As I exited Hell’s Judgment Room, I was told “You should hear from us in a day or two.” That was on Sunday the 10th. The next day, I got a call from Boston Casting, asking if I indeed had a chance to present myself and my dish to the judges, and apologizing for making me wait in the cold. I asked when I would hear back, and was told “soon.”
Last Wednesday, I called Ashley (Cheerful Person) and asked again when I could expect to hear something. She explained that the judges had been traveling and attending meetings, but that I should hear something by Friday the 22nd.
What have I been doing in the meantime? I’ve been preparing myself for the next step in the selection process. I figured it would be better to be ready than to be caught flatfooted after a last-minute phone call, and anything I did now wouldn’t go to waste.
I’ve been reading a lot, particularly Culinary Artistry and The Flavor Bible by Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg. They’re not so much cookbooks a books about how to cook, dealing with classic flavor combinatons and why they work well. I’ve also spent as bit of time pulling together recipes for dishes that I can cook in 30 minutes, an hour, and an hour and a half.
But most importantly, I’ve been watching the 2009 season of the British version of MasterChef, the show on which the new Fox version will be based. It’s a tight half-hour production in which six contestants per round are weeded down to one winner. The winners of each round compete in a quarter-final, and eventually one contestant emerges victorious. Here’s the first show of the series, broken down into sections. To start, we are introduced to six cooks, who have 50 minutes to cook anything they’d like from the ingredients in front of them — a classic “mystery basket” challenge:
After the time is up, the dishes are judged:
Three cooks are chosen to move on to the next challenge: work the line at lunch service in a busy restaurant.
Immediately after the lunch service, the cooks have 60 minutes to cook two dishes. One cook will be chosen as the winner, who will go on to a quarter-final round.
I’ve seen one quarter-final contest so far, thinking “I can do that” as I watched. Each of four cooks has to survive an “identify the ingredients” test and then cook a three-course meal in an hour and 20 minutes. This whole process is repeated over the course of 32 episodes until someone wins the title of MasterChef.
If the Fox version of the show follows the same structure, then they will need close to 100 contestants, which improves my odds slightly. However, given how Fox messes with the formulas of the British shows it lifts, there’s no guarantee that they will use that many people. (And how does Gordon Ramsay fit into the structure?)
I’ve also been following various blog reports about the show. Here’s one person’s account of her audition in Seattle, ending with her immediate selection for a 30-minute on-camera follow-up interview. She (like me) was pre-screened for the audition and was able (unlike me) to present her dish shortly after arriving at the casting call.
Then there’s this post from an editor at the Epicurious web site. As you can imagine, I didn’t have a lot of sympathy for her. In fact, I submitted a comment which was not approved, so I’ll post it here instead:
How terrible for you that you had to DO YOUR JOB, and how fortunate for me that I had to wait outside in the cold for four hours and not witness your suffering.
I’ve received many supportive and sympathetic emails and comments in the last few days, for which I am extremely grateful. “Everything that was in your control you managed perfectly. The rest was completely out of your control.” was some much-needed perspective.
I completed my application on the Saturday evening before the casting call, making a copy to keep on file (at the insistence of She Who Must Be Obeyed). After a good night’s sleep, I was up at 8 AM to put the finishing touches on boeuf bourguignon version 2.0. My plan was to have everything packed up and ready to go by 12:30, which would give me time to get to Create-A-Cook in Newton for the call at 1 PM.
By this point I wasn’t even bothering to open a cookbook. I trimmed onions and mushrooms, glazed them, reheated the beef and strained the sauce, and made croutons. I cooked the noodles last, leaving them a bit al dente, figuring the carryover heat in their container would bring them up to doneness.
I packed everything into a heavy insulated bag: noodles in one container, the finished serving of beef in an insulated lunch bowl, a plastic box with the croutons, a small container of chopped parsley, a serving plate wrapped in a kitchen towel, some serving utensils, a handful of paper towels, a large Tupperware bowl with lid, a strainer, and a thermal carafe filled with boiling water. The bottom of the bag was lined with a heating pad from an insulated Pyrex casserole dish carrier, a veteran of many school potluck suppers.
I put on some nicer clothes, got in the car, drove to Newton, found the location, parked the car, and was greeted by a line of people that stretched around the building. No problem, I thought, I’ve been prescreened. I headed straight for the front of the line and told the rent-a-cop that I had a prescreen invite.
“Back of the line, just like everyone else.”
“That can’t be right, that’s not what I was told.”
“You and fifty others so far. Back of the line.”
I would spend the next four hours standing on that line out in the cold. I guessed there were at least 150 people ahead of me, learning as time went on that many of the applicants had brought a friend of family member along for assistance or moral support. I readjusted my count to about 100 applicants.
