The Mind of a Chef (2012) s04e08 Episode Script
Evolution
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For chef Gabrielle Hamilton, the path to becoming a chef was not a typical one.
There was no formal training, no innate love for the kitchen.
She worked to survive, fell in love with the craft, and reluctantly became the chef she is today.
Oh, victory! Now she's shifted from student to teacher, keeping watch over the techniques she holds dear, to preserve the past.
This is out of fashion.
All right, fine.
No, I'm gonna pass it on to the next generation, I swear.
Enter the Mind of A Chef.
It's so good to be classic and not trendy.
Oh man, we are making some food here now.
à I worked in kitchens early on.
I was a dishwasher, a salad girl, waiter and a bartender.
I have in fact worked every station in a restaurant.
But I was not technically or formally trained, I haven't been to cooking school.
It's always undermining my confidence.
Oh, whoops.
Burnt number two.
I am so not giving up.
Oh, we are feeling some luck today.
Ready? Whoo-hoo! I never knew I could be the teacher.
I didn't go to cooking school.
Oh good, me neither.
I have your You know that that book came out in '74 or so, this is like 43 years old.
I have had it since I'm 19 I'm 49.
Technique are very important.
In itself, the technique are not, but if you happen to have talent, then it lets you take that talent somewhere.
Repeat, repeat that we do to practice, those technique are ingrained in your brain so much, now you can reject all of it.
Jacques Pépin is the kind of nice papa bear of all the technique.
He famously can bone out a chicken with his bare hands.
Nice chicken, I love chicken in any form.
Of course, I'm wondering if the horse and buggy still has any currency.
So you want me to bone out that chicken? Should I set the timer, do you wanna? First, I remove this very often.
Grab it this way, break it at the joint here, pull out, and then remove one of the two bones.
That we call a lollypop.
And now, we're going to remove the wishbone here.
Whether you roast a chicken or not, the wishbone is in the way of the carvings.
There is the joint of the shoulder here, and the joint of the hip that I can feel here.
That's really the two place where I need a knife to cut, the rest you pull.
Wiggle the knife a little bit to go in to the joint here.
Same thing on the other side.
And now I have cut those two articulations, so I can put my finger through it, and pull out until I see the oyster here.
Same thing on the other side, I see the oyster, and now, bring the thigh bone parallel to the carcass and crack it open.
And you pull out, and pull out.
Keep pulling it out, just like if you're taking his pajama out.
And pull it out.
There is no secret to the thing, it's a question of practice.
Man, it doesn't take long to get there, does it? I didn't want to be a cook.
I wanted to be a writer my whole life.
Never knew or even considered that you could make a living as a writer, I just always knew that I had to make a living.
After I'd graduated from college, this bright idea about catering came up, because you can paid a very nice wage.
I thought that that would be a great way to be a writer, and still pay my rent.
I'm gonna cook with my dear friend Misty Callies.
We've made some very dry, un-luscious, inoffensive catering food together.
And we stood across the prep table each day, and maybe she liked me a little bit, I liked her.
What we're doing, because we thought it would be funny, demonstrating the confines under which you have to make catering food.
So we're gonna make a chicken breast, not even thigh, you can't get away with thigh or any of the dark meat.
And often that would be skinless.
Right, we're kind of getting away with murder here.
I hope this works.
Maybe this will be fun for you, you know, I'll prep and you'll prep and we'll just be like good old days.
I was in a catering kitchen last night and was having, like, traumatic flashbacks.
You know, everyone's bopping the food onto the plate with the latex glove.
Timer! Timer! And you're not allowed to turn it off until whatever catering cook shows up to pull their roasted vegetables out, right? Timer! I remember going to an event and it was, again, a boneless, skinless chicken breast, but they had left the skin on.
And this one guy says, "Pardon me while I undress my chicken.
" As if it was scandalous that the skin had been left on.
And everyone laughed and I'm feeling sheepish because I was happy, the skin's the best part, isn't it? That was, what, 20 years ago or whatever.
Yeah, that guy's dead.
