the IMPATIENT chef — Arielle Giusto

All it takes is one week of sun for me to become Impatient Chef. No matter that at market I hear from the farmers how their fields are still buried under water, how they haven't been able to get even a quarter of their crops in the ground yet. I grab a case of asparagus, some beautiful leeks, a few bunches of green garlic, and mouth foaming, look around for more. But that is IT. No mas. No delightful fruits, cherries or stonefruit bursting forth. No English peas. Nada.

I've plugged asparagus into the menu as much as humanely possible before I get worried about customer revolt. I am so bored with my wintery kale salad that I almost can't stand the sight of it anymore. It's getting to be an unhealthy chef-menu relationship. So I've done what any self-preserving human will do - I ordered snap peas from Baja. They are exceptionally delicious and they have allowed me to move forward into Spring. I usually reserve this as a last resort on the tail end of a season to buy me a little time to transition a menu item. I hope I am not going to be judged too harshly for using out of state produce to launch an item. See the guilty conscience?? But hey, customers are constantly asking to add tomatoes to things in the middle of December so perhaps the seasonal awareness is not really as strong as I would like it to be.

Hand-wringing aside, I did have a lot of fun putting together this new salad. I sprouted Einkorn for a few days, boiled it briefly and then left it to soak in a mixture of lemon juice and yogurt. The vinaigrette is made from green garlic that has been confited (not sure if that is a word) in olive oil, then blended with dijon, champagne vinegar and EVO. The heirloom spinach is tossed with the aforementioned snap peas, radish and grain, topped with fromage blanc and mustard flowers that Nick has so graciously been gathering for me by the side of the road in Petaluma. And just like that, Spring is in the house!

May 11, 2020

Mating Dance

April 1st and it is the 23rd anniversary of my mother’s death. Usually I go walk the beach, to the place where we scattered her ashes and where she spent her last years, but it’s 2020 and the beaches are closed so instead I go for a walk around the block. In my seventh month of pregnancy now and my feet have started to ache from the extra weight, so the walk starts out slowly, gingerly. I conjure her here, in step beside me - Suzanne Segal, born on Friday the 13th and died on April Fool’s Day. Was that her ridiculous way of encouraging us to see some of the humor, the lightness of life? Those deep dimples and that shrieking laugh are with me as much today as they were decades ago.

February 20, 2020

santa fe, NM 1995

My mom and I got off the plane in Albuquerque and headed for the white Isuzu Trooper we kept parked at the airport. After our first few visits to New Mexico, when my mom had properly fallen in love with the landscape and started buying property – all sagebrush and pink dirt – she decided we needed our own car there. This one was properly beat up enough to fit in, as I learned after my eyes had adjusted from the bombastic wealth of the Bay Area to this perennially poor state. But the colors! Even on the license plates! The flamboyant yellow, red and turquoise delighted me, set as they were against the glow of the high desert. I suppose we both were in love with this new frontier.

December 15, 2019

Peeking through the Back Door

I have always felt most at home in restaurant kitchens. No matter how glossy the paint or how shiny the brass door handle on the imposing front door to the dining room, there is always a dinged up, unmarked back door that leads to the real heart of the beast. It took a few weeks into my first cooking job at The Olema Inn to get used to the complete lack of glamour of it all. Only now do I see how the paucity of it helped to form our psyches, ordained us cooks with the chips on our shoulders and the swagger in our steps. We’re here to do the real work. We don’t need no fancy door.