I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. Good evening. Welcome. First, Sojin Roshi is going to give us some words. He was one of my first kitchen teachers when I was Kenzo at Tassajara. I would meet with him and go over the menus every week. both the prospective menus, but also reviewing what had actually happened, and it was really helpful. I learned a lot about cooking for the zendo and cooking as practice, and menu planning, for example, not to serve steel cut oats and sesame soybeans the same, because they look kind of alike. And they have the same texture, you know, little bitty things, and they're the same color. Not good. The sesame soybeans.

[01:03]

These days I usually serve her like a brown rice roll or white rice roll. And citrus. Somebody cut it because it's so rich. But let's not go there now. I'm going to try to tell you when I'm being opinionated. Yes, you can. Feel free. I think you have to be opinionated to be a cook. I mean, you have to care a lot, or else, I don't know. And then you have to let that go. But anyway, so. That's always good. Well, I've been thinking about having a meeting with the cooks. I've been thinking about having a meeting with the cooks. And the mayor said that she was going to have this class. And so I thought, well, what we thought, I can't really remember myself.

[02:07]

I thought maybe I should talk, say a little something in the class. So anyway, that's what I wanted to do. And what I want to say is not going to be as extensive as I'm going to teach, but I just wanted to share I want to emphasize a few things. The first thing is that cooking, for a saga, is practice. So the practice aspect is into every aspect of cooking. That is the main thing. I really love to eat. That's the experience. And before we eat, we chant, milk, such a thing. It's part of the practice. And so when we say we eat this food, we're going to practice.

[03:12]

So it's the same thing. We cook this food. We have to practice. We have to practice. Suzuki Roshi came and taught something like this. Even if there is a wonderful French chef, we don't put them in the kitchen. We put people in the kitchen who have a name, a practice name. Of course, the French chef has the practice name. During sashimi, Koki means Tenzo's Sushi. It's the Sushi practice of Tenzo. It's the standing kitchen of Koki. But, you know, we have different ways of doing it.

[04:18]

It depends on the situation, place. Tassahara, you can have the cooks stay in the kitchen. even though sometimes they do say nothing about it. But when they practice, they tend to look at it that way. So that's the circumstances. I just want to talk to you about how to practice with the materials that we're using. In the first place, We try to put, as everybody knows, we always try to keep silence in the kitchen, except to talk about what's going on, what has to be said. But unnecessary conversations are really hard.

[05:23]

And our utensil should be somewhat strict. There was a story about Tenzo. One day, he was practicing in China. And he saw this little figure, a young Jewish man, standing on top of a pot. He said, you get out of here. He threw a shakimuni up there. I'd beat him, too. Chased him out. But he's a fellow. Tough stuff. In terms of it should be very strict, you know. And if people start to talk, say something. Don't just get drawn into it. And not let people walk back and forth in the kitchen, in the kitchen, and so forth. And when

[06:29]

In a kitchen, of course, in a kitchen, it's best not to express your own opinion. There is a few words in there that tell you that you should have some opinions. She says that you should be attached to So my suggestion for kitchen workers is when you walk into the kitchen, you just leave all of your thoughts behind. When you walk in with a totally open mind, your attitude is, please tell me what to do. Please tell me how to do it. So if I'm working in the kitchen, and the attendant says, would you please chop these onions? I would say, how would you like to be chalked? Do you want to do it this way?

[07:31]

Or do you want to do it this way? Do you want to do it small? Or do you want to do it large? Sometimes the tensor will forget, or even not maybe think about how, tell you how you would have, or should have done. So you should always ask, how would you like to do it? So if you don't go ahead and do something, And you have to de-flip over and dance a little bit. And so this takes it out of the realm of your preferences. You should walk in with no preferences at all, and just be the extension of the hands and feet. That's practice attitude in the kitchen. After you have been able to follow in that way, then you're allowed to leave. Then you can decide how you should be treated, and how the care should be put forward.

[08:38]

So the process is, first, they have a father, and swallow their babies. Then you're asked to leave. Another aspect is, How do you deal with your work space? Ideally, practice. When you have a space that you're working in, you have to push the person. Then you clean your space. And if you have any dishes and pots, you wash them. attitude builds up until it gets to the point where I'm doing all this work, but quickly, someone else should be doing it, and I should be in the dishes. That's the usual division of labor.

[09:45]

But as a kitchener, you shouldn't depend on people who do this work for you. You should, as much as you can, do that work so that the people coming later don't have to do so much. And you're always keeping your space clean and clear. So at any one time, while you're working on the meal, the space that you're using and the materials should only be the materials that you're working on and the utensils that you need. You're not having to scatter all over the place. You're kind of piling up around you. And you're always moving things, always saying you have this clear space. And then you work on the next thing. And you have a totally clear space. You've taken care of all of your utensils and dishes and pots and pans.

[10:47]

And then you start on the next thing. So that there's never a mess. This is the practice. never leaving this, never leaving something for somebody else to do. Of course, the pots, many of the pots you can't do. The things that you can't do, someone else can do those things. But the things that you can take care of, you should take care of. And if that becomes a habit, it really doesn't take very much longer to do all that than if you weren't So it's, you know, working together in the kitchen is very intense, I suppose. And you have to find a rhythm. You have to feel all the, all the other people in the kitchen.

[11:48]

It reeks. Really, it reeks. So we're always thinking about how to take care of those people. As soon as you walk in the kitchen, you must be coming to the end, where the kitchen is. So we're working, cleaning, working, cleaning. That's the engine that we're working on. That's the engine that we're working on.

[12:58]

You didn't have to be harsh. You didn't have to be firm. What happened... over and over again. Tanzo knows what they want to do. And then somebody said, oh, no. Don't do it that way. You do it this way. And then, oh, OK. They do it that way, and things go wrong. So even if your decision is wrong, go ahead and do it anyway. I'm not saying you shouldn't listen to people. Before you start, that's when you should listen to people. If you are cooking a new dish, and you haven't done that before, ask people before you start to cook it for them a time. So that then you can decide.

