Landlocked Blues

I thought it appropriate to, well, appropriate the title of one of my favorite Bright Eyes' songs to head this post about Nebraska, home of Bright Eyes and Buffalo Bill Cody and, uh, I'm sure a lot of other stuff that I just haven't noticed.

I've driven through Nebraska at least once before, back in 1994 with the late great Kosmo on our pre-Moscow cross-country trek, but I didn't remember a thing about it (I may have driven through as a child as well on one of our summer meanders). I would love to report that I somehow forgot the wonder and splendor that is Nebraska from earlier visit(s), but, well, to steal one of my favorite Stellan Skarsgard lines, "it would taste a lie."

Here is what I know of Nebraska, at least as far east as North Platte, where I am currently holed up at the Super 8:

It is brown and mossy-colored rolling hills and flat tan stretches of grass punctuated by the bright white towers of grain elevators, and the smell of cow and diesel hangs heavy in the air.

Oh, and all but one of the restaurants that included their menu in the North Platte Super 8 Menu Guide serve "freedom fries." Really. I never saw that seriously on a menu, even in 2002/3.

Also, Mi Ranchito, the "fine Mexican dining" establishment next to the Super 8, where I had a "small dinner" selection big enough for a lumberjack, serves a cheesecake burrito. Both horrified and intrigued, in a "can I watch the autopsy?" kind of way, I asked the server what exactly was in the cheesecake burrito. They put cheesecake batter in a flour burrito and then deep fry it.

Let me repeat: cheesecake batter. Flour tortilla. Deep-fried.

I thought immediately of the Scottish woman who once tried to make a dish sound more appetizing to my best friend L. and I by stressing that it was "deep fat fried." Apparently to distinguish it from things fried in broccoli juice or something. I know that, in the name of research of all things pastry or pastry-ish, I should have ordered one, but I just couldn't bring myself to do so. If I have shamed my intended profession, so be it. Forgive me, St. Honore.

A couple other things I saw today as my car struggled, literally groaning, to haul all my stuff up and down the Rockies and then across the prairielands:

• Perhaps my all-time favorite highway signs ever, eastbound on I-70 just past Idaho Springs. After warning of steep grades with the usual truck-on-a-triangle yellow hazard sign, an above-lane sign (a real, legit one, made by the highway department) read: TRUCKERS, DON'T BE FOOLED! STEEP GRADES AND CURVES NEXT SIX MILES. Yes, truckers, beware the road gremlins that will try to trick you into thinking you're on a level straightaway when you're in the middle of the Rocky Mountains! Even better, a few miles later (4.5 miles to be exact) was another official highway sign that warned: TRUCKERS, YOU ARE NOT DOWN YET! STEEP GRADES AND CURVES NEXT 1.5 MILES! Just in case, I guess, the fact that their rig was hurtling down a mountainside wasn't clue enough.
• Also seen, on the back and sides of a tanker near Sedgwick, Colorado, exactly as it appeared: "INEDIBLE TECHNICAL ANIMAL FAT. Naturally." Where do I start with that? What exactly is "technical" animal fat? And why did the makers, or at least transporters, of it feel the need to add "Naturally" in sexy italics? If they're trying to make it sound better to the average puzzled consumer sharing the road with it, perhaps they could start by calling it something less disturbing than "inedible technical animal fat." "Cheescake burrito filling" might do.

Rocked Out

Hi from the Super 8 in Grand Junction, Colorado, where the coffee is muddy but the wifi is free...

I left Las Vegas yesterday at 0500. Only after crossing into Arizona's northwest corner did I realize that I pulled out of Sin City without looking back, not even once.

Despite no love lost for Vegas, I did enjoy working at the hotel, and after checking out and turning in my uniform, my colleagues took me out to a bar where one of my favorite sous chefs taught me to play pool. Loved it!

Once I got on the road, I detoured, if I may use that word (is it even a word?), to Capitol Reef National Park and then Arches National Park. Arches is supposed to be one of the most beautiful NPs in the country. I dunno about that, but it's certainly one of the most popular. It was hella crowded and I realized, about halfway along the Scenic Drive, that I'd had enough of it. It was a combination of clueless tourists milling about and more red rocks. Yes, the arches are neat, but I've seen a lot of red rocks the past few months. I mean, a lot: the aptly-named Red Rocks, Valley of Fire, Cathedral Gorge, Bryce Canyon, Capitol Reef, random roadside formations... I could go on and on.

