas grill, you can sear the fruits right on the grill, or put a cast iron skillet on the grill and sear the fruits in the skillet. I would recommend the latter.

Alternately, you can sear the fruits right on your stove, using the pan of your choice. I'm sure it would work fine, and allow you to control the heat better. On the other hand, the smoky flavor of the fire goes well with peaches, and there is something mystical and primordial about the open flame.

Grilled stonefruits

Ingredients (serves 20 or so)

About 20 peaches or plums, halved, pits removed

1/2 cup of peach jam, preferably homemade

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Spanish sherry vinegar, water and sugar to taste

Olive oil

Preparation

Before splitting fruits, make your glaze. Liquify your jam in a blender, and add water, a few tablespoons at a time, until it blended, but still coats a spoon. Add cinnamon and then sugar, salt and vinegar until you get a taste you prefer - slightly tangy, but still peachy and not too thin.

Split your fruits with a paring knife, remove pits and lay on a sheet pan. Heat a grill or skillet to medium heat. Brush halves with oil. Place on grill. Leave there 3 to 5 minutes, checking frequently with tongs or a spatula.

You will surely have hot spots on your grill or skillet. Adjust heat and move fruits around so they sear evenly. When caramelized but not burnt, flip over, apply glaze with a brush and push to the sides of the heat so the glaze sets, but the bottoms don't burn.

When ready (in a minute or two) place on serving platters and enjoy.

Before working at Oliveto, I developed my own recipe for panzanella, a tomato and bread salad that has multiple versions throughout central Italy.

Stuart's version? Take slices of frozen sliced bread from the ridge, toast them and rub them with a half a clove of garlic. Then mix together wine vinegar, olive oil, basil, onions and other ingredients, and fold in sliced tomatoes and the bread.

It's a pretty tasty dish if you eat it immediately, but the bread can get soggy quickly -- not the best technique for a dinner party.

At Oliveto, the chefs have a more elegant approach. They prepare golden croutons of bread, toasted in olive oil. They toss the croutons with the salad at the last moment, adding a nice crunch. And since there is plenty of olive oil in the croutons, there's no need to add any to the dressing.

My recommendation? If you are going to make croutons, make a mess of them, using one or two loafs of bread. Then freeze the remainder. They freeze very well and are delicious with soups and salads.

Panzanella (serves 8)

Ingredients
One half loaf Pugliese bread, such as Acme or Bella Bru
2 red onions
1 cucumber
6-8 tomatoes, preferably of varying colors and textures.
1 small bunch basil
3/4 cup olive oil
1/3 cup to 1/2 cup red wine vinegar
Salt and pepper

Equipment:
Bowls, sheet trays lined with parchment

Preparation
Pour 1/2 cup of olive oil into a large bowl. Add half the basil, removed from stems. Let sit.
 
Cut crusts off of bread. To do this, cut loaf in half, creating a flat surface on which the half loaf can rest on your cutting board. Then use a serrated knife to carefully cut off crusts. (Reserved crusts can be saved, frozen, toasted, and ground up for bread crumbs.)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Using your fingers, tear bread into chunks the size of a quarter. Toss in bowl with olive oil. Add more oil, if needed, to thoroughly coat.

Spread bread pieces on one or two parchment-lined sheet pans. Remove basil leaves and reserve. Place in oven. Check and stir after 10 minutes. Croutons are done when pieces are uniformly golden, but not dark brown, as seen to the left. (Croutons can be prepared a day, or several hours, in advance.)

Prepare onions into thin slices (a half julienne) and toss into a bowl. Add 1/3 cup vinegar and a generous sprinkle of salt.

Peel skins off of cucumber and slice it in half lengthwise. Then slice into half moons about 3/16 of an inch thick. Add to bowl along with reserved basil leaves.

Slice tomatoes into uniform wedges, about the size of ping-pong balls, and place in a bowl.

When ready to serve, mix tomatoes with the marinated onions and cucumber and fold in the croutons. Add remaining basil leaves, torn in pieces. Adjust salt, and add black pepper to taste. Arrange on plates. Serve.

Variations: Feel free to add or substitute green beans, capers, green onions or other seasonal ingredients. The tomatoes are the most important part - they must be fresh and ripe, bursting with flavor. 

My apprenticeship is entering its final days, but that isn't preventing my friend Paul Canales from throwing a few surprises my way.

Many weeks ago, Canales accepted an invitation for Oliveto to prepare a dish at "A Day in the Country," a fundraiser for the Yolo Land Trust. The yearly event, which will be held Sunday, brings together farmers, chefs, winemakers and others who are committed to protecting Yolo's fertile farm economy.

Paul often overcommits himself, and such was the case this time. Sunday is his day off, and he has family matters that demand his attention. Thus, on Wednesday, as I was returning from a backpacking trip in the High Sierra, I picked up a phone message from Paul asking if I will be manning the Oliveto food booth at the September 13 event.

"I was thinking you could grill some peaches," Paul said. "That should be pretty easy."

How many peaches? The chef didn't say.

As it turns out, I may need to grill a few hundred peaches .

There was no point in arguing. Paul needed my help, and I was more than happy to assist Oliveto in a charity event for the Yolo Land Trust. So I called Paul back and told him I would be there.

There's only one problem -- I have never grilled peaches before. Figs - yes. Peaches - no.

But it can't be that hard, right? You just slice the fruits in half, remove the pits, oil a hot grill and place them face down for a few minutes. Then you flip them and drizzle them with a reduction of balsamic vinegar and spices. Right? How hard is that?

If you want to find out, you can still get tickets for the event, which will be held at the beautiful Elkhorn Basin Ranch, right across the river from Sacramento. Mulvaney's, Waterboy and Masa's in San Francisco will be serving dishes, along with chefs from other restaurants.

The peaches I'll be preparing come from Full Belly Farm, an organizer of the event. I also plan to use some of Full Belly's produce to prepare a panzanella -- a tomato and bread salad.

Stayed tune for how it turns out.
 

If you've visited the farmers markets lately, you've probably noticed a dazzling array of gypsy peppers, red bell peppers and Italian frying peppers.

Most of the year, sweet peppers cost $4 a pound or more and come from Mexico or elsewhere. By comparison, the current local crop costs one fourth of that price. The flavors are incomparable.

In other words, now is the time to have a pepper party.

Before interning at Oliveto, I had never fried any sweet peppers. My usual technique was to char them on the grill, remove their skins and then add them to a dish - a labor intensive process.

But at Oliveto, the chefs have shown me a time-honored method for frying these summer gems. In recent weeks, I became the pepper prep cook. Day after day, my job was to cut up boxes of peppers, blister them in hot pans and then finish them with a dramatic deglazing of balsamic vinegar and fresh basil.

The end result was sweet and tangy -- a dish that goes well with lamb, grilled fowl or fish. The high heat caramelizes the sugars in the peppers, and the balsamic vinegar and basil give the dish a final flavor punch.

Warning: If you prepare this dish at home, there's a high likelihood you will make a mess of your stove top or splatter yourself with hot oil. So be careful. But be bold. These peppers fit that description.

Keep reading for the recipe.