12/16/2020
CHRISTMAS AT THREE FOUNTAINS
It was supposed to be a majestic vision with a touch of Vegas, three spouting tiered fountains cascading over each other in a synchronized water ballet. What it looked like to me was three oversized “bubblers”—as we called them in Wisconsin—placed next to each other in a large birdbath. But for me they were iconic, situated at the entrance of my first adult job site. For years I helped my dad at his grocery store and was a paperboy from a single digit age, but this job definitely dropped the boy moniker.
I went to my first interview wearing my best short-sleeved white shirt, heavy wool, cuffed black slacks, and a clip-on black tie held rigidly in place with my dad’s silver tie bar. During the interview I was turning to liquid in my seat as the July heat was not only flooding my underarms and back but everything waist down that was covered with the thick, itchy sheep thread. This was all wasted anxiety because my friend TJ recommended me and he and his buddies were the golden boys of the existing cleaning crew. I was in before I even entered the room.
The fountains were in front of Three Fountain’s Nursing Home, the newest senior care center on the North side of Milwaukee. This was an interesting job for me because my experience with people of advanced age was limited. I did have three living grandparents but two of them were not fit for child interaction. There were also two older households on my paper route who would regularly yell at me for not throwing the paper close enough to the front stoop. I was not attuned to the whole old-age-limited-mobility thing and I generally lacked compassion for them. It seemed like they were just mad, bitter people who wanted to make my life harder.
The first days of my job consisted of sweeping floors and washing windows and walls—very basic stuff. If you could swish a mop back and forth, you were left alone. There were more advanced jobs that you had to work your way up to. At the top of the ladder was the electric floor cleaner. This was a combination cleaner and polisher, a large oscillating handsome piece of machinery that looked like a blast to run. On my first crack at it, Tom, my instructor, told me to grasp the horizontal handle. It felt like what I imagined a motorcycle would feel like so I pulled back on the handle and it peeled out dragging me across the floor while almost pulling my arms out of my shoulder sockets. Tom yelled “Let go!” and the beast spun to an eventual stop. Tom quickly decided a safer bet would be the Clarke machine.
This was a “tank” of a floor scrubber, looking like a walk-behind Zamboni. It moved much slower than the other cleaner so all you had to do was be continually in the present once you pulled down the forward bar. It scrubbed a four-foot swath of floor and it only took me two passes up and down the hallway to feel pretty cocky. Within seconds I found myself at the back end of the machine with the front buried so far into the wall that it went through both layers of drywall and was protruding into the recreation room on the other side of the hallway. If it wasn’t for T.J., my nursing home career would have been over.
Our supervisor retired me from the cleaning crew and gave me the option of transferring to the kitchen crew. Since the other option was early retirement, I jumped at the chance as I was actually interested in cooking. A trained dietician oversaw the entire kitchen operation and the head chef, was a hard-working, mild-mannered woman who never seemed to be stressed no matter how many things she had going at once.
My main job in the beginning was to put together simple side dishes like mashing the potatoes or pureeing the vegetables for the residents that couldn’t chew solid food. I would then plate up the trays, pop them into the warming boxes and deliver the trays to the bed bound residents who couldn’t make it to the dining room. I was really nervous about the delivery but this changed as I saw peoples faces light up like it was Christmas morning as I brought the trays into their rooms. I quickly realized that this was a high point of their day and eventually I was being pumped daily for information on what was coming up on the menu.
Upon picking up trays, I noticed that the puréed food residents were regularly taking a few bites of each dish, but not finishing. I asked the chef if we could deviate from the regular mashed potatoes, puréed ground beef and puréed peas. She said a few of the people where on a strict diet but for some we could do anything as long as it was puréed. She approved sweet potatoes, barbeque beef and creamed spinach that ended up having the puréed crowd cleaning their trays. Daily deliveries prompted conversations and the residents had marvelous stories of travel, work and family. They listened when I had questions and were generous with advice. The more relationships I developed with these folks the more I wished that many of them were my grandparents.
