Long Live The King

Most of the people who know me and have heard me talk about Reserve for any length of time have probably had the misfortune of hearing me whine about everything that was wrong with it. Indeed, the list is long and I stand by it. The restaurant was put together by massively over paid consultants who clearly knew nothing about modern cooking and even less about producing charcuterie and by the time I came in to the picture it was too late to right the ship. And the clientele...

I had actually left Grand Rapids over a decade before because I could not sesame crust and sear another piece of tuna. Staying there would have meant the slow decay of my culinary education and career. But much seemed to have changed since then (and much has) so I came back to work here under the impression that Grand Rapids was ready to think about their restaurant culture in a little more contemporary fashion. Unfortunately in the early days Reserve attracted a well heeled but not particularly food savvy patron. One night a customer at the bar explained he didn't eat at Reserve because he expected a fancy room like ours to serve food that was more modern and trendy, you know like lamb lollipops or sliders, or, yes, seared tuna. He also thought our wines were over priced, and he knew good wine. He always ordered the most expensive bottle at Bonefish Grill. Around this same time, Chad Miller's Bloom and Corez both closed, and once again the dining culture here seemed doomed. I thought at that moment, much to my great disappointment, that this grand experiment was over.

For a restaurant to find success in Grand Rapids it must capture the loyalty of the locals. No one comes here specifically to experience the restaurant scene and the majority of visitors are business travelers which explains the number of steakhouses downtown. So any restaurant that tries to break from the norm must do so without alienating the people who live here (on the lakeshore, populations swell with part time residents and vacationers from larger metropolitan areas who have had more exposure to modern dining). And the locals here notoriously mistake price points and quantity for quality and this, along with a pervasive lack of self awareness, is what really stands in the way of the dining scene getting better. With restaurants you really get the operators you ask for. And it was painfully obvious they weren't asking for Reserve. We weren't trying to be innovative or avant garde, we just wanted to avoid doing things like everyone else. We wanted to feel free to be ourselves and pour wine and cook food that reflected that.

So fairly early on our opening general manager was chased back to Chicago and I hatched a slow moving plan to get back to my home by the Lakeshore. That plan will eventually culminate in St. Anthony, but in the meantime it has led to me leaving Reserve at the end of January. A lot has happened since those dark dining days in 2010, and I now find myself wishing I could stick around a bit longer. Over time, we have built a good reputation, especially among others in the industry. This is an important first step. There must be a culture within the industry before one can blossom without. And this is happening in Grand Rapids. Things get better everyday. More and more people are starting to understand that Reserve and a few other restaurants are run by passionate people who wish nothing more than to share what roots their passions in their professions.

It's a cliche, I know, but in the restaurant business in particular, the people make the place. Spend as much money as you want, but a restaurant will never be great unless the people who have boots on the ground are of high caliber and that is certainly true of the heart of Reserve. Peter Marantette, Mathew Green, and Brandon Sturm are unimpeachable stewards of their crafts. It has been my great privilege to work with them. Caleb Williams is perhaps the best line cook I have ever seen and is already showing signs he'll be a great leader. Brian Proctor has such enthusiasm for his work I would recommend sitting down with him for a beer to anyone who has lost their passion for cooking. Tori Gersonde, who has no desire to cook for a living, brings a commitment to quality to her work that shows just how remarkable a person she is.

We very rarely had disagreements at Reserve, but when we did, it was because somehow mediocrity or mistakes crept in, and the anger and frustration anyone felt stemmed from their knowledge that we were better than that. I have been thanked several times by my staff for what they learned from me, but I don't know how much validity there is in that. This crew came through the door with a lot of talent and skill. I will take credit for fighting hard to keep our standards high and creating an environment that was as free from sacrifice as possible. I think putting this much talent in an environment like that can only yield great things. And that is why I will be keeping a close eye on Reserve to see what comes next. The place has been left in very good hands. This story is not over. I think years from now, we'll see that this restaurant will have had a big hand in making the dining scene in West Michigan better. I am sad to be on the sidelines, but happy to have had a hand in it.

