Description

SUBTERRANEAN COOKHOUSE BLUES


* mama’s in the basement mixing up macedoine
i’m on the pavement thinking bout a toblerone,
man in a chef’s hat, locked in a big sweat
wants eleven crème brulee and I’ve only got ten,
look out kid your gonna get hid,
better duck down the cool school, looking for a new brule
break a few rule, t’s a bit cruel,
the torch wont work cos the comis took the gas tool.



It has been a year of cooking dangerously. I have been let loose in other people’s kitchens. . Over the last year I have been invited to cook in big hotels new and old, little restaurants, private homes.
As a guest chef it can be a bit of a risk to cook in a strange place. While it is always a privilege to be invited to a cook’s kitchen, many professional kitchens resemble a hot badly designed cage, without any natural light, full of noise, tucked away within the bowels of a big building.

Cooks will put up with a lot to be allowed to make our mud pies.

Most ‘civilians’ never experience the life of commercial kitchen and when they do enter one, for a visit or to deliver some produce; the gleaming stainless steel, the cacophony of sounds and the heat overwhelms them. To be privy to this can make one feel like an honoured insider, but linger for a while and soon some very basic insights begin to emerge.
While there may be a sexy exhibition kitchen with its chef’s table and all the trimmings, descend a bit deeper into the belly of the machine and you are likely to enter a space designed by people who will never have to work 5 or more 12 hour shifts in a row and will never have to turn over and reset a large 4 course banquet room in half an hour.

These engine rooms are usually without natural light, offer no contact with the outside world to their inhabitants and resound to sound levels well above the maximum limits of endurance and regulation.
To spend more than a few minutes inside you need to acclimatise, surrender and improvise to be able to survive.
In a kitchen like this you can hardly hear your self taste.
Consequently professional chefs have developed a very strong flavour memory and often rely on the aroma of a dish when tasting but in an over air-conditioned space even this skill is tested to its limits.

In contrast a real cook’s kitchen represents the emotional centre of a house or restaurant. There is an unmistakeable patina to a cook’s kitchen.

Paradoxically the more we read, watch cooking shows and talk about food, the more the home kitchen has become for many, the equivalent of the old “very best front parlour”- a pristine showcase that is too precious to use.
We have been taught to love our shiny surfaces but despair at every scratch. We are in lust with the new oven but it has to be available online to defrost, cook and clean its self- and then email the fridge to SMS the “provedore” to remember to courier home the sourdough bread before we get back to eat designer take away.
The modern domestic kitchen has inherited much from the commercial, if only the reverse could also be true.
At the risk of sounding like an old hippy, the nurturing vibe of a traditional farmhouse kitchen has many timeless design features that can be expressed in a very contemporary style.
In the old houses of the Western District I have found some of the most inspirational cookhouses. While catering for country weddings at these properties I have returned to a time when most of the food consumed on the farm came from the farm. It is a joy to cook in these spaces. I have fired up wood ovens that have not been used for decades to roast farm killed beef and lamb to perfection.
We can now buy a modular one off the shelf to complete the contemporary courtyard.
We have traded scrubbed timber for satin steel, the ‘South Wind’ for an L.G. the cool cellar for a ‘EuroCave’
But considered design in whatever medium can turn a sweatshop into an oasis for the creation of flavour.
I will never forget the first