The Chef Apprentice

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.)

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

I'm about to go off on a long weekend of bicycling in the High Sierra. But even after a few mountain passes, I'm doubtful I'll burn off the calories I consumed last night at Oliveto.

Along with another intern, I polished off seven dishes, not including the two deserts, wine, bread, etc. Two of the dishes came floating on a pond of fonduta, the decadent sauce I helped prepare Wednesday with 45 egg yolks.

Above was the night's prize dish - a pastry stuffed with braised porcini mushrooms, topped with fried leeks, floating on a small pond of fonduta. It's called a vol-au-vent.

If that sounds French, you are not mistaken. Chef Canales is known to have a taste for fussy French food. But by adding porcini and  fonduta, he pulled the vol-au-vent back to the Piedmontese side of the border. Or so he claims.

I could wax rapturous for several more paragraphs describing the other delicious dishes at last night's Barbaresco Dinner, but I don't have time. I need to hurry off now to pump up my bike tires, and check my cholesterol.

Yesterday I helped Chef Paul Canales prepare a fonduta, a delicious and decadent form of fondue from the Italian region of the Piedmont (or Piemonte, as my Italian-American wife correctly pronounces it).

You can find recipes for fonduta here and here, but Canales' version is more refined and made in larger volumes. The batch we prepared yesterday, for instance, required five pounds of the finest imported fontina cheese and 45 egg yolks.

The cheese is soaked in milk and slowly heated on the stove. Cubes of floured butter are added. Then some of the warm milk-cheese mixture is added to the beaten yolks, to bring up their temperature. Canales added this back to the pan, and we carefully stirred it until it was smooth and thickened, but not cooked to the point that it became scrambled eggs. We then strained it into a hotel pan, as you can see in the photo above.

The final fonduta was rich, creamy and irresistable. The chefs immediately pounced on it with pieces of bread, which we topped with minced truffles soaked in oil.

Yes, there are some perks to this job.

The fonduta will be featured tonight and tomorrow at Oliveto's Barbaresco Dinners, which will feature Piedmontese food that compliments Barbaresco, one of the region's finest wines. Chef Marco Forneris, who schooled the kitchen on making gnocchi a few days ago, has worked with Canales on planning and preparing the menu. The wines were selected with the help of Aldo Vacca, Director of Produttori del Barbaresco, who will also be on hand for the special event.

I have a reservation to dine tonight, so I will get a second crack at that fonduta. Molto buono.

Early readers of this blog might remember the mishap of my first week. I over-salted nearly 20 pounds of lamb shoulder before browning it, unaware that the lamb chunks and sauce would later be reduced, intensifying the saltiness of the sauce.

I then hustled to help save that dish, by adding wine and cream until the sauce had the right seasoning. The damage to the dish was less than the impact to my ego. I was sure that Chef Canales would relegate me to duties befitting my talents, such as cleaning out the grease traps.

But two months have passed, and I've gradually redeemed myself. With task after task, I've demonstrated I am reliable -- no drama, no whining -- and won't repeat a mistake twice. That has helped me win back some of the trust I nearly squandered.

Earlier this week, Sous Chef Brian Murphy asked me to repeat the task I flubbed before -- seasoning and browning more than 20 pounds of lamb shoulder. This was my big moment. Would I screw up again?

In an editorial notebook today in The Bee, I rant against certain Amtrak passengers who carry on loud, lengthy, inappropriate cell-phone conversations within the train cars.

"These are people so focused on themselves that they have no moral qualms about sharing their most intimate conversations with everyone else," I write.

The column is already generated lots of feedback. One reader, "Doc," offered this suggestion on how to deal with such narcissists:


Great idea, Doc. Your approach demands chutzpah, but I think I'm up to the task.

Make no mistake about it, Oliveto is in business to make money. That's why the restaurant holds its Oceanic Dinners and other special events each year. Chef Paul Canales knows these dinners will pack the dining room with customers who want a delicious taste of the unusual.