[14:20]

But it's a very bad policy to share choices in the middle of the stream, so to speak. You can work, but you're seeing not many times. In that case, When there's a case of, you know, you should talk to Ntenzo. Ntenzo should always be willing to listen to people. Ntenzo was leading the conversation. Well, that's good, Ntenzo.

[15:22]

Then you're reminding Ntenzo by talking about this problem. There's nothing wrong with that. So they need to be reminded. And you can do it skillfully. There's a question about the role of meal, and then the serving of the meal, and where that line of utensils, suggestions, or position is seen as sort of maybe being too directive. When the head server wants to, say, pick a particular utensil, or something like that. Do you have any? Where does that sort of line, that sort of argument end?

[16:27]

Well, that's it. The utensil may feel, these are the utensils I would like you to use. given what I've done, right? And then they'd serve, and they'd think, well, I would rather use these utensils, right? That happens. Right. So the formula. Right. So it sounds like you're saying the tentor prepares the food and gets it into the pot, so pitchers or what have you, and then it's the server's responsibility to serve it in a timely manner. I think it's a certain kind of food. I was figuring they're the ones that have to serve it. Yeah, right. Yeah, I've had a couple times when there was a little tension in the kitchen there about what to use. Thanks. that Tenzo may suggest, but it's up to the servant, the servant to decide.

[17:31]

But what about things like once I had yogurt in the bedroom, and I wanted to set little flowers on top, and I put these little flowers on top, and it was beautiful, and I asked the head servant to set it with the flowers, and he took the flowers off, And then he served me. I mean, there was nothing I could say. And I can see his point, but the whole point was the colors of the yoga would be beautiful. Wow, he didn't have any flowers for the people, but even if he did, you could eat the flowers. Well, if he had served them with the flowers, he would have been OK. And if he didn't serve them with the flowers, he would have been OK. It was OK. Yeah, so it was OK. It was OK. Why did we have to go past the grill? Oh, the reason why is we always used to serve the masi at the grill.

[18:40]

And then we stopped doing that because the cooks made the grill supposedly tasty. But they also stopped using salt often. So I said, I really would like to have some salt. And I said, because the cooks aren't holding their end. So we started serving gnoccio in the evening. But mostly the girls tasted it. I don't want to give up too much of the time. Let's just have a look. In terms of putting the two together, if you want to ask a question. You know, this question is amazing. The question is, should the first look, well, look good, but should it be made pretty?

[19:42]

Yes, the first should be a little, not pretty, That's right. You know, the deal with the taste of the books is to use humble ingredients to make sophisticated food. You know, like, very simple. Very simple and bringing out the qualities of the food and throwing a lot of stuff in there to make it taste good. you can bring out the qualities that are in your food. That's real cooking. That's Zen cooking, to pre-cut the qualities. And then you use certain ingredients to do that. Unable to do that. And so I think the color, we used to have one pencil that made, no matter what he did, everything came out the same color. It's always going to have a bit of a taste in your mouth.

[20:44]

But it doesn't matter if they come out the same color or different colors. But there's something about the quality of the color that comes from the substance of food. So I wasn't even worried about that. But there are many combinations that are important. One of the best combinations we used to have, and some folks still do, is soybeans. We have miso soup and cheeky carrots, a great tradition. So I always would like the cooks, especially when it comes to starch cooking, to look at the menus. Because in the past, we've had all these wonderful dishes that have been menued, and work, and people like, and are simple, easy to make.

[21:46]

and healthy and so forth, and people just ignore them. So if you start by using those tried and true recipes, then what can you do? It's not really about people who like your cooking. Maybe you can add something if you're hungry occasionally. But to just start making up all your own menus and doing it all in your own way, it's a little unartistical. And, um, uh, any stuff that people talk about, and they either love it, you know, because it's like Japanese, or, or they, they don't like it. So, there are, there are recipes that everybody loves. And so it's good to, you know, find out what those are. And start using your own initiative. You know, some people like to be extra, you know, like a show or something.

[22:54]

But you have to realize that the meaning is in the book. It's in the book. Yes. Simple. Really good. Wonderful. Simple. So you use the simplest of readings to make the most wonderful book. That's the art of the book. It seems like the future, more than any other place in the world. I mean, why is that? What is it about the future that makes you think this is the place to be? This is the place to be. It's one of the most exciting And then we had people working together in a small space and trying to satisfy everybody's appetite.

[24:03]

And when we did all the Tassajara, the nitrobiotics, the mucosal diet, every kind of diet, the bigger, was introduced by somebody. It's really there for months and months on end, you know. And you have to satisfy all these people who come from divergent, diverse places in the world, and have grown up on different kinds of food, and to feed them all the same food. This was a great challenge across the heart. There were times when nobody talked about anything else. The winter of 1969, when we were slowed in, we didn't have the freight going around. We just had to wait at the moment for the airplanes. We had to go out and make sure we had the correct instruments.

[25:06]

We had the instruments up, great size. We did it every day. We didn't have a question mark. Nobody talked about anything else. Every conversation was so fast. So that's the message of it. I think we put a lot on, we project a lot on who we may need it for, who that part of the girls and the kids. It becomes really important in our culture. So our feelings about being comforted and sustained are right there. I think we know that by that vision. In my experience when I was ten, so as a mother in particular, Because if they're there, people will get attracted to them. They're going to have to eat what you give them. It's not like they go across the street or something. Sometimes people will get very upset about something.

[26:09]

And my experience was that it was often more about how they were doing at base, rather than it wasn't really about food. Sometimes it was about food. One of the many things I learned from Mel was about who told me about that winter, he said that the food has to be, it has to be, I mean, I'd always heard that it shouldn't be too exciting. The food should not be the topic of conversation right after the sushin or during the practice period or something.

