Setting myself a goal

I have decided to set myself a goal for the rest of my time doing this stage.

Here is the problem: our vegetarian entree sucks. It isn't just "not our best dish". Its not disgusting, but it also isn't a dish and isn't anywhere near the same level of execution for the rest of our food. It's really a platter. I know one thing vegetarians hate a lot, and that's the veg entree which is simply a collection of sides. Here is what we put on our veg platter right now:

-A slice of eggplant parmesan
-Sliced roasted peppers (the veg side for the lamb dish)
-Sauteed artichokes (the veg half of our squid and artichoke dish)
-Sauteed chicory (the veg garnish for our fava soup with chicory)
-A breaded and deep fried mini mozzarella sandwich (yes, we flour, egg, and breadcrumb bread)
-Sauteed broccoli rabe (veg side of another dish, cooked in the same way as the chicory)
-A beaten egg mixed with some crunchy dried sweet pepper and cooked in the oven as a kind of souffle-thing
-Sauteed swiss chard (again, cooked in the same way as the other two green things, and also a side)

We heat all the veggies up in the microwave when an order comes in. Yum!

Saturday night we had an abnormally large number of these ordered. This is one dish that isn't made on the line, which means that chef is the one to assemble everything. Saturday, since I was there she delegated everything but the side veggies to me (parmesan, egg, and sandwich), and then complained to the front of house that they need to sell fewer of these because it takes a lot of time split between two people to assemble this dish. All the components do mean that it takes a lot of time to assemble one order, but I don't understand why we have the dish on the menu at all. Our most complex entree has five parts, and yet here we are with eight, to the point that they can't even all fit cleanly on our biggest platter. Furthermore, it doesn't even make any sense. There is no focal point of the dish, though on the menu it always lists "eggplant parm with other seasonal veggies", so maybe the eggplant parm should be featured, but it is just presented as one item in this smorgasbord.

Last night I tested the waters. Just with us cooks, not chef. We were discussing prep for Tuesday, and I mentioned that we needed more eggplant parm. I then also said, "you know, I'm not fond of our veg dish." They asked why, and I explained how its a platter, a collection of sides, not a proper entree. Keiji looked at me and said that with just vegetables, what could we expect to do? I replied that there are vegetarian entrees out there that we could do, and that was the end of the conversation. However neither of them stood up to defend the dish, and I think they may have just been confused as to why I cared.

Hence my goal: Get the restaurant to start serving a proper veggie entree. I think that while it is ambitious (a stage convincing the restaurant to change a dish), I think it might be doable. The chef dislikes putting together what they currently have, it isn't the favorite of the owner or chef's mother or anything sentimental, and I don't think anyone is proud of it or anything. However my work background gives me at least a little bit of authority on the matter of vegetarian dishes, and so I'm going to leverage that all I can.

But if I say that we should change it, I think then that I need to have a good alternative to propose. So I'm going to try playing with ideas and developing something this week that I can bring in as an alternative. I'm going to stay conservative though, and probably try to keep on the theme of eggplant parmesan, but by elevating it in some way such that it actually fits the context of a fine dining restaurant and can hold its own as an entree. I'll keep you updated on my progress!

(photo credit:  martina0315.blog.deejay.it. Not actually our eggplant parm.)

Who I work with

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! I definitely missed it a little here, but instead I went to Mac Dario's (scroll all the way down for menu) instead and had a feast of some of the finest meat you can find in Tuscany (if not all of Italy) in the lovely company of Josh, and I was happy (and so, so stuffed!).

In other thanksgiving news, if you want to know why it might be fun to be a food scientist, read this post which entertainingly details part of the scientific method of how to cook a great turkey and along the way discusses flamethrowers and dragons. That blog in general is terrific, but this post was just fabulous.

So I started work last week, and I thought it would be good to introduce you to the cast of characters. Running the kitchen is Giovanna, who requests that she be called "la cuoca" (the cook) rather than "la chef", and while I think this is somehow related to hubris and her desire to not be obnoxious, I'm going to ignore it here and refer to her usually just as chef. Life is simpler that way.

