My Chef

Andrea (Andy) was my chef for two years. He was a macho Italian, a womanizer and devoted scotch drinker. I accepted his rough exterior. I'd recently been fired from an important executive position at a new fine dining establshment and decided to suck it up and start at the bottom. My ego taught me that I didn't know anything.

Secretly, Andy was an artist, an incredible floral designer, gardener and chef. He was trained in England and France by the old Escoffier crowd. His body of practice and knowledge was beyond belief. He was so talented with a knife that it might as well have been a paint brush. All august cooks carry around volumes of everyday brilliance. Repitition is the great teacher.

He was rough and burnt out after ten years of running a busy kitchen. All of his ceative juices had congealed in the rocks glass. Andy was always calling me in the mornings, "Hey, shithead I need some help." It might be a big delivery to be humped into place or a special menu to be designed and executed. He payed me with his friendship. He taught me the old arts of Charcuterie, Garde Manger and knife skills.

Years later I was putting together a restaurant operation and had an ad in the paper for an assistant chef. Andy called, he was having a tough time, had a couple of heart attacks, failed buisness ventures and a long suffering wife that was about to turn him loose. His comment was, "Skid, I'm a bag." I had to turn him down, "Andy you are my Chef you can't work for me." He understood.

The grilled hamburger was not invented by White Castle. It was commercialized and nationalized by this corporation and mostly ruined in the process. Even in the 70's you could find a decent diner burger in small burgs in the midwest. Some of the best were located in SW Missouri in towns like Carthage, Webb City and Joplin. They were sold by the bag. Little jewels fried up in mass on a hot greasy flat grill. America's a al plancha, the diner art of the Nighthawks, Edward Hopper and late night liquor infused culinary relief.

Traditionally the American flat grill was lubricated by a metal container filled with melted lard kept in the far west or east corner of the grill. Cooking at home I prefer clarified butter. Butter is the best. If you are going to freeze up your heart you might as well use butter, though lard has it's good points.

My sous, Guillermo used to save all the bacon grease from Sunday brunch and once a year we would make thousands of tamales for Guadelupe Center to sell to raise cash to buy Christmas gifts for los ninos pobres from the west side.

Put a splash of clarified butter in the center of a hot grill (or heated skillet), then a handfull of minced onion, place a 3 oz. round of ground beef on top of the onion pile and mash down with the flat of a good metal spatula (turner). Keep mashing it down, then turn it after a minute or two. Finish mashing and cooking for another minute. The meat should be cooked through but not dried out or crispy. Serve on a bun with pickle, mustard and catsup.