Skirt Steak - Fried Apple Pie

Skirt Steak: Women Chefs on Standing the Heat and Staying in the Kitchen

By Charlotte Druckman

320 pages, Chronicle Books, 2012

It was necessary to write Skirt Steak. Reading it will make you realize just how necessary it was.

The book is as straightforward as its title suggests: food writer Charlotte Druckman interviewed 73 American women chefs on multiple aspects of their profession, and organized her findings by topic to paint a picture of the situation of women in the professional kitchen. While she does not quite manage to weave everything into a smooth narrative, Skirt Steak is a gold mine of information. The thoroughness and girth of the research accomplished by the author are commendable.

Perhaps inevitably, it sometimes feels a bit dry. There are sections where multiple direct quotes are dumped on us in succession. There are so many names dropped that, unless you are very familiar with the restaurant industry, you are likely to feel quite lost. Thankfully, there is a very useful index you can turn to, should you ever need to look up a specific chef. In this manner, this book can serve as a reference for future use.

Druckman attempts to lighten the content by inserting personal anecdotes, jokes, and pop culture references. This works up to a point, if you have a high tolerance for snark. The use of footnotes is, I felt, a bit over-the-top: the author often uses this space to explain her jokes (some of which are a little too insidey to be relevant), or to provide information that has very little to do with the topic. In a book already packed with information, this weighs things down more often than not.

But the heart of the matter, the stories of these women chefs, are very valuable.

If you are even a little bit interested in the restaurant industry, and have even the slightest feminist inclination, you will not find much to surprise you within these pages (which are, in passing, gorgeously packaged). Being a chef in a restaurant is excruciating work. And this is not an environment that is particularly welcoming to women. The irony that the home kitchen has traditionally been considered to be the woman’s domain, while the professional kitchen is positioned as out of her reach, is nothing new.

Ultimately, the struggles the women in this book tell will resonate with those of working women in many other fields, only exacerbated. Machismo and outright sexual harassment in the workplace. The difficulty of balancing femininity with competitiveness. Lack of professional recognition and exposure. Having children and a career. And, more specifically, holding one’s own in a very physically demanding profession.

These are stories we have heard and read many times before, in other contexts, or even in this very same one. But as long as they continue to be representative of a current reality, they need to continue being told. Even if it gets repetitive. Even if it gets depressing – which, in fact, this book is not. This is in large part thanks to the spirit of the women Druckman interviewed. That they are tough, and little prone to self-pity, is not surprising, but that does not make them any less admirable. Although they recognize the challenges they face, most of them roll up their sleeves and carry on cooking. What better way to tell off detractors?

This book is about women, but it is also about food. And a lot of it is raved over by Druckman. In particular, she lauds Christina Tosi’s fried apple pie. Tosi is a familiar name for New Yorkers, as the founder and owner of Momofuku Milk Bar. Druckman's style is often enthusiastic, but never more so when she is describing this dessert:

“It had the familiarity of the cheap-bastard standard, but the flavors were better defined, the pastry an appropriately thick blanket, the fry just right on the crispy and not at all greasy, and the apples had a caramelized intensity. [...] It wasn't just the pie. It was the sour scoop that came with it - like crème fraîche in ice cream form; lighter, somehow, and yet not icy. And then, too, there was the miso ganache. Salted caramel? Please. Next to this almost savory take on butterscotch, with its smooth-creamy, thicker-than-frosting texture, salted caramel might as well have been a dipping sauce on the McDonald's menu (if it isn't by now). Heaven. I was in heaven.

That was a Tosi creation.”

Druckman helpfully mentions in a footnote that the recipe is published in David Chang and Peeter Meehan's Momofuku cookbook, which I happen to own. I won't share it here, since I did not adapt it in any meaningful way, except to take shortcuts that did not benefit the recipe in anyway. I skipped the homemade sour cream ice cream and cinnamon dust. I loved charring the miso (something I'd been wanting to do every since I had incredible burnt miso ramen in Tokyo a few years ago), but couldn't get the ganache quite as smooth as the description suggests. I struggled with making and shaping the dough.

The result tasted fine, but undoubtedly nowhere near what it was supposed to be like. And highly unphotogenic. I offered the pies when my talented photographer friend Aurélie Jouan was visiting, and while she did wonders, considering the improvised conditions and the lacklustre subject, I doubt anyone could have made what I served up look mouth-watering. After this and the infamous pâté shoot, I really owe Aurélie a pretty, visually appealing dish for her to photograph.

Still, at the end of the day, it was fried apple pie, with a gritty but still pretty awesome miso sauce. Not to settle for less, but it was good enough for me!