All or Nothing (2 page)

As we went back into Recette's tiny kitchen after our meeting outside I could sense that everyone was on edge. On some level I knew that I was making them nervous as I laid out dozens of tiny note cards listing every table and course so we could keep track of each course and cross it off whenever a plate was served. But I couldn't rein it in. I continued hollering the same instructions they'd heard several times by then as I tore through the kitchen, checking everything for the hundredth time. I moved a thin slice of raw fish a millimeter to the left on the hot rock that seared it, I tightened the kelp envelope surrounding the sliced mackerel so the diners' senses would be overwhelmed by the smell and taste of the sea when opening it, and I checked the yakitori grills heating in the oven. “The grills aren't hot enough,” I called to Christina as I continued moving through the kitchen.

I stopped in front of the burner where the consommé for the shabu-shabu was simmering. My mind was spinning with too many thoughts at once. I had to check in with Christina Lee about the five dessert courses she was in charge of and then get to the front of the house to look at the reservations list and psych up the hostess and waitstaff to execute a great service. My hand shook slightly as I pulled the tasting spoon from the back pocket of my jeans, a simple movement burned so clearly into my muscle memory that for the briefest of moments I forgot where I was.

There had been a spoon in my back pocket for as long as I could remember, but the spoon's intended use had changed so completely that even I was caught off guard at times. Once I had carried a spoon to cook drugs on the streets of Florida, and now it was there to prepare haute cuisine for Manhattan's foodie elite. This was a transformation I could not have imagined taking place over a span of eight years. But as I snapped to my senses and dipped the spoon into the dank-ass broth the truth hit me that I was just as addicted as ever—it was only the substance that had changed.

Braise

Braise:
A combination cooking method using both moist and dry heat. First the food is seared at a high temperature, and then it is finished by simmering in a covered pot with a variable amount of liquid, resulting in a particular flavor.

T
he story my mom always tells about me when I was a kid goes like this: By the time I was a year old, I was already climbing out of my crib. My older sister Joee (pronounced
Joey
) never climbed out. She was happy to stay in that crib until my parents decided that she was old enough for a bed. But I wouldn't stay put. I climbed out over and over again until my parents finally realized they couldn't keep me contained any longer. They got me a toddler bed, but of course I wouldn't stay in it either. I wouldn't even stay in my room.

The townhouse we lived in back then in Tamarac, Florida, had a steep flight of stairs right outside my door. My parents were scared that I would fall down the stairs when I came barreling out, so eventually they were forced to place a latch on the outside of the door and lock me into my room at night. When my mother came in to get me in the morning, she says, she found me perched on a nightstand that I had pushed into the corner and reaching up with my small pudgy arm to rip more wallpaper off the wall. Strip by strip, I'd torn it down all the way from the ceiling to the floor in clean, straight lines.

I don't remember doing that, but I certainly believe it. I can feel in my bones exactly what it must have been like for me as a baby, locked in that room but full of restless energy and the urgent need to escape. For as long as I can remember, I've had this unquenchable thirst to keep moving, going, and doing. I've never felt comfortable in my own skin and have always needed an outlet for that uneasiness. When I was a kid, my leg was always twitching, my foot constantly tapping. I just couldn't sit still. “Jesse has a lot of energy,” my mother would say apologetically when I knocked over yet another plant or vase, destroying the perfect order of our home.

But order was hard to come by in those days, and not just because of my own odd behavior. Our family moved a couple of times within just a few years, finally landing in a wealthy gated community called Cypress Head within the city of Parkland, Florida. Cypress Head was a giant cul-de-sac, a three-mile-long circle where you couldn't go forward, only right or left. No matter which way you turned, you just kept going around that huge circle. Suddenly we were in a big house surrounded by golf courses and even a nature preserve. It was heaven to my parents, especially my dad, who'd grown up in a Brooklyn tenement, but I always felt like an outsider. My dad's mantra was, “Play the part, act like you belong,” but I couldn't even pretend to fit in there. Parkland had no culture or real community. Everyone had come there from somewhere else, and the city had nothing that could anchor its residents. That left me feeling bored and lonely, even when I wasn't alone.

I responded by concocting imaginary friends, a whole Rolodex of characters I called upon. Late at night I'd lie in bed talking to “Blake,” rehashing my day and planning some sort of shenanigans for the morning. Joee would yell at me from the next room, “Shut up, Jesse, there's no one there!” but I never listened to her.

From the outside it must have looked like I had a picture-perfect childhood. My dad worked hard and provided more than enough for our family, while my mom stayed home with Joee and me and put all of her heart and soul into raising us kids. We went on family vacations every year, my dad coached every single one of my sports teams, and Joee and I literally had everything we could ask for, to the extent that we never even had to ask.

From the time I was a toddler I admired my dad's work ethic. He started a dental supply business out of the trunk of his car when he first moved to Florida in the late '70s and sold it to a Fortune 500 company thirty years later. When I was a kid, he also had side gigs and was always out hustling, looking to make a few extra bucks.

Despite working long hours, my dad found a way to spend a lot of time with Joee and me. But sometimes even when he was with me it seemed like he wasn't all there. He was often distracted by his own worries and anxieties. I didn't know at the time that he was drinking a lot and partying. When I was five years old, my mom threatened to leave my dad if he didn't stop. The next thing I knew there was no alcohol in the house, not even wine on Passover. My mom completely stopped drinking too, as a show of support, until they were able to reintroduce alcohol years later in a more moderate way. But alcohol or no alcohol, they were always going five rounds about something. Money was the big topic now. My dad made it, but never enough; my mother spent it, but always too much.

