On moving on

I recently made a move from Tilth to Boat Street in an effort to regain some sanity, friends and appetite.  I'm happy to report the effort was not in vain, although leaving Tilth proved bittersweet.  Tilth made me a much better cook.  Not only in terms of food, but in terms of what it means to be a line cook.  I still believe there are many home cooks out there that can make a better apple pie or puttanesca sauce than some line cooks working high demand jobs, but fact is most would break down and cry within two hours of service starting.  I'm not saying that because I think it's what might happen, I'm saying that because I've seen the lip start to quiver, tears held back in fear, only to have them come pouring out in frustration.

My first night at Tilth was trailing on fish station.  It was the top line station at Tilth reserved for those that had earned their stripes working pantry and meat.  I believe they do this to really gauge a cooks worth.  I mostly watched that first night and received instruction from the station cook.  I cooked a little, it seemed easy and I went home feeling good about myself.  Not because I owned it because I didn't, but because I didn't fall flat on my face.  I got a call to come back in and trail a second time.  The job was still up for grabs and I think they wanted to see me one more time before taking a chance on someone right out of culinary school. 

The second time I came in was again to trail on fish, but the person working the station that night would become the Sous Chef in title only a couple months later.  This man was intense, with a mind moving a mile a minute and wiry body hardly able to keep up with his thought process.  He was also able to teach at a mile a minute.  I've never really seen anything like it before.  Generally I find instruction during the heat of battle to be useless.  Either the person can't properly convey their thoughts or I can't properly comprehend them.  With this guy I got it and everything was going well.  Then Chef Maria Hines showed up.  My back tensed, my right eye twitched and I started to sweat a little more than anyone should.  She took over the ticket board and called out the orders.  One particularly large fish order stumped me.  I couldn't call it back for the life of me.  Something as simple as "Large salmon, 2 salmon, halibut, 2 tasting mussels" came out of my mouth as "Large sallibut.....fuck.  Large salmon, 2 halibut, 4 mussels.....shit".  A look of hopelessness must of exuded from my face and she walked closer to me and asked me if I understood the words she was saying.  Finally I got the call back right.  I didn't give up, didn't give in, and most importantly I didn't cry or get kicked off the line.

My back never did unwind.  I lost weight in the beginning because I lost my appetite.  I wasn't scared of Maria, I just didn't want to let anyone around me down by not being the best cook I could be.  Everyday I arrived a half hour early to get my prep started.  I often skipped family meal in order to get the last of my prep done before the doors opened.  Eventually the Sous Chef made family meal mandatory.  I ate like a bird and returned minutes later to get everything ready for service.  Beyond that I almost never saw Jill, didn't have time to see any friends, culinary or not.  My days off coincided with nothing of interest unless day time TV is your best friend.  The only things that helped seemed to be flying a kite or blogging.  The blog was born of more than that, but it did prove therapeutic.

I decided to look for a new job, a daytime gig for the sake of getting ready for a wedding.  Enter Boat Street.  There is still a lot of work to be done at the new job, but the prep and plating being less demanding makes the job more fun.  They want rustic to the point where I have to pull back and try to make things look more like I wasn't trying to make it look that way.  I had to learn not to make a powder out my parsley, and not to mind the exact placement of a lettuce leaf.  It's not laziness really, it's just a style that demands you plate a dish the way your arthritic grandmother might, without making it look like a mess of course.  I can live with this.  I feel good again, I eat three five square meals a day, I have time for friends.  That said, I miss the chaos of Tilth, I know this because during a brunch shift at Boat Street last Saturday that got a little out of hand given the amount of tickets building up and the prep that still had to be done on the fly, I found myself enjoying the insanity.

Buskets of Oysters

I had the pleasure of my second and first visit to The Walrus and the Carpenter last night with Jill.  I say second and first because the first visit was cloudy due to some medications I was taking after slicing off the tip of my finger.  Our waitress on the other hand had a much better recollection of our first visit than I had.  I always find it charming when waitstaff remembers you even after one visit many moons ago.  It made me feel like one of those background characters on Cheers that actually gets called by his name even if it's only for one episode.

The Walrus is a small oyster bar located in the back of the recently renovated Kolstrand building(keep old Ballard alive!).  The building is also home to Ethan Stowell's Staple and Fancy and the Dutch Bike Company, selling bikes I can't imagine are the most practical for the hills of Seattle.

Back to the oysters.  All but one variety offered at this time are local, and the ones we tried were fresh and delicious.  We had a mix of Eld Inlet, Pickering Passage and some Sweetwaters from Lopez Island.  In case you were wondering or were interested, there are only 5 oyster species, yet the waters they grown in have a very profound influence on their flavor(culinary school nerds inside joke).

