As I sit on my swiss-ball-turned-desk-chair facing my bookshelf-turned-desk listening to my kind-of-gay-but-fantastic track of "Total Eclipse of the Heart" by Bonnie Tyler I wonder what the future holds for me. In the words of Thomas Keller, this "may be the most exciting time ever to be a cook and a chef in America." Things are moving really fast and I've been taking time to recenter myself lately and the obvious question arises; What next?
The current plan is to work at Va Pensiero through Northwestern graduation, which would make my total time there amount to about a year. So many chefs suggest staying at a place for at least a year because that is the minimum amount of time required to pay back the restaurant's investment in you. When you get hired as a cook, especially when you're a rookie cook like myself, you need to be trained, to be taught, to be fed, and after 5-6 months you start becoming an efficient part of the team. You hopefully become someone who is dependable and skillful enough to contribute to the restaurant, to execute the restaurant's vision. So for the risk and time that my Chef has taken upon me, I think I owe him at the very least a year. Young cooks are moving faster these days, too fast as many will complain. They will stay 5 months, learn everything they can and move on. Old school chefs might have stayed 1.5-2 years, but I think there simply isn't time for that anymore in this day and age. One year strikes a balance I can work with.
And then I will take a hiatus to learn some things before culinary school, chill out, play ultimate and enjoy the Chicago summer. I think the most important things I could learn are better knife skills, prep efficiency and the process of 4-star standards. I'd like to take an internship at a butcher shop and get better at taking apart animals. I'd like to know what it's like to prep in a restaurant consistently doing a 150+ covers a day while maintaining 4-star standards. That requires not only efficient prep but perfect prep, and to combine those is a difficult skill to learn. Those are things I could take with me to school so that I have an easier time showing those bitches whats up.
Ah but there comes the dangerous pitfall. Arrogance. It doesn't seem to serve any purpose in my opinion, other than to ameliorate the symptoms of insecurity. But that can be solved with just plain ole' confidence. Confidence is the key, and it takes years to develop, every stage leading up to that one being as awkward as puberty. Arrogance doesn't get you anywhere in the cooking world because you will immediately be put in your place. There is someone always doing it better than you are. Usually.
The industry is growing at an alarming rate. I've mentioned this before, but this generation of young adults, more than any other, are discovering cooking as a viable profession. It is gaining considerable respect and it's a good alternative for those shunning office jobs or dealing with a personal existential crisis. Good food is becoming more and more important as the onset of America's obesity epidemic threatens to close its fist. Being a cook, a chef, a restaurateur seems like a potential path to celebrity (those with those intentions in mind are in for an unpleasant surprise though). The food world is no longer something you were forced in to and couldn't get out of. It's a respectable and decent career choice.
And for that very reason the competition is going to be ferocious. This is good for diners, foodies and people all over America. You'll be getting the best of the best. But this is difficult for all those hopeful chefs. It is going to be a a more crowded pond to survive in. You could give it your all, be exceptionally creative and talented and things just might not work out. You could fail even though you have not failed yourself. That's the nature of the business. You have to accept a few ignorant bastards on yelp.com could ruin your business because your waiter had a bad day. You have to accept that there's a hip new restaurant with models-serving-food drawing all your clientele down the street. You have to accept that to survive is to do so unconditionally, regardless of circumstances.
So there are many of me out there. Young, energetic, somewhat sharp of mind and ambitious cooks who are seeking glory out there in the dining halls. There are many who have had infinite more experience than me, have that Midas touch where all food turns delicious under their hands, or have had better training than me. I don't know what to expect when I get to culinary school, I will only expect to humbled. If I find out otherwise I will be pleasantly surprised, but I have to prepare for the fact that there are talented people out there ready to push me out of the way if I can't keep up.
All I've ever known of cooks have been Mexican cooks. Indefatigable, persistent survivors who used the colorblindness of the kitchen to succeed in this country. My sous chef Chuy doesn't know why force-feeding ducks makes foie gras taste so good (force feeding carbohydrates causes them to be broken down and accumulated as natural sugars and fat in an engorged liver... kind of like what most of Americans do to themselves), but he sure as hell knows how to saute it to crisp perfection in the shortest time possible. They are efficient cooks and even if they lack the "passion" or language skills to deeply pursue culinary knowledge, they know how to get shit done.