Watching the care, focus and integrity that the chef crafted into every dish, be it sweet or savory, was a revelation. Not that I wasn’t familiar with scratch cooking, as my mother was a wonderful cook, but when you cook for a captive audience of 200-plus folks three times a day, it could be very easy to take shortcuts. None were taken here.
As winter rolled around, the kitchen became Santa’s workshop. Every day leading up to Christmas there was something special coming out of the huge 80-quart Hobart mixer to be finished in the convection ovens like coffee cakes with nutty, crumbly toppings, hearty winter fruit pies and caramelized golden sticky buns. On Christmas Day, lunch brought the meal that all the residents voted for, pizza, with a thick homemade burnished crust, a layer of chunky, garlicky tomato compote, juicy house-made sausage, oozing fresh mozzarella and sharp imported Romano. The closer followed. Weeks prior the chef had cut up and macerated dried fruits in oodles of bourbon. This fragrant mash was folded into a creamy batter that threatened to overflow the 80-quart bowl. Portioned into rectangular pans, they were slowly baked in a water bath. The people’s choice was fruitcake?! Well, this much-maligned doorstop of a dessert in the loving hands of this caring culinarian was transformed into magical bites. Pizza and fruitcake would not have been my first choice. But now I was starting to get it. Great food comes from people who care. And by the reaction of the audience, great food comes from the heart. To the seniors, she was one of the three kings showering them with the most precious gift possible: Love!
As I left work that Christmas night, I could faintly hear the residents singing carols inside. A blistering Wisconsin wind-chill had frozen the bubblers into a beautiful intricate ice sculpture. For the first time in my 14-year-old life, time stood still and I wished that Christmas could go on forever.
A SPRING STORY
So strangely bright, like the months of darkness have finally lifted. It’s an odd sensation, as the car has not even warmed up, but I’m warm—not just warm—I’m actually sweating. I tap the window button and, sweet relief, a gentle breeze cascades across me. I’ve spent the last six months confined in this moving “Skinner box” and each year I forget how liberating it is to just drive with the windows down. When I was growing up, our family’s form of after dinner entertainment was my dad packing us into the ‘55 Chevy Bel Air and driving up Capitol Drive on the north side of Milwaukee for a custard. It was an exciting sensual assault as the neon lights of the passing businesses blurred into the overhanging street lamps as my sister and I would hang our heads out the back windows like dogs lapping in the air. On the way back that same gentle air would flow into the back seat and lull us to sleep.
That window held so much power: roll it up and you are in your own private universe, roll it down and you have to engage in the outside world. Whenever I pull up to a stoplight with the window down, I feel the same way as I did the first time I was seated at a long banquette in a tiny New York City restaurant so close to the next table that there is really no division—should I look over, look away, or just feign disinterest—always an awkward situation for me.
I know why this happens because from a young age, driving with my mother was always an adventure. Not because of her driving skills, which were better than competent, but because of her demeanor, which could turn on a dime. At five foot not-much-more, she had the face of a rational, happy mother. But this was buffering her internal voice of a Vegas blue comic who professionally wrestled on weekends. Try to take what she thinks is her parking spot at the mall or innocently cut her off at an intersection? She will follow you to hell and to lay on a verbal beating. This would always result in me balling myself up on the floor of the car in an embarrassed, horrified bundle.
By the time I got to high school I felt that I had finally gotten over my fear of my mother-induced embarrassment. Then Nancy Sinatra “walked” into my mother’s life. It was 1966 and “These Boots Are Made For Walkin’” was taking over the airwaves. My mother, always feeling she was on the cutting edge of fashion, started wearing those knee-high glossy white high-heeled boots that Ms. Sinatra had made so famous. From my perspective, if you’re a sixteen-year-old girl, possibly hot. If you’re my mother, OH GOD, MAKE IT END!
