Aidan Brooks: Trainee Chef: May 2009

Sunday, 31 May 2009

Deconstructing Bourdain

Back in 2006, before his highly-publicised bust-up with the Food Network, my favourite cook-scribbler Anthony Bourdain worked with the communications organisation on a TV production resulting in the multi-media publication Decoding Ferran Adrià. The other day I came across this ten-minute clip on YouTube, edited and uploaded by skinnylatte, aka. Adrianna, from Singapore. If you haven't already seen it, watch it (a) to learn something about Adrià, (b) to learn even more about Bourdain, (c) for the sheer delight of experiencing a soupçon of El Bulli.

Just bear in mind before you start that the name Anthony Bourdain is usually associated with such biting adjectives as "acerbic", "cynical" and "belligerent"... and that "lost for words" is not a phrase normally applied to one of the culinary world's most outspoken representatives. Note the difference between the poetic eloquence of Bourdain's post-production voice-over and his real-time struggle to find adequate words to describe his journey through The El Bulli Experience. Pull out a handkerchief and enjoy!

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Sunday, 24 May 2009

Part Of The Team

Last week I made an excuse for not having written about my experiences at Restaurante Ferrero since I moved here to València in early May to start a three-month stage. Well now I can reveal all. In all fairness I did give a hint when I said "things have been moving so fast since I arrived...", but in truth that was something of an understatement. I actually found myself in the position of Acting Chef de Partie for the Starters section within two days of starting in the kitchen. It was a position of responsibility I'd come here to achieve, but when I drove up the hill from Bocairent that first morning I hadn't imagined in my wildest dreams it might happen just forty-eight hours later.

But that wasn't the end of matters. It soon became obvious that other moves and changes were in progress as Head Chef Paco shaped his new kitchen for the exciting challenges ahead. If being put in charge of a section in my first week came as a surprise, what was to happen two weeks later was truly a shock. Last Wednesday Paco called me into his office and asked how I'd feel about spending the remainder of my stage in training with a view to taking up a contract as Pastry Chef this summer. You don't turn down an offer like that... and I didn't.

I came to Spain a year and a half ago to work with chefs who could help me elevate myself from a graduate trainee to Head Chef material. It's a long and difficult climb up that mountain and I've never underestimated the effort and determination that would be required. I've also come to understand the importance of broadening one's experience to every aspect of the job - even if that involves taking big risks. I'm sure there will be some eyes popping open at the prospect of Aidan Brooks as a Pastry Chef, not least my pastry tutor Andrea Ruff at Westminster Kingsway College. But to become a successful Sous Chef you need to be able to manage and develop staff across all sections and it's never a great idea to criticise anyone for failing or omissions that you share with them.

My working here looked like a risky choice for both employer and employee. From my standpoint, having reached the point where I was being told by my Head Chef in Barcelona that I was ready for a Michelin 2* kitchen, but opting instead to work unpaid in a remote, little known, unstarred restaurant wasn't an easy call to make - especially as I had two contract offers and a paid stage offer in Michelin-starred kitchens in Catalunya and the Basque Country. For Head Chef, taking on someone so young and with so little professional experience when you have set such massively high goals for your restaurant looked equally unsafe.

But the truth is that neither of us really took a risk. I did my research properly before I packed my possessions and left Barcelona. I took advice and, when chefs and food writers for whom I have the utmost respect told me "that's a brilliant move", my decision became pretty much a no-brainer. Equally, Paco and his team made enquiries about me and I'm pleased that they proved positive. He also employed some techniques aimed at identifying staff motivation that I won't discuss any further, other than to say that the experience was very uncomfortable but I survived the test.

Picking flowers and herbs for the kitchen

Over the coming months I'll write more about my experiences here, including picking wild flowers and herbs for the kitchen in the Sierra de Mariola Nature Park (see photo above). I would have like to have written up the meal I ate in the restaurant back in April, but the menu was still in development so I was asked not to publish photos of the dishes at that stage.