So I'm curious what kind of cooks I will encounter out there. These young American cooks who combine great passion with encyclopedic knowledge and proficient technique. I kind of fear them, but that's the kind of cook I think I can be. If I just have more time and I focus better on my training. I tell myself every week that I have to do better than the last. More uniform dices, cleaner plates, more efficient motions ... you have to tell yourself as a cook that there is no such thing as convenience, you have to do it the hard way because that makes things taste better.
I'm nervous now much like the way I used to be on the ultimate field. I would withdraw, be fearful, nervous of doing anything out of my limited comfort zone, not have fun. But I am comfortable now to be myself out there, to be bold and do things out of faith rather than knowing. Can I reach this point in cooking? My brain tells me certainly, my heart tells me maybe. There's still so much I don't know.
But the nice thing about being a cook is that there are always a few ways to gauge your progress. Your chef, if they are a good chef, will be riding your ass in to the ground. The less they bitch, the better you are doing. The chef used to taste every single pasta dish I put out as quality control. He no longer does that. There is no such thing as soaring praise in professional kitchens, it is just the absence of criticism you must take comfort in. And then there are your customers. Capricious, difficult and endowed with a sense of entitlement bordering on blue-blooded obnoxiousness, they will give you a very real calibration of how you are doing.
Generally, I don't get many complaints. It took me a few days to work out cooking ravioli to perfect doneness, the corners were a bit hard. Sometimes I make the ravioli when I get there at 2 PM and they are relatively fresh and cook quickly. Sometimes they are made a few days beforehand by the prep cook, it all depends on how busy we are. Then they are frozen en masse and take longer to cook. So knowing the order time, cooking time, ravioli condition, water temperature and bringing it all together at the right juncture of all four took some trial and error. I've gotten it down now for the most part. People love the potato-garlic ravioli infused with black truffle (to be fair the Chef has made the sauce for the past few weeks ... porcini-madeira glaze one week, chianti braised lamb ragu the next).
But I think there's an even better gauge than your chef (they can be temperamental, let's be honest), or your customers (even more temperamental).
Clean plates.
On slower nights I can watch the dishes go to the dishwasher. If I see plates minus the food they went out with, I know something is being done right. If I see clean, clean plates, plates that have been wiped dry with crusts of our rosemary-foccacia bread, then I know I'm definitely doing something right. And on the flipside, watching a waiter shovel half an uneaten dish in to the garbage? Bad news bears, friend.
So yes, clean plates. As a cook you must always ask yourself this; is it delicious? Are people unable to control their appetites with your food? Good. Drug those sons of bitches with the robust, natural flavors you develop. If you can make something so good it can't be left unfinished, then that is a truly successful dish.
The same goes for employee meal. I love making employee meal. I would make it everyday if I had the time to do so. One of Thomas Keller's first cooking jobs was being in charge of employee meals every day for a yacht club. Apparently they have those in country clubs and hotels where there are small armies of cooks and bakers. I would love that job. What a wonderful way to practice. There isn't the crushing pressure of failing a customer, and in turn your chef. You get to experiment and learn to economize upon the food scraps of the kitchen. But he also noted how meticulous he was and what he learned from this experience. He goes on to say,
"Can you be passionate about cooking at this level? Staff meal. Only the staff sees it. If you can make great food for these people, create that habit, have that drive, that sincerity, and keep that with you and take it to another level in the staff meal, then someday you'll be a great chef. Maybe."
I don't want to jump to any conclusions, but I sure as hell love making family meal and making it right. To their credit, the Mexicans focus on economy. They were taught to waste as little resource and money as possible for the benefit of the restaurant. So we get a lot of pasta with tomato sauce, a lot of old sauteed vegetables, and a lot of strange stews made with fish scraps. I kind of take a small liberty and try and go the extra step with family meal. I make jalapeno mac and cheese, I make filet mignon tacos (I might be the reason we need to order a lot more paprika/chili powder, but these are excellent when we have the scraps to make them), red onion quiche and tarragon chicken fricasee. Those have so far been my most popular dishes, and there's nothing more rewarding than seeing people coming back for seconds (especially the hot Romanian hostess ... I figure eventually I'll go up to her and be like, "You know ... I made those tacos. No big deal, just doin' my job" and she'll fall madly in love with me. Or something). And I will plan ahead to use some valuable scraps. The night before I was inspired to make the fricasee we roasted about 20 half chickens for a party. We had about 7 leftover and a whole sheet tray of juices and chicken fat, or what I like to call culinary gold. I poured them off into a container and let them sit covered in the fridge overnight. The next day I was greeted by about 4 cups of flavorful chicken juice and an inch of solidified chicken fat. Yum. The coolest thing is that the juices will gelatinize so I get a big block of delicious chicken jello. Then it went something like this.
