The Chef Apprentice

On the line of fire: The lives of line cooks

2009-10-01T05:17:51Z

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.

To readers, friends and colleagues: Thank you so much

2009-10-01T02:30:23Z

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.)

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Molly, Eric, Chris and many others - thanks for your insights. I hope to see you again soon, in the dining room, awaiting your recommendations.

At The Bee, this blog and the stories, photos and videos couldn't have happened with a huge cast of characters. Executive Editor Melanie Sill urged me to write it, and Managing Editor Tom Negrete and Features Editor Cathie Anderson helped make it happen. Copy Editor Jack Vaughn helped me "frame" the approach of the blog. Photographers Carl Costas and Manny Crisostomo ventured to Oakland to capture the scene in the dimly lit Oliveto kitchen, and Manny also produced two superb videos.

At KQED, Wendy Goodfriend was immediately receptive to the Chef Apprentice, which allowed me to join other great food writers on Bay Area Bites.

Thanks to all of you readers. You peppered me with questions, shared in my trials and tribulations and challenged me when I was whining or sounding too full off myself.

Almost lastly, a big thank you to my wife, Micaela Massimino, who supported me (financially and every which way) as I enjoyed this five-month sabbatical. Mickie, you are my passion, and the reason I have a passion for cooking.

By the way, when are you getting home? It's time to fire up the stove.

What I won't miss - the commute

2009-09-30T13:57:03Z

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.

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Sometimes I'd stop for a coffee or pastry, or to post a blog entry I hadn't completed on the train. Generally, I'd arrive at the restaurant at around 10 a.m., then work straight for seven or eight hours.

If I dashed out of the restaurant at 5 p.m, I could ride down the hill and catch the 5:40 train. If the kitchen was busy, I'd catch a later train. Generally, I'd get back to Sacramento by 9 p.m., whereupon my wife and I would fix dinner.

Initially, this bike-train commute was fun. I met interesting people on the train and enjoyed exploring various neighborhoods of Berkeley and Oakland on my bike ride to and from restaurant. It also helped that Oliveto agreed to cover my monthly train pass ($390) in exchange for my labors.

But as the internship progressed, the commute started to weigh on me. I felt constantly in motion, always dashing to catch (and sometimes miss) the train I wanted.

And, of course, the train was sometimes delayed. At one point, the train being held up in Martinez because of a fatality on the tracks ahead. Hours later we were bussed back to Sacramento.

So I am glad it is over. I'll miss some of my fellow commuters and the friendly and helpful conductors. But I won't miss the commuting frenzy.

My new job is not without stress, but the commute is a breeze. Instead of spending four hours traveling each day, my commute is back to ten minutes each way.

Not ready for arrivederci, a recipe for roasted tomatoes

2009-09-27T18:31:55Z

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.

Processing a pig a week: What happens to all that pork?

2009-09-22T00:15:02Z

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.

A swan song for Oliveto - grilling peaches for a crowd

2009-09-15T03:24:31Z

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.

A peachy idea - stone fruits on the grill

2009-09-15T02:53:16Z

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.

Panzanella - Oliveto style

2009-09-14T20:35:02Z

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.

A late assignment: Grilling peaches for a good cause

2009-09-12T14:43:17Z

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.

Fried peppers with balsamico and basil

2009-09-09T06:59:36Z

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.

]]> Fried peppers with balsamico
Eight side dish servings
Prep time: 30 minutes. Cooking time 30 minutes.

Ingredients
12 sweet peppers of various colors
Olive oil
Salt
1 bunch basil, leaves removed from stems
Medium quality balsamic vinegar

Equipment
One large steel skillet (avoid non-stick if possible)
One slightly smaller skillet, wrapped in foil
Tongs

Preparation
Cut peppers in half, remove seeds and membranes, and then cut again to produce quarters. Remove basil leaves from stems and place in a bowl.

Heat skillet on a high flame. When hot, add olive oil to cover bottom of pan. Just before oil starts to smoke, add peppers skin down in a single layer. Don't crowd the pan. Sprinkle with salt. Place foil-covered skillet (or some other weight) on top of peppers.

After 30 seconds, remove weighted pan and check peppers with tongs. Move peppers around so the skin evenly blisters, and turn down heat slightly if they are sticking or burning.

Once peppers are well blistered on one side, give the pan a flip or use your tongs so the skin side is face up. Added weighted pan and cook for another 30 seconds to a minute.

When peppers are cooked but not too limp, add about eight basil leaves and a splash of balsamic (no more than two tablespoons.) Flip the pan a few times, pretending you are a celebrity chef. (Don't scorch yourself.) Empty contents of pan into a bowl.

Carefully wipe pan with a towel and start the next batch.

(Note: You will probably need to clean your skillet after two batches. Alternately, have a second skillet ready.)

These deglazed peppers keep in the refrigerator for up to two weeks, but you will surely eat them before then.

Fashionable and unfashionable footwear on the line of fire

2009-09-06T02:27:57Z

Ever since I started interning at Oliveto, folks have asked: "How are your feet? Is it hard to stand up all day in a commercial kitchen? What shoes do you wear?"

These are good questions. Uncomfortable shoes can make for uncomfortable food. Chefs, cooks and interns must inevitably stand in one place for hours, peeling garlic or shucking beans.

At first, standing all day was difficult. I had been working a desk job right up to my apprenticeship. But I quickly adjusted to eight hours on my feet. I credit that to an old pair of work shoes.

