Sweat and Thunder

My sweat is seasoning the flattop as I show Wyatt how to cook the catfish for the tacos.

So long as the Blackstone is greasy slick, you’ll be fine. no need for more oil. He’s paying close attention. Good. Let the pan do the work. You want to cook catfish a little longer than you think. Just salt. We hit them with Tajin after — if you do it before, it’ll burn on the grill and it’ll be bitter. OK?

He nods OK. I set the first 30 batons of blue catfish on the flattop and they sizzle nicely. Wyatt has already grabbed the spatula, and gotten a pan ready, lined with paper towels. Good kid, this.

I move over to Kyle. He looks more tentative. Almost scared. No worries. I’ll take care of everything. He relaxes a bit. Kyle’s job is tortillas. He’s never heated tortillas before and clearly didn’t want to screw it up.

OK, here we go. Corn tortillas need really high heat, like 500 degrees. Flour can be cooler. You lay them on the flattop and when you see steam rising, you’re good. Watch that. When it dissipates, flip the tortilla. In a perfect world, they’ll have some nice char marks on that first side. If not, no babies will die.

He laughed. Relaxed now. I did the first round, then stood with him on the next. He let one stick on the hot steel, and flipped another too early. We did one more round together. Better.

There ya go! Only the first thousand are hard.

Kyle laughed again. The next round came out nicely. Wyatt showed me his first round of catfish. Perfect. More of that. He beamed. I love this part of my job.

Last weekend I did something I rarely do: I was a true chef — chef means “chief” in French — and got to be leader and teacher at the same moment. It was taxing. It was trying. It was sweaty and hot and swoony and frantic. And it was glorious.

Me and a group of volunteers from the Coastal Conservation Association of Maryland served close to 100 people last Saturday at a private home near St. Leonard. Apparently southern Maryland is basically northern Florida: the temperature that day hit 90 degrees — and so did the humidity. I almost fell over (literally) from heat stroke. Twice.

Our menu was to celebrate Borderlands, my new cookbook. We started with a Maryland blue crab ceviche that was a mash-up of one I’d eaten in Ensenada, in Baja, and one I’d eaten in Oaxaca. We followed with caldo de oso, a catfish stew from the state of Chihuahua — yes, I know it’s weird to serve soup on a hot day, but it was such a perfect match for the event, whose purpose was to highlight how delicious the invasive blue catfish can be, and it’s a favorite recipe of mine in Borderlands.

After that I made some simple charro beans and red rice, and the finale was catfish tacos, dressed with a Mexican slaw, a Baja-style chipotle crema, pickled red onions like I learned to make in Merida, and some of the guacamole we had leftover from the ceviche.

All this sounds pretty simple, but do it for 100 people and things get real in a hurry.

Darren, Wyatt’s dad, had led prep the day before, while Jesse, myself and a few others caught an absolute pile of blue catfish on the Potomac River. Lest you think we got the better end of the deal — to be fair, we probably did — we cleaned catfish for several hours while Darren and his crew chopped vegetables like madmen.

Through all this, I found myself in both leader and teacher role. Cleaning catfish is tricky because of their slippery skin and bone structure, so I showed several of the volunteers how to do it, in between filleting dozens myself.

This is key: All good chefs do all the jobs in the kitchen. Period. Show me a chef who won’t clean fish or chop onions or do dishes and I’ll show you a pompous jerk. I was taught to lead by example, and I have striven for that my whole life.

Only a trained kitchen staff that knows your likes and dislikes can read your mind. I can tell my friends Rachel Rinas and Josh Valentine to prep onions for salsa or make tortillas or whip up some cochinita pibil and I trust that they will do exactly what I am thinking of — we three have that magic in the kitchen.

Last weekend was none of that. No one had any real kitchen experience, so I had to be very clear and “use my words” to help everyone know what I was looking for. And when one clearly had no idea how to dice an onion, I was more than happy to show him how. Twice.

In my kitchen there are no dumb questions, unless you’ve asked the same one three times. Then I might get salty.

