Food Arts Magazine, January/February 2004

HOUSE A FIRE

THERE'S A LOT TO GET FIRED UP ABOUT ON A NARROW STREET NORTH OF NEW YORK CITY'S LITTLE ITALY.

CHRISTOPHER STYLER SWEATS THE DETAILS.

    Mention "dream kitchen'' to a chef and you're likely to elicit visions of slick stainless steel, state-of-the-art programmable ovens, and custom-built island cooking suites-all spread out over acres of real estate. Frank De Carlo's dream was built of simpler stuff: bricks and mortar, coal and wood, cement and sweat.

    De Carlo, who opened Peasant in Manhattan in 2000, honed his style of rustic, regional Italian cooking both here and in the motherland. In the late 1970's when De Carlo begged then-chef Donato Deserio for his first restaurant job, at Il Cortile, it was the hottest Italian restaurant in Manhattan. "He didn't want to hire me laughs De Carlo, referring to Deserio's unstated rule of hiring only Italian and Spanish-speaking cooks.  "You won't last a day in there, he told me 

    De Carlo lasted much longed than a day as did his friendship with Deserio, who hails from Mola di Bari, a small town on the Adriatic coast of Apulia. "I jumped on an opportunity to go to Mola di Bari recalls De Carlo. I stayed with the family of Domenico   Avelluto, a waiter at Il Cortile.'' ln the two years he spent in Italy De Carlo traveled extensively with Avelluto and a third companion, Giuseppe Guglielmi. He   ate,  toured vineyards, and, perhaps most-important, worked at Niccolo Von Westerhout, a small but excellent restaurant in Apulia. "That was the most amazing restaurant you could hope to visit," says De Carlo. "It was right on the water. We pulled fish out of the sea a few times a day to serve there -- 10   kinds of mussels, fish that are found only along a tiny stretch of that coast."

    Back in the States, De Carlo took a 12 week crash course at Peter Kump's New York   Cooking School (now The Institute of Culinary Education) to learn the more technical side of cooking. He then went on to work in the pastry department of Le Cirque (now Le Cirque 2000) and to several short stages at some of the best-known French restaurants in Manhattan, such as Lutece and Bouley.

    But he couldn't stray from his Italian roots for long. Avelluto and Gugliellni. De Carlo's travel buddies from Italy, had returned to Manhattan to open a restaurant called Mazzei, and De Carlo was there to help. According to De Carlo, Mazzei ranked among the finest Italian restaurants in the city at that time (see "viva Italia!" Food Arts, October 1993, page 70). "We  were one of five restaurants with a wood-burning oven. The others were using theirs as more or less a showpiece or for pizza. At Mazzei, we used ours for everything but pizza,'| De Carlo stayed at Mazzei from 1990 to 1995, when the restaurant relocated to Port Chester, New York, where it's still operating.

    After five more years of polishing his moves with the likes of Pino Luongo (at mad.61) and at F.illi Ponte and Circa restaurants, De Carlo struck out on his own He knew exactly what he was after and found it in the form of an abandoned auto body shop on Elizabeth Street in Manhattan's now Derek Jeter-hot NoLita (North of Little ltaly).

    From the name--Peasant-- to the cooking and to his plans for the kitchen, De Carlo and his wife, Dulcinea Bensen, set out to pay homage to the restaurants they loved.  "Dulcinea's input in planning and her role in the opening were incredibly important. It was not just my dream but hers as well.  I'm not saying this because she's my wife, but she's solid and gives me the best advice. I probably never would have gotten as far as securing the lease if it weren't for her"

    In 2000 De Carlo began the conversion, first by knocking out a part of the wall that led to a courtyard behind the body shop. Two arched windows on either side of the new opening were also enlarged by a removal of the portion between their sills and the floor to create two entrances to what would become the kitchen.     In what had been the courtyard a concrete pad was poured to form a solid flat floor, completing the first step toward De Carlo's dream kitchen.

    Next on his agenda was the conversion of the basement into a prep area and storage space. As things stood, there was no entrance to the basement level from the kitchen. De Carlo's plan was to install   a staircase linking the kitchen directly to the basement. To do so meant breaking   through a concrete wall with sledgehammers--a three day process as it turned out, the memory of which still makes sous chef Olivier Pillard wince and rub his biceps. The basement's dirt floor was excavated, a new concrete floor poured, and spaces for a walk-in refrigerator, prep area, wine cellar, and storage designated.

    That done, plans for the kitchen were literally drawn on-site. "I must have done a thousand configurations." De Carlo claims "I took the kind of chalk that kids draw with on the street and used It to map out where the different pieces would go. ''

    Those "pieces" represent the heart and soul of Peasant's kitchen.

