paul o' vendange

I will have to chime in on this one. I don't think one could easily lump an entire student body into any one "sort;" I think you would find that even those one would want to judge as "dilettantes" may, if one dug deeper, defy the obvious judgment and reveal a more abiding reason for attending school. I can tell that in my case, at the crest of going to FCI, I don't fit easily in any mold; and I am not unique. I am middle class, and will be going into considerable debt to enter, at 41, into a profession where the financial remuneration is woefully less than I make now. I have a wife and child. I have little professional experience in a kitchen. I also know that I have had an unabated passion for French cooking since I was about 12, when I first worked my way cover to cover through La Technique. Were I single, and 16, and able to live again, I might have bagged Berkeley and apprenticed the years in France. But FCI will provide an opportunity to do something workable at this stage of life which I would not otherwise have. I know, too, that the same mileu will likely exist at FCI as existed at Berkeley. Those who are there only to satisfy anything but the sound of their own, true voice, will get out of it exactly what they put in, and no one will be "dragged down" by their lassitude. I know of few teachers who are charmed by indolence, self-indulgence, or petulance. I know many who respond to sincerity. What I am centrally saying is that it seems to me the proof is in one's ability, to borrow from Chef Pepin's apt description in his Memoirs, to "kick ass." The heat of the kitchen, whether in school or on the line, is the same for everyone, and noone gives a damn where you came from - can you work? Everything else is meaningless, as is discussion (or critiques) about people's motivation for wanting to attend school.

When I've run into a consistency problem (but like the taste as is - don't want to concentrate flavors more than they are by further reduction), I go along with Chef Pepin's suggestion of potato starch. It's very cheap, a pure starch (much like arrowroot, thickens beautifully without the glossiness/slickness of corn starch). Available in kosher sections of grocery stores.

Clean out the fridge night. Chicken liver crostini with bacon, madeira and shiitake mushrooms. Sauteed chicken breasts with tarragon/leftover rabbit sauce (from last night); Bread, brie and gruyere. asparagus Pommes anna. The rest ( ) of the Chateau de Pez. More of the lavender-peach sorbet.

Agreed. My wife and I were blessed for a time to live in Wisconsin, on 60 acres, amid oak, corn and soybeans. The deer there were beyond belief. Contrasted with the poor animals who live in the U.P. of Michigan (where my wife's family hails from and where we often go), many of the deer live on scrub pine to survive the long winter. Not always by any stretch, but at times kind of like eating a "Rack du Pine Sol." Your risotto sounds great.

Chad - Did you hunt the venison?

I could be wrong, but I believe all of Bell's beers are bottle conditioned. I don't think there's a filter in the plant. I agree pasteurization leads to crap beer, but can't go so far as to say that filtration always does. Many bottle conditioned beers are, to my taste, lousy with autolysis from improper cellaring, and the taste of rotten yeast guts doesn't add up to a great beer. And with a clean Quality Control SOP, a brewery can filter without pasteurization, yielding clean beer without cooking it. Goose Island for one, where I worked.

An update on dinner. The "rack of rabbit," and rabbit loin roulade with bacon, caramelized fennel, chanterelles, rabbit sauce, and fennel oil. I wanted both the mushrooms and the fennel in the dish, more for an aesthetic consideration of the "field" and rabbit than for known culinary affinity. I sauteed the thin fennel slices to caramelization, and slightly crispy, and the marriage with the sauce, fennel oil and chanterelles worked beautifully. The roulade itself was so-so. If I do it again I will try another type of bacon (or maybe pancetta, or prosciutto). The loin had a chewy toughness to it; somewhat perplexed as to why (it was done to temp); next time I will bag using the flank "flap" to cover the loin, as I don't think it is needed and only adds to the toughness. The "rack of rabbit" a la FL is comically tiny, a bite, but delicious. I can see somehow using the rack in an amuse of some sort, although it is meat. The wines were very nice. The Chateau de Pez is a great buy at $24, and coming as a St. Estephe Medoc 1996, I was eager to try. It worked well with the rabbit, as well as with a course of bread and black truffle-oiled brie (the wine extended the truffle oil beautifully - a sublimation on the palate which really brings home the idea of "black earth" with the St. Estephe terroir and black truffle...). The Clos L'Abeilley was similarly good - more of a "rot" component (as distinct from simple sweetness) from the vine than I have had in other sauternes, a good acid balance, and very enjoyable with the peach-lavender sorbet, although normally I would just drink the sauternes as dessert.

