Sunday, December 28, 2003
SOUP SECRETS
What are you, a used car salesman or a cook?
How to make Clam Chowder, as told to me by Chef Jean Combettes
If you go to work in a first-class house and make this soup as I am showing you, you will immediately classify yourself as a professioNAL. The chef will recognize you, and will know at once that you were not selling used cars last week, like so many who put on a tall hat and think that makes them a cook. The competent cook, unfortunately, is rare.
Here's how you make one good soup, he told me. Always choose a pot you think is too big for the job. Nevair cook soup in a small pot. In fact, nevair cook anything in a small pot. Young cooks always pick out a small pot, barely big enough to hold what they are cooking. Then they have no margin for error, no room to stir and it will probably boil over too. Besides, it takes too long to come to a boil.
Chop up enough vegetables (onions, celery and bell peppers) to fill about one-fifth of the pot. The reason I do not specify exact amounts is because there is no such thing as an exactly correct soup. And also because we are dealing with a recipe which will work with any size pot. Our main concern here is only that we do not wish to choke the soup with too many vegetables, but still we want enough. Therefore we gauge amounts according to the size of the pot. No?
I emphasize this idea of ratios instead of exact amounts, the Frenchman went on, because when pretentious recipes specify exact amounts they tend to frighten young cooks into thinking that the slightest variation means failure. This is a falsehood. Even the application of herbs, seasonings and salt are not as important as cookbooks insist. Far more important are appearance, thickness, color, temperature and texture -- what the soup feels like on the tongue and on the back of the throat.
Now, we have not started cooking the soup yet, but this explanation gives us a good understanding of what we are trying to achieve and is the first step on the road to acquiring judgment, something every good cook must have. Bad cooks know a lot of rules. Good cooks have judgment and an understanding of what they are trying to do. They can think on their feet.
I am taking a long time to tell you this because these procedures are fundamental and can be applied over and over again in making many different types of soups.
So far, all we have in the pot is onions, bell peppers and celery. Some hotshots may object to the inclusion of bell peppers in this clam chowder, and I say to them, bon! We are not dealing here with authenticity as recorded in cookbooks written by people who should know better; we are just talking about good soup.
All right. Now put some bacon grease in the pot and fry the vegetables until they are tender and you have gotten rid of the raw taste of the onions -- You do save your bacon grease so that you always have some on hand, don't you? Tell me you do or I will take away your soup spoon.
Okay, now chop up some raw potato and add it to the pot. Next, fill the soup pot halfway with hot water and bring it to a boil. Add some ham soup base, or chicken soup base, either one is fine. Now, cover the pot and let it simmer till the potatoes are done. Simple, so far, no?
Now, add a couple bay leaves and some white pepper and thyme. The amounts of thyme and white pepper can be widely varied to suit your taste. No salt, of course; the soup base already has plenty of salt in it.
Now, you may wonder why I do not just give you the exact amounts of ingredients. But remember, we are talking here about learning how to cook, while avoiding the bonds of exact recipes. Recipes do not teach you how to improvise, which is necessary in becoming a competent cook.
Too many recipes with exact amounts of this and that have been written by cooks who really make their own clam chowder just about the way I recommend here. They do it by eye. I do not know why it is that perfectly
good cooks lose their minds when asked to write down how they cook something. They write down what they think is the authentic method, but of course they never make it that way themselves.
Chef Jean continues
Now for the secret ingredient. Garlic. Offhand I cannot think of a single soup that is not improved with the addition of garlic. So add some
granulated garlic to your soup as so many of us do. How much? Suit yourself. After making soup this way a few times, you will know how much you want without consulting a recipe.
"Now, check the potatoes to see if they are done. If so, mix together some cold water and flour. (Don't worry about making too much; this 'whitewash' has many applications and can be stored in the refrigrator.) The whitewash must be smooth with no lumps and about the consistency of pancake batter.
Slowly, while stirring the soup with a big spoon, begin pouring some of the whitewash into the simmering soup. Let the soup get about as thick as you want it. Any bacon grease floating on top will be entirely absorbed by the whitewash
Then, still over a low fire, stir in some milk, hot or cold, just enough to make the soup smooth and creamy. Cold milk will cool off the soup a little, but a moment or two over low heat will correct the temperature. Voila!
"But, Jean," I protested, "haven't you just made potato soup?"
"But of course! Oh, that is right, we were supposed to be making clam chowder. Zut! So put in a couple cans of chopped clams. Clam chowder is potato soup with chopped clams and clam juice in it. ##
Copyright (c) 1996 by Vincent G. Johnson
http://www.vgjohnson.net
What are you, a used car salesman or a cook?
How to make Clam Chowder, as told to me by Chef Jean Combettes
If you go to work in a first-class house and make this soup as I am showing you, you will immediately classify yourself as a professioNAL. The chef will recognize you, and will know at once that you were not selling used cars last week, like so many who put on a tall hat and think that makes them a cook. The competent cook, unfortunately, is rare.
Here's how you make one good soup, he told me. Always choose a pot you think is too big for the job. Nevair cook soup in a small pot. In fact, nevair cook anything in a small pot. Young cooks always pick out a small pot, barely big enough to hold what they are cooking. Then they have no margin for error, no room to stir and it will probably boil over too. Besides, it takes too long to come to a boil.
Chop up enough vegetables (onions, celery and bell peppers) to fill about one-fifth of the pot. The reason I do not specify exact amounts is because there is no such thing as an exactly correct soup. And also because we are dealing with a recipe which will work with any size pot. Our main concern here is only that we do not wish to choke the soup with too many vegetables, but still we want enough. Therefore we gauge amounts according to the size of the pot. No?
I emphasize this idea of ratios instead of exact amounts, the Frenchman went on, because when pretentious recipes specify exact amounts they tend to frighten young cooks into thinking that the slightest variation means failure. This is a falsehood. Even the application of herbs, seasonings and salt are not as important as cookbooks insist. Far more important are appearance, thickness, color, temperature and texture -- what the soup feels like on the tongue and on the back of the throat.
Now, we have not started cooking the soup yet, but this explanation gives us a good understanding of what we are trying to achieve and is the first step on the road to acquiring judgment, something every good cook must have. Bad cooks know a lot of rules. Good cooks have judgment and an understanding of what they are trying to do. They can think on their feet.
I am taking a long time to tell you this because these procedures are fundamental and can be applied over and over again in making many different types of soups.
So far, all we have in the pot is onions, bell peppers and celery. Some hotshots may object to the inclusion of bell peppers in this clam chowder, and I say to them, bon! We are not dealing here with authenticity as recorded in cookbooks written by people who should know better; we are just talking about good soup.
All right. Now put some bacon grease in the pot and fry the vegetables until they are tender and you have gotten rid of the raw taste of the onions -- You do save your bacon grease so that you always have some on hand, don't you? Tell me you do or I will take away your soup spoon.
Okay, now chop up some raw potato and add it to the pot. Next, fill the soup pot halfway with hot water and bring it to a boil. Add some ham soup base, or chicken soup base, either one is fine. Now, cover the pot and let it simmer till the potatoes are done. Simple, so far, no?
Now, add a couple bay leaves and some white pepper and thyme. The amounts of thyme and white pepper can be widely varied to suit your taste. No salt, of course; the soup base already has plenty of salt in it.
Now, you may wonder why I do not just give you the exact amounts of ingredients. But remember, we are talking here about learning how to cook, while avoiding the bonds of exact recipes. Recipes do not teach you how to improvise, which is necessary in becoming a competent cook.
Too many recipes with exact amounts of this and that have been written by cooks who really make their own clam chowder just about the way I recommend here. They do it by eye. I do not know why it is that perfectly
good cooks lose their minds when asked to write down how they cook something. They write down what they think is the authentic method, but of course they never make it that way themselves.
Chef Jean continues
Now for the secret ingredient. Garlic. Offhand I cannot think of a single soup that is not improved with the addition of garlic. So add some
granulated garlic to your soup as so many of us do. How much? Suit yourself. After making soup this way a few times, you will know how much you want without consulting a recipe.
"Now, check the potatoes to see if they are done. If so, mix together some cold water and flour. (Don't worry about making too much; this 'whitewash' has many applications and can be stored in the refrigrator.) The whitewash must be smooth with no lumps and about the consistency of pancake batter.