On the heels of those boots followed a new car. Not just any car but a brand new Plymouth Barracuda V8 fastback in Turbine Bronze, which just happened to match her tan—and her hair. It didn’t even cross my mind that she actually knew that she had just purchased a close facsimile of a classic muscle car. I was thinking what a waste of unbridled speed in my mother’s hands and was hoping that maybe my overactive juvenile body, fresh off of passing my drivers test, would get a crack at this mini-beast. No such luck, as it was like a piece of personal jewelry to her.
A few months after buying the car I’m a passenger with her driving up Capitol Drive. It’s an early spring night and the windows are down when we pull up next to a carful of guys about my age. The driver looks over and guns the engine, and through the roar he whistles and yells, “Nice ride, does grandma know how to drive it?” I start to slink down in the seat waiting for her verbal onslaught but not a word comes out of my mother’s mouth, she just stares ahead. The light turns green and I’m thrust so deeply into my seat that I can hardly breathe. WHAT THE…as I see her white glossy boot buried into the pedal…she’s racing these guys!…my mother is drag racing a carful of kids!!—not just racing—SHE LEAVES THEM IN THE DUST!
She pulls into Kitt’s Drive-in, hands me a few dollars and blurts out, “Hot Fudge Sundae, EXTRA PECANS!” As we’re sitting in silence munching on our sundaes, a calming breeze is drifting through the windows. I’m still infused with the aroma of burning rubber, very confused, and trying to sift out what just happened. But one of the questions I had about why she bought the car was definitely answered…I was so wrong…she knew exactly what she had…oh…she knew.
June, 2015
TAKE IT, IT’S FREE!
The first time I heard the anguished cry “Free, free, set them free,” I didn’t quite comprehend the overall jist of Sting’s poetic lyrics. What grabbed me was a visceral feeling that I get whenever I hear one of my favorite words: free.
I was weaned by a professional shopper, my mother. I must have spent 80% of my early years in her tow through the 50s shopping meccas of Milwaukee like Capitol Court, Bay Shore Mall and various downtown independent merchants. You could find me sitting for hours in that dreaded chair—posted outside of every dressing room—to try and placate the unruly and bored who had to wait and wait until the controlling person with the money tried on every stitch of available clothing. This was always followed by a quick visit to a department I was interested in for a small treat. That Pavlovian training laid the groundwork for the “pro shopper” that I am today. That is, I understand discounts and sales and have the patience to spend hours sliding hangers on a sale rack until that real deal appears.
As much as I revel in a sale, free always trumps it. Those magical four letters send my adrenaline into hyper flow, whether it’s a trade show where I leave with two shopping bags full of promotional key chains, wrist bands and sun visors or I brake to a screeching halt at a street-side “Free!” sign to load whatever it is into the back of my car for closer inspection. I realized I was hooked during my first week living in New York City in the early 70s as I muscled an oversized wing chair with trashed-out fabric and a still sturdy frame that was left out on the curb up to my fourth floor walk-up apartment.
Ironically, I have spent my life in a profession that’s base was built on the concept of free product. In the earliest days of cooking, all cooks were first hunters and gatherers. This brings me to one of my most admired avocations, foraging. Foragers are the “Sultans of Free,” possessing skill and knowledge that most of us have lost through centuries of processed food.
Throughout the years of my cooking career I have worked with many foragers, but beyond digging up clams on the Connecticut coast or stumbling over puffball mushrooms larger than a beach ball, I’ve always just waited for the delivery rather than make that sometimes life-or-death decision (as with some mushrooms). And being in an urban setting most of my life, beyond a wealth of young dandelions growing in the cracks of the city sidewalks, it was a pretty barren foraging location.
With our move to Hatfield, plopped right in the middle of prime rural farmland on the banks of the Connecticut River, our former scenario has taken a fast 180-degree turn. After 30-some years of buying foraged fiddleheads and ramps, all I have to do is hop on my bike and within minutes I’m filling my lined backpack with a mother lode of each, fresher than I’ve ever had. And I know that this is just the introductory appetizer to years of gathering. The best gift of all is they are free!
