Yo. We had a busy but very smooth service over in Brooklyn tonight. Nights like tonight remind me why I’m still in one of the world’s most deranged professions. I hate the life I live sometimes. I sometimes ask myself why didn’t I decide to work in an office in the city, and work normal hours, and live a calm life like normal people. Sometimes I get home at 4 in the morning and there’s nothing to do but drink, and then when I wake up I feel crappy and it’s time to go to work again.

But days like today are different. It’s weird that I had such a nice day, because I was really feeling the drag when I went into work today. I went in at 4 pm, and two of my coworkers saw me and were like, “daaaaaamn, what happened to you?” Well nevermind about that. The main problem was that I overslept and couldn’t shake off the half-asleep look. But after busting my ass for an hour and a half to set up my station and bang out a little prep, I was ready for the relentless marathon of service that we get thrown at us each and every Saturday night at my place there, in Brooklyn. I drank a big ol’ cup of our very nice premium coffee, in a plastic pint container of course, and was ready to throw down for the next 8 hours.

It was such a smooth, enjoyable service. I had very good mise-en-place – I knew exactly how much I had of all my food, and where it was located – and we were continually busy for 6 hours of so, but not slammed like when everyone decides to have dinner at the same exact time. So, knowing that my saute station was good to go, and by staying out of the house of pain of putting out 12 tables at the same time, I could concentrate solely on my cooking, and cook stress free, which of course leads to better tasting, higher quality food. I hope that people can taste my food, and know that I like what I do. Anyways, it’s so unrewarding sometimes – long days, a lot of work, rediculously low pay, and working for a lot of assholes (managers, owners, sometimes chefs too). But when I’m in the kitchen on days like tonight, and everything just goes so smooth, and I can just work the pans and enjoy cooking – then it all makes sense.

I served this cured duck hors d’oeuvre at my recent dinner party. Everything on my menu that night had some type of relevance to me. This dish represents the beginning of my professional career here in New York City. The duck pastrami was one of the things I learned to do at the first serious restaurant I worked at, a Mediterranean spot called Trigo. I used the same curing mixture to cure my duck breast at home, as I did back there at Trigo. I made my own dish from it though, by serving slices of the duck on endive leaves, with a garnish of minced apples. Endive leaves are a cool vehicle for hors d’oeuvres. I learned that trick at Aquavit. When I worked there we served tuna tartare on endive leaves as an hors d’oeuvre for private parties.

I served these skewers as one of the hors d’oeuvres at my recent dinner party.

Basically I wanted to only serve food that held some type of meaning to me. I spent two months in China studying in 2005, so I wanted something to represent this experience. I was into Sichuan cooking for a while. Sichuan is one of the provinces of China which I visited. It’s a beautiful place with a mild climate (although a lot of rain), and you can see the giant pandas there. It also has some of China’s spiciest and most delicious food.

Anyway, when I returned I bought Fuchsia Dunlop’s excellent Sichuan cookbook, Land of Plenty. The basis of this hors d’oeurve is the Strange Flavor Chicken recipe in Land of Plenty. That recipe calls for serving cubes of cold chicken with a sweet, salty, spicy sauce powered by the very Asian flavors of soy sauce, sesame paste (or tahini, which I used), and chili oil.

I added to the dish a little, by putting the cubes of chicken on skewers, with an equal-size cube of cucumber above them. I spread the sauce down a rectangular plate, and arranged the skewers along the sauce. The idea of the cucumber is that it cools your mouth after the piquant sauce, and also adds another color and texture.

I served a “beet salad” on a tasting spoon as an hors d’oeuvre at my recent dinner party.

This hors d’oeuvre was a symbol of working in New York City. I don’t know what it is, but it seems New Yorkers love beats. I’ve worked at 6 restaurants so far in NY, and 5 of the 6 had a beet salad on the menu, and one of them had two! (At Aquavit – a fancier one for the dining room tasting menu, and a simpler one for the cafe.) So I thought it was funny that I’ve made 6 different beet salads, so I made my own version and put it on a tasting spoon. I did a play off the classic combination of beets and goat cheese. I pureed the beets, dropped a dollop on the spoon, and topped it with a piece of goat cheese, and a leaf or two of Chervil. What I did was redefine the beet salad, so you could have a taste of it on a spoon.

