The Chef Apprentice

Sometimes life takes some serendipitous turns.

When I first arranged my apprenticeship at Oliveto, a blog wasn't in the works. But when Sacramento Bee Editor Melanie Sill asked me to write about my experience (or lack of it) in the kitchen, I could hardly say no.

This blog led to a simultaneous one for KQED. It also led to an invitation to be an assistant pit master at a barbecue competition. Then I was asked to be an auction item for a charity event. And this Friday, I'll be leading a cooking class for the East Bay Restaurant Supply store in Sacramento.

Full disclosure: I'm mortified by this most recent invitation. Although I've learned a tremendous amount at Oliveto, I am still at a low point on the learning curve.

But the folks at East Bay seem confident I can pull it off. My class kicks off a series called "La Cucina Italiana" that features various cuisines of The Boot. The organizers hoped I could impart some Oliveto tips and recipes in a manner that would inspire home chefs.

So here's the game plan: On Friday, Aug. 7, from 5:30 to 9 p.m., I'll demonstrate how to make three dishes. The highlight will be hand-made pasta with beef ragu, using an Oliveto method that I detailed in this post.

As I starter, I'll prepare tonnato with summer vegetables, another Oliveto speciality. The desert will be a peach tart with mascarpone cheese.

All the dishes will be paired with regional Italian wines. The class will be "hands-on," meaning that students will be encouraged to help in the preparation, and savor every part of the process.

More experienced instructors will lead the other classes. All will be held at the culinary center at the East Bay Restaurant Supply store, 522 North 12th Street in Sacramento. For more information and information on how to purchase tickets, click here or call Carolyn Kumpe at (916) 440-0623.

Friday, Aug. 7, 5:30-9 p.m. - The Chef Apprentice

Friday, August 14, 2009, 6:00 - 9:00 pm - Antipasti Misti with Gianluca Varenni
Varenni a native of Asti, Italy, will demonstrate how to prepare typical Northern Italian antipasti. Cost includes a serving platter for each participant. Gianluca's menu will feature Zucchini in carpione, Bagnet a Pezzi or 'diced dip', cipolle ripiene (onions stuffed with meat), crostini con gorgonzola e noci, and prosciutto e melone.

Saturday, August 15, 11:00 am - 1:00 pm - Gnocchi for lunch with Chef Carolyn Kumpe
Kumpe, the resident chef at East Bay, will lead a gnocchi making class. Learn the technique for creating perfect gnocchi every time. Enjoy a lunch of gnocchi and garden fresh salad and bring home your own potato ricer.

Wednesday, Aug. 26, 5:30-9:30 pm, Piemontese Cuisine with Chef Denise Pardini
Help prepare a delicious four-course Piemontese meal with Pardini, who owns and operates La Vita Vera Cooking School in an ancient castle in Sinio, Italy. The menu include Foccacia with Oven Roasted Tomatoes & Red Onions; Fire Roasted Sweet Pepper Rolls filled with Chilled Tuna & Caper Mousse, Aged Balsamico; Egg Maltagliati with hand chopped Duck Breast, Marsala & Green Olive Ragu; Fennel dusted Crispy Pork Tenderloin (or Sweet Breads) with Quince Vinaigrette; Shaved Fennel, Apple & Red Onion Salad; Peach Tart Tatin with Black Pepper Gelato & Basil Syrup.

Top photo, showing a cooking class at the East Bay Restaurant Supply Culinary Center, by The Bee's Renee Byer. Bottom photo by Stuart Leavenworth.

If you are a fan of Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, you probably buy chunks of it. You grate them and devour them.

Eventually you are left with rinds that are too small to grate, but too precious to throw away. If you are like me, these rinds pile up in the cheese bin of the fridge.

At $16 a pound or more, how could you possibly throw them away?

Then the time comes to utilize these rinds. Tossing them in a stock or soup is a time-honored tradition. So is simmering them with fresh tomatoes for a pasta sauce.

Yet there are other ways to utilize these rinds. Here's a method I learned from a line chef at Oliveto, after I asked him about pasta recipes for a dinner party.