Slowly, while stirring the soup with a big spoon, begin pouring some of the whitewash into the simmering soup. Let the soup get about as thick as you want it. Any bacon grease floating on top will be entirely absorbed by the whitewash
Then, still over a low fire, stir in some milk, hot or cold, just enough to make the soup smooth and creamy. Cold milk will cool off the soup a little, but a moment or two over low heat will correct the temperature. Voila!
"But, Jean," I protested, "haven't you just made potato soup?"
"But of course! Oh, that is right, we were supposed to be making clam chowder. Zut! So put in a couple cans of chopped clams. Clam chowder is potato soup with chopped clams and clam juice in it. ##
Copyright (c) 1996 by Vincent G. Johnson
http://www.vgjohnson.net
Thursday, December 25, 2003
FRAT SLOP
Come on, Losers, college is not one big frat party
FRIDAY NIGHT
In the frat house. Stanford students in poker game, smoking cigars, drinking beer, running up and down the halls snapping towels at each other ...
All except House Nerd Wally Zit. Wearing tattered but sensible hand-me-down JC Penney jeans, Zit sits alone, writing a letter:
DEAR MOM: THESE SOULLESS APES THINK COLLEGE IS ONE BIG PARTY, WHEREAS I, WITH MY WORN-OUT BUT CLEAN WHITE SHIRT, BURN WITH AMBITION, ETC and so on like that.
SATURDAY NIGHT
Big frathouse party going on. Lots of horseplay: Water Gun Fights and wedgies.
Oblivious to the madness around him, immersed in a book grinding away for finals, Zit sits alone . He doesn't even notice when a frat member squirts him in the face with horse piss.
SUNDAY MORNING
In the bathroom Zit is hosing barf off walls, scrubbing toilets with one hand while reading his textbook SHOCKING DISASTERS IN KANSAS GRAIN SILOS.
Frazzled Frat Guy, hung over, pokes his head in door and yells:
HEY, ZIT! WE GOT SLOP BUCKETS OUT HERE NEED EMPTYING!
Zit heaves a sigh of annoyance, goes out in the hall and picks up the two main buckets. Grunting under the strain of the huge load, he staggers out to the street and starts pouring one down the storm drain.
Two cops in a squad car pull up.
Driver leans out the window, growls:
OK, YOU SMART ALECKY RICH KID, WHAT'S THAT REEKING MESS OF CORRUPTION YOU'RE POURING DOWN THE SEWER THAT SERVES THIS INSTITUTION OF HIGHER LEARNING.
Cops get out of car and look in bucket. Driver says to his partner:
OH MY GOD, HARRY! IT’S ... IT'S FRAT SLOP!
Driver grabs Zit and says:
WHAT KIND OF DEPRAVED ENEMY OF DECENT SOCIETY ARE YOU?
AT THE STATION HOUSE
Wally Zit under the lights. Cops with baseball bats and brass knuckles. On the table, seething and bubbling, is a confiscated bucket of (dare I say it?) frat slop!
1st Cop looks in bucket, says:
THAT'S THE MOST DISGUSTING FRAT SLOP I'VE EVER SEEN!
2nd Cop says:
AND HE WAS GONNA POUR THAT REEKING SLOP DOWN A SEWER USED BY WOMEN AND CHILDREN! HE'LL GET 30 DAYS FOR THIS!
1st Cop:
YEAH, AND I THINK THE DEAN USES THAT SEWER TOO!
30 DAYS LATER. SAT NIGHT
Zit scrubbing toilets while reading a book entitled MAN AS WASTE MAKER, ARE WE DROWNING IN OUR OWN SLOP?
Zit thinks to himself:
I'M WAY BEHIND IN MY STUDIES. I'LL CATCH UP WHILE THOSE IGNORANT PHILISTINES ARE RUINING THEIR MINDS WITH ENDLESS PARTYING.
Frat Guy in tux pokes his head in door, yells:
HEY, YOU DISGUSTING ZIT! WE GOT SLOP BUCKETS OUT HERE NEED EMPTYING!
In the Frat House ballroom: Girls in formals, Guys in tuxes. Carrying two slop buckets, Zit weaves through the sophisticated dancers. An unnameable mess sloshes out on the floor. Society Babes slip and fall down in their pink and yellow chiffon party dresses.
HOW SICKENING! UGH! MY SHOES! CAN'T THEY DO SOMETHING ABOUT THAT REVOLTING ZIT TWIT ?
Zit knows he can’t take a chance on getting caught by the two college cops, so he doesn't take his buckets outside to the storm drain. Instead, he just opens the front door and heaves the seething slop outside--all over the same two cops now standing on the doorstep. The viscous, greenish-yellow slime on their uniforms includes maybe a lizard and an old tennis shoe.
1st cop, green slime running down over his eyes, cries:
MY GOD, HARRY! I CAN'T SEE! DID HE GET ANY ON MY STAR?
They drag Zit off. Harry snarls:
YOU'LL GET TEN YEARS FOR THIS, ZIT!
Zit raises a finger and proclaims:
THUS DO THE WORLD'S SLOP MAKERS THRIVE WHILE THE RIGHTEOUS ARE CAST IN THE PIT, AND SO ON AND LIKE THAT.
TEN YEARS LATER
Same Bunch Of Frat Members, now top Excutives wearing suits and ties in Corporate Boardroom.
Beer and pizza boxes stacked on table. Also Slop buckets. A big Graph on the wall goes straight up. Title on graph says: SLOP! THE MAGAZINE THAT DARES TO TELL IT ALL -- ALSO PUBLISHERS OF SLIME! THE MAGAZINE THAT TELLS ANYTHING WE DIDN'T DREAM UP IN SLOP!
Zit is sweeping the floor.
Former Frat Member, feet on table, calls out:
HEY, ZIT, WE GOT SLOP BUCKETS HERE NEED EMPTYING!
(To be continued, maybe)
Wrote by hand,
Vince Longknocker Johnson
Come on, Losers, college is not one big frat party
FRIDAY NIGHT
In the frat house. Stanford students in poker game, smoking cigars, drinking beer, running up and down the halls snapping towels at each other ...
All except House Nerd Wally Zit. Wearing tattered but sensible hand-me-down JC Penney jeans, Zit sits alone, writing a letter:
DEAR MOM: THESE SOULLESS APES THINK COLLEGE IS ONE BIG PARTY, WHEREAS I, WITH MY WORN-OUT BUT CLEAN WHITE SHIRT, BURN WITH AMBITION, ETC and so on like that.
SATURDAY NIGHT
Big frathouse party going on. Lots of horseplay: Water Gun Fights and wedgies.
Oblivious to the madness around him, immersed in a book grinding away for finals, Zit sits alone . He doesn't even notice when a frat member squirts him in the face with horse piss.
SUNDAY MORNING
In the bathroom Zit is hosing barf off walls, scrubbing toilets with one hand while reading his textbook SHOCKING DISASTERS IN KANSAS GRAIN SILOS.
Frazzled Frat Guy, hung over, pokes his head in door and yells:
HEY, ZIT! WE GOT SLOP BUCKETS OUT HERE NEED EMPTYING!
Zit heaves a sigh of annoyance, goes out in the hall and picks up the two main buckets. Grunting under the strain of the huge load, he staggers out to the street and starts pouring one down the storm drain.
Two cops in a squad car pull up.
Driver leans out the window, growls:
OK, YOU SMART ALECKY RICH KID, WHAT'S THAT REEKING MESS OF CORRUPTION YOU'RE POURING DOWN THE SEWER THAT SERVES THIS INSTITUTION OF HIGHER LEARNING.
Cops get out of car and look in bucket. Driver says to his partner:
OH MY GOD, HARRY! IT’S ... IT'S FRAT SLOP!
Driver grabs Zit and says:
WHAT KIND OF DEPRAVED ENEMY OF DECENT SOCIETY ARE YOU?
AT THE STATION HOUSE
Wally Zit under the lights. Cops with baseball bats and brass knuckles. On the table, seething and bubbling, is a confiscated bucket of (dare I say it?) frat slop!
1st Cop looks in bucket, says:
THAT'S THE MOST DISGUSTING FRAT SLOP I'VE EVER SEEN!
2nd Cop says:
AND HE WAS GONNA POUR THAT REEKING SLOP DOWN A SEWER USED BY WOMEN AND CHILDREN! HE'LL GET 30 DAYS FOR THIS!
1st Cop:
YEAH, AND I THINK THE DEAN USES THAT SEWER TOO!
30 DAYS LATER. SAT NIGHT
Zit scrubbing toilets while reading a book entitled MAN AS WASTE MAKER, ARE WE DROWNING IN OUR OWN SLOP?