I spent my time making the acquaintance of the people around me in the line. The fellow just ahead of me — I think his name was Frank — competed in local recipe challenges and cook-offs. I thought maybe I might be out of my league until it became clear that Frank was the exception and not the rule. After a while, we all started asking what dishes we were going to present. I saw a lot of Pyrex casserole cases, and a whole lot of cake carriers. Who brings a cake to a cooking show audition?
The line crept forward slowly. Soon people were seen leaving, having completed the audition process. Some of the friendlier competitors answered questions for us: Once at the head of the line, you had five minutes to plate your dish, then two minutes during which you answered questions while a judge tasted your dish. The questions seemed to be about general cooking knowledge, which made me feel much more confident.
Frank and I began commenting on the exiting contestants, many of whom were still carrying their plated dish. One disgusted-looking guy was carrying a wooden cutting board on top of which rested a sandwich. It was made with some sort of whole-grain bread, had some greens in it, and might have been chicken salad.
“Is that really a sandwich?” Frank asked.
“Sure looks that way. But it had better be the best goddamned sandwich in the world. Look at that guy: His friends have told him for years that he makes a kickass chicken salad sandwich, so he finally took them at their word and tried out today. Now he’s pissed off because the miracle sandwich was not well received. I can’t tell if he’s mad at the judges, or if he’s about to go home and beat up his friends.”
A cameraman from the local Fox affiliate stopped to talk to the woman in front of me, who was there with her teen-aged daughter.
“What did you make today?”
I couldn’t hear all of her answer, but the general idea was “blah blah squash blah blah rice blah blah organic blah blah healthy lifestyle.” Good luck with that; Gordon Ramsay hates that kind of food.
All this time, although I was moving closer to the front door, the length of the line remained unchanged. People kept arriving, responding to an open casting call notice posted on Craigslist.
Finally, after four hours of waiting outside and forcing myself not to open my bag and check the internal temperature, I was let inside, where there was yet another line. This one moved quickly, ending with someone from the casting company. He checked my name against the list of prescreened applicants, then sent me to the head of a very short, fast-moving line. I was given a name tag with a number: 119.
I was waved into a kitchen with a stainless steel prep table and told to plate my dish. I pulled out the carafe and tested the water temperature: still very hot. I poured some of the water into my serving bowl to warm it up. I poured some more water into the container of noodles, covered it, and gave it a good shake to loosen and heat up the contents. I set the strainer over the Tupperware bowl, poured out the water in the serving dish, then strained the noodles. I arranged the noodles in the bowl, then the beef and lardons, the onions and mushrooms, and lastly a few ladlefuls of the sauce. I garnished with the croutons and parsley, packed up all of the other prep stuff, and got ready to meet the judges.
How did the dish look? Like this:
“Wait,” I can hear you say, “That’s the photo of version one.” Yes it is. And version two looked exactly the same.
I was standing at the front of the judging queue for a few minutes, so I took the opportunity to check out some of the other plated dishes. I saw at least three beef Wellingtons, an obvious nod to Ramsay (cooking Wellingtons is the bane of Hell’s Kitchen contestants). A fellow in a Patriots jersey (number 12, Tom Brady) had a gorgeous plate, but it was just tuna tartare. What surprised me was the number of people who chose not to use white plates for their presentations. By contrast, mine stood out; others in line were pointing at my dish, another boost for my confidence.
People were being shown into the judging room four at a time, two for each pair of judges. When my turn came, I was directed to the judges on the right: two women, one with a big smile and one who looked bored out of her skull. I presented my plate.
“What do you have for us today?” asked Bored Person.
“Boeuf bourguignon,” I replied. She grabbed a plastic fork and ate a lardon, not the beef.
“Ooh, just like Julie and Julia!” said Cheerful Person.
I gave her a big smile. “Exactly. But I’ve been refining the recipe for twenty years.”
Bored Person sawed off the smallest possible corner of a piece of beef with a plastic knife, shredding it to bits. “How did you prepare this?” she asked.
“I’ll need more than two minutes to tell you, but I started with organic beef and hand-cured salt pork.” Inside my head, I was screaming Pick up a spoon and taste the sauce! The sauce, dammit!
Having eaten the beef corner, she pushed the plate away and turned her attention to the dish from the other applicant, who had not previously entered into my consciousness. It was a dull green salad plate crowded with a slab of what appeared to be meatloaf topped with two soggy mushrooms, with a side of overcooked green beans and a blob of what might have been mashed potatoes.
Cheerful Person had a question for both of us: “What would it mean to you if you won?”
