Is this really my life? Oh wait, yep.

Well, again, it's been a while since I've written, but all has been about 90% groovy. I've been working, and for the most part, really digging my new job. I know I said earlier that I'd be on 5 days a week, but it turned out I am only doing 4 (with an option to switch to 5 later when I'm better acclimated to the long hours) but still getting PLENTY of hours. That means I get to act like a bum like 50% of the time, which is very enjoyable, and really quite relaxing. I have enough recovery time to want to cook at home at least 3 times a week and exercise fairly regularly (I miss the gym sometimes, but the weather is so gorgeous, it's easy to want to walk or bike once you will yourself outside). I am starting to think that this job validates the whole move. It's perfect. I am learning exactly the things I need to learn. I'm learning quickly and executing well (almost always). I am liked by everyone except the sous (who is kinda mean and definitely a hardass, but a badass too), and I can already see that I'm on my way to indispensability. It's a very good thing. I show up on time and work hard, and so far that seems to be working.

My last chef said often, that I would never find a cooler boss than him, but I'm pretty sure he was wrong. My new boss is pretty damned cool. She is a very cool customer, doing very cool, interesting food. She embodies the NFA ethic. She is personable and laid back while delegating and keeping order with an air of total professionalism. She takes care of her staff like a family (which it kind of is, with her BF running the adjacent lounge), and I think we are a good fit. I get the feeling we are both grateful to have found each other. The sous and I will work things out one way or another. It's nothing personal, but he certainly has a knack for making it seem that way. He's critical in a kind of coarse and hurtful way. I know he's there to help me grow a nice thick skin, so I'll just take him with a grain of salt, BE COOL, and try my best mot to let him get to me. We have another prep cook (I mean besides me), who also doubles and triples as a busboy and a dishwasher. He's really cool too, and he likes working with me, so if the sous decided he wanted me out, he'd be outvoted in favor of keeping me, 2 to 1(4 to 1 if you count the waiters, who also think I'm pretty ok)!

I do miss things about my last job, particularly making bread all the time (we don't serve any free bread, and only use it for sandwiches, and bread to go with cheese plates and stuff). Then there's chocolate cake. Of course there is a chocolate cake on the menu right now, but it's very different from my chocolate cake. This one is dainty and light where mine is massive and rich, but I suppose a lighter approach is better for this climate. Dessert, at this gig, is not really my department. I miss my little brother at work a lot. I haven't really worked in a kitchen professionally without him by my side. It was always nice to know for sure someone totally had your back (and his company is hard to beat). I know somewhere, me and my Bro will always be there for each other, if not in the physical world. I will eventually get over the feeling that something is missing without him there on the line. It's just another part of going out into the world I guess. Tonight will be my third Saturday night late shift, hopefully, with many more to come. I'm still lacking a bit of speed, but to put it shamelessly, I feel like a budding badass. So I'm going to bed (the sun is officially up and it's 7:30 am - I got home at 4:15), and then going back for more of the good stuff. I'm loving every sweaty, stressful, glorious minute of it.

The New Gig, or Operation AlanaBeCool

Ok, I haven't blogged in a bit, but it's mostly because I've been busy attaining and doing a job. I found it through Craig's list. The hours are insane, but I'll only be working 5 days a week, which makes it seem less daunting. I am training to be the late night chef at a small but very cool fusion restaurant in downtown Sarasota. That means I'll be at work from 5pm to 1am weeknights and 5pm to 3am on weekends. This is not as crazy for me as it would be for a normal person that sleeps at night (or any other time for that matter). Also, It works out perfectly for vehicle sharing with my roommate who works early hours. The commute is (in another weird NYC comparison that shouldn't be made but I will anyway) about equivalent to taking the subway from Middle Village, Queens to SoHo, only I'm in Florida so I have to drive for 40 minutes each way (in a giant gas guzzlin truck...that I am grateful to have use of). I wish I could read and drive simultaneously, that would make it a lot more fun (and more like the subway). Anyway, it's a trek, and it's quite a job, but the money's very decent and there's no income tax in Florida (I guess if they can't have Subways). I know I'm going to learn a lot. When I've mastered my domain, and all 20 or so of the dishes which are my charge, I'll get a raise, and major street cred. Also, when I get the hang of multitasking on the level required of me, I will be able to say truthfully to myself that I am truly a badass line cook. I'm about to get quick-schooled in everything I wasn't allowed to learn at my last couple of jobs. It's all quite serendipitous, really.

