Salaison and the art of reintroducing the wheel December 29, 2010

Today was my last day at the farm. Everyone will be going to the market or is on holiday and so no one is cutting, and the abbatoir is closed for cleaning and so….

I took all the chiles J made Kate buy and roasted them in the fireplace and made “french” hot sauce

Also: I boned out a hock/jarre for stuffing, poaching and preserving tomorrow, cured some duck breasts (we’re doing it wrong), made tarte de vollaille, cleaned the kitchen

Found 1 gift, out of the 10 I am sposed to be looking for: an absinthe spoon for T

Thought a lot about salt box, and curing (since I did a lot of work with cured meat today) and how everyone that works on the farm does something with a force of skill that would knock the eight ball in the corner pocket unequivocally. Dominique: the teacher makes all the saucisse cuit and sells at the market and goes to the US to tell people about the farm. Bruno: the expert in salaison went to Lyon and studied dry curing. He knows the science of things; humidity, fermentation, time and was shocked when I told him about Monsanto, and eating habits in the US. Cecile and Mark are the steadies, like middle children and sous chefs they will watch for the gaps, pull more than their share and with a half smirk and a shrug tell you youre aight. Jacques knows more in his pinkie about pigs than anyone I have ever met. The energy on the farm when the pigs are eating, or he is running around is palpable. Quiet & smart, he can cut with the rest of them, but instead makes sure they have pigs to work with. Mssr & Madame Chapolard did not have to show the silly american how to cure, tie, and hang but they did all while cracking wise about each other and all of their grandkids.

And so, I feel as though I have a picture in my mind and hands of what the wheel could look like, or rather what my dream of producing cured meats could look like and for the first time in a long time, I do not feel restless, disastified, less than capable or unready.

The wheel you see is what we have been doing all along, and sometimes we forget that it is what carries us forward from where we once came. You forget to look down, notice the road passing by, what the terrain looks like, what the wheel feels like – the one in your hands and under your feet. We strain against reinvention constantly, in a way that defies all that created us, or sometimes in a way that mimics a coming of age.
Vous prenez le temps de passer le temps – If you dont stop to reflect upon what you are doing, all is lost. The things we do can be beautiful and well crafted or hasty and good enough. Good enough is not…good enough. I can feel the salt on my palm and it speaks to me in a way that only a purity of ingredient can. Focus, minimize a lack of precision, act with intention. Breathe fully and move carefully as if we have forever, as if we only have now.

The wheel December 29, 2010

France – 17.12.2010

I have slept all the sleeps I have. Something occurred to me over my dinner, during which I sat still the whole time, and ate tiny bites, and stopped and watched the snow. (SNOW) The dinner was an exercise, more on that in a bit. So the thought that occurred to me over my simple dinner, served on a butcher block. (a sign) What if we just stopped trying to reinvent the wheel? What if the goal of the whole exercise was just to present a perfect wheel to the next group of kids coming up and actually take the time to divest them of the notion that the wheel needs to be reinvented? The truth of the matter is, we will eventually be without means to add all of the bells and whistles that we keep trying to glue to the bike in those cities filled with gastronomes. So what if a pork chop can just be: a pork chop, with some sauteed noisettes of apples and a parsnip apple puree (made with the rest of the ridiculous scraps of apple after all those tiny balls) I say this as I am about to launch into teaching Molecular Gastronomy next quarter. What if the wheel is enough ? “Here you are, a perfect wheel, I took care of it for you, keep in good shape and people will love it.” I know this notion itself is not new, but wheres the badass thats actually talking about enough when he’s taking it to the table? The truth of the matter is, the consumer needs to be retrained. We both know the food system is seriously fucked up. What if we asked the customer/consumer/guest to pick up their half of the responsibility and helped us rectify whats wrong about our food and revel in whats right? Truth is, I get tired of people whining that 3.99 is too much for a pound of meat. Is it? I mean if I fed them every day for 18 months and then factored in everything else and crunched the numbers….it used to make me sad, then angry. But being here, right now, where people will pay for their food (not the tacky atlanta ladies bitching in the corner of the cafe) I feel passionate that this is possible.
So there I was, master of the deli cup dinner relaxing into something I have not done in so many years, just eating. The pace of the meal was predetermined by so many things I am sure. The four mile walk around the Champs de Mars/Eiffel, the slow drifting pace of the snow, the warm wood surfaces, the servers who refused to rush. Any small deviation from that formula could have resulted in something entirely different. A glass of wine, a steak barely kissed by a grill, a salad dressed with a vinegary mustardy dressing and a tiny steel dish of chilled bearnaise. *sigh* Does anyone ever admit that cooks might have eating disorders? Oh, that’s right, we don’t do therapy either….The last six months, what with the on-site culinary analysis (food grading) and the 14 hour days with too much coffee I was actually trying to avoid food, like it was bad for me. “No, thanks I think Ive consumed enough calories today, no, I didn’t enjoy them either.” Someone should have slapped me. So the server, despite my atrocious french must have fallen in love with me because I concurred that I wanted my steak “bloody”, and asked about some Marc after the meal to have with my tarte tatin. Or maybe I wasnt being an obnoxious american. So it was my charcuterific lunch and this dinner that made me stop and think too many thoughts about what to do when I return….but the wheel….the wheel is very much on my mind.