Thanks to the entire staff at Reserve. I am very proud of you all and the work that we've done over the last couple of years. Keep doing what you know in your heart is right, for yourselves, the restaurant, your clients, and your profession, and fight against the push toward the middle of the pack. The high road has benefits, I promise. One day you'll wake up and the world will be different, and you'll know you had a part to play in that. Sitting it out to be safe is never worth it.

Cheers to what's coming,
Chef

Rain Delay

So, for a variety of reasons, Brandon and I have decided to delay the opening of St. Anthony for a year.  Principally, this is because of our timeline. Time is the best resource you have when trying to do something right and we have no interest in rushing through the process. Keeps your eyes posted on this blog for more info and to hear about two other projects on the way this summer.

Christmas In Dry Valley

The view of Rich Mountain from parent's front porch.

My Mom, Dad and brothers moved to the foothills of the Smoky Mountains in Townsend, Tennessee about a year after I started college. My mother's side of the family is from this area, in fact she was born here. Her parents, my Nana and Grandfather, moved to the suburbs of Detroit in the early 1950's to find work in the auto industry when she was one year old, as did many out of work Southerners. East Tennessee in the 1950's was poor and rural, and Detroit was a boom town. Many of these Appalachian expats didn't end up finding any manner of real happiness in Detroit. Some stayed. Some actually moved to the Copper Mountains in the Upper Peninsula because they somewhat resemble the Smokies. Many returned to the mountains they loved. Poverty, it seems, is a more easily accepted lifestyle when you are in a place you have very real love for deep in your bones. My Grandfather drank himself to death in the chair he sat in every day after work in the suburban Detroit home where he raised my mother and uncle. I couldn't tell you if it was because he missed the mountains. He died just a few short months before I was born.

So it wasn't much of a surprise that, after Nana died, my family decided to move south with the help of a bit of money she left them. They have struggled, as most people in east Tennessee seem to, but I think they are very happy to be there. And I have been very happy to visit. We started visiting Tennessee when I was very young and I have spent almost every Christmas there since they moved. Even though I have never lived there,  Tennessee is very much a part of me. Many of my relatives have heavy southern accents and I have great aunts named Bobby and Gladys and Phyllis, most of whom kept extravagant beehives or similar fashionable hairdos most of their lives. My mother cooked things like biscuits and gravy and fried chicken when we were growing up, just like Nana and her sisters would when we visited.

I love the food of the American South, especially the food and food traditions of Appalachia. In the South, where racial divides have historically run very deep, it can be hard to tell where the line between soul food and southern comfort food is. This is what I love about the dinner table. It is truly a harbinger for commonality, equality and democracy. Not so long ago in Townsend it wouldn't be unusual to find smoky country ham, hominy or fine grits, beans baked with ham hocks, wild watercress wilted in bacon fat, or greens in pot liquor on local stoves. Today, the small town of Maryville, the closest metropolis, is surrounded by malls and chain restaurants. My mother and I were talking about how strange it seems to both of us that you can't find a local restaurant that makes a home made biscuit. You are hard pressed to find anything more than typical commodity products on grocery store shelves, barbecue joints are few and far between (though there are a couple of good ones), and you are unlikely to find someone under the age of 50 who has ever tasted wild watercress. But this is still a very, very good place for food.

The renowned Inn at Blackberry Farm is here, where John Fleer got people thinking about the fine food traditions of the foothills and paying good money to experience it. My mother owns a bakery, Wild Mountain Rose Bakery, where she makes delicious, hand made bread from her wood fired oven. The Market in Maryville which sells her bread has a really remarkable butcher shop in it.

