Burn Appetit : Firehouse Fare Can be Anything From Burgers to Blackened Fish

“I think it needs a little more basil,” says firefighter Joseph Lankau, 36, as he tastes the shrimp and tomato sauce from a large wooden spoon. His badge gets misty from the steam as he leans over the simmering five-gallon steel pot, its contents almost ready to be served with a nearby bowl of noodles for lunch.

Another firefighter takes a taste before Lankau sprinkles in a little more seasoning. “Yeah, that’s what it needed, just a tad more basil,” he says of the fettuccine recipe clipped from Bon Appetit. Lunch is ready for the B shift at L.A. City Fire Station 70, Lassen Avenue and Reseda Boulevard in Northridge.

Bon Appetit magazine? This is not typical fire station cuisine, where simple and easy is the rule and meat and potatoes the usual. “You should try Joey’s Cajun blackened fish,” says firefighter Tom Croell, 53, “It’s excellent.”

Lankau, a 9 1/2-year veteran of the department, is more than just another firehouse cook, his fellow firefighters say. He’s a self-taught gourmet chef, creating some of the best cuisine they’ve ever tasted from a fire station kitchen. The cook, however, is modest about his accomplishments.

“I enjoy cooking,” he said, “but more importantly, I’ve been a vegetarian for the past four years, and by doing the cooking, I can better control what I eat.” Which may explain why during his red meat or chicken meals, he is usually munching on something far less tasty looking than what is being served to the other firefighters.

Three Shifts

Each Los Angeles fire station is continually manned by one of three crews who work 24-hour shifts, and each shift is responsible for buying and cooking its own food. At Fire Station 70, each person contributes $8 for each 24-hour shift, with $2 going toward housekeeping articles such as toilet paper, napkins and a replacement fund for pots and pans. The remaining $6 covers lunch and dinner.

Each crew decides whether the shift will have a permanent cook, like 75% of the San Fernando Valley’s 35 city firehouses, or if the cooking will be done on rotation. At Fire Station 70, only the B shift has a permanent cook; on the other two shifts, firefighters take turns.

About 10 a.m. every day, shoppers can spot fire trucks pulling up in front of supermarkets throughout the Valley. It’s not a drill and nobody is inspecting hydrants; the shift is going shopping, parking the fire vehicles fully equipped with firefighters in front of the market while one or two of the crew buy the groceries. Fire Station 70 usually shops at the Vons market at Nordhoff Avenue and Reseda Boulevard in Northridge.

Each shift has exactly the number of people it needs and is on duty at all times. Should there be a call, everybody, including the firefighters doing shopping, drops everything to respond.

“They’ll let one of us know what’s happening and we’ll put the basket in a walk-in cooler,” said Vons Manager Richard Nussbaum, who said he is used to seeing a firefighter running out the door. They are usually back within an hour.

Groceries Spoil

Two or three times a month, after shopping is done, the crew gets a call on the way back to the station. How much food ends up being thrown away depends on the length of the call and the heat of the day. Many times, they have to replace everything.

Lankau prefers the Northridge Vons because, “I know it like the back of my hand. I know where everything is and I can usually get in and out of there in 30 minutes. Plus, I know what the prices are.”

Prices are important, he said, as the Fire Station 70 cook is always on a tight budget, spending about $72 on two meals for each of 12 firefighters.

“You have to budget your money,” said firefighter Jamey Tanner, 29, who had been a permanent cook at other fire stations before joining 70’s B shift.

“I’d go cheap, stir fry or hamburgers, chili burgers, but I’m not big on hot dogs. For dinner I like a hunk of meat, a steak or roast, or meat loaf. Also a lot of chicken because it’s cheap. It was surprising to find someone like Joey who knows how to cook. I enjoy cooking but I like to see what Joey does,” Tanner said.

There are 12 members of each Fire Station 70 shift who have to be fed lunch and dinner, so Lankau’s preparations start long before he grabs a shopping cart.

He examines food stocks in the brown and mustard colored 20-foot by 30-foot fire station kitchen--besides an industrial stove, it is equipped with two refrigerators, a microwave, three sinks, two dishwashers, an ice machine and a giant coffee brewer. He carefully goes over recipes from magazines such as Gourmet, Bon Appetit, Better Homes and Gardens and The Times food section before making a detailed shopping list.

“You have to be quick on your feet, in and out of the market and put something on the table at a reasonable time,” he said while listing the ingredients for making a peach pie from scratch, a little something he is going to whip up for after dinner. “You have to know the market, keep within the budget and have variety, otherwise the guys, well, they’re pretty opinionated.”

Planning, shopping, cooking and cleaning, Lankau said, eat up four to five hours of the shift. But fighting fires is Lankau’s first priority, and when the station gets a call, everything else stops, including the cooking, which may happen three or four times a month.

“If things are in the oven, I normally leave them there but shut the gas off. If there is a meal on the burners, I shut it off and put them on the griddle. I don’t want to create a situation where we have to respond to a fire back in our own quarters,” he said. According to a spokesman for the Fire Department, two such incidents have occurred in the last 10 years, although not at Fire Station 70 and not involving Lankau.

Chance to Learn

The cook always has help, as KP is part of the daily routine.

While Lankau is checking on how the pasta is cooking, Tanner is cutting up five pounds of tomatoes and firefighter Robert Brooks Richardson, 37, is dicing the contents of two large cans of olives.

“Everybody should have the opportunity to be a cook at one time or another,” Richardson said. “Cooks evolve in the Fire Department. When I first joined I didn’t know how to cook anything, but after doing KP, you learn.”

Almost everyone on the shift agrees that the cook must have a thick skin and a good sense of humor.

“You never have a problem as long as you keep the guys happy,” said former cook Tanner. “But when you screw up, they’ll hound you and never let you forget it. That didn’t happen to me, though, as I started out with four or five recipes from my mother.”

There is always the exception, such as the permanent cook at one station who was so bad the shift voted him out. (A cook’s tenure lasts as long as he wants to hold the volunteer job.)

Like a God

“Most guys hate to cook, so if there is someone who wants to, they’ll treat them like a god,” said firefighter Steve Skinner, 43. “You’d eat almost anything, but not from this guy. It was awful.”

That isn’t a problem at Fire Station 70, said Capt. Steve Hawes, 44.

“Most stations have a lot of meat and potatoes,” he said poking at the shrimp on top of his pasta, “but Lankau is much more health conscious.”

Part of that, Lankau replied, is because of his strict vegetarian ways--no meat, poultry or fish.

“When stations have people who rotate cooking, you get the normal meat and mashed potatoes,” he said, “things that I didn’t necessarily want. So in order for me to eat with the guys, I volunteered to be the permanent cook and try to put out some quality meals, giving the guys meat once every three shifts. And when we have the money, if they want prime rib, that’s OK with me, I’ll be glad to fix it for them.”

As other firefighters were cleaning up after lunch, Lankau was already sitting down to plan dinner: chicken cordon bleu sauteed in an apple cream sauce with raisins--inside the chicken will be apples, cheese and smoked ham--and a side dish of sauteed Italian squash. “He gives us a wide variety of dishes we’ve never tried before,” Richardson said.

“As I said,” Hawes continued, downing a shallot, “this is definitely above-average fire station cooking.”