She really runs the kitchen like the matron of a family. At this point all of the daily work has been delegated to her two cooks, and she just oversees things and puts her nose in where she feels like it. Generally speaking she is extremely jovial, and you can tell she enjoys the work. She personally prepares staff lunch almost every day, but that's about the only thing she always does. Usually during prep time she will come in at a certain hour and start standing by the stoves. There's a little workspace there where she will slice things for sauces, and she takes complete control over all sources of heat for a portion of the day. It actually is nice because the prep area is not near the stoves, and so if you put something on and need to check it constantly, she will do it so you don't need to constantly be interrupting your work to run over there and see how things are going.

I guess its the way she approaches staff meal that makes me think of her more like the mother cook in the kitchen than anything else. She always cares about it, and if I stay working for an extra minute or two to finish a project before going to eat, she scolds me and tells me to stop and get some food. As well, she has an opinion about everything. In the first week she has delivered lectures on why black truffles aren't really good, the differences between various kinds of prosciutto (gray and red, I think), why chefs in American restaurants don't work in the kitchens anymore (hours are too ridiculous), why you shouldn't do pasta for an entree when serving lots and lots of people at once (though we did it), and I'm sure you get the picture.

Furthermore, she's a short, very large woman, who always wears this kind of work dress that is probably actually a maid's outfit. It is short sleeved, khaki colored, and stops just below the knees. She always wears hose and a pair of black mary-janes.

Susanna is from somewhere in South America originally (I couldn't get her to tell me where exactly), and has been working at the restaurant for about three years. For all intents and purposes she's the sous chef, and as such she always knows what's going on. She likes to ask me lots of questions when we're working (what are you doing for christmas? where is the rest of your family? do you like x?) and got very interested in the fact that I was Jewish a while ago (so you guys believe in the trinity but not christ, right? umm.....that doesn't even make sense) and I got questions all day long on what that's like. She was especially curious about what I do on christmas day if I'm Jewish (Japanese food).

Her workstyle doesn't remind me much of the cooks at home. She has intensity but for some reason lacks that kind of smooth confidence I associate with someone who has been doing their job for a long time and thinks they know it well. Maybe it's because she doesn't want to be in more of a leadership position, but something about it strikes me as a little strange. It's probably just me. She too is really short, which means that in my clogs (2 in platform) I actually tower over these women. Its a really strange sensation for me.

Keiji is the other person who works in the kitchen, though his Japanese accent is so thick and he talks so quietly that I often have trouble understanding him, which means we don't talk too much. But he's a really nice guy, and always smiles. He works hard, well, and has a good attention for detail which Susanna sometimes misses. It's probably for that reason that he's in charge of the pastry menu and doing our breads, and I think he does a great job at things.

So that's our kitchen! Small but kind, fun and relaxed. A very different experience than what I've had in the US, but I'm enjoying myself tons, and my Italian is improving so much!

A party

Friday night we were supposed to be doing a private event for a group of 80. I got in Friday afternoon as the chef (she doesn’t like to be called chef, but its just easier terminology) was trying to figure out how to make our food stretch because apparently it was instead going to be 100. People complain that Top Chef throws those guys into situations that would never happen in real life--except that they do.

The main issue was that we only had made 85 portions of the bavarese (halfway between a pudding and a panna cotta) that we were serving for dessert--the rest we could just do slightly smaller portions and make it alright. Luckily our regular menu serves a bavarese but in a different flavor; our plan was to just slip some of these in and sauce them up the same as all the others in the hope that nobody would notice the inconsistency. We didn’t have any more mandarins with which to make new pudding anyway, and they were all set in individual cups.

I started my day by prepping a squash that was long and thin, like butternut. When I say long, I mean it--I needed two cutting boards for this thing because it was about the length of my leg. So perhaps “prep” is also not quite the right word. Because of the size, maybe “butcher” would be a better term. Not to mention the fact that the squash was very hard and the knives in the kitchen all a little dull. At one point chef mentioned that my grunts of effort made it sound somewhat like I was participating in a wrestling match (or at least I think that’s what she meant....). It took about an hour and a half to get all the squash peeled, diced, and in the oven. At this point I could hardly grip a knife anymore and had lost all upper body strength.