And then, of course, there is Allan Benton. Allan Benton is a bit of a hero of mine. He has recently become very well known thanks to the likes of David Chang et al. I have been a customer for some time, before the hoopla. Allan is friendly, kind, and gracious. More often than not he is taking orders by phone at his shop in Madisonville and he will happily drop what he's doing to give passers by a tour while telling the story of Benton's, a story that started with his childhood in Virginia: killing, butchering, curing and smoking hogs for the family. He makes ham and bacon the way he was taught in the hills as a child, and this is what makes his products so special. Many country ham producers in the south are changing their hams to suit modern tastes: lessening the salt and smoke, controlling their curing cells to keep the funk at bay. But a Benton's ham is made as it always has been. It is as aggressive and wild and boisterous as the south itself and is probably very much like the hams that were made by the first foothills settlers two centuries ago. Admittedly, it's not for everyone.  In fact, we had to stop putting Benton's bacon in our burger because too many Yankee princesses were complaining that it was too smoky (as it turns out, Allan says even in Tennessee they sell more unsmoked bacon than smoked). But I love love love it. It is an experience not unlike drinking Scotch from Islay, whisky that is peaty and smoky sometimes to the point of becoming medicinal. And once again, some people love it, others don't. This area was settled in large part by Scots, so this comparison seems all too appropriate, as does my appreciation for both, as a Scot descendent myself.

Many years during the Christmas visit we make the trek out to Madisonville to see Benton's. One of the little known gems you can get there is his breakfast sausage. It is a raw pork sausage studded with nutmeg and sage packed in to a sleeve of burlap and cold smoked. It is without a doubt the best breakfast sausage on earth. I am very proud of my own, but it falls very short of Mr. Benton's. Having breakfast sausage on hand in the Millar house means biscuits and gravy will follow. I have been working on perfecting my own biscuit recipe and am always excited to make them for Mom to see what she thinks of version ?.0. My mother puts Pet brand evaporated milk in her gravy. I never knew this and when she told me I was a little suspect. As it turns out, a lot of people in East Tennessee cooked with cans of evaporated milk. There was a Pet production facility here so it was inexpensive, and it kept well without refrigeration. This was pretty important in a part of the country that was economically depressed and that sees raging heat and humidity in the summer months. Some of these hollers and mountain communities didn't see electricity (and therefore refrigeration) until the 1970's. So if you didn't have a cow, you had no milk unless you had Pet.

I have always loved my mother's biscuits and gravy above all others, so as I was making gravy this morning, I did as she suggested and used a can of evaporated milk. And the lights suddenly went on. I have never been able to make it myself as well as she could, and now I know why. Evaporating the milk concentrates and faintly caramelizes the lactose, milk's natural sugar, which gives the gravy that same subtle dairy sweetness, and turns good into great.

This is one of the reasons I love to cook with my Mom. I constantly pester her with questions, and sometimes I am blindsided by some little nugget of wisdom that I never thought to ask about and she never thought to share. She taught me to cook and she is still teaching me. My personal history is wrapped up in the things she learned to cook from her mother, right along side the history of the people of this region, all those good things to eat, and the wonderful stories that get passed around our home. Stories about great grandmother Rose who cooked most of her life on a wood stove and could tell with a pass of the hand if the fire was ready for baking a pie. Or how she taught them the hard but necessary truth about where chicken comes from when she went into the yard and wrung a bird's neck to make dinner one night. Or what it is like to go without so your children will have something to eat that day in school. Or, perhaps, a story or two about the great abundance of both food and joy around the table on Christmas night, now that the days of living on the edge of hunger are at least for now a memory for my family. It is quite often a story about something simple, a piece of candy her mother gave her, maybe, that will cause her to pause and remember Nana, her sweet and giving mother, who she lost too soon, who stayed connected with the tall, rocky hills of Townsend, and kept them alive for her daughter, who kept them alive for me. Cooking and eating are one of our great cultural archives, but also one of our most fragile. Writing about food helps, but it does not replace the acts of cooking and eating. If we don't take a little time to preserve the foods that are so central to our personal histories by bringing them to life in the kitchen and the dining room, they will be lost and unrecoverable. This yearly sojourn to Tennessee brings things to life that I may never cook in a restaurant. But they remind me who I am, and put my feet firmly in the red clay of Tennessee, if only for a moment.