“It would prove that after years of teaching myself how to cook that I could now cook like a pro,” I answered. The other applicant, a very large woman, started jumping up and down. “I’d be so psyched to win! I loves me Gordon Ramsay!”
And with that, I was done. The judges turned their attention to a rating form on which they evaluated each of us on a scale of 1 to 5, categories I couldn’t see because I was trying to read upside down while packing up. As I turned to leave, I saw Frank talking to the other judge, someone I thought I recognized. I turned back to Bored Person: “Is that Adam Reid?” I asked.
“Yes, it is.”
I could feel something unpleasant welling up in me. “I’m sorry, I forgot to ask. Who are you?”
“I’m Mumbledy Mumble, I’m a food stylist.”
“And I’m Ashley from Boston Casting!” chirped Cheerful Person.
I left the room and headed over to a table where I could deal with my dish of food. Now I understood why so many people carried their plates out: They had something that could be covered and taken home, but I would have to scrape my plate into the nearby bin, wipe it clean and pack it up to go. That bin was full of the stuff of broken dreams: beef Wellingtons, tuna tartatre, cake, meatloaf, lobster, salad (who brings a salad to a cooking audtition?), and now boeuf bourguignon.
While I cleaned up, I could see through the window in front of me, where Frank was still talking to Adam Reid. Adam Reid of Cook’s Illustrated. Adam Reid of America’s Test Kitchen. Adam Reid, the food columnist for The Boston Globe Sunday Magazine. Adam Reid, laughing, smiling, chatting with Frank, eating the food, pointing at the plate and asking questions, behaving like a consummate pro.
I endured the walk of shame past the line — which was still as long as before — to my car. The guy in the Tom Brady shirt was asking anyone who knew “How did the Patriots game turn out?”
I had been following the course of the game on my phone. The Patriots lost badly to the Ravens. “You just lived the game,” I told him. “You froze outside for four hours, only to be met with bitter disappointment at the end.”
As I drove home, my fury mounted. When She Who Must Be Obeyed asked how I did, I exploded:
“Was my food tasted and judged by Adam Reid? No! It was tasted by a woman whose job consists of painting turkeys brown and sculpting mashed potatoes, whose most important kitchen implement is a misting bottle full of water and glycerine! A fucking food stylist!”
My sister, a professional dancer and veteran of hundreds of New York musical casting cattle calls, tells me my experience is absolutely typical, that I was lucky to get asked a few questions. My brother, a three-time Grammy award-winning record producer, tells me I was lucky to be interviewed by someone in the same industry.
Typical yes, lucky, maybe. But I can’t help but hear the famous words of one John Lydon at the conclusion of the last ever show by the Sex Pistols:
Having a killer signature dish, I realized, was only half of the game. I had to nail the application as well. Although I had “applied” for many jobs over the years, in actuality the process had never been more than sending a resume and sitting through an interview. The last actual application I completed was the one that got me into MIT.
And, like a college application, the MasterChef process would require some careful editing and positioning. The dinner conversation during the first taste test revolved around how to answer the questions to my best advantage. The “science geek in the kitchen” persona was still the angle to pursue, but now it was time to get to the specifics. So, without further ado, some selected answers to questions from the MasterChef signup form.
Section 1: General Information
This covered all of the basics: contact info, age, gender, birth date, education, web site (this blog, of course). There were some questions about my prior television experience (none), and then the big one:
Would you be available to leave your everyday commitments for up to five weeks starting in February 2010? Yes.
Do you have any obligations that would prevent you from being gone from your home and job for an extended period of time? No. (Answer was the result of a lengthy discussion with She Who Must Be Obeyed, who would shoulder a considerable burden in my absence.)
Section 2: In the Kitchen
If you have not attended a culinary school or cooking program, what is your cooking background? See the attached “How I Learned to Cook,” I’m completely self-taught.
Rate your cooking skills on a scale of 1-10 (10 being the highest): 9.
How would you describe your food philosophy or point of view? Rustic food prepared with modern techniques.
What is your favorite dish or type of food? Pork, in all of its myriad forms and preparations.
What cooking utensil can you not live without? My brain.
What is your favorite cookbook? The French Laundry Cookbook.
What are your 3 signature dishes and give a brief explanation in how you prepare each dish:
Pasta and tomato sauce made from the family recipes.
Boeuf bourguignon: a hybrid of Julia Child’s “Mastering” and Thomas Keller’s Bouchon recipes.
Bombe aux trois chocolats: chocolate mousse in a chocolate cake dome, covered with chocolate ganache.
What are your strengths in the kitchen? Organization, thoroughness, tasting as I cook, working clean.
What are your weaknesses in the kitchen? Dealing with outside distractions, my timing can be improved.
