This swine diagram in the Oliveto back office pretty much sums it up.

Next to his desk in the Oliveto back office, Chef Paul Canales has taped a diagram that captures the restaurant's reverence for pork.

The diagram shows a hog divided into sections, such as the shoulder and the leg. All of these sections are labeled "Good," except for the belly. It is labeled "Real Good."

Pork is a constant at Oliveto. The menu revolves around it. On any given day, prep chefs can be seen breaking down a hog into various cuts -- shoulder, loin, leg -- and then processing them into porchetta, pancetta, scallopine, sausage or salumi.

For an uninitiated guest to the kitchen, it can be startling to see a pig's head simmering in a stock pot or a chef hefting a hand saw on one half of a 200-pound carcass.

Oliveto Chef Paul Canales seasons pork cutlets while Sous Chef Kelsey Bergstrom cuts into a pork leg with a hand saw.

Yet if you want restaurants to be respectful of the meat they serve, extracting every ounce of flavor and using all parts of the animal, then these scenes shouldn't shock you. Many chefs run a far tidier kitchen by relying on industrial meat processors to do their butchery, delivering meat cuts that are shrink-wrapped and ready to cook.

Oliveto's experiments with whole-hog cookery started more than a decade ago, when the restaurant, under owner Bob Klein and former Executive Chef Paul Bertolli, developed a relationship with Paul Willis and Bill Niman, founders of the Niman Ranch meat company.

Willis, a hog farmer from Iowa, met Niman in the mid-1990s, as industrial hog farming was transforming the landscape of the Midwest and North Carolina. Farmers such as Willis were trying to stay in business by marketing the quality and benefits of the pork that was raised without hormones and antibiotics, with the pigs allowed to range freely. That led to a partnership with Niman and the birth of Niman Ranch.

Paul Watson, seen left, heads a network of 500 small farmers who supply pork to Niman Ranch.

Today, Willis supervises a network of 500 farmers who produce pork for more than 1,200 restaurants, ranging from chains such as Chipotle Mexican Grill to high-end restaurants such as Oliveto. His success has inspired many other farmers, including some here in California, to grow their own pigs and market them directly to restaurants.

Every Tuesday at Oliveto, a truck pulls up in the garage of the building, delivering a split carcass pig, usually from Willis. For the last several months it has been my job, along with Oliveto butcher Pablo "Tigre" Mendoza Gavito, to heft and these split carcasses (100 pounds) into the basement meat locker.

Hanging meat from hooks can be dangerous, as former Oliveto Sous Chef Curtis Di Fede demonstrates.

This can be a dangerous job. Pigs are slippery and tricky to hoist. Usually Tigre would lift from the bottom, using a small meat hook to grab hold of the carcass. My job was to grab the hind leg, attach a meat hook to the trotter, and hang the hooked carcass on the meat locker rod while Tigre hefted it from the bottom.

The first time we attempted this together, I inadvertently left my pinkie finger in between the hook and rod. My finger was nearly crushed as the full weight of the carcass came down on the rod. Luckily, I pulled my pinkie out at the last split second.

Once the pigs are in the locker, the chefs assemble a game plan for breaking them down and preparing dishes. That plan changes weekly, depending on the whims of the chefs and what dishes they haven't recently prepared.

"Technically, you want to use the loins and legs first, since those are most subject to spoilage," says Canales, who replaced Bertolli as executive chef in 2004. "The shoulders will last the longest."

Why do the shoulders last longer? As Canales notes, shoulders and other heavily used muscles tend to have high levels of myoglobin, a protein that causes the red color in meat. Birds such as ducks and pigeons have high levels of myoglobin, because they fly such long distances. As a result, ducks and pigeons resist spoilage in a refrigerator longer than chickens do.

After a hog is delivered, Tigre tends to get the assignment of breaking down the hog into its component pieces. He also can be regularly seen trimming up the loin for one of the restaurant's prized dishes, the spit-roasted porchetta.

Oliveto butcher Pablo "Tigre" Mendoza Gavito prepares sausage in the back kitchen.

