The Chef Apprentice

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.

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:

It's hard to imagine a more challenging peasant food than gnocchi.

It should be simple. It's just potatoes and flour, or some other starchy combination, which you quickly shape before tossing into boiling water.

Yet if you get the proportions wrong, or knead it too much, the results are disastrous. Either the gnocchi falls apart or you end up with lead pellets instead of light pillows.

On Saturday, an experienced maker of gnocchi -- Marco Forneris of the Osteria Lalibera, in Alba, Italy -- visited the Oliveto kitchen.

After watching Marco make many pounds of gnocchi, I feel far less intimidated by this peasant dish than I once did.

As a home chef, I've cooked hundreds of batches of pasta over the years and dreamed up an equal number of sauces.

The final product was often good. But only a few achieved greatness.

Part of my problem: I was cavalier about marrying my pasta and sauce together.

Now, after two months at Oliveto, I am starting to learn how these elements should be married. My pastas have improved. I am starting to hear wedding bells.

To read the rest of this column, go here.

Has my home cooking improved after working for five weeks in a high-end restaurant?

Perhaps. Usually I am so tired by the time I get home that I ask my wife, "Trader Joe's pizza tonight?"

Seriously, my home chef skills have improved since taking an internship at Oliveto. I pay more attention to detail now. I have a more discerning palate. I am more adventurous in the kitchen (when I have the energy).

On my day off yesterday, for instance, I butterflied a chicken for the first time and roasted it with green garlic olive oil and herbs.

Yeah, I know. Butterflying a chicken is easy. But for some reason, I was intimidated by the prospect until I saw chefs at Oliveto do it regularly.

I've also learned other lessons -- and been reminded of old ones -- during my five weeks in a commercial kitchen:

-- Don't skimp on the olive oil or the butter. If you like to cook Mediterranean dishes, you should have at least one really good bottle of olive oil on your shelf. Drizzle a little on your pasta after it sauced and plated, or save it for a salad you really care about. You'll notice the difference. (In the photo above are some oils regularly used at Oliveto).

-- Use the right oil for the right job. Olive oil can scorch at high heat. That's bad news if you are sauteing something delicate, such as fish. At Oliveto, the chefs use grape seed oil for high-heat cooking. It has a neutral flavor that won't affect your lovely halibut.

Fava beans? Asparagus? Artichokes? I love them all -- I've prepared them all. In a matter of weeks, I'm no longer scared of my wonderfully sharp Shun paring knife. It is my friend, and it's helped me prepare boxes of 'chokes this month.

But let's face it. An intern at Oliveto doesn't want to just prepare vegetables. He or she wants to cook some meat.

And so on Wednesday I moved to my next challenge - the preparation of a sugo.

The sugo is the foundation for many a meat dish at Oliveto. It means "sauce" in Italian, but that doesn't begin to describe it. The sugo is the result of browning scraps of meat and vegetables, gradually building up a brown layer of caramelized solids in the pan. These you deglaze and reduce, deglaze and reduce as you rebuild the foundation - la fond, as the French say it - again and again.

When finished, after a full day of work, you have an intense and naturally thickened sauce that goes perfectly with the finer cuts of meat.

Pellegrino Artusi, a 19th century Florentine silk merchant and gastronome, described a sugo di carne in his seminal cookbook, "The Art of Eating Well," which he self-published in 1891.

"You really should watch a good chef make this sauce," wrote Artusi. "I hope, however, that my instructions will allow you to produce at least good, if not excellent results."

I feel the same way. Words can only hint at the nuances involved with making a sugo. But if you are passionate about making Italian food, you should have this sauce in your repertoire. The following photos and instructions may inspire you.

Improper knife care is one of the biggest mistakes that home chefs make. Some people spend hundreds of dollars on a knife set and then fall into bad habits that will dull their blades or cause other knife damage.

Mimicking what they've seen on television, home chefs will use the edge of their chef's knife to scrape minced parsley or veggies into a pile, and then flick it into a bowl.

Don't do this. Knife edges are intended for cutting, not scraping. Using them in this way quickly dulls the blade, particularly if you are chopping on a plastic cutting board.

Instead, use the back of the knife -- the spine -- to pile up and collect your cut food. Or use a scraper, a 4-by-6-inch tool that is handy for all kinds of tasks, including scraping bread dough off a board.

If you choose to use the or spine of the knife, just be careful when you have changed grips. At that point the knife edge will be pointing up instead of down.

Be certain nobody else is around when you do that fancy wrist flick to scrape veggies into a bowl.

During my first busy week at Oliveto, I had a mental lapse and scraped with the knife edge. Another chef noticed and reminded me of the proper technique. Too bad we all can't have  experienced cooks looking over our shoulders.