SPRING WILD HARVEST RAGOUT WITH FIDDLEHEADS, RAMPS AND MORELS (or substitute other seasonal vegetables, including mushrooms, as the seasons change)
Serves 6
½ pound fiddleheads, cleaned
½ pound “baby” pattypan squash, trimmed
4 wild leeks (ramps), cleaned
¾ cup shelled fresh peas
½ stick (¼ cup) butter
½ pound pearl onions, blanched in boiling water for 1 minute, peeled, and trimmed
2 thyme sprigs
1 bay leaf
¼ pound fresh morels, cleaned, trimmed and sliced
3 tablespoons minced fresh parsley leaves
2 tablespoons chiffonade fresh mint leaves
1 large garlic clove, minced
Boil the fiddleheads in salted water for 2 minutes, or until they are crisp-tender. Drain and plunge in ice water to stop the cooking. When cool, drain them into a colander. Repeat the process of boiling and cooling with the squash and the ramps. Boil the peas for 2 to 3 minutes or until they are just tender, and drain. In a heavy skillet, combine 2 tablespoons of the butter, the onions, thyme and bay leaf and sauté the mixture for 2 minutes. Add the morels and cook until they are tender. Add the fiddleheads, squash and ramps and cook for 1 minute (just to reheat the vegetables). Add the peas, parsley, mint and garlic. Stir in the remaining 2 tablespoons of butter, stirring until the butter is just melted. Discard the bay leaf, season with salt and pepper, and serve.
YOU HAD ME AT CAMPFIRE MARGARITA
I was so jealous when I saw the photo. Here’s my friend Bob Spitz looking transcendent as his mouth is attempting to close over his first Sonoran Dog. I knew just what he was feeling as almost 12 years ago I was that Sonoran Dog virgin as we waited patiently in line at El Guero Canelo.
It was during Angie and my first trip to Tucson and our good friends and fellow chef/restaurateurs, Janos and Rebecca Wilder, were taking us on the platinum food tour of the town. After sampling through a greatest hits of the Tucson Mexican community, Janos knew there was only one topper that would miraculously make us forget that we had just consumed approximately three times our body weight in food and drink.
What I like to call “The Hot Dog Conversation” comes up frequently between chefs, being that each is so fiercely regional. That time it was Bob Kinkead’s gaggers vs. my personal favorite, Usinger’s Bavarian’s (big mistake when Usinger’s left the Brewers ballpark!) vs. Janos’s mysterious Sonoran Dog. Turns out the Sonoran Dog has the least to do with the actual integrity of the dog itself.
It’s serviceable as a naked wiener, but the magic comes in the costuming: fully corseted with a thin slice of smoky bacon; slowly crisped on a butter-slicked griddle; bejeweled with plump Pinto beans, fresh tomatoes, crunchy diamond-cut onions; accessorized with a yellow, off-white and vibrant green filigree of mustard, mayo, and Jalapeño sauce; all outfitted in a soft cordovan outer coat.
This all flashed across my palate as I saw that picture of Bob. So this last April when I was invited to participate in the Tucson Festival of Books, my head immediately became dizzy with dancing dogs. It took until the last day of the event when Janos and Rebecca, our hosts for the weekend, invited a few other festival authors, Philly’s Italian wunderkind from Osteria, chef Jeff Michaud, and L.A.’s brilliant chefs, wife and husband Suzanne Goin and David Lentz, over for dinner.
The dogs became an amuse to a relaxing evening at the Wilder’s bucolic desert home. “Would you like a campfire Margarita?” Now, how can that even be considered a question as we were comfortably slumped in overstuffed garden chairs, a cool mid-evening breeze cascading over the pool at our feet, gaping in awe at the flaming Tucson sunset fireballing across the vast horizon. The only thing missing was that Campfire Margarita, the Wilder’s kismet camping invention that when, without enough limes they used the only other acidic juice mixers they had, grapefruit and oranges—quite inspired.
Over the dinner table the exquisitely simple chili beef tacos, native seed stewed beans and backyard salad were washed down with liquid gems from the deep recesses of the cellar. The conversation was like being on a “Small World” ride at Disney with satisfying, cathartic off-the-record chef/restaurateur banter such as worst or most colorful customers/employees and other entertaining war stories.