I don't recall ever doing anything like that.
Oh Misty, if you want my catering tricks We hoped you were gonna tell us all sorts of new things to do.
All the tricks? Mm-hmm, especially for hors-d'oeuvre and appetizers.
The bane of our existence.
I remember bringing some tray game to the parties.
Were you impressed with me? I was mightily impressed.
Were you? - Yes, yes.
Boy, I'm enjoying remembering some of these things.
Don't you feel like you did very good work there? Sometimes we probably did, but the unfortunate memories are the ones that have stuck with me.
I mean, to the people getting it, they regard it as good, hopefully, but there is nothing enjoyable about making that much food at one time.
Because you're desperately looking for something new.
That's right, that's right.
And then there's only so many new things you can do.
And it has to fit all that criteria.
It has to be made in the shop in advance, it has to hold up for four hours.
And everyone usually is in such a rush, it never gets plated out the way that you have it in your head and looks as beautiful as it could.
And then you got to clean it all up.
And repack it, and take it back, and really clean again.
It's challenging, so I think when people really pull it off beautifully, it's pretty impressive.
Oh, oh! Oh, victory! Oh, oh, oh! Glossy.
And it's kind of brown and unoffensive, oh it's This really brings me back.
It's not bad, right? No, it's not bad.
I would eat it.
Are you free to cater my wedding? I have made a thousand butter rosettes for catering, and you know what we use? The piping bag with a pastry tip.
But to do it by hand, this will be fun.
I want to have cold hands.
He says, scrape the top of the butter several times to build up a long bank of butter.
And he wants me to come this way, not out but in.
Oh, and you just curve it off.
Oh, oh, you know, beginner's luck but come on.
Maybe I have something to show Jacques.
Yep, that's more than enough.
More with the point.
Not too much you go too much with the point.
It's a good thing we're doing this.
Bring your knife more toward the center Of the butter pound? You start with the wrong part of the knife.
I should be up at the top, okay.
Try it there, it's a bit softer, may work a bit better.
Yeah, good.
Good, good, incline you knife a little more this way, a little more this way, that's it.
Okay, I'm gonna start again.
Okay, go back a little bit, little thing, I'm tilting too much, God.
And I'm shaking.
Yeah, that's it.
Yeah, take your time, that's it, good, keep going.
Keep going this way, you have to have it a little longer.
That's it, that's it.
Yeah, that's it! Okay, this is getting fun for me.
Good, so now you have to do a tighter one to put in the center of it.
So, am I doing the same thing, just smaller? Yeah.
Beautiful, look at that! Beautiful.
I have to brush up on my botany in order to make my butter flowers.
All right.
Okay.
It smells like gardenia! This is out of fashion.
This is out of fashion, all right, fine.
Will people go with me, or are they gonna be like, "God.
" The day I opened the restaurant, I said, hello Gabrielle, let's have a conversation about what's not happening for you.
This decades-long justification for not writing.
Well, of course you're not writing, babe, you just worked 22 hours yesterday.
Well, you can't really write tonight, you really should just have a little bourbon and two cigarettes and go out for dinner and have somebody else clean up.
But in your whole mind, if I only had more time, I'd really be a writer.
You're not a writer, you're a cook.
Say goodbye.
And then I got my first writing gig.
I got some New York Times gig.
Unbelievable.
You think you're coming to the fork in the road, and you mourn for and grieve and long for the path not taken, and they reconverge up ahead who knew? I would love to have there be a chef and owner here who can ventriloquize me, and these classic techniques.
To bone out the chicken, to make the butter rosettes, the rosettes in sweet butter.
And actually feel pretty confident passing it on.
I've read the recipe five times.
I'm gonna help you.
Even if you do something horribly, we're gonna do it again, until we do it right.
And you should go ahead and put on an apron.
And you should definitely have a sip of cava, because if there's anything I've taught you Tyla marks a change in my work life.
She's sort of like project manager.
She's incredibly bright and she writes and we have a lot of fun together.
Do you want to say what we're making? We're doing toasted manti with garlic yogurt.