Describe your feelings about Chef Gordon Ramsay: I respect him both as a cook and as one of the chefs who put British cuisine back on the map.
Pretend for a moment you are a contestant on the show. Tell us the dish you would create for each of the two challenges listed below. Describe the ingredients you would use as well as the presentation.
1. Create a summer seafood dish. Pan-seared diver scallops with a sweet corn beurre blanc, sweet corn and roasted mushrooms, garnished with chives, chive oil, and sherry vinegar. Place a scallop on each of three small mounds of chive-garnished sweet corn kernels and chantrelle mushrooms. Lay down a stripe of the beurre blanc on either side of the scallops (rectangular plate), dot the sauce with chive oil and sherry vinegar. Garnish the scallop tops with single chive tops.
2. If you could put a gourmet twist on your favorite comfort food, what would it be and how would you prepare it? Comfort food: smothered pork chops with grits and greens. Gourmet twist: pan-seared, oven-roasted thick-cut pork chops (brined in salt, brown sugar, bay leaves and garlic). White wine pan sauce with shallots, capers, and lemon. Savory polenta with red onions, garlic, and parmesan. Set cooked chop on a bed of polenta, sauce the chop, serve sauteed kale with bacon and mushrooms on the side.
Section 3: Employment History
The usual nonsense here, concluded with this set of questions:
Do you enjoy your current job? Describe why or why not: Yes. I work for and answer only to myself, and I decide which projects I work on.
What is the best job you ever had and why? My current job is the best; I get to do creative work without corporate politics.
What is the worst job you ever had and why? Editor for McGraw-Hill, everything was decided by committee.
What would your dream job be and why? Food and travel writer/blogger, which would utilize all of my creative skills.
Section 4: Your Profile
This is where it got personal.
How would you describe yourself in one word? Perfectionist. (I didn’t think asshole was appropriate, although it might be more accurate.)
What is something we wold not know by looking at you? I’m a MIT-trained biologist.
More questions about hobbies, life-changing events, best and worst qualities, etc.
What was the last unusual, exciting, or spontaneous thing you instigated? Booking a trip to London in April 2009 so we could eat at St. John restaurant. (Not too much of a stretch.)
Section 5: Medical and Background
Here’s where it became clear I was dealing with Fox. Questions about my general health, any criminal record, violent tendencies, drug use, lawsuits: would truthful answers improve of decrease my chances?
If chosen to be a contestant on MasterChef, is there any part of your life that you would prefer not to share on camera? (i.e., social organizations, activities, personal history, friends, family, etc.) No. (I’ve just given Fox permission to poker their cameras everywhere.)
Voluntary Participation Agreement
Summarized by She Who Must Be Obeyed as “You give them everything, and they are responsible for nothing.”
I felt pretty good about the application; I don’t think they’d see another one like it.
Signature dish: done. Application: done. Time for the audition.
What dish would I bring to the audition? What was my “signature dish”? I had never thought about it before, and now I had to choose something that I thought was representative of my cooking. After a two weeks of rolling the idea around in the back of my mind, I arrived at what in retrospect was the inevitable conclusion: I would cook boeuf bourguignon.
It was the first complex dish I learned to cook, and one that continues to reveal new lessons to me in the kitchen. It requires time and patience, needs the best possible ingredients, and can be assembled stepwise over the course of a few days. But if I wanted to impress a tasting judge, I had to refine the recipe beyond my current method. I wold have to pay attention to every ingredient, which began with my laborious preparation of beef stock.
I returned to my butcher for boneless chuck roast and salt pork. As luck would have it, they had just put out their own salt-cured pork jowl, not unlike my own guanciale before the drying step. I grabbed a pound of that, knowing I’d probably make the dish twice, and four pounds of the chuck roast. For the other key ingredient I consulted with my friend Andrea — a former caterer currently working at Cambridge Wine and Spirits — about which wine to use. I would normally select an Oregon pinot nior, but she sent me two bottles of Hahn 2007 Meritage, claiming that it had a better fruit backbone than similarly-priced pinots.
With all of my key ingredients assembled, I had to reconsider my method. The Julia Child/Jacques Pepin recipe I use has you place the browned beef and lardons in the pot first, followed by the aromatics tied in a cheesecloth bundle. No mater how carefully I did this in the past, bits of vegetable and herb escaped and stuck to the beef, marring the appearance of the meat. The solution to the problem was in Thomas Keller’s boeuf bourguignon recipe from the Bouchon cookbook. He puts the aromatics in the pot first, layers damp cheesecloth on top, then the meat and lardons, and then tops the whole assembly with a parchment lid. This arrangement keeps the meat clean and submerged below the level of the simmering liquid, and allows easy removal of the meat when it is done cooking — just lift up the cheesecloth with the meat and let the juices strain out.