Starter: Puree of roasted squash soup with black kale

The soup is super simple, with the ingredients being just squash, a bit of potato, oil, butter, almost caramelized onions, broth, salt, and pepper. It has a nice smooth texture even though we don’t pass it through a fine strainer, and the color is that bright orangey-yellow that makes squash soups so wonderfully delicious. The black kale (cavolo nero) we just boiled off quickly and sauteed in a pan. Turns out that at the restaurant they don’t overcook their greens (much).

Primo: Tortelli filled with broccoli and served with a sweet paprika sauce

Tortelli are big tortelloni; they are about the size of a golf ball. These we filled with a broccoli and ricotta puree which I was not a huge fan of. The broccoli was very overpowering and still had the little bits of florets intact, which meant that the filling had a kind of rough texture. We make fresh pasta at the restaurant, but the rough filling sort of hid the nice texture of the dough. The paprika sauce is very neat, a definite improvement on a red pepper coulis, with the sauce being much stronger and richer while missing that taste of bell pepper which I dislike anyway. I still haven’t learned how we do the sauce, but I will for sure.

Secondo: Roulade of chicken stuffed with prosciutto and fig with potato-swiss chard puree

Myself and the sous, Susanna were cutting the chickens while Keiji was doing the stuffing and rolling of the birds. About halfway through the chef walked over and asked Keiji where the prosciutto was. “Prosciutto?” was essentially his answer.

Hence ensued a discussion of how it is hard to stuff something with prosciutto and dried figs when you don’t have the prosciutto, and from here we began a discussion of how to get prosciutto into the dish. We immediately decided we didn’t have time to re-roll and -stuff the birds already done, and we had to be consistent, so the first thing was that we continue on. We then thought of various plans, from cooking the birds with prosciutto on top (no, because then the string would be under the prosciutto), cooking the birds, untying them, and adding prosciutto on top when we went to reheat them (no, we’d lose the crispy skin of the birds and the prosciutto would get tough in the oven, or would fall off when cutting), pushing little pieces of prosciutto into each slice after cutting (no, that’s stupid), or sauteeing up cubed prosciutto and just drizzling it on top as a garnish and pretending that the menu was wrong, not us (that’s what we did). The skin on these birds was deliciously crispy.

Dessert: Bavarese of mandarin orange with Strega sauce.

Strega is some kind of Italian liqueur. I can’t figure out what’s in it, but it makes me think of what mint would be like if it were a spice instead of an herb. Good news was we ended up having enough bavarese because after being told 100 were coming, only 70 showed. This is probably in large part because while they originally were coming at eight or eight thirty, we got a call at half past seven that they wouldn’t arrive until just after nine. At eight thirty we were told just before ten. And they did show up just before ten, but my guess is some of the conventioneers decided it was too late and they were tired and so they went home. This solved some of our problems, but made it a very late night. However, I really enjoyed it and was glad to have so much to do all evening (or at least until 8, when our prep was all ready and we were set up to go with no guests. During this down time, the owner opened up a bottle of prosecco for us, we did an oil tasting, and we discussed why it is that American cooks work so much harder than Italian cooks, but whether or not there was an ensuing difference in quality of cuisine. The jury is still out.)

Coming soon!

Took a little hiatus, but I just started work and am going to be posting all about it soon, so check back in a day or two!!

The land of overcooked green things

The other day in class Patricia was cooking green beans for a dish. She brought one over to me. "Is this done?" I tasted it, and it was just at that spot I love: a little crunchy, but no more raw taste to it. Bright green, it tasted like summer and I helped her pull them out and shock them in an ice bath.

About five minutes later Chef started asking who had done the green beans. I presumed he wanted to praise that person for her excellent timing in making sure that they were cooked to perfection. Apparently not.

"These are still raw! Where's the cooking water so we can put them back in?" Patricia defended our decision by explaining that the green beans were going to get re-heated and thus cooked more when we added them in to the next step. Chef looked at her strangely and told her to cook them for at least another four or five minutes. She smiled, "better undercooked than overcooked, right?"

Well I have come to the realization that in Italy that isn't true, because I have seen so many green things be abused and overcooked until all nutrition, flavor, and color has been leeched out of them. I have admired the Italians' respect for products in every department except the one of things which are green.