Prep done, we gathered for a pre-service meeting right before 4:30, when we thought guests would arrive. Everyone was eager to do their part, and the vibe was positive and damn near fun. I would do “expo,” which is to say expedite the flow of food from the kitchen to the guests. It’s basically the orchestra conductor’s role: More of this! Slow down on that. Cook this longer, ease off on the dressing of that…

Deep breath. I could smell myself: Lime and chile and sweat and the last remnants of this nifty algae-based body oil I use after a shower, which seemed like it was far longer than just a few hours before. My right hand burned from handling too many jalapenos. My left arm smarted from a half-dozen droplets of fryer oil.

At 5 p.m. guests started flowing in. Food would start at six. I broke the ice with my best Heath Ledger-as-Joker impression: “And here we go!”

Crab ceviche tostadas started flying out the door as fast as we could make them. Everyone was glowing — on both sides of the kitchen. Handing them the little plates, saying hello to guests I knew, directing traffic, it was a happy blur. And then it stopped. We’d made 120 tostadas. All gone.

Alrighty then. These folks came to eat.

We plated the soup next, which was a bit challenging because we wanted to give them only a small cup of soup on this sweltering day. We determined that draining the ladle first, dropping the good stuff into the little cups — everyone must have a piece of catfish! — then ladling over the broth worked the best.

We blasted though 130 cups in what seemed like a flash. Me, having channeled my inner Mexican grandmother, had made so much soup we’d only eaten maybe two-thirds of it.

On to the rice and beans. I have a confession to make: I almost didn’t serve the rice. It tasted great, but apparently cooking 10 pounds of red rice on a propane burner that cycles between blazing hot and “off” is challenging. Even after an hour of tinkering, there was a fair bit of al dente rice. I made the call at the last minute to serve it anyway.

Heavy on the charro beans — drain them, please! — and very light on the rice.

“Heard, chef!” one of the volunteers shouted. My heart melted. I felt a team coming together.

The guests crushed them. Even a vegetarian pronounced the beans excellent, despite the presence of bacon.

On to the tacos. By this time, Kyle and Wyatt had their jobs down pat. The catfish was cooked perfectly and dusted with tajin, the tortillas nicely heated. Showtime!

Each guest got a plate with a simple tortilla topped with the catfish. Then they chose what they wanted to top it with. It was all hands on deck as plates flew off the table.

A murmur rippled through the crowd. I looked up and saw it.

A wall of charcoal gray air was barreling towards us from across the little bay. Thunder rumbled in the distance. Then closer. Lightning flashed. The stagnant summer air freshened. It felt lovely… except for the fact that a serious storm was headed in our direction. Darren showed me the radar map on his phone. “Uh oh…”

The oldest of the guests scarfed their tacos and scurried into their cars. Just in time. Buckets of rain. Biblical, fire-and-brimstone, pelting rain hammered us. We moved everthing under the pop-up tents as fast as we could. Party’s over!

It just kept coming down, as more guests, now soaked to the skin, bolted for their cars. We all started carrying everything we could into the homeowner’s gigantic garage — thank God for that! There was nothing to do but laugh, get soaked through, and move like a single organism. No script, no plan — just a dozen people in a storm, doing their best. It was hilarious and wet and wild and hard and, well, I guess I didn’t need a shower after it all.

Finally home, I had a nip of bourbon with my hosts Jesse and Amanda reflected on it all. That was some Type II fun, eh? We all laughed. Type II fun, if you’re not familiar, is the sort of fun that isn’t terribly fun in the moment — usually because it’s emotionally or physically trying — but is the sort of experience that makes the best memories.

I got to serve people who care about things I do. I sold a few books. I got to teach a whole slew of volunteers, young and old, a little more about how to cook, and how a kitchen is run. And I got to make some fantastic food that holds meaningful memories, and which now has a new layer of those memories to make it even richer.

Leadership is about setting a rhythm others can fall into, not being the loudest drum. Teaching, cooking, serving — when I do it right, I can disappear into the moment. And that’s when I feel most fully myself.