Kitchen Thoughts Part Deux

the whole experience has been overwhelming. as i wrote down previously, if only i had an automated keyboard that would capture my thoughts and blast it all down on twitter.

certainly it has laid to rest any doubts about wanting to be a chef. i am too small, too weak and too old to put up with the blasted heat, hauling heavy things and the daily injuries you get like nicks, scrapes and burns.

i've seen for myself my previous theory about why most of the chefs are men. because frankly, girly girls have no place prissing about in a kitchen - specially not one which aspires to the kind of standard that pearl does.

while i love food and cooking - i want to do it in my kitchen, at my pace, in my somewhat meditative state, at leisure. and i want to serve food to my friends and family who love me so much they always marvel and tell me how good a cook i am, even if i have oversalted or oversugared or overcooked a few things. that is how i equate food with love.

don't get me wrong - the food at pearl is also done with love, albeit a different kind. it is the kind of love that is about artisanal craftmanship. the same way back on the olden days when people planned and took the time to carve, to sculpt, paint.

working in the kitchen, is like working with a bunch of artists. there is nothing glamorous i think about a sculptor facing a block of marble and there is nothing gentle about a hammer and chisel picking away pieces of stone. but you are left in wonder after the sculptor is done with his finished statue. he will stand there covered in dust, his hands will be red and raw, callused and before him will stand david. it is the same will all the chefs in the kitchen.

their hands and arms are seemingly to me permanently red and raw. or swollen from being constantly in touch with water and heat. their arms all bear burns in varying states of healing, healed and new. they have this constant sheen of sweat on their brow. they stand at the pass calling out orders at the same time, while juggling all the different items coming out like veg and fish and meat and micro herbs and sauce. plating each item, carefully laying them on the plate one by one painstakingly - creating edible artwork. and every day they do it.

i swear, if anyone tries to be a smart ass food critic about the food at pearl - i will hurt them. no one is allowed to say bad things about pearl's food in front of me. they don't know what it took richard, leo, ben, mickey, sebastian, dane, andy, ben, sarah, shelley, simon, suren and chef to get that kind of food out. those who critique food who can't cook aren't allowed to be a critic.

i an very grateful to be allowed this kind of experience. it put me back in touch with that side of me which is in love with doing things that mean much to me.

in the midst of that whirling dervish of a kitchen it also allowed me to collect my thoughts and re-think what i wanted out of my life.

a kilo of grapes to peel and de-seed takes some time, delicate handling and much patience. while doing it i would drift away into my thoughts. one time, i thought about someone who i thought i wanted...until someone else came into my life with whom i could not explain this connection to that i felt. it is true you know - you will know what you want when you find it.

slicing two and a half kilos of jerusalem artichokes on the mandolin. i thought, working with my hands helped calm my mind and centered me better than two years worth of therapy did. it occurred to me, this is why people in the olden days never needed shrinks, they could sort out their thoughts while working with their hands. these days, we've stopped working with our hands because machines are now available for everything. so i've resolved, i will take the time out to doing something with my hands - food is my craft of choice and writing. what's yours?

cracking walnuts. andy needed them in perfect quarter slices. i realized, in order to get perfect quarter slices, you need to get the walnut out whole. which is hard to do if you have to crack them open with a hammer. you can't pound the heck out of the shell because that would result in crushed walnuts. so i learned to gently pound the shell to get many, many little fissures which i would then gently peel away and voila - perfect walnuts. i never got perfectly shelled, whole walnuts all the time. i did learn though as i went along that walnuts have this natural four lines that if you cracked the top and ends, the walnut panels would fall away easily. it occurred to me, things in our lives are like walnuts. nature has them perfect wrapped like every single walnut has their four paneled shells. but not every walnut can be cracked perfectly. this is why when you do get one perfectly cracked - it becomes worth every walnut imperfectly cracked.

sebastian also asked me to dice some ox tongue for him. i was caught up in other tasks so when i was ready, i went to him and asked him 'sebastian where's your tongue that you wanted diced?'. i wanted to laugh my head off after i said that but blessedly he's french. and he was overly, overly swamped with too many things to think of he didn't get the joke.

leo - the gentle giant of the kitchen. the one time i had to help him out was to help him make labels. please, he asked, can you write down for me on these labels four rows of the letter P in 5 columns. then G, then JG, then Q and so on and so forth. to make the job quicker, i challenged myself to think of words beginning with the letters i was writing down. P, P, P, P...penguin, pare, pear, paranoid, psychotic...then i started to think perhaps my word choices mean something psychoanalytically? G, G, G, G - gaga, lady gaga, gaga pa rin, gaga ulit...gaga ka...tumigil ka na mukha kang tanga tumatawa mag-isa....F - F, F, F, foker face..F,F,F, foker face....

i haven't cooked a single thing by the way since i started apprenticing at pearl.....