The best thing about this gig is that they need me. They have had a very hard time finding someone with the right combo of will and ability to work the late shift. I have both, but I have to learn to BE COOL. I started on Friday night, the busiest of the week in every restaurant, so I had decided to take comfort in the fact that it would never be as hard as the first time. I went in as relaxed as possible (stomach in knots, shoulders in ears), with my tool kit packed to the gills. I donned clean jacket and shoes, with notebook, sharpie (for labeling), and pen in tow, ready to geek out. I tried my best, as my roommate would say, to put up a good front of sanity. My efforts were, by and large, successful. I got along well with pretty much everyone (oh, and no freaking out). There's the Chef/Owner of the place, as well as another chef in charge of regular dinner service (6-10pm, prix-fixe), and I find that the female boss (also the owner) communicates much better. In fact, I knew in the interview, when she asked me about my goals and what I wanted to learn, that I was in a good spot. The male chef is a little more curt and less communicative (actually, the main problem I have is understanding what he's saying), but I know that once he knows he can trust me, we'll be cool. The biggest thing about this whole experience is learning to be cool under pressure. If I blow up, I blow it. This, I know. I don't just need to stay cool, I must be stone cold in the face of any and all adversity, at work and in every aspect of the rest of my life. I intend to practice being mindful of my level of coolness at all times. Kinda like a thermostat. I call it project AlanaBeCool. It is an integral part of of the NFA Ethos. At this gig, I am most definitely NFA all day.

So Friday night was hot, fast paced, busy, and a bit stressful. I mostly observed and washed dishes, but I did get to jump on the line here and there. The hardest part of all is the punishing length of the weekend shift. I clocked 11.5 hrs the first night (no breaks longer than it took to pee). It was pretty brutal. Including the commute, I was gone for a full 12 hours, maybe more. It was definitely a test of my physical limits. I'm just gonna have to get used to it. Last night, Saturday, was equally challenging in a different way. I got home early (by which I mean 3 am), because the City of Sarasota had to come shut off our power, after a downed line blacked out most of our side of the street. We still had light in the kitchen, but not in the dining room, bathrooms, or anywhere else. The city was supposed to legally shut us down at midnight, but after much stalling, negotiation, and possible bribery, we got them to give us an extra 2 hrs to clean up. That was yet another kind of crazy fun. We had to prepare to lose use of a few fridges, so we had to scrub them down while they were empty, etc. A random accident with the power had to strike on Grand Opening Night for the Lounge adjacent to the restaurant. The occasion called for copious passed hors-douvres, which I had stood making assembly-line style all evening. We passed things like bacon curry caramel corn (outrageously good and my" watch-it- then-make-it" challenge, which I completed successfully), duck spring rolls with spiced apricot chutney, chicken and apple empanadas with smoked gouda inside, and crawfish begniets with remoulade. All of these were assembled, fried/prepared, plated by myself, and sent to be passed around the bar. The candle light was great for the customers, but devastating to the staff. We were kicking it old school with hand written tickets, and handling a bad situation well, I thought. I've seen restaurants with problems smaller than power outages crumble and grind to a halt, but we kept our heads above water. So I go back for the weekday rendition on Monday, to keep learning the ropes. I feel good about it.

The kitchen is tiny, and hot. I realize how spoiled I was at my last job, with 2 luxurious walk-ins, all that burner and oven type real estate. The many reach in fridges and lowboys are absolutely packed to the gills, and personal space is a bygone memory. That's all well and good with me. I'm just gonna be cool and not worry about anything.