There are few hosts that can pull off the perfect evening and now I’ve had more than a few with Janos and Rebecca.
My next trip to Tucson? Of course I’ll have a dog. But my hand will be twitching until it’s wrapped around that Campfire Margarita.
Janos says: Here’s the Pinacates Campfire Margarita recipe. Remember, it’s a campfire recipe so it depends on what you have, is not specific as at the bar, and scales up, but not down, because who would ever want less:
Janos’s Pinacates* Campfire Margarita
Makes 1 Doozy
2 parts mixed fresh citrus juices (grapefruit, orange, clementine, lemon, lime)
1 part (or more) tequila
¼ part Cointreau, or more for sweetness
Shake it up, salt the rim, pour it over ice and make more.
*NASA says, on its Earth Observatory website: The Pinacates region of Mexico’s Sonoran Desert is one of the most unique and striking landscapes in North America. Located just a few miles south of the Mexico-Arizona border, this volcanic field originated with the rifting of the Gulf of California millions of years ago, but the features seen today (volcanic peaks, lava flows, cinder cones and collapsed craters) formed in the late Pleistocene period (2 million to 11,000 years ago). The volcanic range is surrounded by one of North America’s largest dune fields, Gran Desierto.
February, 2014
WILL I MISS MILWAUKEE?
Sanford D’Amato
I’ve been writing professionally for close to 14 years but starting this blog feels like my first day at culinary school—filled with excitement and a bit of wonder.
It’s been a huge couple of years—a life-changer, as they say. With selling the restaurant the word “retirement” was floated—lord that sounded like a touch of fun after all those years of working! I heard that 70 was the new 30, which was really encouraging as I packed on the years. Although there was a slight letdown when it went on to say that the average dying age is now 75.
The response during my book tour has been heartwarming and emotional, especially when the inevitable question arises, “Will you miss Milwaukee?”
Except for the 10 years I spent in New York, everything I am, as a public and private person, has been defined by my other 54 years living in Milwaukee. From D’Amato’s Grocery where I started working, practically before I was forming words, to growing up on the Northwest side where my childhood boundaries after school at St. John de Nepomuc were from 35th Street to Sherman Boulevard and from Townsend to Congress. I was an altar boy, Cub and Boy Scout. I learned how to Twist, Shimmy, Tighten-Up and Mashed Potato, but most of all just sweat at dark and moody CYO dances under the glare of multiple habited nuns.
Milwaukee expanded exponentially when, along with my grade school friends Rick and Greg, I attended the Beatles concert at the Arena a few days before starting High school at Marquette; had my first kiss (thank you, Jane); hung out at Gilles Frozen Custard in my cooler-than-cool burlap jeans and large polka dot wide-collared shirt; had my first drink (two cans of warm Schlitz Malt Liquor that came out of me much faster than ingested); and got my first car, a beat-up beige Ford Fairlane V-8 with an after factory 4-on-the-floor—scary in the hands of a teenager.
Starting cooking as the fish fry guy at Kalt’s and becoming a misguided “frat boy” at UW-Milwaukee gave me reasons to move away from home. I spent ten years in New York for school and continuing education. Then back to Milwaukee in 1980 for my first permanent head chef’s job at John Byron’s Restaurant, where I met Angie, my wife and partner of 30+ years. We opened Sanford Restaurant one month shy of my 40th birthday, and had a 23-year run.
Now that my book is released, we have left Sanford in the capable hands of Justin and Sarah. And as I write today, the finishing touches are being put on our house addition/cooking school where we are starting a new life on the banks of the Connecticut River in Hatfield, Massachusetts. We don’t know how long this part of our journey will be, but just in case we are setting up a Squirrel charging station in the living room.
So, will I miss Milwaukee? The only people who change are the ones who want to forget where they come from. I can’t miss Milwaukee because I will never forget where I come from. It’s always with me, it’s in my DNA—I am Milwaukee.