To read the rest of this post, with a recipe and more photos, go here.

Photo by Stuart Leavenworth

After four years of inflicting pranks on his colleagues at Oliveto, departing chef Curtis Di Fede received his pay-back on Saturday -- with interest.

Preparations for the hazing began a day in advance.

Under the direction of Chef Paul Canales, a crew of interns put together a concoction of fish guts, pork fat, pigeon heads and other leftovers from the butcher's board. This strange brew was heaped into the tool box where Curtis keeps his knives.

The metal box was then wrapped in plastic, baked in the oven (to completely seal it) and placed in the freezer overnight. The next day, the pranksters returned the box to where Curtis would normally find it, except that to open it, he would first need to remove a rotting fish head that had been placed on top.

Curtis seemed delighted with this initial shot across the bow, as you can see from the photo above. He appreciated the creativity.

Of course, the kitchen wasn't done yet.

When he wasn't expecting it, three prep chefs grabbed Curtis, lifted him up and dunked him head-first into a sink of water.

Later, as Curtis concluded his final night of directing traffic in the kitchen, the line chefs set a trap for him.

Grabbed from behind and wrestled to the ground, he was doused -- in this order -- with egg whites, tomato sauce and flour.

Being true professionals, the chefs at Oliveto were able to execute these pranks while still turning out superlative dishes, such as this creamy potato gnocchi you see to the left.

And there were also lighter, and heart-felt moments

To the right, you can see the daily meeting of the chefs and line cooks, where the cooks are given instruction on preparations for each dish.

Curtis is seen lifting his glass in a toast to his colleagues.

Needless to say, it wasn't the last glass he would tip before the night was over.

Photos by Stuart Leavenworth

There's a long tradition of chefs causing mischief in the kitchen.

Jacques Pepin describes some of his favorite pranks in his autobiography, "The Apprentice." Anthony Bourdain takes it to a new level in "Kitchen Confidential."

At Oliveto, Curtis Di Fede is the merry prankster. Over the years, he has inflicted gags on various chefs and kitchen employees. His proudest moment came when he laid a trap for a departing colleague, who ended up getting showered with pigeon blood.

Curtis' last day is tomorrow. As I previously reported, he and a friend are opening a new restaurant in Napa called Oenotri, which likely will consume Curtis' existence for the rest of his adult life.

Curtis will be missed. He's a fine chef, with an instinctive feel for southern Italian cooking, and he's been a big part of the collegiality that is the Oliveto kitchen.

But that won't stop his friends from engaging in a little "pay-back." Curtis will get hazed tomorrow, and he knows it. The only question is: How brutal will the hazing be? And what will be the focus of the main prank?

Here are some possibilities:

1) The ball of rubber bands he has proudly assembled over the years. He has such a personal attachment to this ball that it is a sure target.

2) His knife box -- an old metal tool kit covered with stickers. It was last spotted in its usual spot, on a shelf near the other knife kits.

3) Pigeon blood. This, of course, would have to be collected in advance. But with some planning, there could be blood.

Check back over the weekend and I'll file an update.

In his 2003 memoir, "The Apprentice," chef Jacques Pepin describes how he left his classmates and family at age 13 and became an unpaid kitchen intern.

He worked his way up quickly. By his early 20s, Pepin had become chef to French President Charles de Gaulle. He has since become one of the world's best-known French chefs.

At this point, it doesn't appear that my culinary career will follow a similar trajectory. After three months at Oliveto, an Italian restaurant in Oakland. I'm still perfecting my dicing of onions. So far, Alice Waters hasn't stormed the kitchen and tried to recruit me. I'm not planning any book tours.

But while I may still be a lowly galley slave, I've proved to be a fairly reliable one. With every week, the chefs at Oliveto throw new challenges my way. One day I'm curing pancetta. The next day I'm cleaning squid. An hour after that, I'm helping five other people shuck boxes of cranberry beans. The next day I'm braising fresh porcini mushrooms, and then using them as a filling for cannelloni.