Compulsiveness became my lifeline. It helped me escape. When you're a lonely, frustrated kid, there's nothing like the painless pleasure of living in distraction. Constructing tree forts, climbing on the roof, kicking holes in the walls, and hammering screwdrivers into tree trunks were some of my favorite ways to pass the time. I needed a physical release for all my energy. I could never just
be.
But I was never satisfied, and the more I acted out the more unsettled I grew.

The discomfort I felt in my own skin got worse until eventually it seemed like my body was rebelling against me. I remember waking up almost every night with agonizing growing pains. My mom would lie in my tiny bed with me, sometimes for hours at a time. She made up a magician named Shandoo and told me stories about him as she rubbed my legs until I fell asleep.

Food was my first real escape from the unease within me. When I couldn't focus on anything for more than a few minutes at a time, food caught my attention like nothing else. Food meant very little in our house. My mom took care of feeding us kids and she did her best to cook for us, but she was no chef. For a typical dinner she'd boil penne pasta, put it in a bowl with mozzarella cheese, and melt it in the microwave. On other nights she put ground meat in taco shells or made a Tyson chicken.

Our kitchen lay mostly dormant until my great-grandma, Nana Mae, came over and brought it to life. On holidays and special occasions she took over the kitchen and it then became my refuge. Watching her at the stove, dressed impeccably with an apron on over her clothes, I could sense that cooking meant more to her than just making food. The way she talked about, touched, and experienced food reminded me of the way a gardener cultivates flowers or a tailor attends to the details of a hand-stitched suit. There was a purpose to Nana Mae's cooking. She was doing it with love, expressing herself through the dishes she made. As I watched her lovingly wield a paring knife like a samurai brandishing his sword just to cut something simple like apple wedges, I was fucking mesmerized. My leg suddenly stopped twitching, and I sat at the Formica table in awe and homed in on one new desire: to create something of my own in the kitchen.

From that moment forward I would have moved heaven and earth to get in a kitchen—any kitchen. When I was four years old, I started making up excuses to go to Nana Mae's house just so I could watch her cook. Once there, I stirred the pot, tasted for seasoning, fetched ingredients, did the prep work, and then had a snack or two until it was time to eat. Nana Mae taught me the foundation of cooking. Watching her, I figured out how to prep, slice, dice, season, and build flavors to make a delicious meal. Nana Mae's kitchen was a vivid, intense world of new and exciting smells and flavors. To this day the slightest hint of onion reminds me of those beautiful hours I spent in her kitchen, learning as I watched her work.

Once Nana Mae saw my eagerness to create, she just stood back and didn't meddle. She was the perfect person to nurture my passion because she left me to my own devices. She never said, “Do this,” or “Do that.”

For me, being in the kitchen was like taking a Xanax. I finally had an outlet for all of the emotions that were too uncomfortable for me to really feel. I had never known what to do with those feelings. In the kitchen I had a sense of freedom and space and, most important, order and clarity. It was the only time the restlessness within me subsided.

My early experiments didn't always turn out well. In fact, most of them were fucking awful. But I didn't care so much about the results; I just wanted to play with food. The sound of an egg cracking was intriguing; the empty shell was a mystery. I went on a recon mission to learn everything I could about food, especially what combinations tasted good together and what didn't. I never stopped experimenting. When my family went out for dinner, it was always to the same Chinese place. I put the fried noodles in a bowl with the hot mustard, sweet and sour, and soy sauce and mixed it all together. I called it “kakaballee.” It tasted gross, but I didn't care. I had created something. At home I took ground beef, which my mom called “chop meat,” and wrapped it around hot dogs to make a sort of corn dog, but with the beef on the outside. Then I cloaked it in bacon and baked it in the oven. It was disgusting. But I loved the look of it and the experience of building layer upon layer of texture and flavor.

Nana Mae died when I was eight years old, and though I was too young to really understand why, her death inspired me to start cooking even more. My mom noticed this and started asking me to help her make dinner. She laminated a place mat so I could use it to chop vegetables with a small knife and even prepare meals. When other kids were outside playing, I was in the kitchen, helping my mom make dinner or elaborately fanning apple slices around a plate before I ate them.

Most of my happy childhood memories took place in the kitchen. My dad almost never cooked, but the two things he could make were French fries and pancakes. His homemade French fry days were the best. Joee and I would wake up to the smell of oil and run into the kitchen yelling, “Daddy's cooking!” My dad would hand me my place mat, a potato, and a peeler, and I'd sit at the breakfast bar, peeling the potato inward toward myself. Nothing was as gratifying as the feeling of the starch splashing against my face. I took the thick, heavy potato cutter that shaped them like waffle fries and slammed it down against the potatoes in all different directions, causing slices of potato to fly everywhere.

I'd walk over to the stove and watch the oil glistening in the pan. My dad would instruct me to put in one piece of potato, but it would just fall to the bottom and stick there. The oil was never ready yet. I'd wait a little longer, and then I'd drop another slice of potato in the oil and watch it sink to the bottom and then sizzle up to the top, feeling a surge of excitement as it fried.

I did the whole batch, adding one slice at a time. Then I laid paper towels on a plate and spooned the fries out. I could almost hear Nana Mae saying, “Kosher salt! Kosher salt!” as I quickly sprinkled them. And then we all enjoyed our delicious, salty, crunchy-on-the-outside and soft-on-the-inside French fries. I didn't think anything could be better than that.

I made a mess when I was cooking, not on purpose but just because I had so much extra energy that sometimes food spilled onto the countertops . . . and onto the floor . . . and even the walls. My mom would go ballistic when this happened. She took a lot of pride in our home and wanted the house to be perfectly polished and clean at all times. My mother wouldn't go to sleep if she knew there was a dish left in the sink. Sometimes I'd wake up in the middle of the night to hear the sound of a vacuum running or furniture being rearranged.