I finally had the pleasure of meeting Chris Eames, a family friend of my in-laws. A few months older than my brother-in-law and myself, we had spoken a few times over the phone, and had heard plenty of stories of each other over the last nine years I've been acquainted with the Dolmans.
Currently Chris is living in Austin and attending culinary school, and on Saturday of our trip to Oklahoma City, he and I joined forces and whipped up a feast for the twenty or thirty people there that afternoon. Chris is very passionate about his art and is very skilled and knowledgeable. It was a ton of fun entertaining the ever-shifting audience...people would come and go, some staying for a time to watch and ask questions, and we got the impression that the plethora of high school aged kids never cooked anything...ever, probably, but they seemed genuinely interested in what we were doing.
Chris manned the grill outside, where he grilled off five pounds of seasoned sheet steak (for fajitas--a dish asked for by the Lady of Honor for the weekend, Steph). Also done on the grill was the chicken. Chris picked up three whole roasters and we portioned then up--wings, breasts, thighs, drumsticks, and carcasses for stock. We roasted the carcasses first so we could make brown stock; we slathered the wings and drumsticks in bar-be-cue sauce for the kids; we spooned a sauce made from tamarind and reduced stock onto the thighs and nicer airline breasts (airline=breast with wing drumstick still attached); and I sliced up the remaining breasts and let them sit and marinate with cilantro, onion, and lime, for the chicken half of the fajitas. That meat was cooked on a bowl of foil on the grill, with a little beer added. Also on a foil bowl were the ramps that I brought from New York, with a little olive oil and salt and pepper. The greens from the ramps we tossed directly onto the grill, as a bed for the last two breasts. I was inside working the sauces, stocks, some black whole grain mustard I was pickling, tamarind juice, and cutting the meat.
I mention all this because besides the ramps everything we made we either used from cupboards or picked up at the store...mirepoix stuff like onions, carrots, celery...peppercorns and kosher salt...chickens and beef...Carol made a great tabouli dish and pasta salad, but we really wanted her to relax. We cut the vegetables for both of those. The black mustard seeds and tamarind concentrate I found at an Indian import store across the street from Peter, my younger brother-in-law. It is this action, this found cuisine, that is the essence of this post's subtitle: Gonzo Cuisine.
Chris and I didn't plan any menu; once we had the mirepoix, we just looked around and made stuff that tasted good. Later on in the evening, after we were both spent, he told me about a conversation he had with one of his instructors. Chris stated that he was a proponent of a thing he called "Gonzo Cuisine" (he and I are big HST fans..shocker, no?) and the instructor informed him there was no such thing. He stood his ground, though, and the master chef asked him to define what exactly he means by Gonzo Cuisine, and Chris told him, "That's when you march into somebody's house and make some fine dining with whatever they have in their cabinets." The master didn't have anything derisive to say about that.
Gonzo Cuisine. You should see what I've been doing for dinners with Corrie and Marc and Linda for the past three years...I've been a master of Gonzo Cuisine for a while without even knowing it has a name.
Shout out Mr. Eames
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