Amy Cray » Food and Wine

Still Life With Cheerio

Amy — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 05:49:23 +0000

When not being used to host infants, this contraption serves as a handy Dolcetto holder.

Accidental Chef

Amy — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 04:34:06 +0000

When I’m in the kitchen, I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing or how I got there. A little secret.

In 1994, craving an experience more rich than my life in Los Angeles, I sat in a Denny’s booth one evening with an open AAA map before me and tried closing my eyes, plunking my forefinger down at random and seeing which town I had selected. It wasn’t working well, but the trucker in a weathered red ball cap in the booth adjacent mine, rolling his own cigarettes, was watching. “Portland,” he said finally. “You’d like Portland”. In the spirit of adventure, and upon confirming that the coffee and music were good, I loaded my car with everything I could fit, and moved. I knew no one.

I took the first apartment I found and immediately set about finding a job. No one would hire a blonde California girl with rollerblades dangling from her backpack for any retail position or anything else I’d ever done (anti-California sentiment runs deep in this green state), so I marched into a restaurant that looked like it had a heart, and asked for a job. I told them I’d do whatever they needed, as long as there was room for promotion and free lunch, as my shared $450/month studio apartment left me with minimal funding for groceries on minimum wage (then probably something like $4.50/hr!). That meant starting out at the lowest rung on the smallest, saddest ladder: washing dishes.

For weeks I pulled trays of half eaten calamari and bolognese through the service window and loaded them into my machine, not unlike any menial job I’d done in California. The revelation, however, was watching the cooks in action. I casually kept an eye on them down the line during the dinner shift. They were so cute and controlled. They sang Frank Zappa songs and crashed and smashed their sauté pans about while cooking seven sauces at once with ease. I scurried to pick the pans up, still steaming in the plastic bins below their stations, and dunked them into soapy tubs on my side of the kitchen, wondering how I could angle my way into their world. They were creating such intense, brilliant food for all these demanding and well-traveled guests with such simplicity, confidence and permanence, but lived such casual lives. They were artists, naturalists, poets on the side, threw great parties and were generally incredible conversationalists. They biked instead of driving, on principle. They knew about wine and still listened to vinyl. In the afternoons I began to prep ingredients for them, grating 30lb wheels of Parmigiano-Reggiano and pulling beaks from inky frozen squid while watching the entire senior line sneak into the walk-in refrigerator to smoke a joint as soon as the sous left the room (they have fabulous ventilation systems, the walk ins). I wanted in.

I persistently hacked away at my rookie status, to convince everyone that I was more than a “dish kid”, that I was just a resource waiting to be tapped, and that I belonged on the line. At night, the senior staff (front of house and back), would gather for a drink or four. Cooks from other restaurants would amble by as soon as they closed their kitchens down and it became one big nightly industry soiree. Though the other dishkids and prep cooks scurried nervously out the door, eyes to the ground and not daring to expect to be well received, or even noticed in this crowd, I stood my ground. Though only 18, I convinced the bartender I was cool and could handle a vodka orange. I scooted my barstool closer to their tables each night, acting casual about hanging around late and tucked my shaking hands beneath my thighs to appear indifferent when they eventually began to include me in their conversations and buy me a round. They were so awesome. I was so not.

Suddenly, one afternoon, it was announced that the pizza cook moved on to the day shift. They threw a chef coat at me and said “we’ll see how you do”. I was thrilled and terrified. The training was brief; a few nights shadowing and then I was off and running on a light Monday night. I was responsible for calling entrée orders down the line, spinning pizza dough into the air, making salads and appetizers and calling to the waitstaff when orders were up.

Overwhelmed in this crucial position, I would constantly forget where I was, and how much time to anticipate. I was nervous about everything but estatic when my pizzas and finished plates turned out nicely. The boys on the line were sweet, and always saved me when I had fouled up the order of something or forgotten to add cheese to the pizza in a moment of panic (yes, sad but true), but my work quality didn’t match my enthusiasm. The night shift waitstaff, understandably, was not so accommodating or patient. They glared at me as they picked up their orders of mussels or salads, slightly askew, or the occasional overly crunchy pizza, and made up sarcastic names for me. They complained about me while standing right in front of my station. I wanted to crawl into it and die. It was discussed that I wouldn’t last, and finally, standing in front of the beverage station before a shift, I received a stern reprimand for my lazy response in critical moments from the sous and was given a week to shape up or ship out.

