Big Sur Bakery Cookbook - Michelle Wojtowicz [65]
And then, finally, it’s over, the last guest staggering out the door, a bag of leftovers in hand. Michelle sets aside turkey to use for sandwiches the next day, and Phil grabs the mangled carcasses for soup. Satisfied and stuffed, we stumble home to collapse, exhausted, into bed. Winter has officially begun.
Photographs by Sara Remington
Photographs by Sara Remington
PROFILE: ERIK/“THE EYE”
Photographs by Sara Remington
Former jobs:
Growing plants for a nursery, freelance display work, a job in a mail-order warehouse for the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, where we shipped jigsaw puzzle reproductions of Chinese dragon bowls across America.
Former homes:
Clearwater, Florida. Boston, Brooklyn Heights, San Francisco.
Why Big Sur?
I moved down for a design job on a 560-acre ranch with no electricity in the mountains of Big Sur, living in a tiny hand-built redwood cabin from the ’40s. When I got there it was a garbage-strewn, dope-growing, rat-infested squatter-house-slash-dumping-ground. I spent the next year painting every inch of it and decorating it with found objects. In the process, I fell in love with Big Sur, met the Bakery clan, and decided to stay and help them fix up their place.
How did you find the Bakery?
Coming from the Northeast makes you a complete snot about coffee, food, and pastries. I was working in this totally isolated cabin and needed human contact, so one day I came down here and I saw this funky little place that had just opened, and they had incredible bread and pastries and this great latte. I thought, Oh my God, this can be my Sunday routine. I’ll get the New York Times, go down to the Bakery, and get really good coffee.
What was the Bakery like before you got there?
It was off to a good start; there was enough to keep me interested, but it was painted with a color that the eye did not approve of. It was the coffee from their bald genie barista and the fried egg sandwich that kept me here.
What are some of your artistic influences in Big Sur?
I love gathering natural flotsam and jetsam that have been pounded by the waves. I love driftwood, pieces of glass and rocks that have been made smooth by the ocean. As for color, I love the look of a 1950s color palette, the sort of shades found in paint-by-numbers. Sea glass and sea pottery find their place in my work—basically, if it’s rusted and bent, I can’t help picking it up.
What’s hanging from the ceiling now?
An autumn display. It’s modeled after the old-fashioned method of drying fruits, where people would hang them from wires in a drying room in the attic. I used real persimmons and pomegranates.
Describe the dynamics at the Bakery:
We’re like a family. A big, dysfunctional family.
What is your relationship with Michelle?
Think father/daughter. Then see dysfunctional family comment above.
Recipes
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Butternut Squash Soup
Peter Roelant was one of the first chefs Phil worked for in Los Angeles. Swiss-born and trained in Europe by the famous Frédy Girardet, Peter was a follower of the culinary movement known as nouvelle cuisine, which strives for clean flavors and less fat. Our soups are inspired by that same philosophy.
Silky smooth and easy to make, this is a great starter for Thanksgiving dinner, or for any chilly evening. Puréed soups like this are a staple at the Big Sur Bakery, and they all share the same base: a mixture of vegetables such as carrots, onions, celery, serrano chile, garlic, and potatoes that are sweated until soft or browned at high temperature. (For the butternut squash soup, we caramelize the vegetables to add depth to their flavor.) Then we add an equal amount of whatever the primary vegetable is and purée everything together. For our puréed cauliflower soup, we omit the carrots and stick to a neutrally colored vegetable like fennel to keep the soup light.
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INGREDIENTS
2 large butternut