First I pulled off the meat from the leftover chickens by hand, saved the skin and bones and made a quick stock with them (Sometimes I will make faux-chicharonnes with the chicken skin by patting them dry and frying them in hot, hot oil ... kind of time consuming though)
Heat up the chicken fat, heavily brown onions, mushrooms, garlic (onions are free game we get so many, and we had some mushrooms for our tagliatelle dish that were going south)
Deglaze with white wine (we use a standard 2007 pinot grigio for all cooking purposes, and we run through like a bottle a day... I used about half to deglaze), and cook off the alcohol
Throw in your big block of chicken jello and small diced potatoes and let them stew for a bit (we also had some leftover dried herbs which I added at this point, and I added a little bit of my quick stock to have enough liquid to properly stew ... you could use water, but an actual chicken stock would be best)
After those are stewed for a bit the starches from the potatoes have thickened up the liquid a little and flavors are beginning to meld nicely, I add a touch of heavy cream to smooth out the flavors and add richness, and then a few squeezes of lemon juice to brighten them
Then I add the pulled chicken meat and sliced tarragon (The chicken was already cooked so I didn't want it to overcook in the stew, more reheat it .. and the tarragon, which is quite an expensive herb, was leftover from Valentines Day and couldn't possibly go to waste)
And then adjust the seasonings with salt and pepper, adjust the acidity with lemon juice, and adjust the richness with butter or cream ... mine needed a bit more pop so I added a handful of cracked peppercorns, the kind you freshly crack with a saute pan.
Overall it was a success. It went wonderfully with Tabasco sauce (which is the no. 1 condiment in our kitchen, next to Valentina Hot Sauce) and I was not offended at all by its use. The hot acidity of the Tabasco was wonderfully complementary. As I saw waiters walk by and swipe a crust of bread through the dregs of the stew, I knew I had hit it on the money. The anise perfume of tarragon is just irresistible.
So will I be a great chef one day? I don't know, maybe. There are certainly many out there trying to do the same, if not better. I do know I love the smile on employee's faces when they get to eat something new, something that isn't leftover linguini with weak tomato sauce. The rest will have to fall in to place as we go.
Orale.
EP6
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Sense and Elegance
Cooking is sensory. Professional cooking requires you to focus upon and use all five senses everyday, to be truly aware of your environment and the flow of service around you. Casual cooking is not necessarily so, but you would benefit greatly from learning to open your ears and refining your touch with food. You can learn so much more about food than just with your eyes and your tongue. An example,
I've watched sushi rolls being made since I was about 7 years old when my mother added a sushi bar to her Chinese restaurant. Not only was that just an extremely popular idea for Chinese-American restaurants in the 90s, but it was endless entertainment for fat kids (i.e. myself). The perpetually semi-drunken sushi chef, the gristly "ewww-that's awesome!" appeal to young boys of butchering fish, and the underrated food porn power of sushi were great babysitters while my mother tended to restaurant needs. As long as it kept me from playing "He-Man vs. Optimus Prime on Planet Hoth!" in the ice chests behind the bar, she was happy. But I've always found sushi intriguing and even though I watched for years without the intent of learning to do it, when the time came for me to actually try I felt more than prepared.
I was disappointed to find it was not quite so simple. I know the process of rolling out maki like the back of my hand. Clean bamboo mat, sheet of nori, gently distribute the sushi rice with moistened hands, place ingredients in the center, roll carefully, tighten in to a cylinder, slice precisely in half then thirds. But during my first attempt I saw the sushi rice clumped up in the wrong places, the cylinder wasn't exactly solid and then this obviously affected the precision of the cutting. What the eff, bro? Well even though I had watched for so long I really only learned half of the process. Feeling and knowing when the cylinder is tight enough to slice, feeling how perfectly cooked sushi rice responds to your fingers, and feeling your knife react to various ingredients is something you learn only by doing, and doing often.
