Ferran Adriá's Family Meal, Served SND Style!

Photo from The Independent

For those of you who haven't spent the larger part of your lives toiling away in restaurants, let me explain Family Meal. When you work the day-in, day-out trench warfare that is a restaurant, you work either Front of the House (Waitstaff, Bartenders, Runners and Bussers) or Back of the House (Chefs, Cooks, Dishwashers, Porters) you will, at some point, (or most of the time or sometimes, uh, at every waking moment) experience the polarization that is the "US versus THEM" attitude.

THEM being the restaurant's "guests", or "customers". 

You form a bond with your coworkers, people from wildly varied ethnic, educational, and socioeconomic backgrounds.

It's a Family.

Sort of like the one Patty Hearst had. Which isn't to suggest you immediately start sending harassing letters back home to your birth family, or robbing banks with automatic weapons, although, during some of the rougher nights working a restaurant floor, I considered that as a possible exit strategy.)

"I'm sorry, that isn't my table. I'll have your waiter come right over."

The nature of restaurant work, with its daily adversity/triumph/failure/success/call it a draw bonds you inextricably to your coworkers. And no matter how educated/overqualified you are, or think you are, the people you work with in a restaurant will piss you off and save your sorry ass, often during the same shift.

You will fall in love with them, gossip about them, fuck them, hang out with them, drink too much with them, tell them too much personal information, hate them, be consumed with jealousy when they quit before you, and lean on them for unconditional support when you need it the most. They are your family.

So, Family Meal is the meal that a restaurant serves to its staff before the shift starts. This sit-down meal usually doubles as a shift meeting, getting everyone in the room together and on the same page, information-wise. Sometimes, it even triples as a wine tasting. If you are VERY fortunate, it is just Family Meal, and your final moments with your own thoughts and with your co-workers' info, gossip, barbs and inside jokes before the shift begins. It is nourishment, both physically and psychically.

My first Family Meal at my first restaurant job was at a Farrell's Ice Cream Parlor when I was sixteen years old. That was over 25 years ago. I have eaten more Family Meals over the course of my lifetime than I can count.

At some restaurants, Family Meal is something line cooks know they are required to cook for their coworkers and often apathetically put off until the last minute. The staff at restaurants like these get meals of barely-sauced pastas and salad. At other restaurants, the line cooks get really creative with what they have to work with (scraps/leftovers/things that can't, or won't, be used in service) and use Family Meal to cook "their food," which is likely different from what they are cooking for service. It gives line cooks the opportunity to just get down and creative for their fellow co-workers. I think Family Meal is a direct reflection on how happy and well integrated a staff is. If it sucks, chances are the person cooking it is consumed with some measure of self loathing, or that the kitchen staff is at war with the servers, and the bussers and runners are caught in the middle. If a restaurant's Family Meal is consistently thoughtful and delicious, though, chances are it has been prepared by (and for) a happy, harmonious staff who feels appreciated and takes pride in what they do. Last season, on HBO's Treme I enjoyed watching a somewhat idealized family meal scene. and I loved that idealism. If only they were all like that!

Video still from HBO's Treme

The Invite:

Hungry Kiddies!!

Wow. I know it is summer, but the weeks seem to be flying by in a way that feels very un-summery. But the weekends... the weekends allow me time to ruminate on what I would like to be cooking.

Mark Bittman recently got to cook with Ferran Adria in the El Bulli kitchen. Lucky Bastard. Lucky not just because he got to cook with Ferran, but because he got to cook, as he calls it, REAL FOOD with him. They cooked dishes from Ferran's forthcoming book, "Family Dinners", entirely comprised of family meals served in the restaurant. I cannot wait to get my hands on this book, not only because another one of my favorite go-to's is another Family Meal inspired book,  Suzanne Goin's Sunday Suppers at Lucques.

