Making the Cut: Deliberate Practice with Julienne Brunoise, Chiffonade Mirepoix, et al.

This started out as a New Year's resolution and its back story. The New Year is now 5 months old so this is just about the back story and its underlying theme, the relationship between motivation and creativity. In the final 4.5 months of finishing and defending my dissertation I lost 45 pounds by significantly changing my diet and adding resistance training to my existing exercise routine (OK, it was only playing basketball twice a week with 20-somethings). Over the next couple of years 20 more pounds came off and they have not returned. This change took some practice and there were periods of frustration, despair, and whining. The new eating and cooking habits amazingly helped my clarity of thought (no more carbo brain fog; this is not the space to discuss the nutritional and medical research that confirms my impressions), and I had more energy and very little in the way of cravings for items which fall into the realm of dietary folly. And when such gastronomic indiscretion occurred there was no floundering in despair or self-deprecation.

This was not a short-term change. Why did I decide to do this? In my research on
“How to Write Your Dissertation” I came across an online article that began by saying something like “If you can't control what you put in your mouth, how can you expect to write a dissertation?” Or do anything else except get fat and perpetually fatigued? It was not a resolution. It was a determination; a commitment; a mission; an epiphany.  I was tired of underachieving. Yes, I had made commercial recordings, published a few small articles (in peer-reviewed publications), and had been asked to submit a book proposal. And people were still hiring me to play concerts in different places around the country. I have always seen myself as a creative person but have often wondered what motivates me. With this discovery I felt things could be better, more efficient, creative, and enjoyable.

In the past 10 months I have gone from obese to overweight to within normal limits. This happened through mindful eating and an increase in exercise (aerobics added to the weight training). Dietary folly occurs, to be sure, but in controlled and planned circumstances. The overall mindfulness and continued clarity has helped me in my meal planning and preparation and I don't punish myself for the occasional lapse in gastronomic judgment. “OK,” you ask, “but how is this related to music?”

For our purposes here this post is related to musicology and academic writing than the performance of music. I have discussed the benefits of deliberate practice here.This essay is about clearing your mind, removing inadvertent road blocks (the Carbo Brain Fog), and using the same creative, organized, and methodical techniques used in cooking, flute playing, and academic writing as motivation and how to enjoy it in the process. Yes, believe it or not, some professional musicians do not enjoy playing music. Some people do not like cooking dinner every night. For me, the jury is still out on whether or not musicologists actively enjoy writing or is it something they have to do. At this point in my life I do not have to do it. I want to do it. The dissertation was something that I had to do but it was not an onerous task and I received a lot of encouragement in the process. The book proposal was a validating process (when it got accepted for publication) and when I turned in the first complete draft of the manuscript I experienced euphoria (briefly; to be my own buzz kill I am now waiting on the second peer reviewer to send comments to the publisher/editor who will then pass them on to me and then I’ll do what they ask; thus, my excitement was tempered). But, as noted above, I do enjoy the process, especially now that the goal in my revisions is/will be to engage more of a story-telling narrative. To turn my propensity for writing in a mind-numbing laconic style into an interesting, florid, and captivating style, void of clichés, repetitive sentence structure and syntax, run-on sentences, and with little in the way of bovine discharge.

How do you get to this point? In cooking, if you want to eat something other than white rice or pre-packaged microwave meals you need to acquire some knowledge and skills; you need to step outside of your comfort zone (that’s not a cliché, is it?), expand the horizons of your taste buds, and commit to leaving behind the feeling of underachieving. You may not know how to prepare vegetables with the julienne, brunoise, chiffonade, mirepoix, macedoine, jardinière, chiffonade, or concasse cuts, but as you start to immerse yourself in your own inspiration and creativity you will probably want to do more than just pulverize produce with a cleaver. But you need to be motivated.

As with musicological writing the more you do something the better you get. “How do I become a better writer?” “Write more,” “write every day,” and “emulate writers you enjoy reading”. Same with cooking: more; frequently; copy recipes from cookbooks. After chopping a metric ton of onions, there is no way you won’t get better, and, hopefully you’ll be inspired to do more than dice them. The same with writing: If you call yourself a musicologist then you are already an expert in some area of music and music history. As you write about your subject try refining your mirepoix phrase with the writing parallel of the chiffonade. In conversation people are known to say, “Don’t mince words.” Well, sometimes you might have to give more detail than presented with the literary equivalent of a macedoine cut and dissect it into smaller parts, literally mincing your words to give more detail. And the only way to get better at all this is to do it more. Do it often. Do it in imitation of a well-known chef. Cooking, practicing, musicology; what’s the diff?