I lifted the meat out with the cheesecloth and set it aside, then I strained the braising liquid to separate the spent vegetables. From this point until the dish was completed my chinois became my constant companion. As Keller states in The French Laundry Cookbook:
The final clarifying stage of a sauce is passing it through a chinois. French Laundry chefs will pass a sauce through a chinois twenty times or more, till it is perfectly clean and all the particles that can muddy it have been caught in its mesh. We’re always “cleaning” sauces with a chinois — no liquid should move from one pot or container into another except through a chinois.
In an effort to improve the appearance of my plate, I purchased a set of wide-brimmed plain white bowls for serving. Here, you may recall, was my last plating of the dish:
And here was my new final plate:
I invited Andrea and her husband over for a tasting and evaluation dinner. She loved the dish, but made a few suggestions: thicken the sauce a bit more, leave the crusts on the croutons, and cut them a bit thicker. She thought the juxtaposition of the rustic croutons (made from brioche, inspired by the foie gras course at Per Se) with the refined sauce was perfect.
That was Wednesday night. My plan was to spend the next two days doing actual work, then cook version two of the dish on Saturday, finishing it on Sunday morning just before I had to leave for the audition. I bought another four pounds of chuck (my butcher loves me now) and braised it on Saturday morning. I made a few adjustments (more thyme and garlic) and knew I was onto something. This version tasted even better than the first.
With the improved version in the fridge waiting for the next morning’s finishing touches, I had one more task ahead of me: the application. But that’s a story for the next post.
Okay, enough of my playing coy and talking about my “sooper seekrit cooking project.” Time to come clean with the truth: I auditioned for a cooking show.
In mid-December, my neighbor sent me this email, a forward from the Boston Globe site:
Cook with Ramsay
Boston Casting has put out a call for amateur chefs who want to be featured on a reality show with “Hell’s Kitchen’’ host Gordon Ramsay. “We will NOT be considering professional chefs who work or have worked in professional kitchens,’’ the call says. We take that to mean that Boston Casting is looking for participants for Ramsay’s newest show, an American version of “Gordon Ramsay: Cookalong Live,’’ which features the mean chef teaching average folks to make fancy meals. You can find more information at www.bostoncasting.com.
I went to the site and read the notice. It turned out that the Globe was only half right. They were looking for participants for a new cooking show that would feature Gordon Ramsay, but it was for MasterChef, a reality-type show along the lines of Top Chef that would feature non-professional cooks. A little web research revealed that MasterChef had completed its fifth season in England and had nothing to do with Ramsay.
A little more poking around turned up this page for the US production company that would be creating the show. Despite the association with the producers of The Biggest Loser, I was intrigued by the idea of Ramsay acting as a mentor to would-be professional cooks. It struck me as a move on his part to improve his image here in the States, which he had begun with the atrocious Cookalong with Gordon Ramsay.
I had always figured I could cook better than some of the yahoos I had seen on Hell’s Kitchen, so it was time to put up or shut up. Based on the instructions at the casting site, I sent this photo of me at Per Se:
and this email:
That’s me, David Shaw, about to start my birthday present: dinner at Thomas Keller’s Per Se restaurant (http://blog.belm.com/2009/11/30/birthday-dinner-at-per-se/, http://blog.belm.com/2009/12/01/birthday-dinner-at-per-se-continued/). That dinner was the most recent milestone in a journey that began when I taught myself how to cook in college (http://blog.belm.com/2009/03/31/how-i-learned-to-cook/).
Rather than go into exhaustive detail, I’ll point you to selected posts in the blog I started this year that is mostly about food and cooking.
I’ve been a big fan of Chef Ramsay’s for years, and have managed to watch just about everything he’s done for both British and American television. I’ve cooked his recipes, including this one from the most recent season of The F Word:
What sets me apart from other amateur chefs is my depth of food knowledge, my precision and technique (I’m an MIT graduate), and my passion for good food prepared perfectly.
I look forward to hearing from you about the show.
Satisfied that I had made the effort, I continued with my work. Twenty minutes later I received this reply from Boston Casting:
Thanks for submitting to the Master Chef Casting Call.
We are REALLY looking for a great story:Â something different, something crazy, something traumatic that maybe impacted or inspired your passion of cooking.
I was wondering if you could dig a little deeper and figure out what your angle/your great story would be. I want to consider you, but I need to know more, I need something to stand out. And I mean REALLY REALLY Stand out!!
Please send your story (along with your contact info AND PICTURE) to bostonmasterchefstories@gmail.com
The sooner you get this in to me- the better your chances are for getting an interview!