But that's not the only reason Canales puts his kitchen through the stress and glory of these seafood fests.

He and his chefs are fascinated by marine life. These cooks relish the challenge of preparing fish that many of their counterparts have never touched.

All this week, the kitchen buzzed with anticipation as Tom Worthington, the co-owner of Monterey Fish, delivered box after box of incredibly fresh fish, mollusks and other seafood.

By the chef's calculation, some 65 different species of seafood were served this year. All were chosen based on several considerations, such as whether the fishery was healthy. (If not, it was left off the list. Thus no California salmon).

The restaurant also went the extra mile by publishing footnotes for each menu item, describing where the fish was caught and its method of harvest.

This was a tough week for the kitchen and its workers, including this galley slave. But let's face it, this week was tougher on the fish. So, in their honor, I offer a photo gallery of some of the seafood that shined in this year's Oceanic Dinners.

Photos: Top left, sea bream, filleted; Above right, Chef Paul Canales with his knives and Tsukiji Fish Market apron, both souvenirs from a recent trip to Japan; Left, razor clams that were featured in a crudo platter in the next photo.

Every so often, a dish comes along that challenges your palate and slaps your food sensibilities right out the door.

Last night, on the first night of Oliveto's Oceanic Dinners 2009, I sampled such a dish.

"Green sea urchin flan with old aceto balsamico."

I know what some of you are thinking. Flan? With sea urchins? How could such a combo possibly be edible?

That was my reaction when my dinner partners spotted this menu item. I had tried sea urchins before - the first time, while living in Japan many years ago -- but never warmed to the taste and texture.

But as I've noted in previous posts, I am willing to try anything once. And so I appeased my friends by letting them order the flan, thinking I might try a nibble.

All I can say is thank you, Anders, Maria and Elise. Thank you for changing my life.

In my normal gig, as an editorial writer for The Sacramento Bee, I've been known to make disparaging remarks about state legislators "making sausage."

This is an apt description of the legislative process. But it is an insult to the sausage.

"Making sausage" suggests deception, with chefs throwing together suspect ingredients for the sake of expediency.

To be sure, there are sausages (and legislation) made in this fashion. But Oliveto has higher standards.

Yesterday, the chefs trained me in Sausage Making 101. Equipped with fresh pork shoulder, several superlative spices and some impressive machinery, I turned out more than 42 pounds of sausage in just a few hours.

Congratulations to Josephine Kao, a local eighth-grader who advanced to Round 3 of the National Spelling Bee on Wednesday by correctly spelling "mostaccioli."

Kao, who is in the National Spelling Bee for the fourth consecutive year, now advances to today's semi-finals, where we will be rooting for her in the Oliveto kitchen.

At Oliveto, some of the cooks struggle with the spelling of the "mostaccioli" while preparing cafe menus and labeling sheets of fresh pasta. So we were impressed when Kao, who is 14, nailed that one.

Mostaccioli is a smooth-sided, large type of penne that is popular in southern Italy, particularly Campania. Currently it is on the Oliveto menu cloaked in a silky pigeon sugo. (My favorite dish in the restaurant at the moment.)

Regardless of how she does this week, Kao is welcome at Oliveto anytime. I'd be proud to buy her a plate of mostaccioli. Just to be naughty, I might also test her on the spelling of strozzapreti.

UPDATE: Alas, Kao was knocked out of the National Spelling Bee today after tripping up on "gastaldo." But my offer of a mostaccioli plate still stands. Good job, Jo, for advancing so far and being such a great speller. I goofed on the spelling of "pigeon" in my original posting, but that has been fixed.

Photo by Robert Giroux/AP

Warning to all who are squeamish about certain foods.

If you don't like liver or fish, or if you don't care to see photos about preparation of a monkfish liver, then stop reading this post. Use your clicker to move on to a safer topic, such as preparation of an asparagus salad.

But if you are curious about seafood delicacies, or if you are a sushi fan who has been bold enough to try ankimo (steamed monkfish liver), then hang with me.

