I RETURNED HOME TO New York City shortly after my stage at Senderens ended, my culinary odyssey and year of training at the stove over. I could now chop, slice, and dice with the best of them, and I had proved that I could make it in the restaurant world. I wore my kitchen war wounds—the scars, burns, and cuts—with pride. The professional kitchen no longer intimidated me. Which was why friends were surprised when they asked me where I’d be working back in New York and I replied, “My own kitchen.”
Perhaps the greatest kitchen lesson I absorbed, one far more important than mastering the fine art of shelling crabs or perfecting a brunoise, was that while I liked restaurant cooking, at the end of the day I loved home cooking. If you’re working in a restaurant, you never get to do it. Like Paule, I came to realize that although restaurant chefs might be in the business of hospitality, they don’t often get to see people enjoying the food they’ve prepared. They don’t get to linger over a pot of simmering stew, glass of wine in hand. Unless you work in an open kitchen and inexplicably find yourself with free time in the middle of service (which is not a good sign), you never get to appreciate people savoring your food or even take a bite yourself. You can never sit down with your guests and enjoy the meal with them.
Although restaurant cooking is great for learning how to perfect dishes and to maximize speed and efficiency, the repetition of professional cooking can be, well, repetitive. What I loved about cooking was discovering new ingredients and combining flavors. Home cooking brings spontaneity and whimsy and the freedom to cook according to your own desires. No tarragon in the fridge? Use thyme instead and experience the element of surprise. Never cooked with lemon leaves before? Buy some and experiment! If it tastes bad, you’ll know for next time and you’re no worse off.
On a physical level, being in a professional kitchen is generally harder for a woman. But it’s not impossible. Although I will never be as tall or as strong as the men I cooked with, I held my own for the most part. Instead, it was the emotional aspect of working in a restaurant that I found more difficult. The professional kitchen is loud and brash and can be tough if you’re not part of the boys’ club. I learned to assert myself more and to take pride in what I could do. The only way you become weak in the kitchen is if you let others make you weak. The hardest part of being a woman in the professional kitchen is that there aren’t many other women in there with you. And although I was always aware of being one of only a few women in a male-run, male-dominated kitchen, it wasn’t until I got to Paris and became the brunt of sexual jokes that I truly saw how gender factors into the equation.
Whatever your gender, though, working the line at a restaurant is grueling: It’s exhausting being on your feet all day, the hours are long, and you don’t get paid much. This is why cooking in restaurants is a profession for the young. In the four kitchens where I cooked, my co-workers were almost always in their late teens or twenties, with the sous-chefs and head chefs in their thirties to forties. With the exception of Wylie, the executive chef at each one never (or very rarely) worked on the line. When you reach your late forties, your priorities and stamina change. Most of the celebrity chefs out there aren’t working in restaurants anymore (again, Wylie is an exception), and they’ll all probably tell you it’s more important to have a camera-ready personality than top-notch knife skills. While I’m still relatively far off from having my own family, I don’t want a life where I see my husband and children for only a couple of hours each morning. Of course, this happens in many professions, but it’s particularly telling that in high-level restaurants like wd~50 and Senderens, the majority of people in relationships are with other people in the restaurant industry. I’m not saying that these are bad things about restaurant cooking. On the contrary, I have tremendous admiration for the men and especially the women who get out there every day and cook their asses off in restaurants, whether at the corner diner or at the city’s finest eatery. No matter how much you cook at home, you will never know just how intense cooking can be until you step behind the restaurant burner.
So was this one big time-consuming and cost-inefficient lesson? I certainly think that anyone who has decided to be a chef and wants to go to culinary school should spend time in a professional kitchen before shelling out money for culinary school. Believe me, restaurants are more than happy to take on free labor, even if you don’t have any experience. It might seem like an expensive way to spend a few months, but if you end up deciding that restaurant cooking isn’t for you, you’ve saved yourself $40,000 (and you’ll get some free meals out of it); if you can’t commit full-time, my guess is you can still probably stage once a week on Saturday nights.
And to be totally honest, working in restaurants is the best way to learn how to work in restaurants. Even if culinary school teaches you a million different ways to chop carrots, it’s not going to matter unless you’re chopping the carrots exactly how the restaurant wants their carrots chopped. You learned to sear and season steaks perfectly in school? Great, but you’re probably not going to be running the meat station at your first job out of school, especially if you choose to work at a highly prestigious restaurant. Culinary school is a lot of fun and can give you a good overview of food and cooking, but it’s also a great way to get into debt—not exactly what you’re looking for when you’re making $30,000 that first (and second and third) year of work.
