The Chef Apprentice

When I started this apprenticeship in April, many of my friends and colleagues posed an obvious question: "Do you plan to pursue a restaurant career?"

At the time, I wasn't entirely sure. All I knew is that I wanted to take my life in an adventurous direction, and see where it would lead.

As I had hoped, it led to nearly six months of culinary discovery. It led to an extraordinary group of chefs and cooks at Oliveto, whose energy and creativity were an inspiration.

Yet even with the lure of the kitchen, there were aspects of my old life I missed.

Civic engagement, chasing down facts, holding politicians accountable - these are the reasons I got into journalism. I missed the buzz of a newsroom that is hot on a big story, and the collaboration involved with turning out a fine piece of writing.

Now the mystery has been solved. Starting at the end of the month, I'll be The Bee's new editorial page editor. The paper made the announcement on Friday.

As you might expect, the prospect of a chef apprentice becoming an opinions chef is just too delicious for some readers to resist. As one of them wrote me in an email, "Your stint as an apprentice cook will have you well prepared for this tough job...Once you cook up an idea for an editorial, you'll 'grille' your subjects, add a dash of eloquence and set the table for change."

Undoubtedly, that won't be last such joke I'll hear during this kitchen transition. ("Out of the frying pan, into the fire," etc.) All I ask is that you get them out of your system as quickly as possible.

So what will become of this blog and my column?

I regret to say, they will be coming a conclusion - but not immediately.

For the next few weeks, I'll be posting some remaining tips and musings, culled from my laptop and various notebooks.

I also hope to try out a few more Oliveto recipes in my home kitchen, so I can leave you with some food - and some food for thought.

So continue reading, and keep cooking. I intend to do so.

For me, cooking is great profession, but it is also the ultimate way to express yourself and unwind after a long day. As the food writer Marcella Hazen has noted, cooking is an art form, and you get to eat it too.

My recent KQED post on how the Oliveto staff is responding to food critic Michael Bauer's recent negative review has created a bit of buzz in the Bay Area.

Paolo at Eater SF called my piece "a thoughtful post mortem," and questioned why Bauer devoted a mere 450 words to his review.

John Birdsall of SF Foodie writes that I "struggled to parse Michael Bauer's recent star-stripping of Oakland's Oliveto."

I did? Actually, I didn't spend much time parsing Bauer's prose. I just struggled to understand how he could write such a completely one-sided smackdown.

Adam Martin of Grubstreet San Francisco filed the most interesting response, with a post entitled "Oliveto Review Rebuttal Calls Out Bauer's Methods."

In his piece, Martin delves into the question of whether food critics have too much power. (In my mind, they clearly do, but only because eaters put so much trust in them. You wouldn't depend on a single newspaper editorial to influence how you vote. Why would you depend on a single review to determine where you eat?)

As Martin writes:

While critics do need to be careful when handing out bad reviews, one question we had about the Oliveto take-down was the language: A two-star review of Donato on August 16 read like an encouraging pep talk ("Every flaw was easily fixable"), while Oliveto's felt more like a eulogy ("Once the leader of the pack, Oliveto now trails"). It's true that these two restaurants have different histories and are in different price ranges, but still, we'd like to see some consistency.

There are also several lively comments at bottom of my original KQED blog post. Many of them bash Oliveto, suggesting the restaurant has some repair work to do with previous customers. But one commenter, Eric Christenson, detailed why he thinks Oliveto's food has improved under Chef Paul Canales.

The execution and consistency of the dishes has improved. Paul's travels and the inspiration from various Italian regional influences matched with locally produced ingredients are readily apparent. For those who have not seen and soon tasted the current Tomato menu I would say you have missed on some very fine cooking. For those who have not seen the progression of Oliveto's cooking because they did not have the opportunity, I'm sorry for you.

Amen. 

A summer gratin? Most people have never heard of such a thing.

In our household, a gratin usually means slices of russet potatoes, baked in herb-soaked milk and aged Gruyere cheese. It's simple and elegant fare, but its a winter dish. Gratins are for winter, right?

Wrong. There are other forms of gratin -- such as tian, a Provencal mix of summer vegetables. At Oliveto, the chefs have recently been preparing platters of tians for the cafe and restaurant.

If you are looking for ways to marry and intensify the flavors of tomato, eggplant, peppers, squash or zucchini, this is a recipe to try. The basic technique is to prepare a rosette of sliced fresh tomatoes, alternated with other vegetables that have been cooked or grilled. The photo above shows the result before baking.

Like Hollywood actors, some chefs will claim that they don't pay attention to the critics. The reality, of course, is that they do.