More impressive than the oysters is the man that shucks them.  Since being in the NY Times, his beard has grown, where it ends, no one knows.  There was no shell or other grit left in the oyster.  He seperates the oyster from the bottom side of the adductor muscle without moving/mangling the meat and all of the sweet/salty oyster liquor is retained.  So good is he that I might be in danger of losing Jill to him...seriously, she might be more impressed than I am.

After our oysters, Jill and I split some of their small plates.  I should mention that they the plates themselves are small, the food that comes on them is deceivingly big in quantity and flavor.  We started with a marinated swiss chard salad, which I think was the best swiss chard I've ever had.  We followed with chicken liver mouse and steak tartare.  The mousse came with curried apricots, mint, pistachios and mustard.  This was a well made mouse with no grittiness or acrid flavors.  The heat from the mustard and the sweetness of the apricots really made this dish well balanced and fun.  The tartare was also excellent but I wish we had been offered fresh cracked black pepper.  Maybe it's old school but I think it should be a law as I'm sure it is in France.  Finally, feeling gluttonous I ordered brandade for dessert.  I know what you're thinking, how can a dish involving salt cod be dessert?  Guess what?!  I got a fever, and the only prescription is more salt!

The Walrus doesn't take reservations so be prepared for a popular new restaurant wait. The nice thing is they will call you when a a table becomes available so heading up the street and grabbing a drink at any of the numerous bars on Ballard Ave makes the wait very tolerable.


Apologies for the lack of pictures.  It was dark and the camera on my phone takes bad low light pictures.  As penance here are a couple of pictures of Bacon, the chicken that stopped laying.  She's in solitary confinement for aggressive clucking, withholding protein pods and several counts of general chick-anery...I made a funny! 

Falling apart...part deux

I can't remember ever being this clumsy in my life.  I went through an entire childhood without breaking a bone.  Some scratches here or there, but my first ER visit wasn't until college.  Not surprisingly, it was because of a kitchen accident when I spilled some boiling water down my shoe.

In the last few days I managed to sprain my left wrist and fall flat on my face carrying a full sheet pan full of polenta.  Thankfully I was able to sacrifice my body in order to save most of the polenta.  Much like the guy that caught the ball at the homerun derby, I was more concerned with the product than the body.

Notice how he holds his beer above the water the entire time.  He seems to be having a hard time getting his head back above water after the spectacular catch, but that's not nearly as important as saving the 9 dollar beer.  Bravo good sir.

Wish me luck, but not the break a leg kind of luck, something tells me that might backfire.

Double bellied asian pastrami pig...wha?

I will not apologize for the lack of posts these last couple of weeks.  I also will not apologize to those who find the pig to be an unnaturally dirty animal.  Pigs don't go out of their way to smell, they will do what's necessary to survive and humans found out that letting them sit in their own feces on concrete floors does not harm them as it might some animals.

Last summer I had the pleasure of visiting local, sustainable farms throughout the Skagit Valley and several of these farmers raised pigs.  The pigs were allowed to eat grass and walk around large enclosures.  They were also given feed and shelter. While the pig prefers to hang around their own and close to shelter, it does not purposely roll around in it's own feces as some imagine. They roll around in dirt and mud to cool themselves.  They don't smell great, but what farm animals do?  Ever smell a male goat in rut?  Ever clean out a chicken coop?  Perhaps been on the wrong end of a cow?

Now I will apologize.  This post isn't supposed to be a rant about the pig.  It's actually meant to be about the Pig Roast that me and my unsavory group of friends just put on.

This 6th annual event featured a pig with some interesting changes I hadn't played with before.  The first few times we followed the Cuban method to a T including the marinade which features a lot of garlic and sour orange juice called Mojo.  Last year I did 3 pigs for various events and for all three did more classic american bbq flavors.  This year with the help of Sous Chef Jude Cruz, we went for Asian flavors.

In past years I've received the pig the night before in order to splay it open and marinade it.  This year I decided to give myself an extra day to let the pig sit in a cure consisting mainly of cilantro, salt and water.  The cure was rinsed off the next day but I found it did a good job of getting some salt deeper into the meat.

Another big change was the addition of a second pork belly.  The belly itself was butterflied so that it would stretch over the already butterflied big.  This gave us a huge pocket to stuff the pig with all manner aromatic and flavorful veggies including lemon grass, garlic, ginger, daikon and galangal.

Last but not least, the curve ball.  Being the great communicator that I am, I did not tell Justin(Pig Roast Host Extraordinaire) about the plans for the pig.  In uncanny Justin fashion, the man managed to get a free pastrami from the folks at Roxy's Diner.  I was promptly contacted and told to add the pastrami in the pig.  Conflicted about adding a Jewish cold cut to my Asian pig, I pushed back.  Surely this marriage had never occured before and would not work.  After some fighting that mimcicked Restaurateur v. Chef, the man with the pocketbook won.  If I were any chef worth his salt, I would've flipped the pig off the table onto the ground and stormed off in a rage of expletives, french ones at that.  It's best this didn't happen, as it turned out the pastrami was the best part according to a lot of people.  C'est la vie et merde.