I figured I had received an automatic response, because there was no way anyone could have read all of the blog posts I included in twenty minutes. So I re-sent the photo along with a cut-and-paste of my “How I Learned to Cook” post. That was my story, and I was sticking to it. Email sent, I returned once again to my work.
Another twenty minutes later my phone rang.
“Is this David Shaw?”
“Yes.”
“We’ve been monitoring the emails from Boston Casting. We’d like to ask you a few questions. Have you ever cooked professionaly? Have you attended a cooking school or enrolled in a cooking program? Have you written a cookbook or articles for a food magazine?”
“No, no, no, no, and no.”
“Great. Please show up at 1 PM on January 10th at Create-A-Cook in Newton. Bring your signature dish, something that can be served at room temperature. You’ll have time to plate and assemble the finished dish, but will have no access to any kitchen equipment — not even a microwave. We’ll follow up with an email; be sure to download the application and fill it out before you arrive.”
I got the email a few minutes later and downloaded the application and a FAQ. Only then did it hit me: I would have to audition for a television cooking show.
It was December 16th. I had less than three weeks to plan my attack, and one question loomed larger than any other.
What is my signature dish?
It took me two weeks to come up with the answer. You, however, will have to wait only one day.
I‘ve been away from here for a week, working furiously on a “super seekrit cooking project” that I alluded to on Facebook. While I’m not quite at liberty to divulge the nature of the project, I can tell you that it started with a fundamental technique that separates the pros from the amateurs: making beef stock.
Chicken stock is easy: toss some bones and scraps in a pot, cover with water, bring to the barest of simmers, skim the gunk off the surface, and toss in some aromatic vegetables during the last hour of cooking. I do this every other week, when the bag of chicken scraps in the freezer gets full. Beef stock, on the other hand, cannot be made on a whim. It requires planning and a two-day time commitment, which I was prepared to make for this project.
I wanted the best, most refined stock I could make, so I used Thomas Keller’s method, a page-long sub-recipe from the Bouchon cookbook. I started with five pounds of beef shank bones cut into three-inch lengths. Since the bones weren’t particularly meaty, I also added two and a half pounds of oxtail cut to the same size.
I preheated the oven to 475°F and put a roasting pan in to preheat for ten minutes. I filmed the pan with a tablespoon of canola oil and added the bones. I roasted them for forty five minutes, turning once when they were well browned on the bottom. While they roasted, I prepped all of the aromats: one and a half onions cut into quarters, one large carrot cut into quarters, a large leek, split and cut into two-inch lengths, a large sprig each of thyme and parsley, three bay leaves, a quarter teaspoon of black peppercorns, and a head of garlic cut in half horizontally.
I removed the roasted bones from the oven and lowered the temperature to 400°F.
As I transferred them to a colander set over a baking sheet to drain, I realized I had a pan full of roasted bone marrow. I sacrificed one bone’s worth for a chef’s treat:
A slice of toasted country bread, a sprinkling of fleur de sel, and I had a snack worthy of Fergus Henderson. I briefly considered whipping up a quick parsley salad to accompany this lovely slice of heaven, but realized that I would then have to eat all of the marrow, to the detriment of my final stock.
Feeling virtuous about my exercise of superhuman restraint, I pushed on. I drained the fat from the roasting pan, placed it over medium heat, added a cup of water, and scraped the fond from the bottom of the pan.
I transferred the fond to a large stockpot, added the bones, and then enough cold water to just cover the bones. Fat immediately rose to the top, which I skimmed off.
I added a large pinch of salt and the remaining half onion, which I had charred on a non-stick skillet while the bones roasted. I brought the pot to a simmer over medium heat, then lowered the heat to a very gentle simmer. In the meantime, I tossed the vegetables in another tablespoon of canola oil and roasted them in the oven until they were caramelized.
So far, so good. All I had to do now was continue to skim the impurities out of the stock for the next five hours. Which I did, imagining that this would be the same task that would have been assigned to me as a commis in the Per Se or French Laundry kitchens. All that skimming did result in very clear stock:
At this point I turned off the heat, covered the pot, and went to bed because it was one o’clock in the morning. The next day, bright and early, I brought the pot back to a simmer, then added the caramelized vegetables, herbs, peppercorns, and garlic, and simmered for another hour.
I let the stock rest for ten minutes, then began the laborious process of transferring the finished product to a new pot one ladleful at a time, passing it through a chinois. (The force of pouring the stock out of the pot would have carried any impurities through the strainer.)
So, sixteen hours later, I wound up with the four quarts of liquid love you see at the top of this post. After a few hours in the fridge they turned into beef gelatin with a thin layer of solidified fat which I skimmed off.