A good review, in a prominent publication or media outlet, can help launch an upstart restaurant or attract new customers to an old one. A bad one can sink the newcomer or spell trouble for a venerated establishment.

Oliveto, the Italian restaurant in Oakland where I've been interning since April, has enjoyed its share of published praise. In her latest edition of the "Food Lover's Pocket Guide" to San Francisco and the Bay Area, food critic Patricia Unterman writes that Oliveto "sets the standard for Italian cooking in America."

Last month, the restaurant staff was buoyed by a glowing endorsement from Marcella Hazan, an author of several award-winning Italian cookbooks. Writing in The Daily Beast, Hazan said she "would eat at Oliveto in Oakland every day" if she lived in the Bay Area.

Yet those appraisals were quickly overshadowed last week when Michael Bauer, the food critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, published his first major review of the restaurant since 1996.

In a nine-paragraph column, Bauer said that his last two visits to the restaurant were disappointing. He criticized the service, the atmosphere and the food, and knocked the restaurant down from 3 ½ stars to two.

"It could be that others have caught up and that Oliveto has slipped," wrote Bauer, noting the restaurant's legacy in inspiring other chefs and restaurants across the region.

To read the rest of this post, click here.

Superlative food sometimes springs from serendipity.

It unlikely, for instance, that someone set out to create the first wine or the first vinegar. All were accidents involving grape juice.

That brings me to this week's topic - throw-together pasta.

Throw-together pasta is just as its name implies - it is serendipitous, done in a hurry. In my college days, throw-together pasta consisted of spaghetti, butter and Kraft Parmesan cheese. I've since graduated to higher levels of experimentation.

Last week, my wife celebrated her birthday. After working a long shift at the restaurant, I took the train home knowing that she deserved - and was expecting - a dinner worthy of this day.

In the refrigerator was a chunk of pancetta, a chunk of pecorino cheese, and many, many chunks of roasted summer squash.

In our larder sat several pounds of homegrown tomatoes, along with red onions, olive oil and imported conchiglie (pasta shells).

From my experience at Oliveto, I knew that all of these could be married together. So for Micaela's birthday dinner, we enjoyed some throw-together pasta.

For the full recipe, go here.

Many of us who tend vegetable gardens tend to be whiners.

We complain about snails and white flies. We gripe about being smothered by squash. Gosh, isn't it awful-- we have to water our plots everyday!  And by summer's end, we end up becoming enslaved to our bounty. The sheer volume of produce determines what we eat for lunch or dinner.

Yet even as we gripe, most of us gardeners are, at our core, grateful. Growing food is a magical thing. You stick seeds or sprouts in the ground, water them, and they produce luscious fruits and vegetables.

And as every gardener knows, there is simply no comparison between a store-bought tomato or pepper and one picked at its peak of ripeness.

In the photo above, you can see some of the bounty I am currently growing at the 19th Street Community Garden in Midtown, where I've tended a plot for several years.

Going clockwise from the bottom right, you can see:

Brandywine tomatoes: Incredibly juicy and sweet. My plant is six feet high and very prolific. I am making sauces and soups from these.

French white squash: Sweet, and crisp. You have to pick these early or they grow the size of a football.. The larger one I skin and seed, then roast them in chunks in the oven with salt and olive oil. The smaller ones I saute or throw on the grill.

In my column today, I ruminate about the food adventures of writer Waverly Root and one of the specialties he encountered across Italy - mostarda.

Mostarda is a sweet-savory relish made with various fresh or dried fruits. Think of it as an Italian chutney, without the intensity of ginger.

I recently helped Oliveto Chef Paul Canales make a peach mostarda, which you can see to the right.

He later served it with Paine Farm pigeon al mattone, smeared with a liver mousse, seen below.

(Al mattone means "under a brick," an ancient Italian method of flattening and searing a piece of fowl on both sides. At Oliveto, the chefs don't use an actual brick. Instead, they achieve the same result by cooking the meat between two hot pans).

You, too, can make a mostarda. Here's a recipe by Mario Batali that offers one basic blueprint. Here's another by Amy Sherman. Here's another from Food and Wine.

And if any of you have your own mostarda recipes, feel free to share.

Many of you out there likely grew up spooning canned tomato soup into your little mouths. (I did.)

Possibly, you liked it, or liked it initially. (I did.) But then, after your twentieth or so lunch of this canned potage, you slammed your spoon down on the table and told mom or dad: "No more tomato soup!"

What a shame.

Tomato soup, made fresh and in season, is a real treat. You can serve it straight up, cold or warm, or make it an elegant starter for a meal with any number of herbs, cheeses, croutons or garnishes.