[27:11]

That shouldn't be it. But on the other hand, it needs to be good enough that people are interested in eating it. And that winter they had. It never dawned on me before that there was there was, like, not good enough. You know, it was thought that the problem was, you know, people getting too exciting about it. But there is, there is the other, another side. And I will be, I'll be talking here about the zendo, cooking for the zendo. So I'm not, not talking about guest cooking. what Tassar guest food or greens food or something like that. I'm talking about much more everyday food. And so we're talking about that balance. And also here, they're two different, they're different systems. At Berkeley Zen Center, you're, you cook for one day and you volunteer to do that.

[28:12]

And so you're, you're called, you're tenzo for the day. And then there's an overall tenzo, a person who's responsible. And that person is responsible for making sure that that all happens, but also for coordinating. So if people put down the same menu three days in a row, then the Tenso is supposed to say, oh, excuse me. It doesn't work with us. If everybody made oatmeal every day, then that would be problematic. And at San Francisco's Inn Center, at all three places, there's a crew that works in the kitchen. And there's a Tenso that's always the Tenso that oversees the whole thing. pretty much plans the menu so they may or may not consult with other people or have, you know, sometimes the chief assistant, the food patent may plan some meals sometimes or whatever. But basically the TINZL is responsible for the planning. So I'm talking about two different systems, but there's a lot of overlap. And so I'm just trying to remember to identify it. I mean, when I talk about menu planning, the same considerations apply that if you, even if

[29:15]

you're only planning for one day, you look at the day before, or whoever wrote down before you, which might be three days after yours. But whoever got there first, you look at that and you take that into account in what you're doing. So this is similar, pretty much the same considerations apply in meal planning. But I'm getting ahead of myself. But I just wanted to mention that there were these different systems. So I've made an outline, and we'll see. Today I wanted to talk about kitchen practice and take off from where Mel started. And then the next class would be menu planning and particularly talking about protein and tofu. The third about amounts and ingredients. Figuring out how much to make when you're cooking for the zendo or when you're cooking for large crowds of people, and ingredients, and also in terms of multiplying ingredients and so on, because they're different ways, different things apply.

[30:29]

And then class four, I want to talk about cooking and pay some particular attention to gruel and dealing with disasters and depth of flavor. Depth of flavor is When you're cooking with meat, you usually get it from, for example, if you're making soup from a meat stock, you can intensify it, and that's relatively simple. But when you're cooking vegetarian cooking, it's not always so easy. So you have to pay particular attention to that, especially in soups, which of course we make a lot for the Zendo. So there are ways to think about that and sort of tricks of the trade to get depth of flavor, so you have a soup that has some feeling of body. And then these are just my Bibles. Well, they're beyond my Bibles. The Instructions to the Tenzo is Dogen's essay on kitchen practice. And From the Zen Kitchen to Enlightenment is Uchiyama's translation into modern Japanese, and then his commentary, the whole of which was translated by, well, a number of people.

[31:39]

There's one in one of Kaz's books, I think. There's the book, it's now called From the Zen Kitchen to Enlightenment. It used to be called Refining Your Life. And then Mastering the Art of French Cooking, especially Volume 1, that's where I learned to cook, and a lot of cooks learned from there. And so it's usually simply referred to as Julia. Julia says, and the thing is that she really did in that book, or they did, they taught a lot about cooking, about techniques. So I think it's useful for that. And then Debra Madison's new book, Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, and Joy of Cooking. Joy of Cooking, and Joy of Cooking particularly, it tells a lot about food. It explains things. It tells you about what are the different kinds of flour, and what does it mean, hard wheat flour and soft wheat flour, and so on. How does it act? And then they have this little thing about custard.

[32:41]

And they'll explain to you why, what it means if your custard has little bubbles in it, or if it's kind of rubbery, or it separates and it starts to weep. You know, what you did that made that happen. So what not to do next time. It's mostly about cooking it very slowly. But at any rate, or not putting in boiling water when you start it. You're putting it in a water bath. Things like that. So the joy of cooking is really great if you're making something that you haven't made before. or that you're not familiar with, to read that and read about that kind of food. So these are basics. And there are lots and lots of cookbooks. I mean, there are the vegetarian classics. I also think, I think it's useful to, for example, if you're going to cook Indian food, to go to an Indian author, like Madhur Jaffer. If you're going to cook Italian food, go to an Italian author.

[33:43]

Yes, go to Dali. And Marcella Hazan, but go to Dali first. And if you're cooking Japanese food, go to some Japanese books and so on, rather than to other ones. Vegetarian cookbooks have a lot of sections about these kinds of things, but you'll learn a lot more if you want to learn a lot about Mexican food if you go to Diana Kennedy than if you go to somebody else's book who read Diana Kennedy. I mean, Deborah Madison is friends with Diana Kennedy, so she's learned a lot about that kind of thing. But it's wonderful to actually go and read these cookbooks, even though a lot of times they're about meat. And then you really learn it. And then you can translate it better. So, Mel didn't say this in so many words that I want to say it.

[34:58]

The kitchen is a zendo. And he did say it. It's a place of practice. first tenso that I had as a guest cook was Tia Strozer and Tia is very, very much a kitchen person. She's at San Francisco, she's a Tonto at San Francisco Zen Center now and Tia says, whenever I go in the kitchen I want to bow because I feel that I learn so much in the kitchen. And that's partly because it is like what Dana was saying, it's a pressure cooker. So it shows you your stuff and it all comes up in that pressure cooker. So it's a great place to learn. It's another practice opportunity, not always so pleasant. Ed Brown gave a lecture once at Tassajara, and he said somebody said, come up to him and said something about, oh, it's so wonderful. All the food that comes out of this kitchen is

[35:59]

prepared with so much sweetness and love. He didn't say this to the person, I'm sure, but in his lecture he said, give me a break. It ain't like that all the time. But that means that there's lots of chance to practice. So actually, I wish for all of you sometime, if you ever get a chance, to actually do a kitchen sashim, in other words, to be in a kitchen for five or seven days straight and just work the whole time. And it's a very powerful experience and I talk about it a lot and I used to and people would come and do it and then afterwards they would come up to me and they would say, they would say, oh, It really was a Sashin. I said it was, I meant it.

