Life – Sam’s Food Blog

Back in Black

Two years ago I stepped away from working in the culinary industry due to some medical issues that I was dealing with. The job I moved to was in retail with full insurance benefits. It was the first time that I had any amount of sick leave, paid time off, national holidays off with pay. It was easy and detail oriented, and though a major departure from what I was used to, it was a blessing as I was treated for and recovered from my illness.

I saw an opportunity to work at a prestigious and popular restaurant in Manhattan. A new adventure was waiting and I was the one that had to make the decision: keep living a relatively easy, but unfulfilling life? Or dive off the deep end back into a world that I had long since said goodbye to. I chose the latter, with hope and fear tangled around each other in my head like a Russian wrestling a bear to the death.

Two weeks in it’s like how I remembered. Constant until the end, especially at a popular place like this one. In Garde Manger (or garmo for short), it’s s lot of the same things with the occasional outlier dish. Both cold appetizers and desserts populate my side of the menu. The alpha and omega of the meal, our position is prep heavy with more to be done during service.

The main difference this time around comes from within myself. Before, I had undiagnosed ADHD and general anxiety disorder (not that it’s excusable), and I was a nervous wreck. Getting stoned on my lunch break kept my mind even hazier than it would’ve been otherwise, combined with being the lone hot line cook, garde manger and somehow the main dishwasher. It was a lot of pressure and u fortunately I crumpled like a RAW rolling paper.

Since then, I’ve been through a considerable amount of shit and learned a similarly considerable amount of shit about people, jobs, cooking and life in general. Right now I’m ambitious and proud, excited to put my head down and finally hone my craft through action, rather than my mind. The goal remains the same, to get to a point that I can write recipes for a living, write a cookbook and start a family. My pathway to those places is a but different than I expected, but I’ve found out that that doesn’t really matter by the end of your life.

I’m back in black pants, nonslip shoes, apron and a white button down cooks’ shirt, equipped with my knife roll and a few sharpies. I miss the ones that helped me get to this point, that I don’t get to see as often anymore. But it does still feels good to be where I should be. The universe feels more satisfied with me, like I don’t have as much of an urge to fight against it.

I’m tired, but I’m happier too.

There’s a First Time for Everything: Brooklyn Chinatown

I had walked down 8th ave a few times to get to a friends’ house for dinner, but I never had the time to partake in what I saw available. Having said that, I was tempted to take a pit stop and make my friends wait even longer for me to arrive. The smells were intoxicating. They took me back to my trip to China in college. The durian, dried seafood, and stir fried noodles were the closest thing to real Chinese street food and vendors I’ve witnessed outside of the mainland of China itself.

My wife and I were guided by a close personal friend, Danny “Machiats” Mentado, through some of the food vendors. We started by ordering skewers of various meats cooked over live charcoal. It was like a classic NYC food cart, but open concept with a pit in the back to house the glowing coals. Char marinated meat perfumed the area, causing me to float through the air like Jerry the mouse mesmerized by a fat hunk of cheddar.

You have to call to order and I get the beef tendon balls, charred aorta and the chicken heart. The wait is long, because we ended up at the end of an invisible queue of hungry locals waiting to feast on their perfect late night drinking food. As we wait for our turn in heaven, we wander down a stand selling a variety of stir fried noodles. The three of us share one spicy and one mild container of vermicelli noodles cooked with egg, bean sprouts, scallions and whatever wonderful sauces they threw in. The chef’s wok was beaten to hell; bent completely out of its conventional shape and into the shape of efficiency. You could tell that this man cooks these same noodles the same way over and over again every day. And you taste that cultivation of technique. I ended up with most of the spicy noodles to myself, it turns out my spice tolerance is much higher than my friends’.