To the left you see a cold soup of Brandywine tomatoes, served with a swirl of sweet pepper cream.
 
Best of all, tomato soup is an easy way to take care of scads of tomatoes that are now hanging off your plants or in market.

How do you turn them into soup? No problem.

All you need are the right tools for removing seeds or skin after you briefly cook the tomatoes. A food mill or conical strainer (also known in restaurants as as China cap) is essential.
A blender is also helpful if you want a silky smooth texture.

If you see colors while listening to certain types of music, or if every letter or number you see is "tinged" with a particular color, it is likely you have a neurological condition called synesthesia.

Synesthesia is a catchall for a little-studied cognitive abnormality that has dozens of variations. My late father-in-law, Rinaldo, had one type of synesthesia. He was a musician, and whenever he played or heard music, he would involuntarily see colors that he associated with particular chords and music keys.

Late in life, Rinaldo decided to take up painting. In a period of months, he turned out scores of watercolors and other paintings. As the family soon realized, he was using a paintbrush to depict the music he was seeing in his head.

I've been thinking about synesthesia because of conversations with Paul Canales, the executive chef at Oliveto. Paul is a connoisseur of music - jazz, roots rock, heavy metal. He loves all these forms and often likes to blast a new discovery on the boom box.

Paul tells me that music helps him cook. He'll be at home, trying to figure out a recipe or a creative use for an extra box of peaches.

A song will spring from the speakers and then the answer will be clear: A mostarda! A peach mostarda with star anise and chili flakes!

Paul does not have synesthesia. If he did, the sound of a song would prompt him to physically taste food on his tongue, not just think about it.

Yet it's clear that Paul feels a strong association between music and food. At Oliveto, the songs coming out of the kitchen boom box are not just background noise. They are an essential part of the creative process.

I have a slightly different association between food and music. Music doesn't generally stimulate my creative juices in the kitchen, but sometimes, the sight or taste of certain foods makes me think of a song or musical style.

Consider the photo to the right. It shows sheets of fresh pasta with a filling, ready to be hand rolled into agnolotti.

There's something rather militaristic about all these fillings, lined up in formation. They remind me of a Marine Corps marching song.

Or consider the melon soup to the left.

It is bright and sunny - the kind of dish that Joni Mitchell could have created.

And this plate of cookies?

British ska.

A song by the English Beat, perhaps.

You get the idea.

Food and music - they go together, often capturing our imaginations in unexpected ways.

Note: For a really interesting video on the relationship between art and synesthesia, go here.

A recent posting on the Food Blog Alliance site urged writers not to use overused adjectives such as "nice," "wonderful" or "delicious" when writing about food.

Since I tend to dislike edicts even more than clichés, let me say this about the lentil soup recipe I am about to offer:

It is wonderful. It would be nice for you to try it. And if you did, you'd find this soup to be delicious.

Okay, maybe I could work harder in describing why a mere lentil soup deserves the forbidden D-word.

But believe me, it does. There is something about slow cooking of dried porcini mushrooms, wine and lentils that leads to magic. If you properly execute this dish, throwing in generous amounts of finely diced vegetables and finely chopped herbs, you will have a soup that is as complex and brooding as Caravaggio painting.

To read the rest of this posting, with a full recipe, go here:

Just like Popeye, the Chef Apprentice is in love with Olive Oil.

So today, in my column for The Bee, I offer summaries of three Oliveto sauces and salsas that make creative use of this staple of the Italian kitchen.

I promised you recipes, and so here they are:

One is an herbaceous marinade for fresh mozzarella balls, like the ones you see in the photo.


You can find the recipe here.

Another summarizes the Oliveto method of making aioli and other variants, which the Italians call maionese.

You can find that here.

The last is a salsa rustica, a mix of olive oil, herbs, cornichons and hard boiled eggs that you can drizzle over roast meats and other dishes.

(Yes, you could try it on your breakfast cereal, but I wouldn't advise it.)

Before I started interning at Oliveto, I didn't know beans about cooking green vegetables.

Generally, I would steam veggies such as broccoli, green beans and chard, with mixed results. Far too often I would let them steam too long, or cut them up irregularly so that not all pieces cooked evenly.

Rule #1 at Oliveto: Cut or sort your vegetables into uniform sizes.

Rule #2: Blanch vegetables in boiling salted water.

Rule #3: Remove vegetables just before they are done, drain and spread them out on a sheet of parchment to cool quickly.

Yesterday, I blanched some green beans for a salad that included rice, garbanzo beans, red onion, pine nuts, tomato and basil. Here's a basic recipe, which you can modify based on what's in your fridge:

If you are like me, you are always in search of old and new ways to use tomatoes at this time of year.

