Honey’s Big Night
A Beekeeper's Passion Crests with a Guest Stint in Canelé's Kitchen
Amy
Seidenwurm
Photo by Coral Von Zumwalt
I make honey—or rather, my bees make honey, and I enjoy the fruits of their labor by sharing it with my nearest and dearest. I love to give jars of our rich, complex, ridiculously delicious nectar as gifts. Still, I yearn for other outlets.
Long before my husband and I began keeping bees last September, I’d had a crush on Canelé, a bistro in Atwater Village. It’s everything I find appealing about a neighborhood restaurant: friendly, simple, fresh, creative and reasonably priced. The food is in no way trendy, but it isn’t predictable either. You expect salmon or Caesar salad on the menu, but instead you find whole branzino and dandelion salad. I like a place that challenges me in subtle ways. A host offers diners a mini canelé—a pastry with a soft custardy center and caramelized crust—on their way out, and the treat is a fitting end to a generous and graceful experience.
So, smitten with the restaurant, I did what I do: I cyberstalked it, learning from the place’s Website that there’s a program called Friends Cook at Canelé, described as an opportunity for “the sort of friend so in love with eating that she must share some childhood gustatory obsession with the world...When we find such a friend—whether experienced cook or absolute newbie—we want nothing more than to offer him or her a stage on which to shine.”
Yes! Sign me up! The site is cryptic about how one gets to be one of these “friends,” but I am known to be very persistent. I boned up on chef and co-owner Corina Weibel and resolved to meet her the next time my husband and I went in for dinner.
I’ d worked in the music business for much of my life and am used to meeting rock stars and actors. But put me in front of a chef I admire, and I get goofy and shy. I gathered all my courage and approached Corina to ask how someone can be one of these special friends. “Well, you need to submit a menu,” she said. Friendly enough, but she certainly didn’t go out of her way to encourage me. I beat an intimidated retreat.
A lot happened in the year that followed. I quit my soul-sucking job at an Internet startup. I spent a week learning to make cheese on a dairy farm in North Carolina. My mom died. My mother-in-law died. I started a great job that does not suck the soul out of me. And most important to this story, my husband and I started keeping bees. Then it dawned on me: The honey was my ticket to becoming a Canelé friend. So, with a jar of our finest in hand, I approached Corina again and explained my vision of a honey-driven menu, with each of the three courses featuring honey from organic beekeepers around L.A. A few emails later, I was in, and we had agreed on this menu:
• Mixed green salad with roasted
beets, Gorgonzola, honey-roasted
walnuts and honey-champagne
vinaigrette.
• Honey-glazed pork tenderloin with Maker’s Mark reduction, corn cakes and buttered carrots.
• Goat cheese and nectarine tart with raw-honey drizzle and
honey gelato.
I had made my pork tenderloin with Maker’s Mark bourbon ever since a friend left a half gallon of it at my house after a particularly sodden poker game. It adds a woody, complex flavor that works great with a honey glaze. But the rest of the recipes needed work.
5 LESSONS LEARNED
1. Great chefs make cooking look easy, but it isn’t.
2. I don't know as much as I thought I did.
3. Things are more delicious cooked with butter.
4. Always bring your knives.
5. When someone in the kitchen says "behind you," don't back up.
To perfect the dishes, I started cooking like a maniac. Counter to my usual practice, I wrote down recipes before testing them. I made sweet walnuts and spicy walnuts and walnuts with smoked paprika. I decided that, in early summer, yellow corn is sweeter than white corn. I arranged a barter with Silver Lake’s Pazzo Gelato, giving them a bunch of honey that they turned into incredible gelato. They gave me half and sold the rest in the shop.
I emailed Corina to ask if we could meet to figure out logistics. She replied that we would work it all out the day of the dinner. What? How would she know what supplies to get? How would the crew know what to do? My inexperience made me want to hammer out every detail to ensure it would be flawless. We finally spoke by phone, and I realized I was being an idiot. Corina had an answer for every one of my questions and was way ahead of me on the specifics. It should have occurred to me she would handle this dinner with the same attention to detail she gave everything else at her restaurant.
Big Tuesday came (all of the Friends dinners are on Tuesdays), and I arrived hours before the 5:30 p.m. opening. I was first-day-of-school nervous, as I didn’t want to look like a poseur—the office worker playing cook for a day. With my knife skills and speed lacking, I hoped that a sense of humor, some humility and a general tough-guy attitude would earn me a little respect.
I needn’t have worried. Everyone in the kitchen at Canelé was beyond sweet and skilled. They gave me tasks and managed to make me feel like I wasn’t holding them up. We chopped and prepped everything. We made all of the dishes once and tried them. Corina taught me how to do that nifty pan flip chefs do—possibly the most exciting new skill I’ve learned since mastering the Rubik’s Cube in seventh grade.