Zit thinks to himself:
I'M WAY BEHIND IN MY STUDIES. I'LL CATCH UP WHILE THOSE IGNORANT PHILISTINES ARE RUINING THEIR MINDS WITH ENDLESS PARTYING.
Frat Guy in tux pokes his head in door, yells:
HEY, YOU DISGUSTING ZIT! WE GOT SLOP BUCKETS OUT HERE NEED EMPTYING!
In the Frat House ballroom: Girls in formals, Guys in tuxes. Carrying two slop buckets, Zit weaves through the sophisticated dancers. An unnameable mess sloshes out on the floor. Society Babes slip and fall down in their pink and yellow chiffon party dresses.
HOW SICKENING! UGH! MY SHOES! CAN'T THEY DO SOMETHING ABOUT THAT REVOLTING ZIT TWIT ?
Zit knows he can’t take a chance on getting caught by the two college cops, so he doesn't take his buckets outside to the storm drain. Instead, he just opens the front door and heaves the seething slop outside--all over the same two cops now standing on the doorstep. The viscous, greenish-yellow slime on their uniforms includes maybe a lizard and an old tennis shoe.
1st cop, green slime running down over his eyes, cries:
MY GOD, HARRY! I CAN'T SEE! DID HE GET ANY ON MY STAR?
They drag Zit off. Harry snarls:
YOU'LL GET TEN YEARS FOR THIS, ZIT!
Zit raises a finger and proclaims:
THUS DO THE WORLD'S SLOP MAKERS THRIVE WHILE THE RIGHTEOUS ARE CAST IN THE PIT, AND SO ON AND LIKE THAT.
TEN YEARS LATER
Same Bunch Of Frat Members, now top Excutives wearing suits and ties in Corporate Boardroom.
Beer and pizza boxes stacked on table. Also Slop buckets. A big Graph on the wall goes straight up. Title on graph says: SLOP! THE MAGAZINE THAT DARES TO TELL IT ALL -- ALSO PUBLISHERS OF SLIME! THE MAGAZINE THAT TELLS ANYTHING WE DIDN'T DREAM UP IN SLOP!
Zit is sweeping the floor.
Former Frat Member, feet on table, calls out:
HEY, ZIT, WE GOT SLOP BUCKETS HERE NEED EMPTYING!
(To be continued, maybe)
Wrote by hand,
Vince Longknocker Johnson
Wednesday, December 24, 2003
GREAT KITCHEN DISASTERS
with the assistance of a fire-breathing cleric
What can a poor cook do when, as it must in the fragile career of all cooks, disaster strikes? The famous French chef August Escoffier (we all called him OOGIE) recommended the following strategy:
When you have worked all day to prepare a culinary masterpiece for an important guest but your masterpiece has been ruined by one of the incompetent assasssins on your staff, you can protect your reputation ahead of time by never naming anything until after you've cooked it. This way, the brilliant chef remarked, nobody can criticize your work because they don't know what you started out to cook in the first place.
"Of course the rice is gummy, your highness" he once remarked to a disgruntled king, “of course it's all lumpy and stuck together. What you fail to realize is that I was not making pilaf at all, I was making rice balls, which by their very nature must stick together."
But suppose your dining room is filled with knowledgeable epicures at an important state dinner, and they know all about Escoffier's old trick, and they have already tortured you into revealing at the very outset what you were preparing for an important state dinner? What then?
For example, suppose you have already admitted that you were preparing a turkey dinner with all the fixings but then at the last minute you are confronted with the worst culinary disaster known to man, an underdone, bloody turkey.
Royalty, when served raw turkey in a foreign land, have been known to swirl their cloaks over their shoulders, stomp from the dining room, leap into their carriage, clatter to the coast, sail across the ocean and command their merciless generals to invade the offending cook's country, pillaging and laying waste to entire cities just to make sure they got the dirty shoemaker who served that damned raw turkey.
But, suppose you’ve got a turkey in the oven when Prince Charles pops in (you know how the British are always popping in) and Charlie is so hungry he bloody well wants to eat right now.
While Charlie is pounding his utensils on the table in dramatization of a royal snit, you discover to your horror that the bloody bird is not done. What to do?
Solution:
Remove the turkey from the roasting pan. Next, pour boiling broth in the empty roasting pan about an inch deep and put the pan over a hot fire and bring it to a boil.
Now!
While the broth is boiling, hack off the drumsticks and the wings of that bird and slice off the breasts. Break off the whole hind end of the carcass and mash it down with all your weight, breaking its back and flattening it out.
Next!
Put the whole dismembered carcass: drumsticks, wings, breasts and hind end into the boiling broth. All bloody side down.
I can assure you that in a matter of minutes that bird will be cooked and you can slice it up in the kitchen out of sight and then present the sliced turkey artfully arranged on a large platter, thus escaping Charlie's wrath, which if not pacified would probably have meant sending YOU to the dungeons to get the old bloody turkey treatment yourself, as described above in ghastly detail: break the cook's back, smash his hind end, etc.
But if Prince Charlie is rattling his sword, demanding instant service, and he further demands that the turkey be presented at the dinner table stuffed and splendidly WHOLE, there is only one thing to do: you must do what August Escoffier did once when he was caught with a raw turkey:
The wily Escoffier shoved the bird back in the oven and turned the fire wide open. Then he persuaded a fire-breathing cleric to deliver a half hour of grace.
So powerful was the cleric's oratory that diners later remarked they could feel the heat of hellfire. Of course it was the heat from Escoffier’s blazing oven.
All done, kids.
http://www.vincejohnson.net
vgjohnson@wizwire.com
with the assistance of a fire-breathing cleric
What can a poor cook do when, as it must in the fragile career of all cooks, disaster strikes? The famous French chef August Escoffier (we all called him OOGIE) recommended the following strategy:
When you have worked all day to prepare a culinary masterpiece for an important guest but your masterpiece has been ruined by one of the incompetent assasssins on your staff, you can protect your reputation ahead of time by never naming anything until after you've cooked it. This way, the brilliant chef remarked, nobody can criticize your work because they don't know what you started out to cook in the first place.
"Of course the rice is gummy, your highness" he once remarked to a disgruntled king, “of course it's all lumpy and stuck together. What you fail to realize is that I was not making pilaf at all, I was making rice balls, which by their very nature must stick together."
But suppose your dining room is filled with knowledgeable epicures at an important state dinner, and they know all about Escoffier's old trick, and they have already tortured you into revealing at the very outset what you were preparing for an important state dinner? What then?
For example, suppose you have already admitted that you were preparing a turkey dinner with all the fixings but then at the last minute you are confronted with the worst culinary disaster known to man, an underdone, bloody turkey.
Royalty, when served raw turkey in a foreign land, have been known to swirl their cloaks over their shoulders, stomp from the dining room, leap into their carriage, clatter to the coast, sail across the ocean and command their merciless generals to invade the offending cook's country, pillaging and laying waste to entire cities just to make sure they got the dirty shoemaker who served that damned raw turkey.
But, suppose you’ve got a turkey in the oven when Prince Charles pops in (you know how the British are always popping in) and Charlie is so hungry he bloody well wants to eat right now.
While Charlie is pounding his utensils on the table in dramatization of a royal snit, you discover to your horror that the bloody bird is not done. What to do?
Solution:
Remove the turkey from the roasting pan. Next, pour boiling broth in the empty roasting pan about an inch deep and put the pan over a hot fire and bring it to a boil.
Now!
While the broth is boiling, hack off the drumsticks and the wings of that bird and slice off the breasts. Break off the whole hind end of the carcass and mash it down with all your weight, breaking its back and flattening it out.
Next!
Put the whole dismembered carcass: drumsticks, wings, breasts and hind end into the boiling broth. All bloody side down.
I can assure you that in a matter of minutes that bird will be cooked and you can slice it up in the kitchen out of sight and then present the sliced turkey artfully arranged on a large platter, thus escaping Charlie's wrath, which if not pacified would probably have meant sending YOU to the dungeons to get the old bloody turkey treatment yourself, as described above in ghastly detail: break the cook's back, smash his hind end, etc.
But if Prince Charlie is rattling his sword, demanding instant service, and he further demands that the turkey be presented at the dinner table stuffed and splendidly WHOLE, there is only one thing to do: you must do what August Escoffier did once when he was caught with a raw turkey:
The wily Escoffier shoved the bird back in the oven and turned the fire wide open. Then he persuaded a fire-breathing cleric to deliver a half hour of grace.
