Row Away From The Rocks

Hedge your bets. Hope for the best when you strike out against the prevailing tide, but always guard against failure by moving to the middle of the road. Always have a Plan B. Subjugate the truly substantial things you could accomplish to the altar of solvency. Call on God, but...

I have been thinking about money lately. Non stop. There are, of course, two groups that think about money more than they should. Those who need it and those who have too much of it. Those who have just enough to not notice, well... they are very rare birds indeed. I want to be that bird. I know the consequences of financial failure first hand, but I also know the potential benefits of the high road.

I need to finance a restaurant and a magazine; a not insanely expensive, but not particularly cheap restaurant. But it's a place that I plan to put everything I have worked hard to understand about cooking together. It is stuck in my head and I can't get it out. And I have spent the last few years preparing for it. I've been in front of the camera and gotten people talking, something which believe me does not come naturally. I've stuck to my guns and stayed here and championed this place, my home, and I think have had at least some positive impact on our dining scene. And now I need to get back in the kitchen to finish the job. And I don't mean to be arrogant, but the region needs it too. I have spent the last decade, not just thinking about what I want to to cook, but what we should be cooking here, in this place, in a way that suits us here and only here. It's not about me, but us. And I think I've finally got a line on it. I don't know for sure, because we have to build it, cook in it, taste it, spit it out and start again. But I do know we are closer at this moment that we have ever been. And the only thing standing between us and a giant leap to the next level is cash.

And so I think about money. More to the point, I think about the good things that never happen in this world because they go un-financed. Not just the capital conceits like restaurants, but the charitable, ideological, environmental... we seem to have an enormous ineptitude when it comes to knowing where to put our  money. This is particularly shocking when you think about how much time and resources we apply to that very question. But it's true. We routinely spend our money poorly in the grand scheme of things. Sometimes we are too conservative, sometimes too greedy, sometimes just plain stupid. Mostly we are arrogant, especially when it comes to money. So many people who have money feel that it validates them, that somehow they have achieved expertise that is commensurate to their capital.

What I have learned is quite the opposite. I am repeating myself but it merits repeating: money rarely equals taste. Or intelligence. Or financial savvy, even. In my experience, those who have money are most likely in that position because of inheritance, greed, or dumb luck. Generally speaking, the rich are not a particularly impressive lot. Folks like Aubrey McClendon and Donald Trump should provide ample evidence to support my theory. Unfortunately, doing something with long term positive effects is of little interest to someone judging the quality of an investment by how quickly and aggressively it provides returns. So we languish in mediocrity, the rich get richer and buy more marble counter tops, and the rest of us dream of nothing more than an opportunity to really achieve. Change the world. Today. Not in a decade when the simpletons with cash finally figure it out, but now.

I think the fact that we live in a country that has such enormous wealth but still bumbles it's way so clumsily through first-worldism is proof enough that the current crop of resource intensive humans are not up to the task (just to be clear, this post is not a rant against my former employers). It can be too easy to load a chip on your shoulder when things aren't going your way, and I cannot honestly say that a few sour grapes have not influenced my current unsavory mood. But, gun to my head, even with the benefit of distance, I think what I say has validity. I think we are coming to a very important tipping point in western civilization: soon the market and the economy will no longer be two sides of the same coin. Soon, the market will consume the economy and the trend which already favors excess for the few will become the rule.

And the only way to stop it is to opt out. Start putting your coin in the purse of the guy who has no shareholder to answer to: the guy who answers to his client and his community. Become mistrustful of any relationship that does not include a face you recognize and a handshake you feel good about. Put your money into something you want to see in your community, something you know is going to make the world immediately around you a better place, instead of some faceless fund that is accountable to no one, especially you, and provides you little more than a few extra dollars.

You will never spend your money more wisely.

The Lateral Line

The post Reserve era has left me with the opportunity to do some things I couldn't fit into my schedule when I was working full time in a professional kitchen. For the past several years Amy has extolled the excellence of the Winter Beer Festival, but until now I was unable to attend. To say she was right is a gross understatement. This festival is everything a beer lover in the great white north would want. There are some 70+ Michigan breweries pouring their staples and some rare specialties (some were pouring beers made exclusively for the festival). The air was perfectly crisp and fat snowflakes lumbered drunkenly toward the ground. There was great music, an insurance adjuster's nightmare of a snow hill to romp on, roaring fires, smoked turkey legs, and for me, someone who has worked on the fringe of the craft beer industry, a chance to see friends I haven't seen in a while and drink their outstanding beer.

We stayed the night in a hotel in Grand Rapids the night before the festival and beer hooligans were filling the lobby bar. They are not hard to spot: typically a group of younger people, dressed simply and having a very good time, probably passing around a 750 of something good to drink. I think one of the things that is so appealing about the craft beer industry right now is it's youth. Many people working in the industry are quite young and even the old timers have a great vitality and energy.  The craft beer industry seems from the outside to be filled with happiness at a level you would surely never find in other professions. But these guys are pros, too. They smile a lot, converse generously, drink freely, but at the end of the day the job is done and done well. Pride in a job well done is crucial to being happy in your work. This seems obvious, I know, but too many people overlook it. 

I talk from time to time about how in Michigan we don't always spend much time taking pride in being who we are. When the local foods movement landed here, the food culture that surrounded it in its place of origin, the Bay Area in California, came with it. Cooking locally there meant cooking with a strong Mediterranean vibe. That's who settled the region. That's what the climate mimics. And thus, Cal-Ital is born. For some reason when Alice Waters' influence was felt here, her cooking style came with it. We asked our farmers to grow heirloom tomatoes (turns out tomatoes grow remarkably well here), we made fresh pasta, and made our own salumi. What I am beginning to discover, however, that our story, the story of the north, of pierogi, of apples, storage crops, and French and German charcuterie, is the story we should be exploring. The cooking of the north is becoming quite trendy in high end restaurants around the world as well. It is genuinely and truly fascinating. I think this is why the craft beer industry has grown into itself so successfully in Michigan, more successfully you could argue, than Michigan's wine industry.

Beer, if you buy into this lateral line of influence from Europe I'm proposing, was the alcoholic beverage of choice for the people of the North. As Michiganders, the descendants of the Germans, Dutch, Poles, French...we embraced it readily, like we were somehow predisposed to it. It came naturally and as a result, Michigan is the nation's craft beer leader (you heard right, Portland). And it is not that the North does not have a long and great tradition in winemaking, it's that the wine industry here, driven by market demand, has not until recently even begun to celebrate riesling or Gruner Veltliner. We still plant cabernet and merlot that doesn't belong here because popular tastes are so skewed toward fruit heavy big reds. In America, the great wine making traditions of the Mosel, Austria, or Alsace are often viewed as second class citizens. But this puts Michigan in a great position. If we get behind the things we do well and suit the land and climate, champion them, rise up against the prevailing tide and lead instead of follow, the wine industry here will be as unstoppable as California's.

In short, we need to take a cue from craft beer. It was not long ago that the idea of craft beer carving out a place in the market was viewed as naive at best. But Goliath fell and fell hard. It is nearly impossible to find an independently operated bar or restaurant that doesn't have at least one faucet dedicated to a local brew. It is not uncommon to find lists made up almost entirely of Michigan beers. This is success through honesty and self awareness. It works. It it will always work. It will be a guiding principal at St. Anthony. Thanks to all my friends in craft beer for lighting the path, showing us it was not so treacherous after all. A gift almost as good as great beer.

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.