The right tool for the job: accordions over knives

Dear Colleague,

I began a small-scale reorganization of the kitchen in order to put the tools I use most frequently in one place and closer to where the action is. During this process I realized that I have many more tools than I really need. It reminded me of the hiking – backpacking – outdoor survivalist philosophy of only take what is necessary and not what you think you might need. The same thing applies to playing music and going on a gig; pack only what you need for the number of days you are gone and only the tools and music that you need for the performance.

Before this little reorg I had my knives organized by ethnicity, that is, on one side I had all of the Asian style knives (santoku, nakiri, and cleaver), and on the other side the European/French style knives (the standard chef, pairing, and boning knives). As you know I am continually striving to improve my skills as a musician, researcher, and cook. For Christmas I was given an online course on cooking chicken.

“What?" you say, "Why do you need a course on cooking chicken?”

My response is that everyone should take this course on cooking chicken, no matter how well you think you can make it because it is always beneficial to periodically revisit something you have been doing, using, or teaching for some time. Get refreshed and energized. Part of my mission, goal, and enthusiasm for the things that I love in this life is to try to take what I do and make it more efficient, streamlined, or just easier to do and thus make it more enjoyable.

Following the 80/20 idea for work and creativity, that is, 20% of the effort will get 80% of the results; I embraced the chicken course, watched all of the episodes, and immediately set about trying to improve my chicken-cooking skills. Part of the online cooking class includes, of course, advertisements for other cooking courses but also other skills related to textiles, woodworking, and more things than I can list here easily. Part of these ads included some free skills courses. Whoa! A free course? A quick browse of the available free skills courses (in the food section) revealed that there was one of particular interest to me: knife skills. I downloaded the course, and began watching immediately. The first thing in the course was an overview of knives, and also how the different knives function for different types of food. In the course of this first discussion, the chef pointed out that for many nights in one of his restaurants he could get away with just two knives, sometimes three, but to be covered for everything he might have to do in the course of the day working as a chef or just a cook on the line, he only needed four knives.

Using this model, I took a look at all of our knives and determined that for all of the things I do a combination of the European- and Asian-style knives was the way to go. My santoku knife, a chef’s knife, the big cleaver, the boning knife, and, for really thin cuts of fruits and vegetables, the nakiri knife (a luxury item, I know, but once you use it you will fall in love). All of these knives are now on one side of the knife block while the rest are all crammed on to the other side. Now that the knives are organized, the next step in my kitchen mini-reorg was to work on the spoons, whisks, spatulas, and ladles. My previous way of organizing them was buy material type into separate crocks. In one crock rested all of the tools that were made of wood (with the two metal whisks in as an exception), and in the other were all of the metal tools or anything made out of a combination of metal, plastic, or silicone. Now the crocks are separated into the tools that I use most frequently and those that I need occasionally. Tools that I rarely use live in a drawer. I have also started a reorg of the herbs and spices, moving some that were in a drawer to the rotating rack on the countertop. Stay tuned for that story.

Now that my tools are in order I can perform my journeyman cooking skills more efficiently.

“Yes, well, this is all well and good, but how is this relevant to music?” you ask.

An excellent question, to be sure, and one that I will now answer. I suppose my main point, or, thesis statement is that whatever your task or job, it will be executed more efficiently if you have not only the right tools for the job but also have your toolkit properly outfitted and ready to go. In music as in cooking, a tool is a tool, unless, of course, you are referring to a colleague as a “tool,” but that is a different discussion for different time. Now, with my fab five of knives ready to go (and really, I could do almost everything with just three, the chef, santoku, and pairing knives), I have the right tools for the job, the essential knives, the tools that are necessary, and can deal with any culinary situation in which I might find myself. Why do I have fifteen knives running around when three will do (80/20) and five will get me to the 90-95% level of what I’ll call kitchen efficiency?

This reorg was inspired, in part—OK, a large part—by a discussion I overheard at a national convention that people who play a particular instrument (for our purposes here we’ll say it is the accordion) attend every August. Here is a paraphrase of the inspiring statement, “I don’t play on accordions pitched at 415 Hz because I can’t find one that does what I want; I will only play accordions at 400 Hz.”