So powerful was the cleric's oratory that diners later remarked they could feel the heat of hellfire. Of course it was the heat from Escoffier’s blazing oven.
All done, kids.
http://www.vincejohnson.net
vgjohnson@wizwire.com
Tuesday, December 23, 2003
MY REAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY (v.3)
Before talking about my extraordinary dominance over everybody else in every possible activity, including horseshoes, I might as well start right out and tell you that I am the best golfer in California. Having settled that to your complete satisfaction, you now have a basis for understanding whom the hell you are dealing with and how to interpret my following remarks.
I am a 69-year-old retired camp cook. I spent 30 years in those wilderness camps, all over Alaska and Montana but never did get those beans and sourdough bread just right. After giving up on that dodge, I took up the writing game in newspapers and such.
That artistic writing endeavor withstood close inspection by astounded experts and to this day my boyhood chums are trying to figure out how I rose so high when their careers fell in the ditch and they are to this day miserable failures. Especially Freddy and Miles.
I'm on the net every day, maintaining correspondence with various odd balls and other family members.
My worst experience on the net was the time some character I had offended with a remark about his tree-swinging forebears mail-bombed me with subscriptions to over four thousand publications, from coon hunting to rock-polishing and earth worms in your garden. It took me a week to get out of that mess. I finally had to get a new email address.
Before talking about my extraordinary dominance over everybody else in every possible activity, including horseshoes, I might as well start right out and tell you that I am the best golfer in California. Having settled that to your complete satisfaction, you now have a basis for understanding whom the hell you are dealing with and how to interpret my following remarks.
I am a 69-year-old retired camp cook. I spent 30 years in those wilderness camps, all over Alaska and Montana but never did get those beans and sourdough bread just right. After giving up on that dodge, I took up the writing game in newspapers and such.
That artistic writing endeavor withstood close inspection by astounded experts and to this day my boyhood chums are trying to figure out how I rose so high when their careers fell in the ditch and they are to this day miserable failures. Especially Freddy and Miles.
I'm on the net every day, maintaining correspondence with various odd balls and other family members.
My worst experience on the net was the time some character I had offended with a remark about his tree-swinging forebears mail-bombed me with subscriptions to over four thousand publications, from coon hunting to rock-polishing and earth worms in your garden. It took me a week to get out of that mess. I finally had to get a new email address.
Monday, December 22, 2003
Sunday, December 21, 2003
THE EDUCATION OF A CAMP COOK
"I'm a cook," I announced confidently to the union dispatcher in Anchorage. "I'm looking for work."
"Cook, huh?" She looked me over like if you've seen one greenhorn you've seen 'em all and referred me to a long list of names on a clipboard. "You'll have to sign up on that sheet with the rest of 'em."
With sinking hopes I looked at the list of about thirty names. Next to each name the applicant had written down the kind of cooking job he was qualified for. And each one had written in the mysterious words "BULL COOK." The term sounded ominously professional. I figured that was the end of any hopes I had of getting sent out on a big-paying camp job.
How naive I was to think a city boy like me could come up here and compete with all these veteran bull cooks, these old time sourdoughs who knew all about baking bread and cooking moose underground packed in mud.
I was ready to drag my carcass back to the lower forty-eight. But I added my name to the list anyway, and timidly followed it with the single pomposity: "Chef." Oh, how these Alaskans would laugh upon seeing that title. It was like walking into a Russian tractor factory and applying for a job as a seamstress. "Oh yeah, cheechako, let's see ya skin a moose!"
I was plenty worried. Suppose I did get sent out on a camp job. I'd look great out in the bush stirring beans over an open fire with the snow falling off trees and putting my fire out. Then some woodsman would probably drag a grizzly into camp and want me to cook it underground with a secret method known only to bull cooks. They'd laugh me out of camp. I wondered if you were supposed to take the hair off it first.
Two days later, with no offer from the union and my money running low, I was preparing to call the airport and head for the lower 48. The phone in my room rang. It was the union dispatcher. "I've got a job that pays fifteen hundred a week but they've run off the last three characters I sent out. They're a little rough on cooks. You want the job?"
"Is there a mustache in Iraq? When do I start?"
"You fly out to Nome tomorrow morning on Air Alaska. When you get to Nome you grab a charter out to someplace called Granite Mountain. That's a hundred and fifty miles out of Nome."
"What about tickets?" I asked. "I'm just about broke."
"The company's paying for all that. You just be there."
"What happened to all those bull cooks who signed up ahead of me?"
"Bull cooks?" she said. "You ARE from outside. Hell, all the bull cooks do is wash dishes and make beds. No, these guys want a real cook, and you're the only one signed up."
I hung up, amazed that they were going to spend all that money on plane tickets for a big phony like me who was sure to be unmasked the minute I showed up. I just had time that afternoon to rush out and buy a couple of how-to books on camp cooking. I opened the first book and read the blurb:
"CAMP COOK'S INCREDIBLE TALE OF HEROISM! The heroic tale of Sourdough Bill McCrafty, veteran of hundreds of lost expeditions, who snow-shoed out alone to rescue THE LOST JAPANESE EXPEDITION from a Frozen Hell, even though he lost both feet to frostbite doing it. Then this incredible man of steel ran down a polar bear, strangled it with his bare hands and cooked it underground wrapped in sourdough puffpaste! And Sourdough Bill had only one match with him too.”
I opened up another book. "CAMP COOK KNIGHTED BY QUEEN! The nerve-shredding tale of Sourdough Jack McGurk, the 80-year-old veteran who survived 90 Days Of Frozen Hell on an ice floe! Unbelievably, this magnificent example of Arctic culinary pluck actually chopped off his own foot to free himself from a bear trap. Then in his struggle back to civilization this iron man happened across the LOST BRITISH EXPEDITION. It seems the Brits had run out of tea. Touched by their plight, this tough miracle-man struggled 280 miles through a raging blizard to get the tea, then returned to the starving British and cooked them a walrus underground. ‘Hell,’ said Sourdough Jack, ‘I knew they couldn't make it out there without no tea! And I only had one match to cook that walrus, too!”
Next morning, just like I knew what I was doing, I caught a two-engine prop job at Anchorage and flew out to Nome. The Nome Airport was 25 below and I was still shivering in cowboy boots and a thin jacket. Carrying my small suitcase, I met the pilot of the single-engine Cessna at the strip. He looked me over doubtfully and noted my cowboy boots. I think he could see right off he thought maybe I was the sole survivor of the 1908 Swedish Disaster.
"I'm Bubba," he told me. "Dead Stick Bubba." (I knew his name wouldn't be Theodore the Timid) "You the cook for Granite Mountain?"
Shivering in the wind, I managed to silence my chattering teeth long enough to admit it.
"By God,” said Bubba, “if this don't look like it's gonna be another short trip. Where's your gear?" I held up the small suitcase. He shrugged his shoulders. "I guess you know what you're doin'''. Climb on board then."
When we got in the air, Bubba said, "They're sure gonna be glad to see you -- if you know what you're doing, that is. I'm gettin' tired of flying cooks out there and havin''' to go pick them up again next day. Everyone of 'em lookin''' like a whipped dog, too."
This cheery news just about finished off whatever confidence I had left. What kind of a crafty old veteran of the Frozen North were they expecting? And what did they do with impostors out there in the bush? I hoped the trip would be a long one. I'd brought along my books and wanted plenty of time to look them over. I concentrated on a chapter called "THE GREAT NOME MASSACRE OF 1901, a gripping tragedy about a cook who put baking powder in the biscuits of a one-legged trapper called Sourdough Jim.
Our airspeed was probably about 160 mph. We were flying through a wide valley, whose bare mountainous walls rose abruptly from the plain. Not a tree in sight. If you've ever flown in a light plane you know how the landscape seems to crawl by. The illusion is that the plane is hanging in the sky, hardly moving at all. This was all to the good; it gave me plenty of time to contemplate the fate of cooks who made biscuits with baking powder.
An hour and a half later, I finished the tale of the death of the unfortunate cook and suddenly we were there. In the middle of nowhere, that is. Bubba glided in low over a cleared space in the snow, looking to see if he could land without cracking up. I looked around and saw nothing for miles in every direction. Not a tree, just the vast expanse of tundra surrounded by low mountains.
"We're gonna land here?" I asked. "Where's town at?"