Here I go Again Some more...

Well, on the home front, things are good. My first weekend after the move found me settled well into my new kitchen, lack of formal (or any) dining area be damned, and cooking up enough grub to keep me from feeling too lazy due to my current employment status. It'd be tempting to see just how long I could keep this up, but when the thought pops up, I strike it down like I was Darth Vader or something! My first big Sunday dinner began on a tag-team trip to the store, where I was encouraged to just go for it, and get whatever I wanted. I can do that. The piece of meat with the most swagga' caught my eye, in the form of a skin-on, bone-in picnic shoulder of pork. GRRRROWWWLLLLL. Before I even got to the checkout, the seeds had been planted, and the plan had begun to take shape.

It had been at least a year, I guess, since I did a butchery job like a pig shoulder (with 2 articular joints inside I discovered), but I had decided to debone and stuff it, and cure the skin for cracklins. It is safe to say that it was the quickest and cleanest butchery I've done in recent memory. I got done patting myself on the back and got the boning and skin removal done, making sure to leave a nice layer of the subcutaneous fat on the outside to keep things nice and moist. I sprinkled the reserved skin, and the entire surface area of the ham, inside and out, with some of the ol' cure-all, and parked it in cold storage over night. The stuffing, not yet one with the ham, would consist of a flavorful herb, spinach, tomato, olive and roasted garlic filling. We had corn, and some nice baby vidalia onions to grill, and makings for romesco sauce (a red pepper and almond based Spanish sauce), so things were looking favorable. Sharp was my determination to make real barbecue with gas.

When I awoke (or rather, got up) about 9 am, I decided it was time to hit the pigskin. I had buried the skin in cure-all, so I rinsed it off, dried it very thoroughly, and cut it into battonets, rolling it up pinwheel style to slice it. The only fry-worthy lipid available to me was 2 sticks of crisco, so I got a sauce pot and went to work. It only took 4 batches at around 40 minutes of low temperature frying each to get it all done.

When I was working at Anvil, I got pretty familiar with the stove-top smoker, which turned out to be a great way to hot-smoke small stuff using gas heat. It worked great for things like fillets of fish and vegetables. That gave me hope. The thing about cooking with a gas grill is that its efficiency is both its greatest asset (as a thing) and its greatest disadvantage for the pit master. The dang consistent, unflagging heat of the propane, cooked the meat just a bit too fast for me to get enough smoke on it. *SIGH* Of course, I'm not alone here, so debate and research about how best to get smokin' ensued in our new home. If we had started out using aluminum foil pouches perforated with holes, we may have had better success from the jump, but what we figured out did work, we just ran out of time a little bit. Steven Raichlen of PBS's Barbecue University shows you all kinds of ways to do this kind of thing, and mostly he says to put your pan/pouch of soaked wood chips directly on the flame, under the grill grate. The way this grill is made, there was no room for a pan in between, where I had seen the others on TV. We ended up dispensing with the grill grates over the 2 right burners, both of which were on high, with the big hunk of meat off to the left cooking as indirectly as possible. We replaced the right grate with the cheapest cookie sheet I have, which I lined with foil and placed directly on the burners, covered with mesquite chips. This, eventually, worked ok.

So we had finally gotten the smoke going, and of course, the propane tank (which had been used for about 6 hours a few days prior at a crawfish boil) proceeded to run out. Fortunately our electric oven heats up pretty quickly, so I stashed the ham in there until one of my two heroes (roommates) went and got us a new tank. I kept thinking "This sure would be easier with actual coals." So eventually the planets aligned and we had, heat, smoke, and side dishes, all moving toward completion. It was good. It was very good. It was bronzed on the outside, thanks to the annato oil I basted it with fastidiously. Unfortunately, it remained pale on the inside. No glorious smoke ring like back home. It just didn't happen. It had a nice smoky finish, but it was by no means a smoked ham. I was a little disappointed, but we had a great meal, and it was certainly a learning experience. I have a few more tricks to try before I give up the fight.