Precision December 7, 2010

I imagine the look the beast would evoke once its brought to the table. I often have an excited bristle of electricity, a commanding concentration and wonder at the gravity and opportunity before me. The arduousness of the investment to just bring it to the butcher always amazes me. A chef I knew described it as giving death. I have no such illusions and remember how it made me feel, all those years ago, far afield with my father and uncles. Taking its life, honoring its death, making sure above all that no part is wasted. A beauty that demands respect. The metallic sound of edge as it slides against steel to hone itself for the task. Honing: such an apt expression for a butcher, especially one who seeks to become more and more precise wasting nothing, using all.
The steady hand that is watched switches modality, grabbing the handle shank to shoulder using the blade as lever and as scalpel. The visceral nature of incision can mesmerize, the fingertips pulling back to reveal the next step, the bone, the sinew. The terminology to describe it counters the actual act. Fabrication; a composition of what, an assortment of cuts for the chef? A transformation of beast to braise? All those things, the act of butchery itself is tantalizing; whether cutting across or around the beauty of it can only be matched with a hard kiss of dry heat, followed by a slow simmer in its own unctuousness.

Lens December 7, 2010

In a long chat with a friend that became known as “the conversation”, not because of its import because it was a conversation left open-ended revisited and continued at different times, an intriguing idea emerged. Perhaps not as intriguing to her, but a relic from my childhood, remembered and reconstructed in a new light. They say that the eyes are the windows to the soul, and certainly our eyes are lenses for how we see the world. But what about the photograph? Some people hailed it as the one great thing that would replace realism, and perhaps most great art. This claim didn’t paralyze artists, or stop them from creating. What it did do was spur those artists on for who photography became a way of capturing a moment, perhaps with realism or only an impression or emotion. All of those ideas are so very academic, and beyond that, people who enjoy the photo, the capturing of a moment enjoy it because of the light, composition, or subject. So the premise that always fascinates me the most, and captivates my interest is what goes on behind the lens. What is going through the mind of the photographer; are they happy, sad, enamoured of the subject? Are they a purist, capturing the moment with the best light and composition they can? Sometimes I can see the dialogue between the subject and artist; resignation, bliss, comradery. The view beyond the lens becomes more fascinating sometimes than the subject itself. I love the dynamic exchange between a photographer and their subject, at times I have been that subject, less than I have been the photographer.
Silly as this sounds as a child I found mirrors to be completely confounding. I would stare at my own image and become paralyzed with a singular metaphysical thought…what…am…I…doing here? I would literally have to will myself back, it is a question that remains wholely unanswered but stitched together in places with gaps, some wide and some strange. But a photograph of me, a photograph solidifies who I was in some great place, at some great moment, looking pensively into the lens at my capture.