I have no regrets about my year of professional cooking. Books and schools may teach you about cooking and about various cuisines, but you can never truly know a cuisine without experiencing it firsthand: by going to markets and learning about products, by dining out in both upscale eateries and hole-in-the-wall joints and with local home cooks. I ate banh bot loc, che, and even thit cho (aka my beloved dog meat)—dishes that I’ve never seen in Vietnamese cookbooks or in restaurants in America. Living in Tel Aviv, I shopped like a local in the Carmel Market and played around with newly discovered ingredients like zaatar and silan in my kitchen. And even though I spent an inordinate amount of time shelling crabs and doing prep work, Paris gave me a deep appreciation for the tradition and influence of haute cuisine and what it takes to succeed in that world. Cooking in restaurants will teach you speed, precision, discipline, and hard work. It’s like the army: It can be tough while you’re doing it, but you come out of it that much stronger, with a band of brothers. Hopefully a few sisters, too.
So what if it took going around the world to realize I wanted to end up at home, in my own kitchen? I discovered what I loved: cooking for my friends and family and sharing the bounty of the table together. And the friends I made along the way taught me that home can be anywhere, and so can your home kitchen. It’s those you share it with who really matter.
So when I returned to New York, I wanted to have a dinner party to catch up with my friends. I invited Rebecca and Max to dinner, and I also invited Nell and Joe, two friends I met shortly after coming home. I didn’t know them well, but I figured that almost everyone enjoys a dinner party, and if I’d been able to make new friends all over the world, why shouldn’t I be making some in New York?
Our dinner party took place on a balmy spring evening. I was living at my parents’ apartment temporarily while getting my life in order and finally finishing graduate school and cooking dinner for them nearly every night. They were the perfect guinea pigs for testing out all my new recipes and culinary techniques; everything I made was pronounced delicious, though maybe they were slightly biased. Or maybe not.
“Can I help with anything?” Joe asked as I washed the cucumber and tomatoes for the salsa.
“Sure, do you want to cut the shallot? Just cut it into small pieces. You can get uniformly sized pieces if you crosshatch it. Just make vertical and horizontal cuts into the shallot, and then you cut it on the remaining side, but if you don’t want to do that, just cut it into small pieces,” I said.
“I won’t get fired from kitchen duty if they look ugly?”
“No, this is my kitchen… well, technically my parents’, but I make the rules here. And as long as the end result tastes good, I don’t really care how things are chopped. I chopped enough vegetables perfectly over the last year to last me a lifetime.”
“Is there more wine?” Max called from the living room.
“Yeah, come and get it. Pour us all a round while you’re at it. And we’ve got another bottle in the fridge, so don’t be stingy,” I said as I handed him my empty glass.
“So, Lauren, is it true that chefs drink all the time? Did you drink on the line?” asked Rebecca.
“Do you know how chaotic it is behind the stove, trying to fill as many orders as you can in a short amount of time? No; no booze during shifts. But after, yeah. But I also think the hard-partying reputation among chefs is a cultural thing. I drank more whiskey while working at wd~50 than I had in my life up until then, but that sort of work-hard/play-hard culture didn’t exist in Vietnam or Israel, especially because the chefs went straight home at the end of their shifts. It was more of a job for them, and more of a lifestyle here,” I said.
“Well, I for one am glad that you decided not to be a restaurant chef, because that means that I can enjoy your cooking more often,” said Max. He dipped a spoon into the bowl of chopped cucumber, tomato, and onion. “Mmmm, delish.”
“Don’t nibble too much or we won’t have anything to serve,” I said, and handed him the bowl. “Here, be useful and spoon some out onto each plate while I take the steaks out and finish them.”
“This beef is going to be the most exciting part of the meal, since it uses the pretend sous-vide technique my old supervisor Jared taught me at wd~50. It’s faux sous-vide because you put the meat and any flavorings into a ziplock bag and cook it in a pot of water on the stove.”
“How is it done normally?” asked Rebecca.
“You need an immersion circulator to control the water temperature, and you use special vacuum-sealed bags.”
“And these bags work the same way?”
“Sort of. You have to submerge the bags in the pot until you reach the zipper part, then carefully seal the bag shut. The water pressure forces all of the air out of the bag, so it’s close to being vacuum-sealed.”
“Awesome.”
“Yeah, it’s a great trick, but it’ll be a bit of a pain, because we’ll have to constantly be checking the temperature of the water in the pot we’re going to cook them in. But hopefully we’ll be fine,” I said, peering into the pot.
“Do you have to do anything else to the steaks?” Rebecca asked after I lifted out the bags with a pair of tongs.
“You can serve the steaks straight out of the bag if you want, but you won’t have that nice sear that comes with cooking meats on the stovetop. Most restaurants will sear meaty proteins like beef or lamb quickly on the stovetop to get a nice charred crust,” I explained.
“This is some four-star dining treatment we’re getting here,” she said.
“Here, I think they’re done now anyway.” I took the meat out of the bags and placed them into the skillet; it was beginning to brim with smoke from the oil I’d added, a visual cue that it was hot enough for the meat. The steaks hissed loudly as oil spattered onto the stove.
“I wanna see,” said Nell, coming into the kitchen.
“You want to cook them for a quick second. Just until they sear. You don’t want to spoil your sous-vide by cooking them too much on the stove,” I said as my friends watched eagerly behind me. “Max, can you hand me the plates? Rebecca, do you want to add a dollop of crab to each one?”
