Fraternity Kitchen

So Lucky to Have Me

Sunday, August 30th, 2009 | daily | 7 Comments

Once again, I’m hearing from Greek chefs around the country.  A lot of them are back at work, whereas I’m still on summer vacation.  In theory.  Last week I spent three days on an alumni event, one of which was the most stressful day of my working life.  And this morning, a Sunday, a glorious late summer day, I received an email as I was enjoying my Sunday New York Times with my freshly brewed coffee and homemade huckleberry muffin.   It was from the guys’ advisor telling me that Badley and a handful of helpers were painting today and would I possibly be able to just whip up a simple lunch for them?  I knew I had several choices in this situation, but decided to do it, knowing that every single time Badley has a petty little complaint I can use this as one of my “remember that time…” examples.  I set some chicken poaching and headed to the West Seattle farmers market where I received a text from Mr. President himself asking me when lunch would be arriving.  “Johnny has a present for you!” he interjected irrelevantly when I called him to tell him he was really pushing his luck.  When I delivered the chicken salad with dijon apricot mayonnaise, I discovered that the “present” was a shiny new mop bucket, these guys apparently never having witnessed their own mothers’ disappointment with a washing machine for Christmas.  “You’re the best!” Badley yelled after me as I exited the building, reiterating the fact that I am not on the payroll yet and it’s not even a day I would be working even if I were so you’re so goddamn lucky to have me!

Pledge Slaves

Wednesday, August 26th, 2009 | daily | 5 Comments

Badley asked me to compose a letter for a packet he’s sending to the incoming freshmen.  He wanted me to write a bland bio that would comfort the parents, but I didn’t want to do that.  I wanted to aim straight for my future customers with the hard, cold truth.  I got the impression he didn’t much care for my letter when he sent me an email asking me for my letter.  The one to the parents.  I won’t rehash it all here, but this is a little segment:

As to my reputation for being mean, it is categorically not true.  I simply have two very firm requirements:

1.       Sanitation in the kitchen and dining area.  This should be self-explanatory, but let’s be perfectly explicit:  if you make a mess, clean it up; if you take something out of the common fridge, return it before it develops enough bacteria to kill someone; clear your plates and throw away your trash.  We receive frequent Health Department inspections from a very sarcastic, nitpicking inspector.  Even more sarcastic and nitpicking than me.  Don’t embarrass me.

2.       Respect for my work area and the tools of my job.  I come into work at 7AM and I need a clean and stocked kitchen right from the start.  So please don’t block my parking spot, put a six pack of Coke in the freezer, break into my kitchen or pantries, or unplug cooling equipment, leaving food to spoil.  Not that anyone’s ever done any of that.

What he didn’t see were all the great lines I left out.  Like when I talk about how early I come into work and how I have to knuckle right down, I was going to add, “because unlike your President, I don’t have a bunch of pledge slaves to do my bidding.”  “It’s a perfectly fair letter,” I said to Dan, “I’ll cook great food if you don’t fuck with me.”  And I know I have the support of several former pledges because when they told me they’d read the letter, they laughed.  And it was one of those knowing laughs.

Charm Offensive

Friday, August 21st, 2009 | daily | No Comments

I’m installing 2 compost bins at the House and you would think this would be pretty straightforward, but I’m finding that some of my great ideas for the coming year are being met with a huge wad of red tape.  So that, besides the City of Seattle, 6 parties and a dozen emails are involved in this effort.  Johnny has been named Compost Chair (not to be confused with the Sustainability Chair, the Recycling Chair, or the “Turn Out The Goddamn Lights When You Leave the Bathroom” Chair), and when I first learned this, I was skeptical; he and I have had a somewhat, well, rocky relationship over the years.  (Search “Johnny the Funny” for an example).  But this morning I received an email from him that changed my view.  He’s not just more enthusiastic about table scrap dirt than you’d expect of your average college boy, but he’s been working all summer at Fort Lewis on an army compost project of huge proportions and he is nothing short of an expert now.  It’s an example of something that happens time and again in this job; just as I’m about to kill one of them for cause, he’ll turn and say something so unexpectedly interesting or touching or insightful that I just can’t do it.

House Made Sausage

Wednesday, August 19th, 2009 | daily | 7 Comments

I watch Food Network when I work out and I hate it when I time it to coincide with Robin Miller.  It’s not her personally, or her tips on getting weeknight meals on the table, which are very sensible.  And I know she has a tv show and sells lots of books, which clearly I do not.  It’s just that every single episode I manage to catch, there she is cooking boneless, skinless chicken breasts, a “why bother?” ingredient to rival cottage cheese.  I just don’t see the point of  paying someone a premium to strip out the only two flavor elements–the bone and the skin.  So I was thinking about her when I was making my first sausages composed of not just chicken thigh meat, but chicken fat.  I bought a commercial meat grinder with the notion that I’d be popping out artisinal sausages for the guys this year, but it will take some practice because stuffing hog casings is a little like milking a goat:  Not as easy as it looks.  When I told some of the guys about my new toy, they weren’t nearly as thrilled as I was, but they could see it as a potentially useful hazing tool, giving new meaning to the term house-made sausage.

