Fun food day...

I feel momentum. It is a strange thing in my business... how it all works. So you have a product that you think is pretty spiffy. It's you... in your own kitchen... alone... with this awesome product. So how do you get that product OUT THERE? You let everyone you know try it, you make it a bunch of times, with friends, with employees, on your own. You are GIVING this shit away. Of course, everyone loves it.

Then your friends start asking you if they can have some of it (for free) for their parties, and you are making the awesome thing even better all the time. Now you have 40 variations on the awesome. Then you go to school and get your degree, work at some cool place where you learn how to make the awesome thing even BETTER. Then your friends (you gave all that free stuff to) start giving your newly minted cards out to their friends. Then slowly, so slowly, you start getting calls. They want the awesome thing, at a rock bottom price. You think to yourself... well I have to start getting paid somewhere!

Then five years later (flash forward, with that hazy dream sequence) you turn around and realize you have this KILLER client base, you are not even sure you can TAKE on another client. THAT is how bad-ass you are.

So I got a call from one of my favorite former schoolmates. She works at this kind of trendy wine bar in Walnut Creek. It's called Residual Sugar. The need a reliable source of Charc, and can I bring my stuff in? I am stoked. I local customer! No shipping required! Plus Residual Sugar just SOUNDS cool! So I wash the "opening the restaurant" grease off me, toss on a chef coat and slice up a decent selection of our stuff, plus grab some of the orange fennel and andouille fresh sausages and drive (the 12 minute drive) over to Residual Sugar.

They are closed but I can see Genesis in the back prepping. I wave and she lets me in. I love the space (I grow increasingly envious of well funded restaurants); it reeks of testosterone like a British club where hard bodied sons of former royalty drink beer in very tight very expensive jeans. The space is narrow and long with high ceilings and lots of dark wood. Her boss is, indeed, a smiling handsome early 30 something who clearly knows his way around a gym. The Bar Manager, slender, blond, like an impish Puck with a rakish hat. Genesis and I seem at home with all of our masculine energy, amazons in the sleek dark space.

She cooks up the fresh sausages. They smell amazing. We all sit down as I unwrap the plate of sliced Charc and start my schpiel, we start from lightest to heavier/spicier. The ThingTM happens. Each bite is a story, a history... they are trying to observe the social contract and look at me when I am talking but they can't stop looking at the meats on the plate... blood red to creamy white, smelling of salt and tang and spice. Soft and supple, "The Bresaola is so tender! I had some the other day that was like beef jerky". "Do you like head cheese?" "I like this head cheese!"

I slip into details, how I inoculate my refrigerators with our local lactobacillus "This lactobacillus is one of the reasons our San Francisco sourdough is some of the best in the World"... how we make everything by hand. I end with the andouille. I am not sure they will be into it (pepper spice can interfere with wine tasting) but they love it. We talk about the texture of hand made sausages vs. commercially produced. There is just no way a machine will ever be able to make sausages as good as a trained charcutier. To have one is a true treat that many Americans will never experience. But we are trying!

We talk about my process, I only have 3-5 wholesale customers at any given time and it is a very collaborative relationship for me. You have a signature wine? I will make Sauccision Sec with  YOUR wine. They talk about what they want... they really want some rilette, can I make some? Do I do terrines? Why yes sir, I do.

So tonight I feel inspired by my craft, by my clients, by my world. I am grateful for this respite to the stress of opening the restaurant. I called my meat purveyor to get the pork, pork liver and duck and picked up some duck tongues as well. Tomorrow I will make confit for rilette and take the ducks apart for rendering the duck fat. I will cure the livers a bit in spices before I start the pate. These are the Charcutiers pleasures; these complex little works of edible art that allow us to dance for you, to sing for you, to show you who we are. Most chefs get few opportunities to show off this skill-set in a modern world that rarely craves such food.

I love what I do so much.