The duties range from the mundane to the revelatory, but nearly every day is different. To be a successful kitchen intern, you must gird yourself for anything. You must jump on any assignment.

It helped that, early on, I sought the advice of one of the most experienced interns at Oliveto. His name is Jacob Calthorpe. Jacob, seen above, has been interning in the kitchen for nearly two years, mostly on the weekends.

He is 13.

To read the rest of this posting, a column published today in The Bee, go here.

Peeling and dicing an onion is an easy matter, or so I thought before interning at Oliveto.

Chef Paul Canales has a certain technique - "Paris before the war," as he puts it - that he enforces for the cutting of onions and other vegetables. After three months, I've practiced it enough for a public demonstration.

In this video, Canales tutors me on how to peel the onion with a paring knife, and then slice it with a chef's knife to make a fine dice.

Once you perfect this method, you can plow through dozens of onions.

As you can see from the video, shot by The Bee's Manny Crisostomo, I am still perfecting the method. It could take a lifetime.

Ever since I took a leave from The Bee in April to work as a chef apprentice, people have asked me to tease out the differences between my old gig and my new gig.

To my surprise, the two jobs are remarkably similar.

Both newspapers and restaurants must confront daily deadlines that can be bent, but not broken.

At Oliveto, the Italian restaurant where I am interning in Oakland, the kitchen must complete all basic food prep by 5:30 p.m., when dinner service begins. Newspaper stories face a similar deadline.

Both jobs involve close collaboration with creative people who, by their very nature, can be temperamental.

To read the rest of this post, which appeared as a column in the print edition of The Bee on Sunday, go here.

Some readers of this blog think I publish nothing but tripe. That is so unfair. So far, I haven't published a single entry about tripe. That is about to change.

On recent workday at Oliveto, I entered the kitchen and Chef Paul Canales exclaimed: "Tripe!"

I thought: Oh no. Has he been reading the nasty things I say about him in the blog?

Or does he actually wants me to do something with intestines?

It was the latter.

My job was to cut up a slightly frozen block of beef intestines, before briefly braising them.

I thought it would be a disgustingly smelly job, but the raw tripe was amazingly clean and free of odor. (Apparently, there are modern methods for cleaning tripe that I have yet to fully understand. Sausage makers, who use pig intestines for sausage casings, are constantly complaining about the smell.)

Long story short, Canales amazed me with how he handled this dish. After we braised the cut-up tribe, he dredged the pieces in semolina, flash-fried them with onion rings, and presented them on a bed of frisee with some Diavolo sauce -- a peppery concoction that goes well with strongly flavored foods.

It was fantastic. Canales assumed that no one would order it. ("We do this for ourselves," he said of the tripe). But he was wrong.

After some of the servers warmed up to it (and attempted to sell it to customers) it sold very well. I ate at Oliveto earlier this week with my wife and some friends, and we all were wowed by both the flavors and crunch of the fried tripe.

So it just goes to show you: Foods that you thought you'd never like can be delicacies in the hands of a master.

There's no tripe in that sentence - only truth.

In my column today in The Bee, I express sympathy with home gardeners who get stuck with a bottomless bounty of squash. I also summarize Oliveto's basic approach to dealing with this bounty -- roasting the squash into golden nuggets, which are then baked in creamy gratin.

Yet there are other possibilities. One preventative method is to pick the blossoms from the squash plant, batter them and fry them. To the right, you see fried squash blossoms filled with Primosalle Siciliano sheep's milk cheese, a simple and satisfying way to slow down your plant's production.

If a gratin seems too fussy, there are other ways to deploy roast squash. Here is a basic recipe I threw together last weekend, inspired by pasta-cooking techniques at Oliveto:

Sausage, tomato and squash fettuccine (serves 3-4)

Ingredients

1/3 pound Italian pork sausage, preferably without fennel
Two large ripe tomatoes
1/4 red onion, cut into thin slivers
11/2 cups roasted squash
6 large leaves of fresh basil, chopped
1/3 pound fettuccine or other pasta
Olive oil
Kosher salt
Pecorino cheese

Preparation

Bring water to boil in a stock pot. While water is heating, saute marble-size chunks of sausage in a large skillet until done. Remove meat from pan and drain on paper towels. Add onions to skillet and a tablespoon of oil, if needed, and saute until tender on medium heat. When water in stock pot reaches boil, add tomatoes for one minute. Remove with a slotted spoon, cool, remove skins and slice into quarter inch cubes. Add salt and pasta to boiling water.