These corn fritters were one of the hors d’oeuvres I served at my recent dinner party.

I shaped the batter into little circles with a ring mold, and popped them off onto a sheet pan, to wait to be fried. A short time in the fridge will firm up the batter a little, so they keep their shape better when fried.

To make it a little more fine dining-like, I garnished the corn fritters with laughing bird shrimp, and a dollop of whipped creme fraiche. I cooked the shrimp in a court-bouillon (quick stock, or cooking liquid) made of water, white wine, peppercorns, bay leaves, and thyme. Bring the liquid to a boil, add the shrimp, turn off the heat immediately, and let the shrimp cool in the cooking liquid. This technique cooks the shrimp quickly, while also allowing them time to absorb the flavors of the court bouillon.

The dollops are made by piping the whipped creme through a pastry bag.

Here is the recipe for the corn fritters:

As March comes to an end, we’re getting through the last of the cold days here in New York City. That means, a lot of good things will be coming into season soon. The Union Square Greenmarket will fill up again, and bring to us city cooks and chefs its supply of ramps (wild leeks), tender baby artichokes, tiny green fava beans, pencil asparagus, and earthy morel mushrooms.

Greenmarket farmers also sell planted herbs. I want to set up a little herb garden in a flower box on the balcony this year. I’m thinking basil, rosemary, and chives. Growing herbs is nice because you have a lot of flavor on hand at all times, and also enjoy their fragrance every day.

I had a box of Umbrian lentils in my cabinet, and as I’ve never been a big lentil-eater, I wasn’t sure what to use them for. So I went to the basics: lentil soup. Lentils are a staple in some parts of Italy, and lentil soup is a very common, nourishing, country dish. This version of lentil soup, from the Silver Spoon cookbook, adds Swiss Chard, for its delicious leafy taste, nutritional value, and vibrant color.

Tonight the sous chef threw me onto the middle station, which puts out spaetzle, vegetable side dishes with nice sauces, soups, German sausages, and a bone marrow dish. It’s a fun station, because I can have a lot of pans going at once. I very much prefer working saute pans to grilling. Not sure why, I just enjoy it more. Building sauces, flipping things, controlling heat.

Anyway today was my first busy night on the hot line, and I found out 10 minutes before service started that I’d be working there. I spent 50 minutes setting up the garde-manger, and then all of a sudden it was like, okay, I have 10 minutes to set up this other station. Also too the menu just changed yesterday, and the side dishes on middle station were different, and I hadn’t seen then. But I learned a long time ago that working in the kitchen, there’s no point to stress over anything. The work that needs to get done is always possible, and it always gets done, somehow, some way.

So I found out what the new sides were, drank some coffee, checked my mise-en-place (station set-up, ingredients, back-ups, etc.), drank some more coffee, prepped the crap out of some vegetables, ran around getting stuff assembled, and organized, into quart containers or whatever, and then finally, everything came together and I could chill out, and have a nice service.

The most important thing in the kitchen, on any station, even if you don’t have a clue what you’re doing, is good mise-en-place. You find out exactly how much of everything you have, like how many quarts of soup, how many quarts of the carrots, the mushrooms, if you have all the herbs chopped, and then minor things, like if you have salt and pepper, olive oil, etc. Once you know you’re good on everything, and you know exactly where each ingredient is, then you’ve got yourself set up to work the next 7 hours and never once have to worry about running out of something. That frees up that part of the brain to stay focused on the service, and staying afloat. I was good today – nunca en la caca – never in the weeds. And nunca nervioso – never nervous.

The best part of it was that I was back into real cooking, rhythmic cooking, like I haven’t done in 3 months. First I was trying to put in time at DB Town, and they screwed with my paycheck, so I had to quit, and then I had to put in time over here at my new restaurant, putting my new guy time in on garde-manger, making salads for 8 hours straight. So it’s good to be back. And I got to talk trash all night long to the Mexican guy who works the saute station next to me. In two months I hardly ever heard a word from him, and now I finally got him trash talkin’ with me. So work is gonna get a lot better now – got the whole crew tight, and talking trash, and enjoying the good life.

Wow. I left my house to go to work at 1:30 pm on Wednesday, and got back home a day and a half later, 4 am Thursday night. Now it’s 5 AM and I’m lying in bed, listening to music, texting trash talk in Spanish with a Mexican guy I used to work with, and writing this.