Miracle Tonics

I have been in a very bad mood at work lately.

I am admittedly not very far from flying off the handle about something on a fairly regular basis, but the last couple of weeks have found me very often unjustifiably and irrationally angry at the slightest provocation. There are many reasons for this, not the least of which is the onslaught of corporate christmas parties filling our docket this month, and principally one which has been spirit dampening and soul crushing at every turn. This particular group has loads of money to spend. You would think this is a chef's dream, but that is a horrible myth. The fact is, the more money someone has to spend, the more they have to say about how it's spent, and money, I am quickly learning, very rarely is an indication of good taste. The big check waltzes in to a restaurant and demands their tastes be met without one care in the world about what wonderful things a talented, professional, and knowledgable crew might be able to do to make them happy if they would only open their hearts to it. Very quickly, all dreams of culinary liberation through finance fade. Very quickly, that opportunity cook with Alba white truffles or pour some stellar grower champagne gets shoved aside for someone who wants a mountain of shrimp cocktail and filet with lobster tail, enough filet, mind you, that each and every guest is allotted over a pound. With this group, it's all about more, not better.

But they have that check. That huge check. And they are not naive; they know exactly what power they have. No restaurant is in the position to turn it down. So you do it. You book the party and you order the shrimp. You make the cocktail recipe they brought you by Sarah Lee. And I am a bit of a prima donna. So it kills me. It really and truly crushes me. My profession, the craft that so many thoughtful, passionate, creative people have dedicated so much labor and love toward giving it the remarkable beauty it has in modern times, deserves better than to be some philistine's errand boy.

But, the money is there and so is your standard. You cook from scratch, order the best shrimp and the best filet, and you cook a delicious, if not inspired, meal, which is exactly what happened. I spoke in the prime rib post about how much I enjoy finding some love for the over done and abused, and shrimp cocktail & filet sure fit that category. So my staff and I took them very seriously, as seriously as we would have taken those Alba truffles.

And two extraordinary things happened.

Two extraordinary broths happened.

First:
The filet was marinated in a powder we made form dried porcini mushroom, fennel, and cayenne for a couple of days.  This is a cheesy, steak house chef wanna be preparation but it's tasty, and when it rested out, the jus it left behind was shockingly good. Blood red and powerful, infused fully with the flavor of the spices and dried mushrooms. The beef and porcini packed enough amino acids into that roasting pan it could have spawned new life. We knew it would be good, but when it came time to execute, the conscientious sourcing, the extra care put in to preparing the steaks for roasting and the pitch perfect roast and rest left behind a liquor so very and unexpectedly special, that it led us to cook something else we normally would have very little love for, something that is typically made with very poor ingredients and very little care or attention: a French dip. Made with the left over filet (as you might imagine, there was plenty), some home made bread, French raclette, grilled red onions. Brian, barely audible past the mouthful of broth soaked beef and bread, murmured "best French dip ever".

To my way of thinking, a jus is the best of the flavored cooking liquid cannon. Jus is the liquid that naturally runs from a roast as it rests before carving, sometimes augmented by a little stock made from the same beast. So it isn't water steeped with bones, it is the pure, undiluted juices of the animal, plus whatever salt and seasoning the cook used to get the roast ready for the oven. And in my world it's hard to imagine better friends to lovely, rosy, day old roast and some soulful jus than bread, cheese, and onions.

Second:
We decided to make risotto with the lobster this year. Last year, they asked for way too much. One of our cooks spent an entire shift killing lobsters and they ate less than a third of it. So we took a different path, used fewer lobsters and had shells for stock. We also needed to poach Mount Shrimpcocktail along with twenty pounds of stone and snow crab. So we used the lobster stock as the foundation for a court bouillon to which we added some late season blanched celery & leeks from our friends at Visser Farm, lemons, fresh herbs, white wine, a small handful of salty olives, some Spanish piquillo peppers and coarse, dried Aleppo pepper. I began poaching the crab and some proteins started to collect on the surface and throughout the broth. Then I moved on to the shrimp, fantastic brown shrimp from the Gulf (Americans are justifiably proud of the shellfish that is raised near it's shores -- it is the best in the world). As I was poaching the proteins began to amass in the bouillon and toward the end it started to clear. I realized almost too late, just as I was getting ready to get rid of it, that I had made consommé by sheer luck. And it was delicious.

