Settling In

I arrived at Pierluigi at 10:45 after teaching from 9:00-10:30 near Largo Argentina, about a ten minute walk from the restaurant. I ran into Lorenzo on my way over and had a chance to show him the zero-issue of my new magazine and he was very pleased with the advertisement we had put together for the restaurant.

The chefs arrive for work at 10 to get everything ready for lunch, so walking in 45 minutes after that I got a few joking watch taps, along with questions about where I had been the last two weeks. Sadly I hadn't found time to make it to there between Easter in Calabria and the magazine's pilot issue being printed a few weeks ago.

I got into the kitchen and was a talking with Antonio for a few seconds when Giovanni called across the room for me to give him a hand (dammi una mano). I walked over to his corner and was instructed to peel a sack of potatoes. I handed me a peeler and left my to my own devices to work on the potatoes. When I was about finished he came over and helped with the last few. He peeled and cut about two potatoes for each one that I did. As is often the case in the kitchen, I was impressed with the speed and accuracy the chefs are able to preform tasks. Even the most mundane tasks, such as slicing a zucchini, they do so quickly and seemingly effortlessly, without an ounce of wasted effort.

After the potatoes it was onto staff lunch. We were having steak, potatoes and bucatini alla amatriciana. Giovanni and I were in charge of the steak and potatoes. The potatoes were already boiled so I cut them up into cubes and threw them in a large pan where a good amount of butter, a red onion, some salt and pepper had already been cooking. Giovanni left the potatoes in the pan for 2-3 minutes, just long enough to warm them up a little bit and make the butter covered everything. After that he dumped the whole thing into a shallow square pan that I had coated with butter. I sprinkled a good portion of grated parmaggiano over the potatoes and we stuck them in the oven for about 15 minutes at 350.

For the steak, Giovanni put a large tub of premade four-cheese sauce in a pan and left it to heat up for awhile. He sliced a large plate full of steak into thin strips, almost scraps. He left me in charge of cooking that and only said don't cook it too much, I actually did feel like I could handle that, and did pretty well, when the scraps were about 3/4 browned I put them in the pan with the cheese sauce and let that simmer for awhile.

While the steak with simmering and the potatoes were baking we had zucchini and eggplant to prepare. I washed and cut the ends off a large tray full of both veggies. Then Giovanni took me over to the meat slicer to show me how to cut the veggies. For the zucchini he left the blade off and just pushed each piece through. The eggplant was a little more involved and he turned the circular blade on for them. We stacked the slices on the tray and put the end pieces on a separate plate. The slices went into the fridge and the ends I cut up into very small strips to be fried in the deep frying later with a light coat of flour.

When that was all said and done we sat down for lunch. The potatoes were delicious but the steak took the prize, hopefully next time I'll figure out how to make the sauce.

After lunch there was little left for me to do, I cracked about 40 eggs and separated out the yolks to go into creme brulee (I think, didn't actually see the whole process as I went to watch Antonio making pastas). Once customers arrive, there is little I can do but occasionally grab some spices for someone, stir a pot here and there, but I mostly just try to stay as out of the way as possible.

I watched Antonio making various pastas and think I have figured out the trick to a good spaghetti alle vongole (with clams). He put the a ton of olive oil in the pan with a smashed clove of garlic and a chili pepper. Let that cook for a few minutes, than added the clams, a handful of finely chopped parsley and about a cup of wine, covered it and let it cook.