The shoes in question were an old pair of Timberland chukka boots, seen to the left. I purchased these about eight years ago, and they've been through hell. I took them to New Orleans to do some reporting after Katrina devastated the city. They took a licking, and kept on kicking.

I had expected the cooks at Oliveto to wear clogs, and some do, but not many. The shoe of choice seems to be sneakers, followed by Crocs.

In the photo at top, you can see Chef Paul Canales' feet enveloped in a pair of Vans sneakers. Canales seems to wear a different pair of Vans everyday, with a footbed inset to provide better support.

Several considerations should go into kitchen shoes: Do they provide support? Do they protect your toes? Do they allow your feet to breath? Will they result in you tripping or losing a shoe as you dance across the kitchen to save a sauce that is about to boil over?

I like my old Timberlands. They have served me well. Undoubtedly they will help me make more meals before I finally give them the boot.

Who speaks for the fig?

2009-09-05T00:01:06Z

Note: This notebook originally appeared on July 9, 2005 on The Bee's editorial page. I present it as evidence that an editorial writer doesn't necessarily need to abandon food writing upon returning to the job.

On the hottest days in the Central Valley, the coolest shade can be found beneath the boughs of an old fig tree. One recent afternoon, I sought refuge under one of these shady seniors, and was immediately taken back to my hometown - Fresno.

Fresno, named by the Spanish for the ash trees that lined the San Joaquin River, once boasted the largest concentration of figs in the Western Hemisphere. Fresno competed with the whole of Greece and Turkey to be the Big Fig of the fruit world. Then in 1922, a developer named J.C. Forkner had the ripe idea to sell "fig farms" to doctors and lawyers who, like Adam and Eve, might want to lead a modest life surrounded by fig leaves.

That was the beginning of Fig Garden Village. And it was the beginning of the end for the figs.

As every Fresno kid knows, you don't want to take a nap under a ripe fig tree. Fall asleep in the cool shade, and ants will crawl into your snoring nostrils. When the figs are ripe, you pull out the ladders, call your friends and pick the fruit. Otherwise, the ground becomes an open-face sandwich of fig jam.

Residents of Fig Garden Village eventually grew tired of this relentless bounty. They cut down the fig trees and planted hedges to screen their hot tubs from the neighbors. Fed by land speculation, the city sprawled north and abandoned its downtown. The remaining commercial orchards soon became subdivisions.

For this reason and others, California has lost much of its fig heritage. The peak year was 1933, when 46,400 acres were planted. That has now dropped to fewer than 13,000 acres, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. While California remains in the top three of world production, the future of this tear-shaped fruit remains fragile, like a fig.

California, as has been said many times, doesn't know what it's losing. In New York City, people pay $5 a carton for figs. Here they fall to the ground, scorned and ridiculed. Few people know you can cook them into jam, mix them with walnuts and cinnamon, and then tuck them into buttery dough that turns golden in the oven. Nor do they know you can wrap them with prosciutto, skewer them with rosemary and grill them for a few minutes. It's a little taste of heaven.

Aside from being healthy and full of antioxidants, figs are one of our links with the old world. They are frequently mentioned in the Bible and in the works of ancient philosophers. Pliny the Elder once said these fruits "increase the strength of young people, preserve the elderly in better health and make them look younger with fewer wrinkles."

In other words, figs are better than Botox.

Now there's a marketing pitch for the California Fig Commission.

Bee photo by Florence Low.

So what will become of the Chef Apprentice?

2009-08-31T18:53:40Z

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.

Buzz from the blogosphere on Bauer's "misdirected punch"

2009-08-29T15:14:48Z

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.

If overloaded with summer vegetables, it's time for a tian

2009-08-28T15:38:14Z

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.

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Sounds too hot for your summer kitchen? Here's the trick: Prepare it in advance, wait for an evening with a cool Delta breeze, and then bake it in the oven until done. The next day you'll have a superb side dish for grilled chicken or fish.

Summer vegetable tian

Ingredients
Two globe eggplant
6 medium summer squash
4-6 tomatoes, such as Early Girls
Olive oil
Salt
1/2 bunch fresh thyme, leaves separated from stems
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Equipment needed:
One large ceramic gratin pan
Gas or charcoal grill

Preparation
Slice the eggplant into 1/4 inch slices. Slice the squash either lengthwise or at a diagonal into 1/4 inch slices. The goal is keep all of the slices roughly the same size.
Mix squash with a splash of good olive oil and a toss of salt in a bowl. Salt eggplant and toss in a separate bowl.
Grill the squash slices over high heat for about 2 or 3 minutes on each side. You are looking for nice grill marks, but not blackened vegetables. Remove from grill and place in bowl to cool. Do the same with the eggplant slices and place in separate bowl.
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Pour enough olive oil in gratin dish to cover. Arrange your vegetables in a rosette, alternatingly tomatoes, squash, eggplants. Sprinkle with thyme.
Bake in oven for a half hour, then pull out pan and sprinkle cheese on the tian. Return to oven for another 15 to 30 minutes, until juices have cooked down and thickened.
Allow to cool at least 15 minutes before serving or store overnight in the refrigerator.

Variations
Try adding grilled peppers or artichokes to the mix, and feel free to experiment with different cheeses or breadcrumbs on the top.

For a tian that really sings, add roasted garlic and/or red pepper flakes.