Time is running out. I think I have just one day left at this current restaurant. And I wonder if I learned all that I was meant to in my time here. One of the newer, younger cooks was having difficulty last week with his buerre blanc. We were busy and it kept breaking, and I saw him struggling with it so I helped him. I made one and it lasted the rest of the night, he even tried heating it up to see if it would break and it didn't. I couldn't actually figure out what was making his fall apart but I told him I think it's because he is scared of it and he admitted that he was. As if the trauma, wherever it was coming from was trembling the molecules of the emulsion, and I remember back in chef school, 14 years ago, it was my turn to make my first buerre blanc and I was scared to death, I couldn't understand how it was made, even though it was explained in detail. Cooking is a mystery, an art and a science, but a lot tends to fall under mystery doesn't it. I struggled for years with this sauce, and it struck me that night I fixed his that I can now do it with my eyes shut, pressed for time and juggling lots of other things. I make brown butter holandaises like it's no big thing, because it's not.. but it is. I make the meanest scallop this side of my boss, and I didn't used to. I know a good foie from a bad one. I have learned a lot. There is a certain sadness with shallots, I have decided. I will miss working with the distinctly French fresh tarragon, Italians don't really use it. I wish I could say that I mastered charcouterie, but I really didn't.

I'm going to miss the chef, his talent is mesmerizing. A year and a half later and I still can't figure out where he gets his ideas from. Last night he made a seared foie with Sancerre soaked melon for me as a going away present.

I worked a single day at the new place on Thursday and really enjoyed it. The menu needs a lot of work, the pasta dishes are in a bad way right now, too mediocre. The draw of the place is clearly the artisnal, authentic pizzas, but I want the other dishes to match that quality. The pizzas are sublime, Giovanni really has the lightest touch with ingredients, he knows exactly how scant to scatter things, and it always comes out right. It's incredible to watch him when it's busy, he juggles eight to ten at a time. We became fast friends. His English is just a little better than my Italian, so we use Spanish instead. One my first day he made me food all day, first a chickpea-flour socca, then a tirimisu, then a peppered veal and gorgonzola dish, and in the evening a pizza, I made him a pasta and a test batch of my grandfathers olives. We made the paper that day: Here (Scroll to bottom).

The kitchen needs a bit of a facelift though, in my opinion, a few shelves loaded with colorful cans of tomatoes and such would do the trick. Giovanni and I sourced a wonderful brand of canned San Marzano tomatoes, the best I ever had. We will use those exclusively on the pizzas and pastas. We also found a dazzling sparkling water whose bottle was designed by the guys who design Ferrari.

I have to work out some dishes by early next week. So far, the plan is to have a slow confit of duck leg, the meat pulled off in silky shards, in a sauce of green olives and duck essence, twirled up with pappardelle that I will make fresh. We are still trying to find the right pasta machine that suits me.

I made something called Pasta Trinacria the other day that I liked. There is an ancient symbol of Sicily, probably pre-Greek, that is an image of the sun, with a somber face, with three legs jetting out. The three legs are meant to represent the three earliest tribes that made up Sicily (the Sicani, the Elymi and the Siculi). The three legs also form an imaginary triangle, which mimics the shape of Sicily itself. But this dish is meant to combine the three main flavors of the island, if you can really narrow it down to three. Swordfish, eggplant and mint. I made a light tomato sauce anointed with garlic and anchovy, and added deeply browned chunks of eggplant and cubes of swordfish, spiked everything with a little mint and tied it all up in fettucine. But my fettucine was far too thin, see thru really, and unfortunately didn't work. I liked the sauce and the idea behind it. I have to work on my dough, I'm a little out of practice.