I've seen the chefs at school do it over and over, and my host mom does it every time she cooks anything leafy. Now, there is a Tuscan dish called "rebollita", which means "re-boiled", where you take a soup of spinach, kale, chard, celery and some other flavors, eat the soup with bread, soak the bread in the soup overnight as a thickener, and re-heat it the next day as a kind of stew you eat with a fork. I understand that when you reheat those things they will get overcooked, but that's the point in this case. However I don't understand the point of overcooking them on round 1 as well! I've started to term it an official philosophy of Italian cooking. Whenever I see something overcooked (for example we overcooked otoro tuna the other day--so painful to watch!!) I just remind myself of the Green things philosophy. Which doesn't make the slaughter any less painful, but at least lets me categorize it as a cultural difference.

I guess the main point of this post is that cultural relativism is not always a good thing--sometimes they're just wrong!!

In other news, now that I've now learned how to embed videos, I'm going to have fun with its awesomeness for a bit. Check out my sister and her show!

On Learning (and a sidenote on lobsters)

First off, how wonderful is this?



So I guess just like Tony, I’m in a soapbox kind of mood.....

I went to visit Alle Murate yesterday, mostly because I had no clue when I would be starting, what my hours would be, or anything of the sort. Turns out their hours are easy and relaxed; I’ll be working from 4 PM on. I then assumed that it would mean I’d get off work around 2 AM, but they laughed at me: “Most nights you’ll be off at midnight, on occasion around 1.” A kitchen with an eight hour workday? I still haven’t totally wrapped my head around this concept. Though I suppose in exchange I’ll be working six days a week.

I also apologized for my stilted Italian where I don’t understand a ton of things. They laughed at this too. “You’ll be fine. You should have seen the last one.”

The chef herself seemed so relaxed. As you can see from this little vignette, she laughs, she smiles, she’s cheerful in general, and she didn’t seem particularly rushed, despite the fact that I had stopped in on a Saturday (not the best time to ever go into a restaurant if you aren’t a guest, but it was what worked for me). At the end of our conversation she excused herself and took her time reentering the kitchen. This was very strange for me. The executive chef in my head of one of the best restaurants in the city on a Saturday night is not a cheerful, bubbly person. I have a stereotype in my head of someone who is busy, working hard, strict, and not to be trifled with. Generally speaking I think I see chefs as hard-core, tough guys. And it could be that she didn’t want to scare me off before I had even started working. But reflecting on it I don’t think that was the case. I think that she actually is that relaxed and cheerful. When something isn’t going right, maybe then she turns on the heat (no pun intended), but it appears that for the most part she defies the stereotype entirely.

I’ve had a lot of time during class these past few weeks to observe the personalities of everyone in the class, and I’ve been using this as an opportunity to self-reflect about my own behavior (this is so atypical of me--I must really not be doing enough!). For manners and  anonymity’s sake, I’ve flipped around genders on occasion, am splitting up different parts of everyone’s personalities, and it probably won’t matter and you probably don’t care. But I’m doing it anyway. One thing I’m not sure about is why I’m doing this, but I am anyway.

School is of course a place to learn. However, in an environment like culinary school whether or not you’ve learned certain material exhibits itself in a very different manner, as at the end of the lesson there’s a final product which illustrates the skills trying to be honed. Furthermore, you can’t really do that much “studying” at home--what you do in class is your main chance to expose yourself to the material and learn it.

One guy in the class came in with some experience, and as a native Italian he’s obviously had exposure to a lot of the material. It’s a little unclear why he’s doing the program, but it obviously isn’t for mastering the material, since he already feels he’s got a good grip on the material. When he does decide to grace us with his presence you can tell he’s not taking what he does particularly seriously, he isn’t asking questions, and he’s just going through the motions of the class. It’s a lot of money to not focus on the material. Perhaps he’s just doing it for the contacts during the stage, or perhaps the certificate at the end has more significance than I had imagined. And I think I would have less problems with this if he were doing everything correctly. But he’s not. His hubris has gotten in the way, and rather than taking the class at least as a chance to improve his palate, I feel like he’s just passing through.