[37:06]

It's hard to imagine what kind of a deep Sashin experience it can be. It becomes like there's kind of one organism. Maybe there's one brain, but it's not like it's the Tenzo's brain. It's just this thing that happens and you begin to really dance together more and more. And that happens during the day working here in the kitchen. But if you can do it for five or seven days straight, it's a deeper experience of that same thing. So I wish that for you, if you can stand it. What that lady was responding to, I think, was just the care in the preparation of the food, the taste and all that. And I think even what we put up here, which is really a high caliber, it does vary.

[38:09]

And people have said that there is a care with some people putting into the food. And it just kind of comes out differently. And I don't know if it's quantifiable in the way that you've been around. I don't know if it is. And then the cooking, which is a lot different than just cooking at home. There's so much to say I think There's there's a lot you can learn you can make really really good food. I mean some people have What Diana Kennedy calls it, I think she calls it sasson, but they have a palate that's very finely tuned. But we all can develop our palate and we can tell if a food tastes good or not.

[39:14]

The most important thing in terms of that is really paying attention to what you're doing and tasting it. Tasting it as you go and not just not just following a recipe and then expecting it to turn out some particular way, especially if you're increasing a recipe. You just don't know. So you have to keep tasting and really paying attention to what you're doing. But there's a lot that can be learned, especially about cooking for mass quantities, like toasting flour. I don't want to get into that. kind of talk about general practices now. So I think really paying attention and tasting the kind of respect that Dogen talks about. I don't know if all of you read the instructions to the Tenzo, but he learned there. He talks about when he really, in his beginning of practice in China, he learned from this particularly one, but also another old

[40:22]

that these guys were really dedicated to their work, and they understood it as their practice, which he had never really understood before. It's one of the themes of Dogen's, about how in Japan before, they didn't seem to really understand work as practice and life as practice. It was sort of reading sutras and being in the Zen-do, but having it extend and permeate your life was not something that sounds like was part of their monastic practice and their way of living. And that was something that he really came to understand in China. It's something in the, you know, in the, what is it? Enlightenment Unfolds, that's the second volume of Kaz's book. And there's his journal from when he was in China and his conversations with his teacher, Ru Jing. And he asked Ru Jing, well, you know, What did Bodhidharma mean for us? What was it?

[41:24]

As I understand it, Ruijing basically said he brought the focus on practice. He enlivened the practice here. He permeated it with zazen. And that's something that Dogen took back to Japan, this notion of respecting what you're doing, and that's part of what that story, I think that story about beating Manjushri, when Manjushri appears above the cooking pots, that it's about when you're in the kitchen, you're cooking. You're not studying sutras. You're not talking about the definition of emptiness. Maybe you're doing emptiness, but you're not talking about it, and you're not thinking about it, so that if something, some dharma question pops in your head, go back to the carrots. So that kind of focus really makes a difference, too. He also, Dogen, talks a lot about thoroughness, which is another aspect, maybe, of paying attention to really making sure that you use every bit of the food that you can, cleaning the pots,

[42:45]

I think of washing the pots after you're done with them as really part of kitchen practice and cooking practice. And it's true here, the kitchen crew eats in the zendo, and the tenzo goes and does three vows before the meal is eaten, and then goes and sits down and eats. And if the tenzo happens to be a priest, the tenzo is expected to be in robes and el queso. So it's a little bit of a stretch to also get the food served up hot and be ready to do that and get all the pots washed is not so easy and it doesn't always happen. But that's the effort. And I think it's a really important practice to finish that kind of thoroughness. And it's to finish what you're doing. And part of the kitchen practice is to leave the kitchen clean at the end. and not leave things for other people. Sometimes at City Center, or Green Gulch too, at Tassajara it's the same people, so it doesn't matter.

[43:52]

If you leave something to some, you're coming back to it. But at Green Gulch and City Center, you might have to leave something for some people that are cleaning up. And sometimes, I know this never happens now, but when I was 10, so this used to happen. If the rice scorched a little or something, was stuck on a pot, then you have to leave it soaking. So it happens. But the effort is to not let that happen, and to take real responsibility for the kitchen. That's your zendo. You don't walk out of the zendo with the cushions scattered all over the place. You don't walk out of the kitchen with the pots and pans not both cleaned and put away. That's the effort. That's the effort. What about knives? I'm coming to knives. Yes. I think you can do that with something like if it was just a colander that you use to rinse off the zucchini or something.

[45:04]

Yeah. You mentioned earlier We're in the process of talking about that. There's usually one person completely responsible, and then other people come in and help. And this last one, I had decided I'm too old for this. The Berkeley schedule for the Tenzo is really a lot, because you start out at the beginning and you get breakfast out and you take a little break like half an hour and you come back and you cook and you go to lecture and you come back and you get lunch out and then you take a little break like maybe half an hour, 40 minutes and then you come back and you do work period and you make the cookies and you supervise getting the vegetables cut and all and then you go to tea and then you come back and you get dinner out. I can't do that. And your schedule is easier.

[46:05]

They take a big long, like a one to four, they take a break. And then they come back a bit in a row. So anyway, so we're talking about it. We just were talking about it at the practice committee on Monday. And we're going to talk about it some more. Do you want to say anything about it? I mean, it's sort of a work in progress. I think what you have to do that you're too old for is It's a real point for people. It's not just chronological age, but just the ability to be able to stand up and be able to do all that work in a different style, in different buildings. And people have some work required. Some menus require a lot more work, a lot more QE, a lot more input to draw the effort out and extend people's value. I don't really have a food teacher.

[47:07]

Peter is a kitchen keeper, and a kitchen keeper who does a lot of work with the kitchen and signs up to cook for us. He signs up for us, so he's the one who heads up. And like Ray said, we have assistants there. So we need to do the way in which the work is administered, if you will. So it has to be determined that in a practice place, a continual set of people. I think it's easier to have Intenso than if we were doing a sort of working body of people. Here, it's like a volunteer army, and every Sashim is a different, it's a different crowd, and it's kind of brilliant. And it's what we kind of signed up for. Intenso doesn't pay for Sashim. And sometimes it's hard to get people to sign up for Sashim. I was really happy because we have five days a week that people sign up very quickly and send me breakfasts, which, of course, are not so expensive.

