{"id":931,"date":"2009-09-20T21:37:00","date_gmt":"2009-09-20T21:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/elitemporaryblog.wordpress.com\/2009\/09\/20\/what-i-do-now"},"modified":"2016-02-19T00:34:17","modified_gmt":"2016-02-19T05:34:17","slug":"what-i-do-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orangette.net\/2009\/09\/what-i-do-now\/","title":{"rendered":"What I do now"},"content":{"rendered":"

So, I wasn\u2019t kidding about the black hole<\/a>. But I\u2019m sorry to have been gone from here for so long. I\u2019ve missed you.<\/p>\n

Delancey<\/a> is getting easier. As of two weeks ago, we now have a prep cook to work in the mornings, which means that instead of going in at 9 am to receive the first deliveries, Brandon can now go in around 11 am, and I go in sometime between noon and 2 pm, depending on the day\u2019s prep list. We still get home around midnight, but it feels a lot easier than it did a couple of weeks ago. We\u2019re getting more sleep, for one thing, but even more importantly, we know what to expect now. That\u2019s the key, I think. In the beginning, I would be mopping the floor at the end of the night, thinking I CAN\u2019T BELIEVE I HAVE TO MOP THIS STUPID STUPID STUPID FLOOR AT ONE IN THE MORNING WHY DOES PIZZA HAVE TO BE SO MESSY AND STUPID THIS RESTAURANT IS SO MESSY AND STUPID WHERE IS THE NEAREST SHARP OBJECT SO I CAN STAB MYSELF AND GO TO THE EMERGENCY ROOM AND MAYBE THERE I CAN ACTUALLY GET SOME SLEEP, but now I just think, Ah yes, here I am again, mopping the floor late at night. This is what I do now.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nOver the past couple of months, a number of people have told me that opening a restaurant seems a lot like having a baby, and while I can\u2019t say for sure, since we are not at all in the baby-having business, I think I know what they mean. You can prepare for a baby, or a restaurant, in many ways, but when it actually comes, it changes everything<\/span>. The shape of your life is completely different. You are exhausted. This baby, or this restaurant, or whatever it is, is wholly dependent on you. It does not stop. And while you eventually adjust, and it adjusts to you, nothing ever quite goes back to the way it used to be. I am just figuring this out.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not a bad thing. It\u2019s actually a good thing. I love this restaurant. I love our staff. I love our customers. I\u2019m learning so much. Brandon is learning so much. We\u2019re learning so much. And it really does get easier. I\u2019ve done payroll three times now, and only the first time did I come close to screaming. I actually kind of enjoy it now. I do it twice a month, in the mornings, and I use my TI-85 calculator, the one I got for trigonometry class in high school. We\u2019ve been together for almost 15 years. We\u2019re tight.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nAnd we\u2019re starting to be able to play with the menu a bit, which feels good. We\u2019re now making our own pork sausage, and we\u2019re doing a lot of pickling: peppers<\/a>, shallots, cucumbers, Walla Walla onions, you name it. This morning, as I type this, Brandon is working on an eggplant sauce for pizza, based on a killer pasta sauce<\/a> that my friend Francis<\/a> made up. If it works out, it\u2019ll be on the menu tonight. And last week, we started serving burrata<\/a>. You probably can\u2019t tell, but that last sentence was a very, very exciting sentence to write. I am nuts for burrata. We buy ours from Gioia<\/a>, a cheesemaker in LA, and it gets overnighted to us twice a week. We serve it as a first course, with a dousing of olive oil, some sea salt, and a few toasts. I am deeply in love with it. But every time I plate one, I die a little, because at the end of the week, it means one less leftover burrata for me.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nWe\u2019re also changing up the dessert menu, now that fall is coming on. The chocolate chip cookies are still there, and possibly will be forever, but the chilled peaches in wine<\/a> are gone, as are the popsicles<\/a>. Instead, there\u2019s plum crumble. That\u2019s what all of these pictures are of, in case you were wondering. I know it took me a while to get around to explaining that.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nI learned about this crumble recipe about two years ago, from Luisa<\/a>. I made it a couple of times that summer, and it went instantly into my keeper file. It\u2019s pretty straightforward, as most specimens of the crumble genre are, but unlike some, it\u2019s not gloppy, gluey, or the least bit too sweet. It calls for my favorite kind of plum – Italian prune plums, the deep purple, oblong ones that come out in late summer – and it doesn\u2019t mess with them much. Before going into the pan, they get a very small amount of brown sugar, even smaller amounts of ground ginger and cinnamon, just enough flour to give their juices some body, and a gentle kick in the seat from some crystallized ginger. The topping comes together a little like streusel, as Luisa so rightly described it, in hand-formed clumps and particles, which you pile on top of the plums. Then you spoon melted butter – what seems like a lot of melted butter, but be strong, be strong – over the whole thing. Once in the oven, the topping goes pale brown and pleasingly lumpy, crisp in some parts, chewy in others, soft where it meets the jammy fruit underneath: a perfect compromise, I would say, between crumble, spice cake, and cookie. I serve it with housemade cr\u00e8me fra\u00eeche, but it hardly needs the help.<\/p>\n

Most nights, I make two 9\u201d-by-13\u201d pans of this stuff, and most nights, I want to hoard about half of it for myself. If it weren\u2019t for the servers, who stop by every few minutes with new orders and expect to find me working, I would probably get a spoon and hide in the corner by the chest freezer. Then I\u2019d start in on the burrata.<\/p>\n\n

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Recipe<\/div>\n

Plum Crumble<\/h2>\n

Adapted from Marion Burros and Luisa Weiss<\/a><\/h3> \n \n <\/header>\n\n
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