So I turned back from completing the Scenic Drive and headed here to overnight before setting forth, momentarily, on another detour, this time to The Black Canyon of The Gunnison (yes, that's its official name), a national park that is full of black rocks, as the name suggests, which should be a lovely diversion.

I have photos but can't remember where I put my UBS cable, so they'll have to wait for another post. I do feel the need to mention a couple randoms:

• For those of you who know how much I love those "my special child" bumper stickers, I saw a new low in the genre: My Child Excels At Crawford Preschool Academy. Oh, the horror. Can a preschooler actually "excel" at anything?
• As the ranger was suggesting the best things to see at Arches given my "condition" (more on that in a moment), an old man walked up, interrupted him to demand directions to a place to eat outside the park boundaries, then walked away. I said to the weary-looking ranger "I'll thank you on his behalf" and he said "I'm used to it. Nobody thanks us." Rangers get paid almost nothing and are often caught in the crossfire of political quibbling and budget cuts. Yeah, they get to live in places like Zion, but they have to deal with idiots and rude people all the time. So this is my Earth Day Plea: Be extra super nice to the next ranger you see. Take a moment to thank him or her not just for giving you directions, but also for dealing with the muttonhead who wants to climb a fragile natural formation, leave his or her beer cans in a tree or carve initials into a fossilized mollusk.
• You may have noticed I'm not mentioning any hiking. That's because I broke my toe! Derrrrr. Yes, Thursday night, in a rush to do some packing before going out with the bakery gang, I slammed my foot but good into a doorframe. It's just my little toe on my right foot, so it's not debilitating, but even with my good hiking boots on, it's really not up for much trekking. So I'm... shudder, car-touring.

More soon, including an answer to the question that I have often pondered: what's in Nebraska, anyway?

Iron Chef!

Well, Tin Chef might be a more accurate title. On my final day of externship, I had another Chef’s Table tasting, only this one was for just the chef who runs the tastings and the other students. Chef Olmos was disappointed that he hadn’t been invited, but afterward I told him he didn’t miss anything.

Today’s tasting was, you see, sort of like a nutty version of "Iron Chef." We did four courses, and for each course, we would get two mystery ingredients, to which we could add only two components. We went course by course (instead of plating up everything at the end) and had strict time limits for each, ranging from five minutes for a starter to 15 minutes for the entree. Every student had to do every course, whether we were culinary or baking/pastry.

In addition to being limited by time, we were limited to adding things only from what Chef had set up for us in a small "market" with some fresh produce, extremely basic dairy and spices and oil and vinegars. He also included some rice and barley, uncooked, I think to throw us off and get us to make something that would never be finished in time, cheeky bastard.

Maybe because it was my last day, maybe because Chef Olmos had already given me my evaluation yesterday (I got 46 points out of a possible 50, with very positive comments... the only thing he dinged me on was "going too far" and "taking too many risks" on my tastings. That white chocolate and saffron panna cotta is going to haunt me the rest of my days, isn’t it?), but, for whatever reason, I just didn’t give a patoot. I mean that in a good way. I had a ton of fun and wasn’t stressed at all, and really was not emotionally invested one way or another in my dishes. A few of the other students (including Eunice) got themselves all crazy worked up and stressed, but I just thought it was a hoot.

Here, for better or worse, the results (for the record, I finished all my dishes at least 30 seconds before time, and I never felt rushed, I think because I decided beforehand that I was going to keep things simple and not try to be Julia freakin’ Child or anything):

Starter: we were given only one ingredient for this one, in this case, two heirloom tomatoes, a red and a yellow. We had five minutes from the time we saw our mystery ingredient to the time we were expected to have the finished plate in front of Chef.



I added baby greens for color and texture and some goat cheese seasoned with salt and pepper. The cheese was a lot softer than I thought it would be when I grabbed it, so visually it wasn’t quite as attractive as planned, to put it lightly, but it was tasty. Then again, I like white chocolate and saffron panna cotta, so what do I know?

