Erica De Mane

Recipe below: Linguini with Clams, Vermouth, and Thyme

My first serious cooking job was at Restaurant Florent. Florent Morellet hired me despite my lack of experience. I’d been through only a few months of cooking school, and I’d worked for several caterers, but never in a restaurant. I had no idea what I was getting into, but I guess because I was so buzzed up and eager he took a chance.

I was put on lunch duty alongside a perpetually pissed-off chef who welcomed me with, “If I can’t yell at you, I can’t work with you.” I suppose because I was female he needed to get that straight on day one. I was actually happy to hear there’d be no special treatment for a five-foot-one-inch, 90-pound girl who hardly knew what she was doing. But this guy couldn’t stop yelling. I guess I was slow at first at whisking tubs of salad dressing, cleaning sinks full of mussels, roasting beef bones that were almost impossible for me to lift out of the oven.

The job was harder than I expected, but I was determined. Still, the more he screamed, the more anxious, insular, and slow I became. My string beans were problematic, because I don’t know why. They got brushed off my station onto the floor by Mr. Chef as he screamed, “Fucking shit!” Same with a bag of expensive scallops he told me to slice. I asked him how he wanted them cut. That brought only silence and an angry stare. Just tell me what you want me to do. But no. I then heard how “retarded” I was. The heat did scare me a little at first, but at least I avoided Bronsoning the hell out of those silvery fish, as he did. Customers complained that his were too blackened.

“Don’t stare at the busboy when I’m talking to you.” “Stop fucking around with your side towel.” And then he’d get all chatty, talking theater and Beckett, or that awful Blue Man Group, while I raced to wash three tubs of salad greens before the 11:30 lunch countdown.

At first I thought, well, this is just the passionate behavior of a dedicated chef. But I soon realized this guy was more suited for a sloppy American diner than a good kitchen. His cooking was, not up to the charm of the place at all. In his hands a grilled ham and gruyère sandwich, which should be a thing of beauty, turned into a burnt, oozing mess. He was all about speed, at any cost. He had little interest in detail, which surprised me, since even back then I understood it to be a given. Otherwise what’s the point?

Mr. Chef’s specials were particularly unpolished. One 7:30 a.m. I found cans of nasty chopped clams piled on my station. My chore was to open all the cans and pour the clam nibs, dark gray and smelling like cheap cat food, and their rank liquid into one of those stainless inset pots. “They’re gonna love this,” he said, as I watched him execute the first order, throwing in a fistful of garlic and then a ladle of the rubbery bits with their stinking liquid. That was the entire sauce, poured over flaccid spaghetti. I thought of my mother’s calm sauce, with its purple tinged Manilla clam shells, its aroma of white wine, parsley, and olive oil, and its touch of peperoncino. What was this guy doing here? And why was he serving this at all in a French bistro, when he should be spending his time trying to keep the boudin noir from exploding across the stove? The meatpacking guys who ate at Florent, many of them Italian-Americans, complained loudly about the stupid plate of pasta. I was deeply embarrassed. Schifo of the highest order. I told Mr. Chef my grandmother would have rolled over in her grave had she seen what he did to that spaghetti. With that, he threw a big sauce pan at my stomach. Oddly, it didn’t hurt, but it did startle me. Okay, I shouldn’t have said that, but by then I was so sick of his perverse anger and crappy cooking, it just came out.

Can-to-table method aside, this guy was such a dick. I told the head chef I might need to quit. He said, hang on, he was working on something. I assumed this meant working on replacing him, which I learned was true. But before that even happened, Mr. Chef had one of his time-consuming fits that greatly underlined the issue. This time he was provoked not by me but by one of the hardworking Mexican stock guys. I’m not sure what he did wrong, but Mr. Chef again threw a sauce pan across the kitchen, missing the stock guy but smashing into the restaurant’s fire protection system. White foam came spraying from the ceiling, not only in the kitchen but in the front of the house too. It was magical. A silence fell over the place as we all stood there and watched the lovely snow fall. Florent closed down for a day to clean up the mess. The next day Mr. Chef was out. I was more than relieved. In his place came a real chef, someone who taught me much and became a friend. I went on to work at Florent for four more years.

I’ve given a lot of thought to tyrannical kitchen culture and how harmful it is. I’m not talking about sexual abuse, I’m talking about bullying, which is a tradition. I’ve been told it developed as a way to keep twelve-year-old kitchen apprentices in France under control, a repulsive explanation. It certainly traveled here, and here it had nothing to do with kids. And I don’t think it’s a productive way to energize the weak or unmotivated. What is does is mess up performance, keeping good cooks from blossoming. After my stint with Mr. Chef, I went on to work with many chefs, and only one other subscribed to this creed. Mostly they were decent. If I screwed up, they told me, and we worked it out. Once I got fired for not being a fast enough line cook at a trendy, packed restaurant. The chef didn’t throw anything at me, he didn’t curse at me, he just fired me. And rightly so.

Linguini with Clams, Vermouth, and Thyme

(Serves 4 as a main course)

Extra-virgin olive oil
½ cup dry vermouth
½ cup chicken broth
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
4 to 5 dozen (depending on their size) littleneck or Manila clams, soaked and cleaned
3 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
1 fresh peperoncino, minced
Salt
1 pound linguini
6 large thyme sprigs, the leaves lightly chopped
A handful of flat-leaf parsley, the leaves chopped
The grated zest and a little of the juice from 1 lemon

Set up a pot of pasta cooking water and bring it to a boil. Add a generous amount of salt.

Pour the vermouth and chicken broth into a wide pot. Add the butter and about 3 tablespoons of olive oil. Turn the heat to medium high, and bring the pot to a boil, letting it go for a minute or so. Now add the clams, and partially cover the pot to let the steam build back up. Then uncover the pan, and, with tongs, start pulling the clams out, one by one, as they open, dropping them into a big bowl. Clams are not as predictable as mussels; they proceed at their own pace, so to avoid overcooking the early openers, this tedious procedure is unavoidable. Drizzle the clams with a little olive oil.

Strain the clam cooking liquid into a bowl to get rid of any sand.

Drop the bucatini into the water.

Rinse out the cooking pot to remove sand, and then pour in about 3 tablespoons of olive oil and get it hot over medium heat. Add the garlic, the fresh chili, and the thyme, and sauté until fragrant, about a minute or so. Add the clam liquid, and let it simmer for about 2 minutes. Now add the clams, with any liquid they may have given off, and stir everything around for a few seconds. Turn off the heat.

When the bucatini is al dente, drain it, leaving some of the cooking water clinging to it. Place it in a large serving bowl, and give it a drizzle of fresh olive oil.

Pour the clams and their liquid over the bucatini. Add the lemon zest and the parsley, and squeeze on a little lemon juice. Taste for salt. You may or may not need it, depending on how salty your clams are. Toss well. Serve hot.