For now, let me just make the initial observation that, in my opinion, the kitchen here is already at Michelin 2* level in terms of the exacting standards of discipline, the quality and creativity of dishes, the facilities we are working with and the collective expectations of perfect execution. And if the kitchen is amazing, the hotel itself is nothing short of stunning. The video clip (left) is an extract from an advertisement on Australian TV Channel 9's ninemsn website, just after the refurbishment in 2007.

Restaurante Ferrero is a clear step up from my previous working environments and reminds me very much of one or two very famous 2* kitchens that I've had the privilege of being shown around. We're hoping that, come November, The Fat Man concludes that we have done enough to merit the award of a first star. I say "we", because I don't look at myself as merely an employee here, but as part of the team that is striving so hard to make this place successful. If we fail, I'll shoulder my share of the responsibility for that failure. I don't for one moment expect to find myself in that position.

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Tuesday, 19 May 2009

The Cutting Edge

I've been in Valencia for over two weeks now and I still haven't written a word about my new place of work, which must seem a bit odd to many of my regular readers. It's not for want of trying. I've sat down a couple of times to put fingers to keyboard, but things have been moving so fast since I arrived here at Restaurante Ferrero that I've not been comfortable about writing.

That will change soon, I promise you. In future posts I'll have some interesting tales to tell about my role in the kitchen, the people I'm working with, our chefs' apartment, picking wild herbs and flowers and weekend trips to the beaches of the Costa Blanca. So watch this space! Meanwhile... Two new additions to my collection of tools of the trade.

Not for personal hygiene - for the gastronomic kitchen

On the left: some very cutting-edge equipment - a cut-throat razor with a blade so sharp... well I don't think I need to remind you of Sweeney Todd, or of Mr. Blonde, dancing menacingly to the sounds of Stealers Wheel. I, on the other hand, have been using this deadly tool for altogether more innocent purposes, such as cutting edible flower petals into brunoise, preparing chives neatly into one inch sections and also splitting them down the length to make coiled chive ribbons for garnish.

On the right: fine tweezers which I definitely don't use to pluck my eyebrows in slack periods during service. These are for precisional placing of delicate and tiny components while plating up - very handy for fiddly items such as juliennes of pepper skin. All completely proper - but I can't help imagining what might happen if I was caught in possession of these by the police and told them that everything was OK because I'm a chef. Would they believe my stories of slicing flower petals and manipulating red pepper skins? Somehow, I doubt it. Maybe I should invent a more traditional southern Spanish explanation - that I specialise in the halal slaughter of small game birds followed by the plucking of awkward little feathers.

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Sunday, 10 May 2009

Can Paixano - The Perfect Last Meal

I spend a lot of time indulging myself in fine dining and writing about my experiences in what are known here in Spain as 'restaurantes de alto nivel'. It's my chosen career, so I make no apology for my hedonistic extravagance in the pursuit of knowledge. Fine dining has brought me great pleasure, but there's another side to my relationship with food.

There's no feeling quite like being out with your friends at a really good local hostelry where they serve top quality local produce prepared with love and pride. During my time in the Catalan capital I learnt how the ordinary residents of the city eat, if 'ordinary' is a term you could ever apply to Barcelonistas. I began to share their passion for simple food, deeply rooted in the local culture, cooked perfectly and shared with friends, family, neighbours... or whoever happens to be sat next to you. And so it was that a week ago - my final Saturday night in Barcelona - I wandered out in search of the ideal way to celebrate my departure from the city.

Stroll a hundred metres south from my former apartment, cross the Passeig de Colon and you come to Barceloneta. With the Port Vell and its massive World Trade Centre complex to the west, the city's proud Olympic Park to the east, trendy El Born to the north and the Mediterranean Sea to the south, Barceloneta should by rights be some of Barcelona's most prime real estate. But Barceloneta was always a working-class barrio, ever since it was created from derelict and reclaimed land by Flemish engineers 250 years ago to house the poor families displaced by the massive city developments of the time. And, despite the tourism and a half-hearted attempt to clean up its beaches and replace its sea-front chiringuitos, so it remains today. As working-class as Barcelona gets.