Family meal is the meal you eat together before every shift. It sometimes feeds your body, occasionally even feeds your soul. You will most likely have may more disappointing family meals than satisfying ones-- it is often a way to use scraps-- an afterthought unless you get a line cook who really cares and wants to show you their mad skillz. For years after I worked at Babbo I didn't eat pasta because it reminded me of my five night a week family meal there. Prune had some amazing Family Meals, especially if Ashley Archer or Ginevre Iverson was cooking them. The Tasting Room always had some inspired cooking, in part because Colin Alevras just fed us doctored versions of the real menu. (that is unheard of, by the way, because it doesn't do your food costs any favors).  From time to time Sara Jenkins takes over the line at the end of service and whips up something - a recent All'Amatriciana comes to mind.

Much of what I do here is really family meal, in a way. And seeing Ferran's recipes made me realize I wanted to cook a "Family Meal Inspired" SND with the 3 recipes they published in the NYT and some of my own.

The Menu: 
Marinara Style Mussels with Crusty Bread *** Shaved Vegetables and Cannellini Beans with Anchovies and Lemon Vinaigrette*** Market Salad with Green Goddess Dressing ***Grill-Roasted Local Bass with Potatoes, Onions and Tomatoes*** Squash, Eggplant, Peppers in Charmoula *** Country Bread with Chocolate and Olive Oil

Ferran Adriá, generally acknowledged as the father of Modern Spanish Cuisine, is about to release a "Family Meal" cookbook and that is very interesting to me. I never got to eat at El Bulli. It was very far away, crushingly difficult to get into, and very expensive.

I also fall into the "foam on my food isn't that interesting" camp, which isn't to say that while I don't undervalue the great invention and creativity that has created and driven molecular gastronomy, it just doesn't interest me either as a cook or as a diner. It feels too gimmicky and science-y to really capture my imagination. I don't want perfectly seared scallops in a chocolate/lime/salt/coffee foam that magically tastes like bubblegum. Mindfucks are best left to horrible bosses and high schoolers, I think. And, besides, if I want bubblegum, I'll chew a piece.

Back to family meal, inspired by Ferran Adriá.

One might imagine that a chef with as creative and nimble a mind as Adriá's would insist that family meal be more elevated than pasta and salad.

One would be correct.

It started with Marinara Style Mussels.

Marinara STYLE, because there is virtually no tomato in them, mostly smoked paprika and garlic. The broth was so fantastic I saved some and froze it to use later, something I wouldn't usually do with mussel broth. It was lemony, smoky, briny and garlicky. Absurdly delicious.

Next up was Bean Salad with Shaved Vegetables in Anchovy-Lemon Vinaigrette.

I read this recipe in the New York Times on a flight to Phoenix recently, and thought... HELLO! Fresh and delicious! The article was about the virtue of cooking your own raw beans. I had forgotten what a pleasure that could be. Not a pleasure on par with, say, getting involved in an unexpected three-way on your way to math class, but a pleasure nonetheless...

The recipe called for an anchovy vinaigrette, and if you have ever dined in my home you know that "anchovy vinaigrette" are magic words.

The shaved vegetables can be anything in season; The beans are your canvas and the vegetables your palette. I chose radishes, carrots, shaved zucchini and greens, tossed them with room temp (or warm) beans, vinaigrette, squeezed a little more lemon for taste and called it good.

 

There are a million different versions of Green Goddess dressing and everyone claims theirs is the correct recipe.

I make no such claim.

I only know mine is delicious. Parsley, Basil, Tarragon, Cilantro, Capers, one Anchovy, Garlic, Lemon zest and juice and Greek Yogurt zapped together in the blender. Voilá. Toss with hunks of a hearty lettuce like Romaine and you really don't need anything else.

Plus, this is an easy, simple salad that you can make quickly for a crowd.

 I liked the idea of serving eggplant, peppers and squash in a spicy charmoula - something there is also about a million recipes for.

First, I charred and seeded the green and the sweet red peppers, then marinated them with onions, garlic, thyme, balsamic, red wine vinegar and olive oil for a few hours.