The same goes for Western cooking. I watched the line cooks at Oceanique and Va Pensiero cook busy nights for months before I ever got the chance to do it. Watching so much gave me the proper preparation to have a basic idea of what I needed to do, so I didn't start out clueless, but I still had a long way to go in terms of becoming proficient at it.
So for you ambitious home cooks you should start learning to tune all of your senses in to the creation of a dish. I think risotto is a good dish to try out your Chef-Spidey-sense-in-training on as properly made risotto requires the use of all five. Risotto is challenging, but it has an overly intimidating reputation, making many cooks shy away from the thought of it. It requires patience and being highly observant, but equipped with some basic knowledge you can make a fantastic risotto and bring elegance to your dining table (read: impress some hoez. Let's be honest now, so many cooks are hoping to increase their domestic and sexual appeal at the same time). But of course I need to talk your ear off first about what risotto is, and then subtly add obscure sci-fi/fantasy references to further cement my social status as an unequivocal nerd.
Prisencolinensinainciusol
What is risotto? For those of you who haven't had it or who have only had mediocre risotto at best, what it should be is a delectable rice dish that creates a natural creaminess unlike any other starch or grain. There are various types of rice that are used, the most popular being carnaroli and arborio. The former is usually considered superior to the latter, but arborio rice is cheaper and more widely available. You will also need to select the grain size type as they range from superfino to fino. The grain size does not reflect quality and you can make a wonderful risotto with any type and size. Some are better for certain applications, but for standard risotto it mostly comes down to personal preference.
The special thing about risotto is that the grains are covered in starches that are released by cooking in liquid and by the physical mechanics of stirring. When you add a proper amount of liquid, a risotto reaches a beautiful equilibrium of starch and liquid that results in a creamy, satiny consistency. When the rice is cooked perfectly to al dente then you have a dish that gives you a little bit of bite suspended by a smooth finish and a wide range of flavor possibilities.
Risotto is traditionally served on its own, mixed with small cuts of meat and vegetables, or occasionally paired with a meat entree, like osso bucco. Personally, I think it is best suited as a small appetizer, or maybe as a starch to go alongside braised meats. The creaminess and richness seems too redundant to me when eaten in large portions, but I find it a rather dynamic vehicle to deliver a small bit of powerful flavors. The texture can go alongside nicely with a succulent, fall-apart braised dish as well, being more texturally interesting than mashed potatoes. I can think of nothing more "rib-sticking" or warming in winter weather than a long braised short rib placed atop a small mound of creamy risotto. Also, risotto is almost always finished with fresh grated Parmigiano-Reggiano and butter in Italy.
So why all the fear and dread surrounding such a luxurious yet simple dish? Why in almost every cookbook I own does the chef-author acknowledge an initial nervousness with this grain? I mean it's not like something out of Harry Potter's Advanced Potion Making textbook (oh yeah, I'm going there). There isn't a precise number of counter-clockwise stirs to make, or an exact moment to clarify with gurdyroot to achieve Felix Felicis perfection (as some old school cookbooks would have you believe). I think most of it has to do with the almost constant observation it requires. Once you start a risotto you can't really stop, you have to guide it through every baby step, gauging doneness and tasting every step of the way. But we can break it down here for you in to a few simple sections, and you'll be on your way to getting your OWLS in risotto in no time (my inner nerd says yes, and yet my dignity says, please kill me).
This is your prep list, you'll need:
Carnaroli or arborio risotto (3/4 dry cup goes a long way, you'll probably have extras)
1 yellow onion, very finely diced (uniformly please, practice your knife skills)
A cup or so of dry white wine (remember what Riesling does to sauces, kids)
Freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano (that powder in a Kraft tube doesn't count)
1-2 quarts of chicken stock (preferably homemade, remember those chickens? Eh? Do it)
Unsalted butter (the creamier, the sweeter, the better)
That is the basis for almost all risottos. You can change the cooking liquid to pair whatever ingredient you are presenting with the risotto, not that you have to present any. But if you want to focus on vegetable flavors (or just go vegetarian) you could use vegetable stock or even water. You could use beef or veal stock if you're going with a beef or veal dish, red wine if you want a more noticeable wine canvas to build your flavors on so to speak, so on and so forth. But remember all that collagen/gelatin/gooey goodness in chicken stock (beef/veal stock also have a good amount of this stuff so long as it's homemade) helps to bolster the creaminess and flavor of the finished product. I would recommend starting out this way and then adding flavors on top of this foundation as it is fairly neutral and holds up well to modification. I've never heard of using fish fumet or shellfish stock to make a seafood risotto, I think the fish flavor might get out of hand, but as I've yet to try it I won't pass judgment.