Working with Nobile Attie of Hearthcraft, who has done custom Installations for such luminaries as Jean-Georges Vongerichten and Jonathan Waxman, De Carlo commissioned three brick structures   that turn the space mto an ancient town on the outskirts of the dining room. a freestanding oven, a separate structure that houses the rotisserie and grill, and a wood-burning stove De Carlo and crew Including the stlll-stiff Pillard, acted as apprentices to Attie, working alongside him throughout the process of planning and construction of the oven, stove, and rotisserie/grill. All the bricks for the exterior of the pieces were obtained by "Dumpster -diving as De Carlo puts it, or, more genteelly by reclaiming bricks from construction sites around the city. "Frankie wanted something that looked really old,''Attie states "He matched those bricks himself   and did a lot of the facies work himself If he loves something, he puts his whole heart into it ''

    First to be constructed was the brick oven, with its floor made of bricks built to Attie's specifications (as are the walls and domes of all of HearthCraft's creations). It is a simple domed affair, designed to cantilever over the staircase that leads to the basement (This being Manhattan, fortunes are built or lost on the clever use of a few square feet ) The brick oven, which burns only oak or fruitwoods like cherry ls equipped with space for wood storage beneath and is flanked on one side by a marble-topped reach-in refrigerator with cold inserts for holding prepped ingredients In addition to pizzas, the oven station produces many of the smaller hot dishes, such as roasted sardines, a stellar tripe Florentine, and razor clams (Peasant's   menu, which changes often, runs from smaller plates through pizzas and pastas to main courses.)

    Once the brick oven was completed, work started on the wood- and charcoal-burning stove, which houses circular fire boxes beneath   each of its three enormous burners Removable grates cut through the 3/4 inch steel surface of the stove over each burner can be hated off for intense surface heat (Lift the cover off one of those burners, and you'll think you're looking into a Jet engine) The picturesque brick stove was built, De Carlo admits, mostly for roman- tic reasons He has since refitted the stove to burn gas, but it can still burn wood, charcoal, or both, with or without gas The back of the steel top is cooler and serves as the saute station's bain-marie.

     Across from the stove are a butcher-block table that tops two refrigerated drawers and a reach-in refrigerator for holding prep.

Beside the stove are a pasta cooker and a counter with a drop-in sink.

    Last-and largest-of the three pieces to be built, the rotisserie/grill   is the centerpiece of the kitchen.  Steel doors underneath each may be opened for feeding the fire, cleaning out the ashes, and even doing a little cooking.  Peasant's crew uses this prime- and literally red-hot-real estate to roast vegetables for service and heat casseroles during service.  The duck leg on its bed of perfectly  cooked white beans, one of the casserole items currently on Peasant's menu, arrives at the table so hot you'll need to give it a  little space before you gingerly introduce yourself to it.

    The rotisserie burns a mix of charcoal and wood-mainly cherry and oak-whereas the grill uses only charcoal. "Open flame   cooking is much more intuitive than other ways of cooking,'' De Carlo observes. after everything was built and the pieces had a chance to cure, we just started playing around. You always have a choice with these things, and we ended up burning what we burn in each by trial and error."

    Attie is more direct in his assessment of the learning curve at Peasant: "The setup is unique, building these things is my life, and I've never seen anything like Frankie's kitchen in the States or Europe.

The guy lives for food. The way he maneuvers his fire, the flow of air.

How these things really work. He mastered the art quickly''

    The cold station, which produces Peasant's salads, antipasti, and desserts, is an L-shaped marble-topped counter, the elbow of which juts into the dining room through the door that was enlarged during the first phase of construction. An overshelf and the countertop serve as storage areas for prepared foods, antipasti, and a display of beautiful raw produce.

    Anticipating their first guests at around 6:30 p.m., the crew lights fires at 4 p.m. or so. About an hour later, the first suckling pig, tethered to its spit and stuffed with herbs and garlic, starts rotating on the rotisserie. Other spit-roasted items, like squabs and chickens (and more suckling pigs), are added later to keep a steady supply throughout the long and busy night. On a typical weekday the kitchen is hopping until around 11 p.m.

    Life in Peasant's kitchen is different than in most. First of all, fires, whether charcoal, wood, or a combination of the two, have to be tended all night, devouring about 1,000 pounds of charcoal and half a cord of wood per week. There is no way around that expense and effort, as far as De Carlo is concerned. "A suckling pig tastes completely different cooked over a rotisserie than it does in a gas oven. That's why I keep the seasonings simple. The fire is the star here-it's as big a player as the pig itself.  Different cuisines rely on different spices. I guess you could say my spice is the fire."

    Second, the kitchen gets hot. Not broiler-station hot, but fry-an-egg-on-the-stainless-steel-table hot. To stand in that kitchen on an August night is to fully understand the old saw about the heat, the kitchen, and the getting out thereof.

    De Carlo built his dream kitchen and, boy did they come.

"This place was put on the map by the late Jean-Louis Palladin,'' De Carlo states. "He was the first big-name chef to show up, about two weeks after we opened.'' When Palladin came back, he came not alone but with the likes of Paul Bocuse, Alain Ducasse, and Daniel Boulud. All of them De Carlo still counts as regulars.

    Not just French chefs dig what De Carlo is dishing up at Peasant. Pro-chef fans of his fiery cooking include Eric Ripert, Wylie Dufresne, Tom Colicchio, and Mario Batali. "I love Peasant's says Ripert, chef of New York City's Le Bernardin and the most recent recipient of The James Beard Foundation's Outstanding Chef award. (In fact, Ripert loves the place so much he took his crew there to celebrate after copping the coveted award) "I think what he's doing is very interesting, cooking every- thing in wood the way people did in their homes a century or more ago. But it's not just the way he cooks. His products are amazing.

Whatever he gets--ricotta, sardines, seppie--it's all wonderful.

Everything tastes so amazing there--the porchetta, the roasted sardines,   everything. And I can say that because I think I've eaten everything on   his menu."

      "All these guys love checking out what goes on in the kitchen," De Carlo says. "They always tell me, "Id love to have a kitchen like this" And with 20 years of dreaming, a sledgehammer, and a couple of tons of brick, they could.