Porchetta is pork rolled with spices and salt into a log and then set on a rotisserie. As it roasts over hot coals, the fat renders out of the meat and keeps it juicy and savory. Slices of this log are then served with an accompaniment, such as a diavolo sauce made with chili peppers.

By contrast, Oliveto generally takes cuts from the leg and turns them into scallopine or salami. Scraps from the leg are ground in a meat grinder and used in a ragu, a pasta sauce. The shoulders, meanwhile, are generally reserved for sausage.

As you can imagine, all this cutting and trimming results in numerous scraps that some butchers might be tempted to throw away. At Oliveto, all these scraps are further trimmed to separate meat from fat. The meat pieces are cooked down into sugo, a heavily reduced pork stock, similar to a demi-glace. The rest might be used for a ciccioli, an intensely rich concoction that is made by cooking down fatty pieces of pork, compressing them and drying them.

Outside of the pigs it breaks down, Oliveto also receives special orders of pork, particularly pork bellies for pancetta. These bellies arrive every other week from Heritage Foods USA, which originated as the online marketing arm for the Slow Food movement. Now a private company, it sells meat from small farmers who are raising and preserving heritage breeds of pigs, turkeys and other animals.

"I try to support them, because they are trying to do the right thing, by these animal and the small farmers," says Canales. "These guys have no outlet. Either they find a niche market, or they get forced out by Tyson or the big outfits."

The author trims fat off of a pork belly for pancetta.

While apprenticing at Oliveto, I had a privilege to trim and cure pancetta a few times. It is not terribly hard, as Michael Ruhlman demonstrates in this post. The slabs of pork are seasoned with salt, curing salt and peppercorns, and then hung in cold storage for a week or so.

By the time it is dried, thin sliced and then served, it is belly, belly good. (Sorry, I couldn't resist.)

For Oliveto, the true test of its pork obsession comes in February, with the annual Whole Hog dinners. The menu offers nearly every part of the animal, from the brains down to the trotters. Last year's menu(pdf) featured a wild boar scaloppine alla Milanese, a spaghetti with pork cracklings and a spit-roasted pork belly with Sicilian chestnut honey.

A basic summer dish at Oliveto - cured coppa and melon.

Preparations for these dinners are an all-year affair, since some types of meats - such as prosciutto and coppa - take many months to cure and dry.

I missed this year's Whole Hog Dinner, but plan to be there in February. After six months of trimming, slicing, browning, simmering and curing pork, I feel a closer connection to this noble animal, along with an awareness of how much more there is to learn.

Stuart Leavenworth has concluded his apprenticeship at Oliveto, and this is his final post for Bay Area Bites. On Monday, he starts a new job as The Sacramento Bee's editorial page editor. You can contact him at sleavenworth@sacbee.com.

Oliveto Chef Paul Canales directs the nightly "testing" of dishes prior to service at the restaurant. Photo by Carl Costas, Sacramento Bee

Like Hollywood actors, some chefs will claim that they don't pay attention to the critics. The reality, of course, is that they do.

A good review, in a prominent publication or media outlet, can help launch an upstart restaurant or attract new customers to an old one. A bad one can sink the newcomer or spell trouble for a venerated establishment.

Oliveto, the Italian restaurant in Oakland where I've been interning since April, has enjoyed its share of published praise. In her latest edition of the "Food Lover's Pocket Guide" to San Francisco and the Bay Area, food critic Patricia Unterman writes that Oliveto "sets the standard for Italian cooking in America."

Last month, the restaurant staff was buoyed by a glowing endorsement by Marcella Hazan, an author of several award winning Italian cookbooks. Writing in The Daily Beast, Hazan said she "would eat at Oliveto in Oakland every day" if she lived in the Bay Area.

Yet those appraisals were quickly overshadowed last week when Michael Bauer, the food critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, published his first major review of the restaurant since 1996.

In a nine-paragraph column, Bauer said that his last two visits to the restaurant were disappointing. He criticized the service, the atmosphere and the food, and knocked the restaurant down from 3 1/2 stars to two.

"It could be that others have caught up and that Oliveto has slipped," wrote Bauer, noting the restaurant's legacy in inspiring other chefs and restaurants across the region.