The following day, I made bread for sandwiches. Ham sandwiches. I also made some goodies to take to my roomate's workplace, so that was cool. Tomorrow, we're going on a DIET! I guess I went on a bit of a spree. I'll get more tropical with things, surely, so things will get more summery and light. Tomorrow, further exploration!

Well, I must admit, my agoraphobia is getting to me a bit. It doesn't help that everything I need is within a mile of where I live (except a job). That is to say, most of my culinary experiences so far, have been home cooked meals by me. I haven't gotten out much, but that will change next week. That is not to say we haven't been eating memorably well. On my first full day in town I did our grocery shopping for the week (I underestimated our fruit requirement, oops), and kinda got stuck in the meat section between beef, lamb, and pork (they had this really nice fresh ham...ooh! and a whole fresh leg of lamb...oooh!). It was in that moment that I felt my first pangs of sadness at having left my wonderful eyesore of a smoker back home. AAARRRGH!!!! How could I be the townhouse pit-master with... a gas grill? Say what? I know. Hank Hill, and other propane advocates agree that propane burns cleanly, reliably, and doesn't mask the flavor of your protein of choice ("You taste the meat, not the heat" I think the feller says). It just feels too pristine and easy. It's barbecue for dummies, ladies and gents, and I shamelessly rocked it out. I'll admit it, I enjoyed using the thing. I grilled pizzas, and cooked my chosen slab-o-pig to dry-rubbed, tasty perfection, and charred a bunch of peppers for the veggie chili I made last night. All this took about 2 hrs (only the ribs were on that long, cooking over the very steady, indirect heat of 2 of 4 available propane burners), no muss, no fuss, no f***ing around. It isn't as if I can't still smoke stuff on a gas grill. If I had had some wood chips and a disposable pan I'd have used em. Anyway, with all the yummy noises and love grunts the guys were making at dinner, I don't think anybody missed the smoke or the charcoal at all. Please don't think to ill of me, o barbecue puritans, I was so recently among you.

So I had pizza and ribs night, which was a huge success, and chili night the next which was well received as well. The only thing lacking in my opinion was my pizza crust, since I left my sourdough goodness in my father's fridge. Just a few tablespoons of starter in the dough gives it that fermented taste you can't get in pizza dough unless you have time to leave it in the fridge for 3-4 days. I did save one ball of dough for aging. I'll probably cook it for lunch tomorrow... mmmm. In another dough-related matter, the time has come to send Standley (my trusty mixer) off to Kitchen-Aid HQ for some service. Apparently, I finally got the better of him. God willing, he'll survive to whip another meringue to stiff, glossy peaks. Wish him luck out there.

So, what's really tripping me out right now, is that the last time I left Shreveport was to move to New York City, and now, moving to Sarasota is an utterly opposite feeling. When you move to the city, your sense of reality is heightened. everything seems hyper-real (at least that was how it felt to me), and here, it's Dali or Magritte plus sparkly clean strip malls, slightly more believable wildlife, and impeccable white sands. It's just so very, very surreal. New York and Sarasota were never meant for comparison, but they are parallel, opposite universes in energy, appearance,and ideology. I love the way the world can blow my mind. I did technically play in the ocean this week, but I don't see myself succumbing to the beach-bum lifestyle anytime soon (not without a lot more intensive and frequent yoga). However, I could sit here forever, and boy, is it tempting. I must fight the sleepy feeling and get out there. I'll get there.

Hi, from sunny (and soporific) Sarasota! Through byzantine channels unknown, I am on the internet! Excellent! Excellent is how things are going. The drive was easy enough, and I've slept like a rock every night so far (knock on wood). We had to move east on the weekend we switched to Daylight Savings time. We lost 2 hours, and it turned us all into zombies. Happy zombies in paradise, but God willing, I'll soon shake it off.