This is off thread, and if others would prefer, I can carry this on privately. Please let me know. For the moment: At the outset, let me admit my prejudice in this area - I was trained as a Shakespearean actor at Shakespeare & Company, in Massachusetts (Tina Packer, Artistic Director, formerly of the Royal Shakespeare Company). What follows is largely informed by my training there, to include that of Kristin Linklater, their Director of Voice. Firstly. Katherine, to the extent that Shakespeare was pure entertainment for the masses, and that it was not meant to be overacted by actors with a special feel for the text, I think we are in agreement. Shakespearean English was Elizabethan English, simply the everyday language of the time. The problem is, language itself was a different experience then that it is now. Language has largely become a utility, and largely one of commerce (as food has become the brief break in between things that matter - there, back to thread!). It is no longer the principal means we express our true selves. Witness two guys hashing out a business deal at lunch. Listen and literally watch the throat tighten, because regardless of what words are used, god forbid the "true" self is revealed, it is the antithesis of business negotiation; and were the voice free, open and responsive, god knows what would come roiling up from below. So, when words like: 'tis now the very witching hour of night, when churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out contagion to this world' were spoken, felt, and made sense of, by actors who saw language as "stuff," a physical link from the deepest self to the gods (I am thinking of Irving, here), throughout the Globe, there was a kinetic rush of "got it" (and "dive for cover, here comes Satan!") in the stands. "Yawn" is made sense of differently than "open," and hell is a physical, sensual thing - it literally breathes, it moves, it infects. The same thing happened at Epidaurus, from what we can tell. There, a primitive amplication system of amphorae with varying levels of water were placed throughout the stands, to resonate with, and amplify the actor's voices. At the heart of it is vibration, and not some new age concept of it, but literally a physical reality of sound waves bouncing through the actors out to the stands, which were felt, in a very real, kinetic sense. My lament for most of American Shakespeare is that it therefore falls into 2 camps. The "method" camp, which says screw the language, screw the verse, it must be "felt." Watching it, I feel I am watching a sea of emotion (not mine, the actor's), but don't know what the hell they are saying, because they themselves haven't made sense of the word (these are largely the "motorcycle and Gatsby" concepts I have seen); and The "sacred" camp, which fears language so much that it treats the verse as sacrosanct unto itself, an academic exercise, a pristine, wrathful idol, and definitely foreign. I feel then like I am watching talking heads, and do not feel anything (nor do the actors) (these are the hopelessly overwhelmed stiffs worshipping some dead English guy with a bad 'do - maybe the "overactors" you were speaking of). On the other hand, when the language is trusted (and the cadence of the verse honored), the physical instrument is open, and all engines are flying, then I witness art. 100%, shakespearean verse, spoken as such; and 100% alive, even, in Peter Brooks' sense, dangerous. Secondly, I can't agree that Shakespearean verse was a normal manner of expression, any more than opera is everyday Italian. Verse matters. It means something else is going on besides "everyday speech," even as an aria means more is going on than singing a jingle. Stanislavsky, the Founder of the Moscow Art Theatre, said it himself when he said that good Opera happens when the player sees the song as the titanic "next step," demanding that the player can no longer rest with words but must sail with song. In other words, the size demands an aria. Shakespearean verse should be approached similarly. Bad opera is bad acting is bad art - disconnected, forced, false. The problem for the Shakespearean actor, as for the Opera performer, is to fill the size the poetry or aria demands, and make it clear on all levels - intellectually, emotionally, I would say corporally (I mean that literally - how to open up the body such that the whole "corpus" becomes an instrument of the "voice," and vibrations are not limited to the larynx but the whole being literally "springs" sound), even spiritually, all with ease and without forcing. To do this, the words have to move beyond an intellectual understanding of the head to a kinetic experience of the whole body, framed and made sense of by the actor's intelligence. I am not talking, too, only about the "highborn" speeches in Shakespeare. The counterpoint thoughout the man's text of good, guttural, anglo saxon (think "f**k") with highborn Norman ("Ascension") meant all inhabited this universe. I think of Dame Judi Dench, playing the lowliest of wenches in Branagh's Henry V. Lamenting the death of Falstaff, her lifelong friend, she describes the touch of cold as it moved along the old, broken man's body. Her performance was brilliant because it was simple, because it was one with her body and mind - "cold," and the "O" in cold, rested in her, the feeling of the word in her body shook her to the core, and therefore moved me in understanding. Or the actor playing Pistol, erstwhile friend of Henry, and, by the war's end, disgusted with life, his role in it, himself - he will return to his former profession, a cutpurse. His verse describes the "quick hand," and "there [England] I'll steal." The actor seized on "quick," and the word itself became not a bludgeon but a scalpel, a short, sharp blade - it percolated out his mouth like this, because it was felt like this. Imagine the same thing if the word were "fast." "qk" cuts the throat more keenly. Again, sorry for the length. I hope I haven't offended with this use of bandwidth and I will gladly continue privately if anyone wishes. Oh, and here's my suggestion. Growing up, no American kid should ever be required to read Shakespeare. Every American kid should be required to speak it.

