When I packed up my apartment this winter and moved into indefinite storage, I was rather ashamed of how filthy my refrigerator had become in one short year of life. As I scrubbed on my hands and knees, I tried to fathom how in the world there could be almost a quarter inch of mud in some of my produce drawers … and then it dawned on me … the veggies themselves were the culprit! Those lovely roots, tubers, and lettuces trucked in from Don Kretschmann's farm brought a handsome fistful of dirt each week as well.
Few of us will ever experience the dirt of whole foods here in the United States. We are more accustomed to produce already cleaned, clipped and sanitized into small packages. Most restaurant cooks never see the crates of spinach leaves still glistening, ribbed and muddy from the field either. Among many restaurants in the United States, "fresh produce" just means the "Sysco" truck comes every day instead of every week. The coolers are stocked with pre-washed bags of mixed greens; peeled and trimmed shallots, naked garlic cloves already stripped from their bulbous home, pre- shredded carrots and cabbage, grape and cherry tomatoes clipped from their stems and packed into convenient little crates.
While there are st
ill restaurants dedicated to receiving raw, whole produce, I have been surprised at how many of these establishments also employ a team of immigrant workers to transform the jungle of crates into a sanitized version of produce most cooks are comfortable with cooking – a small in-house Sysco operation, if you will.
The jab of this little polemic is really aimed at my own self and aspiring culinary professionals like myself. We have embraced this system, likely out of apathy and ignorance more than anything else. Here, in the small back kitchen at Chapter One however, I have fallen in love with the artisanal butchery most produce undergoes on its journey to the plate. Each morning my paring knife and I...
…delicately pull back the damp and dirty layers of skin around crates of baby onions, revealing pearls of virgin white; ….plunge with sacred awe into the flesh of rough, green artichokes digging out their tender hearts; …. rip and rinse wide leaves of spinach, reveling in the sweet crunch of the ribs I've reserved to munch.
These are the tasks many cooks see as entry level obstacles to be hurdled on their path to the "heat." But here, at Chapter One, no cook ever graduates from trimming produce. And it may be my imagination, but I believe it is reflected in the cooking. There is a delicacy and intimacy to each dish that is downright relational!
Few of us will ever experience the dirt of whole foods here in the United States. We are more accustomed to produce already cleaned, clipped and sanitized into small packages. Most restaurant cooks never see the crates of spinach leaves still glistening, ribbed and muddy from the field either. Among many restaurants in the United States, "fresh produce" just means the "Sysco" truck comes every day instead of every week. The coolers are stocked with pre-washed bags of mixed greens; peeled and trimmed shallots, naked garlic cloves already stripped from their bulbous home, pre- shredded carrots and cabbage, grape and cherry tomatoes clipped from their stems and packed into convenient little crates.
While there are st
ill restaurants dedicated to receiving raw, whole produce, I have been surprised at how many of these establishments also employ a team of immigrant workers to transform the jungle of crates into a sanitized version of produce most cooks are comfortable with cooking – a small in-house Sysco operation, if you will.The jab of this little polemic is really aimed at my own self and aspiring culinary professionals like myself. We have embraced this system, likely out of apathy and ignorance more than anything else. Here, in the small back kitchen at Chapter One however, I have fallen in love with the artisanal butchery most produce undergoes on its journey to the plate. Each morning my paring knife and I...
…delicately pull back the damp and dirty layers of skin around crates of baby onions, revealing pearls of virgin white; ….plunge with sacred awe into the flesh of rough, green artichokes digging out their tender hearts; …. rip and rinse wide leaves of spinach, reveling in the sweet crunch of the ribs I've reserved to munch.
These are the tasks many cooks see as entry level obstacles to be hurdled on their path to the "heat." But here, at Chapter One, no cook ever graduates from trimming produce. And it may be my imagination, but I believe it is reflected in the cooking. There is a delicacy and intimacy to each dish that is downright relational!
You are so right... i think its mostly out of ignorance. I mean who here in the US really has that much first hand knowledge of where food comes from and what it goes through....certain industries have almost made sure that we don't. And by now, after years of that, people don't really want to know. Ease and convenience wins out over thought... at first... but it doesn't win. So scrub that dirst with a passion!:)
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