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Below are some pictures.  If you feel uneasy about whole dead animals, get over it and enjoy.

 Covered inside and out with cure

 Rinsing cure off

 Butterflied

 My oh my, it's pastrami

 Massive goodies

 Belly up, double down

The finished product

Street food showdown #2 - Brick meets mortar

It should be no surprise to most that I like street food. I like the idea of trucks moving around the city giving people a different options for lunch on the fly. The worst part of getting lunch when you've worked at the same office for three years is trying to find somewhere exciting and new to eat when you only have half an hour. I don't have this problem anymore but I know it's a real one.

While I love the idea of owning a street truck, I also realize there are many issues associated with a moving kitchen that a brick and mortar operation do not have to deal with. Some follies include; knocking the ventilation hood off the roof while going under a low hanging tree branch, forgetting to fill the water tank, engine breaking down, sub-frame of airstream trailer cracking. These are all issues I've heard of first hand from the owners and all of these can lead to a day or more of lost business.

So what do you once you've made it big? You open a joint that no big bad wolf can blow down. Enter our two contestants, Marination Station and Skillet Diner.

Marination is not your typical taco truck. They are a Korean taco truck with the aloha spirit of Hawaii and the spam sliders to drive the point home. Then there's Skillet doing what they do best, anything they damn well please.

Marination
I had all four different types of tacos as well as a couple bites of Jill's kimchi fried rice. The four tacos served are; kalbi beef, spicy pork, miso ginger chicken and sexy tofu. The kalbi had some sweetness to it and a lot of earthy flavor, it was quite greasy. The pork had an interesting lingering spice, not spicy though. The meat had a re-fried granular texture and It was greasier than the kalbi. The chicken had the sweetness of white meat chicken, but the sauce was seriously lacking in flavor. I could barely taste either the miso or the ginger and this made me sad. Finally the sexy tofu. You're really going to have to try hard to convince me that your tofu is sexy and let's just say the effort was lacking. The kimchi fried rice was good but the rice was slightly under cooked and although we got the fried egg to top it, I wish there was more egg involved.

I honestly think that my experience here was due to poor execution. All of the food needed more salt besides the fried rice and the chicken taco, which just needed more miso. The sauces that accompanied the taco fillings just needed the extra flavor that salt helps bring out. Granted I'm addicted to salt and I've been trained to salt things within a couple of grains of over-salted, there was room for more, far more. Anyone serving spam on their menu should know this.

Skillet Diner
I'm not really a sweets guy. Generally when I go out for breakfast I like the savory stuff like biscuits and gravy. About once a month I get a weird itch for something sweet and nothing can stop me. This month it was pancakes.

I arrived first on a quiet Wednesday morning when most people are starting their 9 to 5. One thing I love about diners is the booths. These booths were comfy. The whole place was comfy. A modern diner for sure, but a proper diner none the less. So I grabbed a comfy booth and waited for Jill to show up. In the meantime I ordered one of their fresh made agua frescas, pinneapple-strawberry-basil. Yum. #$*!ing yum.

Jill showed up and we ordered. I ordered the flapjacks with rhubarb compote and lemon zest butter while Jill got a chopped green salad with an egg on top. If you haven't noticed a pattern, Jill likes an egg on top. It's a solid move and it impresses the wait staff almost every time.

The flapjacks were great, a good combination of fluffiness and density. The edges were ever-so-slighlty-yet-magnificently crunchy from all the butter used to cook them. The lemon butter was subtle, but a very nice touch. My only complaint was with the rhubarb compote. I believe there are two camps on rhubarb, those that want it to retain some of it's tartness, and those that want it sweetened to the point that your teeth disintegrate upon contact(there is a third camp actually, my dad, who thinks that rhubarb and mallard ducks are the devil). Personally I'm in the tart camp, and this compote was just a little too sweet for me.

There was no real competition here, Skillet walked away with this one. Marination has the motto of doing one thing well while Skillet wants to do everything. You would think this would give Marination the upper hand but it doesn't. When you fall into the monotony of doing the same thing every day over and over, you're bound to get lazy and it showed in the tacos. I won't give up on Marination, I know they can do a great job because they wouldn't be this far in the game if there wasn't something to their formula. Perhaps they just misplaced it and forgot to add the salt.

The Hangover 3

I'm done complaining about The Hangover 2. I promise. I did however have a killer hangover this morning thanks to a night out with the dudes at Tilth. This morning I woke up to bright sunlight piercing my eyelids making my headache feel that much worse. I drank some water, took some ibuprofen and tried to sleep it off. I awoke famished and in all my clarity decided to make the masterpiece you see below.

