A not so lazy Sunday

I walked into the kitchen and chatted with Antonio for a few minutes about my visit to Matera (his hometown) the weekend before. He didn't really have much to say on the matter, just asked if I saw the caves and then asked where else I went and, of course, if I ate well. It was a weekend so the kitchen was crowded, all five chefs were there, as opposed to the two or three that man the kitchen during the week. Nevertheless, there was still plenty for me to do.

I went to work with Giovanni and, as is becoming the norm, he set me to work on lunch for the staff. We were having what I can best describe as a meat stew, although it was not as thick as what I would call a stew, more a mixture of meat and veggies I guess. When I asked Giovanni what we were making he responded "pranzo da me" (lunch by me).

First step was cooking the pork. Giovanni cut had cut it into cubes and put it all in a bowl which he gave to me and told me to make sure I cooked them thoroughly but did not let any of them burn. He put a pan on the stove with a good amount of olive oil and salt and then walked away, telling me to make sure I let the pan heat before I put the meat in. I'm starting to feel a little more comfortable in the kitchen, but it is still always a little unnerving when I'm told to do something and inevitably miss a word and don't understand some cooking term (today I learned rosolare - to brown) which is what Giovanni told me to do to the meat and I had no idea what he said but he was gone before I could respond. So I put as much of the meat as I could fit in the pan and started cooking it, assuming Giovanni would be back before I screwed something up to badly. He did come back, and I hadn't screwed anything up, in fact I was doing well, and recieved my frist 'bravo' (good job), a small thing, but it was good to hear. After all the meat was cooked, three full pans worth, Giovanni dumped all of it in a large pot and added some broth to it.

While he was doing that I was washing and chopping the veggies, fresh celery, carrots and onions. I generally have difficulty cutting onions (my eyes often water up so much in need a minute or two of fresh air and I would rather not have to deal with that in the kitchen at Peirluigi) so am always a little worried when they tell me to chop onions, but I have devised a way that seems to avoid my problem. Rather than chop them all mixed randomly, I cut the onion in half and then put the flat side down and slice it very thin, holding the form of the onion together so none of the fumes reach my eyes, then rotate it 90 degrees and do the same thing. This seems to work reasonable well, if they every gave me a large number to chop it might be a different story, but for now I've been ok.

After the fresh veggies we moved to the canned veggies, artichokes in olive oil and crimini mushrooms (little small ones with a brown top). I cut the artichokes into small pieces and drained them. Giovanni took the drained oil and added it to the meat and broth.

Then I started to saute the fresh veggies one by one, starting with the onions. I cooked them for a few minutes to soften them up, but not let them brown. I was moving them around with a spoon in the pan and then Giovanni came over and showed me not to use the spoon and to just toss them around with the pan itself (he has showed me how to do this repeatedly, and I have gotten somewhat better). When they were soft I tossed (buttare) them into the pot with the meat. After that came the carrots which Giovanni said to make sure they were only cooked a little bit, he said it's important that you still feel the crunch of the carrots. After that came the celery, done in much the same way.

Now the pot had pork cubes, onions, carrots, celery, beef broth and olive oil from the artichokes. To this mix we add the canned artichokes and canned mushrooms. Then Giovanni gave me some beef scraps that he had cut off a large tenderloin for later use and I cooked them for a few minutes in olive oil and salt, just barely browning them. When they were ready I dumped them in the pot with everything else, Giovanni added a handful of finely chopped parsley let it cook for a few more minutes, and we were ready to eat. It was a pretty hot day and this dish seemed a bit more like something for the summer, but it was delicious and no one seemed to mind.

The entire time I was working on the stew and Giovanni was keeping an eye on me and helping me out here and there, he was also doing a million other things. In the time it took me to put the stew together, he made creme caramel, large meatballs in a lemon sauce, completely removed the fat off a massive beef tenderloin and who knows how many other things that I didn't even notice. It is incredibly impressing to me how he (and all the chefs in general) can keep so many things straight at once, without ever looking at a recipe or confusing two things they are doing.

I stuck around after we all had lunch for a little while, but once the restaurant started to fill up it was time for me to get out of the way, getting orders ready for two hundred people can be a little chaotic and they don't exactly have a space for spectators in the kitchen so I cleared out a little after one. The rush when the orders start coming in is incredible though, at one point Lorenzo came in with a large order and was pumping his fists as if he was psyching himself up before a football game, you can tell he loves that aspect of the business. Before I took off a did help prepare a few fish. A very popular Italian method for cooking incredibly fresh fish is in salt (al sale). They do it by putting the fish, whole with the skin still on, in large pan and entirely covering it with coarse sea salt. This layer of salt seals all the juices in the fish and skin of the fish keeps the salt from touching the meat, it works incredibly well with white-meat fish, I think it would be great with a nice striped bass.