As pasta is cooking, add tomatoes and sausage to skillet and cook on medium high heat until sauce thickens. Add squash. When pasta is done, add to skillet along with a half cup of pasta water. Cook at high heat, mixing sauce into the pasta.

When sauce and pasta are melded together and emulsified, check seasoning and add salt if necessary. Use tongs to arrange on plates and top with Pecorino cheese and basil. Serve.

Sometimes it's best not to tell your dinner guests what you are about to serve them.

Sometimes you should just watch their eyes light up as they try that first bite, and then reveal what you've prepared.

This is one of those dishes.

Tonnato, otherwise known as tuna sauce, is a classic summer dish from the Piedmont of Italy, the northwestern part of the boot.

The Piemontese have been making tuna sauces for centuries. Sophisticated food lovers flock to the Piedmont every year, partly to try distinct regional dishes such as vitello tonnato (veal with tuna sauce).

Yet if you were to tell your dinner guests that you were serving whipped tuna and anchovies as part of an appetizer, some of them might be tempted to say, "Can we just move onto the entree?"

Read the rest of this posting, with a full recipe, here.

Photo by Stuart Leavenworth

It's not very often that Sacramento-area farmers, chefs, gardeners and food activists all gather to consider possible collaborations and raise money for some good causes.

Judged on those merits, the Urban Ag Fest that Slow Food Sacramento sponsored Saturday was a sunny success, even with rain clouds threatening the dinner.

Scores of people joined bike tours of gardens and attended movie screenings and workshops on composting and community farming.

More than 100 attended the AgFest dinner at the Fremont Garden, where they got to hear Brahm Ahmadi (right) discuss his work in West Oakland. Ahmadi the founder and executive director of the People's Grocery, a non-profit that is trying to bring fresh food and new gardens to a community where liquor stores outnumber groceries.

Although I don't know the final tally, the dinner, auction and raffle raised several thousand dollars for two charities, The Sacramento Hunger Coalition and the Sacramento Area Community Garden Coalition. A few people people even bid on me, the Chef Apprentice, to purchase and prepare lunch for them on a coming Sunday.

(To my amazement, the bidding started at $300 and climbed to $420 before the winning group claimed their prize. That was nearly twice the amount bid for a round of golf with City Councilman Rob Fong.)

The question now, of course, is whether the momentum of AgFest can be sustained and translated into something larger.

Many neighborhoods of Sacramento lack community gardens and groceries where fresh food is available. Meanwhile, many local farmers would like to sell more of their produce to people in these neighborhoods, but lack outlets for doing so.

AgFest has broadened the network of people interested in closing this loop.

But, as every farmer and gardener knows, it is not just enough to get your plants started. This is a project that will need feeding and attention, week after week, all through the seasons.

It's been a rough week at Oliveto. Business is slow, and several cooks are out sick. That has forced other chefs to work extra hours, adding to the general stress in the kitchen.

And then, of course, you have inept interns like me, who, even on a good day, have trouble cooking shallots in butter.

This should be a simple assignment for the Chef Apprentice. But on Tuesday I allowed the pan to get too close to one of the pilot lights on the old stove. The extra heat caused the shallots to brown instead of getting tender.

I fully expected to be rebuked for such a stupid mistake. Had the kitchen been close to service, I could have wiped out a dish on deadline.

But after I fessed up to Sous Chef Paul Berglund, he barely raised an eyebrow. "Let's cut up some more shallots and we'll try it again," he said.

Berglund's coolness in the kitchen is one reason I feel lucky to be interning at Oliveto. He seemed to appreciate my frankness in acknowledging my mistake, and getting on with the job of correcting it.