The first thing you're probably gonna do is make your little balls of ground lamb, and those are gonna be ready to be put into your cut pieces of pasta.
And I'm gonna help you.
- Great.
You've really got this down.
Mine are so jumbo.
Two, four, six, eight, ten, 12, 14, 15 All right, are we good, or should I keep going? Want me to keep rolling tiny balls? This is so fun to see.
Exactly in half, east-west, exactly in half, north-south.
There's no reason to be this precise, and there's no reason to not be.
I'm gonna do one for you.
So you're doing one inside at a time.
And I want these to kiss in the center in a star-like way.
So I'm pinching, I don't want a big wide seam.
Push down at the same time so I'm getting a flat bottom so that they sit in my sauté pan later.
Try.
Put your finger in cold water and just do the edge, and I mean the outer most edge.
Do it again.
- It's almost What you don't want is this big wing.
Okay, this is a no pile.
Well, by 20, you're gonna have this down.
The way to fold it is not intuitive.
If I was not here - Yes? What would you do? Probably not make this recipe.
So how many do you do to be prepared for a service? Ten per order, and you know you're gonna do 15 orders a night.
Get a buddy, and do not do this alone.
Don't you feel better that I'm doing this with you? Yes, I do, thank you.
16, 18, 20, 30.
We did three orders in, what, two-and-a-half hours? Really great.
Give a little space between them, and pop them in your oven, moderately high heat.
So while that's in there, I'm looking for an assertive garlic yogurt.
White, pristine, nice little cloud.
And I would actually put some salt in, because it's another way of drawing out the flavor, and you can round out the astringent edges of the yogurt with a little bit of olive oil.
Let me taste.
Hello, we have a nice personality.
Do you remember from reading the recipe start to finish, what's coming now? I believe we are going to bring beef broth to a simmer, and we're gonna put the manti in.
And they're gonna swell and the beef broth is going to reduce.
Correct.
These look great.
I want you to focus on getting the manti out without getting any on the yogurt.
Good, just like that.
Oh Tyla, you're a natural.
I love what you did.
I'm gonna have a viewing party for this episode, and make the manti.
I have been making the pâte àchoux cygnes, the swans, here for 15 years, every Valentine's Day.
No kidding.
Because I'm romantic at heart.
And for Valentine's Day, why not? The pâte àchoux is something fascinating.
It's a mixture of milk, butter, and the flour.
And that's called the panade.
Before you put the egg.
Okay.
So it's just starting to come together, yeah? That wonderful machine.
It will tighten like that into a pretty thick paste.
You fold it like an accordion there.
You want to press without moving, and then you put out to get a tail.
Love it, teardrop.
I'm sure you probably do them better than I do.
I don't do it in like 20 years.
Mine are pretty good, I will say.
So do you want to start with a square or a rectangle? A triangle, this way.
So you do a little bit of a round thing for the head of the swan, and then with the tip of that, I push to do a neck if you want.
Huh, I have a different way different.
Show me the way you do it, then.
Okay.
Okay, wait, yeah, but I can do better.
Oh, oh! It's more like a musical clef.
I'm always making the necks on a separate tray so I can pull them, they cook faster.
You're right, then.
It will cook in like ten, 15 minutes, and the other one like 30 minutes.
And here, I have a chocolate sauce that's very thick, almost like a ganache.
I warm up the milk, it sat, and I put the chocolate in it, and that's it.
We have some ÃÂ choux, they are now cooler.
A little bit of blackberry.
And a little bit of whipped cream on top.
Maybe a bit of chocolate sauce.
A little bit of snow.
It is cheez whiz over here, but works for me.
People are always happy with that.
Always, I'm gonna pass it on to the next generation, I swear.
This is what I devoted myself to, and I did that right.
I am the voice of Prune, or the face of Prune.
We manage to eek out some delicious beauty here, and I know the conditions aren't that great, but I'm proud of what we do here.
Who could have known what appeared to be the prison became the vessel for all the good things.
Everything happened because of the kitchen, yeah.