[48:08]

It's just one meal before signing up. So there's enthusiasm for it. We also take care of our people who have overextended. So they don't have the energy to do the lectures and classes. Yes. I would appreciate it. I think we've got a good chance. Just in general. You don't have to answer it all right now. To weave that in there? The Fukuten at San Francisco Zen Center is basically responsible for getting the food out and getting it made under the supervision of the Tenzo, and that relationship changes. usually as you get to know each other and as the Fukuten is experienced, then they are often given more and more freedom and they may also participate in planning some meals or something like that. But they're responsible for most of the supervising of the crew and so on and the Tenzo is planning the meals and helping and often what you can do most if you're the Tenzo and by the way you can help is to help with dishes or something because that's

[49:22]

That doesn't require a big time commitment, so that if you have to go do something else, you could just wash or dry some dishes, and then go on to something else. And so you can't always cook something. Though the tenzo often also cooks. Except for in the summertime at Tassajara, you're an executive. And you're just ordering a lot. It was true during breakfast period, when we were in charge of the workers in the kitchen, and the tenzo sat at his desk and wrote out orders. Well, it's even more so during the summer. Different tensos are different ways. Most tensos I've seen in Tassajara, I've done some cooking and some hands-on stuff, maybe some prep, you know, it just depends. But in the summer, forget it. Anyway, the two, the tenso and the fukuten, each relationship is different depending on the desires of the people involved. mostly in the amount of training and personalities and management styles, if you'll forgive that phrase, or whatever.

[50:29]

But I mean, that's, I could probably think of some other phrase for it, but that's what it is. And so it varies a lot. And it's good, I mean, Fugitant is a position where I think it's really good practice about following somebody else's direction. Until you are given some more freedom and autonomy, to be able to just say, how do you want it done? And even more so the crew, but even as a Fukuten. And it's not always easy, because sometimes the Fukuten knows more than the Tenzo, and then that's difficult. And that's advanced practice. Maybe for both of them. But I'm still on Dogen's instructions to the Tenzo. He talks about respecting ingredients, but also about respecting your utensils and your pots. And he talked about keeping them clean, but also how you store them, for example.

[51:32]

It was a wonderful phrase. He said, put high things in high places and low things in low places. And it sounds funny. And then you think about it. You don't put big, heavy glass things way up high. And you don't tend to put anything super heavy way up high. You put the baskets up high. You put the paper plates and the napkins maybe up high. It tends to kind of work itself out in a kitchen, but at any rate, you pay attention to what it is and then you treat it accordingly, whatever it might be. And the same with cleaning out utensils or cleaning out, for example, I mean, this was not something he had, but cleaning out a Robocoup or a Cuisinart. You clean it out after you use it. And then you remember to treat the central blade as a knife. So you wash it right away, put it away right away, so it isn't hanging around to get somebody's hand. So you respect your tools.

[52:36]

And you take care of them. And I'm coming back to knives. And you also don't neglect the zendo. So that like at city center, you would sit, if you were working in the kitchen, you would sit the first and the last periods and you go to lecture. And here you sit, you go to lecture and you'd probably, you'd sit the last two periods and you might sit more if you could. And you go to tea and you go to meals. So you do, you do those things because you are part of the session. You're not separate from them. Sashin, and it's important that the meals be simple enough that you can do that, that you don't have to, you know, miss lecture because you made some really complicated soup. That's part of the setting the ego aside when you cook. It's really important, I think, to go to the zendo, and just sometimes at the end of the day,

[53:40]

you're just so exhausted you can't, especially if you're going back in the kitchen the next day. So you also have to take care of yourself. But I think it's a really important value. And if it's becoming really hard to get to lecture and to get to the Zen mode, then something needs to be changed. Either you need more help, or you need to simplify your menus. Something or another is off. Because it encourages people, and it also serves to encourage your own practice. to participate in this one, to get some sazing, and to hear the lecture, and to be part of this thing. He talks about not wasting. And there's this wonderful story about Shui Feng, also known as Sepo. He and another monk were on pilgrimage in the mountains. They were crossing a stream and a lettuce leaf came floating by.

[54:43]

And the other monk said, wow, there must be a person of the way upstream. Let's go visit him. And Shui Feng said, your eye of wisdom is cloudy. Later on, how will you judge others? That person's carelessness about material blessings such as this, what is such a person doing dwelling in the mountains? Meaning being a monk, being a hermit. the other monks agreed. And then moments later, this other monk came barreling down the hill, chasing the lettuce. So they decided to go visit this person. So, not wasting. It's part of what the rule is about. But also just using, I mean, for example, using the stems of the broccoli. I actually think it's the best part of the broccoli, but aside from that, you know, you can peel the stem where it's tough and eat it.

[55:46]

You don't have to throw it away. And I've seen people throw it away. So just things like that, to eat as much as possible of the food, to pay attention to how much of the lettuce you throw away. I mean, you know, when it's for the guests in the summer, that's a different standard. that this is the sender we're talking about and this is us. This is cooking for the family. So not wasting. And Dogen also talks about cleanliness. He talks about, you know, making sure there aren't any mice He doesn't talk about rat turds, but I suppose that's a good one. He talks about not letting people stick their fingers in the pots as they go through the kitchen. Let me tell you, I don't want to take a break. I hope you don't mind. If you need to stand up or change your position, please do. Is that okay, Amanda? Maybe you should take a break. We talked about keeping the pots and so on clean, but also your hands.

[56:51]

You know, you wash your hands with liquid soap and you dry them with paper towel, as restaurant rules. And it's a good practice to do that. And if you touch your face or your hair, to wash your hands again. And to help each other about it, because it's hard to remember that. You don't, you know, you just, you scratch your nose or even blow your nose and you hardly, you don't even notice it really. It's really nice to go wash your hands after you're done, certainly after you use the bathroom to wash your hands. Just to pay attention to this, Mel talked about already keeping your workspace clean. So safety, there's, for knives, you carry it close to you with a point down. And I think, is there a practice now about saying knife, or is that when you walk behind somebody, is that you're carrying a knife? Especially in a crowded kitchen.