"Ain’t no town. This is the place. I'm looking for holes in the runway, or snow drifts or maybe a dead moose." Satisfied,, he banked in a long circling glide and whooshed down on the strip. We taxied over to the one deserted wooden building and got out.
Standing on the tarmac in my thin-soled Los Angeles cowboy boots, this California child recognized immediately that the human body is vulnerable to low temperature. In minutes my toes were frozen, my ears were brittle appendages that could drop off. I realized that Alaskans don't wear heavy clothing of sealskin and wolverine so they'll look good on a postcard. I was in pain. A person could die out here.
I looked enviously at what the Bubba was wearing: Arctic boots made of caribou tops with waterproof rubber soles; a knee-length parka insulated with goose down; and over his head a wolverine-fur-lined hood. I asked him where everybody was and where the site was and he waved vaguely toward Granite Mountain.
"Well, wasn't somebody supposed to meet me here and tell me which way to walk?"
"I dunno," said the pilot calmly and warmly as he climbed back in the cockpit. Alarmed, I said, "You're not gonna leave me out here, are you?" I was terribly afraid that this bush pilot figured a man was on his own out here and ought to know how to take care of himself. I wondered if I could break into the building and start a fire. Would they find me in the spring?
"Hellfire, man," said the pilot. "I'm not gonna leave anybody out here alone, I just wanta get on the radio and tell 'em I'm here and find out when they're coming out to pick you up."
Then I heard the roar of a motor and in a minute I saw a bulldozer crawling around a snowbanked road and heading toward us. Bart Mahaffey a bearded, belligerent 250-pound driller with a smashed nose and broken teeth, was at the controls. Seated alongside him and climbing down now was a whipped dog, who I assumed was the departing miserable failure of a cook. The whipped dog didn't look at us, he just pulled his hood over his face, climbed in the plane and sat there, looking out at me and shaking his head. "Go back now," he called out to me, "while you've got a chance. "Those guys are crazy!"
Mahaffey unbuttoned his bright red parka and flapped it in the breeze, airing it out. "Hi, Bubba," he greeted the pilot, "you got some joker of a cook here by the unlikely name of Montana Jones?"
Bubba jerked a thumb at me. "There he stands, but I don't think he's ever been to Montana dressed like that.” Mahaffey looked me over and growled, "You the cook?"
I answered, "Who, me?"
A look of great incredulity spread over the big man's face. He wrinkled his brow, then shaded his eyes with a hand and turned around in a circle, peering off into the distance at 40 miles of tundra, elaborately pretending to search for someone else he might be talking to. He turned back and barked at me, "How do you make your pancakes--round or square?"
"Huh? Why, round, of course," I said.
"Hurray," shouted Bubba. "You're in!"
"What kind of food do you guys like?" I ventured.
"We like good food," Mahaffey roared, "and plenty of it! Get in!"
(END OF PART I)
We climbed in the cat and took off. "One thing we might as well get straight right now," the big man warned me. "Breakfast is the most important meal out here, and we've gotta have plenty of coffee so we can fill up our coffee thermoses and take 'em with us out to the drilling sites. There's twenty-five of us drillers out here. We're out at the sites all day and we don’t come back to camp until dinner, so we like to take plenty of coffee with us. You got that? We like plenty of coffee. That last greaseburner couldn't never make enough so that's why we ran him off. Besides that, his pancakes was square!"
We arrived in the center of a large snow-covered compound. Mahaffey got out and walked off, giving me a final glare of menace. "See you in the morning," he muttered, daring me to show up, I suppose.
On one side of the compound, I was to find out, was a log cabin for the geologists, and next to it were indoor shower stalls and a long bunkhouse for the drillers. On the other side were the cookshack and a separate log cabin which was my sleeping quarters. This setup is similar to the army practice of keeping the cooks separate from the troops. Next to my cabin was a small log structure used for a freezer. Anything you put in there just naturally froze.
The official reason given for the universal practice of keeping cook's quarters separate from the troops' is wrong. The army thinks cooks need a private room because they have to get up before everybody else and can't get any sleep listening to card games and carousing all night in the barracks. But the real reason for separate quarters is to prevent the crew from having the cook conveniently at hand to bitch at all night about the quality and quantity of the food. Tempers can get short. And not just when a bad meal has been served. It's common practice everywhere for crews to ride the cooks; it's part of barracks humor, usually good-natured, sometimes not. But the them against-us syndrome is wearing.
Any old-time cook knows he's the natural target for men who want to strike out against somebody because of their dissatisfaction with the system in general. That's why, in self-defense, most cooks become muttering old grouches, like I figured I was going to have to do.
An old-timer's standard response to complaints about the food is: "You guys act like you think I give a good goddam if you like my cooking or not," or "You guys know I can't cook." This shuts the crew up for days while they plan new strategy. No fun riding a cook who doesn't give a damn.
Bob Hooker, the camp supervisor, emerged from the geologists' shack and tramped up to me. He was a short, dark-faced man with stringy black hair over his eyes and a habit of blinking furiously when he talked to anybody. "Guess you're Montana," he said, blinking rapidly and offering his hand. He had a cold cigar in his mouth. "I'm Hooker, the supe. Glad to see you. I hope you're the man we've been looking for. The crew's been in such a bad mood I can't hardly get any work out of them." He sighed. "We've had one big problem nobody’s been able to handle. If you can't solve it, no hard feelings but I'll just have to call into Anchorage for another cook."
"Well," I said, "I guess it all depends. If you guys want everything cooked underground I'll do the best I can, but in all this frozen tundra out here. Where's the firewood?"
"Underground?” said Bob Hooker. “Firewood? What in hell are you talking about?" He blinked even more rapidly, then seemed to decide he hadn't heard me right. He motioned with his hand. "Come on, let's go in the cookshack and get you orientated." The door to the cookshack was frozen shut and we had to put our shoulders to it. Inside, the supe said, "Look, Montana, let me give you a tip ... these guys are basically okay, but let me tell you, in the morning they're always in a bad mood. Most of 'em have smuggled hooch into camp and they play cards and drink all night, then they've got a rough day's work ahead of them and they're in a rotten mood and they'll be looking for a handy target. That's you."
At my nervous nod, he continued. "You've got to keep your oven on all night or your supplies will freeze." He looked at me expectantly. "Course you know all that."
The cookshack had a propane stove with an oven and four burners. The crew's long wooden dining table ran down the center of the building. Against the wall were shelves with canned goods, and on the floor were large cans with powdered milk, flour, salt and sugar. There was a case of eggs on a top shelf where they wouldn't freeze. I looked the rest of the supplies over: peaches, tomato sauce, canned soups (canned soups?), pancake mix, blueberries, vegetables, canned pork and beans (canned beans?). Well, at least there was one thing I could cook above ground. Maybe I could handle this job after all — until somebody dragged in a grizzly, that is.
Then I noticed the coffee percolators, about a dozen of them scattered around the kitchen. I indicated them to Hooker and asked him why so many. He took the cigar out of his mouth, scratched a match on the stove, blew out a cloud of smoke. "Oh, yeah, that's why they ran off the last cook. Poor devil." He shook his head sadly. "We’ve never had a cook out here could make enough coffee or have it ready on time. I don't know what you're gonna do about it, but everything kinda hinges on what you do about the coffee problem." He stared at me mournfully, blinking and dragging on the cigar. "I don't even think they'll care if you can cook or not, but if you can't make enough coffee ..." He sighed again. "A supe's job is hard. Well," he said as he went out the door, "your quarters are next door. I think you'll find it comfortable. Good luck and see you in the morning."
After he left I checked the oven to see if it was burning properly, then went outside to my shack. All it had was a bed with a big red sleeping bag on it and that was it. I lay there thinking about rivers of coffee and planning the best way to make enough coffee so I wouldn't get run out of camp.
At six I woke up and pulled on my clothes, ready for my first trial by fire. I darted out of my little log shack and around the corner into the cookshack. I got the burners going and looked around for the sink. Found it after a short search. No faucets. Therefore no water. How was I to make coffee without faucets? I panicked.
Just then the cookshack door scraped open and the two yardboys, college kids, came in carrying four big buckets of water. "Hi, Cookie, here's your water." They'd lugged it up from the creek where they kept a hole open in the ice all winter. They set the buckets on the floor, went and got some more bucketfuls, then left to do camp chores.
I looked in despair at the assorted little percolators. I'd never be able to make enough coffee in those dollhouse pots. It looked like I was going to be on the next plane out. I looked around and found just what I was looking for, a ten-gallon soup pot. I poured it full of water, put it on the stove and turned the fire wide open. I found a big can of coffee and dumped several big handfuls into the water and stirred it up, then turned to other matters.
