Infrequency and Death
Forgive me, but the Beaujolais nouveau is in season now and I'm ripping into a bottle ... drunken posting always has its dangers.Since I have figured out the direction I want to go in the restaurant biz, I've found less and less need to post in this blog. In a way, this blog was a tool for me to sort out the direction I was going in the restaurant business, and I appreciate all of you that came along for the journey, but now, I will be posting even more infrequently, only when something really important or interesting strikes me. You can expect some really interesting stuff at the beginning of March when I go to NYC for a restaurant trade show and check out some restaurants, but once I find that job in NYC, I think it will spell the death of the blog. Which is fine and natural.
Speaking of death. In a recent episode of my favorite podcasts, The Restaurant Guys, they talked about heritage turkeys and it got me to thinking that I want to reconnect with the meat that I eat in a more visceral way. I have killed fish and lobster to eat, but I've never really taken the life of a mammal. I understand where my meat comes from, but I want to develop that greater that comes from the understanding of killing an animal, butchering it, cooking it and eating it. I keep on coming back to the French Laundry cookbook where Keller talks about killing rabbits ... with that in mind, I am going to try to find a rabbit farm in the next month or so and go out and actually kill a cute little bunny to eat.
I think the reason that I chose the rabbit is that it's cheap and, more importantly, its cute. Killing a pig, deer or cow I think, though difficult, could be easy, or rather, easier to do than to kill a comparatively cute animal. We keep bunnies as pets. Perfect for making fricassee.
Sometimes, I'm such an asshole. But I eat well.
1 Comments:
Marty,
This isn't just a post. Its a conversation. Mostly held between you, your quasi-urban NW apartment and a young revitalizing bottle of beaujolais. But, its more than that. You see Marty, I haven't the attention span to create or maintain one of these blog sights, but somehow I do have the ability to read them. This is part of our profession and I am as competitive as the rest of 'em. I want to read about what people are doing, amateurs and professionals alike. This is what I find. You are a line-cook. I am a line-cook. You know how it goes. We show up to work eager and ready. We pound. We place heart through hand through knife through product. We strive through every second to deliver through ourselves what it is we are feeling on the inside. And then it happens. Nothing. Nothing happens. We find ourselves beat and ragged out feeling like the only thing that we accomplished was to help contribute to a premature death or arthritis at best. So. This all being said, my point is this. You are the voice of us all. I mean, fuck, lets face it, line-cooks don't blog, we don't creatively vent our daily hardships to the public. They don't talk about us in fancy culinary magazines nor do any of us have a stupid little column. Were too tired too depressed to hung-over too fucking overwhelmed by the fact that we haven't done our laundry in the last month. Yes, we drink, smoke, do coke, get in fights, make lousy love, and of course stink at the end of each night. But Marty, you write about this. You pull no punches, and after looking at all the food blogs out there with there cute little porn pictures of macaroons, petit fours, T.K recreations, etc. you bring the truth to the forefront. The exhaustion, the begrudged passion, the expression of future plans, of a way out and up. This is priceless. Your blog is priceless, even if it is only read by me and a few other slugs out there that are too fucking lazy to comment. You mentioned the Dali Lama expressing the benefits of doing things for others rather than just the self. We'll you already have...righ here. So, even if you move on and conquer the N.Y. sceen you are always going to have that edge that makes Marty, Marty. And even when involved with $4.5 million restaurant plans you will be pissed off. Because you are a fighter and this business is for fighters no matter what department. Every step of the way we are at battle with ourselves and the rest of the rats in this business. Keep the blog alive Marty, even if you only post 1 time a year. In an industry filled with smokescreens and lies and the greatest false romantic imagery out there your painting a clear picture of one man and his small yet meaningful life as a cook and a human being. Thanks Marty.
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