Though recipes were static, no one was there holding my hand, telling me HOW to work. The precision of timing between getting and understanding the orders (reading them properly and learning their shorthand names was paramount), calling them out to the cooks down the line in order, spinning my dough and squinting into a 550 degree oven for hours on end, making everything come out well, hot, and on time was tricky.

Eddie the senior line cook met me at my station with a dishrag in one hand and a wild look in his eyes. He threw the rag at me and said, “I’m going to teach you how to cook.” He told me to simplify. To stop overthinking, worrying about my outcome and trust in the process by learning consistency is key. Each time I would slow my pace to preciously place pizza toppings, or let my heart and anxiety take me over, he’d take the dishrag and clear everything on my station and tell me to start over. It was irritating at the time but I realize now what an incredible moment that was. Just cook. It’s not a big deal. Do it right. Have fun. Stop stressing out.

I learned that day to commit fully. I could no longer tenuously call out my orders or depend on luck. I needed to be present among the rattle of utensils and oven doors, and people whizzing around me. I started minimizing my movements, keeping things central and clean, rather than flailing about my station and waiting for my team to pick up the pieces. I noted the moment a sauce went on the fire as I slid my pizzas onto the hot stone and listened to for just the right sizzle before pulling it back out.

This is the breathing of a working kitchen: almost a sixth sense of feeling the bodies around you, the doneness of what you’re preparing, the pace of the room. Timing. Listening. Having that foundation allowed me to embrace feeding people as a simple process, and one that should be joyous and straightforward. Though my path to food was unconventional, and my training entirely hands-on, I’ve been doing it ever since. And it works, no matter whether this is the first time I’m making what’s on the menu, or whether I’ve cooked a dish 600 times.

I cooked lunch for clients today, then came home to my own cluttered kitchen and tried to get dinner on the table, while the baby hollered for cheerios in one ear and the six year old babbled about gymnastics in the other. I sighed and longed for the restaurant and its vibrant but even pace, and imagined the beef stock sputtering away near my prep table on a rainy afternoon. Suddenly I thought to myself, “If only I could get my mis en place”. I think it’s a new mantra.

Prayers Answered

Amy — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 00:50:25 +0000

Hail Mary full of grace. The pork is with thee.

It’s Carnitas Week! And I bought, like, $26 worth of pork shoulder. Which means many incarnations of pork-themed meals. The beans are soaking and the dry farmed tomatoes are standing by.

Who’s coming over??

Oh, that’s right, I turned off the comments. Bummer for you.

Calories

Amy — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 07:55:31 +0000

I have never, ever in my life, been on a diet. I’ve never passed on a bread basket because of any rule or purposely abstained from dessert. Outside of the occasional health fast, I’ve never abstained at all. They first did this in high school: a training ground I probably missed, being distracted by wanting to make out with the girls, not learn about their breakfast shakes.

They do it in magazines, ads, movies. Diet tips. Things to do with lemons and cucumbers (or were those for home spa facials?). They were for girls who know the names of nail polish colors, carry an assortment of cute purses and have long hair in ponytails and boyfriends. Not girls like me.

All my favorite, most close friends have had weight issues throughout life but they’ve been very private battles for some reason (right now I am wondering why, actually, because it seems like a very public issue). My mom and sister would periodically embrace some wholesale program like Nutrisystem, but my little knowledge of each amounted to what program-approved snack bars they thought were gross and would be left in the cabinets for me to sneak afterschool.

I have just not ever had the experience of eating particular things for any other reason than that it seemed good at the moment. I have always had a fast metabolism, boosted by years of ballet class, cheffing and event managing on my feet for 10 hours at a time, and am oddly driven to do weird things like wax the floors or rearrange the living room furniture at 3am, ALL the time. My zeal for life quality leads me in the direction of wine, prawns, butter, cream, sugar, chocolate, garlic, more butter, liver, oysters. I adore food. After eating it I was typically dancing around the living room or doing some show or running around carrying my 70lb electric piano or carting one of the kids on my hip while signing mortgage documents or something, and it’s never really been a passion of mine to be thin and suffice it to say it just didn’t affect me and it just didn’t matter.