Soup/Second Starter: we had a choice of what we did for the second course, either another appetizer or a soup. Our components this time were baby eggplant and white turnips, with eight minutes from start (seeing the ingredients for the first time) to finish (putting the finished dish in front of Chef).





I did a brunoise of the veggies, sauteed them with garlic and then added chicken stock (one of the pre-made components available to us) and, at the very end, tossed in a chiffonade of the turnip leaves, which were actually quite tasty. I thought it came out ok, especially since I hate eggplant and therefore never work with it. I really liked the turnip that way, though, and would do it again in the future with some other root veggies like carrots.

Entree: our two components for this were a piece o’ dead cow (the culinary student working next to me identified it as a skirt steak) and fingerling potatoes, with 15 minutes start to finish.

I sliced the fingerlings super-thin and sauteed them with garlic, onion, rosemary, salt and olive oil, figuring that was the fastest and least fussiest way to cook them. Even though the plating is pretty lame, I think the potatoes turned out well, if a bit oily. If you're thinking hey, that's adding more than one component, we could cheat by adding a component of "seasoning" which is how I classified the garlic, onion and rosemary.

The skirt steak was a joke, because I have only ever made one steak in my life, and that was in my culinary class for bakers that I took last year. I rarely, rarely eat red meat (though when I do rarely eat it, I eat it rare!) and I never make it myself. That’s what chefs are for, no? Princess doesn’t like getting her hands bloody.

Of course, I was not the only one who felt this way. Eunice was there and raised quite the stink about being a vegetarian and refusing to touch the meat, blah blah blah. Lord, but she did go on about it.

Anyway, I threw the steak on the grill after seasoning it with salt and pepper, but it took a hella lot longer to cook than I thought, and when I took it off with three minutes to go to do a super-quick "rest," it was still blue-red in the middle. So I sliced off a few pieces and threw them back on the grill. Not my finest moment, but then I am the Pastry Pirate after all, not the Cow Pirate.

Dessert: we had 12 minutes (Chef wanted to give us five, but the four culinary students whined about it, so he relented just to shut them up). Our two components were an Asian pear (my favorite fruit!) and baby kiwis, which I never had before working here and now love, love, love. They are awesome.

I tried the Asian pear and the kiwilettes and found they were both nice and sweet and ripe with good texture, so I made a fruit salad. The two components I added were raspberries for color and a little more flavor diversity, and a sauce that I personally loved (and ate the leftovers of). It was super simple: plain yogurt, pinch of sugar, vanilla beans scraped from a pod and the juice of a couple tablespoonfuls of minced ginger. I thought the mild kick of the ginger and the tangyness of the yogurt, tamed a bit by the vanilla and sugar, went really well with the fruit. It's kind of hard to tell in the photo, but I used a tipless pastry bag to sauce the fruit in a flower shape instead of just splatting it on.

...And Another Thing

I was in a bit of a hurry to get my "Leaving Las Vegas" post up this morning, so I forgot my number one pet peeve about this place (ok, it’s technically tied for number one with the peeves about lousy drivers and speedbumps, but...):

The complete and utter lack of anything resembling a recycling program. At the hotel, at my apartment complex, in stores, anywhere you go, recycling is non-existent. It’s not even like they pretend they’re trying to recycle.

It bugs me especially at the hotel, where, as you might imagine, we generate incredible amounts of packaging trash. Big sturdy boxes that once held danish dough or bags of chocolate chips or cake circles are dumped into the trash by the score. Ditto all the plastic jugs of corn syrup and honey and olive oil. Oh, I could go on, but that won’t change anything. I asked a few of the chefs and sous chefs about it and they just shrugged.

I shudder to think it’s every hotel on the Strip generating that kind of non-recycled packaging "trash" on a daily basis.

Leaving Las Vegas

My friend Bruce asked me a month or so ago if I’d be playing Sheryl Crow’s "Leaving Las Vegas" when I drive out of Sin City. I’m not a particular fan of Crow, whom I accidentally nearly killed once backstage at a Heart concert (another story for another time), and I don’t even have that song in my collection, so the answer was no.