Consommé is a very finely clarified and fortified stock or broth (the fortified part is often over looked, but is crucial). It is one of my very favorite things to make. How good your consommé is depends largely on the excellence of the broth you start with. Get a rich, flavorful broth and build a raft made from the same uncooked protein used to make the broth and aromatics. As the proteins cook and coagulate, they act like a fine net, catching all the particulates that make a stock cloudy. If done properly, the strained liquid is crystal clear and deeply flavored. Egg whites are very often added to the raft. They coagulate very well and make for a strong raft resulting in a super clear broth. The problem is they also strip out flavor and color, so the very best consommés use only meats to form the raft. The exceptions, obviously, are vegetable consommés, which have no protein as their base and must use egg whites. There are other ways to clarify broths, like ice filtration, but the old way is the best way, mostly because the ingredients in the raft also fortify the broth, boosting flavor and contributing color. It is a very favorite if old fashion method. It's lost favor over the last few decades, perhaps because it is expensive and simple to the point where modern diners no longer recognize or appreciate its value, or maybe because it's sometimes used as a restorative by the ill, elderly, or weak who want something nourishing but not particularly challenging to eat.

If consommé boils or undercooks, it fails. The idea that one so tasty came together by accident was probably much more exciting to me than it was to my cooks, who seemed a little bewildered by my enthusiasm. To me it was reminder that no matter what you're doing in a kitchen, even something as tired and overdone as shrimp cocktail, if you cook with good food and treat it with care and respect something delicious and sometimes something unexpected will result. These broths were restorative indeed, a quiet and simple reminder of how good work truly is it's own reward.

***
So, there can be some confusion in edible liquid nomenclature. The words broth or jus or stock are used somewhat interchangeably. Please allow me to give my own little glossary of terms, most of which is probably sound, historically speaking, and some of which comes from my personal and not at all defendable musings:

STOCK: Bones and/or vegetables and aromatics simmered in water. Used as a base for soups and sauces or as a cooking medium for other meats, vegetables, or grains.

BROTH:  Stock which also uses a little lean meat to boost and deepen flavors. Sometimes a broth is the by product of cooking meat for consumption, like in chicken and dumplings. Broths are rich, rustic, and flavorful, and often served as is to accompany poached meats and vegetables.

JUS: The juices that run from a roast, perhaps extended with a little wine or perhaps stock made from the same animal. They are dense and deeply flavorful, and usually a bit aggressively seasoned from contact with the roast.

ESSENCE:  A broth reduced by half.

CONSOMMÉ: Clarified and fortified meat, fish, or vegetable broth, typically served as soup.

GLACE: A very heavily reduced, gelatin rich meat stock or broth, usually used as the base of a sauce.

An Evening In The Pursuit Of A Roasted Chestnut

Mel Torme wrote about chestnuts roasting on an open fire in the midst of a heatwave. "Think cool, be cool", he thought. Less than an hour later, his beloved winter memory became a song, and before long that song became American folklore. It's an image so powerful you need not have actually experienced it to understand it at a Pavlovian level the moment someone starts crooning. It is a very deep rooted, cultural, emotional picture of winter and the holidays.

This year a few days before Thanksgiving I was able to finally give myself fully to the idea of winter when we used our fire ring for the first time. Amy bought it on a whim, and couldn't help but add the grill that covers it, god bless her. She had also bought a few pounds of chestnuts with the intention of making stuffing for the Thanksgiving gathering we had been invited to by our friends at Eater's Guild Farm. We lit a fire because we felt like it and remembered almost incidentally that we needed to prep the chestnuts, so that great holiday mythology became reality. Most people would just turn on the oven. But we had the chance to fill our Thanksgiving stuffing with the true spirit of the holidays so we went for it.