I looked around and found a sack of potatoes. I sliced them up, skins and all, and put them on to boil in another pot. Luckily the stove had a grill on top. I found some bacon and eggs and started frying off the bacon. When the bacon was done, I found some pancake mix and a couple cans of blueberries. I started cooking blueberry pancakes in bacon grease and while doing that I found a gallon can of half-frozen syrup.
To warm up the frozen syrup I floated the whole can in the same pot I was boiling the potatoes in.
Now my coffee began to bubble, I gave it a stir, poured in a pint of cold water and turned the fire way down to let the grounds settle. Meanwhile, I found a roasting pan and put it in a slow oven. I kept cooking blueberry pancakes and throwing them in the oven. The potatoes came to a boil. I had sliced them thin so they cooked fast.
I took the syrup container out of the potato water and placed it on the table so it would be handy for the crew. I grabbed a big collander, put it in the sink and poured the boiled potatoes in it. All of a sudden my feet got hot. I looked down and saw the boiling water running over and under my shoes. I looked under the sink and saw an open pipe leading to a single overflowing bucket. What do you know? No drain.
I mopped up the water, then dumped the potatoes on the grill in some bacon grease and chopped onions. They browned nicely. I put them in a big stainless steel bowl and shoved it to the back of the stove.
Next I scraped the grill clean and scrambled five dozen eggs with some water to keep them soft. I put them in a container and pushed them to the back of the stove. I opened some canned peaches and put several bowls on the long wooden tables. Seven o'clock. Where was the crew?
The two yardboys entered and picked up their plates. "Oh, boy! Yippee! Blueberry pancakes! Bacon and eggs! Home-fried potatoes! All right!" They loaded up their plates and dived in. One of the boys looked up from his plate, his mouth full. "This is great, Cookie! But what are you going to do with all the rest of that stuff?"
I said, "What do you mean? I've got a whole gang of hungry drillers coming in here for breakfast in a couple minutes."
The boys laughed. "Those guys never eat breakfast. They're so hung over from drinking whiskey and playing poker all night, all they want is to fill up their thermoses and get out of here. The coffee keeps 'em from freezing to death out on the sites."
They looked at the empty percolators. "Uh, Cookie, shouldn't you be making some coffee? Those big drillers get kinda mean if they don't have enough coffee and . . .
So this was the big breakfast I'd worried about. I motioned the boys over to the stove and showed them the soup pot full of ten gallons of steaming black coffee. They looked at me in astonishment. "Cookie!” they cried. “You're in!" ##
Copyright 2000 by Vince Johnson
"I'm a cook," I announced confidently to the union dispatcher in Anchorage. "I'm looking for work."
"Cook, huh?" She looked me over like if you've seen one greenhorn you've seen 'em all and referred me to a long list of names on a clipboard. "You'll have to sign up on that sheet with the rest of 'em."
With sinking hopes I looked at the list of about thirty names. Next to each name the applicant had written down the kind of cooking job he was qualified for. And each one had written in the mysterious words "BULL COOK." The term sounded ominously professional. I figured that was the end of any hopes I had of getting sent out on a big-paying camp job.
How naive I was to think a city boy like me could come up here and compete with all these veteran bull cooks, these old time sourdoughs who knew all about baking bread and cooking moose underground packed in mud.
I was ready to drag my carcass back to the lower forty-eight. But I added my name to the list anyway, and timidly followed it with the single pomposity: "Chef." Oh, how these Alaskans would laugh upon seeing that title. It was like walking into a Russian tractor factory and applying for a job as a seamstress. "Oh yeah, cheechako, let's see ya skin a moose!"
I was plenty worried. Suppose I did get sent out on a camp job. I'd look great out in the bush stirring beans over an open fire with the snow falling off trees and putting my fire out. Then some woodsman would probably drag a grizzly into camp and want me to cook it underground with a secret method known only to bull cooks. They'd laugh me out of camp. I wondered if you were supposed to take the hair off it first.
Two days later, with no offer from the union and my money running low, I was preparing to call the airport and head for the lower 48. The phone in my room rang. It was the union dispatcher. "I've got a job that pays fifteen hundred a week but they've run off the last three characters I sent out. They're a little rough on cooks. You want the job?"
"Is there a mustache in Iraq? When do I start?"
"You fly out to Nome tomorrow morning on Air Alaska. When you get to Nome you grab a charter out to someplace called Granite Mountain. That's a hundred and fifty miles out of Nome."
"What about tickets?" I asked. "I'm just about broke."
"The company's paying for all that. You just be there."
"What happened to all those bull cooks who signed up ahead of me?"
"Bull cooks?" she said. "You ARE from outside. Hell, all the bull cooks do is wash dishes and make beds. No, these guys want a real cook, and you're the only one signed up."
I hung up, amazed that they were going to spend all that money on plane tickets for a big phony like me who was sure to be unmasked the minute I showed up. I just had time that afternoon to rush out and buy a couple of how-to books on camp cooking. I opened the first book and read the blurb:
"CAMP COOK'S INCREDIBLE TALE OF HEROISM! The heroic tale of Sourdough Bill McCrafty, veteran of hundreds of lost expeditions, who snow-shoed out alone to rescue THE LOST JAPANESE EXPEDITION from a Frozen Hell, even though he lost both feet to frostbite doing it. Then this incredible man of steel ran down a polar bear, strangled it with his bare hands and cooked it underground wrapped in sourdough puffpaste! And Sourdough Bill had only one match with him too.”
I opened up another book. "CAMP COOK KNIGHTED BY QUEEN! The nerve-shredding tale of Sourdough Jack McGurk, the 80-year-old veteran who survived 90 Days Of Frozen Hell on an ice floe! Unbelievably, this magnificent example of Arctic culinary pluck actually chopped off his own foot to free himself from a bear trap. Then in his struggle back to civilization this iron man happened across the LOST BRITISH EXPEDITION. It seems the Brits had run out of tea. Touched by their plight, this tough miracle-man struggled 280 miles through a raging blizard to get the tea, then returned to the starving British and cooked them a walrus underground. ‘Hell,’ said Sourdough Jack, ‘I knew they couldn't make it out there without no tea! And I only had one match to cook that walrus, too!”
Next morning, just like I knew what I was doing, I caught a two-engine prop job at Anchorage and flew out to Nome. The Nome Airport was 25 below and I was still shivering in cowboy boots and a thin jacket. Carrying my small suitcase, I met the pilot of the single-engine Cessna at the strip. He looked me over doubtfully and noted my cowboy boots. I think he could see right off he thought maybe I was the sole survivor of the 1908 Swedish Disaster.
"I'm Bubba," he told me. "Dead Stick Bubba." (I knew his name wouldn't be Theodore the Timid) "You the cook for Granite Mountain?"
Shivering in the wind, I managed to silence my chattering teeth long enough to admit it.
"By God,” said Bubba, “if this don't look like it's gonna be another short trip. Where's your gear?" I held up the small suitcase. He shrugged his shoulders. "I guess you know what you're doin'''. Climb on board then."
When we got in the air, Bubba said, "They're sure gonna be glad to see you -- if you know what you're doing, that is. I'm gettin' tired of flying cooks out there and havin''' to go pick them up again next day. Everyone of 'em lookin''' like a whipped dog, too."
This cheery news just about finished off whatever confidence I had left. What kind of a crafty old veteran of the Frozen North were they expecting? And what did they do with impostors out there in the bush? I hoped the trip would be a long one. I'd brought along my books and wanted plenty of time to look them over. I concentrated on a chapter called "THE GREAT NOME MASSACRE OF 1901, a gripping tragedy about a cook who put baking powder in the biscuits of a one-legged trapper called Sourdough Jim.
Our airspeed was probably about 160 mph. We were flying through a wide valley, whose bare mountainous walls rose abruptly from the plain. Not a tree in sight. If you've ever flown in a light plane you know how the landscape seems to crawl by. The illusion is that the plane is hanging in the sky, hardly moving at all. This was all to the good; it gave me plenty of time to contemplate the fate of cooks who made biscuits with baking powder.
An hour and a half later, I finished the tale of the death of the unfortunate cook and suddenly we were there. In the middle of nowhere, that is. Bubba glided in low over a cleared space in the snow, looking to see if he could land without cracking up. I looked around and saw nothing for miles in every direction. Not a tree, just the vast expanse of tundra surrounded by low mountains.