Instead, as I put the Strip and all those damnable California transplant drivers in my rearview mirror, I will be playing the obscure Bryan Ferry delight "This Is Tomorrow Calling." I find that’s the song I’m hearing, sometimes just in my head, whenever I set out on a new expedition. And even though my leaving Las Vegas is technically the end of a chapter, the coming months are full of challenges and unknowns, and will be an even bigger adventure.



If you don’t know the song, I recommend you find a (legal) listen online. I would provide a link here, but I don’t know how and, honestly, I’m too lazy to find out. But I love how it starts out so mellow and twangy and gradually builds to a crazy party with slide guitar and horns and more horns and back-up singers and a cowbell or two. I also, of course, love the sentiment: "This is tomorrow calling/what have I to lose?"



In any case, as I leave Las Vegas with Bryan Ferry instead of Sheryl Crow (a much better deal as I see it), I find I’m really excited. I can’t wait to see my dog Wiley again (he has been living in pampered luxury with Dr. Virago while I’ve been in Vegas). I can’t wait to finally, finally! see the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park in Colorado (I’m stopping on my way back home, even though it’s a day-long detour, because I’ve been obsessed with seeing it for nigh on a decade, ever since I saw a photo of it in National Geographic). And I’m looking forward to the extra-challenging eight months of classes back at cookin’ school that await me.



I have no regrets about coming out here for my 18-week externship, which itself has exceeded my expectations and been a great, if challenging, experience. But I also have no regrets about leaving Las Vegas. If I never set foot in this city again, that will be fine. I didn’t hate it, but I know it’s somewhere I could never live for more than, well, 18 weeks.



As I get ready to hit the road eastward, may I present:



Things I’ll Miss About Vegas



The Weather. While I didn’t like Vegas weather in general (see below), I will admit, after 12 consecutive winters in Moscow, upstate New York or Wisconsin, it was kinda nice not to have to touch the snow shovel, navigate icy sidewalks or watch cars slide haplessly across three snowy lanes of traffic towards me.



The Great Kafka Spirit. That’s what I called the mysterious black cat that would sit in the tree outside my kitchen window and stare at me (see photo). I named it the GKS after my friend J’s dearly departed, slightly psycho cat Kafka, and generally I didn’t mind its interest in me. Except for the early, early mornings when I’d be brewing coffee in pre-dawn darkness to get myself ready for work and GKS would scare the bejesus out of me by suddenly appearing as two yellow eyes in the window, right beside my espresso maker, with a haunting meeooowwww.

Sunflower Market. I plan on making monthly trips to the Trader Joe’s in Connecticut once I get back to school, so I won’t miss the TJ’s here... but I will miss the homey natural foods supermarket that is Sunflower, especially its great produce deals. It reminded me of the organic grocery store where I worked (and shopped) while living in Wisconsin. Plus, my apologies to people who work there, but after reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma and learning the ugly truth of Whole Foods’ embrace of industrial organic agriculture (what an oxymoron!), I can’t shop at Whole Foods anymore. And where else am I going to get my bulk red quinoa? Thank goodness for Sunflower Market. I’m sure they buy from people who torture their cows and chickens, too, but at least they have more humanely-raised food products without the distasteful Whole Foods mark-up and smug attitude.

Ali Baba. The best Lebanese food I’ve ever had (that’s saying something, too!) and far enough from the Strip that my visits there were tourist-free.

Most of my co-workers. Sure, there was the occasional bad apple, but I met a lot of people I really enjoyed working with at the hotel, from Boy Wonder the amazing young pastry chef to the Filipino master chocolatiers in the bakeshop who managed to create gorgeous showpieces while singing classic rock and doing a nonstop, raunchy comedy routine. And, but of course, I will miss Chef Lumiere.

The Stuff. Pure and simple, I know I will never again have access to so many different ingredients and high-tech equipment and gadgets. Even at school, the chefs have budgets. Here? I’m sure there’s a budget somewhere for the bakeshop, but this is Vegas, baby. You want one piece of a fruit that’s out of season? Sure! We’ll order a case for you from Chile or Macau or Pluto. Use what you need and don’t worry about the rest.

