The Chef Apprentice

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here are some possibilities:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unlike many restaurants, Oliveto buys entire animals -- whole pigs, lambs and young cows, known as vitellone. To age and store all this meat, the restaurant installed a meat locker in the basement a few years ago.

In this video at the Oliveto Community Journal, Chef Paul Canales gives us a tour of the meat locker, along with a quick lesson on aging grass-fed beef.

As he notes in the video, grass-fed beef tends to be very lean, and not very tender, when fresh. But with proper aging, enzymes help tenderize the meat, and add flavor.

The meat locker also is a storage and curing spot for salami, pancetta (cured pork) and other parts off the animal, all of which are used at the restaurant. In the photo, Sous Chef Curtis Di Fede hangs up some meat.

Photo by Stuart Leavenworth

In the days before Oliveto launches its yearly spectacle of seafood specialties, the chefs must pull off a logistical extravaganza.

The restaurant prepares and serves hundreds of pounds of fish, mollusks and crustaceans during its annual Oceanic Dinners, which start tomorrow.

Some of the fish is salted or cured beforehand. But Monterey Fish, the restaurant's supplier, delivers much of the seafood on the day of the dinners, or a day before - like today.

When I entered the restaurant slightly after 10 a.m., the normal morning rhythms of Oliveto had been obliterated.

Nearly all the line chefs - the young hot shots who normally come in at 2 p.m. or so - were already there. Several interns were flitting about. Every portion of counter space was taken, as you can see. People were peeling artichokes and shelling fresh garbanzo beans, but most were involved with filleting, scaling, shucking or cooking various kinds of seafood.

I ventured into the dining room, and found Chef Paul Canales with some of his sous chefs around a table, checking off the status of fish that had been delivered or ordered.

Two months into my apprenticeship, I'm starting to get accustomed to the daily rhythms of Oliveto.

But in just one week, those rhythms will be washed away by the restaurant's annual "Oceanic Dinners."

From June 10 to June 13, the normal menu will be replaced with one that features seafood in nearly every dish. So the kitchen crew is now gearing up for a seafood extravaganza that will challenge their skills and their imagination.

Pretend you are me. You are sweating. You are standing over a hot stove, stirring a ragu. It's a hot day outside, and the air conditioning and ventilation systems in the restaurant kitchen aren't working well.

To beat the heat, you first pour yourself a glass of ice water, and you attach your name to it with masking tape. That way, no other chef will steal your water or drink from it with their sweaty, sauce-stained lips.

But hydration isn't enough. You need to chill out. So you turn down the flame on your ragu and take a trip to the "walk-in."

Ahhh. That feels good.

The walk-in is just like its name implies. It's a refrigerator that you can walk into. At Oliveto, the walk-in is about 6 by 12 feet wide and 81 inches tall. It is kept at a constant temperature of 39 degrees Fahrenheit.

Stepping into it is like going from a Sacramento summer to Alaska, except that the cupboards are filled with Italian treats.

On your left, as you enter, are trays and trays of fresh, hand-made pasta. Above those are some meats - perhaps some hams or prosciutto. Straight ahead are more meats - pans of lovingly prepared hen breasts, or rabbit legs or meat scraps for a sugo. To the left side might be some handmade sausages and salami. Above that you might see a pig's foot sticking out from a top shelf.

To the right are the condiment trays and leftover sauces and then further to the right are vegetables, raw and prepared, as well as herbs and salad greens. Be careful as you walk around. Down on the floor are several five-gallon buckets filled with stocks - lamb stock, fish stock, goat stock, etc. You don't want to kick those as you move around.

The Chef Apprentice never knows what his first assignment may be upon arriving in the morning.

My first job today? Cleaning and cutting up ten pounds of squid.

By now, some of you may be grossing out at the photo. Yuck! But this wasn't any squid. It was super fresh, straight from the Monterey Bay, and it was going to be turned into a luscious squid braise -- the launch of a particular pasta sauce at Oliveto. 

My first step was to pull the head apart from the mantle -- the main body of the squid -- thereby pulling out the innards. Then I carefully extracted a piece of cartilage, the transparent "quill" that is inside each squid mantle. Using my paring knife, I pushed out all the guts and threw them in a waste container.

The next step involved cutting the squid between the eyes and tentacles and taking out and tossing the "beak," which the squid uses for chewing. The tentacles are then placed in a pan on ice, along with the clean mantles.

With help of Denise Cadet, a nurse and prep chef who works part time at Oliveto (seen left), I spent the latter part of the morning performing this operation on each squid, and then cutting the mantles into half-inch rings. I'm taking a lunch break now. In a few minutes, we'll heat up some olive oil, cook some garlic and mirepoix in a stew pot, and then start braising the squid.

Squid is nearly a year-round menu item at Oliveto, although it is prepared in many different ways.

My favorite is charcoal-grilled squid stuffed with a savory bread stuffing that includes shrimp and herbs.

Yuck, squid? No, yum squid.

Photos by Stuart Leavenworth

This gig exhausts me. I'm on my feet eight hours a day. My feet are sore. My back aches. But at Oliveto, there are some perks to being a chef-in-training - the nightly "testers."

The restaurant changes its menu daily. And because of that, the line cooks - those manning the wood-fired oven, the saute station, the pasta station and the salad station - prepare sample dishes on the menu, particularly the new items, every single night.

As these plates come off the line, the sous chefs and other chefs gather around, sticking their forks in beautifully plated food, tasting it and critiquing it.

If a plate passes the test, it is taken to the back of the kitchen where the service staff conducts their own critique. If the chefs find fault in a dish, it is redone or scrubbed from the menu.

Tonight I hung around for the testers to learn what had become of the food I prepared and to sample some.

The roasted beets that I lovingly peeled became an artful antipasto, paired with fresh mozzarella, Cipolline onions and salsa rustica.

The potatoes I diced were flash-fried and tossed on the edge of a charcoal-grilled swordfish with spring onions and aioli. These golden cubes of spud added a crispy texture to the fish.