"We're gonna land here?" I asked. "Where's town at?"
"Ain’t no town. This is the place. I'm looking for holes in the runway, or snow drifts or maybe a dead moose." Satisfied,, he banked in a long circling glide and whooshed down on the strip. We taxied over to the one deserted wooden building and got out.
Standing on the tarmac in my thin-soled Los Angeles cowboy boots, this California child recognized immediately that the human body is vulnerable to low temperature. In minutes my toes were frozen, my ears were brittle appendages that could drop off. I realized that Alaskans don't wear heavy clothing of sealskin and wolverine so they'll look good on a postcard. I was in pain. A person could die out here.
I looked enviously at what the Bubba was wearing: Arctic boots made of caribou tops with waterproof rubber soles; a knee-length parka insulated with goose down; and over his head a wolverine-fur-lined hood. I asked him where everybody was and where the site was and he waved vaguely toward Granite Mountain.
"Well, wasn't somebody supposed to meet me here and tell me which way to walk?"
"I dunno," said the pilot calmly and warmly as he climbed back in the cockpit. Alarmed, I said, "You're not gonna leave me out here, are you?" I was terribly afraid that this bush pilot figured a man was on his own out here and ought to know how to take care of himself. I wondered if I could break into the building and start a fire. Would they find me in the spring?
"Hellfire, man," said the pilot. "I'm not gonna leave anybody out here alone, I just wanta get on the radio and tell 'em I'm here and find out when they're coming out to pick you up."
Then I heard the roar of a motor and in a minute I saw a bulldozer crawling around a snowbanked road and heading toward us. Bart Mahaffey a bearded, belligerent 250-pound driller with a smashed nose and broken teeth, was at the controls. Seated alongside him and climbing down now was a whipped dog, who I assumed was the departing miserable failure of a cook. The whipped dog didn't look at us, he just pulled his hood over his face, climbed in the plane and sat there, looking out at me and shaking his head. "Go back now," he called out to me, "while you've got a chance. "Those guys are crazy!"
Mahaffey unbuttoned his bright red parka and flapped it in the breeze, airing it out. "Hi, Bubba," he greeted the pilot, "you got some joker of a cook here by the unlikely name of Montana Jones?"
Bubba jerked a thumb at me. "There he stands, but I don't think he's ever been to Montana dressed like that.” Mahaffey looked me over and growled, "You the cook?"
I answered, "Who, me?"
A look of great incredulity spread over the big man's face. He wrinkled his brow, then shaded his eyes with a hand and turned around in a circle, peering off into the distance at 40 miles of tundra, elaborately pretending to search for someone else he might be talking to. He turned back and barked at me, "How do you make your pancakes--round or square?"
"Huh? Why, round, of course," I said.
"Hurray," shouted Bubba. "You're in!"
"What kind of food do you guys like?" I ventured.
"We like good food," Mahaffey roared, "and plenty of it! Get in!"
(END OF PART I)
We climbed in the cat and took off. "One thing we might as well get straight right now," the big man warned me. "Breakfast is the most important meal out here, and we've gotta have plenty of coffee so we can fill up our coffee thermoses and take 'em with us out to the drilling sites. There's twenty-five of us drillers out here. We're out at the sites all day and we don’t come back to camp until dinner, so we like to take plenty of coffee with us. You got that? We like plenty of coffee. That last greaseburner couldn't never make enough so that's why we ran him off. Besides that, his pancakes was square!"
We arrived in the center of a large snow-covered compound. Mahaffey got out and walked off, giving me a final glare of menace. "See you in the morning," he muttered, daring me to show up, I suppose.
On one side of the compound, I was to find out, was a log cabin for the geologists, and next to it were indoor shower stalls and a long bunkhouse for the drillers. On the other side were the cookshack and a separate log cabin which was my sleeping quarters. This setup is similar to the army practice of keeping the cooks separate from the troops. Next to my cabin was a small log structure used for a freezer. Anything you put in there just naturally froze.
The official reason given for the universal practice of keeping cook's quarters separate from the troops' is wrong. The army thinks cooks need a private room because they have to get up before everybody else and can't get any sleep listening to card games and carousing all night in the barracks. But the real reason for separate quarters is to prevent the crew from having the cook conveniently at hand to bitch at all night about the quality and quantity of the food. Tempers can get short. And not just when a bad meal has been served. It's common practice everywhere for crews to ride the cooks; it's part of barracks humor, usually good-natured, sometimes not. But the them against-us syndrome is wearing.
Any old-time cook knows he's the natural target for men who want to strike out against somebody because of their dissatisfaction with the system in general. That's why, in self-defense, most cooks become muttering old grouches, like I figured I was going to have to do.
An old-timer's standard response to complaints about the food is: "You guys act like you think I give a good goddam if you like my cooking or not," or "You guys know I can't cook." This shuts the crew up for days while they plan new strategy. No fun riding a cook who doesn't give a damn.
Bob Hooker, the camp supervisor, emerged from the geologists' shack and tramped up to me. He was a short, dark-faced man with stringy black hair over his eyes and a habit of blinking furiously when he talked to anybody. "Guess you're Montana," he said, blinking rapidly and offering his hand. He had a cold cigar in his mouth. "I'm Hooker, the supe. Glad to see you. I hope you're the man we've been looking for. The crew's been in such a bad mood I can't hardly get any work out of them." He sighed. "We've had one big problem nobody’s been able to handle. If you can't solve it, no hard feelings but I'll just have to call into Anchorage for another cook."
"Well," I said, "I guess it all depends. If you guys want everything cooked underground I'll do the best I can, but in all this frozen tundra out here. Where's the firewood?"
"Underground?” said Bob Hooker. “Firewood? What in hell are you talking about?" He blinked even more rapidly, then seemed to decide he hadn't heard me right. He motioned with his hand. "Come on, let's go in the cookshack and get you orientated." The door to the cookshack was frozen shut and we had to put our shoulders to it. Inside, the supe said, "Look, Montana, let me give you a tip ... these guys are basically okay, but let me tell you, in the morning they're always in a bad mood. Most of 'em have smuggled hooch into camp and they play cards and drink all night, then they've got a rough day's work ahead of them and they're in a rotten mood and they'll be looking for a handy target. That's you."
At my nervous nod, he continued. "You've got to keep your oven on all night or your supplies will freeze." He looked at me expectantly. "Course you know all that."
The cookshack had a propane stove with an oven and four burners. The crew's long wooden dining table ran down the center of the building. Against the wall were shelves with canned goods, and on the floor were large cans with powdered milk, flour, salt and sugar. There was a case of eggs on a top shelf where they wouldn't freeze. I looked the rest of the supplies over: peaches, tomato sauce, canned soups (canned soups?), pancake mix, blueberries, vegetables, canned pork and beans (canned beans?). Well, at least there was one thing I could cook above ground. Maybe I could handle this job after all — until somebody dragged in a grizzly, that is.
Then I noticed the coffee percolators, about a dozen of them scattered around the kitchen. I indicated them to Hooker and asked him why so many. He took the cigar out of his mouth, scratched a match on the stove, blew out a cloud of smoke. "Oh, yeah, that's why they ran off the last cook. Poor devil." He shook his head sadly. "We’ve never had a cook out here could make enough coffee or have it ready on time. I don't know what you're gonna do about it, but everything kinda hinges on what you do about the coffee problem." He stared at me mournfully, blinking and dragging on the cigar. "I don't even think they'll care if you can cook or not, but if you can't make enough coffee ..." He sighed again. "A supe's job is hard. Well," he said as he went out the door, "your quarters are next door. I think you'll find it comfortable. Good luck and see you in the morning."
After he left I checked the oven to see if it was burning properly, then went outside to my shack. All it had was a bed with a big red sleeping bag on it and that was it. I lay there thinking about rivers of coffee and planning the best way to make enough coffee so I wouldn't get run out of camp.
At six I woke up and pulled on my clothes, ready for my first trial by fire. I darted out of my little log shack and around the corner into the cookshack. I got the burners going and looked around for the sink. Found it after a short search. No faucets. Therefore no water. How was I to make coffee without faucets? I panicked.
Just then the cookshack door scraped open and the two yardboys, college kids, came in carrying four big buckets of water. "Hi, Cookie, here's your water." They'd lugged it up from the creek where they kept a hole open in the ice all winter. They set the buckets on the floor, went and got some more bucketfuls, then left to do camp chores.