Giving a stranger a well-deserved Dope Slap in a public place is never a good idea, nor would giving this person a verbal dressing down on their gross arrogance (also in publc), so I just went about my business and thought to myself, “and you never will.” Just as one knife will not do everything for you, no single accordion will do exactly what you want. Each knife has, in essence, its own personality and skill set, just as each accordion does.

Of course you cannot play Argentine tango on a single-row Cajun accordion (and why would you try?), and do not even think about playing “Jole blon” (Joli blon, Jolie blonde) on a 120 bass button piano accordion (unless, of course, you are Clifton Chenier; but you get my point).

And there is no way you can spatchcock a chicken using a nakiri knife, and it might take weeks to do this with a pairing knife. And I dare you to try to julienne anything but your pinky with a cleaver. The basic precept for being a professional musician is: Show up at the right place at the right time with the right tool for the job prepared to do a good job. Same goes for cooks. By limiting yourself to one knife or one accordion (or, dare I say, one flute?), you are missing out on a lot of food or accordion music. Why would anyone want to do that?

I remain,

ymh&os,

Quantzalcoatl

Iberia and the New World (¿Por aquí o para llevar?)

Dear Colleague,

To help prepare emotionally, as well as intellectually and musically, for the concert of Baroque, Renaissance, and Traditional music from Spain and Latin America (and one piece of Yaqui Indian origins), a sampling of cuisine from Spain, Mexico, and Argentina was needed.

The menu:

Paella (from Steve Raichlen's Healthy Latin Cuisine), substituting squid rings and bay scallops for the shrimp.

Posole (with blue corn hominy) (After I browned the pork loin chunks I just tossed everything into the slow cooker; may have overdone the Chimayo chile pepper for the taste of some . . . )

Tacos de carne asada (After rolling out a few tortillas by hand, I lost patience and just grabbed a package of the local corn tortillas I always have around, for just such an emergency) A good marinade of lime juice, salt, and olive oil worked well on the meat.

Matambre. This recipe comes from an older Time-Life book we bought at a used book store. The most difficult part is the flaying of the skirt steak. Next time I'm having the butcher do it, or at least make sure my knives are properly sharpened. That is another story for another time . . .

And the blending of cuisines: risotto with Chimayo chile, shiitake mushrooms, and sweet potatoes.
This seems almost redundant given that the paella is the Spanish version of risotto, but this had no seafood in it. The chicken Andouille was the perfect protein for this (and I took it easy on the Chimayo this time).

Yes, this was a ton of food to prepare over a couple of days but the gang pitched in to defer the costs and took care of the clean up.

The program, as usual with these cross-genre events, required me to do all sorts of things that, in theory, I've trained for, but the reality is that I don't get to practice these skills enough. Thanks be to Providence, the music writing software program does some of it for me. With the trad player on the program we went to a=440 Hz, which, as you know, is less-than-ideal for Baroque flutes, so I opted for whole tone transposition for the pieces which used the flute. I switched to recorder for a couple of pieces, and even played the quena on one piece.Add to that the occasional need to improvise an accompaniment in styles of music that are far removed from either Tartini or Quantz in their styles, techniques, and harmonic vocabularies, and you have a flute player on the edge. The edge of what, we cannot say . . .

The concert went well and was not without some shameless grandstanding. For the last piece on the program, an arrangement of Santiago de Murcia's "Folias gallegas," I played an African drum as well as flute, even doing both at the same time on a few occasions when the extemporized aspect of the piece allowed for a drone on the tonic note while I beat a rhythm on the drum.

Next time this program happens, I'll make sure you are on the gig. We had too many leftovers and not enough flute players.

y.m.h.&o.s.,

quantzalcoatl

Poulet-à-bec (Chicken and Hotteterre)

Dear Colleague,

Last night we had citrus chicken and roasted root vegetables (details below), while a cold winter rain confirmed our life at The Home for Wayward Muses in the Salmon Capital of North America.

The soundtrack for cooking was Couperin's Leçons de Ténèbres, performed by a group which contrasted the Catholic music with Arabic instrumental and vocal music between each lesson. Very interesting, and a bit shocking upon first hearing. So for me, a successful recording; it kept my attention through its duration.

