Now that I'm nominally, more or less, a sous-chef, I get to have even more mildly pretentious thoughts about the way I approach my job, which, with the definite exception of my boss and the moderate exception of the money (I should be paid more--in real terms, not in the way everyone should be paid more--but it could be worse), I greatly enjoy. I'm more firmly convinced, too, that my leaving the new restaurant was the right decision. I need to devote my full energies to the cafe and I've also come to the conclusion that there are a good many things about haute cuisine that I find rather silly. The place where I worked for two months is, as my chef of two months put it, pretty much as high-end as Ann Arbor gets. People who go there pay for both taste and presentation, and so I see the point of some of the things I did, like peeling asparagus stalks to be batter-fried (thus wasting perfectly good asparagus). Straining stocks, though, left a weird taste in my mouth. Most stocks involve the same basic ingredients that their eventual soups will--generally a mirepoix of onions, garlic, celery, often carrot, with meat or poultry carcasses if desired--and the necessity to pour it throuhg a large strainer and then through a fine chinois lined with a towel or cheesecloth is just a little too precious. It didn't help that as number of chefs and cooks of my present and past acquaintance seem to approach their craft as a kind of macho accessory, indulging in needless persnicketude for the sake of looking mysterious and authoritative; it's basically a way of showing how big their cocks are, something in which I want no--okay, little--part.

 I tried to drown my partial sorrrows Friday night with limited success. The Blind Pig seemed curiously lame (although I know a fair number of people who might think "seemed curiously" should be replaced with "was as always") and the music was a slight letdown. Part of it was down to me going out for the first time in... three months, I think, with a probably depressurization effect. I didn't feel like moving around, and was unable to properly say hello to a good many people I'd have liked to greet. The day, too, had already been so terrific that the evening already had a three-fourths chance of disillusion. I didn't stay to hear Great Lakes Myth Society (you know, the reason I was there)--they're always good, but I'd been put nearly to sleep by their predecessors Frontier Ruckus, who follow this well-trodden alt-country groove that comes close to proving Chuck Klosterman isn't entirely full of shit (make careful note that I said "comes close"--he's still a great example of everything wretched about my demographic). He had made the observation that most alt-folk/country bands make the tropes of pre-Grand Ole Opry country a fetish, singing about situations and characters they'd have rarely encountered in real life, making rural poverty and the fast-disappearing, alternately culturally worshipped and institutionally fucked-over agricultural existence in this country an aesthetic accessory. As with a lot of stereotypes, there are enough anecdotal examples to make such generalizations stick a little in the mind without any actual widespread proof (Klosterman's terribly good at bad-faith, self-serving "populism"--he's sort of the "hip" David Brooks). Nevertheless, Frontier Ruckus provided the former that night, at least to my likely prejudiced ears--it all seemed so mopey. In fairness, maybe I'd heard too many livelier bands of the type before to sit still without wiping my eyes. Samar and Ricardo stopped by, and I got to say an all-too-brief hello to the always friendly John Krohn, former producer for the Casionauts. Best of all, speaking of the Casionauts, there was also the pleasant surprise of "Deastro," the opening act, who delivered an unexpectedly blistering and melodic performance on drums and presumably pre-programmed keyboard, sometimes reminding me of the Casionauts, sometimes of Arcade Fire. It was an interesting bit of programming on the Pig's part, and his show was the highlight of the evening.

 This weekend also saw the first of my quasi-official experiments in soup-making at home. I'd made vichysoisse and stracciatella before, the first of which was pretty good, the second of which lacked appeal, but had no thought of offering the results to the cafe. I'd brought two in before--garlic and roasted red pepper soup and a black bean and pumpkin soup with a spicy flavor given by ginger and cumin. The second's been quite popular, while the first, though it looks great and has a lot of potential, lacks heft (I've often thought potatoes and mushrooms might do the trick, and may try them out at home). I've since built up a backlog of the soups I wanted to try, and did the first one Saturday.