I looked in despair at the assorted little percolators. I'd never be able to make enough coffee in those dollhouse pots. It looked like I was going to be on the next plane out. I looked around and found just what I was looking for, a ten-gallon soup pot. I poured it full of water, put it on the stove and turned the fire wide open. I found a big can of coffee and dumped several big handfuls into the water and stirred it up, then turned to other matters.
I looked around and found a sack of potatoes. I sliced them up, skins and all, and put them on to boil in another pot. Luckily the stove had a grill on top. I found some bacon and eggs and started frying off the bacon. When the bacon was done, I found some pancake mix and a couple cans of blueberries. I started cooking blueberry pancakes in bacon grease and while doing that I found a gallon can of half-frozen syrup.
To warm up the frozen syrup I floated the whole can in the same pot I was boiling the potatoes in.
Now my coffee began to bubble, I gave it a stir, poured in a pint of cold water and turned the fire way down to let the grounds settle. Meanwhile, I found a roasting pan and put it in a slow oven. I kept cooking blueberry pancakes and throwing them in the oven. The potatoes came to a boil. I had sliced them thin so they cooked fast.
I took the syrup container out of the potato water and placed it on the table so it would be handy for the crew. I grabbed a big collander, put it in the sink and poured the boiled potatoes in it. All of a sudden my feet got hot. I looked down and saw the boiling water running over and under my shoes. I looked under the sink and saw an open pipe leading to a single overflowing bucket. What do you know? No drain.
I mopped up the water, then dumped the potatoes on the grill in some bacon grease and chopped onions. They browned nicely. I put them in a big stainless steel bowl and shoved it to the back of the stove.
Next I scraped the grill clean and scrambled five dozen eggs with some water to keep them soft. I put them in a container and pushed them to the back of the stove. I opened some canned peaches and put several bowls on the long wooden tables. Seven o'clock. Where was the crew?
The two yardboys entered and picked up their plates. "Oh, boy! Yippee! Blueberry pancakes! Bacon and eggs! Home-fried potatoes! All right!" They loaded up their plates and dived in. One of the boys looked up from his plate, his mouth full. "This is great, Cookie! But what are you going to do with all the rest of that stuff?"
I said, "What do you mean? I've got a whole gang of hungry drillers coming in here for breakfast in a couple minutes."
The boys laughed. "Those guys never eat breakfast. They're so hung over from drinking whiskey and playing poker all night, all they want is to fill up their thermoses and get out of here. The coffee keeps 'em from freezing to death out on the sites."
They looked at the empty percolators. "Uh, Cookie, shouldn't you be making some coffee? Those big drillers get kinda mean if they don't have enough coffee and . . .
So this was the big breakfast I'd worried about. I motioned the boys over to the stove and showed them the soup pot full of ten gallons of steaming black coffee. They looked at me in astonishment. "Cookie!” they cried. “You're in!" ##
Copyright 2000 by Vince Johnson
Saturday, December 20, 2003
Friday, December 19, 2003
TODAY'S INCREDIBLY DISASTROUS CATASTROPHE!
Still can't find my 7-iron. I threw it at a couple of deer in the garden eating my flowers. Well actually I threw three golf clubs. Two of 'em were old worn out irons I had laying around out on the deck. But that 7-iron was special. It was the club that won the club championship for me at Pebble. A deadly chipper.
Still can't find my 7-iron. I threw it at a couple of deer in the garden eating my flowers. Well actually I threw three golf clubs. Two of 'em were old worn out irons I had laying around out on the deck. But that 7-iron was special. It was the club that won the club championship for me at Pebble. A deadly chipper.
Wednesday, December 17, 2003
WORLD'S FIRST BUREAUCRAT:
In an idle moment at the dawn of the Stone Age, the Chief Ecologist decided to do something about all the holes in the ground. It seems that taxpayers kept falling into them and disappearing. In a flash of brilliance the Chief Ecologist got hold of a local genius called Willie Glog and put him in charge of the Hole-In-The-Ground-Agency. A born bureaucrat, Glog immediately hired six assistants and they chiseled the regulations in stone:
1. All holes shall be filled up.
2. Dirt to fill old holes shall be obtained by digging new holes adjacent to old holes.
3. Resultant new holes shall be filled in similar fashion, and so on into the night.
This elegant solution created a bureaucratic empire destined to keep Glog and his army of workers busy for centuries.
"Wait a minute," said a local troublemaker, wrinkling his brow and tugging on Glog's sleeve. "If we keep digging new holes to fill old holes, won't we always be one hole behind?"
Willie Glog barely hesitated before replying. "Not if you work fast!" He turned to an assistant and said, "Get that man's name!" ##
vgjohnson@wizwire.com
www.vincejohnson.net
In an idle moment at the dawn of the Stone Age, the Chief Ecologist decided to do something about all the holes in the ground. It seems that taxpayers kept falling into them and disappearing. In a flash of brilliance the Chief Ecologist got hold of a local genius called Willie Glog and put him in charge of the Hole-In-The-Ground-Agency. A born bureaucrat, Glog immediately hired six assistants and they chiseled the regulations in stone:
1. All holes shall be filled up.
2. Dirt to fill old holes shall be obtained by digging new holes adjacent to old holes.
3. Resultant new holes shall be filled in similar fashion, and so on into the night.
This elegant solution created a bureaucratic empire destined to keep Glog and his army of workers busy for centuries.
"Wait a minute," said a local troublemaker, wrinkling his brow and tugging on Glog's sleeve. "If we keep digging new holes to fill old holes, won't we always be one hole behind?"
Willie Glog barely hesitated before replying. "Not if you work fast!" He turned to an assistant and said, "Get that man's name!" ##
vgjohnson@wizwire.com
www.vincejohnson.net
WHAT'S WRONG WITH BRITISH MOVIES?
I can't watch a British movie. I never know what's
going on. They don't pronounce the words. Every line is
tossed off. Then, there are those confounded wailing
sirens: WAH wah, WAH, wah. Why can't the British use
proper sirens? And who the hell writes the dialog?
Example: World coming to an end, asteroids striking
London, mutant monsters all over the place. Then the Brits
always have some effete gin-filled swine slouch against the
fireplace and toss off something like, "This will never do." An
American character would at least say, "Jesus Christ,
our asses have had it!"
<*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*>
TOO MANY IRONS IN THE RIVER
Every time I pull a job I have to throw another rod in the river. I've got so many guns in the river now the cops play holy hell trying to figure out which one I used on my last job.
Come on, Vince, you don't live near a river.
Well no, but whenever they tell me to whack some poor sap, I always lure the guy out of town, see, where there's a river, way out in the boonies. Then the dumb bastard always says, "Well, Bruno, here we are way out of town in the boonies near a river. What did you want to talk to me about?"
What simple bastards these victims are. I love my job.
I can't watch a British movie. I never know what's
going on. They don't pronounce the words. Every line is
tossed off. Then, there are those confounded wailing
sirens: WAH wah, WAH, wah. Why can't the British use
proper sirens? And who the hell writes the dialog?
Example: World coming to an end, asteroids striking
London, mutant monsters all over the place. Then the Brits
always have some effete gin-filled swine slouch against the
fireplace and toss off something like, "This will never do." An
American character would at least say, "Jesus Christ,
our asses have had it!"
<*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*>
TOO MANY IRONS IN THE RIVER
Every time I pull a job I have to throw another rod in the river. I've got so many guns in the river now the cops play holy hell trying to figure out which one I used on my last job.
Come on, Vince, you don't live near a river.
Well no, but whenever they tell me to whack some poor sap, I always lure the guy out of town, see, where there's a river, way out in the boonies. Then the dumb bastard always says, "Well, Bruno, here we are way out of town in the boonies near a river. What did you want to talk to me about?"
What simple bastards these victims are. I love my job.
Monday, December 15, 2003
HANDLIN YO MAIN SLAPPIN BITCH
Some chumps think you got to duck yo head and be nice to yo main slappin bitch. But that ain't me. I treat her nice only when I damn well feel like it and when she have damn well earned it. Then I show mercy and drag my handsome old self over to her department a couple nites a month and give her what fo.
Mo' on how to handle your MSB next time, dude.
Some chumps think you got to duck yo head and be nice to yo main slappin bitch. But that ain't me. I treat her nice only when I damn well feel like it and when she have damn well earned it. Then I show mercy and drag my handsome old self over to her department a couple nites a month and give her what fo.
Mo' on how to handle your MSB next time, dude.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
