Batting 1.000

Well, it is the return of the baseball analogy season. Oh, and there are a bunch of adults running in circles and swatting sticks at leather wrapped wads of rag too.
The Holy Grail of any performer is ‘batting a thousand.’ The beauty of this goal is its impossibility, and what is more beautiful than a paradox? Now, while I do not consider cooking an art, nor myself an artist ( Food as Art: topic for another day ), I would call my aspirations artisanal. In essence I work as a craftsman to make meals to the best of my ability and with respect to the ingredients. These meals should convey the integrity of the styles and techniques employed, the season, and the captured but unencumbered flavor of the ingredients themselves. But I am not trying to make conceptualized statements about ideas, experiences, emotions, or things.
So, back to the topic: for the artisan, natural variation is a bitch.
When I was an apprentice I initially balked at the weight placed upon doing the same thing the same over and over again. ‘Be free, flaky, and inspired!’ my naïve ego countered to my master’s blunt “Do it like this. Now do it like this 500 times.” For years I cooked without recipes – by feel, instinct, and memory alone. And my goal is still to get home cooks to do without recipes. But, as I have begun to master my own craft, and craft my own style, I am becoming dogmatic about weighing everything, recording my efforts, writing my recipes, and annotating those recipes when I modify them.
Why? What is the impetus behind this shift. Well, for one thing I’ve got more on my mind these days. For another, my once photographic memory has been corroded into a crappy Polaroid from the bottom of an attic storage box. But really, the answer is this: natural variation is a bitch.
Someone told me this story: Alice Waters was speaking to a fundraising group. “Dinner at Chez Panisse will always be good,” she said. “Sometimes it will be sublime. Sometimes it will just be excellent, but it will always be good.” Get it? Natural variation just happens and as an artisan you want to minimize the amplitude within that variation – and consistency is the most effective tool to achieve that.
That being said, I was not happy with last week’s meals. Sure, E for effort but B- ,at best, for execution. That’s the risk we share and it underscores the CSK relationship of you and I. Some meals will be great, some will just be OK, but they will all be good. They will feature outstanding local foods. We will put our best effort into preparing them. But some ideas just don’t pan out. Some don’t transport or finish at home well. Sometimes what worked last time varies just enough to come out not quite as good this time. Often I can feel it – I can feel how the food will come out. It’s like taking a swing. Sometimes every hit’s a smash, and sometimes it’s just a dribbler off the end of the bat.
We once were given the very kind criticism that we do not repeat dishes often enough. There was too much variation in our meals. Home meals, they told us, should be familiar, consistent. We’ve taken this to heart and try to repeat dishes seasonally or quarterly, but in general I like the challenge of presenting you with new, inspired meals. Besides, menu redundancy seems like cheating. Membership is not for everyone and ultimately we have unintentionally selected for people who like the surprise every week, who enjoy the adventure of being “on the bus” with the Food Nanny. Nonetheless, it is like home cooking. Not everything will be your favorite, but it will all be done well, and it will all be good for you. Thanks for riding the wave with us.