Been thinking a lot about liminal spaces lately.
The unmooring of yourself from a timeline, from a place. Not quite there but no longer here either. The word "liminal" comes from the latin word “limen,” which means threshold. In this nomadic private chef life, I find myself at a threshold often - certainly more often than I ever did as a restaurant chef. There was a time that I was having panic attacks during service because I felt so trapped. A horrible feeling. You’re at the helm of the ship, running the pass, and you feel it rising in your chest but there is nowhere to go — trapped— the most you can do is wait for a beat to duck out to the alley behind the restaurant to gasp for air and look up at the sky for two seconds before resuming the relentless call of tickets and finishing of plates. (I’ve since given up caffeine for the most part, which helped immensely even relegated to matcha and green tea as I was).
Being a private chef is kind of the exact inverse of that feeling. Running a restaurant you spend 12+ hours in the same box every single day, when you’re used to that kind of grind it’s wild to go into a routine where you can actually hang out with ‘civilians’ after you get out of work, let alone change locations every 3 months. Pieces of yourself that you thought were identity begin to fall away and shift. Frequently poised at the edge of one place ready to jump into the next, you ballast things you don’t need; shyness, an excessively large wardrobe, even the title of ‘chef’ has started to become less important - a piece of my identity that I clung to when I left a 9 year relationship and moved to LA nearly 5 years ago, the one card I held close while tossing the rest of the deck into the air to see how it would land.
My relationship to food has changed. It was already changing when I left Rustic Canyon last September, and now as I come up on my one-year anniversary in this job, I can feel the distance I’ve traveled. I was reminded of this the other day at Edgartown Meat & Fish, waiting in line to check out behind this guy who was such a caricature of a chef I couldn't help but laugh - a short, stocky, balding man, wearing shorts and Crocks and an expensive Tilit short-sleeve chef shirt that was at least (at least!) one size too small. He had an aggressive full-blackout tattoo wrapping around his left shin and an attitude like he owned the store. I watched him pickup a bag of delicately sliced bagel chips, remark (to no one) that they were “the good shit” and then plonk them back down on the table unceremoniously. When the cashier asked if he’d like a receipt he loudly exclaimed - “Absolutely, no way in hell am I gonna be the one paying for all of this!” I’ve seen this type of chef-dude a thousand times. The dick-swinging, Marco Pierre White worshiping, truffle oil toting, white male chef. Leaning so hard into the cliche they couldn’t see it if they tried. To them, this is what it means to be a chef. Drink too much, cook everything in butter, laugh loudly with guests; be dinner AND the show! This is the type of dude who made 19 year-old me feel like I could never be a chef. This is the trope that makes it impossible for me to watch The Bear, this is the world I left last fall, with the idea that I was a different kind of chef.
And of course, I am. I am a different kind of chef. I practice yoga, I led my team in breathing exercises before service, I read books - not just cookbooks. I cook with olive oil and value love over egoic expression — I want my food to heal you. But for all intents and purposes, when I walked into this job last October, I may as well have had the energy of any pirate-venerating asshole in the kitchen. Indeed, I was used to it being MY show. Welcome to MY dinner party, and if you don’t like it…. the vibe is kind of - ‘well then, you’re just too stupid to get it’. Sure, the dinner party was veg-focused, sourced from local farmers I know by name and less self-conscious than some, but it was still mine. Cue All About Me by Syd.
Private cheffing is not like that. It’s not about you — not really. It's about them.
Which is really a great exercise in releasing ego.
Which is really a great lesson in what hospitality really is.
Which (as a dear friend pointed out) is really great practice for becoming an Ayurvedic practitioner.
I suppose, in a way, a liminal space is a space in which you are changing what you are oriented towards. East Coast to West Coast, island to city; a chance to realign. A chance to let go, refocus, reorient. A chance to leave behind that which is no longer serving you. A chance to notice what is less important to you, or more.
So in this way, I will look at each threshold as an opportunity to adjust course. Shift where it's needed. Adapt. Coming up on one year of a lot of adjusting (a lot!). Making me consider the things that really matter to me. Still food (always food) but community too, how I create a world for myself, and where I want to fit within that world.
More later, recipe below ;)
xo
Z
a recipe for balancing: green curry. of course.
What could be more grounding when we talk of liminal spaces than curry? Curry is the ultimate comfort food - don’t even try to argue! In Ayurveda, you need opposition to create balance. The warmth of curry is the exact antidote to the etheric quality of a liminal space. water + earth to balance air + ether.
This is a chicken curry, because for the people I work for, there always has to be a meat component. But I wanted the Honeynut squash to be the star - a little for you a little for me. Balance ;)
roughly. let’s go -
Rinse, dry and cut chx thighs into 1” chunks. Marinate with a puree of onion, garlic, lemongrass, salt and lime zest. Let sit for at least 1 hour, up to overnight.
Make your curry paste: jalapeno, serrano, scallion, garlic, lime, cilantro, lemongrass, evoo. Blend in a vitamix if you have it. You want this to be as smooth as possible.
Dice eggplant. Toss with salt. Set aside.
Get a medium/large pot hot with a little evoo in the bottom. Add chicken, as well as half a large diced onion, 2 large diced jalapenos, and sliced broccoli stems. I like to use the stems! We’ll throw the florets in at the end.
Pour out your eggplant cubes onto a paper towel lined sheet tray. Place another paper towel on top and press to remove excess water. Add eggplant to pot.
Once the chicken has taken on some color (it happens quickly) add your coconut milk, a splash of water, a dash of salt. Cook on a low simmer for ~30 mins. Taste for salt. Add broccoli florets just before serving (this way they stay nice bright green).
For the honeynut squash: I peeled and cut the squash relatively thin, tossed with the same marinade as the chicken PLUS toasted ground coriander and fennel and roasted on 450 til the edges got a little crispy.