I didn't know it was coming.
And look!
Support your PBS staiton.
For chef Gabrielle Hamilton, the path to becoming a chef was not a typical one.
There was no formal training, no innate love for the kitchen.
She worked to survive, fell in love with the craft, and reluctantly became the chef she is today.
Oh, victory! Now she's shifted from student to teacher, keeping watch over the techniques she holds dear, to preserve the past.
This is out of fashion.
All right, fine.
No, I'm gonna pass it on to the next generation, I swear.
Enter the Mind of A Chef.
It's so good to be classic and not trendy.
Oh man, we are making some food here now.
à I worked in kitchens early on.
I was a dishwasher, a salad girl, waiter and a bartender.
I have in fact worked every station in a restaurant.
But I was not technically or formally trained, I haven't been to cooking school.
It's always undermining my confidence.
Oh, whoops.
Burnt number two.
I am so not giving up.
Oh, we are feeling some luck today.
Ready? Whoo-hoo! I never knew I could be the teacher.
I didn't go to cooking school.
Oh good, me neither.
I have your You know that that book came out in '74 or so, this is like 43 years old.
I have had it since I'm 19 I'm 49.
Technique are very important.
In itself, the technique are not, but if you happen to have talent, then it lets you take that talent somewhere.
Repeat, repeat that we do to practice, those technique are ingrained in your brain so much, now you can reject all of it.
Jacques Pépin is the kind of nice papa bear of all the technique.
He famously can bone out a chicken with his bare hands.
Nice chicken, I love chicken in any form.
Of course, I'm wondering if the horse and buggy still has any currency.
So you want me to bone out that chicken? Should I set the timer, do you wanna? First, I remove this very often.
Grab it this way, break it at the joint here, pull out, and then remove one of the two bones.
That we call a lollypop.
And now, we're going to remove the wishbone here.
Whether you roast a chicken or not, the wishbone is in the way of the carvings.
There is the joint of the shoulder here, and the joint of the hip that I can feel here.
That's really the two place where I need a knife to cut, the rest you pull.
Wiggle the knife a little bit to go in to the joint here.
Same thing on the other side.
And now I have cut those two articulations, so I can put my finger through it, and pull out until I see the oyster here.
Same thing on the other side, I see the oyster, and now, bring the thigh bone parallel to the carcass and crack it open.
And you pull out, and pull out.
Keep pulling it out, just like if you're taking his pajama out.
And pull it out.
There is no secret to the thing, it's a question of practice.
Man, it doesn't take long to get there, does it? I didn't want to be a cook.
I wanted to be a writer my whole life.
Never knew or even considered that you could make a living as a writer, I just always knew that I had to make a living.
After I'd graduated from college, this bright idea about catering came up, because you can paid a very nice wage.
I thought that that would be a great way to be a writer, and still pay my rent.
I'm gonna cook with my dear friend Misty Callies.
We've made some very dry, un-luscious, inoffensive catering food together.
And we stood across the prep table each day, and maybe she liked me a little bit, I liked her.
What we're doing, because we thought it would be funny, demonstrating the confines under which you have to make catering food.
So we're gonna make a chicken breast, not even thigh, you can't get away with thigh or any of the dark meat.
And often that would be skinless.
Right, we're kind of getting away with murder here.
I hope this works.
Maybe this will be fun for you, you know, I'll prep and you'll prep and we'll just be like good old days.
I was in a catering kitchen last night and was having, like, traumatic flashbacks.
You know, everyone's bopping the food onto the plate with the latex glove.
Timer! Timer! And you're not allowed to turn it off until whatever catering cook shows up to pull their roasted vegetables out, right? Timer! I remember going to an event and it was, again, a boneless, skinless chicken breast, but they had left the skin on.
And this one guy says, "Pardon me while I undress my chicken.
" As if it was scandalous that the skin had been left on.
And everyone laughed and I'm feeling sheepish because I was happy, the skin's the best part, isn't it? That was, what, 20 years ago or whatever.
Yeah, that guy's dead.
I don't recall ever doing anything like that.