But this is the 60 days of self-examination and improvement, and no stone can lie idle. I am TORTUOUSLY out of shape, and that is a sad state for a mom who DID NOT EVEN GESTATE the baby, but still managed to gain 30lbs. I got cocky midway into the third trimester, and once the little sucker was born I was stuck on the couch with no hope for anything but survival for many dark months.

So here I am, building my own wagon to hop aboard, trying to figure out how people actively pay attention to their eating habits. Suddenly I am on a journey through a strange land inhabited for years by most people I know but before now completely invisible to me, and I’m asking them for the most basic directions. They have houses built here that I didn’t even know about. Driveways, landscaping. They have established their particular neighborhoods, being able to discuss the merits of Weight Watchers v South Beach, or the optimal treadmill brand. I am Alice in Wonderland with my little calorie counting app, wandering through in a daze, asserting stupid impossibilities like that the elliptical machine calorie counter is totally accurate and I really did burn 460 calories in 30 minutes (note, best friend says no, which is tragic because I was about to declare this war over early). The sky here is a color I have not seen. People know very specific information, like that an egg is a good bang-for-buck and that bacon on top of a hamburger is a dance with the devil.

It’s not as though I’ve been oblivious to nutrition, but this is a very specific endeavor- to actually assess the amount of energy I take in, and put out.

Tonight I took the kids to the burger place to assert my independence over french fries. I would eat them, and something lovely alongside, and still come out under 600 calories or the above mentioned best friend would be able to call me Hank for a full week. I have succeeded, but am feeling trepidatious about optimism in this world where everyone but me knows North from South and there are no street signs.

Above is my very sensible salad with dressing on the side. I did not order like Meg Ryan though I wish now I had. That’s probably a tired joke to people in diet land.

Late Night #2

Amy — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 07:36:52 +0000

Glass of Wine! Glass of Wine!

The terminology for when all loved ones are sleeping soundly (dogs included) and I’m free to sit, write and, well, drink. They say not to drink by oneself, but when you’re a sommelier trying to maintain your palate, and the rest of your family would gladly choose an Italian soda (or breastmilk) any day of the week over the finest Riesling in the world, you’re all you’ve got.

The end goal of this activity is the paradise of really listening to whatever potentially life-changing music I’ve been frantically trying to absorb in between squawks from the children or texts from the employer or the blasting of Teena Marie from the neighbor’s very open and poorly decorated upstairs window. These times, it is quiet but for the occasional binging of the iPhone as daily spam trickles in. Oh nighttime, I love you so!

Tonight, the music is winning. The wine is this awful bottle from Lodi which I knew would be crap but my friend insisted it was earth shattering.. It’s wine and all, it’s just not saying much to me beyond “I’m a blend Portugese grapes grown in Lodi and that’s about all that makes me interesting”. This one isn’t cheaply oak chipped and it’s not trying to be all 16% alcohol twizzler bomb Zinfandel, which is nice, but that’s all the good stuff I can say.

The music is a little iffy because I’m using Spotify, which allows me to stream virtually any song I want to listen to (as in, hey, I wonder what Wiz Khalifa actually sounds like and boom there it is, and it’s not very good) but it’s kind of annoying because the whole point of Glass of Wine is not having to curate the evening and if I don’t manage what I’m streaming I’ll end up listening to that god awful Brian McKnight I accidentally clicked on earlier.

This might all be much more fun if I hadn’t accidentally shaved my knuckle off on the microplane cheese grater yesterday. I’m keeping a brave face and my finger is in a splint, covered with antibiotic cream and lovingly wrapped, but I am terrified of not being able to play piano after this disaster is over, and all I can think about are the staph infections people on YouTube seem to get in their injuries, rendering their limbs and internal organs useless after only two weeks. Does wine support white blood cell activity by any chance?

* I may only be posting this pic to show off my Laguiole wine key but I’m two glasses in and I no longer care about humility.

* I feel bad just talking about wine being bad even if I don’t reference the vineyard. I would make a terrible critic. I would be all Paula Abdul “you did your best”.

* Spotify does not have my challenge song of all time: 1991’s live version of “Slack Motherfucker” as covered by fIREHOSE. They have the Superchunk studio version but I am not impressed. Though the bassline does go with the Portugese grapes somehow.