The Surroundings. As much as I disliked the city itself, I loved being able to go 15 or 20 miles out of town and suddenly be in empty, desolately beautiful wilderness. I’ll miss day trips to Red Rock and Lake Mead, and weekend trips to Cathedral Gorge, Zion, Great Basin and all the other wonderful national and state parks within a day’s drive.

The Speed Limit. Speaking as someone who is still deeply bitter about a speeding ticket she received in 1992 for driving 41 miles per hour in a 40 mph zone, I will miss not Vegas driving itself (oh please Lord, never again), but the highway drives, where 70 mph is the legal limit and the cops don’t really notice you unless you’re 20 or 30 miles over it. I also love the straight, flat, empty roads where, aside from the occasional jackrabbit with a deathwish, you don’t need to worry about hitting something if you’re trying to break the sound barrier.

Things I So Won’t Miss About Vegas

The Weather. Yes, I know I’m leaving before it gets "really" hot, but aside from the occasional supercool windstorm, I’ve been less than impressed with the sameness of the Vegas climate – and with locals whining about it being too cold or too hot even though there’s about a three-degree range of difference.

The Dry Desert Air. I will not miss my biweekly nose bleed or the cracks and canyons carved into my desiccated digits, or the haystack that is my hair despite constant application of moisturizers and conditioners.

The Service Industry Attitude. I once worked with a guy named Mark who was boisterous and extroverted among his co-workers but, whenever we had to spend time with people from another department, he became aloof and exceedingly cranky. I asked him about it once and he said "I don’t get paid enough to be friendly." I thought of his comment often here in Vegas where, when people are on the clock and have the chance of hustling a tip off you, they are so happy to see you and so polite and just so thrilled that you have chosen to be in their presence. Off the clock, they’ll let the door slam in your face or cut you off in the employee parking lot. I can understand the strain of being perky for eight or ten hours at a stretch, but common courtesy requires very little effort.

The Driving. Oh, Sweet Baby Jesus. Not since I lived in Moscow have I witnessed such an inattentive, poorly-trained, clueless and angry driving populace. At least in Moscow, where an estimated 70% of the adult population is alcoholic (when I lived there, anyway), they have the excuse of being drunk behind the wheel. In Vegas, while I’m sure a chunk of the population is on meth or the chronic or coke or Diet Coke or whatever, I don’t think the numbers are that high (no pun intended). There’s no excuse for the reckless and often downright zany driving habits of this city. When I’ve mentioned this to co-workers, a few have said "oh, it’s so much better here than where I’m from," prompting me to ask where they’re from.

The answer is invariably L.A.

I rest my case.

California Transplant Drivers. Yes, I’m singling out those Golden State drivers because I believe they, more than meth or cell phones, are the root of driving evil in Vegas. I always notice license plates, and from my earliest days here, I saw Cali plates nine times out of ten on the cars of the people turning right from the left lane across four other lanes, the people backing up in the middle lane of the freeway and then cutting across traffic to get to the exit ramp, the people merrily speeding the wrong way on a one-way road, usually with a cell phone in one hand and a cigarette in the other, the people applying make-up while driving 20 miles over the speed limit, hogging two lanes of traffic and, just yesterday, the guy who slammed on his horn when I slowed down in a 10 mph zone to let pedestrians in the pedestrian crosswalk in front of me go by. After honking, he swerved around me and cut me off, nearly mowing down three of the pedestrians in the process, then continued down the street at a 50 mph clip... all of about 200 feet, so he could come to a screeching halt at a red light. It wasn’t the red of the light that stopped him (Californians seem to view red as an attractive accent color for home decor and nothing more). It was the bus and truck stopped in the lanes ahead, blocking his way, the inconsiderate bastards!

Speed Bumps. Or, as I like to call them, The Devil’s Road Warts. Las Vegas planners and parking lot designers seem to think that the more speed bumps they stick everywhere, the better the drivers will be. I believe the opposite is true. I think even decent drivers (such as, oh, say, myself) become so enraged by the bumps that we turn from defensive drivers into offensive drivers hell-bent on getting home and away from the goddamn bumps and Californian drivers as fast as possible. I wouldn’t mind them so much if they were all carefully made and maintained bumps, but too many I’ve encountered have been more like speed curbs. And does one lane in a parking lot really need six speed bumps when everyone is cutting across the open spaces to avoid them anyway?