That's a big contrast from the atmosphere in some kitchens, such as The London, a New York outpost for British badboy chef Gordon Ramsay, seen above.

In a 2007 profile in The New Yorker magazine, Bill Buford describes a brutal encounter between Ramsay and one of his younger chefs, who, as it turns out, shares the name Stuart.

I've included excerpts below, expletives deleted.

Kudos to Chipotle Mexican Grill and its founder, Steve Ells.

Ells and his Los Angeles-based restaurant chain are underwriting free screenings of "Food Inc.," filmmaker Robert Kenner's expose of the food industry. One of the free screenings will be on Thursday, July 16, at 7:30 p.m. at the Crest Theater in Sacramento, according to a press release that just came over the transom.

I haven't yet seen "Food Inc.," but I've heard it is extremely powerful. I plan to see it next week.

Chez Panisse Chef Alice Waters gave it a plug at an event I attended in May. "I hope it will be the 'Inconvenient Truth' about food," she said.

For more information about the free screenings at  the Crest and elsewhere, go here.

In my column today in the print edition of The Bee, I recap my wacky Fourth of July weekend working as an assistant pit master at a barbecue competition in Stockton.

Now that the heat is off, I can offer a few final thoughts, pro and con, on what contestant Tim Mar (seen right) calls "this weird subculture of American society."

1. Barbecue pit masters are much like Italian grandmothers. Each is convinced that his or her recipe is the only way to prepare a particular dish.

2. Contestants at the Way Out West BBQ Competition, along with the organizers, were extremely focused on food safety. Every crew I visited was careful to keep surfaces clean, knives washed and meat stored securely with plenty of ice.

3. Most contestants at the Way Out West were there to win, but many also showed up for the comradery. If you get serious about competitive barbecue, you'll see the same folks every few weeks, makes friends and develop a broad network of BBQ buddies.

4. The quality of the barbecue varied at Way Out West. Too many pit masters were using bottled sauces, instead of their own concoctions made from fresh ingredients. Some of the BBQ I tasted was way too sweet and way too smoky. Of course, I've made this same point before.

5. Most of the big barbecue competitions in California are affiliated with the Kansas City Barbecue Society. That's understandable, because if crews want to compete in the big KCBS national competitions, they have to win at the smaller KCBS events.

The trouble is that Kansas City barbecue -- with its emphasis on smoked ribs, brisket, pork shoulder and chicken thighs -- is just one form of 'cue this nation has honed over time. Think of the the regional variations you can taste as you move from the Carolinas to Tennessee to Texas and then over to New Mexico and Arizona.

I'd love to see a California barbecue competition that was uniquely Californian, with special contests for, say, yakitori,  cochinita pibil or smoked cheeses or fish. Imagine the possibilities.

6. Sacramento needs to sponsor a major barbecue competition. Occasionally, the city or its suburbs are home to smaller competitions, such as the one at the Dante Club in June sponsored by the Western States Barbecue Association. But I am talking about a major event, designed to draw thousands of people.

The California State Fair would be the perfect local for a major contest, particularly one that would showcase all off California's ethnic barbecue. I'm not the first to suggest the state fair. Dave Hill of Oaks Hardware has been working on this for a few years.

Let me know your thoughts. Sactown shouldn't have to play second fiddle to Stockton, Modesto, Fairfield and other towns when it comes to barbecue throw-downs.

Imagine having your own chef for a day.

Not just any chef, but one that could explain the intricacies of California water policy while turning out a shaved asparagus salad, a pasta ragu that sings like Pavarotti and various cocktails invented at Oliveto.

If this sounds appetizing, then buy a ticket for the AgFest Dinner, to be held Saturday at Fremont Park and hosted by SlowFood Sacramento. If you do, you can bid on the Chef Apprentice. All proceeds from the dinner and auction benefit the Sacrament Hunger Coalition and the Sacramento Community Garden Coalition.