BBQ Goodness

Amy — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 06:10:32 +0000

I bought a new BBQ! The old one was sad and lonely, a cast off from my mother’s retirement move:

I posted it on craigslist for free and within 20 minutes had 9 takers. Ususally a sign that you should have sold the thing but NO MATTER. It went to a multi-generational family who really needed it and after cramming it into the giftee’s CR-V I was free of the ugliness and looking forward to something new.

I hauled that monster box in from the garage and unpacked violently (see earlier post about how I am all action now). I did it with such determination, scissors flying, that my six year old asked me to consider if a new BBQ was really something worth losing a limb over. And then, the assembly. Twenty minutes in had me hollering “Honeeeeeyyyyy? Can you helllpp meeeee?” into the kitchen for backup.

Ultimately, It was not the take-charge-of-your-destiny event I had envisioned. Nothing sucks the air out of a self-actualization balloon like a loosely translated from Chinese assembly manual for a Kenmore appliance that uses a highly flammable power source.

1.5 hours into the madness we realized we had put the damn thing together backwards on the frame. As in, the front black panel that makes it took all chic and fancy was facing the back fence and we were staring at all the wiry mess that should be concealed. My wife, tired and wishing we did not tend to a Spanish mealtime schedule quite so regularly, sighed and wondered aloud if we were really the kind of people who cared. My last burst of energy was spent unscrewing the base, walking the million pound thing around counter-clockwise and forcing it into place.

Et voila! It is gorgeous and spaceship like.

And a little large. But capable of grilling 28 burgers at once (or so Kenmore says). We had Moroccan night and the lamb was the BOMB.

Late Night Run-Down

Amy — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 09:17:06 +0000

I just HAD to have a glass of wine. The house is (finally) quiet: all family members sleeping, all dogs admonished from couches, dishwasher empty, laundry load put in. I can attempt to distill the ideas that are rocketing around in my head into coherent thoughts.

First, I am SO excited about dinnerparty- my new company. I’ll be throwing dinner parties in super secret non-traditional dining spaces. This summer I’ll host a series of high-end events to get things flowing. My lovely wife will be photographing the magic for all to ogle. I can’t give much away but to say that the first event is based on a classic children’s story… I can’t wait!

Secondly, I’ve started rehearsing for a spring concert. Solo, perhaps? Not sure yet. Two songs are in the pipeline after a two hour session last week and there are more on the verge. They basically write themselves. I just catch them as they’re falling into place and put them in the right order. In my younger years I didn’t care much about craft, and several friendships with good songwriters were ended over method (I can’t get down with grinding it out. What’s the point?). I like to think I’m a bit more focused now, with scheduled rehearsals and all.

Anyway, there’s the plan. Coming to a venue near you, if you live within 12 square blocks from my house on the Oakland-Berkeley border. Ha.

Thirdly, spring is on the move. The rest of the country is feeling ill from cold and sloggy freezing awful blizzard apocalypse while we in the Bay Area are casually watching birds flit about in the sun and expecting the bulbs to peek out of the ground any day. Tortuous, but true. These warm, delightful mornings make me think of two things:

HEY it’s tax time, you better get it together

and, simultaneously,

HEY it’s time to update my wardrobe- when can I go shopping?

Clearly tax time does not get along well with wardrobe reshaping. They hang in midair together, having a staring contest and trying to look mean all through February until one gives in. Typically fashion trumps.

What is a look book, you ask? You probably don’t ask that but just in case… it’s a little booklet (or large binder, in my case) full of inspiration and fun things you run across as the weather changes that will inform your buying decisions and fashion objectives for the next season. For instance, I spent nearly two years wrapped up in the idea of “sexy librarian” and have the look book to prove it. You know, cabernet lips, liquid liner, tweedy fitted skirts with the slightest flirty trumpet flare at the bottom, round-toed pumps and fitted sweaters, dark tights and the ubiquitous bun or chic ponytail. Sexy librarian.

I have before me several months worth of magazines to tear through before I finish this glass of wine and high-tail it upstairs.

Night all, and happy thaw.

