Last night was my first night in a professional kitchen. I mean a REAL kitchen, with REAL chefs and REAL equipment! Prior to last night, my only other kitchen experience was cooking in a pancake house next to a cinema complex in Melbourne's working class suburb of Maribrynong. This was definitely an improvement, not to mention, learning experience.

For a first timer, I managed to hold my own in the James Beard kitchen, even if I did burn myself within 5 minutes of firing up the oven. Which i figured is the stigmata of the rookie cook.

Standing beside the experienced (and nice guy) Tim Kelley from Zoe in Soho and his seriously talented staff we cooked and plated 4 different hor'dourves, 5 tasting meal courses and a dessert plate for 85 discerning diners in about 3 hours.

My responsiblilties for the night were fairly limited. I started with frying the polenta cakes. The sous chef pointed out that my first dozen were a little too brown and that I needn't prod them every second or so to prevent them sticking. This tip worked. The 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th batch were progressively better. Such is the skill of repetition.

Next I fried the bacon wrapped rabbit with much better results. After which I was put in charge of making 90 or so perfect triangles out of a wheel of crumbly blue cheese. Do you know how hard that is? Even though geometry was one of my better classes in college, my first 30 attempts were sorry excuses for triangles.

Another chef clued me in. Dipping the knife in hot water prevents the knife from sticking and voila I had perfect results. I arranged these ones nicely on top, hiding the malformed ones under several layers of parchment paper.

With triangles under my belt, I moved to plating. Chef Kelley had me saucing the squab. This time my success was inversely related to the number of tiny squab legs sauced. The first few were fine, then I started dripping sauce all over the plates. Oiy yoi yoi... Chef Kelley was livid and said "Ok. You're out of here. Matt take over on saucing."

I was fine and understood why. Actually, I was impressed that I lasted on the line as long as I did. But Chef Kelley was great and gave me another chance, this time saucing the lamb. Ladies and gentlemen, I am proud to say that I completed all 85 plates with narry a misplaced drip of lamb reduction. This my friends is what excites me, ladling sauce over tiny fowls without a runaway drip...

Hor'dourves

Geoduck Nuta with Seaweed Salad and Miso
Pacific Coast Oysters with Fresh Oregon Wasabi, Shiso, and Ponzu
Dungeness Crabcakes with Golden Raisin Compote
Smoked Bacon-Wrapped Loin of Frazier Valley Rabbit with Herbed Polenta Cakes and Trevisano
- Domaine Ste. Michelle Blanc de Blancs NV
- Seven Hills Winery Pinot Gris 2000

Kohlrabi Soup with Hudson Valley Foie Gras, Medjool Dates,
Crispy Sage, and Parsnips
- Sineann Winery Celilo Vineyard Gewürztraminer 2001

Lightly Smoked Columbia River Sturgeon with Sterling Caviar,
Braised Salsify, and Lobster Nage
- Woodward Canyon Celilo Vineyard Chardonnay 2000
- DeLille Cellars Chaleur Estate Blanc 2000

Roasted Palmetto Farm Squab with Oyster Mushrooms,
Brussel Sprouts Leaves, and Sweet Potato-Apple Jus
- L'Ecole No. 41 Merlot 2000
- Tamarack Cellars Merlot 1999

Anderson Ranch Natural Lamb Chop and Osso Buco with
Butternut Squash Risotto and Black Trumpets
- Delille Cellars D-2 1999
- Woodward Canyon Artist Series Cabernet Sauvignon 1998

Bingham Hill Blue Cheese with Living Watercress,
Five-Spice Walnuts, and Blood Orange Reduction
- Château Ste. Michelle Syrah Reserve 1999

Tasting of Contemporary American Desserts
- Sineann Winery Zinfandel 2000

Last week I bought about a pound and a half of Italian frying peppers at Wholefoods. Which, according to Fresh Direct, are also called Cubanelle Peppers. Who knew?

These peppers were just too good to pass up. One of the things I enjoy about Wholefoods is that most of their produce is certified organic. Generally this means the food tastes like it should. It also means that I could trust the bright green color and high gloss exterior to be natural and not chemically induced.

My mother used to cook these peppers all the time and I remember them more as a refrigerator staple than the common bell pepper. She would either fry them with a little olive oil in a covered frying pan and serve them whole as a side or, if she had a little more time, they would be roasted, sliced and tossed with roasted tomato, a little olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper.

I preferred the roasted method since it adds a charred flavor to the pepper that counters their natural sweetness. For me the "salad" was even better if it was served on a thick slice of toasted Italian bread.

Last night I was all alone since Joe was in Poughkeepsie spending time with his piano teacher and mentor, Blanca Uribe. Getting hungry, I started rumaging through the fridge, saw the peppers and decided to make this salad.

1 1/2 pounds Italian frying peppers
1 tomato sliced horizontally and seeded
1 garlic clove
Olive oil
Salt & pepper

1. Roast peppers and tomato under broiler or over an open flame. Periodically rotate peppers and tomato halves so that they char and soften evenly.

2. When evenly chared, remove peppers and place in a plastic bag to sweat. The steam or "sweat" will make it easier to peel the now black skin from the pepper flesh. The tomato may take longer to roast and can be peeled without placing in plastic bag.

3. Slice peppers and tomatoes into thin strips. If you want a rustic salad you don't have to remove pepper seeds.

4. In a bowl, gently mix pepper, tomato, crushed garlic with a little olive oil and salt and pepper to taste. Serve warm or cold as a side to fish or meat.

Note: You could substitute bell peppers for the Italian frying peppers, using different colors for a better presentation. If I had one, I would have also added a chilli pepper to give the dish some spice.