As my plastic takeout container gets closer and closer to being empty, we receive out skewers. The charred aorta was cartilaginous and succulent, the beef tendon balls were bouncy and flavorful, and the chicken hearts had a perfect meaty char to them. Everything was heavenly. I got to try Danny’s lamb skewer and it was by far the most luscious and buttery lamb I’ve ever eaten, and I won’t forget it anytime soon.

I ended my meal by trying something that I had always been curious about: stinky tofu. A legendary preparation of the well beloved bean curd that includes mold inoculated fermented tofu cubes that have been fried hard and dressed in a punchy, spicy sauce with raw garlic, cilantro and soy. It was hard to describe, reminding me of a funky washed rind cheese with deeply savory flavor notes, a provocative aroma of something born of necessity. I can’t say I didn’t like it, but I’ll definitely have to temper my palate to that taste over some time.

To think that I haven’t even seen all of the Chinatowns in New York is amazing. There’s so much culture and diversity across the 5 boroughs and I’ve barely scratched the surface in the 5 years I’ve been living here. I certainly look forward to seeing, tasting and experiencing more of what is out there waiting to be had.

My Tongue Doesn’t Work?!

Towards the beginning of September, I began chemotherapy for non-Hodgkin’s squamous T-cell Lymphoma. Needless to say, getting used to my body changing so drastically has been quite the ride .

Fortunately for me, the case is not nearly as bad as it is for some, and my side effects from treatment have been fairly manageable; I am very blessed to be in good enough condition to work at my job and enjoy most aspects of my life.

Having said that, there has been one aspect of it that shook me to my core: my taste buds don’t work the same! What I notice the most is that I don’t perceive salt at all. Potato chips just taste like potatoes, having lost their finger-lickingly addictive nature for me. Coca Cola currently tastes like a weird spiced carbonated tea, and all fast food is so bland that I don’t even bother wasting my time with it anymore. It’s obvious to me that not tasting salt would change how everything tastes, but it’s been crazy to see just how dramatic the difference has been.

Though it has been a massive roadblock to normality for me, I try to see it as a blessing in disguise as much as I can. It’s been easier for me to decide against heavily processed foods and lean more towards things made with whole ingredients. Quality has always been very important to me when it comes to food, but it has recently carried more weight than ever before.

At this point I’m just over halfway through my treatment plan and I can finally say I’ve gotten mostly used to the absence of salt flavor. I’ve made a conscious effort to focus on the flavors that I CAN taste rather than let my underperforming tongue get me down. I certainly appreciate the things that I taste a lot more now.

Have you ever heard of someone going through treatment and experiencing something like this? Reach out to me on Instagram or through email if you want to share your thoughts, I would love to hear about it!

Low Fat vs Full Fat: My Journey to Elevated Eating

For years I’ve bounced back and forth on whether or not I want to use fat free or low calorie versions of the food that I would normally use. A lot of the people I saw online for a long time said “always use full fat because it always tastes better,” then I started delving into the fitness side of food content online and the whole atmosphere around food changed completely.

The focus went from “make food as delicious as possible” to “use ingredients that allow you to eat as much as possible with as little calories as possible” and I saw what I thought was a grand opportunity: eat a lot and still get fit. You see, I’ve struggled to manage my weight for most of my life, and eventually it got exhausting. I felt that everything I attempted ended up not helping, and I felt desperate to try whatever new mindset or strategy had a lot of proven potential. I wanted to do this without realizing the reason for my unhealthy eating habits came from issues I had within my own mind. Self-harm and harsh judgement festered under my relationship with food and it took a long time of looking within and reflecting on my values to realize that. Many demonize low fat alternatives as bland and worthless. I see its value, and deliberately seek the opposite philosophy for the food that I have come to eat.