Oh Misty, if you want my catering tricks We hoped you were gonna tell us all sorts of new things to do.
All the tricks? Mm-hmm, especially for hors-d'oeuvre and appetizers.
The bane of our existence.
I remember bringing some tray game to the parties.
Were you impressed with me? I was mightily impressed.
Were you? - Yes, yes.
Boy, I'm enjoying remembering some of these things.
Don't you feel like you did very good work there? Sometimes we probably did, but the unfortunate memories are the ones that have stuck with me.
I mean, to the people getting it, they regard it as good, hopefully, but there is nothing enjoyable about making that much food at one time.
Because you're desperately looking for something new.
That's right, that's right.
And then there's only so many new things you can do.
And it has to fit all that criteria.
It has to be made in the shop in advance, it has to hold up for four hours.
And everyone usually is in such a rush, it never gets plated out the way that you have it in your head and looks as beautiful as it could.
And then you got to clean it all up.
And repack it, and take it back, and really clean again.
It's challenging, so I think when people really pull it off beautifully, it's pretty impressive.
Oh, oh! Oh, victory! Oh, oh, oh! Glossy.
And it's kind of brown and unoffensive, oh it's This really brings me back.
It's not bad, right? No, it's not bad.
I would eat it.
Are you free to cater my wedding? I have made a thousand butter rosettes for catering, and you know what we use? The piping bag with a pastry tip.
But to do it by hand, this will be fun.
I want to have cold hands.
He says, scrape the top of the butter several times to build up a long bank of butter.
And he wants me to come this way, not out but in.
Oh, and you just curve it off.
Oh, oh, you know, beginner's luck but come on.
Maybe I have something to show Jacques.
Yep, that's more than enough.
More with the point.
Not too much you go too much with the point.
It's a good thing we're doing this.
Bring your knife more toward the center Of the butter pound? You start with the wrong part of the knife.
I should be up at the top, okay.
Try it there, it's a bit softer, may work a bit better.
Yeah, good.
Good, good, incline you knife a little more this way, a little more this way, that's it.
Okay, I'm gonna start again.
Okay, go back a little bit, little thing, I'm tilting too much, God.
And I'm shaking.
Yeah, that's it.
Yeah, take your time, that's it, good, keep going.
Keep going this way, you have to have it a little longer.
That's it, that's it.
Yeah, that's it! Okay, this is getting fun for me.
Good, so now you have to do a tighter one to put in the center of it.
So, am I doing the same thing, just smaller? Yeah.
Beautiful, look at that! Beautiful.
I have to brush up on my botany in order to make my butter flowers.
All right.
Okay.
It smells like gardenia! This is out of fashion.
This is out of fashion, all right, fine.
Will people go with me, or are they gonna be like, "God.
" The day I opened the restaurant, I said, hello Gabrielle, let's have a conversation about what's not happening for you.
This decades-long justification for not writing.
Well, of course you're not writing, babe, you just worked 22 hours yesterday.
Well, you can't really write tonight, you really should just have a little bourbon and two cigarettes and go out for dinner and have somebody else clean up.
But in your whole mind, if I only had more time, I'd really be a writer.
You're not a writer, you're a cook.
Say goodbye.
And then I got my first writing gig.
I got some New York Times gig.
Unbelievable.
You think you're coming to the fork in the road, and you mourn for and grieve and long for the path not taken, and they reconverge up ahead who knew? I would love to have there be a chef and owner here who can ventriloquize me, and these classic techniques.
To bone out the chicken, to make the butter rosettes, the rosettes in sweet butter.
And actually feel pretty confident passing it on.
I've read the recipe five times.
I'm gonna help you.
Even if you do something horribly, we're gonna do it again, until we do it right.
And you should go ahead and put on an apron.
And you should definitely have a sip of cava, because if there's anything I've taught you Tyla marks a change in my work life.
She's sort of like project manager.
She's incredibly bright and she writes and we have a lot of fun together.
Do you want to say what we're making? We're doing toasted manti with garlic yogurt.