Here's the deal: I'll meet the winning bidder at the Sacramento Farmer's Market on a Sunday that is mutually convenient. We'll plan a lunch of handmade pasta that includes the best ingredients at the market that day, which I'll pay for out of my pocket. Then we'll go back to your place and I'll prepare a lunch for you and up to six of your guests.

There's lots of other items to bid on at the AgFest auction. These include dinner for six at Mulvaney's, a ride-along with Bee restaurant critic Blair Robertson, a garden consultation with Bee Garden Columnist Debbie Arrington, Ginger Elizabeth chocolates and more. 

Going once! Going twice! Sold to...?

Readers of this blog may assume I'm a lush, because I sometimes offer up a cocktail recipe on Mondays, a working day for most folks.

Just to be clear, Monday is one of my two days off.

A chef-in-training is entitled to refine his cocktail recipes on a day off, no?

This one is a classic: To the right you see my version of a mojito, made with the same type of mint that is used in Cuba - yerba buena.

As it happens, I have yerba buena growing in my herb garden. We use it for teas and marinades. If you don't have a patch, grow one. Or find this mint at a good Latino market or, possibly, growing in the wild.

Yerba buena (Clinopodium douglasii) has a much more subtle flavor than fresh spearmint or peppermint, which is commonly used in mojitos.

My mojito recipe is less sweet, and more robust with rum, than many of the versions you find in bars. Keep reading for the recipe. 

The judges at the Way Out West BBQ Competition have rendered their verdict:

Harry Soo, the scientific pit master from Diamond Bar whom I wrote about in a previous entry, swept every category and was named the grand champion.

Usually, judges at BBQ competitions spread the awards around for individual categories. This time, Soo (seen to the right) and his assistant Mark Tung swept all the individual contests -- chicken, pork shoulder, pork ribs and beef brisket.

"I don't know if that has ever happened before," said my pit master and trainer, Tim Mar, who came in seventh overall. "This is pretty big news in the BBQ world."

Soo, who owns SlapYoDaddy BBQ, uses a computer with sensors and fans to maintain temperatures in his two smokers. He also is very particular about buying his meats, although this time he nearly messed up.

Prior to the competition in Stockton,  Soo purchased three beef briskets, put two in the freezer and brought the other to the contest. When he got there, he realized he had purchased the wrong cut of meat. He then had to run out and had to find a real brisket in a local grocery store.

Yet it was good enough to win. There much be something in Soo's scientific smoking method, and the nature of his secret spices and sauces, that make for a winning competiton.

Congrats to Harry, who brings home $800 and a big trophy for his efforts. And thanks to Tim and Gina Mar for giving me a front row seat to the passionate and wacky world of competitive barbecue.

Photos by Stuart Leavenworth 

The cooking is over. The judges have examined and tasted all the chicken, ribs, pork shoulder and brisket.

Now we get to kick back, drink a cold beverage, and wait for the judges to render their verdicts.

If I were one of the official tasters, I would give high marks to Tim Mar's beef brisket, seen to the left.

It turned out tender and juicy, and not too smoky. That's a mean trick to pull off, because brisket is one of the toughest cuts to barbecue.Tim smoked two briskets, each about 11 pounds. He put them on his smoker at about 10:30 p.m. last night, at about 225 degrees.

He then stayed up most of the night, making sure the meat was at a constant temperature.

Tim's neighbor, Harry Soo (on the far right), had an easier night.

Harry and his buddy Mark Tung  cooked their meats with a pair of computer controlled smokers with sensors and fans.

The fans and sensors maintain the heat at constant temperature. "That allows us to get some sleep," said Mark.

Sleep is important. The meat has to be pulled off the heat at just the right moment, and then cut, sauced and plated with nice garnishes and some secret touches. Chefs I watched dabbed their meats with special salts and spices.

"You must make the judge's mouth smile," said Harry. "That first bite is very important."

Dave and Jenny Hill, owners of Oaks Hardware in Fair Oaks, are another team I will be rooting for.

Dave and Jenny cook their barbecue in a set of Green Egg cookers, using different woods in each one. Then they taste meat from each egg and send the judges the slices or pieces that taste best.