More Jam

Monday, August 17th, 2009 | daily | 6 Comments

I realize that only hard core cooks and certain weirdos in Montana can appreciate how happy it makes me to stand and admire this collection.  Since returning from my sojourn at Quillisascut, I’ve been a little obsessed.  I admit it.  Must Put Up the Peaches Before They Are GONE!  I knew that I was becoming just plain crazy when I was late taking my stuff out of the washer in the laundry room of our condo building.  “I’m canning!” I cried to the woman whose machines I was hogging and she looked at me like I’d said I was late because I was lost waxing my floors listening to 45’s on the gramaphone.  ”Canning?  People still do that?”  So when I was at the House today doing inventory, it was me who came up with the idea first:  let me come back to work early.  Let me have my professional kitchen back.  Not just because I miss the guys, you know, not just because they miss the real food that I love to cook, but because 8 burners on a commercial stove can make shitloads more jam.

Change Resisters

Tuesday, August 11th, 2009 | daily | 2 Comments

Some of the comments I get on this blog never make it past my viewing.  I have a huge foreign fan club  who try to post sentiments like “Thanking you!  You improving my mood!”  I was thinking about these ego boosters when Brian looked down upon me with such enthusiasm as I explained the menu changes I had planned for the coming year.  He was not thanking me and I was not improving his mood.  You’d think that plans like “no more filler junk for lunch” and “if I wouldn’t put it on a restaurant menu, I’m not putting it on this one” would be met with applause, but you’d be someone who’s never cooked for a fraternity.  It’s not that these guys don’t like healthy and delicious food.  It’s that they also like total crap.  But I have hope because it was Brian who first encouraged me to put lamb and collard greens on my menu.  That despite the fact that he is also the person for whom I once contemplated creating “Ketchup Soup.”

Apricot Love

Thursday, August 6th, 2009 | daily | No Comments

I forgot to bring my camera when I took an Apricot Custard Tart to the House for Zach, so this is a picture from March.  But this is how he always looks, except when he’s trying to lure the ladies in which case he shaves, combs his hair and doesn’t look like a two-year-old picked out his clothes for the day.  You can see an example of this on the “about this blog” page where there’s a photo I call the “GQ Cover Audition.”  I brought the tart because I had rejected his request  for a birthday dinner while I was on my farm retreat.  Zach is 21 now, so he could have his very first drink ever.  I took a picture of the tart, and while up close it looked way better than a finals-burned-out-half-awake frat boy, the photograph looked like poached eggs floating in a bowl of milk.  It smelled great and was still warm when I delivered it.  While I was on my retreat, I purchased a 25# box of apricots from Cliffside Orchard.  They were seconds, but you wouldn’t know it, and so for $25, I have made not just that tart, but 14 cups of Bourbon Apricot Pickles, 2# of oven-dried fruit, 7 cups of preserves, 4 cups of Apricot-Amaretto Jam, 4 cups of poached fruit and a dozen whole ones just for splendid eating.

Farm to Table

Tuesday, August 4th, 2009 | daily | 4 Comments

It’s Zach’s birthday today.  I know this because, of the 7 texts I received from the guys during my retreat to Quillisascut Farm in eastern Washington, 3 were on this subject.  And given the tone of those messages, I’d say ZP was having a hard time accepting that my need for an intense food experience without outside communication trumped his need for birthday cake.  When I say intense, I mean that when I required whole wheat flour, silly me…I was handed a sack of wheat berries and a grain mill.  I mean that when goat was on the menu, we knew that we would be up at dawn to participate in the slaughter and buthchery of one of “the boys.”  It was profound and moving to be a participant in this life-taking, but there were lighter moments.  Like when we were removing the organs from freshly-killed chickens and a few of them “squawcked,” headless as they were, and one of the chefs broke our startled silence by stating flatly, “well now I know PETA is full of shit.”  Or when the owner told us that when they slaughter pigs in the fall, they’ve discovered the most humane method is to get them drunk first.  I went to great effort not to think about my job, but it was hard not to contemplate a practical application for that where I work.  When we were doing all of this beheading and scalding, plucking and evicerating of the chickens, I thought about a cooking class I once gave to a group of Junior Leaguers in Texas.  The women were happy to eat flesh, but recoiled at the idea that they would have to touch the raw breasts before them.  At the time, I wanted to ask how the hell they thought it was going to get onto their plate and it was simply irritating then, but now I see it as a deeper thing, an example of how disconnected we’ve become from our food.  I went there wanting to make some changes in how I do my job, but I came away changed myself, because there is something life-affirming about working with a group and sitting down in the evening to share a meal we all prepared quite literally from scratch.  Zach may not be over it for a while, but the best thing I could have done for my guys was to come here.