Here we go. Get ready to use all five of those pretty little senses you have. Making a good risotto will require all of them being tuned up and at attention.
Bee tee dubz ... you can use almost anything to cook a risotto in, but I would recommend a medium sized sauce pan. I've used everything from tiny saute pans to giant stock pots to get fairly consistent results, but I think the best risotto is made in medium proportions. You also need a trusty wooden spoon, obvi.
Step One: You Toast but .. then again you Don't Toast
(Edit: I lied .. the first step is to heat up your chicken stock. It doesn't need to be at a boil, but it does need to be hot before you start. Heat it and keep it in a sauce pan with a ladle on the adjacent burner.)
The first step is to sweat the onions. You can use any cooking fat (people use anything from canola oil to lard), but why not keep it real and use olive oil and butter? You're going to add butter later, so add just a little bit of it now to give richness and nuttiness to the onions. You don't want the milk solids to brown or burn, even minor flavor defects will present strongly in the finished product, just let it get hot over medium heat. Now listen...
Drop in your onions so there is a sizzle, there should not be a violent hiss. You can easily tell the difference when you're listening for it. When there is just a sizzle that means the vegetables are sweating, when there's a violent hiss that means they are searing. The difference is in the movement of water. Sweating, as you could imagine, just gently leaches out the water in the onions where a great part of their flavor is. Searing leaches that water out very quickly and evaporates it almost in the same instant. That's how you get fond and nice crusts, but we don't necessarily want that in this situation. You want the onions to give up their flavor in the natural, sweaty way (delicious, I know) as opposed to deglazing them off with the wine later. When you deglaze you get strong, caramelized onion flavors. You just want the more subtle sweated flavors because you shouldn't really taste the onion, which is why it's important the dice is small. You don't want to bite a big chunk of it. It will just support without you really knowing it's there (kind of like a Wonderbra).
Now watch, when your onions become translucent you are ready for the next step. Note: even Alton Brown had a hard time describing what "translucent onions" really are, because they certainly aren't see-through. You will have to learn by sight what that exactly means, but basically it's when they become .. less opaque. I'm sorry if that's vague but know that if they start to brown up a bit on the edges, you've gone a bit too far. Now drop in your rice.
The goal is to cover the individual rice grains with a bit of fat. You don't want to toast the grains here, none of them should color, but you do want them to absorb a little of that EVOO/butter combo (did I just use a Rachael Ray term?) They will kind of clump up at first but then when they separate back in to individual grains you will know it's time to drop in the wine.
If there are any browned bits I wouldn't worry too much. Just deglaze them off with your wine. I know I made it sound like you will ruin your risotto if you brown up your onions, but in all reality I doubt you would notice. But if you are going to make risotto you might as well make it perfect. Drop in your wine, stir your rice a bit to incorporate the liquid and smell...
When you cook alcohol you can feel the raw bite of it in the back of your throat as you breathe it in. You want to cook the alcohol off, I can't think of many food applications of alcohol where you wouldn't want to. Keep stirring, making sure your rice never sticks to the pan and keep getting your face in there to breathe in the vapors. Once it no longer has that alcoholic burn to it, you are ready for the next step.
Step Two: Never Disengage, Maverick
You guys know what I'm talking about? That scene in Top Gun where you think Tom Cruise pooses out on his wingmen and is cracking in the heat of battle? And the angry, bald man at the comm is yelling "Reengage Maverick! Reengage!" while smoking a manly cigar? And then finally Tom Cruise gets his shit together, stops crying over Goose, bangs Kelly McGillis and saves Iceman and the proverbial day?
Yeah ... NEVER DO THAT WHEN COOKING RISOTTO. GOOD MEN WILL DIE!
In other words, do not leave it, do not ignore it, once you have begun you cannot stop (until a certain point I will mention later... so I massaged the truth, big deal). Ladle in enough hot chicken stock to cover the rice in an even layer, nearing the top of the grains. How high your heat is will determine how quickly it cooks, but generally medium-high is desirable.