When I arrived at Oliveto on Friday, the day after the review appeared, I expected the kitchen to be buzzing about the review. Instead, it seemed just like a normal day -- busy.

The restaurant's annual tomato dinners were less than a week away, and so chefs and cooks were scurrying about, making preparations for those elaborate suppers.

Yet as the morning wore on, it became clear that the review was the 800-pound gorilla in the room. Nobody wanted to touch it, but it was pretty hard to ignore.

Server Eric Schwier puts a shine on one of the "workmanlike" wine glasses at Oliveto. Photo by Carl Costas, Sacramento Bee

One server volunteered that customers were asking about it in the cafe on the morning it appeared. Another made a joke about the "workmanlike glasses" he was handling, a reference to one of the swipes in Bauer's review.

When Chef Paul Canales arrived in the kitchen, he seemed to be as chipper as normal. But then he spent some time with a business manager looking over past reservation lists. Both were trying to determine which night Bauer might have dined (based on the menu items he ordered) and who was cooking on various stations.

"I think I might have been cooking pasta that night," said Canales. "It might have been me!"

To be sure, it wasn't a complete surprise that the Chronicle was preparing a negative review. Bauer was a huge fan of former Oliveto Chef Paul Bertolli, who trained Canales and helped establish the restaurant's reputation. In 1996, Bauer gave Oliveto four stars for food and 3 1/2 stars overall, claiming that Bertolli was "producing the best Italian food in the Bay Area."

In 2005, however, Bertolli left Oliveto in a fallout with the owners and Canales was promoted to executive chef. As the Chronicle reported that year, Canales had actually been acting chef for some time, as Bertolli grew more interested in starting his own salumi business.

The trouble signs started in January. After eating cheap food in Texas and Oklahoma, Bauer filed a blog post questioning if Oliveto was overpriced.

A few months later, he dropped Oliveto from his Top 100 Bay Area Restaurants list, a choice that baffled at least one other food writer.

In his current review, Bauer clearly was disappointed with the restaurant's appearance and service.

"If you look around the room, you see the workmanlike glasses on the tables, worn and scarred chairs, and a service staff that on my visits seemed too small for the number of seats. The waiters are good but couldn't cover the room; we waited 15 minutes for wine and practically that long before anyone had enough time to check to see if we wanted dessert."

He also had little good to say about the food.

The treviso radicchio salad with lonza (cured pork tenderloin) was "sodden." The meatballs on one of the pastas were "mushy," as were the sand dabs on another plate, he wrote.

A "lukewarm" plate of pancetta-wrapped rabbit cost Oliveto some stars from food critic Michael Bauer. Photo by Carl Costas, Sacramento Bee

"The pancetta-wrapped rabbit was lukewarm, and the braised butter lettuce underneath was cool in some spots and warm in others, arranged on the plate with a loose, red, juicy sauce. The spit-roasted pork loin ($28) is redolent of the farm and the fire, but the sour cherry and black currant compote stripped it of its natural flavor and the firm, freshly milled polenta and salty greens were a disserve to the succulent meat."

I can't argue with Bauer about the service and atmospherics. Oliveto's servers are terrifically knowledgeable about food, but sometimes they are so undermanned they must scramble to get plates out to the dining room. That's one reason the restaurant's carpets are frayed, one detail that escaped Bauer's eye.

I also don't doubt that Bauer was served some disappointing dishes on his last visit. I just question if those miscues were representative of what other customers experience.

Over the last five months, I've heard from dozens of readers, friends and acquaintances who've eaten at Oliveto. All have raved about the food and the service.

Any review of Oliveto needs to at least acknowledge the restaurant's innovations, such as its special dinners and use of old-world techniques. After years of eating in the Bay Area, I have yet to find a restaurant that offers Oliveto's variety of handmade pastas. If anything, Canales has improved the restaurant's pasta by working to procure the finest flours and eggs with the richest yolks.

It's also curious the bulk of Bauer's critique was based on a single visit to Oliveto, and that only one other guest accompanied him. At most big-city newspapers, restaurant reviewers invite at least two or three other people to join them, so they can sample the widest array of dishes. By not doing so, Bauer didn't give his readers a full sense of the Oliveto menu.