Another person in the class also has issues with knowing how to learn. With the other person, hubris is clearly the issue blocking him from getting as much out of the class as he can. With this other person, however, it is more stubbornness. He knows that he has lots to learn, and as such is always getting up there to help out and participate in making the food. Doing is the best way to learn. But the issue is that he just puts on the blinders while working. When an instructor tries to correct his technique, he’ll at least not and listen, but almost never change whatever he’s doing. When a classmate mentions something not happening correctly or safely, it is as if nothing has been said. He doesn’t listen, doesn’t hear, and its gotten to the point where even the least experienced classmates often notice mistakes in technique now, because they’ve all progressed and he hasn’t. Whether this is some kind of machismo or stubborn streak I have yet to figure out, but whatever the reason is, everyone in the class is starting to get tired of things being poorly done.

There are also some people who are striving hard to learn. Not only are they trying to get involved in everything which is being made, but they ask a ton of questions and listen to the answers, no matter who answers. Especially in our class, with all the multicultural backgrounds, there is a lot of dispersed knowledge, and so sometimes the instructors aren’t the best people to answer a question because someone comes from a background where that thing is more common. Seeing these people take full advantage of that fact is really great, and it has actually been exciting to watch them improve.

However learning in the class isn’t directly dependent on getting involved. One person in the class has what I would term some kind of stage fright--despite the fact that there are only nine of us plus the instructor, she gets extremely nervous about doing things for the class because of everyone watching. When she does do something, it’s almost always precise and excellently done, but her nerves get in the way of her trying many things that can be messed up. I try to encourage her to step up and take more risks--these aren’t extremely complex dishes where one step wrong will result in a disaster, but even so she hesitates. However she is clearly learning a ton--her notes are detailed and done in such a way that I have little doubt she will be able to recreate all the recipes when she wants to with little ado.

So where do I fit in on this spectrum? I don’t think I’m either of the first two people, where I refuse to learn. I’m definitely learning a lot from the class, though probably not the same things that the people without kitchen experience are learning. More I’m discovering new flavor profiles, different ways to bring depth to dishes, and cooking techniques demonstrated in a new way. However I don’t think I’m learning much about basic cooking techniques like roasting and sautéing, but I also don’t think that that’s where I’m looking for improvement. I definitely sometimes cross the line between student and teacher, especially when there’s trickier knifework to be done or trussing to happen, but for the most part people don’t seem to mind that, and I try not to force knowledge on others unless there’s a safety issue involved. I know that sometimes I get a little academic in my knowledge and start on diatribes, but again I’m trying to be more aware of it.

At the same time, I’m definitely not always getting my hands in every dish. I am perfectly happy sitting on the sidelines on many occasions, and I think that’s in part because the basic production of Italian food in my head is not technically involved such that if you haven’t felt it yourself you can’t learn it. I think it is much more about timing and quality of ingredients, which are both things you can get from watching and tasting almost exactly as effectively.

Or maybe its because of the trajectory of the course. I was definitely more engaged--both mentally and physically--at the beginning, when everything was new. After almost two months we’ve covered all the basics, and I think a lot of what is going on now is theme and variations. However I’m itching to start the stage to see new material, and have had enough of the repetition. I definitely feel myself more mentally checked out now as the novelty of the coursework wears off. But I also feel like there is not much for me to gain by doing, which could mean my pride is just as pronounced as that one guy’s, but I still feel like I am learning and getting something out of the class. I don’t feel like I’m wasting my time, and I suppose that’s enough.

A Smidgen more on gender

So I just wrote up that whole thing on sexism and all that. I have to say, despite the behavior of this chef, he is a really fabulous teacher and cook.

The other day in class we were waiting for a whole bunch of things to cook, and so he took the moment to give us a little speech. During this entire speech, his face lit up, and you could tell that he was really happy to have this relaxed chance to talk to us, especially since he was now feeling comfortable with us. In the speech he described the passion one needs to cook, and the importance of really loving it if you want to do it professionally. As he said this in his fish print baggy pants and green Birkenstock clogs, you could tell that he had this passion and was excited to see it present even in a few of us. He really loves what he does, and I only hope that I can always feel like him.

Gender in the kitchen

Has the whole gender in the kitchen thing been done to death? Probably yes. But I think here I have encountered a bias for the first time, and I think I also have just recently (aka this week) overcome it.