I will just throw this in. Likely the answer is no (esp. in light of slow braising/tight lids), but is it possible we don't want all the volatiles to remain in our cooking? I can only infer from brewing...where some compounds are not desired, and so some evaporation is desired (largely to rid of sulfurous, and vegetal compounds). I can't think of where this would apply in cooking, and obviously our job is largely to extract and preserve, not drive off, flavor and aroma. But I wonder if there is something here? Merely a point of thought. Food chemists?

Went to Evanston Farmer's market. Got among other things, fennel, chanterelles, purslane, lavender, lettuces. Have rabbit from Paulina Market. Think I will make tonight (for tomorrow night): fennel oil chicken stock "quick" rabbit sauce a la FL and tomorrow will make: braised rabbit leg, roasted rabbit saddle roulade with smoked bacon; plate with rabbit sauce, chanterelles, both cuts of rabbit; top with paper-thin (mandoline-sliced), caramelized fennel, and ringed with fennel oil. Will use the lavender to make a peach-lavender sorbet; and will use the purslane in a starter salad of some kind. Will start with a Gruner Veltliner; move on to one of 2 medocs: Chateau de Pez/St. Estephe 1996 or L'Ermitage Chasse Spleen/Moulis 1998; and a sauternes I know nothing about, Clos L'Abeilley. Edit: Watching my little boy dip his apple slices into his prune juice for dinner, I think I'll take his cue, reserve the rabbit legs to make a terrine, and serve with a prune compote, and caramelized apples.

Bux, and John, thank you, the both of you. I really appreciate your comments. I remember reading somewhere that "inside the heart of every Frenchman beats a peasant," but seems this is quickly becoming memory. You have both given much to think about.

Great! Shall we say we have a quorum and set it? 7/21, 7:00?

We have one on board! Do I hear 2? 2, ladies and gentlemen?

OK, folks, how does Monday night, 7/21, 7:00 pm sound?

I agree wholeheartedly, that things must necessarily evolve. I do not agree that necessarily means the outright abandonment or dissipation, for the most part, of classical technique. I will give an analogy. I am a trained martial artist, having lived as a direct disciple of an Aikido Master (I was an "uchi-deshi", literally "inside" student - a live-in, full time student). The view in that world is to soak up everything the master imparts, by getting onself out of the way, as this is the only way to then create something of real worth, something truly learned, to make an original creation of the "true self." In other words, learn classical technique, then use it to create something truly original. It is not out of homage to "dead ancestors" that I use, and seek to perfect, classical technique; it is because I think that within that world there is an endless, constantly deepening culinary experience. I would rather perfect my classical technique than seek to improve on it by tossing it out. Another analogy. Tired of "dead ancestors," American Shakespeare has relegated itself to "modernizing" the verse, and throwing in "conceptual art" (think motorcyles for horses, Great Gatsby or Capone Gangland milieu for warring states) in an attempt to make it "understandable" to modern audiences. I think we have got it wrong. American Audiences don't "get" Shakespeare because American actors are afraid of text, how to own it, how to make it a corporal, sensual experience, and not a dead uttering of a dead Englishmen. The problem is not the verse, or its "classicism," rather what we do with it. We don't truly, wholly own it. In other words, I think we are looking in the wrong place when we look to abandon classical technique without first seeking to perfect and make it our own. I believe there is enough there to keep us occupied for a long, long time. Andre Soltner said something to the effect of "there is no new food," by which I take him to mean we are not dealing with molecular reconstruction here, we are talking an essentially finite substance, nourishment (forgive me, if I have misquoted him, I saw it somewhere).