I got so busy packing so soon after the end of my going-away barbecue, that I didn't have a chance to write about it before losing all internet capability. It was one of my better parties foodwise, though the cooking kept me from making introductions and mingling as much as I'd have liked to. I felt like I was in my element though, and I could't tear myself away. I had a wonderful day, catching up with a lot of good people I hadn't seen in a while. I must have cooked for nearly 16 hours when I think about it, but it was a rush from start to finish, and whether or not anyone else had fun, I know I had a blast. I started the coals with the earliest friends, about 11:30 am, and first put on fish and cornish hens, all rubbed in my special "Cure-all", served for lunch, with a salad. I also smoked some tomato halves, and several kinds of chiles for the barbecue sauce. I put the piece de la reistace on the smoker after lunch, so it would be ready for dinner.

I had been given a beautiful boxed set of Julia Child's Mastering the art of French Cooking Vol.1 and Vol.2 recently, and was intrigued by a recipe for a stuffed pot roast, braised like the classic French stew called Boeuf Daube. I, being the beastly pit-master that I am, had to take it to the pit. Julia's recipe called for a rather large, rectangular, box-shaped beef roast of about 5 lbs.. The shape, and grain of the meat were more important than the particular cut. I procured a 5 lb. eye of round roast, that I was a bit concerned would be too long and skinny a piece of meat for my purposes, but it worked beautifully in the end. Julia stuffed her carefully carved canoe-like box of flesh with salty black olives, ham and herbs, and of course the browned cubes of beef from the inside of the roast. I used andouille sausage, mushrooms,pearl onions, and roasted garlic tossed with my cubed beef, to stuff mine. I seasoned it of, course, inside and out with the cure-all, and smoked it for about 3 hours. The French Daube is a tomato based braise of meat and vegetable garnishes, thickened with a beurre manie, which is like a raw roux, or a paste of equal parts of softened butter and flour. I strayed from tradition a bit with the assortment of vegetables I offered, but the veg were delicious, and no purists appeared to complain. After smoking the roast extensively, all tied up with twine, and so very nearly seamless, I put it in the daube to braise. I used some of my smoked tomatoes from earlier, sweet fingerling potatoes, more pearl onions, carrots, celery, roasted garlic, thyme, sage, and the beuurre manie. All that went in a baking dish, and the crowning glory went on top, after I draped it with a few strips of bacon to keep it juicy. I lined my platter with green beans and peas, and some of the nicest brussels sprouts I've ever come across, browned in butter. When the meat and veg were done , I spooned the rich, savory sauce all over the veggies, while the roast, rather tender, was sliced to show its stuffing, sauced further, and put on top. I served both brown and white rice pilafs, and a pecan pie with a brown sugar and egg-custard filling for dessert. Also, second lunch was hamburgers (we only had 4 patties) with homemade sesame-seed sourdough buns, made by me, from scratch, and chicken, shrimp, and pork tenderloin, cure-alled and smokedafter being donated to the cause by friends. Mom brought awesome hummus, and all was yum-tastic.

Speaking of sourdough, my starter is the only one of my several pet yeast colonies that I managed to leave back in Shreveport by accident. It's a shame too cuz it was really getting a nice funk to it. My kombucha* mothers made it fine, riding in the cab of the Penske the whole way down, and my jars in the second fermentation made it fine as well. I gotta say the guys did a great job driving, as not a mirror nor a light bulb, nor a jar of fermented tea was broken in transit. Standley, my trusty Kitchen-Aid pro 6 qt capactity standing mixer rode in the cab also. My feet were all up on the seat the whole way. It was a fun drive, and the weather was to die for.