You will need to stir often with your wooden spoon. Now I told you earlier you don't need any precise set of motions like Polyjuice Potion requires, but generally scraping the edges up and then stirring the center is a pretty effective way to get everything to work. You don't have to constantly stir, but my guess is that some rice will begin to stick after 30 seconds of not getting any attention (I know, risotto is such a needy whore). Stirring releases the starches from the grains in to the stock and helps the rice absorb the stock evenly. It is the most essential mechanic to making this dish. Do it well.
When enough liquid has been absorbed and evaporated, and the rice is looking a little drier add more stock. You will be doing this several times throughout the process for about 10-15 minutes. The stock is both cooking the rice and providing a medium for the starch. Now get ready to get in there and touch...
Don't burn yourself but periodically pick up a grain of rice and squeeze it. When it is far from being done you can feel the hard, raw core of the rice. But check every time you need to add more stock and you will feel the rice softening around the core. Eventually you will reach a point where the core of the rice grain breaks in to 2-3 pieces. You will see a fragmented rice grain when squeezed between your thumb/forefinger. At this point in the game you are about 70% there.
At this juncture you can start testing doneness by biting in to a grain. When the rice is still just a bit hard to the tooth, you can now stop if you choose. This is about where restaurant cooks will stop. They'll pull it off the stove and cool it in the refrigerator at 85-90% done. Why? Because risotto takes 15-18 minutes to go from raw to done, it would be extremely impractical for actual dinner service. Doing it this way, when a ticket is called for risotto we put it on the stove and it can finish in about 3-4 minutes. You can do the same, preparing for dinner that night or even a meal a few days away. There is actually a potential benefit to doing this step and to explain it I'll turn to my boy, McGee.
"...the traditional way until it's just short of done, then refrigerating it. This allows some of the cooked starch in the rice to firm, giving the grain more resilience than it would have if cooked fully and simply rewarmed. Then just before serving, the chilled rice is reheated and finished with hot broth and enrichments." (McGee, 475)
The grain having a bit more bite is a good step in my opinion because risotto can easily reach a pudding like consistency. Clearly that's not what you want. You want a creamy semi-liquid that gives a bite. You want textural diversity, not textural uniformity. Do what you like but I think it's definitely important to at least be aware of this step.
Okay, so you've been ladling in the stock, you've been stirring it and catering to its every whim, you've brought it to near completion ... it's the final countdown...
Step Three: Finish Him!
Season your risotto with a healthy amount of salt and keep constantly tasting. In professional cooking we are tasting through every step of making a dish. It's the only way to keep track of what's happening with the food, the unique characteristics of every ingredient and the subtle changes produced by heat. You'll know when it's good, it will be ... surprise, surprise ... very creamy rice.
The traditional way to finish it is with a healthy handful of parmigiano-reggiano cheese, and a few knobs of butter. I recommend you do this almost regardless of what you're planning in the end. My chef makes a big point of this step and ragged on me for a long time to get it right. You've got to take the risotto off the heat. Kill the burner or preferably move the pot, it's time to say good night to the flame for now.
The liquid that suspends all that lovely rice is essentially a sauce. When the heat is on, and you add butter and cheese, it just melts and then you have some melted butter here, some cheese there. Now when you take it off the heat and you stir like a mad man, then you're making some magic. Stirring vigorously combined with the residual heat of the risotto will emulsify the butter and cheese in to this "sauce" that is your cooking liquid. Emulsification in food takes too long to explain properly here, but you are making a thicker, more balanced sauce. Basically,
The butter is physically beat and melted in to bajillions of tiny particles evenly suspended in the liquid, creating richness and thickness.
The stirring is releasing the final coatings of starch and further thickening your flavorful liquid.
The stirring evenly incorporates the cheese much like the butter.
Okay I guess that wasn't too hard to explain, so fucking do it. That's right, it's a command. God knows I've had that barked at me many a time.
Now spoon a bit of risotto on to a plate. Look at it, there shouldn't be liquid running away from the pile and the rice shouldn't look tight and sticky. Bite it, it should have resilience but otherworldly creaminess as well. Taste it, does it need more salt? Is it delicious? Listen to it ...
...
Okay just kidding, that won't help you.
Edit: If you make too much risotto for one meal it also kind of has a finicky storage policy. You should set aside extra at the 85-90% point, rather than completely cooked risotto. Thoroughly cooked risotto keeps cooking with its own residual heat and dries out and becomes a gooey mass. You can reheat it with stock but don't expect very fantastic results. Keep this in mind.
