Why Brunch?

First, there is that I came across this story that I wrote about a chef I used to work for a long time ago.

And then there is that a few of my dearests work at this restaurant that (fortunately for me) expanded South, to Cambridge, not too long ago. And this restaurant happens to feature breakfast all day.

And, of course, there is that I kind of love breakfast anytime, and it seems like other people feel the same way, or that restaurant I mentioned before wouldn't have a business model. Nor, for that matter would IHOP.

So I sort have had breakfast on the brain, but I hadn't been cooking it much until recently when I was asked to do a really pretty breakfast party. And it got me thinking about some things I haven't done in a while, like homemade English muffins. I used to make them a lot. Usually with truffled eggs. Maybe a little local hard cheese and some bacon? We do bacon, so that makes sense...

Can I just say, we served them at that party, and those little breakfast sandwiches were just too good to not make again.

But we don't get asked to do a breakfast very often. Breakfast is a tough gig. Always has been. You work really, really hard at breakfasttime, because everyone has a really specific idea of what breakfast should be, and you have to make them happy and do it really fast, because breakfast is not a three hour meal. You can sit with a computer over coffee in a cafe for hours, but you cannot call that breakfast.

Of course, the high holiday of breakfast is brunch. Brunch is leisurely, compared to breakfast. People can spend an hour or more at brunch, and well they should. They have powered through their breakfasts all week, and this is the day for slow and low.

Doesn't mean the cooks don't work just as hard though, because more people usually show up, sometimes in droves, hungry and possibly hung-over, so it's just as much of a pile up in the kitchen. And let's look at the breakfast kitchen. Cooking breakfast is like doing a puzzle. You have to time everything to come out at the same time. So that guy who is having his eggs basted is going to slow down the folks who wanted yogurt and granola, and you have to make sure that the toast plate for the other guy at that same table isn't burnt while you are doing the other 12 orders you've got moving through your clockworklike set up.

I LOVED cooking breakfast, short order, and did it for years back when I had that kind of energy. The best gig for stories was the one cooking for the Brown's Backers on game days.

So that pretty much brings us to the answer to our question.
"Why brunch?"
Because, we just don't get to do those little sandwiches often enough!

So we are going to do them again.

And a lot of other things, too, which may include Florida organic citrus, which is in season this time of year, and which we get through a system called the "East Coast Food Shed". I'm still not 100% sure how I feel about it, but I am absolutely sure that I want to serve these amazingly delicious little packages of vitimin C, because we all need as much as we can get of that.

And I'm a big fan of the mimosa, I can't serve you alcohol, cuz I don't have that kind of license. You can bring it though, should you wish to have it, cuz the oj will be something fiiiiinnnne. Oh, and I've got these pickled green beans from last summer that I have been just dying to stir a Bloody Mary with...

We've been using the maple simple syrup from our candied ginger (yes, local) to sweeten our granola recently. It's so good with our maple sweetened yogurt!

Our amazing chef, Trevor, has been curing bacon for us all winter. We really do need to share that. He has been making noises about breakfast sausage too. I'm going to get him some pork butt at the meat meet on the 20th and hope those noises turn into yumminess. It's only fair to warn you, though. Emily can't eat any other bacon anymore- Trevor's bacon has ruined commercial bacon for her.

I'm going to load up on Stillman's stunning eggs at the meat meet on the 20th, and we are going to set up a proper egg station. Poached, over easy, omelet? You can have it all, and more!

Yup, a ONCE Brunch is most definitely in order, my friends.
It's $40 a person, and that is to cover the cost of food and the rental of the space.
(If it is too rich for your blood I apologize. I understand. I hope that some day I can cook for the whole world for free. Please forgive me that I cannot do it yet.)

February 28th
We'll start at 11am and keep cooking until we feel like we are done
I hope you can join us
xoxo JJ and co.

Meat Meet on Saturday, Feb 20th at 10am

Meet the meat (ensconced, as it will be, in a truck)
Saturday, Feb 20th
10am

Look for the happy mob of carnivores gathered about a white van in the parking lot behind Quest Diagnostics at approx 36 Bishop Allen Drive
in Central Sq, Cambridge

The truck will be there as close to 10am as possible, weather and traffic dependent, and will stay until everyone has what they want, which takes at least an hour, maybe more.

Please bundle up if it is cold, this is a nice social gathering, and it is not super fast.