Road Food

I just made one of my favorite road snacks as I get ready to leave town, and thought I’d share the recipe, such as it is. You can add a drizzle of olive oil in the tossing stage, but personally I like them oil-free because I find the steering wheel gets greasy if I’m eating them when driving.

I also like the drier, crispier texture of the oil-free variety, though I’ll admit the "mouthfeel" of the oiled ones is superior. In any case, these are a great and much healthier substitute for peanuts or potato chips.

Roasted Garbanzos

1. Preheat oven to 400F.

2. Open a can of garbanzo beans, aka chickpeas, and drain in a colander or mesh strainer, tossing a bit. I often add either finely chopped rosemary or curry power to taste, though I also like them plain or with just a sprinkle of sea salt. If you’re adding oil, now’s the time to do it, while tossing. If you add the oil once they’re in the pan, they get too greasy.

3. Take a non-stick sheet pan or one covered with parchment paper, spread drained beans in a single layer.

4. Put in oven. Every ten minutes or so, give the pan a shake. If you notice any beans sticking, free them with a spatula. Rotate pan as necessary. The beans usually take about half an hour or a little more, depending on your oven and how dark you like them. Personally, I like them golden with some darker golden-brown spots, but just keep tasting one or two as you check them until they’re a consistency you like. The longer they’re in the oven, the drier and crispier they get.

5. Cool and store at room temperature. I can’t tell you how long they’ll last, though, because I usually wind up eating them all within a couple hours.

Enjoy!

Zut Alors!

After working the 2-10pm shift for the past two weeks, including last night, I had to switch this morning to 8am-4pm. I managed to get to work without caffeine, too. Technically I'm working in the office, learning What Chefs Do All Day (lots of paperwork, interrupted by tension-filled meetings and opportunities to yell at underlings), though I spent most of the morning plating cakes for a monstrous convention of 16,000 people that starts in a couple days.

The highlight of the day, without question, was nearly being killed by Chef Lumiere.

Okay, so there's a touch of hyperbole in that, since I didn't actually fall out of the golf cart he was driving when he swerved to avoid the UPS truck, but still.

He decided to take me to the daily meeting he has with various catering managers and another chef, during which they review all the convention and party orders. The meeting itself was interesting and helpful to me -- helpful because it confirmed that, while I might work in one right after graduation, I do not want a career in hotels. Too many meetings populated by too many cranky people. The other chef there, for example, muttered under his breath much of the time and prefaced every comment with a statement such as "Even though I'm completely disgusted with this group," or "I'm too frustrated to even ask why, but..."

Ok, we get it.

Chef Lumiere was his jolly Lumiere self, however, and noted later "I come with my smile, and I go with my smile, eh?"

While we're on the topic of coming and going...

Chef decided we should take the electric golf cart to and from the meeting, which was at the opposite end of the property. My job was to hold his clipboards and pray to baby Jesus that I not get killed four days before the end of my externship. He makes me look like a pokey driver. We hurtled through the corridors, swerving around forklift drivers and bumping down ramps. A woman who knew him (funny how Chef seems to know all the ladies) shouted "be careful with him!" to me, while a French baker we both know shouted either encouragement or warning as we rocketed past.

"Why people say I am not a good driver, because I am French?" Chef pondered as we careened past a pallet of wine bottles. "You know, in France, we have very narrow streets. More narrow than this, eh?"

"Yes, Chef."

"I am a very good driver."

"Uh, yes, Chef."

When we got back from the meeting, miraculously whole, he asked if I was ready for my presentation tomorrow. What presentation, I asked. The tasting for me and Chef Olmos, but of course.

Uh....

I told him I thought, since all of them were there on Saturday, that that had been my final tasting.

"Ah, okay, as you like," he said, feigning disappointment.

I couldn't resist.

"I could make more white chocolate and saffron panna cotta, if you want," I offered.

I think Chef actually blanched. "No! Not that again!"