Master Chef Nephi Craig, part 2: Chef's table ten-course dinner is still cooking - those who will be served

This is the hungry group of people who will be fed on this night at the Chef's Table in the Sunrise kitchen by Nephi Craig and his all-Apache staff of cooks, waiters, waitresses and such. To enter the kitchen, Steven Titla, Matthew Titla, Veronica Titla and Melinda Ivans have passed right through the regular dining area where the regular customers will be waited on and served in the usual way.

This group will eat right in the kitchen - just yards away and in full view of the cooking line. They will be treated special and will be served ten courses - all based on Apache and foods of the Indigenous people of the Western Hemisphere. The Titlas - mother and sons, are all from the San Carlos Apache Reservation, which borders the White Mountain Apache Reservation immediately to the south, separated by the Salt and Black Rivers. Melinda Ivans is from Seven Mile, a White Mountain community.

"I read about Nephi in the  White Mountain Independent," Veronica referred to a very positive, off-reservation newspaper review of a Chef's Table meal prepared by Nephi and staff. "I thought, 'Ahaa!' So I called, 'I want to make reservations.' He (Nephi) was telling me all about it. I was really excited - REALLY EXCITED. I thought, Apache food - Its going to be like the fanciest restaurant in New York City," she laughed. "I want to know what people mean when they say, 'oh, it's a seven course meal.'"

Ten courses - and it will be a three-hour experience. 

I must stress that even though the Chef's Table features Apache and other Native American foods, it is for everybody - about half of all people who have come to experience it have been Apache, the other half, non-Native. Nephi tells me that everyone who has experienced has been pleased.

Now... I know many readers have come back expecting to see the full-blown cooking story and might be a little frustrated with me to see just one picture - no cooking, no eating, just people entering the kitchen. I think when I have a substantial amount of material to work with, I had better stop saying, 'I will publish this tomorrow,' or 'by this certain time.'"

I have put in a great deal of time and work on this story today - and I still have a great deal of time and work left to put into it before I can finish it. It is more than a one day job.

But I will publish it tomorrow.

Oh, no! I just stated that I should not state things. But I will! I will! I will publish it tomorrow - barring any sort of calamity. I usually do my blog work late in the day, often not until evening or even night, but tomorrow I will start early, right after breakfast, so that hopefully I can get everybody fed by a decent hour.

Sorry about this. I'm afraid that's just how I am. It is not for a lack of work and effort. It is just bad estimating. Even after all these decades, my time estimation skills are just not so good. I always think they will be good, but they are not.

It is okay, though. It just gives readers that much more time to build up your appetites.

Master Chef Nephi Craig, part 1: Introduction - for the first time in her life, Margie eats her own Apache acorn stew and bone marrow (I do too) in a restaurant, cooked to perfection

This is Master Chef Nephi Craig in the kitchen at the Sunrise Park Resort hotel, where he supervises an all-Apache kitchen staff of 28 - 14 line cooks, and 14 on the wait staff - those who serve the customers. In my last post, I informed readers that it did not look like I would be able to conduct a phone interview with him until Tuesday, and so I would postpone his story and go ahead and start my India coverage.

Much has happened since then - first, I spent somewhere close to ten hours making a preliminary thumbnail skim of my entire India take, stopping occassionally, almost at random, to blow one up for a close look - and I realized I have huge, huge, task ahead of me and it won't hurt at all to take another day or two to begin to absord it - and Nephi called Monday afternoon and we did the interview.

So I decided to return to my original plan and post my Nephi story first. It is a story that will have more than the average number of pictures and more words than usual, too. So, rather than rush through it tonight, I decided to introduce Nephi in this post and then to publish the main story tomorrow.

Nephi's story is important to me for a couple of reasons. He is the second of the three sons of Vincent Craig, my best friend from Arizona and as good a friend as a man could have in this world, who died in May of 2010 in the evening of the very same day that I traveled to Arizona to see him for the last time.

I loved Vincent and I love his children and grandchildren and so I love Nephi.