Until this past week, I had never tasted or handled the liver of a monkfish. But I'm willing to try anything once.

Every Mother's Day, Oliveto co-owner Maggie Klein places a photo of her mother Marion Blythe on the bar at Oliveto, to greet patrons as they come in.

With the restaurant set to open in a few minutes, Maggie just pulled the photo out and placed it on the bar.

Happy Mother's Day to all.

Photo by Stuart Leavenworth 

Four weeks have passed since I took a leave from The Bee's editorial board to work as a kitchen intern. It's been a humbling transition.

Less than a month ago, I was an influential pundit - regularly courted by politicians and power brokers who feared the sharp edges of my editorials.

Now I spend my days in a crowded kitchen in Oakland, taking orders from young chefs and living in mortal fear of my knife edges.

In my previous life, I worked in a third-floor office with a comfy chair and a view of downtown Sacramento. I earned a respectable salary.

Now I'm on my feet all day, five days a week, in a windowless kitchen, doing exhausting work for no pay. Some days I'm standing in one place for hours, paring artichokes or cleaning squid.

Given the blows to my ego, my body and my income, you might think I'd be eager to hang up my chef's jacket and flee from Oliveto, the Italian restaurant where I'm interning.

You'd be wrong. This is the best sabbatical a foodie could imagine.

To read the rest of this update, go here.

It was only a matter of time before I got into a knife fight with a wheel of Parmigiano-Reggiano.

Oliveto blows through several pounds of this imported cheese each week, and the kitchen staff doesn't use a mechanical grater. That means that someone must grate the chunks by hand, and if chunks aren't available, they must be cut from a wheel of cheese that, upon arrival, weighs about 80 pounds.

On Saturday, my task was to create chunks of Parmigiano-Reggiano from half a wheel of cheese. My only tools were a pair of knives that looked like they had been borrowed from a medieval dungeon.

Line chef Kelsey Bergstrom instructed me on the technique. "This can be a bit dangerous," she warned as we got started.

The first step involved scoring the outside of the wheel with a "rind cutter," a hook-tipped knife, which you can see in this helpful diagram. The hook has to be driven into the cheese fairly deeply, about half an inch.

Once the outside had been fully scored, I picked up a small sword, known as a spatula knife, and plunged it into the center of the line from which I wanted to create two pieces. Then I exerted pressure on the blade, and wedged it back and forth into the interior of the cheese, as you can see me doing in the photo above.

Because aged Parmesan cheese is crumbly, a wheel or half wheel will break evenly in a rough line if it is scored and wedged properly. I was successful on my first try, as you can see to the left. I felt like King Arthur pulling his sword from the stone.

Of course, my task wasn't complete. I had to employ similar techniques to create smaller chunks of cheese, and those had to be grated by hand.

After a half hour of grating, my wrists were sore, and my tongue was salty from all the bits of parmigiano I had sampled. But my job was done. The line cooks had all the cheese they needed for a big Saturday night at Oliveto.

Vegetarians beware: The Chef Apprentice is rapidly transitioning to the world of preparing and cooking meat.

If this offends you, or if you are a carnivore who would rather not know how your meat gets from farm to plate, then avert your eyes.

As for the rest of you, keep reading and learn. I'm sure learning.

Yesterday, Executive Chef Paul Canales instructed the interns, including yours truly, on how to properly cut up a leg of pork -- this one being a 25-pounder that had just arrived from Riverdog Farm in Yolo County.

First Paul judiciously cut off the skin and fat layer on the leg. Then he used a saw to cut off the hock and trotter (feet), as you can see in the photo to the left.

In a matter of minutes, using a sharp, curved boning knife, he had taken apart this leg and separated it into the top round, the bottom round, the top sirloin, the eye of round and the knuckle. And he made it seem so easy.

Sorry I don't have a video of the process. I'll work on that in the future.

Later today, I'll post an extensive entry, with photos, on how to make a "sugo di carne" -- a highly reduced, basic meat sauce that is at the heart of fine Italian cooking. At Oliveto, they make this sauce nearly everyday, using scraps of lamb, goat, pigeon, pork or whatever is left over.