Please post requests in the comments section below- Stillman will read the posts late on Friday night and bring what you ask for, and, oh, so much more

Anyone interested in tailgating? Gimme a shout- I'll order extra hotdogs!
xoj

All this I learned from Joel

I wrote this a while ago, maybe before I had somewhere to put it... A tribute to one of the most influential chefs I worked for as a little cooker:

All this I learned from Joel

One of the best chef's I ever worked with was a chap named Joel Aerosmith.
He was the owner, operator, head chef, executive chef, and pastry chef of a place where I started as a dishwasher and ended up in pastry, called La Patisserie, in Portland, OR.

Joel taught me things I still use regularly, even daily. He taught me things I teach.

He taught me "a pint's a pound, the world around". I thought my dad taught me that until recently, when he said he didn't. So it must have been Joel.
He taught me that it's better to not burn the toast to begin with than to scrape the burnt bit off. He taught me that sugar is a liquid. He taught me how to make ganache in the microwave and how to make muffins with my hands in bus-tubs.

He taught me that I was underachieving, and that I shouldn't. He told me, when I left, after a year, to go on a backpacking adventure across western Europe, that I couldn't come back, because he had nothing more to teach me. What he meant was he would never be able to pay me any more than he was paying me at that moment. It was true, he couldn't, but I wouldn't have cared, because I was 22, and I just wanted to pay my rent and save a few dollars to buy trinkets in Prague. And because I wanted to stay.

He was wrong, of course, about that not being able to teach me more thing.
He couldn't have ever not been able to teach me any more.

Joel wasn't always fun to work with. He was one of many cooks who had fallen into the mistaken belief that it's ok to be an asshole if you are the head of the kitchen. That everyone will forgive you, because it is in the job description. I've known a few of them. Gordon Ramsey's making a lot of money off that stereotype at the mo'.

Joel did some things I didn't like too much. He yelled and sulked. Sometimes he would throw a ripe tomato at the big fridges, and it was a pain to clean it up,. To his credit, I don't remember him ever throwing one at an employee.

He didn't shower me with praise, but I know he was proud of me. He fed me recipes and ingredients and let me go freely. One time I made an entire batch of banana muffins- dozens and dozens of them- and forgot to put in sugar. Maybe letting me go wasn't always the best choice, but I learned, even from the mistakes. No, I learned largely from the mistakes.

I think I must have met Joel because I was making faces at his kid. I was desperate for a job, and I have never been overly keen about other people's kids, so I'm guessing I knew out of the gate that this particular child was attached to an authoritative adult, perhaps one wearing an apron, who might even have the power to employ me.

I talked my way into the only job he needed to fill. A few months out of college, armed with my B.S. in education from Tufts, I rolled up my sleeves, put on my purple, six hole Doc Marten's, and washed his dishes. I must have washed the heck out of those dishes too. I remember him coming up to me a couple of days later and inquiring if I could bake. Who told me recently, always say "yes"? No matter what they are asking, always say "yes". It's a curse. It's not true. Do not always say yes. Unless you are in your early twenties and don't know any better but have the unending energy it takes to back that "yes" up.

So, I said "yes".
And there I was, in the pantry. Big bins of flour and sugar like I had never seen before. Big mixers and real scales. Recipes to make not a dozen, but many dozens of cookies. A lot of the shortcuts and tricks I use today were things that I learned in that kitchen.

After the baking part came the cooking part. In Joel school, you can't spend all your time baking. There is science, and there is art. You bake and you cook.

Breakfast.
Training meant flipping toast. For hours. In an omelet pan. Over and over and over until I could flip it and catch it perfectly. Only then was I ready for eggs.
Over easy. Over hard. Poached. Soft boiled.... there are as many ways to cook eggs as their are people. The trick is to find a common language, and the language of breakfast food is harder to learn than German. (That's hard. I only lasted a week in German!) On the line every weekend, it was just me and him, fast and furious. Breakfast is art because no one wants to sit down to a two hour breakfast. They want to come in, eat, and leave. They want their coffee refilled before it's even empty, and you know they are going to leave a crap tip, so the waiters are cranky and just want to turn the table as fast as possible.
The line is out the door on the weekends, we've been there since the crack of dawn, baking fresh muffins and sticky buns, and by the time the tickets are two deep we have hit a groove. Toast in the salamander, fire that omelet, no jalapenos on that one- I said, NO JALAPENOS! Augh! Scrape em off, they'll never know.... Move!

I loved being a breakfast cook.
It's a lowly, unappreciated rung on the restaurant ladder.
Underpaid, overworked and exhausting.
Joel was right about a lot of things.
That is art.