Among some at the restaurant, there's a suspicion that Bauer has a personal bias against Oliveto, and thus didn't invest much energy in reviewing it. "Ever since Bertolli left, he's had it in for us," said one of the cooks. "There is no way we can win."

Yet that sentiment is hardly universal. When I brought it up, one long-time server, Molly Surbridge, said it would be a mistake for the chefs and staff to get defensive.

"Some of his criticisms are valid," she said. "Instead of focusing on him, we should use his critique to figure out how to make this a better restaurant, not for him, but for us."

I found Molly's comment to be wise beyond her years. It's a reflection of why Oliveto is a special place to work.

The owners, chefs and servers take a lot of pride in what they do, but not to the point of avoiding introspection. Bauer's review, while off the mark in many ways, will undoubtedly spur Oliveto to engage in some healthy reflection.

After all, if you run a restaurant, you constantly have to ask yourself: How can I make it better?

Brian Murphy, a sous chef at Oliveto, mixes up lentils for one of his signature soups

A recent posting on the Food Blog Alliance site urged writers not to use overused adjectives such as "nice," "wonderful" or "delicious" when writing about food.

Since I tend to dislike edicts even more than clichés, let me say this about the lentil soup recipe I am about to offer:

It is wonderful. It would be nice for you to try it. And if you did, you'd find this soup to be delicious.

Okay, maybe I could work harder in describing why a mere lentil soup deserves the forbidden D-word.

But believe me, it does. There is something about slow cooking of dried porcini mushrooms, wine and lentils that leads to magic. If you properly execute this dish, throwing in generous amounts of finely diced vegetables and finely chopped herbs, you will have a soup that is as complex and brooding as Caravaggio painting.

Some might say that lentil soup is an odd thing to prepare in the summer. That would be true in Sacramento (where I live). But in the Bay Area, where it is often cold and foggy, a lentil soup is just the thing to be enjoying on a back patio. I learned this basic recipe at Oliveto, one of many perks of working as a galley slave (intern) there.

Credit for this particular combination goes to Brian Murphy, an Oliveto sous chef who consistently turns out the kitchen's finest soups. Brian's nickname is "Chateau," as in "Chateau Brian."

So here's to you, Chateau. Salut!

Lentil soup with porcini and herbs. Why wait until fall to enjoy?

Chateau's lentil soup

Serves: 8-10

Ingredients:

1 1/4 pounds green lentils
2 red onions, medium dice
1 large carrot, medium dice
2 stocks celery, medium dice
1 head of garlic, clove peeled and finely sliced
1/2 bunch rosemary, finely chopped
1/2 bunch sage, finely chopped
1/2 tablespoon finely ground coriander seed
1/2 cup dried porcini mushrooms, soaked in dry red wine
Up to one gallon of water
1/3 cup tomato paste
1/3 cup olive oil
Sea salt to taste

Equipment needed:
Heavy stew pot or soup pot; hand blender or regular blender; sharp knives.

Preparation:

1. Dice onions, celery and carrot, and finely slice garlic cloves. Video: Basic instructions on peeling and dicing onion.

2. Soak dried porcini in wine, and have a glass for yourself. Grind the coriander. Open the can of the finest tomato paste you can afford.

3. Chop the heck out of the herbs. Get them really fine, but watch your fingers. Don't even think about using a food processor for this.

4. When onions, carrots, celery, garlic and herbs are ready, heat up your soup pot and pour in enough oil to cover the bottom of the pot. Throw in your veggies and herbs. Salt rigorously and cook under medium heat until vegetables are soft.

5. As veggies are cooking, pull dried porcini out of your wine and finely chop. Filter sediments out of wine and reserve.

6. When veggies are soft, add tomato paste to the pot, stir it around for a minute and then add reserved wine. Stir, and add half of your ground coriander.

7. Add lentils to pot and fill with the gallon of water. Add any wine from the bottle you haven't already enjoyed (about 1/2 bottle). Raise heat until lentils boil and then reduce heat to a generous simmer. Cook until lentils are tender and done.

