Ann Cashion

You're right, Tweaked. Salt is the uber seasoning. It has to be right in order for any preparation to sing. This was something that I was taught when I worked in Tuscany. They have a special term of derision there for undersalted food...."schiocca". It's a must avoid! The French, at the other end of the spectrum, have a charming way of commenting on food that crosses the line into over salted..."The cook must be in love" they say, presumably because the experience of love makes everything so sweet that it throws one's salt meter off. Anyway, teaching staff to manage salt...when to salt, how much, how much is too much...has been a major preoccupation of mine through the years.

OK...here's the awful truth. I DIDN'T HAVE A DISSERTATION TOPIC!! Nominally, I was "concentrating" (not!) in English Renaissance poetry. Which I loved. But graduate school was not for me. Too driven towards specialization. I'm a generalist! Two years into the program I had formed no close relationships with any professors in my field. I had no idea what I was doing at Stanford. Schmoozing was the name of the game in graduate school which I found so repellant that I couldn't cope. I was recycling papers I'd written as an undergraduate at Harvard just to get through. I showed up at my unmonitored final exam in Old English armed with a bottle of Scotch (and drank it with a classmate named John) just to keep it interesting. In short, I had gone from being a very sharp and enthusiastic student to being a very bad one. It was time to leave.

Well, I'm happy to be doing this, so thank YOU, Don. You are right about San Francisco. I dropped out of Stanford (Ph.D. program)...actually, I took an indefinite leave of absence from the institution and then never went back. I worked as an apprentice baker for an incredible woman, Lili Lecocq, who had recently opened a tiny, what we would call today an "artisanal" bakery on College Avenue in Berkeley. Lili was an alum of Chez Panisse and after I'd been there for a year and then spent time cooking in Florence, I was approached by Lindsay Shere who was the pastry chef at Chez Panisse, to train with her to become the pastry person at their not yet, but soon to be opened downstairs cafe. The cafe was to have an Italian orientation, and the fact that I had worked in Italy, was, I believe, a big plus in terms of getting hired. Unfortunately, I got on the wrong side of Alice right from the get go. I was making chocolate pistachio ice cream with Lindsay, and she had me scraping the inner husks of the nuts so that they would be bright green. Alice was in the kitchen reading out loud a letter that she had written, to whom I don't know, about developing native ingredients that would be the equivalent of their European counterparts, and I was so peeved by the tedious nature of the task that I'd been put to that I blurted out, "maybe you could put in there something about developing a skinless pistachio." I think this was why, a couple of days later, Lindsay called me and said that Alice had decided that I couldn't work at the restaurant. It was pretty devastating. I was out of a job, and felt like I had lost an incredible opportunity since working at Chez Panisse in 1980 was kind of the non plus ultra of culinary jobs. In retrospect, I'm happy it happened and I think I am better for it. Had to develop myself and not just rely on a dazzling resume.

Sum won eye a door. A woman who writes like I try to cook. For her, language; for me ingredients. Respect them. Find the splendid in the the every day. Exalt the vernacular. Go with what you know, intimately.