[57:52]

That's only if you draw blood. So, at any rate, pay attention. A lot of attention when you have a knife in your hand, especially in a crowded kitchen. And when you're done with it, Well, you wash it right away. Now, maybe if you're cutting onions and you're about to cut bell peppers for the exact same stew, you don't have to go wash your knife. So you could ask what's the next thing before you go to wash it. But have that in mind and never just leave it. And we're absolutely sure don't leave it by the sink. And beyond absolutely sure, don't put it in the soapy water and leave it there. Somebody is going to just go in there and grab and cut their hand. So, wash the knife, dry it, and put it away as soon as you're done using it. It's very important, basic kitchen practice.

[58:58]

Then, and I'm coming back to the knives. When you cut yourself in a restaurant kitchen, if there's a cut that draws blood in a restaurant kitchen, you need to clean it up with bleach. you should assume that somebody has either hepatitis C or, or HIV. You don't ask people if they have it and embarrass them and whatever. You just clean it up that way. So with, what is it? One to 10? Something like that. Bleach to water. Anyway, so the bleach solution, you clean off the cutting board and you, if there is any possibility that blood got in the food, you throw it away. You just don't want to have to worry about it. So when you're the Tenzo, you have to be careful about it, you know, that if somebody, if that might have happened, then you need to take care of it. You also need to, if you're the in charge, you need to really take care of the people so that if somebody burned themselves or they cut themselves, you know, at all deeply or anything, make them stop for a little bit.

[60:02]

People often think, oh, I'm fine, and then they just go on because they haven't really taken it in, and there's a kind of a shock that happens that they're ignoring. So make them sit down for a minute. It's not like they may not have to sit down for an hour or leave or anything, but just stop. Just stop, and take care of yourself that way. If you hurt yourself, just stop. Take care of it. Put a band-aid on or wash it off or do whatever you need to do, but stop. And if you burn yourself likewise, or if somebody gets burned when you're around, take care of it. If it's at all serious, you put it, like if it's on your finger or something, put your hand in ice water until it stops throbbing when it comes out. And then, do we have any aloe around here? Yeah, well, put some goop on it. There's some Chinese burn medicine, I don't know if it's still around, but that comes from, Stuart Cutches gets that for us.

[61:05]

So if you run out, just ask Stuart. I mean, I think it's pretty standard stuff, actually. If it's unsalted, it's all right. But you don't want to put salt on the wound. But the Chinese burn medicine really works to prevent scarring. It's really, really good. It smells all right. It smells a little odd. But it's really great. And aloe is really great for burners. I'm a burner. I think there are people that are either burn people and cutting people. You tend to do one or the other, and I'm a burn person. My experience with burns, and I've looked at others a lot, is that it's the sweetest possible. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Well, that's right. And then ice water is even, the thing is with ice water, you can really immerse it.

[62:10]

Yeah. And, but you have to wait until you have to keep on, I mean the ice as soon as possible, but then you have to keep on until it stops throbbing because it's actually still going until, until it stops. Yeah. So until it stops throbbing, um, So pay attention to this and take care of yourself and take care of each other. And now knives, we talked about a knife sharpening demonstration, but I just, I don't know, maybe what I was thinking about was we could, if people want to, people are interested in coming early at some point, then we could do some of these kinds of things. So, but it's important to keep knives really sharp. A dull knife is actually dangerous. cut, especially like carrots or something, onions and things with the dull knife, they can slip, you know, and cut you instead of the vegetable and whatever that you're cutting. So it's important to keep them sharp. Also, of course, we're just simply respecting whether a knife is a sharp thing.

[63:13]

So one thing I noticed is that we have a tendency to, if we're working on a cutting board, to take the sharp side of the knife and just scrape things along. You know, it's not hard to just turn it over and scrape with the dull side of the knife or use a scraper. Does everybody know what a scraper is? We have them, you know, you pick up food with a scraper or something. So you can use that. And then when you're cutting, you always keep your fingers back from where you're cutting, but keep them curled back so that they, you can be guiding here and you're not cutting, you're not going to be cutting your fingers off. and the little finger is just going to hold it. It would be all back, keeping your fingers back. And it's important now, I want to talk about, I don't know if Dogen talks explicitly about working with energy, but then he talks about the first Tenzo that he meets who comes to the ship to buy mushrooms, and then he says he has to get back.

[64:22]

And they've been talking all day, you know, and he wants to get back before dark. And Dogen says, how far is it? He says, 14 miles. So that gives you some idea about the energy standards. And then there's another one who is drying, an old, old guy is drying mushrooms in the heat of the day. And Dogen says, surely you have some assistants that can help you with that. And he says, who, if this is my work, if not me, then who? He's talking about energy in those ways, whether he says it explicitly or not. But we want to work carefully and very mindfully. But that does not mean slow. The Tenzo from Safe Center is here. We need to work. quickly, and it's important when you're really learning how to work with a knife to not push yourself so hard you're going to cut yourself, but push yourself to learn how to do it quickly and learn how to do it efficiently so that you don't cut one green bean at a time.

[65:37]

You cut four or six green beans at a time depending on how big they are. You don't cut one banana at a time. You cut two bananas or three bananas at a time, whatever. You do it in a way that is mindful and respectful of your ingredients, but that's also efficient and fast. It's a lot more fun that way, too, because otherwise it gets kind of bogged down. Yeah, Jim? But the other part of that is, you know, if you're working efficiently and energetically and kind of pushing yourself, you're actually more mindful because your mind doesn't wander off into space. You know, if you're like doing one banana at a time, it's just so easy to start thinking about what you're going to do on your break. Whereas if you're really kind of pushing yourself, you're right there, you know, and your mind is not, you're not doing it. That's it. Yeah. So you really focus. Yeah. And I just wanted to, I don't know that these things fit right here, but the, you know, when you, when you're prepping, for example, say you're prepping onions, you peel all the onions first.