 

I had seen this in Sunday Suppers at Lucques by Suzanne Goin for years, and never cooked it. It was well worth the small amount of effort.

The sweet/sour of the marinated peppers gave the charmoula a much more complex taste. I roasted the eggplant, and then made the charmoula with cumin, garlic, paprika, spicy smoked paprika, cayenne, cilantro, parsley and olive oil.

It isn't very photogenic here, but trust me, it fucking rocked and was a great counterpoint to both the

simple salad and the starchy bean salad. I think this would be great with grilled shrimp too. Hmmm...

In true family style, I had some cucumbers that I had "quick pickled" with fish sauce, lime, sugar, salt, and rice vinegar. I pulled those out too as a little sweet/tart break for the palate.

You would have thought they were specifically planned and not just an interloper, they were just that good.

I have a friend who has been fishing in Sheepshead Bay and catching more gorgeous fish than he can use. It isn't legal to sell them to restaurants, which is a damn shame, because you can't even get fish that fresh at Hunt's Point, so my original idea was to see if I could convince him to coordinate a fishing trip with The Sunday Night Dinner. Local fish, just pulled out of the water? Sign me UP.

Sadly, the week before this dinner, there had been a MAJOR sewage spill in the Hudson, and all of the beaches were closed. Also, the idea of eating fish caught in raw sewage water seemed like a bad idea, so I wound up buying fish from my local guy.

I ended up getting Branzino and Dorade, both fish that Ferran might have in his kitchen in Catalonia. Adriá's method is to wrap the fish in parchment "packages" with aromatic vegetables, but wrapping thirteen whole fish and fitting them into two pans in a standard oven is more difficult than it sounds, so I ended up improvising.

I layered sliced potatoes, fennel, tomatoes, garlic, and herbs into hotel pans and then coated them in olive oil.

I scored the cleaned fish, added salt & pepper, olive oiled them too, laid them over the veggies, added more rosemary and garlic for good measure, then tightly covered with parchment and then two layers of heavy duty foil, the idea being to seal in all of the moisture to "steam" the fish and vegetables.

When it came out of the oven, the aroma was intense and gorgeous, and more importantly, the juices from the fish had permeated the vegetables and made the whole dish taste like a poor man's bouillabaisse.

 

Not a bad thing. The tomatoes, too had a slow-roasted and concentrated taste to them.

 

 YES.

 

 Although I take a deep, perverse pleasure in boning fish, I hate it when I'm required to do it (I include the word 'perverse' in that last sentence for a reason.) So after cooking all day, I'm sure as fuck not going to go around the table, individually boning everyone's fish. Besides, there is something lovely, (and a little primitive) about letting people just have at it.

Flipping back the top flesh, working around the bones... handing each other little pieces of the fillets that they manage to lift off... You can always tell family-style fish diners who know what they're doing because they will hang back for a minute, surveying the landscape, and then slightly aggressively, but not too much so, nab the best bits, like the cheeks, belly or collar for themselves.

I love to watch that dance.

Last, but not least, and something I will make again and again now that I have done it once, was dessert. This dish came from Ferran's childhood, and if my mother had made this for me EVER, you can bet your ass I would be telling everyone about it too. Simple, and so satisfying.

Check it out: Good, thick country bread, with olive oil and shaved chocolate on it. I used bittersweet Callebaut. Melt chocolate on bread in the oven, drizzle on a little GOOD olive oil (something fruity or peppery works, I used California) and finish with a little Malden salt. This is one of those dishes that I suppose would work with meh chocolate and mediocre olive oil, but if you can, splurge.

You will be happy you did. We somehow managed to have a couple of pieces left over and I ate them right before bed. It felt tragic to brush the taste out of my teeth afterwards!

Family Meal, Ferran Adria Style is something I could get behind. I wonder if companies other than restaurants would be equally productive if they partook in a daily family meal? Hmmm... Changing the world, one shared meal at a time.