coffee steak terror/why i now have knife skills (ptsd)/tomato jam

may, 2016

i have filed a lot of recipes under ‘successes’, and quite a few more under ‘failures’. when i was living in yosemite, food research was a hobby and i had gotten really excited to find a recipe for something called ‘coffee rubbed steak’. it was described as smoky and exotic in the recipe, two adjectives which would be more at home on a shitty dating website. but hey, i was intrigued. after convincing a couple of friends to come over for dinner and be my guinea pigs for this recipe, after carefully rubbing these delicious cuts of meat with this powerful, smoky, exotic seasoning (cough tindernightmares cough), and after taking the first bites of this meal, my friend matt looked at me and said: ‘this might be the worst thing i have ever eaten.’ this was shortly followed by courtney’s comment: ‘yeah this tastes like someone dipped my steak in coffee.’

have you ever dipped your steak in coffee? no, you haven’t. because you shouldn’t.

one bad dinner doesn’t spell doom, though, and if i remember correctly we had enough potatoes and even more wine so that the coffee steak became more of a joke rather than an evening killer.

i moved to san francisco to get into the food industry about a year later. my first day with a fine dining catering company, i was asked to chop chives, and was given a really shit knife to do it with. note: it also happened to be my first day really working in any professional line cook capacity, so don't judge me too harshly for not having my own knives. my cuts were pretty inconsistent (see aforementioned note), but i had never spent a lot of time really focusing on knife skills (again, see aforementioned note). as long as it got close to what size it needed to be, it shouldn’t matter…right? wrong. very very very wrong (i'm editing this 5 years after i wrote this and this particular sentence is...sad? nostalgic? naive? gotta learn somehow.)

the kitchen manager, taylor, spied my bowl of chives and ran his fingers through them. his face clouded over with rage. ‘what. the. fuck. is. this? look at this. this is shit!’ he held my chives out in front of my face and pointed to the imperfect little pieces. i began to say something about the shitty knife, but was cut off with his heavy sigh. he grabbed another bundle of chives and slammed it on the cutting board. ‘just do it again.’ i have never been so intimidated by a garnish. taylor stormed away and looked at the table next to me, where the cook had done something incorrectly. ‘JESUS, IS IT’S EVERYONE’S FIRST DAY?!’ doubt moved in, and i wondered if i had maybe picked the wrong career for myself. i thought that maybe i am too nice for this. i am too quiet. i can’t deal with these big personalities. i began to cut up these chives like i was doing some sort of chemistry experiment with a lethal substance. my cuts were consistent, but i spent about 10 minutes cutting about 4 inches of chives.

i began pulling 14 hour days, not including the time at home when i’d be making myself meals that required some sort of thought. i took classes- the thought of getting screamed at for imperfect chives again was a haunting, shiver-inducing nightmare. i was always reading cook books or food science articles, experimenting with a new recipe, new method, new something. i started my own little catering company on top of everything else. after doing that for a while, i got a position in china volunteering at a restaurant. feeling like i had something to look forward to, i began making prep lists, recipes, plans and thinking that i was going to be going into an unfamiliar, but similar position. i knew kitchens and how they worked, or i could figure it out. hard work and i were [and still are] very good friends.

in april, i arrived in china. the next few months became a stupid experiment in how far my will and drive could be pushed. i don’t speak chinese, none of the ingredients i needed for most of my carefully prepared recipes were available (and if they were, i had no idea how or where to find them), i had to make friends with an entirely new set of people, and i had no idea what i was doing. i could make a long list of problems i was massively underprepared to take on, but they did eventually get figured out. complaining, as i am prone to do fairly often, is really just a stagnant echo chamber.

fast forward: my team and i have put together a nice menu of western food in a place that is -by all the cultural norms that i grew up with in the united states-weird and wild. after finally feeling settled in, though, i have to admit that i do really love it here and still have days were my palm and forehead meet while i’m muttering ‘what the holy fuck is this?’ as jarring as an experience of moving abroad to a place with such an intense language barrier is, it is not an impossibility. what has come out and will come out might be more rewarding and interesting than anything i might be doing back in the united states. mistakes in the kitchen happen. it’s inevitable. something will get dropped. someone will get burned. something will get burned. someone will not be happy with the food. working with food can be unforgiving and hectic and the reward can be minimal. all that aside, i can’t see myself doing anything else. the experiences that i have had, both good and bad, have only made me want to become a better chef.

we go through enough of this jam so that the process of canning comes off as cumbersome and a little pointless, although if you have a canning method you like and are feeling really ambitious then by all means, go for it. i sifted through a lot of recipes when i was developing the breakfast sandwich, looking for something that paired well with meat and was fairly simple to make. i am a big believer that time is a factor in taste; you don’t always have to have a laundry list of ingredients to form a complex and delicious flavor profile, but you do have to have patience. this quickly became a hit with friends and i often get requests for ‘just a little extra’ (read: the whole jar, please). this jam pairs well with, like, everything, so go ahead and slather it on all the food in sight. if you eat it by the spoonful, i wouldn’t judge you.

TOMATO JAM

1.5 kg tomatoes, diced

1/2 large onion, small dice

3 cloves of garlic, minced

2 cups white sugar

2 tsp salt

1 tsp coriander seeds

1. Combine sugar, salt, tomatoes in a non-reactive bowl, mixing ingredients until tomatoes have been covered completely by sugar and salt. Allow the tomatoes to sit at room temperature for at least 30 minutes (if you’ve got some time, leave them overnight in the fridge).

2. Add tomatoes, garlic, coriander and onion to a heavy bottomed pan over medium-low heat. Simmer mixture, skimming off the thin layer of scummy bubbles that build up. Stir occasionally to keep the bottom of the pan from burning. This should take about 30 minutes. Be diligent about skimming the bubbles off- they build up easily.

3. You will know when the jam is done: it will have reduced by about half. You should be able to see how much the level of the tomato mixture reduced by the marks on the side of the pan. Allow jam to cool to room temperature.

Store in the refrigerator for up to two weeks.