Of our instructors at school, only one makes me think of a real chef with actual restaurant experience. His demeanor and comportment triggered my trained responses, so when he asked me to do something at the beginning I always replied "Yes, Chef." I had to force myself to humanize him in my head so I could behave like all the other people in the class. Now I just reply "Yes." or "Of course." However part of the reason I think I respond to him differently than the other instructors is that he is male. I am well adjusted to working under women in a kitchen, but even so there's something about a man which elicits a different response. Its stupid, I know, and probably has to do in part with my first culinary school experience as well as my first work experience being underneath very classic male chefs, which has created the association in my head. But that isn't the part which was fascinating to overcome.

This guy has been discriminating ever so slightly against the girls in the class. Or I've been projecting such that I think he has been. I had noticed, however, that whenever he needed a job done right--a piece of meat cut in the correct way, a perfect dice, a good saute of a dish--he would call over one of the boys. Now, this is a reasonable thing to do, logically, because of the four boys, three have worked professionally, and the one who hasn't is the most competent of the non-professional cooks. Furthermore, one or two of the girls get a little grossed out at the idea of gutting fish and removing the heads from chickens, so again, in terms of pure statistics, it makes sense to call on the guys.

But I want to behead chickens too! So I started a campaign to insert myself on his list of competent people who do things right. I started choosing tasks very specifically--anytime anything needed to be chopped evenly, I tried to snag the job. I always asked, "can I try?" when he did a demo, I avoided doing dishes when he was in the middle of something serious, and I tried to never work on the dessert. I tried to act more like the guys (who never ever do dishes unless explicitly asked), and by the end of last week or the beginning of this one I felt like he was starting to see me in a different light. Having to act like one of the guys sounds stupid, but it made the most sense as a good way to get around things. And I don't like doing dishes either, so while it was sort of an asshole move towards my female colleagues, it had its advantages.

Finally this week he asked me what I'm planning on doing after the course, to which I replied that I'm going back to the US to work the line in some restaurant somewhere in DC. He paused. "Have you worked in a restaurant before?" I could see exactly what was going through his head, because it had gone through mine so many times when I had friends or classmates say they want to work in a restaurant, be a cook. Do you know what the sacrifice is? Do you understand the physical stress? The mental stress? The misery? The crappy pay? Do you love it enough? Of course, when he asked me, I was able to laugh. I replied that I've worked in a handful of interesting and diverse places during my summers off from school, and that I love the life. I also replied that I knew exactly what he was thinking, and he smiled back.

Yesterday we were deboning chickens to keep the skin intact. He first asked the boys to start the work, but then when he told them to let some other people take over, he handed one of the knives to me. And I have to say I rocked it :)

Defining American Food

So back to food-related posts....last week was just a little too busy for me to focus on that stuff as much, with a total of some 46 hours spent at and around school, plus the visit to I Tatti, plus attempting to buy a bicycle, plus needing to deal with life in general, etc, etc, and so I got a little overwhelmed. But now we're back on track a bit! Just as a warning, I step up on my soapbox here for quite a bit--its long.
***
This is a prototype of a conversation I've had a few times here:

Italian: No wonder you came to Italy to learn about cooking! Goodness knows there's more to food than hot dogs and hamburgers. Don't get me wrong, I like hot dogs and hamburgers a lot, but American food just isn't as good as Italian or French food.
Me: Well there's lots of great food in the States! And American food isn't just hot dogs and hamburgers.
Italian: Well then what is American food?
Me: Uhhh......

I usually get stuck at this point. I've been thinking a lot about the subject in the past few days, trying to develop a pithy explanation of what American food is all about. What are some quintessential American dishes? The South definitely has their own style of cuisine, with a lot of great, rich food, and I think I could explain that well, but that isn't all of American food. Even within regions of the South there are different styles: cajun, creole, tex-mex, etc. But I wouldn't use any of those foods to describe what American food is.

Regional variation is definitely an important part of a national cuisine. Here in Italy everyone makes pasta, but the southerners do it with different shapes, doughs, and sauces than the northerners do. Each region has its own style of what is essentially fruitcake to be eaten at Christmas, and yet while there are these regional variations, there is an underlying base style of food which everyone adheres to.