[66:52]

You don't peel one onion and then cut it up. It's somehow, I never, I don't know why this works this way, but it just is more efficient to peel a bunch of onions and then cut them all in half and then prep them all. And remember to cut out the little, what do you call it, it's not a core, the root end, you know, that holds it together so that you don't wind up with some pieces that stay in a big chunk. And say here's an onion, you know, and it's got all these layers. You just cut it like this and it kind of wedges. I don't know how, the people that listen to this. Anyway, you cut it like this, and then you just cut this way, and it winds up in pieces, just depending on how far apart the wedges are. So it's a very simple thing. And also something else I've seen is somebody, the recipe calls for minced garlic, say. You don't have to cut it up into little tiny squares.

[67:53]

You know, you cut it, you know, first vertical and then horizontal, and then into tiny little slices. You just peel a bunch of garlic, and you take the knife, and you have it on an axis, and you just keep going like this, and then scrape it with the dull side back in to get it. And just keep chopping it, basically. You don't have to make tiny little 132-inch squares. Because it dulls the knife faster. It just, you know, here's the knife, and you're cutting like this, so just take it, just turn it, and just use the dull side. It's just, it just becomes a habit to do that. That same kind of thing would apply for nuts. You know, they don't, you don't have to slice them, unless there's something where you're actually slicing. Now, I don't know, not for Zen-no-toki, not for Zen-no-toki, maybe for the guests, but not for Zen-no-toki.

[68:59]

And something else I learned that was really useful, I thought, was at Tassajara you cut up fruit for stewed fruit. You cut up the big pieces like the apricots, especially if you have peaches. Well, I got up to city center years later, and I saw that Bijan was preparing fruit like that for stewed fruit, and he soaked it first. Because sometimes, especially apricots and peaches can be very hard to cut. And so he soaked it first, and then he cut it. So it was much easier. Well, duh. Just maybe half an hour, I think. Something like that. So it still held together. But you could cut it without it being a major event.

[70:01]

But anyway, just soak it for a while. Maybe in hot water, just let it get cold. You don't have to simmer it. Because if it gets really soft, then it may compromise. If it completely turns to mush, then that's fine. You have fruit sauce. But it can be, I think if it has some some resistance left. I think it's probably easier to touch, but there's a middle way. Anyway, I thought that was a brilliant, a brilliant thing, which maybe everybody else knew, but Tassajara, I don't know. I've never seen it before. And then more in the realm of paying attention, check your ovens a lot. One of Tia's favorite stories is about somebody who made a casserole, guest dinner, made a casserole, put it in the oven, the ovens were fine, they put it in there, went to check 45 minutes later, half an hour before dinner was supposed to be, and the ovens were stone cold. And nothing had happened.

[71:10]

And dinner was maybe an hour late or something. Because, you know, it takes longer. One of the things about mass quantities is it takes longer for things to So your recipe might say that something would cook in half an hour. Well, it could take easily 45 minutes and maybe an hour to cook if you have an oven full of casseroles. So that was quite a disaster. Or maybe they made something else. I don't know, but dinner was very late. So keep on checking your ovens. Don't just check them when you put stuff in, but check them. Anyway, you should sort of go say hello to the food every so often anyway and kind of know what's going on. And sometimes, with some ovens, you have to turn it around if the oven's really unheated. And I mentioned already tasting. Tasting, tasting, tasting all the time. And having some idea. Mel said something about if there's something, if you have a dish you're not familiar with, well, probably don't do that for a sashimi or for some big

[72:16]

group, make it at home or make it on your own or make a little sample sometime first rather than just starting out serving it to send a huge group of people. Because you don't know, especially if you're adapting something. If it's a recipe that's sort of a tried and true recipe out of the recipe files that's already been figured out for mass quantities, then that's probably okay. It's not the time, especially a sashimi, is not the time to experiment. One of the things that I think about cooking for sashimis up here is that we don't need to get very fancy at all. Like at Tassajara, I would sometimes serve double condiments, you know, like serve gamashio and cheese or ketchup or something or nuts, right? Or I would serve cereal and miso soup and hijiki carrots and then I'd serve pickles as a condiment.

[73:26]

But that's because that's all you're eating for three months. You know, and here we have like a seven-day sashimi that's the longest thing. So there's no need to get fancy, I think. I don't, I mean, I just don't think that we need to do double condiments here much as I like to do it. I mean, I love having pickles with my rice syrup, actually, but we can have that some other time. So when I was Tenzo at City Center, I would serve that at regular breakfast, but not during a sashimi. I wouldn't serve, you know, I wouldn't serve pickles as an extra thing. Did you ever serve sugar? No, I never did. Did I? I don't think so. Not in the zendo. Um, I'm used to that. I mean, I don't like sugar on cereal anymore. I've been kind of beaten out of it. It's brainwashed. Yeah. Yeah.

[74:27]

Uh, I mean, I never, I'm not a sweet person, so that's not hard. I love gamache here. Very sweet. Thank you. Um, and when you're tasting, again, restaurant rules, two spoons, one spoon that goes in the pot and a different spoon that goes in your mouth. Now, this is not like at a home, where you may very well stick your finger in there. I don't know what you do, and I don't care. But, what? No, I don't want to know. And I don't want you to know what I do. But, but here, you know, we're in the, in the kitchen when you're cooking for a lot of people, again, two spoons. And you can have a little tasting bowl, you know, available that you just put things into. And then that's your spoon, and the other spoon is by the pot. For each thing? Not necessarily?

[75:28]

Well, I wouldn't use a spoon that had been in my mouth, but I would use the other spoon. Or I would use a spoon that I had been using to take food out of the pot, but just not one out of my mouth. So do you have any questions? Yeah, here. I have something about the Chinese recipes. I've seen some of them just take a long time to make. And somehow that discourages me. I don't know.

