No Stoves, No Ovens, All Live Fire: A Day With the Sous Chef at Osito | On The Line | Bon Appétit

Cooking over a live fire makes my life more difficult and more fun at the same time. No stoves, no ovens, no microwave. You have to constantly be feeding it and watching over it. I call it kind of like a needy boyfriend. Between the two fires, we put out 720 plates an evening. As sous chef here, I oversee prepping dishes and putting final touches on things as well as making sure that the staff, the line cooks, the commis are all on track and on schedule for the day. It's five o'clock. Hi, I'm Sarah Baldwin. I'm the executive sous chef at Osito. Come on in. This is Osito Restaurant. We are a 100% live fire. Everything is burned through wood and we use coals to heat things up and cook. It's 8 a.m. and as exec sous, the first thing I do to start the day is to build a fire so we can get cooking. So here we have a little kit to start our fire today. The only use for this blowtorch in the restaurant is to build this fire. As much as I would like to say I use rocks, I'm not that good. We have menus from previous days that we're going to use to crumple up to light and kindle. So I'm going to curl up a couple of these first. We have smaller pieces of wood that'll catch a little bit faster. Setting up a little Lincoln log for ourselves. Intertwine our pieces of paper that we have twisted to kind of help catch fire. Here at Osito, we use a 50% almond and oak. From the almond, you'll get a little bit more of like a nutty flavor and a little bit fruitier. And then from our oak, you'll get something rounder and deeper for when we're smoking. When you're building a fire, the three things that are super important are to give it air, a heat source, and ventilation. I feel nothing anymore. And then right now what I'm doing is I'm starting to push our fire into the corners. By building it closer to one wall of the oven, as the fire builds and the air flows upward, it's going to push to the other side and then kind of climb back in. That'll help us build a convection in the oven. So let's build a fire over here so we can start cooking over the hearth. What I'm looking for right now are just manageable pieces that'll catch quickly. This drier stuff that has moss on it will catch, so that will be more ideal for this application. See our fire is getting pretty big over here. We're in a good place. So then I'm going to take one of these smaller pieces and use it to build the new one. Everything has contact with some element of wood. Between the two fires, we'll be cooking enough food to put out about 720 plates an evening. I find it more satisfying to cook over fire because it takes a little bit more than turning a knob. If you want more heat, you have to feed the fire a little bit more to get more coals to then heat up your pot, and it kind of like feeds my brain in a different way. These fires seem to be lit and going. It's around 8 15, and this time we're going to write out our prep list for the day and get everyone on their tasks. As the opening sous chef, it's definitely more of my job to make sure that everything gets mapped out for the day. Our current menu is about nine courses. It's composed of 20 plates. The way that we build the menu is based on seasonality, and currently we're doing a game birds menu. We were inspired a little bit by the holidays. All the components and the tasks that go into that are kind of going to be divvied up based on everyone's personal strengths. If I know that someone is like really great at kneading bread and portioning and forming, then I'm going to have them focus on that, and then someone else is going to pick the garnish for that same plate. Teamwork makes the dream work. Okay, so it's about 8 30, and we're going to get started on seven ducks a peck in and break down some ducks. These are beautiful ducks that we get in from Liberty Ducks in Sonoma. This is going to be a cross between a Muscovy and a Peking duck, so it's going to be a little bit bigger than the average duck that you see. The top here is the neck, and it has all this extra fat, and I'm just going to take it off so I can get to other parts of the duck a little bit easier, but we will be saving this fat. From here I'm going to grab the front, and I'm going to feel for the wishbone, tip my knife above where I would feel the bone, kind of get my hand in, put my finger around to kind of loosen it up from the breast meat, and make my way up, pull out, and break it off, and then you see here we have the wishbone. Flip the bird over, and I'm going to get the wings. I'm going to use the weight of the duck to kind of help me maneuver and find my way to the bone. So this is pretty much like the armpit of the duck. Make a little incision here, and then as I pull back, see the joint pop out a little bit, follow it with my knife. The seven ducks a pecking is going to be the full utilization of the duck. We're using the breast meat that we make into prosciutto. We also use the duck liver. We make a mousse out of that. We grill it in cabbage and wrap it up, and it's filled with a pineapple guava jelly. We have a