Read Online Yes, Chef by Marcus Samuelsson - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Marcus Samuelsson
Ads: Link
be cooked for a different amount of time and by different
chefs de partie
. The expediter calculates when to start each dish, using backward-counting math and accounting for any extra steps, like pan deglazing or meat resting. The ability to impose order on so much fire is the difference between a great restaurant and one that is merely good; the difference between a flawless service and one that has customers complaining and skimping on tips.
The meals we cooked had been copied straight out of our cooking bibles:
Larousse Gastronomique
and
The Escoffier Cookbook
. Appetizers led sensibly into main courses and side dishes counterpointed or complemented entrées, but nothing about them seemed exciting or surprising or fresh. Every day I would look at the menu and wonder, What if we paired the duck a l’orange with curried fried rice instead of serving it with the traditional potatoes dauphinoise? If thyme and mustard added such wonderful flavors to the roasted lamb, couldn’t we do a similar variation with roasted goat instead? It was in me already, the desire to mix cultures and foods. But this wasn’t just about my desire to introduce international flavors into traditional cuisine. I could also see that at the school, we prized French food above our own national culinary treasures. It was the 1980s and the locavore movement may have been in full swing in northern California, but it sure as hell hadn’t yet come to Scandinavia. I learned more about the foods of the Alsace than I did about Västerbotten, the Swedish county that produced the country’s best cheese. Soon, that would begin to change.
EIGHT EARNING MY KNIVES
P EOPLE WENT OUT ALL THE TIME IN G ÖTEBORG, BUT NOT TO EAT . T HEY might meet for a beer after work or to watch soccer together at a bar, but food was never the center of socializing, the way it is in cities like Barcelona or Paris, where people live their lives in restaurants. Gburg’s blue-collar roots fed into this eat-at-home lifestyle. Factory workers had neither the time nor the disposable income to waste an evening over a leisurely meal. In truth, it wasn’t just about time or money: As a whole, Sweden was way behind the curve on fine dining. It wasn’t until the mid-1980s, when I was starting at culinary school, that the first Swedish restaurants, Eriks and L’Escargot in Stockholm, received major recognition outside Sweden.
Despite the training ground of the forty-seat restaurant, Mosesson really groomed its students for institutional placements such as hospital and school cafeterias. Practically speaking, there was no local restaurant scene to provide jobs for the graduates, even if they wanted to. The result was an environment that didn’t foster much creativity or competition among those of us who had chosen to cook for a living. There were no customers to build a relationship with; the only people willing to pay for haute cuisine were foreigners and corporate diners with expense accounts, neither of whom offered the steady, loyal patronage that restaurants count on to survive. Without a fine-dining culture, it’s difficult to develop a palate that extends beyond whatever it is your family serves you.
My own family ate out two or three times a year, tops. We’d go out to celebrate the big events, like Anna getting into a selective school, Dad getting his PhD, or Linda landing a job at a record company. For the fanciest occasions, we would go to a classic Swedish place, where we’d order grilled pike with dill butter and boiled potatoes. For more casual celebrations, we went to La Piazza, a local pizza place where Linda and I would argue over toppings. I liked the exotically named Capricciosa: mushroom, artichoke, ham, and olive. Linda preferred the royally named Vesuvio, which was just a plain cheese pizza. Eventually, my father decided that we’d eat only foreign food when we went out because my mother would find any Swedish meal we were served in a restaurant lacking and, thus,
chefs de partie
. The expediter calculates when to start each dish, using backward-counting math and accounting for any extra steps, like pan deglazing or meat resting. The ability to impose order on so much fire is the difference between a great restaurant and one that is merely good; the difference between a flawless service and one that has customers complaining and skimping on tips.
The meals we cooked had been copied straight out of our cooking bibles:
Larousse Gastronomique
and
The Escoffier Cookbook
. Appetizers led sensibly into main courses and side dishes counterpointed or complemented entrées, but nothing about them seemed exciting or surprising or fresh. Every day I would look at the menu and wonder, What if we paired the duck a l’orange with curried fried rice instead of serving it with the traditional potatoes dauphinoise? If thyme and mustard added such wonderful flavors to the roasted lamb, couldn’t we do a similar variation with roasted goat instead? It was in me already, the desire to mix cultures and foods. But this wasn’t just about my desire to introduce international flavors into traditional cuisine. I could also see that at the school, we prized French food above our own national culinary treasures. It was the 1980s and the locavore movement may have been in full swing in northern California, but it sure as hell hadn’t yet come to Scandinavia. I learned more about the foods of the Alsace than I did about Västerbotten, the Swedish county that produced the country’s best cheese. Soon, that would begin to change.
EIGHT EARNING MY KNIVES
P EOPLE WENT OUT ALL THE TIME IN G ÖTEBORG, BUT NOT TO EAT . T HEY might meet for a beer after work or to watch soccer together at a bar, but food was never the center of socializing, the way it is in cities like Barcelona or Paris, where people live their lives in restaurants. Gburg’s blue-collar roots fed into this eat-at-home lifestyle. Factory workers had neither the time nor the disposable income to waste an evening over a leisurely meal. In truth, it wasn’t just about time or money: As a whole, Sweden was way behind the curve on fine dining. It wasn’t until the mid-1980s, when I was starting at culinary school, that the first Swedish restaurants, Eriks and L’Escargot in Stockholm, received major recognition outside Sweden.
Despite the training ground of the forty-seat restaurant, Mosesson really groomed its students for institutional placements such as hospital and school cafeterias. Practically speaking, there was no local restaurant scene to provide jobs for the graduates, even if they wanted to. The result was an environment that didn’t foster much creativity or competition among those of us who had chosen to cook for a living. There were no customers to build a relationship with; the only people willing to pay for haute cuisine were foreigners and corporate diners with expense accounts, neither of whom offered the steady, loyal patronage that restaurants count on to survive. Without a fine-dining culture, it’s difficult to develop a palate that extends beyond whatever it is your family serves you.
My own family ate out two or three times a year, tops. We’d go out to celebrate the big events, like Anna getting into a selective school, Dad getting his PhD, or Linda landing a job at a record company. For the fanciest occasions, we would go to a classic Swedish place, where we’d order grilled pike with dill butter and boiled potatoes. For more casual celebrations, we went to La Piazza, a local pizza place where Linda and I would argue over toppings. I liked the exotically named Capricciosa: mushroom, artichoke, ham, and olive. Linda preferred the royally named Vesuvio, which was just a plain cheese pizza. Eventually, my father decided that we’d eat only foreign food when we went out because my mother would find any Swedish meal we were served in a restaurant lacking and, thus,
Similar Books