The fact is, there are very good reasons that chestnuts were once roasted on an open fire. The wood smoke, the intense heat that caramelizes the shells, the simple fun of it, all three infusing the nut even more fully with the feel of fall. Sometimes we forget when roasting chestnuts in an oven, when we're looking mostly for the shells to become brittle so they can be easily peeled, how important it is to actually cook them, thoroughly and a bit aggressively, to really develop their flavor.

More importantly, the act of lighting a fire on a cold, crisp late fall or early winter day fills you with the essence of the moment. The fire we built was in great excess of what was needed to roast the chestnuts (we did cook dinner on it later as well) as was the effort to build it. We wandered our property collecting downed wood that we thought would produce a good smelling smoke. We spent the better part of an afternoon gathering wood and tending the fire toward a plush bed of temperate coals, then stoking it with a little green wood to give a muscular, perfumed smoke. We scored the chestnuts carefully and deliberately, lounging comfortably beside the fire. Then roasted them until they were blushed with char and cracked open looking like a flower at hell's gate. We greedily dove into to the peeling, hands getting tender and rosy from the heat and now sharp, dry shards of the smoky shells. But there was no way to wait for them to cool. We were caught up in the moment.

Not too many people roast chestnuts anymore. The work involved is too daunting. The black walnut or beechnut, two other native fall treats, are even more overlooked for their mis en place intensity. Especially black walnuts, which oxidize and go rancid so quickly it almost seems like you're racing the clock even as you struggle to get them from their shells. But if you slow down, take the time to enjoy the prep, the real act of cooking, especially if you can light a wood fire and give it some seasonal context, you might find the work less tedious, even enjoyable. We don't eat foods so much that we have to work hard for, which is unfortunate because it gives our diet a sort of lazy and unnecessary boundary. The idea that we might live our whole lives without chestnuts and black walnuts just because they are a pain in the ass makes no sense to me.

These days many people think cooking is tedium and that stands between them and the more common use of their kitchen. We don't enjoy cooking anymore. We think of it as a chore, something that takes us away from our real lives. We look for "thirty minute meals" to give us back the time we want to spend with our loved ones instead of incorporating the act of cooking, which is so loaded with love and life and the expression of our place and time, into our lives. Cooking is bursting with the stuff of our real lives, but for some reason, we disregard it for time with the tv. We treat it with the same disdain we treat doing the laundry or scrubbing the toilet.

I can tell in an instant which of the cooks that come in to my kitchen will be in it for the long haul. They are the ones who enjoy dicing, tournet, peeling potatoes, even washing dishes. They enjoy the everyday, the mundane, the grunt work. The real work. Cooking.  Believe me when I say your cooking will taste better and your kitchen, your family, and you yourself will be happier, better off, when you do the same. There is no way to fake careful attention and respect for the food before you.

Don't rush through the prep. Don't hurry to get to the plate. Build a fire. Relax and fuss over it for a bit. Roast. Be slow and deliberate. Smile and talk comfortably with the friends and family around you. Dinner is coming. And it will be be good, as will be the time spent in its pursuit. But only if you are mindful enough to make it so.

Four Whole Fried Chickens And A Coke

It would take no more than a cursory glance in my direction to tell that I am a man who prefers hedonism to health. I enjoy food, both "good" and "bad". I love gin and whisky, cheese and other animal fats, carbs, and until a little over a year ago I absolutely loved to smoke. And I do mean loved it. I have since become that most hypocritical of non-smokers (the one who lectures smokers on the folly of their bad habits), mainly because I quit a day late and a dollar short and will suffer the consequences of my live today pay later philosophy until the day I die. At the tender age of forty one I became someone who will be on medication for the rest of his life, and this medication will only somewhat arrest the decay of my lungs, not repair or relieve my condition in any way. The news could have been far worse. I was basically told that I can live a long and somewhat normal life without my current condition getting worse. So I don't get to burn out after all. I will fade away. And perhaps have a very long time to dwell on it. But I don't have cancer. Which, to be honest, after twenty years of smoking, one could argue was easily deserved.