8. Blend soup rigorously with a hand blender. If too thin, cook to desired thickness. If too thick, add water, judiciously. Add salt to taste. Add more coriander, if desired. When perfect, ladle into soup bowls and serve with a drizzle of olive oil.

(Note: Aftering ladling soup into soup bowls, Oliveto drizzles each with "Olio santa" -- olive oil cooked briefly with rosemary and red pepper flakes. Give it a try.)

Sometimes it's best not to tell your dinner guests what you are about to serve them.

Sometimes you should just watch their eyes light up as they try that first bite, and then reveal what you've prepared.

This is one of those dishes.

Tonnato, otherwise known as tuna sauce, is a classic summer dish from the Piedmont of Italy, the northwestern part of the boot.

The Piemontese have been making tuna sauces for centuries. Sophisticated food lovers flock to the Piedmont every year, partly to try distinct regional dishes such as vitello tonnato (veal with tuna sauce).

Yet if you were to tell your dinner guests that you were serving whipped tuna and anchovies as part of an appetizer, some of them might be tempted to say, "Can we just move onto the entree?"

Although there are endless variations on tonnato, every recipe I've seen includes tuna, anchovies, capers, olive oil and some type of acid, either lemon juice and vinegar.

At Oliveto, the restaurant where I work in Oakland, Chef Paul Canales makes a silky smooth tonnato by blending the basic ingredients with trickles of cream and olive oil.

At a recent dinner, we served it with sugar snap peas, cauliflower and other vegetables.

There are other interpretations. Vintage recipes call for whipped hard-boiled eggs in a tonnato, whereas some modern recipes include mayonnaise (homemade only, please). Jacques Pepin adds a little Dijon mustard to his tonnato, a French corruption that would likely spark riots in Italy.

Whatever the combination, your goal is to create a glistening sauce that is rich with the flavor of tuna, seasoned by background notes of capers and anchovy.

My version has a more rustic texture than what is served at Oliveto, but it is similar in taste and execution. You can see how I served the sauce with some vegetables from my garden, including squash, green beans and tomato.

Feel free to put your own twist on this dish and accompany it with a variety of vegetables or meats, such as chicken or turkey. But try not to skimp on the basic ingredients. High-quality tuna (or canned tuna), anchovies, capers and olive oil are essential.

Dijon mustard? Only if you want to trigger a riot.

Tonnato with Summer Vegetables

Serves: 6-8 appetizer-size portions

Ingredients:
12 ounces of fresh ahi tuna (or canned tuna)
6 anchovy fillets, rinsed and dried
1/4 cup olive oil or more
1/2 cup cream or an equal amount of milk and unsalted butter at room temperature
3 tablespoons capers
1 tablespoon lemon juice
Vegetables of your choice
Salt and pepper

Preparation:

1. Cut up and cook your vegetables, either by steaming or blanching. Try to include some that remain crunchy, like string beans or carrots and cook them in separate batches until just tender. Plunge in an ice bath and drain.

2. If using fresh tuna, add oil and tuna steaks to a skillet and heat until just barely bubbling. Maintain that gentle heat, turning once or twice until tuna is just cooked through. Do not overcook.

3. Add tuna and oil (or canned tuna) to blender or food processor. Add other ingredients, except for vegetables, and blend until smooth. Add additional cream or milk if mixture is too thick. [edited for clarity]

4. Your final sauce should be smooth enough to barely pour, without being runny. If still too thick, add more olive oil. (Go on. Just add it. It's good for you.)

5. After checking for seasoning, pour or spoon your tonnato onto a plate, arrange your vegetables in an artistic fashion and serve.

Note: Tonatto can be made in advance and refrigerated for a day or two. The flavors will meld and enrich the sauce. Bring to room temperature and rewhip before serving.

Mostaccioli with pork shoulder ragu

I've been making meat sauces for years, but only now -- after two months as an apprentice at Oliveto -- have I learned some of the secrets behind a superlative ragu.

