Have Blade Will Travel: The adventures of a traveling chef (18 page)

And finally, I acquired a set of wheels – a 1957 Ford that I had purchased from one of my college-kid on summer break dishwashers, for the stunning price of 1¢.  Yes, you read that correctly – one penny.  She was a bit of a gas guzzler, but at that price, I had no complaints.

Chapter 9

Unheralded Culinary Heroes of Gotham City k
Beyond

I found a cache of matchbooks recently, that I had begun to collect as early as 1958, and it was akin to opening a personal time capsule.  Some of the matchbooks hailed from bars, pubs, restaurants and private clubs centered in the areas where I later peddled my culinary skills over a period of 30 years – San Francisco, Rhode Island, Maine, New York, and Western Europe.  Although they all tapped into my personal archaic experience, one was particularly poignant.  It read, “Peter van Erp’s De Roode Moolen, Inn of the Red Mill – Restaurant, Cocktail Lounge; A Bit of Holland on Long Island.”

Peter van Erp was one of the great chefs of the 20
^th
-century, though owing to his inability to operate a successful business and to a series of poor business choices, the man was unable to rise above his own neurosis’ and achieve the success that he was capable of.  Van Erp was the perfect example of a man who was his own worst enemy.

Born and bred in Rotterdam, van Erp’s father, a longshoreman, died after his leg was crushed by a tanker that drifted towards a dock when the elder van Erp was momentarily distracted.  His son was eleven years old. 

In his early teens, young van Erp gravitated towards a career as chef, and by the age of twenty-four he had worked in every nation in Western Europe –including a two-year stint in Belgium as Pâtissier (Pastry Chef).  In the years following WWII, the Shell Oil Corporation hired him to revamp the menus on their oil tankers – a place where he was able to use the six languages he had acquired via the outstanding Dutch educational system.  He would work on one ship for a few weeks, leaving behind a much-improved food service operation, then transfer to the next vessel, and the next, and so on.  He also served as a Chef de partie on Holland-America lines for a while, eventually landing in New York City. 

In September 1975 my promising job at the Woodstock Inn in Vermont went sour after a run-in with an insecure and arrogant Swiss line cook.  With no particular destination in mind I phoned Harriet Reilly, who had been my French Culinary Terminology instructor at culinary school, and learned she was visiting with van Erp at the time.

Shortly thereafter I arrived at the Dutchess Valley Rod & Gun Club in Pawling, New York – about 90-minutes north of New York City.  It was there that van Erp spun his culinary magic for a very well-funded clientele, while teaching full-time at the Culinary Institute.  It was the perfect marriage of a brilliant chef with an exclusive, rustic rural club whose members not only knew good food, but could afford the expense as well.  Their arrangement with the chef consisted of a token salary of $100 per week, a comfortable, two-bedroom apartment on the premises, and the ability to charge the members a fee when they gathered for an event. 

It was not a very busy place, which made the occasional lunches, dinners, and hunt-season buffets all the more special.  During the year I worked there, I performed a myriad of duties.  That Peter van Erp was a walking encyclopedia of culinary knowledge and experience was not lost on me – and I sopped up every technique, every menu, and every trick-of-the-trade that crossed my path.  And though the chef would never have admitted it, I know that van Erp had never had a better apprentice in all his years.

One evening the chef dropped a small piece of mace – the outer shell that covers a nutmeg – into an enormous stock pot that would simmer all night.  I wondered about that subtle gesture, and whether or not it would make any difference in the long run.  On the one hand, it was not a large enough piece of spice to make any difference in the flavor – yet its presence was undeniable.  What if he had added a small cinnamon stick, or a few cloves – how would that have affected it?  Some years later I would work with a Frenchman who never bothered to add aromatics (celery, carrots, onion, leeks) to his stock, because, said he, “It doesn’t make any difference – they can’t taste it anyway.”  But of course it makes a difference, even if that difference is not revealed directly in the flavor of the soup or sauce that is ultimately created from that stock. 

A tiny piece of mace was part of a personal signature of a culinary practitioner (the chef) that gave his food a unique character and distinctive quality that when added up, became the
je ne sais quoi
that one experiences when consuming the particular fare of a particular kitchen. 