There are 22 teams competing in this cook-off. Anything can happen.

Check back after 6 p.m. tonight and I'll post some results.

The tension is mounting at the Way Out West BBQ Competition.

The contestants have turned in their first entries - chicken - and the judging has begun.

To the right, you can see the tray that Tim and Gina Mar turned in, on a bed of lettuce, garnished with curly parsley.

The contestants needed to turn their chicken trays by 11:05, or else they would be disqualified from that category.

The judges will now rank each entry based on appearance, taste and texture. You can see them the left judging the looks of an entry.

The next turn-in time is 11:35, for pork ribs. Tim has just gone to the bathroom and Gina is worried that he's been gone for so long.

"If he doesn't get here in five minutes, you will be cutting ribs," she said to me.

Yikes. Hope Tim gets back.

UPDATE: Tim made it back and we turned in the ribs in time, but just barely.

As a result, I didn't get a shot of the plated ribs, but let me tell you, they looked - and tasted - great.

A little smoky for my taste, but what do I know.

Here's Tim pulling the ribs off of his Tucker smoker-grill. Pork shoulder is next. I'll work to get a shot of the plated pork.

Happy Fourth of July! I'm here at the Way Out West BBQ Competition in Stockton, where a whole lot of meat is cookin.'

The pit masters fired up their meat on last night, just as fireworks lit up the sky from the nearby ball field in downtown Stockton.

I'm here with Tim and Gina Mar and their 12-year old daughter, Rachel (seen left) who are in their seventh competition in two years.

It's an all-night affair, at least for Tim.

Last night, he tended the brisket and pork shoulders he had laid into his 22-inch Weber smoker at about 10:30 p.m., as you can see below.

 After sleeping on his cot for "maybe an hour," he said, he got up at 5:30 a.m. to start the ribs.

"This isn't an atmosphere conducive for sleeping," said Tim, a graphic designer and part-time caterer from Marysville. "People are milling around all night."

By milling around, he refers to the teams who enjoyed a few beers, an essential fuel for some of the pit crews.

I missed out on that part of the party. But I showed up this morning early with coffee, pastries and parsley. Tim and Gina needed the latter for garnishes.

They don't have much time. Their plate of chicken must be turned in to the judges by 11:05.

Their next turn-in time is 11:35 -- for pork ribs. Pork shoulder must be turned in by 12:05 and brisket is due to the judges by 12:35.

All during that time, the public will be milling about. The gates to the "Taste of San Joaquin" open at 11 a.m, after a parade on Center Street that starts in a few minutes.

The public can then buy tastes of BBQ from competitors who are participating in the "People's Choice" contest, and then vote for their favorites. Sadly, Tim and Gina are not competing in that category. "Not this year," said Tim. "Maybe next time."

The judges will announce the winners at 5:15 this afternoon, and Tim knows he will face some stiff competition.

"There are a lot of great teams here," he said. "We could come in first, or we could come in last."

Okay. Enough blogging for a while. I need to put on my apron and help Tim win this thing.

Needing to broaden my culinary horizons, I am filing this dispatch from the Way Out West BBQ Competition in Stockton, Ca. I'll be for here two days, working as an intern for Tim and Gina Mar, rising stars in the barbecue competition circuit of California.

This is a big departure from the fancy white-tablecloth world of Oliveto, where I've been a chef apprentice for three months. Instead of working inside a crowded kitchen, I am outdoors, surrounded by scores of pit masters and assistants, trucks, trailors, grills and smokers.

The smell of smoked meat fills the air, and many of the competitors are sitting in chairs, drinking beer and enjoying the Delta breeze.

"This is one of the weird subcultures of American society," said Tim, who caught the barbecue bug a few years ago and started competing last year.

But it's a fun culture, he added. Competitors see each other every few weeks, traveling the state with their grills and gear. "It's a good group of people. We all get along," adds Tim, who won his first competition last year, in Modesto, and finished third last month in the state championships.

Tim and I connected after he read some of my initial blog dispatches and emailed me with an invitation (more accurately, a challenge) to work as his assistant for a day or two.