If memory serves, Bocuse also uses a bit of water. See his Regional Cooking. I can't think of why.

Bux - thank you. I freely admit my naivete, as I have never spent time in France (though I have been fluent, more or less, since 12-13, and had a Fleur de Lis hanging above my nightstand - j'ai seulement le sang, et une certaine sensibilite, Francais). My journeys are therefore vicarious ones, through Root, and others (like you and John). But at the heart of it for me is that I would hope the marriage, or re-marriage, of good food and traditional food would be the norm. So, two you two, what do you think would be a solution, if indeed you are having to research harder?

If 7/14 is amenable, how's 7:00 pm? (if this date is bad, is this time good for people?)

Everybody, how does Monday night, July 14th, sound? Maggie, I played Brick, once. Hopleaf should provide the click.

Bushey, I am aware of the Budvar in England (and of the recent court decision which stripped them of the right to carry the name here, forcing the "czechvar" name - although the name in the U.S. goes back to a 1939 trade agreement in the U.S. - see: http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewForeignBureaus....R20030304c.html I am speaking of Budweiser, the AB company. It is sold side by side with Budvar, and other lagers, and Carlsberg-Tetley is a giant among many, sadly dying, independent ale breweries. The broader thing I speak of is that lagers of any ilk (and as regards A.B's rice-water, I use the term "lager" very loosely) are overcoming ales as the national beer of choice in England. Whereas in 1980, Ale and Stout accounted for 70% of total beer consumption, and lager 30%, the situation is now largely reversed (lager, 60%, ale/stout 40%). And the trend is continuing. Source: http://www.canmakers.co.uk/industry/can_ma...makers_report_3 So, back to the thread, John, very interesting, and thank you for the book cites. I hadn't thought of the "prosperity" phenomenon.

I'm heartened by what John writes, and saddened by what Bux writes, respecting Waverly Root. But then, I wonder if I myself was conjuring up something which couldn't possibly be; Root's writing, spinning a dream, but bespeaking another, now lost, time? If bistros exist which continue to do justice to authentic cuisine bourgeois, then maybe we are simply witnessing a necessary cycle - the waning of haute cuisine (if indeed it is), does it merely herald the birth of something new, more profound, just as regional fare, once passe, found its rightful place again over the course of the last century?

Fritz - Because you can drink 15 stouts on tap, from the source. Larry Bell knows his dark ales! Edit: If you happen to swing by the brewery, please say hi to Alec Mull (the head brewer) for me, will you? Oh, guajolote, just saw you asked how old my little guy is - born 12/12/2000, and, I'm sure like you, I am blown away by how much he knows already...likes to cook with dad, and throw his dad all over the futon (I am a former Aikido instructor - he learned early ). Sounds like your "damager" and my "crusher" could do some serious mayhem together!

Actually, nothing sacred to me about the week of the 7th - anyone have a problem with the following week?

FWIW, if Hopleaf isn't serving yet, Zaky's just opened, same (nice) family that owns Buy Low Liquors. I may be prejudiced, as I have known Elias and his family for years. Middle Eastern, really liked their baba ganoush the other night when we went in... Another option.

As promised on da' other thread, a thread about a planned trip to Hopleaf. How does week of 7/7 look? My wife and I play switch hit on watching our wee lad (she works at Spago, nights), but M, W, and sometimes Thursdays are good for us; but if these are bad for everyone else, will try to make arrangements... What say ye?