I had one of my basic ingredients ready. Now it was time to do some serious cooking. But that will have to wait until the next post.
I have been playing with my shiny new Bliptronic 500o, which I received for Xmas. Rather than try to describe it, I can show it to you in action.
Straight out of the box it’s a bit limited. It only plays in C major (and A minor, har har har), there are only eight instrument sounds, and the tempos are fixed at 20-beat intervals. But those are limitations easily overcome with some effects processing, as seen at the end of the video.
Since the device is so inexpensive, I have high opes that it will be hacked and circuit-bent. If someone can come up with a MIDI control add-on, then the fun will really begin.
In the meantime, I’ll mate it with some of my other gadgets.
The cooking buzzword last year was umami, the “fifth taste” responsible for our sensing “meatiness.” Before that taste had a name, however, cooks in the know had a pantry full of components they could add to boost a dish’s savory notes. A quick look through the Belm Research Kitchen turned up these (not including the bacon dashi in the Deep Storage Facility): shiro miso, instant dashi, soy sauce, Marmite yeast extract, anchovies, dried mushrooms (porcinis in this photo) tomato paste, and konbu.
The konbu (dried kelp) was the source from which glutamates, the molecules that trigger the umami taste, were first extracted and identified. The most well-known of the glutamates is, of course, monosodium glutamate or MSG. The can of Accent is pure MSG crystals, shown in the opening photo.
I mention all of this because I recently remembered something about an apartment I used to live in back in 1986. It was on Main Street in Cambridge, MA, situated above the Royal East Cantonese & Szechuan restaurant. (Although the Royal East has been at that location for almost 25 years, MIT old-timers still refer to it as Colleen’s, the name of the Chinese restaurant that preceded it. Why was a Chinese eatery named after an Irish girl? Beats me.) The building was narrow, so that although the front bedroom had a view of the street, the rear bedroom (mine) had a view of the parking lot in back, which was where our dumpster and the entrance to the restaurant kitchen was located.
One evening my roommate came home dragging something bulky behind him. It was a large empty cardboard drum, red on the outside with white lettering that proclaimed “MONOSODIUM GLUTAMATE (MSG), 25 kg.” He found it next to the dumpster, obviously discarded from the Royal East kitchen. We fitted it with a trash can liner and proceeded to use it as our kitchen trash receptacle from then on. Visiting friends admired it, some asking us to keep an eye out for another one that they could put to similar use. I told then it might take quite a while for another one to turn up, since 25 kilograms is a lot of MSG.
Much to my surprise, about three months later, a second empty drum materialized in the kitchen. Having become familiar with the layout of the Royal East by this time (I was the wonton soup, boneless spare ribs and crispy duck takeout), I assumed it was the empty drum from the other side of their kitchen. I was happy with that explanation until yet another empty drum appeared. I was completely baffled: How much MSG did the place use?
I never bothered to try to answer that question until now. Let’s make some assumptions and do some math:
Each dish receives a teaspoon of MSG.
There are three teaspoons in a tablespoon.
A tablespoon of MSG weighs 5 grams.
Each evening 200 people are served.
Each diner at the restaurant orders one dish.
A 25 kilogram drum of MSG contains 15,000 teaspoons: ((25,000g/5g) x 3) = 15,000 dishes.
200 people x 7 days/week = 1,400 dishes/week
Which means a new drum of MSG lasts almost 11 weeks: 15,000 dishes/1,400 dishes/week = 10.7 weeks. That seems to be in agreement with the frequency of drum appearances by the dumpster wihle we lived there.
At least two of my assumptions are speculation: the weight of a teaspoon of MSG (I couldn’t find that info online), and the customer churn at the restaurant. But the assumption that always bugged me, from then until now, was the one challenged by another friend:
Now that I’ve been at this blogging thing for a year, I get to reward myself by engaging in that most self-indulgent of online activities (apart from the self indulgence inherent in the very act of blogging), the end-of-the-year list of superlatives.
I’ll stick to food and cooking for this go-round (I have some opinions about the year in music, but that’s what Pitchfork is for), resisting the impulse to present everything as a High Fidelity-esque top five list. In no particular order:
Cookbook
Momofuku, by David Chang and Peter Meehan.
An amazing cookbook in an amazing year for cookbooks. It’s full of recipes I want to cook right now, requiring just enough new techniques and ingredients to improve my cooking skills. If that isn’t enough, Chang’s story of how he started his restaurant(s) is as captivating and full of culinary badassery as Kitchen Confidential.
