One Way To Achieve Temporary Tranquility

There's a world of difference between cooking at home and cooking professionally. I spent ten years of my life - well over a third - in professional kitchens, doing everything from washing dishes to prep work to desserts to single stations to swing and float. (Float, aka all-around, meant that on busy nights, rather than have an assigned station, meant I ran around the kitchen and bailed out anyone in danger of going into the weeds. Swing, to put it simply, meant that I covered the station of whichever cook had the day off.) I've worked brunches, lunches, and dinners. I've worked in high-volume kitchens and kitchens where a good day's take was 350 covers. It's intense. You get burned, cut - my hands and arms still have scars, nearly ten months after leaving my last position. Every movement needs to be precisely calculated for speed, agility, and grace, while be being economic - after all, coffee and Red Bull will only get you so high on caffeine before you crash. It's crazy, it's hectic, it's harsh and unforgiving. Part of me misses it.

Cooking at home is a different story entirely. At home, I achieve a state of calm usually only attained by a large dose of Xanax. It's my home kitchen. I listen to the music I want, the counters are at a proper height for me, my standard four-burner gas stove and oven are familiar to me, my pots and pans are great non-stick non-Teflon (a Christmas gift from Jeremy's dad and stepmom three years ago), and there's no pressure, no machine spitting tickets or irritated expediters telling me to hold or fire on salads for table 409.

I love the challenge of buying cheap, tough cuts of meat and doing something other than stew them. Being in dire need of some tranquility today, I got in the kitchen and did some messing.

First step: I pulled out three chunks of bottom round. The butcher had sliced them in such a way as to make them unsuitable for grilling. I used one of my favorite knives, one that I highly recommend to everyone, to slice the meat cross-grain on the bias.

8 1/2" high carbon molybdenum vanadium steel blade, anti-stick coating, super-light, high clearance to avoid knuckle bumping



I set the meat aside. In a medium sized sauce pot, I placed fresh rosemary, two crushed cloves of garlic, a single juniper berry, some freshly ground black pepper, and a few shots of balsamic vinegar. I then filled the pot 3/4 full of beef stock. I brought it to a boil, boiled it for ten minutes or so, then turned off the heat and let it sit.

After turning off the heat under my jus, I melted butter in a large, heavy skillet over medium heat. Once the butter had foamed and subsided, I browned my strips of bottom round, after seasoning with kosher salt and some freshly ground black pepper. Once the meat was browned, I placed it in the pot with the jus in it, then sampled a piece. Tasty, flavorful, but very chewy and tough. No biggie. I turned the heat under the jus up to medium-high and brought it to a rolling boil. While the meat boiled in its sauce, I threw some butter into a smaller, heavy skillet, turned the flame to medium high, and melted it. Again, I waited for it to foam and subside. Once it had, I added sliced white button mushrooms, added a pinch of salt, and sauteed them till they were dark golden brown on both sides.

I turned off the heat under both skillet and pot. We placed meat on soft white rolls, Jeremy added his mushrooms, we each added a slice of mozzarella cheese, ladeled out small bowls of jus for dipping, and feasted.

This is one of my favorite things to cook. Stripping rosemary leaves from their stems, slicing the meat and the mushrooms, tasting, correcting seasoning, tasting again... We have a curtain over the kitchen door. Its intended purpose is to keep the cool air from our window A/C unit in the living room and bedrooms. It also serves well to muffle sounds. So while Jeremy was watching wrestling on his computer and the boys were playing and watching kids' movies on the TV, I was in the kitchen listening to a mix of Journey, Green Day, and The Killers, singing along, and not allowing my brain to process anything. I've made these sandwiches so often that I don't have to think about what I'm doing. It's the closest I can get to autopilot, and being on autopilot for an hour or so was exactly what I needed. Yes, I could have boiled the jus while I browned the meat and saved some time, it's true. But I did it the way I did it for the simple reason that I was at home, I didn't have a ticket time I was trying to achieve, and I was relaxing. Those sandwiches gave me peace, relaxation, and inner quiet.

Plus, they were damn tasty.