The only thing I can think of which follows this line of thought in American food is BBQ. Almost every part of the US does barbecue, but everyone does it in a slightly different way. However I don't think that as a style of cooking it defines our national cuisine in the same way that pasta does Italian food (or mustard for the French!).

Of course there is the argument that America is the big melting pot, and that everyone brought their own cuisine in to the country, and so every household does different food. I suppose this is true, but I also think that the country has been around long enough that despite this a national cuisine could emerge. Or perhaps the States are too big for that to happen. Italy is just slightly bigger than Arizona, and ranks 71st in terms of square footage, just behind Oman. Their population is just under 60 million and shrinking, and so obviously we're talking about a very different situation (CIA factbook). If you asked the residents of Arizona how they define the food of their state, you would get a much more specific answer, and while it might lack some of the variety that Italian food has, they only have 6.5 million people, so we'll let that be their excuse.

Yet despite all of this I feel that there is more to American food than what immigrants have brought in from the old country, and that can be found across the entire country. The difficulty is that its a very simple kind of food, and I would define it almost entirely by how it is ingredient-driven. While we are seeing restaurants pop up everywhere describing themselves as serving "New American" (which I think is actually just a derivative of Californian cuisine as passed down by Alice Waters, Thomas Keller, etc), I think this kind of food is also getting onto the dinner table, at least in the households where people are cooking dinner.

My proof is going to be through the food network. While there has been a lot of discussion lately on whether the food network is actually teaching anyone to cook, a quick glance at their website shows the trends that I think define a lot of American cooking. They have a tab for "in season", which features pumpkins, apples, potatoes, and squash; the first tab listed is "quick and easy", which also is focused mostly on fall ingredients, with things like butternut squash mac & cheese and pear and fennel salad. These kinds of dishes don't belong to another culture's cuisine, and even the ones that can be traced elsewhere culturally seem to have little twists that make them somehow American. Using the "quick meals" tab, I selected that I want a beef dinner that can be made in less than 45 minutes, to which it supplied quite a few options. The "lime marinated flank steak with herb salad" has a title which makes me think that it will be based on Mexican or central American flavors, because of the limes, but looking over the ingredient list the marinade also includes balsamic vinegar and olive oil. The herb salad mixes basil, cilantro, parsley, and tarragon. I could find everything for this recipe here except the cilantro and maybe the tarragon. I haven't seen them anywhere since arriving, and the limes would have to be considered an import item because they aren't really common in the cuisine here. So here we go, a dish offered up on TV by some guy named Danny Boome who has a show, and people cook it. But how do you define a cuisine like this?

The best explanation I can come up with is ingredient-driven. While that makes sense in an American context, the only problem with it is that in large parts of the world (here included), food is always ingredient-driven. It is hard to find bad produce here. I haven't seen things around that aren't in season somewhere in the country, and it was considered unusual that the supermarket had to import their lemons from Spain. That's about 500 miles, which is just a little further than Chicago to Nashville. However in the States ingredient-driven means a little more than just in season or local (though they're getting to be more and more synonymous), but it means keeping things simple to let the ingredients shine. Nothing about that steak is particularly flashy, the flavors aren't masking anything, and I imagine all the ingredients balance pretty nicely so nothing is overwhelmed. In Italian cuisine, a ragù is made with so many different ingredients that there is often no way to know all that went in there (think about the beef in dolce e forte I featured a few weeks ago). These are definitely two distinct approaches to food.

I am definitely still not satisfied with this as an explanation, not only because it doesn't quite do justice to American food, but because saying that another cuisine doesn't focus on ingredients to let them shine is also wrong. The bistecca fiorentina (Florentine Steak) that they serve here is nothing more than a whole lot of beef with salt and pepper cooked very briefly on the grill. Straightforward and simple, it is nothing but the one ingredient.

However I feel like as someone who wants to cook so-called "American" food, I do need to be able to define what it is to a certain extent. Fusion and multicultural make it sound like it is just a remix of some other foods, which also happens to imply that it is inferior, which I don't believe it is. I want to find a definition, a way of explaining to people what American food actually consists of. And perhaps if its successful, maybe one day the stereotypical American dish won't be a hot dog!