[76:32]

I would have to look at some particular thing. It may be more complicated than you imagine. Recipes which you think are very seem very labor-intensive, maybe are, because there's no other way to do something. But sometimes, too, things look like they're hard and they're not. For example, you think that the easiest cereal would be semolina, you know, because it cooks just like that. Well, actually, that's one of the hardest cereals because you're trying to, you have to do it at the last minute. Like cracked wheat, you get it on and you pretty much forget about it. You stir it occasionally. And that's it. Cereal sticks to the bottom of the pot, you take it off the flame for a while and it reabsorbs. I saw that at Tassajara and it took me years to finally try it. I was one of those people that was really snobby about the old recipes. What an idiot I was. That was one of the things I didn't do.

[77:35]

And I finally did it, and it worked. So I started saying, wow, look at that! And then I realized, oh, right. That's written on the cereal card at Tassajara, and I never tried it before. And I didn't use those recipes. When I was a guest cook, I didn't go through the card file for recipes. And then when I was tenzo, I did. And there were some wonderful recipes. And likewise, well, at City Center, I had learned by the time I was 10, so at City Center, and so I did go through those files. And it also dawned on me that who was the people that were putting those recipes in there? It was like Deborah Madison and Annie Somerville. And so there were some wonderful things in there. And I learned a lot from there. So it also is true here that sometimes there are ways to simplify things. So, I'd be happy to talk to you about it, you know, about individual things, but it's hard to say.

[78:38]

Well, some old things were. Mel used to talk to me about how they used to, you know, we used to grind the rice and make rice cream. So, we tried it. When I was ten, so at Tessahara, we got out the grinder, And we tried it. We put brown rice into the grinder and we tried it, you know, to make it finer than the cracked rice cereal. You know, it's usually called rice cream, but it's really, it's cracked rice. To make it finer than that. It was really hard. Yeah. So somebody was, you know, grinding and grinding and grinding away. Somebody really strong and did it for like half an hour and got maybe Max, a cop or something like that. I consulted Sojana. He decided maybe this wasn't quite worth it. And then I found out Lundberg actually sells it. And so I used to serve it, but nobody likes it. Yeah? As far as complicated recipes, one of the things that I learned was that between being a guest cook and then I was a guest cook and then I became a foucaultier.

[79:49]

And as a guest cook, everything had to be diced. exactly into little tiny pieces and then when everything could be ten. It's okay if it's four times bigger than that. It's sort of like not everything has to be finely chopped. You can often, you know, get away with a medium chop and it actually saves you so much time. That sort of thing. So that's something to think about. And I think also a lot of the recipes were written for, you know, cooking crew. as opposed to one person, a few people. There's also a lot to be said for repetition, for learning how to do something really well. If you cook for people once every three months, you could cook the same thing a couple times in a row and learn in the process how to do it really well. learn what worked and what didn't work, and probably do it more quickly, too.

[80:50]

But I think a lot is about simplifying. I think my meals are too complicated. And I try to keep it pretty simple. And I try to serve stews, for example, more than soups. So things with bigger pieces. They can't be that big, but as I know. But even so, I think that it's too complicated, and it's a concern to me. Well, Mary, what do you think about, when you're talking about suits now, in order to get a good suit, I think, you know, when you're talking about a vegetarian thing, I mean, you've got, it's longer than a couple of hours. Well, it depends on what it is. Or you've got to use some sort of commercial product, you know, that's been produced about 10 to 12 hours. And that'll give you some body to it. Well, we will get to depth of flavor. You do have to deal with it in some way or another.

[81:55]

And that is a, you know, making a good stock is the key. Water and carrots. Yeah. I just want to do one in Montesquieu where you can collect your vegetables during the day, during the season, whenever, and make a stock from it versus Well, yes, but I mean... Well, you could use, you know, two carrots and two onions and some parsley stems and a few peppercorns, and you can make a decent stock that way. You know, it doesn't have to have... and you have some kombu, so much better, or potato. in the wintertime for heavier stuff. But I mean, it doesn't have to be really complicated, but it is, it is more difficult here. Well, Green says that you should only cook it for about a half an hour. It might, or it gets bitter. That's not my experience.

[82:56]

I've seen stock left on the stove overnight and boiled for two hours and I never noticed it getting bitter. But, um, at any rate, um, Yeah, it's usually... I mean, it's a lot easier at any rate if you do it the day before. And it's not easy. It's garbage hot water, too. Don't listen to that. Only if you're desperate. It's been done. Well, I know, but that's not... Because the hot water has a flavor. Of course you can, but... A brand new water heater is okay. Well, maybe. I don't know. But anyway, I think it tastes of the hot water, yeah. But it's good. That reminds me that in terms of kitchen practice, it's really good. It's good to have a pot of boiling water to have always. At the city center, you have a samovar. What? In case somebody has a baby, right?

[84:00]

That same water, yes. But not after. Anyway, it's really good. You may need it for, you know, if your rice needs a little more water, or the soup needs a little water, or whatever, or you have to make emergency gruel all of a sudden, if you need to make instant couscous, that kind of thing. It's just good practice to have a pot of water boiling or close to boiling available at all times. It's a good place to have it. I wanted to say, invite, is there anybody that wants to come at 6.30 next week and prepare. I thought next week to do some samples of tofu salad kind of things. Things with tofu that eat ways you don't usually think of it. And then also the following week to make some stock and show you different things with stock and depth of flavor. So is there anybody that would like to come early next week and play with tofu?

[85:04]

Yes, we're all going to eat it. Everybody's going to eat it. You're going to sample it with two spoons. Will we fit in the kitchen? Yeah, that'll look like OK. And then the following week, please help me remember we need other people or the same people, I don't care, to make stock. yes well we're gonna oh well don't worry about it I'll think about this oh wait a minute wait a minute wait a minute we're going to chant this is the Dharma this is not I want to think it's important to close the class with a chant, because as Dogen says in his instructions to the senior staff of Eheji, which I think is in Enlightenment Unfolds also, or it's in that little brown book, whatever, I forget what that is. He talks about all the different sutras you should chant in the kitchen.

[86:12]

to what we usually say, beings are numberless, I think.

[86:20]

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