Step Four: The Step That I Probably Should Have Put Before the Other Steps
Now what can you do with the flavor of this textural wonderment that is risotto?
As I mentioned before, I think a small dish of risotto as a sort of appetizer is amazing. Maybe some of you can just eat a giant bowl of risotto and love it, but the creaminess can be overwhelming and eventually boring for me. But it can be such a powerful vehicle for flavors that its short burst potential is great.
You can steep saffron threads in to the stock to make a perfumed, shockingly yellow risotto. You can saute some shrimp or bay scallops on the side and fold them in to the finished product. You can spoon a dollop of basil pesto on top to give a punctuation of acidity and depth. You can mix in a more melty cheese like fontina or mozzarella for that lovely, stretchy texture and tangy flavor. You can mix in some roasted butternut squash (very popular combination) for a sweet and luscious wintry treat. I can keep using as many seductive adjectives until I run out and just tell you that the possibilities are endless. Oh wait, I just did.
The best risotto I ever had? BLT Market, New York City. Creamy white lobster risotto with fresh chervil, black truffles shaved on top at the table. Risotto is a famous vehicle for fresh shaved truffles. The funky aroma of truffles seems to explode from the shaving process, tantalizing a diner's nose from the get-go, and the creamy liquid and truffle flavor seem made for each other, embracing one another immediately and deliciously.
If someone is really bored, can they tell me how many times I used the word "creamy" in this post? Thanks. Over/under 50?
Happy cooking, this has been a test of the Panda Educational Culinary Blog Experiment.
EP6
I've watched sushi rolls being made since I was about 7 years old when my mother added a sushi bar to her Chinese restaurant. Not only was that just an extremely popular idea for Chinese-American restaurants in the 90s, but it was endless entertainment for fat kids (i.e. myself). The perpetually semi-drunken sushi chef, the gristly "ewww-that's awesome!" appeal to young boys of butchering fish, and the underrated food porn power of sushi were great babysitters while my mother tended to restaurant needs. As long as it kept me from playing "He-Man vs. Optimus Prime on Planet Hoth!" in the ice chests behind the bar, she was happy. But I've always found sushi intriguing and even though I watched for years without the intent of learning to do it, when the time came for me to actually try I felt more than prepared.
I was disappointed to find it was not quite so simple. I know the process of rolling out maki like the back of my hand. Clean bamboo mat, sheet of nori, gently distribute the sushi rice with moistened hands, place ingredients in the center, roll carefully, tighten in to a cylinder, slice precisely in half then thirds. But during my first attempt I saw the sushi rice clumped up in the wrong places, the cylinder wasn't exactly solid and then this obviously affected the precision of the cutting. What the eff, bro? Well even though I had watched for so long I really only learned half of the process. Feeling and knowing when the cylinder is tight enough to slice, feeling how perfectly cooked sushi rice responds to your fingers, and feeling your knife react to various ingredients is something you learn only by doing, and doing often.
The same goes for Western cooking. I watched the line cooks at Oceanique and Va Pensiero cook busy nights for months before I ever got the chance to do it. Watching so much gave me the proper preparation to have a basic idea of what I needed to do, so I didn't start out clueless, but I still had a long way to go in terms of becoming proficient at it.
So for you ambitious home cooks you should start learning to tune all of your senses in to the creation of a dish. I think risotto is a good dish to try out your Chef-Spidey-sense-in-training on as properly made risotto requires the use of all five. Risotto is challenging, but it has an overly intimidating reputation, making many cooks shy away from the thought of it. It requires patience and being highly observant, but equipped with some basic knowledge you can make a fantastic risotto and bring elegance to your dining table (read: impress some hoez. Let's be honest now, so many cooks are hoping to increase their domestic and sexual appeal at the same time). But of course I need to talk your ear off first about what risotto is, and then subtly add obscure sci-fi/fantasy references to further cement my social status as an unequivocal nerd.
Prisencolinensinainciusol
What is risotto? For those of you who haven't had it or who have only had mediocre risotto at best, what it should be is a delectable rice dish that creates a natural creaminess unlike any other starch or grain. There are various types of rice that are used, the most popular being carnaroli and arborio. The former is usually considered superior to the latter, but arborio rice is cheaper and more widely available. You will also need to select the grain size type as they range from superfino to fino. The grain size does not reflect quality and you can make a wonderful risotto with any type and size. Some are better for certain applications, but for standard risotto it mostly comes down to personal preference.