course that uses the duck brain with a little bit of embered sunchoke. Brains are kind of a softer texture. It's kind of similar to like panna cotta, and I'm sorry for the visual that I just created, but it's true. The casserole dish that we have on the menu currently, that was a dish that I created. For that course, we're taking all of our duck wings and braising them in duck stock. On top of that, we have creamed spinach, black trumpet mushrooms with truffle, and we top it with crunchy scallions. This knife is a Tojihiro Konosuke, a knife that's designed for butchery, and it has an angled tip that makes it a little bit easier to wedge your way in when you're trying to separate meat from the bone. We usually butcher about 10 ducks a week. These are pretty generous size, so we're able to utilize a lot of it for multiple people. The duck carcass is here. Spend some time in our wood fire oven and roast, and then we're going to make a duck stock, which then goes back into braising the duck wings that we previously talked about. And that's it. It's about 9 30, so we're going to get these bones roasting and moving on to our next project, which is the dashi, which is a Japanese broth that is going to be put into our chawanmushi dish. Let's go. I'm just getting some water in a pot here to bring to a boil to start making my dashi. Chawanmushi is a steamed egg custard normally found in Japanese restaurants. We're going to season it with a little bit of white soy, and then all of our uni from the day before is actually going to be blended into the base. In this cold harvesting, would you mind putting some under the chawanmushi guys? Of course. Thank you. The hearth here is kind of the lifeline of the restaurant throughout the day, throughout prep and throughout service. We're constantly feeding it wood so that we can build poles and then transfer it to wherever needed. And the bigger the pile and the closer up to the metal is going to be how hot it's going to be. So to start the dashi base for our chawanmushi, I have some kombu here that I'm going to have kiss the fire a little bit to impart some of that smoky flavor. Kombu is a seaweed that has been salt cured and dried. Rather than just being the umami that you get from seaweed, it'll have like a little bit of like a deeper flavor. I don't want to burn it. I just kind of want to see it start to ripple. We've had our water on the flat top here for a little bit. It's about the right temperature to start our dashi. So we have our torched kombu that we just did and we're going to pop that in there. And then these are dehydrated smoked king trumpet mushroom stems. When we cut them up and portion them for service, I take all of the butts and I put it up top. Dehydrate and smoke just to like re-impart that flavor in the dish. Same idea with our mandarin skins. I just save all the peel and then I add that in here. And then classic bonito flakes. Dehydrated flakes of fish that are typically from tuna. Adds a little bit of umami as well as a slight fish flavor. And then the last ingredient for this dashi is going to be some pine needles. It's gonna bring out the grassiness of all of our other ingredients. You might see a little bit of Asian influence in the food that I make because I am a Hapa. My mom is Filipina and my dad is a Caucasian man. So I grew up kind of having a lot of traditional Asian treats as well as uh you know your stereotypical like Kraft macaroni and cheese. So I kind of like to think that the food that I make is a blend between the two. I'm gonna kind of mix it up a little bit and then I'm gonna let this steep for about 20 to 30 minutes and strain. You don't want it to go any longer than that because the pine tends to turn bitter. So we just want to make sure that we catch it before that point. All right so our dashi is done. It's about 10-15 and we're gonna go on to our next project which is making pate. The pate that we're making is gonna be pork butt and squab innards. We use pork butt because it's a nice ratio between fat and lean meat. It's always important for like the bite and the structure of the meat to have a good percentage of fat to meat. This pate kind of evolves with the seasons and what's available. Before it was persimmon and pear but right now we have some like really beautiful dehydrated peaches and I thought it might be a nice bright addition to this dish. This pate is served with our house-made milk bread. It has like a little bit of allium powder in there that we make in-house. So we take all of our scallion tops throw them up top and use that as like our dehydrator and then we grind it to a fine powder and fold it into our batter. Head over to the prep kitchen to bring down our meat grinder and then we can start grinding our pate. So here we have all of our pork and we're gonna season it with a mixture of cured salt as well as our fine sea salt. Then we're gonna get grinding and start feeding some of the pork through. It's not exactly the most glamorous job but someone's got to do it. Oh yeah, meaty. The rehydrated peaches and figs that we are adding to our pate add a little bit of sweet and tartness. We