Saunter to the edge of the little part of Barceloneta cut off by the massive Ronda del Litoral ring-road and you find the 173-year-old landmark Les Set Portes (Seven Doors). Turn your back on the bourgeois opulence of the city's first ever restaurant - with its grandiose architecture and classical Catalan haute cuisine - and amble round the block into the Carrer de la Reina Cristina. All at once you find yourself in a cluttered passageway filled with tiny electronics shops and jewelry stores. And if you don't wander straight past without spotting the place, you'll arrive at a very different eating establishment.

Bryan Miller, former restaurant critic of the New York Times and celebrated gourmet described the place nearly two decades ago when he discovered it one night during the Olympic Games. I can't possibly improve on his sketch, so I'll leave you in his skilled journalistic hands (I've added the links and photos).

"Can Paixano offers a rollicking, rough-edged taste of working-class Spain just a 10-minute walk from the Columbus statue. You won't find any foreign tourists at Can Paixano. It has neither a phone nor a sign. Even the street number, which is normally posted above the door, is missing. Starting about noon, local artisans, students and squat, bag-toting women flood into this narrow bar and charcuterie, with its napkin-strewn cement floor that appears to be in a converted garage. The bar is three deep in no time. Pushing and shoving is part of the fun here.

Behind the counter and under grease-splotched signs listing all kinds of sausages and cured meats, cooks hustle up charcuterie platters and sandwiches. Taste a ración of the delicious air-cured ham, lusty chorizo, butifarra (Catalan pork sausages that come both white and dark), or cecina, the dark, minimally salty air-cured beef that is a specialty of Burgos. The butifarra is especially savory; so too is a strong, chewy Basque chorizo called chistorra. Raciónes go for €1.25 to €2.25 - no wonder the place is always packed. There is also a good selection of cheeses at a retail counter in the back (if you can shove your way over there).

A struggle to get anywhere near the counter

Along the chest-high counter are bottles of cheap sparkling rosé that go for €2.75 a bottle or 50 cents a glass. In any other setting this sweet, bubbly drink would be dismissed as a step above ginger ale. Somehow, though, the obstreperous Iberian setting and rugged food elevate it to a higher status."

Not at lot has changed in the seventeen years since Bryan's brush with Barcelona's proletarian cuisine. A few tourists can be found in Can Paixano these days - you can blame eGullet and Flickr for that - but there's still no sign or street number. They've acquired a telephone, but I wouldn't advise anyone to call the number in the hope of reserving a table for Saturday night.

Prices have shot up. What cost €2.25 in 1992 now costs the princely sum of €2.85. No wonder it's still packed most days. And just when you think it's reached capacity more people arrive and join in, like a queue at a football stadium or a crowd at a demonstration. Can Paixano is not a place that has to advertise itself, or particularly wants to. In fact I was amazed to discover that the place actually has a website, until I realised that its main function is to entice foreign distributors for the local cavas and own-label fizzy wines for which they are famous. Bryan was right about the retail counter - the only problem for cheese-monkeys is the near-impossible task of shoving your way over there. If you can manage to shout the Catalan for "make way, make way... cheese emergency", you could just be in with a chance of taking some home.

Can Paixano was the perfect venue for my last meal in Barcelona and I couldn't have picked a better night for it. An hour or so earlier at the Camp Nou Barcelona had thrashed Real Madrid 6-2 in the country's most high profile derby 'El Clasico' and I was packed in amongst a crowd of celebrating Catalans. Horns were still sounding, flags waving and the atmosphere on the streets and in the cafés was simply incredible. I gorged myself on my favourites - morcilla and chorizo sandwiches and a bikini, washed down with a couple of glasses of Can Paixano's best own-label cava rosado.

Refreshed both in body and spirit, I headed out into the warm night air and made my way back across the ring road and into El Carrer del Comerç - a route I'd taken many times during my year at Comerç 24. My timing was perfect. Service was finished, surfaces cleaned down and the chefs were emptying out into the street. Off we wandered to the plaza for 1:30am mojitos, laughing and joking all the way, with me looking decidedly the worse for wear. What a great way to go out!