I made my first sugo yesterday, and it was a success. Check back this evening for more info. I need to get into the kitchen right now for another day of learning and cooking. 

Photo by Stuart Leavenworth, showing Paul Canales (left) and Pablo "Tigre" Mendoza Gavito in the background. 

Here's the question I hear most often from my friends back in Sacramento:

"Do you still have all of your fingers?"

Ha-ha. Such a funny bunch I run with.

"Oh yeah," I respond. "All digits attached."

Or sometimes, just to play along, I will display one of my hands, with one finger hidden, as in the photo to the right.

If you work in a restaurant kitchen, you must keep good humor about potential injuries. Otherwise, you'd likely move to a safer occupation - like working in the Alaskan crab fishery.

The reality, of course, is that a nasty knife cut or burn can come at any moment. As readers of my first installment remember, I cut into myself (just slightly) on my first day.

Since then, I've seen two other chefs - ones with more experience than this rookie - nearly fillet their thumbs.

I had already bloodied my thumb and forced my chef friend Paul Canales to rescue a lamb dish I had oversalted. Thus, I assumed that, on Day Three of my apprenticeship, the Oliveto restaurant would relegate me to a job suited to my talents - such as sweeping the floor.

But on Day Three, Oliveto allowed me to me redeem myself. I helped prepare a rather tricky dish called a Sformatino - a vegetarian entree.

My day in the kitchen started at 10 a.m. At that point, I had been up for four hours, having biked to the Sacramento Amtrak station, loaded the bike on the train, disembarked in Berkeley and cycled eight miles (mostly uphill) to the Oliveto restaurant in Rockridge.

My heart was pumping as I entered the kitchen. A savory pigeon stock simmered on one of the burners, and the kitchen was bustling with interns chopping up vegetables and removing the innards from squid.

In the back room, Pablo Mendoza Gavito, otherwise known as "Tigre," was breaking down a lamb with the help of an intern. Mexican music drifted from a boom box, adding a festive air to the normal rhythms of the morning.

I grabbed a white jacket, apron and two towels from the linen closet, and after washing my hands, I reported to Paul Berglund, one of three sous chefs at the restaurant.

"You," said Berglund, "are going to make a bechamel sauce."

"You do know how to make a bechamel sauce, right?"

Upon starting at Oliveto on April 1, I assumed it would be weeks, even months, before I cooked anything of real value. After all, why would a fancy restaurant - one with a food rating of 25 in the Zagat Guide - assign a mere novice to cook for their customers?

Yet at the start of my second day, April 2, Chef Paul Canales informed me I would be browning and braising lamb that morning. To power up, I immediately went downstairs to the Oliveto cafe and poured a strong jolt of coffee.

In retrospect, I should have poured myself a double.

The first day of my apprenticeship started - and nearly ended - with a wicked little devil of a knife.

The devil in question was a 2¾-inch Thiers Issard paring knife, an old-school French design that sports a handle longer than its blade.

I had never clutched such a knife before. But on my first day interning at Oliveto, an Italian restaurant in the Rockridge neighborhood of Oakland, I was handed one by executive chef Paul Canales.

"Stu, I'm going to have you turn some potatoes," the chef said.

This was new to me. For my entire life, I had used a potato peeler, and I had "peeled" them, not "turned" them. Now, in the kitchen of a highly rated restaurant, with a crew of chefs watching me, I was about to wield a menacing and unfamiliar blade.

Imitating what Chef Paul had just demonstrated, I cut off both ends of a potato. I then folded my right index finger over the spine of the knife, cradling the handle in my palm. Slowly turning the potato in my left hand, I attempted to swipe the skin off in a series of back strokes.

"Keep trying," the chef said. "You'll get the hang of it."

Then he walked away. As soon as he did, I somehow stuck the point of the knife into my left thumb. Blood ran out, and my apprenticeship had barely started.