Before I knew it, we had customers. The first wave was mostly friends, and they looked like they were having fun. People who had only met a couple of times were pulling their tables together to hang out. Compliments started coming into the kitchen.
As my friends finished up—seeming to have honestly enjoyed their meal—the next wave arrived. The Friends menu is in addition to Canelé’s standard fare, and I found myself annoyed when people dared to order anything other than my offerings. Then suddenly the place was full, and we were “in the weeds”—an old restaurant expression I’d heard and read and seen on TV but was now strangely excited to experience. I finally got into the rhythm, and we cranked through 50 or so dinners in a couple of hours.
Customers stopped arriving at about 9:30, and Corina suggested I sit down and eat. I suddenly realized I was dead tired and hadn’t had any sustenance for many hours. I took a place at the community table with my husband and close friends and savored the meal—truly my meal in more ways than one. The spattering from the corn cakes left me with burns up and down my arms and a nice one on my face. I kind of like them, which I know is weird. Don’t judge me.
AMY SEIDENWURM is a fan of bees, food, dogs, wine, music, typography, technology and basketball. In her professional life, she is a digital marketing geek.
Categories: Food / Photos / Pictorials / Square Peg
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Looks fantastic! Congratulations, Amy.
Posted by: Kathy Fennessy | 08/02/2009 at 04:10 PM
Ami....You are so delightful, quirky and smart.... as your mom and dad have told me many times. Excuse me for saying I ate up your article and got a little teary at the end, thinking of your beautiful, creative, brilliant mom. I am corny enough to truely believe she also read the article and is once again bursting with pride in the cosmic somewhere. Last year I gave my oldest son Rob a book on bee keeping and how to start a hive whether you are living in a high rise in New York or in the wilderness. It is something every Renaissance child should know how to do. So I will be a complete mother nag and send him your article...."see Amy did it, you can do it too..." Best of luck in your next adventure. Vickey Dunivin
Posted by: Victoria Dunivin | 08/03/2009 at 11:03 AM
what a wonderful article..you do your mother proud..she would love that you have such great literary ability and to have found a gastronomic outlet would be sweet nectar(bee of course) to her ears!!...hugs and huzzahs!! rhoda galvani
Posted by: rhoda galvani | 08/03/2009 at 12:37 PM
A delicious piece describing a passion, celebrating a restaurant, and divulging a few of the enigmas of Amy Seidenwurm.
Congratulations and thanks for a great read.
Ann Carli
Posted by: Ann Carli | 08/03/2009 at 01:11 PM
Amy,
Great article. Yes, your mom would really have been proud. Your next profession can surely be a chef. Menu sounded fabulous.
Mattye (your mom's friend from NYC)
Posted by: Mattye Gandel | 08/05/2009 at 03:02 PM
Amy: mmmmm your article made me
so hungry... As a fan of every cooking
show on television I admire your courage
to step into a professional kitchen
and have a dream come true.
How can you go wrong with Bourbon,
butter and honey!!!
Can I please come to your next dinner..
Coni Lancaster
Posted by: Coni Lancaster | 08/07/2009 at 11:06 AM
Amy...you have made me so hungry!
As a fan of every cooking show on TV
I admire your courage to step into
a professional kitchen.. the menu
and pictures looked so yummy.
How can you go wrong with Bourbon, butter and honey!! Congratulations on
a wonderful, witty article!
Coni Lancaster
Posted by: Coni Lancaster | 08/07/2009 at 11:24 AM
Amy, Your dad sent this to me, and I loved reading about your oh so very interesting hobbies! Your mom sat next to me (in a picture frame) while I read. She was smiling!!!
Connie Lacy
Posted by: Connie Lacy | 08/21/2009 at 12:00 PM
Hi Amy.. I met you (& your husband) a couple of months ago, with Helene and Brenner, at your lovely home where you showed us your beehives.
Reading the NY Times today, I came across this article which immediately reminded me of you and your fervent work with honeybees.. Enjoy!
http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/02/saving-bees-what-we-know-now/
I really enjoyed the LA Times article on your menu prep too. Glad it was a resounding success. That is Sweet!
Best, Barbara
Posted by: Barbara DeLucia | 09/03/2009 at 11:22 AM
Congratulations Amy,
Sounds like your a pro, thanks for sharing your story with us.
Posted by: jojo | 03/30/2010 at 01:25 PM
Fantastic article - my mouth is watering!
I would love to recreate this menu. Any chance you can share the recipes? As well as sources for locally produced honey?
Thanks!
Posted by: Sparker | 03/30/2010 at 01:33 PM
The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher hes a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he""s to setting.
Posted by: Nike Air Max plus | 11/15/2010 at 01:12 AM
Excellent post!
You learned very important things out there and shared the valuable knowledge in your blog.
It's true regarding coking with butter, it's actually delicious, I've just tried:)
Posted by: Help with scrabble | 05/02/2012 at 01:08 AM