The first thing you're probably gonna do is make your little balls of ground lamb, and those are gonna be ready to be put into your cut pieces of pasta.
And I'm gonna help you.
- Great.
You've really got this down.
Mine are so jumbo.
Two, four, six, eight, ten, 12, 14, 15 All right, are we good, or should I keep going? Want me to keep rolling tiny balls? This is so fun to see.
Exactly in half, east-west, exactly in half, north-south.
There's no reason to be this precise, and there's no reason to not be.
I'm gonna do one for you.
So you're doing one inside at a time.
And I want these to kiss in the center in a star-like way.
So I'm pinching, I don't want a big wide seam.
Push down at the same time so I'm getting a flat bottom so that they sit in my sauté pan later.
Try.
Put your finger in cold water and just do the edge, and I mean the outer most edge.
Do it again.
- It's almost What you don't want is this big wing.
Okay, this is a no pile.
Well, by 20, you're gonna have this down.
The way to fold it is not intuitive.
If I was not here - Yes? What would you do? Probably not make this recipe.
So how many do you do to be prepared for a service? Ten per order, and you know you're gonna do 15 orders a night.
Get a buddy, and do not do this alone.
Don't you feel better that I'm doing this with you? Yes, I do, thank you.
16, 18, 20, 30.
We did three orders in, what, two-and-a-half hours? Really great.
Give a little space between them, and pop them in your oven, moderately high heat.
So while that's in there, I'm looking for an assertive garlic yogurt.
White, pristine, nice little cloud.
And I would actually put some salt in, because it's another way of drawing out the flavor, and you can round out the astringent edges of the yogurt with a little bit of olive oil.
Let me taste.
Hello, we have a nice personality.
Do you remember from reading the recipe start to finish, what's coming now? I believe we are going to bring beef broth to a simmer, and we're gonna put the manti in.
And they're gonna swell and the beef broth is going to reduce.
Correct.
These look great.
I want you to focus on getting the manti out without getting any on the yogurt.
Good, just like that.
Oh Tyla, you're a natural.
I love what you did.
I'm gonna have a viewing party for this episode, and make the manti.
I have been making the pâte àchoux cygnes, the swans, here for 15 years, every Valentine's Day.
No kidding.
Because I'm romantic at heart.
And for Valentine's Day, why not? The pâte àchoux is something fascinating.
It's a mixture of milk, butter, and the flour.
And that's called the panade.
Before you put the egg.
Okay.
So it's just starting to come together, yeah? That wonderful machine.
It will tighten like that into a pretty thick paste.
You fold it like an accordion there.
You want to press without moving, and then you put out to get a tail.
Love it, teardrop.
I'm sure you probably do them better than I do.
I don't do it in like 20 years.
Mine are pretty good, I will say.
So do you want to start with a square or a rectangle? A triangle, this way.
So you do a little bit of a round thing for the head of the swan, and then with the tip of that, I push to do a neck if you want.
Huh, I have a different way different.
Show me the way you do it, then.
Okay.
Okay, wait, yeah, but I can do better.
Oh, oh! It's more like a musical clef.
I'm always making the necks on a separate tray so I can pull them, they cook faster.
You're right, then.
It will cook in like ten, 15 minutes, and the other one like 30 minutes.
And here, I have a chocolate sauce that's very thick, almost like a ganache.
I warm up the milk, it sat, and I put the chocolate in it, and that's it.
We have some ÃÂ choux, they are now cooler.
A little bit of blackberry.
And a little bit of whipped cream on top.
Maybe a bit of chocolate sauce.
A little bit of snow.
It is cheez whiz over here, but works for me.
People are always happy with that.
Always, I'm gonna pass it on to the next generation, I swear.
This is what I devoted myself to, and I did that right.
I am the voice of Prune, or the face of Prune.
We manage to eek out some delicious beauty here, and I know the conditions aren't that great, but I'm proud of what we do here.
Who could have known what appeared to be the prison became the vessel for all the good things.
Everything happened because of the kitchen, yeah.
I didn't know it was coming.
And look!