So what happened is this. In the restaurant world, we do things different from people who work regular hours like bankers and 9-to-5 folks. We can’t hang out with the more proper part of society, because we’re cooking for them, so we basically hang out with each other, and whoever else is up in the wee hours of the morning. So being up all the time through the crazy hours, naturally we get a little crazy ourselves. Everyone knows chefs are crazy. That has a lot of effect on our creativity, I think. Like, if we lived so rigid and uptight, how could we be creative?

Anyway, happy hour for restaurant people is 11 pm to 4 am, because those are our after-work hours. But for me, it starts at 1 or 2 AM, because that’s when my restaurant closes – we’re a late-night shop. Service at my place is a marathon. It starts early, and on busy nights we go nonstop until midnight, and then it’s time to start closing down.

So we’ve got this Guatemalan dishwasher who might be the most chilled-out person in the entire operation. (I’m probably #5 or #6 at the moment, because I’ve learned to not stress in the kitchen, but I’m still fairly new there, and in the process of moving up.)

So this guy wanted to go have a drink with me and the guy who works with me on the garde-manger (salad station – where you usually start when you move to a different restaurant). I was like, “alright, we’ll go have a drink, or whatever. See what happens”.

What ended up happening was very funny. We were at the bar and the sous chef and manager were also there. Somehow it ended up that the three of us were in a little group taking shots of Jameson, while the bosses drank beers and smoked cigarettes.

When I got into work today, the chef (also a very chill man) was like, “hey David you alright? You look kinda beat up, you go out last night?” And the sous chef was there with us in the walk-in, and he answered for me, “Oh yeah this guy had some fun. I was at the bar with (manager) and him and (dish) and (gm guy), and we were just having a couple beers, and those guys were over there taking shot after shot.”

Lol. So after all those shots, I didn’t feel like taking the subway home – which can take up to 1 1/2 freakin’ hours at night. Solution – I crashed with the dishwasher, who lives right across town in Flatbush. Not straight-up Brooklyn hood, just semi-hood, like Bushwick, where I used to live. So it was safe and all. We were wandering around and stuff, looking for something to do. Then finally it was like, yo we gotta sleep.

Latinos are so hospitable. This dude lets me sleep in his big comfortable bed, and he sleeps on the floor. Then in the morning, he gives me a new toothbrush, so I can brush my teeth. Very thoughtful no?

It was so weird waking up in the morning. I was dreaming something about a baby, and then I realized I was awake and still heard the baby. I was like, “wait what is this, I don’t have a baby?” Then I was like, “wait why am I on a big real bed, and not a small air mattress?” Then I remembered everything that had happened the night before.

Then work was great. When you’re crudo (hungover) in the kitchen, you gotta let the other cooks know. That way they’ll go easy on you if you start messing things up and forgetting things – we all know the feeling of standing over a hot stove all night, with alcohol-infused sweat pouring into your chef jacket and down your back. It’s a crappy feeling, and a good feeling at the same time – you know you’re messed up, but your body is getting rid of the bad stuff for you.

Ok. Long-winded type of post. More pasta stuff coming to Heat & Knives soon. I’m starting a new project – sort of like Pasta 2.0. Last year I learned how to make pasta just right, by working a pasta station at a busy Italian spot. Now this year, I want to learn the big classic pastas really well – Amatriciana, Carbonara, Gricia, the ragus from Emilia-Romagna, the seafood pastas (clam, mussel, etc), and whatever else. Also want to learn more shapes. I’m lazy so I bought a KitchenAid mixer to mix the dough faster and easier. I can make it by hand, but I’m the type of cook that likes gadgets, and also too working with dough is not the aspect that I enjoy about pasta. And, let’s face it: power = fun.

Pasta is often at its very best when tossed with a simple sauce of just a few flavors, and finished with a quality olive oil and grated cheese. This vodka sauce is a good example. It begins as a butter, infused with the flavors of salty prosciutto, sweet tomato paste, and fresh parsley. When the butter is ready, the vodka and cream are added, and emulsified with the butter. Reduce the sauce to just the right consistency, cook the pasta just to al dente (taste it at intervals, don’t follow the box instructions), toss the pasta in the pan with the sauce, and finish with your best olive oil and Pecorino or Parmigiano cheese, and you’ll have a perfect pasta.