"I think this would be a great opportunity for your readers to see the sometimes serious,
sometimes wacky world of competitive cooking contests," Tim wrote.

How could I turn down such an invitation?

So far today, I've helped Tim inject a special seasoning agent into a pork shoulder. I've also trimmed a beef brisket and spread dry rub on it, and trimmed chicken. Ribs are next.  

Tim uses some special ingredients for his BBQ, which he disclosed to me but would prefer not to detail. After all, this is a competition.

"Basically, we are all a bunch of egomaniacs," he said. "Otherwise, why else would we do this?"

Some 22 teams are competing in the Way Out West competition. The longest journey was made by Harry Soo, owner of SlapYoDaddyBBQ, who lives in Diamond Bar, Ca.

Harry is an up-and-comer who was inspired by Mar's victory last year. His team competed against more than 160 competitors in Kansas City in May and came in second, quite an accomplishment.

"You probably never knew there was so many Chinese who were into competitive barbecue?" said Harry.

 "We are part of the Asian invasion," joked Tim.

So the fun is just getting started. A potluck has just begun, and fires are being stoked for brisket and other meats that need to cook overnight.

I'll be posting updates as time allows, today and tomorrow. Stay tuned, or better yet, stop by the Weber Point Events Center in Stockton tomorrow for the public tasting, which starts at 11 a.m.

As expected, defenders of the Holy House of BBQ have taken aim against my recent heresy arguing for oven roasting of ribs, instead of use of a grill or barbecue.

Several readers claimed my method would result in dry ribs. "Horrible way to cook ribs," said one anonymous commenter. "At least Stuart doesn't boil them first," said another.

No problem, dudes. If you don't want to try my dry rub and over-roasting method, stick with your own. It's a free country.

All I know is that my recipe has produced consistently moist, flavorful, country-style ribs that get devoured at parties.

The "anony-mice" are missing out. The photo to the right shows what they missing.

My day at Oliveto was spent with sardines - nearly 20 pounds of them.

These were not the small, salty, smelly sardines most of us have reluctantly eaten from a can. These were big and fresh, coming straight from the Monterey Bay.

My job was to scale all these sardines, fillet them, cook them and then marinate them for a saor, an ancient Venetian technique I described in this previous post.

As I worked, I fell into a gentle rhythm - "channeling John Steinbeck," as one chef in the kitchen joked.

Yes, I thought, filleting sardines at Oliveto is somewhat like Cannery Row. It is a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream.

Yet my mind wonderings were not allowed to travel very far. Chef Paul Canales was in a hurry today, juggling multiple projects, including the sardine prep. Several times he seemed impatient with my progress on scaling and filleting these little fish.

No, this is not the Palace Flophouse and Grill, I thought. It is not the Bearflag Restaurant. This is Oliveto, and I must keep focused on the task at hand.

Yet as I filleted the sardines, running my blade down the sides of their backbones and trying not to waste a gram of fish, I kept thinking about Monterey. Looking into the clear, bright eyes of the fish and inhaling their scent, I recalled times kayaking around the bay, looking for sea otters but being accosted by sea lions.

"How are ya doin,' Stu?" Paul asked a one point. It was a rhetorical question. He knew my mind wasn't completely absorbed with my task.

He could tell by the pan of uncut sardines, resting on ice, still half full after two hours.

Just a few days from now, millions of Americans will fire up the grill for the Fourth of July, and many will cook pork ribs.

Please excuse this act of treason, but I've come to the conclusion that barbecuing ribs is not the best method for preparing them.

Ribs need slow cooking, and in my experience it is difficult to control the heat on either a charcoal grill or a gas grill. A smoker or grill will produce ribs with an intense, smoky taste, but again - excuse the treason - I'd rather taste my pork ribs without the smokiness.

Everyone has different tastes. Mine point me to the oven. An oven, particularly a convection oven, keeps the ribs moist and succulent. And if you follow my technique on a spice rub for the ribs, you will get the smoky flavor you seek without the smoke.

To read the full recipe, click here.