Fancy Food Show

Amy — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 18:01:05 +0000

After a few years hiatus, I attended the annual NASFT Fancy Food Show in San Francisco last weekend. My BF and I have gone together in the past, if for no other reason than to see what’s new and validate a nice lunch at Restaurant Lulu afterward (their salted mussels are reason to do anything, really.. and I used to work in the Lulu catering kitchen so it holds a special place in my heart).

The last year we went was the year before those Nespresso-style coffee pods hit the market and I walked around feeling very “industry” when people were getting all geeked about them 15 months later. It’s fun to have seen and done before the average consumer gets there.

Basically, you wander around Moscone center for a day or two (easily two), wearing a badge that states your kind of business. It’s largely full of retail and import people, easily identifiable by their black suits and mover-and-shaker body language. They sort of heft around and dodge in front of you at the booths when you’re trying to break through the crowd and see what the Montepulciano d’Abruzzo lady has to offer. Catering (especially small caterers) don’t have much pull in a big room like that.. you’re only interested in making these tiny little orders and the vendors want, well, Whole Foods to come in and buy their whole year’s worth of stock.

In the past I’ve just pretended to be a bigger caterer, in order to make the connection and find out what people are all about. But this year I was snooty and just passed the import people right by. I wanted to meet the artisanal producers, the (literally) mom and pop businesses. I collected a small stack of business cards but largely was unimpressed by the small-scale representation this year. All I really remember is getting a panini from Mezetta, whose booth eclipsed half of the North hall (and whose sandwiches, in all honesty, were excellent).

Here are the highlights:

HappyGoat Caramels- just what it sounds like. Caramel made from goat milk. Every bit as wonderful as that sounds. And they had a 15 year Malt Scotch caramel sauce that made my knees wobble. And SUCH nice people doing everything right: small production, sustainable farming. They got picked up by Williams-Sonoma and will be hugely successful next holiday season, just you wait and see.

La Quercia: Artisan salumi from heritage pigs (Berkshire, Tamworth) and is doing organic, small batch things to make prosciutto, bacon, pancetta and Acorn-fed coppa, lonza and so much more. They were sampling the Tamworth and Berkshire and they had me at hello.

Hodo Soy Beanery, located here in the East Bay where all good food originates, makes all sorts of high-quality soy products including yuba: thin sheets of fatty soymilk that can be cut, grilled, used like pasta and all kinds of fun things. They are also totally nice and organic/non-GMO and started out at local farmer’s markets.

I leave you with the vanilla and berry Strauss soft-serve above, clearly the best idea (and the best bite) of the entire show. May we all have Strauss Soft-Serve in our immediate futures.

You Are What You Eat

Amy — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 07:25:49 +0000

My family has absolutely no ancestral clarity. The best I can tell you is that I’m from a whole mess of adopted children with no knowledge of their biological origins whatsoever. Thankfully, I am good at making things up as I go along.

For example, enchiladas.

Now, there’s a rumor that half of my people come from Texas, née Mexico. Unfortunately, the last generation to have any first hand knowledge of specifically WHO those people were aren’t talking because that would mean admitting that big lies were told, and they’re saving face.

The only time I ever think of these things is when I’m cooking Mexican dishes. I don’t by any stretch claim to sense my Mexican ancestry while I’m making enchiladas. Let’s just put that out there right away. My mom learned everything she knew about food from Betty Crocker, circa 1972, and authentic traditional foods that ‘ain’t. I learned this (and likely only this: she loathes cooking more than I loathe gardening) dish from her.

But there’s something about the process of making verde sauce, grinding chiles, pickling onions and frying tortillas that just pulls me deeper into the moment to where I feel the most, well, me. And if I’m homesick, lonely, or otherwise broken, a plate of tamales and really good beans will turn things around like nothing else. It’s just replenishing, for whatever reason.

And with that, I present to you my enchiladas. They are NOT haute by any stretch, no no. They are soul food on a rainy day. I make them if I love you, and only IF. They are for friends, beloved roommates, family and off-year Thanksgivings. They’re for freezing if you’re a new mom, or doorstep gifts if you’re having a hard time. They come stuffed with whatever the season has to offer and only taste good because I keep reinventing them. And that’s about as close to cultural heritage as I’m ever gonna get.

Simple Things Made Great

Amy — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 08:41:11 +0000

Have you had a boiled egg and some nice crunchy kosher salt lately? You should. It is the bomb.