Caldo Verde (Portuguese greens soup)

1 1/2 tbsp olive or veggie oil, 1 medium chopped onion, and 2 cloves garlic

Heat and stir in soup pot 5-10 mins or until tender, not browned.

8 cups of water (or 6 cups water and 2 cups chicken or veggie stock), 4 medium potatoes, thinly sliced, 1 1/2 tsp salt, and 1/2 tsp pepper

Stir in, bring to boil, reduce heat, and simmer until potatoes soft (20 mins?). Remove pot from heat and mash potatoes in pot to provide chunkiness. Return to heat.

1/2 tsp veggie oil, 6 oz linguica or chorizo sausage, thinly sliced

Brown in skillet over medium-high heat. Add to soup pot. Pour 1 cup of soup into skillet, scrape up browned bits and return to soup pot. Simmer 5 mins.

4 cups shredded kale, Swiss chard, or collards

Add and simmer 5 mins.

2 tbsp lemon juice

Add and serve in warmed bowls.

Hmmm. The recipe came from the All About Soups and Stews volume of the Joy of Cooking series, so I suppose caldo verde must have gone hand in hand with Harvey Wallbangers for the man when he got home to Levittown from his grey flannel job in the city after wondering why Adlai Stevenson even bothered running for President. I thought it lacked heft, but then I'm not a natural soup-eater; I'm just apparently good at making them (I don't say this as a boast--it's a matter of genuine puzzlement to me that I'm good at making soups for work but not all that wild about eating them). For me, soups should be a comfort food, thick and filling (insert joke). I like soups that come closer to the consistency of stews--thin, fluid soups don't really rock my world. Caldo verde turned out to be a bit runny for my taste, even after I let it simmer down for something like an hour. The cooking itself was, as it usually is, very enjoyable--I had the outside door open so the fire alarm wouldn't go off, Joy Division (anyone who thought John Simm was a deceptive marvel as Joy Division guitarist and New Order frontman Bernard Sumner in 24 Hour Party People should check out his deliriously awesome performance as the Master in the last three episodes of the latest Doctor Who series--he really is something to see), Elliott Smith, Feist and Ennio Morricone were on the stereo, and Saturday afternoons are almost by their very nature a pleasure. It was interesting working with chorizo for the first time, especially as I found out that the bit I'd sampled the night before hadn't in fact been "like pepperoncini" but instead had been raw chorizo. Cooked, it was great, with the sharp paprika-inflected taste (still wary about paprika) slightly modified by the surrounding soup. The potatoes worked out trememdously well; slicing them with a chef's knife almost came out to mandoline quality and they cooked relatively fast. If only the rest of it turned out so well... I remain undaunted, though, as I'm guessing part of my culinary education is figuring out what doesn't work as much as the opposite. With caldo verde... it'd look a lot better with cream. There's no doubt about it, especially with the contrasting colors of the greens and chorizo; the latter in particular stains the whole thing a brownish-red. I wonder about the greens, too. I'm pretty sure I've eaten chard in salads (probably when I couldn't get any kale, rapini or arugula at the farmers' market--one sign of my present discrimination/pretentiousness vis-avis salads is that I now find spinach and romaine a little bland and can't even think about iceberg lettuce without my gorge rising), but the taste when cooked is supposed to be lighter and less insistent than the other greens specified in the recipe. I've eaten and enjoyed both kale and collards, and wonder if the whole wouldn't have been better had Hiller's actually had kale when I went there and had I not chosen collards instead of the unknown evil of chard. That was too good, by the way, to pass up; usually in the entry titles I go for some cheesy song lyric or movie line--inapposite, too as I just pull them out of my ass because they sound good--but that's a keeper, eh?* It's unfortunate, as chard's a rather attractive green, much like a well-built fern. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I've saved four or five quarts, and may try adding cream later.

*Cf. the great Patrick Magee in Zulu--"Damn you, Chard! Damn all you butchers!"

**The best thing about the process, of course, is that I got to use my new food processor! I can see why so many cooks fall in love with theirs. Mine's ridiculously noisy, but I think it's just showing off.