At the same time, I was perplexed by the condition of the chef’s knives – not only were they all dull, but most were chipped – and not just the tips, but all along the cutting edges.   Since I had always been meticulous about my own knives, realizing their ultimate importance in my ability to perform in a kitchen, I never understood why van Erp didn’t simply take his knives to a professional grinder to maintain them in top condition.  Perhaps this was another glimpse into his dysfunctionality, which prevented him from achieving the great success and renown he was capable of. 

The clientele of the Dutchess Valley Club included some of the most successful CEO’s, attorneys, architects, and society divas who had ever been posted in the Who’s Who of New York society.  The chef often served lunch to the very gracious Michel Bergerac, then CEO of Revlon; the quiet yet amiable Mario Arcori, president of the Bank of Italy in New York; and the laid-back Franklin Roosevelt Jr.  

At the Institute, Van Erp was one of two instructors within the kitchen that serviced the Escoffier Room – the celebrated restaurant that was open to the public.  Though neither communicative nor particularly gregarious, van Erp’s command of the culinary craft attracted a small coterie of young, highly motivated students who realized that if they could reach the level of expertise that van Erp represented, there was literally no limit to what they could go in the industry. 

Given that it was late November, with winter clearly on her way – and since I had no particular destination in mind, I accepted van Erp’s invitation to stay at the club and serve as a second, unofficial apprentice.  Van Erp had already taken on one official apprentice, a youngster from culinary school who didn’t have very much passion for food, or drink, or the industry.  Thus I figured there would be plenty of work for me, and plenty to learn as well.

Of course, situations rarely work out as you expect them to, and my stint at the club was no exception.  In spite of his achievements as a chef, van Erp’s emotional persona lacked a certain healthy balance, though behind his occasional gruff exterior he was clearly big-hearted.  And in practice, he was more idiosyncratic and eccentric than anything else – and as long as you were willing to work and do what you were asked to do, he was easy to interact with.  Thus, I was like a dry sponge, soaking up every little tidbit, every technique, every trick-of-the-trade, every subtle nuance performed by the chef.  As challenging as the work was at times, it was also a period of great learning for me. 

Van Erp’s off-and-on girlfriend, Ruth Trager also lived at the club, and served as both the dining room manager and the go-to person when someone needed to make a reservation.  She was eleven years my senior, and about a decade van Erp’s junior.  She was also smart, particularly about working with people, and possessed of a very strong personality.  Trager had checked out all the chefs at the Institute – up close and personal – and concluded that van Erp was the premier chef of them all, and she latched onto him like a bee to honey.  It was a savvy move, if you were smart, and motivated, and wanted to make something of yourself in the food service business.  And though it had started out as a romantic liaison, the bloom came off the rose very early on – given that Trager was more interested in advancing her career than in spending a good part of her life with an elder chef.  Not that Trager did not have her own share of neurosis – but it was obvious that she was there to take all she could ingest, then move on to her own successful life.  Like I said, she was smart.

There was one near disaster, in which Trager overcharged one of the members, and the member’s wife became irate over the incident.  This was the down-side to her strong personality, and in this case she over-stepped her bounds.  Clearly in the wrong, she was forced to apologize, admit her malfeasance and make restitution.  That was the closest she had come to getting sacked that year, and she knew it.

In spite of their differences and her
modus operandi
, Trager was a positive influence in the chef’s life, because she was forever touting his wisdom, experience and knowledge.  If it wasn’t for Trager, I probably would not have stayed at the club for the year that I did.  “Watch, and learn as much as you can,” she would say to me, more times than I can recall.  And that’s what I did.

Truffle was Trager’s small, ornery dachshund, possessed of more personality in her little paw than most humans have in their entire body.  Truffle had a certain territorial persona, which is to say, that she considered The Dutchess Valley Rod and Gun Club her own private domain.  Of course Chef van Erp was the titular head of that domain, even if Trager was the power behind the throne.  But Truffle clearly behaved as if she owned the club.   