Runners-up:
A Day at El Bulli by Ferran Adria, The Big Fat Duck Cookbook (the boxed first edition) by Heston Blumenthal, and Alinea by Grant Achatz — all fascinating looks inside the heads of the top practitioners of molecular gastronomy. Ratio by Michael Ruhlman, the meta-cookbook we didn’t know we needed until he wrote it. And, lastly, Ad Hoc at Home by Thomas Keller. If you had told me that a Keller cookbook about comfort food would sell out its initial print run of 100,000, I would have told you to put down the crack pipe. It almost beat out Chang’s book for my top pick: it’s full of straightforward (but not quick) simple recipes, so simple that Keller has said “if you think they’re difficult, then you’re doing them wrong.”
Cooking Blog
Alinea at Home by Carol Blymire. Fresh from her successful through-cooking of The French Laundry Cookbook, Carol has set her sights on doing the same to the Alinea book. I’ve been enjoying her journey thus far, even if she did beat me to the idea. (Really. I had the Alinea through-cook project all mapped out, and might have been able to launch it if she hadn’t managed to score an advance copy of the book.)
Runners-up:
Nose to Tail at Home by Ryan Adams: If you think sourcing gellan gum and transglutaminase for a recipe is difficult, try locating woodcock anywhere in North America. Ryan has been cooking his way through Fergus Henderson’s The Whole Beast, another project I thought of too late. I’ve had my revenge, however, by eating at St. John before he did, and having She Who Must Be Obeyed making the Eccles Cakes first.
Cookblog: “My friend Peter has a cooking blog, you should check it out.” I did, and discovered just how amateurish my home cooking efforts really are. This guy cooks astonishing home meals from what appears to be the best-stocked home refrigerator in the universe, supplemented by his vegetable garden and local farms.
Cooking Show
The French Chef. I know it’s not a new show, but PBS has been re-broadcasting episodes for the last two months. Watch any of these shows — from the early ’60s black-and-whites to the last of the run in the ’70s — and watch her kick ass ad take names, all in one live take.
Runners-up:
Good Eats: Still the best show on the Food Network, and still going strong after ten years. I don’t know how Alton Bron has managed to keep the show fresh and free of the network’s focus group-driven “improvements,” but he should keep it up for another ten years. As an added bonus, all of the show’s recipes are in the process of being published.
The Minimalist: Mark Bittman’s four-minute one-recipe videos are perfect little gems. You can count on him to teach a new technique or new flavor combination in every broadcast. I watch them as they’re downloaded to our TiVo, but you can view them online at The New York Times web site.
Recipe I’ve Cooked
Momofuku “Chicken and Egg.” A great tasting dish, challenging but not intimidating to prepare, and my introduction to “ghetto sous-vide.”
Runners-up:
Hainan Chicken Rice. A Bittman minimalist classic, easy to prepare and a delight to eat. I’ve made this at least once a month since I discovered the recipe.
Roasted Bone Marrow and Parsley Salad, St. John, London. God’s butter on toast, ’nuff said.
Runners-up:
“Oysters and Pearls,” Per Se, New York. “The poached oysters melted in my mouth, the tapioca had a slight bit of al dente bite, and the caviar popped open with a warm, salty gush of brininess.” Three perfect bites.
Cured Foie Gras Tart, Au Pied de Cochon, Montreal. The most overindulgent dish I’ve ever eaten.
Pan-Roasted Lobster, Jasper White’s Summer Shack, Cambridge. Lobster, butter, chives – that’s it. Once you’ve had lobster cooked this way you’ll never want any other preparation. One of Julia Child’s favorite dishes.
Complete Restaurant Meal
Per Se, New York. My 50th birthday present from She Who Ms Be Obeyed and the new Best. Meal. Ever. I can’t think of what could top this, possibly Thomas Keller cooing dinner for me in my home, or my cooking dinner in the Per Se kitchen. I can dream, can’t I?
Runners-up:
St. John, London. Bone marrow, crispy pig skin, perfect roasted pork, rabbit with bacon — all served at Fergus Henderson’s temple to “simple British food.”
Whole Hog Dinner, Craigie on Main, Cambridge. Chef Tony Maws had me at “half roasted pig’s head.” He remains my go-to guy for all things pig.
Dinner Guest
She Who st e Obeyed, aka Diane Martin. My wife has been with me for all of my culinary adventures. Here’s to many more years of discovery.
plus this (Trader Joe’s Wisconsin cheddar cheese curds)
and this (beef gravy from the Belm Research Kitchen Short-Term Cryostorage Unit)
equals poutine:
I threw this together in 15 minutes (simple math, but the order of operations — fries, then curds, then gravy — has to be observed), and it tasted better than my first exposure to the Quebecios national dish, but not as good as the platonic ideal served at Au Pied de Cochon. Still, after an hour of shoveling snow it really hit the spot.