have a lot of umami and savory notes and this kind of balances it out and when it's served with the jam it kind of pops a little bit more. I rehydrated the peaches and figs with a little bit of white wine and warm spices and then add our squab innards. A little bit of heart and liver and we get about 40 squabs in a week. We want to use all the parts so that's going to land in our pate this week. Very valentine's day oriented when you do this. What'd you do today? Just grind some hearts. The last bit is going in and we're going to finish mixing everything in the kitchen. Next step is to add our eggs and our milk. So I'm going to make sure I break down these eggs a little bit better and then we're going to start dumping into this lexan. This is going to make approximately 12 loaves which will last us probably about a week and then we'll start this whole process over again. Doing bigger projects is more on my side because it has to be so precise as far as like measurements and consistency of the meat. So like right now you can kind of see the separation between the meat and all the liquid that we're adding to it. Once we fully emulsify it and mix it you'll see that it'll bind and you won't see any separation it'll just be like all one mass. She looks crazy right now but I promise you it's pretty good. From here I'm going to start doing my favorite task and also workout. We're going to start kind of self-emulsifying it like this bringing the fat and the proteins together. As I'm doing this it's starting to clump up a little bit and that's like exactly what we're looking for and then play whatever music you need to to get you motivated for the last push. Oh yeah. So then you know I don't have to do arms today. As you can see it's like starting to kind of like really stick together it's pulling away from the edges and it's kind of building more of a mass in the center. So we're almost there Chef. Sound-wise and feel-wise it feels pretty tacky right? What sound are you looking for? Like a... Basically when you work it the salt pulls the proteins out and so the more you work it the tackier it gets and so you're listening for it to be really tacky in your hands. I feel like we're there. Now I'm going to put them in pans and cook them in the oven. As I fill the pate I'm going to stud the top with a little bit more of that rehydrated fig. Let people know what flavor it is. Flam it down a few times to push out any air that might have happened while I was filling it. I'm going to place it here in these hotel pans. We're going to pour in our hot water bath. It's allowing it not to come from one heat source but kind of all around and it cooks a little bit more evenly. That'll keep the moisture in but also emulsify at the same time. Boom. And then I'm going to head this over to the oven. Coming down right behind corner. In she goes. Tend to load the pate pan in a little bit closer to the fire. You're going to get more of like your higher like 400 degree heat. They're going to take about an hour. It's 11. We have about an hour to cook family meal and I'm going to go see what's in the back. The way I determine what we're going to use for staff meal is do we have anything that's excess and anything cooked off. So I kind of look through here and I see that there's some leftover chicken thighs from yesterday that weren't used for family. So I'm going to scoop those up. We have some already cooked off pasta and then I see that we also have arugula. We like to kind of centralize where all the things for family meal go so it's a little bit easier for people to decipher what they're going to make. We like to rotate staff meal so that everyone kind of has a chance to participate and it's kind of their time to like show off what they can do and kind of experience something together. I think I'm going to start smoking some chickens. Marinate it in a little bit of ginger scallion and so I'm just going to kind of pour it over. Scrummaged through people's stations to see what they had excess of or things that they weren't going to use today for service. I'm going to start skin side down to kind of help with making sure that it doesn't stick to the rack. A lot of the fat is going to render out through that so it'll create like a little layer between the rack and the meat. I like making family meal. It kind of breaks up the monotony of you know everyday routine. I'm going to put it up top to smoke. When I'm putting them up here I'm going to look for where the fire is and obviously right above is going to be the hottest and probably more likely to burn but as you can see there's like a little bit of smoke that pillows up to the side and that's going to give me a little bit more gentle heat and it's going to smoke it more evenly. I prefer smoking over grilling because I think it gives you a little bit more leeway. It's a little bit lower and slower and so the likelihood of burning it is less and also I think it makes the chicken a little bit juicier. The next thing I'm going to do is head over to the back and get some veggies for our noodles. I'm thinking I'm going to go like yakisoba routes and I'm going to use