One morning, as the chef rose from bed, he put his naked foot down right into the middle of a small, wet mound of dog droppings.  I was already up that morning, prepping for a party, and I had never seen the chef so angry (like who could blame him?).  He was screaming at the top of his lungs, and at one point threw a chair at the dog in the living room – barely missing the little bugger.  Truffle realized she was in serious trouble, and scurried into the kitchen where I was working, scratching frantically at the door.  I let her out immediately, because I knew that if van Erp got a clear shot at her, she would be done for.  Van Erp went back to the bedroom to clean up the mess, and I continued on with my prep work.  Truffle remained outside in the winter cold for the next twelve hours – long enough for the chef to get over the outrage. 

One of my most memorable experiences that fall was a mushroom hunt that the chef initiated on the spur of the moment, with little fanfare.  We simply walked out into a nearby wooded area, and the chef began digging with a small trowel.  After collecting enough morels for a party of three – the chef and I brought them back to the club kitchen.  They were well-rinsed in cold water – to remove soil and any impurities in between the ridges on the cap – then sautéed in butter and seasoned with salt and pepper.  And we sat there in the kitchen, savoring the most exquisite wild, fresh morels I had ever tasted in my young life.  Not only was it an extraordinary moment, it also confirmed the meaning of savoring the simple things of life – such as a spontaneous wild mushroom hunt, and the subsequent moment of ingesting those mushrooms.

Wild mushrooms contain a high proportion of glutamic acid, a compound that opens the taste buds, similar to the effect that MSG (mono-sodium-glutamate) has.  They are thus important in cuisine for naturally enhancing the flavor of the foods that they accompany.

Of course there were items that were unavailable in the cold winter woods, and for those items the chef drove down to New York City periodically, to shop midst the ethnic markets on Ninth Avenue and elsewhere.  After one such trip he returned with a fat black Périgord truffle, which was stored in a one-gallon glass jar filled with uncooked risotto.  The dry rice was the perfect storage medium, and the rice absorbed the intense aroma of the truffle – without diminishing the intensity of that flavor and aroma.  At $400 per pound in those days, it was important to both preserve the tuber and gain the maximum from its intense character.  And even though I was a truffle virgin at that point in my career, I was savvy enough to know that a kitchen in possession of
Tuber melansporum –
what the Italians call
la perle della cucina
and the French gourmand Brillat-Savarin once termed a black diamond – was a very serious kitchen. 

The truffle is a member of the botanical family Funghi, which includes mushrooms and morels, in addition to truffles. The word truffle is derived from the Spanish
trufa
and the Italian
treffere
, both meaning deceit, a reference to the fact that this variety of wild mushroom grows underneath the surface of the ground – anywhere from just underneath the surface, to 12-inches (300 mm) deep.  They are unique in that they produce their fruiting bodies underground, and they have a symbiotic relationship with trees – typically beech, hazelnut, oak, poplar, or willow.  Humans do not possess an olfactory sense keen enough to detect them, hence we must elicit help.  In Sardinia goats are employed to track down truffles; bear cubs have been used in Russia; and pigs and specially trained dogs in France and other parts of Europe. 

Pigs are the true experts, however, since German researchers recently discovered in truffles a musky chemical that is also secreted in a male pig’s saliva, which prompts mating behavior.  When the pig’s sharp nose detects that aroma from underneath the ground – both pigs and dogs can detect that aroma from as far away as 50 yards (45 meters) –  it sends the creature into a lustful frenzy, and they must be held back to prevent them from eating it.

The white truffle from Alba is found in the Piedmont and Emilia regions of Italy, and the Atlas mountains of North Africa.  The black Périgord truffle is found primarily in the Dordogne region of southwestern France, and in parts of Spain, Germany, and Italy. 

Tragically, over the past two centuries ninety-percent of European forests have been cut down, and this deforestation, combined with soil and water contamination, and over-harvesting, has brought truffle production down from 1800 tons (1.36-million kg) per annum in Périgord alone, to about 200 tons (181,500 kg) in all of France.  Harvesting truffles has always been a challenge, but this damage to its yield has made truffles so rare and difficult to obtain, that they are priced beyond reason – $400-to-$800 per pound.