I got a feelin'...woo hoo

I wanted to start with this which was forwarded to me from Not Always Right:

Female Conference Attendee: “Where’s the cook? This food is amazing, and I want to give my regards to the cook.”
Me: “That’s great to hear – if you wait a moment, I’ll get him out of the back.”
(I return with the cook.)
Me: “This is ****, and he is our head cook.”
Attendee: *looking behind the head cook* “No, seriously – where’s the cook? I need to talk with her.”
Cook: “Ma’am, I am the cook. How can I help you?”
Attendee: *looking askance* “You are NOT the cook. You cannot BE the cook. The food here is so wonderful, so full of love – it MUST be cooked by a woman.”
Cook: “All right, you caught us. The real cook has her day off today. We’ll thank her when she gets back tomorrow.”
Attendee: “Yes, you will.” *muttering as she walks away* “Men who cook…sheesh.”
 ****
 I went out again on Saturday. This time I didn't have to be dressed up by someone else, but took the initiative into my own hands and bought a shiny top.

Again I went over to Fernanda's house for dinner and to get dressed. This time was much less chaotic, as not only did I get there all by myself (I even remembered the street!) but it was apparent that my Italian has improved because I was able to follow a lot more that was happening linguistically speaking. Hooray for tangible improvements!

Just like last time some old guy with a car picked us up (it was a mercedes). The club ended up being really close to my house (for once, something nearby me!) and I was the only one who had ever heard of the street, so I was the one giving directions, ironically. Of course I thought it was a different street than it actually was, which meant that my directions ended up being wrong, but it was okay because this being Italy, when we got to the door it was still closed. Things start very late here.

While waiting for the club to open we ran into the people we were supposed to meet (three men--are we sensing a theme here?). They were very cordial and we started having a great conversation about South Park, Florentine offal sandwiches (yum!), and Obama (everyone wants to talk about Obama here).

Even though we were in Italy, Halloween was still an event. It seemed like guys liked to wear the pointed hats, while women were dressed up mostly in angel and devil costumes, though I saw some other outfits on occasion. However it was definitely a very small majority of people who had dressed up for the event. I considered the fact that I had put on eyeliner costume enough.

At the club we had gotten a table reserved, which meant that we had to pay a lot more. However Fernanda explained that that was what the guys were for. She was very adamant about that part, and even when it came time to leave and they were short a little bit, she made it seem like us ladies were not supposed to contribute. I contributed anyway.

Just like last time, the music started out really fun (the Black Eyed Peas song is really really popular right now, hence the title. Also some song that I have started to identify as the "Ba da dah dah dah" song, because those are the majority of the lyrics, but its such a great melody that everyone sings along, and it suits drunken voices rather well. It may or may not be in Spanish. If I discover what it is, I'll let you know) and as the night went on the melodies went away and the music became very repetitive and rather boring. Its really sort of odd that the music gets so much work every night, though it seems like other people don't mind the degeneration and actually seem to like it. Philistines. In this picture is Maya, Fernanda, and me, in that order. Maya is Fernanda's roommate.

Of the guys we were with, one I hardly talked to, one talked to me too much and too obnoxiously, and one asked me for translations of the lyrics of many songs. The one who was obnoxious was not just obnoxious in speech, but as the night went on he was obnoxious in conduct as well. It is not appropriate to grab someone's head in your hands when dancing, and never should you shove a hand in someone's face. I started faking being tired so that he could stop harassing me. If he wasn't Fernanda's friend I would have been much more rude. Here's your mug shot for anyone who ever finds themselves in a Florentine club. Note the closeness of him shoving into me.

I think these experiences are really anthropological in many ways. While I enjoy going out for about an hour, after that hour I'm really ready to leave as I'm hot, tired, and usually the music has taken a turn for the worse. But its interesting to watch everything happening, and to attempt conversations with people, at least until your throat gets sore from shouting. I'm definitely a prop for the girls when we go out, their american friend to use as a shield from ex boyfriends (as Maya did), or as an excuse to take a ridiculous number of photos of herself (as Fernanda did). But I honestly do enjoy myself, even if I don't enjoy everything about the experience. And this time I got to go home to sleep in my own bed!