Even if this were not the case, I believe that what he is doing is important, innovative, interesting, and a good story. After exploring the world of French and other "high-class cooking" and mastering the skills necessary to work in any fine restaurant in the world, he came to understand that there is no higher class cuisine than the traditional food that has sustained his own Apache and Navajo people since time immemorial.

He decided that Apache, and other Native American food would be the cuisine he would highlight and he would do so at an Apache-owned restaurant.

He gave me a good story, so please come back tomorrow and I will share it with you. Then I will take this blog back to India.

Shortly after I joined Margie in Arizona, we drove up to the tribal-owned Sunrise Ski Resort and I took the picture of Nephi that stands atop this page. Afterwards, we made the short drive to the ski area itself. We did not stay long and I took no great pictures. The sun was high and hard and I had only one short lens with me, no skis, no boots, so I took this picture, just so I could show you something about the background against which Nephi works.

In the evening, we returned to the restaurant, where Nephi treated us to a ten-course, "Chef's Table" meal that included three sister items (corn, beans and squash)  an indigenous power salad from Meso-America, Pacific salmon and, among many other savory items, Apache acorn stew and bone marrow.

When we were young and Margie first brought me to the reservation, she was a little hesitant to feed me acorn stew - just like the Iñupiat of the Arctic Slope are often a little hesitant to feed their whale, seal, walrus and such to non-Natives whom they do not know.

It is not unusual for non-Natives to turn their noses away from acorn stew, or to shudder when they take their first bite and then refuse to take a second.

Admittedly, when I first tasted acorn stew, it struck me as bitter, but I did not turn my nose or shudder. I ate it. And as I ate, my palate began to adjust to the new taste sensation it had not experienced before. My second bowl tasted okay and my third - delicious.

That's how it generally works when you give food that has long sustained and pleasured other peoples, but is new to you, a chance.

On this night, acorn stew and beef bone marrow was the eighth of our ten courses. It was the first time either of us had been served acorn stew or bone marrow in a restaurant. As you can see, Margie slipped into culinary heaven as she ate it. I did too. I savored the entire meal. 

It was exquisite, beginning to end.

I had originally thought that there was no way I could eat ten courses, but Nephi knows how to portion the servings so that they do not stuff diners and make them uncomfortable. Instead, they satisfy. The ninth course was hangar steak, prepared from Apache beef, made savory by salt from the reservatio salt banks in Salt River Canyon.

Man... so good! I don't think I ever tasted better steak in a restaurant. It was every bit as good as the steak Margie's mom cooks over an open fire, up in Carrizo Canyon.

There is no higher compliment I could give a chef than this.

Two nights later, I would return to follow Nephi as he and his staff prepared a Chef's Table for four visitors from the San Carlos reservation, even as they fed a full house of skiers and other visitors to the resort. That visit is what I will feature in my next post, when I tell Nephi's cooking story.

Debby, just for you - the words on the back of the cup; Nephi expects to be able to talk maybe by Tuesday, so I will wait

Debby left a comment on my Tim and Wesley post chiding me for not letting her know what the words say on Tim's cowboy cup. Debby, just for you, I took a three-mile walk to Abby's and back this morning and took this snap. Now you know.

As for my pending piece on Master Chef Nephi Craig, he sent me a message to tell me he will be able to talk soon, perhaps Tuesday. I wrestled with the idea of whether I should wait a bit longer or not, because even without talking further to Nephi I think I can put up a pretty good post - but I believe it can be a better post if I talk to him first. I want to get the story right. So I am going to wait until after we talk.

In the meantime, I will now take this blog back to India. I don't think I will post again until tomorrow. I have a huge amount of photos and information to try to get a handle on and I will start doing so today. Once I start back on India, I may not be able to make mysef to break away from India, other than to insert a quick daily frame or two from Wasilla or Anchorage, until I finish this round of India coverage.

If that's how it works, I will then post the Chef Nephi story immediately after I complete the India series -followed by one more White Mountain Apache story from this last trip that I still must tell.