After looking at food as something I need to decode and navigate like the seven seas, I realized my misguided thoughts. I needed to respect food. A hearty cup of low fat yogurt with sugar free jam and stevia just doesn’t do it for me any more. I learned to use less sugar, adapt my palate to loving acid and earthiness, tang and tartness over the sweetness I craved in my youth. This has helped repair the bonds of my broken relationship to a better place. It’s not perfect (I still love the guilt-free indulgence of a diet Dr. Pepper now and again) but I have never been more happy with it. I’d rather have a quarter cup of rich, full fat yogurt with sweet and tart raspberry jam because of how much better it tastes, not just because I believe there is no substitute. It deserves the indulgence that it brings.

Using lower calorie foods to have more hearty and filling meals helps a lot of people lose weight, I won’t deny it. But quadruple zero fat greek yogurt and ground turkey with just salt just leaves me wanting more. I need more soul in my food. And I’m willing to focus in the little things more and more to experience that fulfillment.

My Leap of Faith

That late August Georgia day is tattooed onto my brain. It was warm, I was beyond nervous. My fiancé and I piled our lives into a 20 ft U-Haul, filling it only about a quarter capacity. The smaller, more practical truck we rented was unavailable, so they let us “upgrade” to a bigger one. They didn’t account for the extra dollop of anxiety that was plopped onto my plate by that behemoth, making itself comfortable beside my fear of failure, pandemic stress, and the sheer presence of the great unknown. Despite my worst fears, the trip went exactly as smoothly as it could have, which further cemented my decision to make such a dramatic migration. I even got a few days with my Grandma when we passed through Virginia, which worked as a great distraction.

In New York City, we dropped off our stuff at the new apartment and the truck at the closest U-Haul return location. We managed our way back and were left to imagine what lives we had ahead of us in a city crippled by the pandemic. Neither of us had jobs, and there weren’t many available, so taking leaps of faith was going to be the norm for the next year or so. We still aren’t comfortable with that part. What drove it all, defying the fear and anxiety, was a shared love of food and the faith that we would make and eat the best cuisine of our lives. I was going to train as a chef amid a worldwide disaster and industrywide collapse.

A few days went by and I was able to tour the place in which I was meant to hone my craft for the next 6 months. As I took my first steps through those heavy double glass doors, I was overwhelmed by the face of culinary-focused academics staring me down. As I passed endless fully equipped kitchens in my tour, my excitement was overflowing, and I looked at my fiancé and said, “This is where I should be.” After I received my start date and some paperwork to finish before then, we left and I was chomping at the bit for more. We spent the meantime exploring the neighborhood we lived in and we soon learned of the absence of energy in this once bustling city. I saw statistics online that really drove the point home. Despite the seemingly busy subway trains that kept alternating seats empty to combat the spread of Covid, the subway was only seeing a fraction of the riders it saw a year prior. Even Times Square was close to empty.

My first day finally arrives and I get up before the crack of dawn to make it to class a half hour early. I was a little nervous, but mostly excited. I was finally here! I had been waiting for this moment for almost a year, all the while imagining how the universe would find a way to pull the rug out from underneath me. My patience had finally paid off. We learned of knife cuts, stocks, sauces, cooking methods, regional dishes and much more, but what I’ll remember most about this time in my life are the relationships that I made. A native New Yorker classmate of mine told me, “I’m sorry you have to see the city this way, it’s a shitshow.” I told her there was no need to apologize, I saw past the tragedy and tried to focus on the beauty of the city in pain.

We often discussed our hopes and wishes that everything would be cleared up enough for us to have proper externships and find good jobs after school. Did we all really decide to go to school during a pandemic? Was it something we would grow to regret? I still don’t know the answer to the latter, but yeah we did it. We picked the most hopeless time to start careers in a tough, yet rewarding industry. And who knows, maybe we picked a perfect time. We’ll see businesses revive and mourn the ones we lost forever. We will build a palace on the ruins that are a pre-Covid world. Every chef that graced our classroom with their knowledge and experiences told us what would be expected of us young cooks. We’re the ones that will rebuild and permeate the industry with our talents and bring it back to life like a phoenix emerging from a pile of discarded masks and faded lines of floor tape.