We assembled the finishing touches together, and finally our dinner plates were heaped high. We brought them to the table while Max uncorked another bottle of wine. “To Lauren, the chef!” he said, raising his glass in a toast.
“And to my sous-chefs. Cheers to you all,” I said, and we all clinked glasses.
“I still can’t believe this is sous-vide beef. I’m so far away from being able to make sous-vide beef at home,” said Rebecca. “Okay, who are we kidding? I’m actually pretty far away from making any kind of beef at home. But I’m definitely going to make this salsa this summer.”
“Me too. And you know what would be nice in it, too? Avocado. You can never go wrong with avocado,” Nell added.
I smiled as I sipped my wine. In this meal, I had incorporated bits and pieces of technique and kitchen wisdom from the four restaurants where I had worked to create an international surf and turf and a jewel-toned fruit salad, wholly original recipes that embodied what I loved about each experience. But recipes are not static; they are fluid and always evolving. So these recipes weren’t just mine, they were now part of my friends’ culinary repertoires, springboards from which they, too, could find their places in the kitchen.
Figuring out what to make for my homecoming dinner party was tricky, because I didn’t want to make four separate dishes, each representing a place where I’d worked. While there were elements of wd~50’s cooking techniques at Senderens or of La Verticale’s market-driven philosophy at Carmella, the four countries and restaurants where I had worked each exhibited a unique culinary point of view. Instead, I wanted to create individual dishes that melded my year of travel, and the following recipes were what I came up with. Serve both dishes together on a warm evening to a group of friends, along with lots of wine and merriment.
This fake sous-vide technique is not perfect and requires much more supervision than traditional sous-vide cooking, but it’s as close as the home cook can get. For the beef’s garnishes, I was drawn immediately to crab (already shelled, though!) and was inspired by the traditional Israeli salad of cucumber, tomato, and onion. But I swapped in shallots instead, plus a little lime juice, fish sauce, and chile for a hint of Vietnam. If you prefer, try this with other cuts of beef.
SERVES 4
1 hanger steak, about 1 pound
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons olive oil
½ clove garlic, minced
½ English or regular cucumber, seeds scooped out
3 tomatoes, cored and seeded
1 large shallot
¼ teaspoon minced Thai chile, if desired
1 tablespoon fish sauce
2 teaspoons lime juice
1 teaspoon sugar
½ pound lump crabmeat
1 teaspoon mayonnaise
2 teaspoons minced chives
½ teaspoon finely minced or grated lemon zest
Pinch of kosher salt
Cut the steak into four pieces, season generously with salt, pepper, 1 tablespoon olive oil, and garlic, then place each piece in its own quart-sized ziplock bag. In the sink, fill a large pot with water. Zip the bags closed halfway, then carefully begin to submerge the bag into the pot of water, making sure not to get any water inside the bag. When the top of the bag is almost at the water’s surface, press out any remaining air and zip the bag closed. There should now be very little air inside the ziplock bag, and it should almost look as if it is vacuum-sealed.
Heat a large pot of water on the stove over medium heat. When the water is 130 degrees F, add the ziplock bags. Cook for 3 hours, making sure that the water remains at a steady 130 degrees. (You’ll need an accurate thermometer for this, and you may need to add more water to control the temperature.)
Meanwhile, prepare the vegetable salsa: Dice the cucumber, tomatoes, and shallot into pieces about ½ inch, then place in a bowl along with all the remaining ingredients. Refrigerate until ready to use.
Prepare the crab: Combine all ingredients in a small bowl and mix well. Set aside in the refrigerator.
Heat the remaining tablespoon of olive oil in a large skillet until smoking. Add the steaks and cook just until seared, about 30 seconds on each side. Transfer the steaks to plates.
To serve, add a dollop of crab next to each steak, along with several spoonfuls of vegetable salsa.
It was hard for me to think of a dessert that combined elements of four different countries (especially Vietnam, which doesn’t have much of a dessert culture), yet one of the things that struck me most living and cooking outside of America was the freshness and variety of produce available and the strong food market culture in each region. So what better dessert than a fruit salad that incorporates some of my favorite fruits from each place? This fruit salad has a pomegranate for Tel Aviv, plums for Paris, lychees for Hanoi, and an apple to represent my hometown, the Big Apple.
SERVES 4
1 (2-inch) piece of fresh ginger, peeled and smashed with the back of a knife
¼ cup sugar
¼ cup water
1 pomegranate
2 plums, pits removed and cut into thin wedges
½ pound (approximately 10) lychees, seeds removed and cut into thin strips
1 red apple, peeled and cored and cut into small chunks
In a small saucepan, combine the ginger, sugar, and water over high heat. Once the mixture reaches a boil and all the sugar has dissolved, turn off the heat and let steep for half an hour. Discard the ginger.
Seed the pomegranate into a large mixing bowl, as directed on page here. Add the plums, lychees, apple, and ginger syrup, and coat well. Let sit for 15 minutes before serving.