The food was comforting and the weather was merely a light rain (and a balmy 34 F / 2 C) so the Couperin recording seemed more appropriate than Vivaldi's Opus 8, no. 4. And it was Boxing Day so some primal need from my childhood for sacred music at this time of year had made itself evident. But just thinking about that Vivaldi concerto got me thinking of the Rousseau arrangement of the Opus 8, no. 1 (Am I wrong in thinking it is one of your favorite encore pieces? Or is that the one piece that might send you to the dentist from the fierce grinding of your molars at the mere mention of it?).

Speaking of Couperin, and French music in general, I've been using Hotteterre's "Ornamented Airs and Brunettes" for beginning traverso students.

Why in the world would I do that, out of all the things that could be done? Well, the melodies themselves are not complicated, have a relatively small tessitura, and are short in duration. I have them practice the pieces sans agréments. They can then focus their attention on tone, breathing, and with people used to the modern flute, remembering the fingerings and embouchure position for notes such as F#, F-natural, and Bb, for example. Once we get the tone, breathing, and blowing issues sorted out, then the ornaments are introduced and then the dental grindstone (speaking of molars . . . ) of music making can begin.

After a few months of wading through the Airs & Brunettes, they start to get comfortable with playing the traverso, playing ornaments without losing time or an excess of air ("you're spewing again" is a regular idée fixe in the studio). Then I introduce them to Hotteterre's L'Art de Préluder. That gets them used to playing in more than one key, and really developing an intimate relationship with the traverso. Then we go for non-French music and they are amazed at how relaxed they feel when faced with passage work that extends over several bars, even one bar, and that 16th-notes seem downright slow by comparison to the seemingly endless supply of notes that must be played in the space of an 8th-note in the heretical Hotteterre and his annoying agréments (those feelings belong to the students, not me!).

To put the orthodontia to better use, here is the Boxing Day Repast:

Citrus Chicken
(adapted from Giada Delaurentis's recipe on the Food Network):

4 chicken breast halves (boneless, skinless)
1 each of lemon, lime, blood orange, thinly sliced
Dash of lemon, lime, or orange juice
Salt and pepper

Pre-heat oven to 400 F / 205 C
Braise chicken in olive oil in an oven-proof skillet/casserole or a Dutch/French oven until lightly browned on both sides.

Remove chicken from pan and line pan with a melange of the sliced citrus.

Place chicken on top of the citrus, season with salt and pepper, and place remaining citrus slices on top of the chicken. Pour the dash of juices around the rest of the pan.

Bake, covered, for 1 hour.

Serves 4-6

Roasted Root Vegetables
1 Rutabaga
3 Parsnips
1 Red garnet yam*

*(Almost any root vegetable may be used here; this is just what I had on hand last night)

Chop rutabaga into 3/4"-1" chunks
Similarly chop the parsnips
Cut yam in half then lengthwise down the middle, then cut those pieces in half again

Put in bowl, lightly coat with olive oil, then season with salt and pepper.

Lightly oil a baking pan and arrange vegetables on it, trying not to overlap or layer.

Bake at 400 F / 205 C for one hour or until the rutabagas are tender.

Serve in large platter with the citrus chicken and watch your hungry diners devour with glee, gusto, and a general sense of civilized voraciousness.

Pears in Red Wine (adapted from Lesley Mackley's The Book of Mediterranean Cooking)

4 whole pears (I prefer red)
3 cups red wine (temperanillo or a temperanillo/garnacha blend)
1 cinnamon stick
3 tablespoons sugar

Remove skin from the pears

In a saucepan large enough to hold the pears, heat the wine, cinnamon stick and sugar, on medium heat (but do not boil), and gently set the pears in the liquid.

Simmer, uncovered, 15-20 minutes, turning the pears once. Basting is welcome but not necessary.

Remove pears, turn up heat and reduce liquid to a syrup texture.

We like to serve the pears on a buckwheat waffle and a wee bit of vanilla ice cream. Pour the wine-syrup on top and add a small garnish of fresh mint leaves.

Follow with a wee dram of Edradour (where they "take it back to the old school" as we say) or a snifter of Cardenal Mendoza, (established 1781), and contemplate your next musical project.

Speaking of next projects, my next project will be to finalize in paper form the "10 Steps to Baroque Ornamentation" that I showed you on your last visit to Salmon Central. After the paper form is settled, the next step will be to make a video recording of the musical examples. Looks as if I'll be in for some dedicated practice on the "Gavotte de Corelli" by Monsiuer Blavet. [And how did that little gem not make its way onto your Blavet recording?]

Until the next time,

I remain,

y.m.h.& o.s.,

quantzalcoatl