A blurred spaceholder for Master Chef Nephi Craig

In my last entry, I stated that I would post my piece on Master Chef Nephi Craig before I went to bed tonight, but I encountered a little difficulty. On the evening that I spent with Nephi, the kitchen was super busy and the pace extremely fast and while I got the pictures I need to tell the story, there was never a point where I could sit down and do any kind of interview with Nephi, but I wasn't concerned, because I figured I could communicate with him later via internet and telephone.

But the internet is down at the White Mountain Apache Tribe's Sunrise Park Ski Resort where Nephi works and I can't reach him by phone, either. So I will hold off until tomorrow and see if somehow I can find a way to communicate with him.

If I can't, then I will just go ahead and run my picture story without the info I was hoping to get. It will still work. Readers will still get the idea, just minus a few specifics.

In the meantime, here is a very blurry picture of Nephi, right in the middle, framed by two thumbs and wearing dark-rimmed glasses, at work with his all-Apache kitchen staff. This is one of those incidents that I referred to in my last post, when the knob on my camera rubbed against something, probably me as I was switching cameras in a hurry so that I could get this shot, and in the process knocked my shutter speed down to some ridiculously slow speed.

Still, you can see that the kitchen is very busy, fast-paced place. I will attempt to bring it all into better focus tomorrow. For now, I will just state that Nephi has studied the culinary arts in top chef schools all the way from Arizona to Japan and has become highly skilled in the arts of French and Japanese cuisine, among other types of cooking. Even as he did so, he always believed that there was no finer food to be found in this world than the Apache food that he grew up with, along with other Native American foods originating from across the hemisphere - all the way from South America right up here to Alaska.

Now, as a master chef and the head chef at an Apache-owned restaurant, he has set out to prove his case.

More later.

Tim and Wesley go to Abby's; Wesley's truck gets away from him; Wesley launches a recovery mission

As has been happening every night since my return from India, I dozed off maybe a few minutes before midnight, slept pretty good for awhile and then woke up at about 1:30 AM, unable to really sleep any more, although I stayed in bed and tried pretty hard and did manage to pass in and out of a state of semi-sleep. Before I went to bed, I had already determined that no matter what, I would have breakfast at Abby's today.

I came out of one of those semi-sleeps at 5:45. I thought I might as well get up and instead of Abby's, go to Mat-Su Family Restaurant, because they open at 6:00 and Abby does not open until 9:00. I hadn't seen any of my Family Restaurant breakfast acquaintances since before I left for Arizona and India, so maybe it was time.

But no, my stomach was set on Abby's. Plus, things are pretty tight right now and I couldn't really afford to go to Family, but Chris and Arlene Warrior are still buying me breakfast at Abby's once or twice a week as their thank you to me for photographing the wedding of their daughter, Aurora, to Robert Standifer.

So I did not get up until about 7:30, then, feeling groggy, headed to Abby's.

Shortly after I set down, Tim Mahoney walked through the door. "Hi Bill!" he said, then sat down at my table. Abby brought him the cowboy cup she keeps just for him and filled it up with coffee.

Tim had come with his grandson, Wesley, who just turned six. Wesley ordered pancakes and eggs. Grandpa, who dotes on his grandson, cut them up for him.

Tim asked me a bit about the Arizona part of my trip and where Margie was from. The words "Apache" and "Arizona" inspired two stories in him. The first was about a time when he drove through the Mescalero Apache reservation in South Central New Mexico. Like the White Mountain Apache, the Mescalero live in high country where elevations ranging from 5400 to 12,000 feet.

Tim was so impressed by the beauty of Mescalero country that he felt like he just wanted to stop his car, get out and go lay down on the earth - "lay down on my Mother's breasts," was how he put it.

Once again, I was reminded of the painful fact that this life is just too short, for I, too, felt the sudden desire to go back to my wife's country during certain times of the year when the sky above the highlands is so deep and blue, the air cool but not cold and to just lie down upon the breasts of Mother Earth. So many places I want to go, want to see, want to spend time in - including every place that I have ever been. I want to linger in those places, to know them intimately as a baby upon his mother's breast knows his mother intimately - and all the while to better get to know Alaska, top to bottom.

