Back when I was still young enough to do such a thing, I spent my summers on the Eastern end of Long Island, cooking at various restaurants in East Hampton, Amagansett, and Springs. I got into restaurant work for the usual reasons, which didn’t include becoming a brilliant chef. What I wanted was to spend nights chasing experiences (and girls), days chasing waves (and girls), and show up for a dinner shift un-showered and wearing whatever happened to be lying on whatever floor I woke up on without drawing odd looks from the miscreants I worked with (and girls).
I loved working at restaurants. It seemed like every kitchen I ended up working in came with flying pans, crazy chefs, copious alcohol and cigarette consumption behind the line, and creative kitchen staff-only dishes like clams oreganata marijuana (great stuff if I recall correctly, which I almost assuredly do not).
With my priorities where they were, I didn’t learn as much as I wish I had in those kitchens, and my memories don’t go much beyond two simple rules: everyone that doesn’t work in the kitchen (besides the bartender) is an enemy, and don’t put good knives in a dishwasher. But not everyone I knew was more interested in hanging out than cooking. My friend Andrew, whom I met at a French bistro where we both worked, had gone to cooking school and actually knew something about food.
Andrew wasn’t in East Hampton that summer just to drink, chase girls and inhale the nitrous from all the whipped cream chargers in the walk-in. He could certainly down more than his share of Slivovitz (which I found rank) and Elephant beer (7.2% alcohol), and he’d wrecked a car or two and passed out in some odd places, but Andrew was there to cook. And the girls thing, too.
Andrew, I, and a lesbian chef whose name eludes me all shared a house that summer (hilarity ensued as we all chased after the same girls), and it was at a poker party in that house that Andrew hipped me to what I thought at the time was a odd pairing: chicken and sausage. He combined them in couscous, got me wasted on swine and poultry, and proceeded to fleece me at cards. It was that good.
So today I’m putting up two recipes that use the combo: Andrew’s couscous, and a chicken and sausage gumbo.
I haven’t seen Andrew since his wedding party over 15 years ago (a party at which I reconnected with the lovely woman to whom I’m now married) and I haven’t worked a shift in a kitchen in a lot longer than that, but I still have three great things from my days cooking in the Hamptons: my Ludwig Schiff offset serrated knife, a love of chicken and sausage snuggled into the same dish, and fond memories of pastry chefs screaming and winging dead whipped cream chargers across the kitchen after very un-whipped cream poured out and ruined a beautiful desert.
Dear Mr. Schmidt, a query: is that thing in the poncho with you Andrew? the Lesbian? the chicken or the sausage?
just curious.
Also your article has reminded me of a great black Chinese Puerto-Rican chef i once worked with (grovelled before) who had the habit when annoyed of tossing a whole chicken into the air and pinning it to the wall with a Chinese cleaver – right over the door through which all waiting staff had to pass as in abandon hope all ye who enter here.
That’d be a gypsy, stealing the souls of anyone who looks into her eyes in the photograph.
And I love that chef (what restaurant was he working in?). Great way to keep people in line. Kitchens these days don’t seem to be quite as nuts – I spent an afternoon with Zach Bell at Cafe Boulud and no one threw anything and anyone.
No whippets, either (but I did get my hands on a terrine made for the House of Representatives before they did….)
He was working in the Stephen Talkhouse, turning out 7,000 bowls of moules marinieres a night. We made up in the end, and he left me nightly pieces of amaretto cheesecake hidden in the walk-in.
The kind of story that illustrates why I loved working kitchens.
(In Amagansett.)
Which reminds me of the first kitchen I ever worked in, circa 1970, in the first Lesbian bar (do I discern a theme?)on the South Fork of Long Island, where I was responsible for heating the chili con carne, which was as I recall the only thing on the menu, and dishing it out to the ladies. I myself am not of the persuasion but someone I dearly love and admire did at that time and in that very place discover that she was. Of the persuasion. And we all love chili con carne, don’t we?
Speaking of which, my rich friends with the rich Texas oil Dad made in those long ago days his killer chili with actual real hunks of sirloin and no tomato. What did I know?
Remember that the lesbian chef (Gail?)invited us to stay at that house, rent free, in East Hampton, during the summer, because she was convinced that it was haunted? We invited the crews from all of the local restaurants to poker parties and fleeced them all. I remember we had this odd system where one of us sat in a ornate, high backed chair at the end of the table. When the picture on the wall overlooking the table made eye contact with the person in that chair they would fold and the rest of us would follow. When it did not, then we bet the farm. Perhaps it was just the delerium tremens taking hold, but it always seemed to work. That was an interesting summer.
By the way that restaurant was called Casablanca. Remember the owner Rick?
Ach – of course. Cafe Bonaparte was in the same location, but a different year (I believe). I cooked at both. Learned about what the French mean by “black and blue” there.
And yeah, Gail it was. I was wondering what we were doing living there.