We arrived in Sarasota late at night, because of the 2-hr time thing, but got a lot of butt kicked, unpacking about 2/3of the truck immediately. I was wired on 5-hr energy things from the convenience store, and managed to have a fully armed and functional kitchen before sunup. I thought of Julia, moving from place to place in France, and unpacking her "Batterie de Cuisine" first to help her feel at home. It totally helps. It was really nice to know that if I had had stuff to cook, I'd have been able to make breakfast in the morning. I cooked my first official meal in the new place last night. Roast chicken with broccoli rabe, and couscous pilaf. T'was delish. And the grocery right near the house is really satisfactory, so I'm giddy with joy. The pad is swankier than I'd ever have imagined, and I'm digging my 2 master suites (1 being the kitchen, of course). I turned the chicken leftovers into a beautiful salad for lunch today, and for dinner, we went to Siesta Key, and hit a touristy bar type place up for grub and people watching. I had some very tasty shrimp on a salad, but my expectations were more met than exceeded. It was my first real outing in town, and it was fun. It is going to be very interesting here, indeed. That is to say the people watching was the best part of the evening.

Next thing is to finish unpacking, really, then hit the streets in search of gainful employment. I'm going to my roomate's job soon and bringing goodies from the oven, so I'll be sure to bring a fistful of business cards as well. I am also determined to find a good place here for Pho. I'm craving Vietnamese...

New Beginnings... Maybe?

Well, I'm off on a new adventure. Setting out to find myself, or at least dig up some dirt on me, in a new place. Save the 11 months I spent in New York City, and a few months, years ago in Austin, TX, I have lived my entire life in the city of Shreveport, LA. I was born and raised here, and since coming back from the city, where I went to culinary school (at the French Culinary Institute), I've been trying to find a way to get back there. Shreveport has a very powerful "tractor beam," and no matter how hard many Shreveportians of my generation(and those of generations previous) try, we seem, always, to get pulled back here. Its magnetism has a lot to do with southern charm and homey-ness, but it also has to do with the fact that survival is easy here. My last Chef said that a lot, and it's true. The cost of living is low, employment is readily available and easy to get (if you aren't visibly drunk/drugged up upon arrival). People in Shreveport are, generally, quite tolerant of f**k-ups, essentially.

Things here are not to be complained about, but after that taste of possibility, of what else is out there, I am jonesing for more. I need to be in a place where I need a map to get around. Making the decision to leave is not an easy one. I had a great job, by line-cook standards, working for one of the most consistent and successful restauranteurs in Shreveport's history, making a totally decent living wage. I could have stayed right there and worked the same job for the next 20 years, with no chance of advancing my career even from salad over to the hot line, and been at least complacent. Perhaps, unfortunately, I just need more from my life. I need to try new things. I need to push myself and step outside my comfort zone. I need to be in a stimulating atmosphere, and I need, most importantly of all, not to be BORED. Boredom is my most dangerous enemy, and it has been lingering here, tormenting me, for far too long. Maybe this trip is a fight-or flight response to the danger of the boredom I've been feeling. In short, I gotta GTF outta here, ASAP! A chance to flee has presented itself, and I'm taking it.

So this blog will be the story of what happens as I take my talent elsewhere, and see how it goes. It seems to be a lateral move in a way, from small southern town to smaller southern town, but it is different and that works for me. I'm looking forward to living near the ocean, which I've never had the pleasure of doing before. I look forward to learning to fish, and to honing my seafood cooking skills. As an avid seafood lover, Sarasota sounds like a cream-dream. It's exciting! I can't wait to check out the restaurant scene and find a place I'll fit in. There's a ton of money there, so I intend to take as much as I can. I will proceed to charm the pants off some elderly folks, and feed them excellent food in return for (hopefully) gynormous wads of CASH! It sounds like fun to me.

This is the penultimate post I'll be making from Shreveport. I'm going to be leaving in a few days, but not before having a huge going away barbecue for myself. I will, of course have a few things to say about that before departure. My only hope for this blog, is to entertain. I hope I succeed in that, and that you will be entertained enough follow me on my adventure through it, laughing and crying with me through all the slings and arrows, and such. Wish me luck! Please!

New Beginnings... Maybe?