But there just isn't time. Life zips by so damn fast. Inside me, I still feel that I am a young man; I believe I am a young man; I picture myself as young man, I have the goals, desires and ambitions of a young man, but I am on the very cusp of becoming an old man. There is so much I still want to do, so many places to spend time in. It can't be done.

Thw other story was about a man, a finisher, half-Apache, half-African American who Tim worked with on a construction job in Kasilof. The man was the fastest finisher Tim had ever seen. After the concrete had been poured into the form, he strapped trowels to each of his knees, took two more trowels, one in each hand, then got down on the unset concrete on all fours and smoothed it out with such speed and finese that Tim and the other workers could only gape in amazement.

He also had a story about Wesley, who he told me has an innate sense of direction unlike anything Tim has seen in anyone else - kind of like his own internal gps system. Tim told me how they had driven down to a place in Kasilof over a year ago. Then, a year later, they drove back to that place. As they drove, Wesley would tell them to turn this way here, that way there, right to the place.

As for this valley, he knows the way back to any place where he has ever been, Tim said.

"If I took him up north," he spoke of the Arctic Slope, where he has done much village work, "I would never get him back." He explained that the people would love him because no matter where he would go, be it sea ice or tundra, he would always know where he was, where he had been and where he was going.

Abby took a look at the teeth that chomp through her pancakes.

Wesley got up and roamed around for a bit as I listened to more of Tim's stories. The stories were interesting, so I was not really paying much attention to Wesley. Then I noticed that he was very interested in something beneath the next table.

What could it be?

It was Wesley's toy truck. It had gotten away from him and disappeared beneath the table. Wesley crawled under to retrieve it.

Wesley recovered his truck. Abby's Home Cooking. She named her restaurant well. Abby's HOME Cooking. 

Soon it came time to leave. Tim helped Wesley into his jacket.

Then Abby gestured for a hug. She got it, too - but one thing that is really aggravating about this camera I am using most of the time is that the knob that controls the shutter speed continually changes it when I move around and it rubs against something - me mostly. For some reason, it most often changes the speed downward.

Then I shoot without realizing and get motion blue, because my shutter speed is at some ridiculously slow number for fast, hand-held, shooting - like 1/15 of second. Despite the blur, I use a lot of those pictures, anyway, if I think they still tell the story, but sometimes they are blurred beyond hope.

The hug was blurred beyond hope, but be assured, Abby got her hug.

Now, I know that there are some people in India who must be growing very impatient with me. They wait to see my pictures of Sujitha and Manoj's wedding, and of the other stories I shot there. And there is a master chef on the White Mountain Apache Reservation who is probably also getting a bit impatient with me.

So, beginning with the master chef, whose story I plan to post before this day ends, and then moving straight back into India, I will return to my travels. I am struggling with this a bit, because I shot a lot. I had hoped to have done a preliminary edit of the entire take by now, but I have taken a first, quick, look at less than five percent of the India take; maybe 60 percent of the Arizona take.

It is a monstrous task. I shot over 500 gigabytes. How the hell do I deal with that? Especially when it is a struggle to keep my eyes open. For example, it is 6:21 PM right now. I actually started to edit the pictures for this little story at about 1:45 PM. By 2:00 PM, I couldn't keep my eyes open any longer, so I went and laid down on the couch, where Chicago joined me for a nap. I didn't want to take a nap. I wanted to keep working, but I had no choice. I HAD to lay down and if not to really nap, to at least close my eyes. My body refused to let me do anything else.

Then I had to struggle to get up and go get my afternoon coffee at Metro before Carmen closed at 4:00. So this is the kind of thing I face. But I have many things to do and must get it all done, so that is what I am going to do.

Master Chef Nephi Craig, son of Vincent Craig - you are up next - before I go to bed tonight.* After that - back to India. I will try to make at least two posts every day, one from here in Wasilla, one or two from India/Arizona, until I am done.

And I've got to launch my store. I don't know how to do it, but I've got to do it, if I am ever to begin to figure out how to make this blog the foundation of my livelihood - a seemingly impossible task that I must do.