So I dumped smoking to avoid death and possibly divorce (my wife's parents only recently both passed away from maladies brought on or worsened by their smoking), which led me to also evaluate some of the other things that affect my health, specifically food and alcohol. To my way of thinking, and I stand by this implicitly, a life lived in the confines of prohibition is no life at all. If there were two lines in the great before, one for those who wanted to live long and live without, and one for those who were okay with the idea that a slab of foie gras and an early death didn't sound so bad, I would clearly be lining up to kill the duck. I could of course come to regret this point of view, wishing as the light was slowly dimming, that I'd eaten more oat bran and thought more sensibly about drugs in college, so I could be here for just a bit longer. But I like to think that I'll look back and think my road was worth walking, and that the price to walk it was money well spent.

What I don't want is to wither. To live a life where the indulgences of youth (and middle age) destroy the years I am standing on this earth. Die a few years early, who fucking cares. Death comes to us all and when it does, the moments of regret for me will be few. In many ways, I made my life full and big and worthy in the wake of my bad decisions. But lethargy, depression, immobility, slowly watching the things in life you thought you'd have time for someday become things you consciously know you will never be able to do, even though you will be around to make time for it: this  makes me remember how much I love vegetables and fruits, and that it is not actually a sacrifice at all to choose them over ice cream and potato chips.

I'm not there yet. I am a person who makes change slowly, but once the seed is planted, eventually it will sprout and grow. Jake ate. Elwood had no soul on his plate. Jake died too soon. Elwood lived long enough to make the most unwarranted sequel in movie history. Somewhere in there is a place where whisky and wheat grass and red meat and kale, work in harmony to bring health and happiness to someone who finds so much of his happiness in food and drink. It is not about going without. It's about making room for all, because I love them all and I believe that a life lived with joy and the inclusion of things that bring us joy, is a healthy life, and a life lived long enough.

The trick is to find the right mix of hedonist and puritan so that life stays rich and joyful but doesn't end or devolve too soon. If I am wrong and I find myself at the end too soon, I hope my loved ones will not begrudge me that one last sip of whisky, and not judge me too harshly for knowing the right thing to do but not doing it (let's face it, we all know what to do: eat sensibly and exercise -- this basic tenant has not, nor will it ever, change). I'm sure I will wish in those last moments that we could all stay together forever. What I hope is to not not look back and wish we would have spent our time together indulging our joy despite our impending demise.

I wish for us all a life well lived, with many moments of recklessness and repression of common sense, sewn together by just enough desire for self preservation to keep suffering at bay. But not so much as to keep the best and the worst of the world out. Never so much as that.

Cheesy Beef, Beefy Cheese

The first time I had Epoisse a part of me thought it was the best steak I'd ever eaten.

Thelma and Louise at Cato Corner

Epoisse is a raw cow's milk cheese from Burgundy, called the king of all cheese by Brillat Savarin. It is a washed rind, or "smear ripened" (I hate that term) cheese. A bacteria called B. Linen is inoculated on to the rind of the cheese which causes it to ripen quickly, turning it soft in texture and strong in aroma and flavor. In the States, we'd call this category stinky cheese, which gives us one of the few truly American cheeses, Limburger. This category of cheeses is my favorite. Big, bold, assertive, and complex . After gaining an appreciation for these bruisers one may find all others a little boring. My very favorite is actually made in America, at Cato Corner in Vermont, and is called Hooligan. Could there possibly be a better name for a cheese so pungent, such an assault on the senses, but so inescapably tempting? Your better senses tell you obviously you must stay away. But, no...