The irony of being a cook is that you can't afford the food you make. What we have here is chicken and waffles. Two Eggos with a chicken tender in between, basted egg on top, garnished with goldfish and finished with a swoosh(a horrible one) of Aunt Jemima maple syrup. Double Faceplam. At least the egg came from one of my chickens.

Falling apart...

...literally. If I ever get any followers that don't know me I should point out at this time that I'm a line cook at Tilth. The job, and the industry in general, is tough on the body. A year and half into this madness and I'm feeling weathered. I received a couple of cuts and burns('tis but a scratch) while in school and working. I was hoping that once school ended that the extra time off would give my body time to heal. Somehow the opposite has happened and the wheels are coming off.

About a month ago I got an amazing opportunity to do a stage at the Modernist Cuisine test kitchen. The prep work I was doing would be served to one of the dozens of Michelin star chefs that were rolling into the kitchen every few days as the book had just been released. I started the morning by cleaning snails. In a half hour my dream of opening a frog/snail ranch with friend Steve S. had dwindled along with my appetite. My next job after getting the snails readied was to slice onions, for employee lunch, on a mandoline.

 Staring into the teeth of the wicked beast

The mandoline, for those that don't know, is a blade on a plank. Slide the food over the plank and a slice of the food falls out the bottom. No, it's not a an annoying musical instrument as some have guessed, perhaps most disappointingly one of whom works in food service. The mandoline is a great tool to get uniform slices and julienne cuts. It's the best tool cooks both fear and respect. This fateful morning, I forgot to fear it. I simply went about my business sliding the onion back and forth when suddenly, well I don't really remember. I looked down and I was bleeding from my right pinky finger. I looked at it and figured I had cut off a little piece. No big deal, I'd just go over the sink, rinse it off and apply some pressure. I looked at it through the running water and thought, "that's not looking too good." Calmly, so as not to alarm the chefs, I walked over to my friend Aaron and asked where the first aid kit was. We walked over and he pulled out a band-aid.  I lifted the paper towel, he looked at me, then the pinky, then back at me. In restrospect I wish I could've come up with "we're going to need a bigger boat" on the spot. I'll attribute my lack of cleverness at the time to blood loss.

Flash forward a couple of hours. I'm out of the hospital, hand numbed and bandaged. It was slightly embarrassing showing back up to the kitchen to collect my knives and fill out have the nice lady fill out an accident report. I had spent most of my day at the hospital instead of cooking with amazing chefs.

Had I cut my left hand, I would've gone to work the next day. Cutting my right hand meant I was out of the rotation for a couple of days. Upon my return to work I was greeted with the nickname "Stubs".  This was very exciting to me because it meant they we're starting to accept me as one of them. Sadly it didn't stick and I still get called Christian every now and then.

I am happy to report that my pinky is getting better. I don't hit the return key with it still but I can bend it and grip with it. Great news right? It would be if I didn't just get a bunion(not part of the Allium family) on my right foot. Groan and sigh. It's not all about the food, sometimes it's all about me.

Walk there, waddle back.

Woke up this morning to find out that Jill decided to play hookey from work. Facebook had revealed to her that Skillet would be parked behind Theo Chocolate in Fremont. We've both had Skillet before, I was fortunate enough to meet Chef Joshua Henderson during a field trip in culinary school. He showed us around their truck, the commissary kitchen they were cooking out of and we got to taste all the food that day. A great trip all around and one of the reasons we decided to hire Skillet to cater our wedding.

Today we met up with a friend of ours, local artist Jonathan Wakuda Fischer. The boy had never eaten at Skillet so I knew it would be fun to see his expressions as he took his first few bites. He got the burger which is their signature food topped with their signature condiment, bacon jam! Upon picking up the burger, he was slightly worried it would fall apart, something I can't stand when eating a burger.  If it doesn't stay together, I'm not getting all the ingredients in each bite, which makes me sad. Don't make me sad, it's not pretty. To Jon's delight the burger stayed together and I could hear the content as he took his first few bites.  Not in words at first, but the sentiment was there. I took a bite of Jill's burger, the magic was still there.

While Jon and Jill ate their burgers, I let my eyes and camera delight in the beauty that was my braised duck leg special. It came with a nice side of veggies and a kale caesar salad. I picked it up by the end of the drumstick and was happy the thigh didn't come crashing down. Despite what some might think, you can over-braise meat. Not this duck leg, the meat came off the bone with little effort and the skin was not chewy or soggy. Sprinkled liberally on top of the leg was some chopped fennel fronds and sage. The giant pieces of sage were a bit much and I ended up picked them off. Had they been fried, it would've been perfect.

Full of food and sun, we fed some ducks a couple pieces of fries and without thinking waddled away. I hope the ducks didn't take too much offense.