More than thirty years ago I met John Takach, a retired small bluecollar bar and restaurant owner from Cleveland visiting his doctor son in Maine. He was rumored to be a gruff, remote man so I was nervous. It was a beautiful warm August day when he arrived with his heavy vintage suitcase. After introducing myself and telling him how I had been looking forward to meeting him he looked at me and said, let's cook, I have much to teach you!
We were instant friends, as we picked cucumbers and told stories. That day is burned in my mind, we talked about the story of his life and love that he insisted on sharing with me. We chopped and sautéed and talked about life in the old country and coming to America. That night there was to be a gathering at his son’s house and we were expected to make a real Hungarian feast. He had brought along many brown wrapped packages filled with smoked hunks of fat, loops of freshly made sausages, good Hungarian paprika, and a special jug of Whiskey.
It is Sunday late morning, the North wind is howling outside and the
rain has changed to half inch hail but the farmhouse walls are more than
two feet thick and we are very cozy. We hear nothing, just the sounds
of the wood fire crackling, a knife on the cutting board and two friends
engaged in a lively conversation catching up on many things since our
last visit. We are sitting at a 8 foot long chestnut kitchen table
boning out the leg of a wild boar, removing sinew, fat glands and
chipped bones from the bullet wound. Alain has told all his neighbors of
our visit and one has shot a wild boar for the occasion and foraged for
black truffles. It was long decided before the boar was cold that we
would make a daube just like his mother made for him in his child hood
home in Avignon and it will marinate today and simmer over a wood fire
all afternoon tomorrow. Tonight we are having raclette with charcuterie
for dinner that they brought home from their skiing vacation in the
Alps. Not a bad way to spend a rainy Sunday afternoon!
Spending 14-hour days in command of a restaurant kitchen can take a
toll, both physically and emotionally. So when it’s time to move on,
where do chefs go?
It is late Wednesday morning and Candy Sue Weaver is on the road again,
barreling through Arkansas. Her iPod is pumping Henry Gross, Eagles,
and Delbert McClinton through her radio and she is just as pumped. She
can taste victory up the road. Weaver is a sportswoman, and she is on a
700 mile drive in her pickup, trailer in tow, towards a baseball
diamond wedged between a cornfield and a soybean field in northwest
Illinois. But Weaver is not a baseball player. She is competition
barbecue cook.
Shortbread is simply the most delicious biscuit ever conceived by mankind (though I suspect
womankind had more to do with it!).