A ragu is a basic meat sauce for pasta. The first authentic version I tried was years ago, in Emilia-Romagna, the region of Italy that invented the classic Bolognese sauce.

That first ragu was bold and brooding -- much like a Pavarotti opera. The sauce was entangled in a nest of perfectly cooked tagliatelle, with the flavor infused into the noodle.

Numerous cookbooks offer suggestions on making a Bolognese sauce and other forms of ragu. Yet nearly all of these recipes, in my opinion, are flawed. Most suggest cooking a mixture of diced onion, carrots and celery before adding your meat to brown it. The sauce that results tends to be lifeless or, even worse, infused with chunks of burnt vegetables.

Vegetables sweating on top of meat as the meat brown

At Oliveto, the chefs have reversed the sequence. First they brown the meat and then allow the vegetables to steam, or "sweat," on top of the meat. This process produces a dark layer of caramelized meat solids at the bottom of the pan -- a foundation of flavor. This foundation, or "fond" as the chefs call it, is then deglazed by the natural juices of the vegetables when added on top. This is allowed to cook down so the fond is rebuilt and deglazed two or three times.

Paul Bertolli, the former head chef at Oliveto, describes the technique in his 2003 book, "Cooking By Hand." Bertolli's successor, Paul Canales, who had a role in developing this technique, has continued to refine and perfect it since becoming executive chef.

Cooking a ragu in this manner is not difficult, but it cannot be whipped out in an hour or two. A ragu is truly slow food -- time-tested and refined by Italian grandmothers over many centuries.

Ragu ready for a long simmer, after broth and tomato paste have been added

Ragu for pasta

Makes: 8-10 servings of sauce

Ingredients:
2 pounds ground meat (Beef, pork or equal amounts of both. For beef, try ground chuck or get adventurous with ground hanger steak, beef cheeks, etc. For the pig, try ground pork shoulder.)
4 medium yellow onions
5 stalks celery
5 carrots
4 tablespoons finely chopped fresh sage
2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh oregano
6 cups dark chicken or veal stock
½ cup white wine
½ cup high-quality tomato paste
1 cup cream (optional)
Salt and pepper to taste

Preparation:

1. Dice the onions, celery and carrots into a mirepoix -- cubes smaller than 1/4 inch in size. As you are dicing the vegetables and mincing the fresh herbs, start cooking your meat. Use a heavy bottomed Dutch oven or stew pot. This is essential. The bottom of the pan has to be thick and heavy enough to brown the meat, without scorching it.

2. Use high heat to start your browning process. But keep an eye on it, and adjust the flame accordingly. It’s okay for the meat to stick and brown, but you don't want it to blacken or burn.

3. After you have built an even layer of fond on the bottom, toss your vegetables on top of the meat. Leave them there for at least 15 minutes, allowing them to release their juices to the bottom of the pan.

4. Give your meat and vegetable a rigorous stir with a wooden spoon, and scrape up the fond layer that has now been deglazed by the vegetables.

5. Turn up heat slightly, and allow this to cook down and brown again, then add a shot of wine -- no more than a cup. Stir and scrape.

6. Allow this to cook down again. When browned, add a cup of stock. Repeat the process and add your tomato paste, diluted with a half cup of stock.

7. Watch your ragu carefully at this point. The addition of tomato paste could lead to scorching. Keep the heat up, but stir it regularly as the fond starts to reform. When it is nice and brown, but not scorched, add two or three cups of stock -- enough to make it slightly more soupy than you'd want for a sauce.

8. At this point, your ragu should have a lovely, brownish-red color. Bring it to a boil and then turn down to a simmer. Allow it to simmer for two to four hours, stirring occasionally and adding more stock, if necessary.

9. Before serving, you have the option of adding cream -- as much or as little as you want. Too much cream will dilute the intensity of the sauce, so be judicious at first.

10. You can take this basic sauce in many different directions. Add minced porcini mushrooms early in the cooking for an earthier flavor, or cinnamon or nutmeg to give it a spicy edge. Use different combinations of fresh herbs.