One of my new favorite restuarants is Supper, Frank Prisinazo's relatively new East Village restaurant. I went there last night with a friend visiting from out of town. We wanted something casual, inexpensive and given the winter storm, something that would warm us up completely. Supper did that perfectly.

What I like at Supper more than the prices is that the kitchen does simple northern Italian fare well, very well in fact. I had the calamari which were served perfectly tender in a garlic broth. For my pasta entree I had the "priest stranglers". They were al dente tossed in a great marinara sauce and the plate garnished with a dollop of ricota cheese. The service this time around was much improved and there was no "didactic" host, which more than pleased me.

It is hard to eat here and wonder why you had to eat so many bad Italian meals. Supper really respects the ingredients it uses and it shows. The kitchen takes advantage of quality ingredients used in simple combinations. They don't rely on garlic as the only means of imparting flavor nor do they use olive oil as a heat transfer medium but rather an ingredient in its own right.

I am beginning to appreciate the nature of simplicty at work and starting to translate that into other things around me such as my cooking, which isn't as easy as it sounds.

My dinner tonight was inspired by Supper's simple menu. I didn't want to waste time preparing anything, dealing with multiple pots or cleaning up after fancy creations. I had 3 eggs in the fridge and a half pound of asparagus, so I decided that an asparagus omelette was going to be my dinner. My mother made this all the time as a side and I loved it as a kid. I love it more now for the fact that all you taste is the asparagus, fresh, green and crisp.

1/2 pound of asparagus
1 tablespoon olive oil
3 eggs
Salt & pepper

1. Trim asparagus and then cut into 1 inch lengths. If the stalks are thick, you might need to cut them in half lengthwise.

2. Heat the oil in a non-stick frying pan until very hot and smoking. Add the asparagus and cook on high heat until browned, about 5 - 10 minutes depending on the stalk's thickness. Season with salt and pepper. Spread the asparagus so that it evenly covers the bottom of the frying pan.

3. While the asparagus are cooking, beat 3 eggs, add salt and pepper. Add eggs directly to asparagus in the pan. Reduce heat to medium and cook until egg is set on bottom.

4. Transfer pan to broiler to cook egg on top. Another 5 minutes.

5. Invert onto serving dish and serve, sliced in wedges.

For a variation, you could add diced tomotoes when cooking the asparagus and/or add any type of grated cheese to the egg mixture.

While I hate tax time, I do love running reports off Quicken and reaping the benefits of having downloaded my financial data off the Internet. I am fascinated to see my life's habits and daily movements tracked by credit and debit purchases.

It is one thing to see how much is categorized under "Food: Dining Out", but another to see trends and patterns at any one particular establishment. The frequency and amount I spent at the local Vietnamese restaurant, Thai Son, is truly disturbing. Also, did I really buy that much chocolate at NY Cake and Baking Supply?

The only good thing to come out of this exercise was that I found some paper scraps scribbled with recipe notes. I had jotted the notes down on my trip to Australia several months back and had filed them away with receipts from the same trip.

This is exactly why I have a food blog. I needed a place to capture and organize such peices of information that would otherwise be lost amongst receipts, movie ticket stubs, newspaper clippings and old magazines that lay around my house.

The recipe I found was my friend Paul's all purpose marinade. He's a great cook, making wonderful meals mainly by taking a basic recipe (or something he has seen dining out) and improvising with whatever is in the fridge or pantry. His dishes usually have an Asian twist to them that is uniquely Australian.

While I have seen Paul use this marinade for anything intended to hit his outdoor grill, including quail, chicken and shrimp, it should also work for pork and dark meats.

2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon Hot English mustard
2 cloves crushed garlic
1 1/2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 teaspoon cracked black pepper
1/4 cup of olive oil
1/4 cup of roughly chopped parsley

1. Combine all ingredients together and pour over meat to marinade.

2. Let meat marinade for at least 1 hour before using.

Joe and I have been on a dow mui kick for months now. We stumbled across this Chinese green (also know as pea shoots) at the Grand Sichuan in Chelsea. This is one of the better chinese restaurants in the city and it isn't even located anywhere near Canal Street. These little sprigs of green are bright to taste and almost as sweet as the peas they eventually produce.

Dow mui is easy to make. Simply saute the dow mui over hight heat with a little oil (corn is preferable but olive or peanut would do) for several minutes or until the leaves start to wilt and the stalks just give to the tooth - kind of al dente for pea shoots. Just before you remove the shoots from the wok, add salt and garlic slivers, toss to combine and serve immediately. 1 pound of dow mui will make enough for 2-3 people as a side dish.

Making the dow mui at home is not the problem. The problem lies in finding someone to sell you dow mui in the first place. Living close to Chinatown and having navigated it's maze of streets, vendors and smells many times, Joe and I still had trouble finding someone to sell us the greens. Asking for pea shoots didn't help us. Chinese vendors looked at us blankly or shooed us away for taking too much time away from regular customers.

After some research at home (the equivalent of asking our Chinese speaking roommate what pea shoots translated into) we went back into Chinatown determine to get at least 1lb of the sweet stalks.

Again no success. We tried pronouncing dow mui differently. Placing emphasis on different syllables and even changing the inflection. No luck. Still blank stares, but we were making progress. Store keepers understood our very poor Chinese and told us they didn't have dow mui. "No more today" and "Market too expensive" were common responses.

Then on Mulberry Street, deep in the bowels of Chinatown, we had success. "Dow Mui? Yes, we have. In the back. How much you want?" Finally. While they gathered our dow mui we started chatting with the women running the store. Apparently pea shoots are very popular and sell out quickly. Hence they are generally kept in the back and are only available to special customers on request.

At $3-6lb the shoots are considered expensive by Chinese standards. For us they are well worth it since 2lbs of dow mui will be our dinner for that night. And now we are the special customers.