Anyway, Epoisse. Epoisse is big, brutal, runny, offensive and beautiful in every way. It comes packed in a small balsam box because it is so ripe, soft, and runny, that without reinforcement it would burst like a flood swollen dam. It quivers maliciously at the thought of escaping the walls of its overripe, nearly desiccated orange rind. It is a small wheel and typically eaten by cutting the top off and spooning the paste out and spreading it on dark bread within reach of a good, strong Flemish beer.

But the first thing you are struck by when you first eat Epoisse is that it unmistakably tastes like beef. Roast beef. Like soft, yielding, knee buckling beef fat. This made me wonder why more cow's milk cheeses don't taste more like beef. They have the same source, after all.

I was reminded of this connection tonight when tasting a roasted prime rib of beef. Prime rib is a cooking conceit I have had little love for for most of my career. In the Midwest, prime rib is a staple of every cheap buffet and mediocre steakhouse, every wedding banquet and hotel catering menu, and is despised by most cooks who take cooking seriously. It's usually badly executed and overpriced, prized only for whatever worn out cachet it still carries amongst very unfoodie types. But I sometimes develop a weakness for the abused culinary heroes of yesteryear. I begin to wonder why they came to prominence in the first place and think about what luster they lost and how we might regain it. To that end, we have recently been cooking whole rib primals for large groups at Reserve.

At Reserve we pride ourselves in our aging program. We bring large cuts in and dry age them for far longer than industry standard. This is a practice gaining a little popularity in high end steakhouses around the country right now. We buy green (un aged) beef and hang it in a very cold cooler for a minimum of thirty five days and it stays there until it sells. During one particularly long summer dry spell for beef sales we had a rib primal hang for nearly 100 days. Dry aging is the best means of aging beef, and long aging brings out the funk. As beef ages, bacteria and lactic acid go to work on the comparatively simple proteins, fat, and carbohydrates present in meat and break them down. When they break down they become very complex and nuanced. The same thing occurs when cheese ages. Up until 28 days, a steak will taste like a steak. After that, mushrooms, blue cheese, flavors of the deep woods or pasture. Normally these primals are cut into steaks and grilled. They are rarely, even in highly vaunted steakhouses, roasted whole. But today we did. And in the rib we roasted today: the flavor of nearly spoiled milk.

Sounds horrible, doesn't it? Believe me, it was not, and I have a dozen staff members who ate it and will attest to it's deliciousness. When I say nearly spoiled, I'm not talking about sour. I'm talking about the onset of fermentation, the positive acts that bacteria have on foods before they begin to biodegrade and become inedible. I'm talking about the development of amino acids (umami) in great number. The best way I can think to describe it is like the transformation that occurs when sugar is turned to caramel. For the most part, sugar is just sweet. Caramel is smoky, deep and rich. This was not the flavor of fresh milk, sweet and wholesome and clean. This was the flavor of age. Milk on the road to becoming parmesan.

Lactic acid also continues to break down connective tissue and soften muscle fibers. Around sixty five days or so the texture can become a little livery. Until then, the texture gets soft, supple, and incredibly tender. The rib we ate tonight was 50 days old and was tender enough to easily pinch a salty, garlicky snack off the crust of the roast. Here's the thing about a giant roast like prime rib. A good one will have a very soft, rare interior with a dark crust where most of the seasoning resides, even after a day or two of rest. The seasoning doesn't really make it's way to the middle, so the best forkful is a chunk from the middle and a sliver from the grey, slaty edge.

So, this was no Vegas buffet prime rib. This was prime rib in it's glory, long aged, perfectly cooked and seasoned. The group we served it to tonight ordered two but didn't even finish one. They picked at the first one, pushed it around and sneered at it because it was "still mooing". The great shame of wasting something so rare, so well executed by my cook Brian, so expertly aged & butchered by my sous chef Brandon...not happening. We ate it. The whole staff. We carved and attacked that rib like it owed us money. This cut and the people who cooked it took prime rib back to the mountain top. A great and glorious moment in the cuisine of middle America.