11. The final step, of course, is marrying the ragu with the pasta. Don't just ladle it on top. Cook your pasta just short of al dente, then mix it thoroughly in a skillet with an appropriate amount of sauce and then serve it immediately. Sprinkle some Parmesan cheese on top, and you will be ready to sing.

This is what ragu should look like when finished

It's 4 p.m. on a typical afternoon at Oliveto, and chefs and interns are hurriedly chopping vegetables, stirring pots, de-boning fish and preparing for that night's dinner service, which starts in 90 minutes.
Service people are rushing through the kitchen, carrying glassware or trays of olives. Dishwashers are trying to return saucepans to overhead hooks, without dropping one on someone's head.

It's a frenetic dance that occurs daily at the Oakland restaurant, and to add to the frenzy, it comes with a soundtrack. Many afternoons, Chef Paul Canales blasts acid jazz from the boom box. Nothing like some mind-bending music to sharpen your focus.

For the last two months, I've been part of this dinner troupe, as a stagehand -- a chef apprentice. Starting in April, I took a leave from my job as an editorial writer and columnist for The Sacramento Bee to intern at Oliveto, an Italian restaurant in Rockridge.

It's been a humbling transition. Until April, I worked in a cushy office and shadowed the power players in California's capitol. Now I'm on my feet all day in a hot, windowless kitchen, taking orders from young sous chefs.

Yet in the realm of unpaid sabbaticals, this one can't be beat. Anyone with an interest in food and cooking needs to work in a restaurant, particularly one like Oliveto. Concepts that once seemed so exotic and unattainable -- curing salami, turning out trays of handmade ravioli -- now seem within my grasp.

In recent weeks, I've filleted fresh mackerel, prepared soft shell crabs, cut up and cured pork belly for pancetta and braised porcini mushrooms for cannelloni, which I later rolled by hand.

I've also improved my knife skills. Dicing dozens of onions and carrots, day after day, helps in that regard.
That said, my initial performance was far from stellar. In one of his first assignments -- a test, perhaps? -- Chef Canales asked me to "turn" a potato. This involved peeling a small spud with a sharp paring knife, turning the potato with my left hand.

Within a few minutes, I had managed to insert the knife tip into my left thumb. Blood was running out. As I moved to the sink to wash and bandage the wound, I noticed a faded photocopy on the wall that offered instructions on dealing with an amputated finger.

"Reattachment is always possible," the sheet said. "Stop the bleeding and place the lonely piece in a wet towel..."

Yes, it was one of those "What am I doing here?" moments. But I hung in there. Before starting my apprenticeship, I had read Bill Buford's book "Heat," and recalled that Buford had stabbed himself within days of starting at one of Mario Batali's restaurants.

Oliveto, founded more than 20 years ago, has a long history of training interns, even those who are initially inept. Like other high-end kitchens, the restaurant's menu is labor intensive, especially in the spring and summer months, when farmers and suppliers deliver boxes of artichokes, beans and other produce to the kitchen.

Interns provide this labor for free. In exchange, they pick up tips, training and contacts they'll never get at culinary school. And if they work hard and show promise, they may get a shot at a paying job in the kitchen, should one open up.

People ask me: Is this just a temporary gig? Are you contemplating a career change?

I don't know. My presumption is that I will return to my newspaper job when my six-month stint is over. But I have to admit, the life of a chef is alluring, even with the absurdly low pay. "It gets under your skin," says Canales, who started interning at Oliveto 15 years ago after leaving a corporate telecom job.

Since April, I've been keeping a personal blog, which is largely focused on my day-to-day experience as a kitchen apprentice. For "Bay Area Bites," my posts will be more focused on classic techniques of Italian cooking, and tips and recipes I’ve picked up from working at Oliveto.

Here is one thing I've learned: There is no "magic" to preparing superlative food. The artistry that arrives on your plate at the best restaurants is not prepared by Houdini.

What separates great chefs from good ones is training, practice, creativity, attention to detail and a passion for the food they are preparing. All of these are within reach of home chefs -- those who prefer to do their cooking in more sedate settings, without a soundtrack.

Photo of a mackerel, from the Monterey Bay, right before I filleted it for that night's dinner menu. Photo by Stuart Leavenworth