At Oliveto last week, we served up slices with a soft, herby and slightly tangy mix of marinated fresh mozzarella cheese, capers, and cucumbers.

This dish is so easy that even an intern could pull it off.

Just be careful in chopping all those herbs.

(And no, you cannot just throw them in the food processor. If you do, please don't tell me about it.)

For months, I've watched cooks at Oliveto turn their arms blue as they whipped up batches of aioli.

Yesterday it was my turn.

Aioli, which tops many a salad and fish dish at the restaurant, refers to an emulsified mix of oil, garlic and egg yolks. Traditionally, aioli didn't include egg. Mustard, garlic and even potato was used to achieve the desired emulsion.

Our recipe Friday was a more modern version. It called for four egg yolks, four cloves of mortared garlic, salt, two cups each of mixed olive oil and grape seed oil and a splash or two of red wine vinegar.

The initial whisking of eggs and addition of olive oil is the most crucial part of the process. "This is where you can make or break an aioli," said Canales.

Some cooks, he said, add too much oil at first or don't whisk quickly enough. As he said this, the whisk in his right hand was a blur.

Then he gave the whisk to me. It was my job to keep whipping the aioli with my right hand while drizzling a steady -- not shaky -- stream of oil into the bowl with a ladle in my left hand.

At one point, I changed hands and started whisking with my left. That was an utter failure.

To my surprise, Canales added a few tablespooons of water at a couple of points in the process. That prevented the aioli from seizing up and getting too thick.

After many minutes of whisking, our aioli was done. We added some chopped olives, and the aioli was ready for service.

That night, it was married with a frito misto of battered and fried peppers, beans and onions. A vegetarian's delight.

So now the veil has been lifted on another mystery of sauce making. I will now do some aioli experimentation in my home kitchen, and report back with recipes.

My career as a cooking instructor has now ended before it started.

As of Tuesday, only three people had signed up for the cooking class I was scheduled to lead Friday at the East Bay Restaurant Supply store in Sacramento.

By mutual agreement, East Bay and I decided to pull the plug on the class.

I'm disappointed, but not hugely surprised. If huge numbers of people were to flock to a cooking class taught by a chef apprentice, an equal number would be sending their kids to driving schools led by a 16-year-old instructors.

But I am grateful for the opportunity that East Bay presented me. Perhaps in a few years I can rise to the occasion. And to the trio who signed up for the class - my apologies. I'd urge you to take your refund and spend it on Gianluca Varenni, a chef from Italy who will be leading a class at East Bay's Sacramento store on Aug. 14.

I hope to be there, doing what I do best in a kitchen - learning.

In my column today, I swoon about a pepper cream sauce that Brian Murphy, a sous chef at Oliveto, whipped up effortlessly last week.

Actually, it was only effortless for him. I did all the prep work.

But I'm glad I did. The final product was well worth it.

Blended with a mix of red and yellow peppers, this sauce is smooth and velvety, rich with the sweetness of summer. Yet it also offers a slight kick at the end - a tinge of hotness that comes from garlic and red pepper flakes.

As promised in the column, here is a home version I whipped up the other night and served to some friends at a dinner party:

Even a galley slave must take a vacation sometime.

Here you see me grating some cheese onto a beef ragu at our camp site in Pomo Canyon, a little-known state park on the Sonoma coast.

A ragu sauce, accompanied by a bottle of chianti, is the perfect ending to a day of hiking and beach lounging. Freeze it beforehand, and it keeps well in your ice chest, ready to be heated up at the last moment and married with pasta.

I probably gained a few pounds "practicing" on my days off a few weeks ago.

After camping in Pomo Canyon (seen right), my wife Micaela and I purchased some California halibut in Point Reyes Station, and served it with an almond butter sauce for our friends, Amanda and Ken Eichstedt.

Amanda and Ken own the Bear Valley Inn in Olema, where we stayed after slumming it in the woods.

Then, on our way home, we took a detour to Sebastopol and beyond, and dined at Zazu, one of our favorite restaurants in Sonoma County. Zazu has the feel of an old roadhouse taken over by some serious and playful chefs, which pretty much describes the owners, Duskie Estes and John Stewart.

We enjoyed a lot of great food on that mini-vacation, but I keep coming back to the beef ragu.

High-quality but low-cost ground meat, browned and slowly simmered with a flavor base of vegetables and herbs, enhanced with tomato paste and wine -- how can you go wrong?

Top photo by Micaela Massimino, others by the camping Chef Apprentice.