Every year, the day’s labor reveals a yawning cultural divide. The Ecuadoreans and Mexicans on our crew intuitively know what to do. They don’t have to be told the weeds from the plants, or how far to dig for the seeds. They move gracefully under the burning sun, while the rest of us stumble across the soil as if wading through custard. These folks are just one generation removed from agriculture, and it shows, while we schooled American cooks have about as much rhythm between the beds as we do on the salsa floor.
We proceed to pick all that we’d planted on a previous trip: Bull’s Blood beets; string beans; Chantenay carrots; gray, gold, and black zucchini; heirloom tomatoes. In the afternoon, we head back to the city and write the evening’s menu: “Return from Blue Hill Farm.”
Nights like these are filled with appreciation in the dining room, a collective bravo for all of our hard work. But the best rewards are more subtle. Like watching Ricardo, our prep cook, clean and cut the carrots he’d planted months ago for the stew. A fiery type with fast hands and a routinely wasteful approach to prepping, tonight he is caressing his “bambinos,” as he repeats over and over to anyone and no one in the kitchen. Then, slowly, with surgical precision, he peels the carrots as if undressing his firstborn. Not a semblance of peel remains. I pretend not to notice, for fear of embarrassing him. Then, instead of throwing the peelings away, he decides to juice them for the stew, handing the result to his longtime nemesis Manuel in a shocking display of, well, affection.
And there it is, the free lunch after all—a slice of real community added to the daily commerce of cooking.
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