this cauliflower. I have some celery here. Take these noodles that are already cooked off and kind of kiss them on the plancha. Get them a little seared up with some veggies. For cooking on the plancha, number one less dishes and number two it's a larger flat surface so I'm able to cook more food faster. Family meal in the mornings are for about 15 people whereas at night it's about 20 to 25 and it's really important to have enough food for everyone so that everyone's geared up and ready to go for the day. I'm going to start adding my nudes. It's a little hot so I added a little bit of soy sauce. Season everything a little bit more. Sesame oil burns easily so I want to add it towards the end. Sacrificial noodle. All right, servable. I'm going to check on my birds. It's a lot easier to work here if you're tall. I've been short my whole life so I'm very crafty. The chickens are a little bit more opaque and then you'll see that the skin has seized up a little bit and has a brown color to it. They look pretty good but I want to get maybe the skin potentially a little bit crispy so I'm going to pop it in the oven for like two to five minutes and then it's ready to go. We have some arugula here. This green salsa would be like a fun vinaigrette so I'm going to try it out and see what happens. I'm going in. Oh yeah. They're looking right tonight. All right and lunch is served. It is 12 30. We just got back from lunch and we're about to go on a crab party. Crab party. Crab party. We like to get a couple of people together to harvest all of the meat off of the crab. This is duncheonous crab. It's kind of like a hometown hero and so whenever it's in it's like a hot commodity and everyone tries to get it as much as possible. The part of the crab that I have here is the body. What I like to do is go in with my kitchen shears and build myself a little route so I can crack it in half and have access to most of the abdomen meat a little bit easier and I'm going to take my tweezers pluck them out of there. The crab is used in our first snacks served with the chow mushi on a separate plate with a brain sauce on the bottom and then on top is the harvested meat from this. A couple pieces of leg and it's finished with our house-made fowl XO. Traditionally it's made with dehydrated scallops and Chinese bacon and here we've just used our duck prosciutto in supplement of the Chinese bacon. We have here a crab leg and I'm gonna use my shears and come in on the side because we want it to be as whole as possible. I'm gonna go all the way through shimmy the top off and we have our whole leg here. Now we have a claw. I'm gonna take off this side first and kind of slowly wiggle out and I'm gonna do the same thing that we did before with the leg with my scissors. I'm gonna try to build a path. Oh yeah see there you kind of cut through pop the top off and then I'm gonna hold on to the base and then pull out a little oh that was anticlimactic look at that little guy. We got the goods while our crab party is officially over. A day in my life. All right behind behind coming down right behind coming down coming down right behind. It's almost two o'clock we're gonna get ready for our roundup meeting where we all kind of gather before the day and talk about anything that might be pertinent to service. We want to do it right every time we want to value the guests that are coming in. The service here at Osito is different than other restaurants because we are one communal table so it's just a matter of orchestrating the timing of everything so that everyone is accommodated in like a timely fashion. We only have one aversion today and it's one no shellfish um so that means we'll have like an uni supplement just to be safe. The expectations when coming in to eat here I feel are a little bit higher than most restaurants due to you know recently being awarded a star so it's important for us to kind of maintain that level and standard of excellence as much to our ability. So it's about three o'clock I'm gonna go around the kitchen to make sure everyone's good for service and pick up any little tasks. Do we have more of this by the way? Part of my job to go through and make sure that we have everything for service I want to check the quantities the quality I like to also take note of like how quickly we're going through things to see if it needs to be done the next day. Yum. So we're checking in on our last batch of pate for the day to make sure that it's ready I'm going to use my digital thermometer here and I'm looking for an internal temperature of at least 131. We see we're a little bit over which is great. Corner out hot stuff. All right it's five o'clock. We call back in this kitchen just to make sure that everyone heard that information and that's my way of knowing and confirming that they heard what I said. We just got our reservation sheet for the evening that means it's about 5 15. We open at 5 30. I hope you got an idea of what it was like to be a sous chef here at Osito. Unfortunately you have to go and we love seeing you too. Bye. That's a wrap. Here at Osito the man behind it all Seth Stowe. We call him dad.