The special thing about risotto is that the grains are covered in starches that are released by cooking in liquid and by the physical mechanics of stirring. When you add a proper amount of liquid, a risotto reaches a beautiful equilibrium of starch and liquid that results in a creamy, satiny consistency. When the rice is cooked perfectly to al dente then you have a dish that gives you a little bit of bite suspended by a smooth finish and a wide range of flavor possibilities.
Risotto is traditionally served on its own, mixed with small cuts of meat and vegetables, or occasionally paired with a meat entree, like osso bucco. Personally, I think it is best suited as a small appetizer, or maybe as a starch to go alongside braised meats. The creaminess and richness seems too redundant to me when eaten in large portions, but I find it a rather dynamic vehicle to deliver a small bit of powerful flavors. The texture can go alongside nicely with a succulent, fall-apart braised dish as well, being more texturally interesting than mashed potatoes. I can think of nothing more "rib-sticking" or warming in winter weather than a long braised short rib placed atop a small mound of creamy risotto. Also, risotto is almost always finished with fresh grated Parmigiano-Reggiano and butter in Italy.
So why all the fear and dread surrounding such a luxurious yet simple dish? Why in almost every cookbook I own does the chef-author acknowledge an initial nervousness with this grain? I mean it's not like something out of Harry Potter's Advanced Potion Making textbook (oh yeah, I'm going there). There isn't a precise number of counter-clockwise stirs to make, or an exact moment to clarify with gurdyroot to achieve Felix Felicis perfection (as some old school cookbooks would have you believe). I think most of it has to do with the almost constant observation it requires. Once you start a risotto you can't really stop, you have to guide it through every baby step, gauging doneness and tasting every step of the way. But we can break it down here for you in to a few simple sections, and you'll be on your way to getting your OWLS in risotto in no time (my inner nerd says yes, and yet my dignity says, please kill me).
This is your prep list, you'll need:
Carnaroli or arborio risotto (3/4 dry cup goes a long way, you'll probably have extras)
1 yellow onion, very finely diced (uniformly please, practice your knife skills)
A cup or so of dry white wine (remember what Riesling does to sauces, kids)
Freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano (that powder in a Kraft tube doesn't count)
1-2 quarts of chicken stock (preferably homemade, remember those chickens? Eh? Do it)
Unsalted butter (the creamier, the sweeter, the better)
That is the basis for almost all risottos. You can change the cooking liquid to pair whatever ingredient you are presenting with the risotto, not that you have to present any. But if you want to focus on vegetable flavors (or just go vegetarian) you could use vegetable stock or even water. You could use beef or veal stock if you're going with a beef or veal dish, red wine if you want a more noticeable wine canvas to build your flavors on so to speak, so on and so forth. But remember all that collagen/gelatin/gooey goodness in chicken stock (beef/veal stock also have a good amount of this stuff so long as it's homemade) helps to bolster the creaminess and flavor of the finished product. I would recommend starting out this way and then adding flavors on top of this foundation as it is fairly neutral and holds up well to modification. I've never heard of using fish fumet or shellfish stock to make a seafood risotto, I think the fish flavor might get out of hand, but as I've yet to try it I won't pass judgment.
Here we go. Get ready to use all five of those pretty little senses you have. Making a good risotto will require all of them being tuned up and at attention.
Bee tee dubz ... you can use almost anything to cook a risotto in, but I would recommend a medium sized sauce pan. I've used everything from tiny saute pans to giant stock pots to get fairly consistent results, but I think the best risotto is made in medium proportions. You also need a trusty wooden spoon, obvi.
Step One: You Toast but .. then again you Don't Toast
(Edit: I lied .. the first step is to heat up your chicken stock. It doesn't need to be at a boil, but it does need to be hot before you start. Heat it and keep it in a sauce pan with a ladle on the adjacent burner.)
The first step is to sweat the onions. You can use any cooking fat (people use anything from canola oil to lard), but why not keep it real and use olive oil and butter? You're going to add butter later, so add just a little bit of it now to give richness and nuttiness to the onions. You don't want the milk solids to brown or burn, even minor flavor defects will present strongly in the finished product, just let it get hot over medium heat. Now listen...
Drop in your onions so there is a sizzle, there should not be a violent hiss. You can easily tell the difference when you're listening for it. When there is just a sizzle that means the vegetables are sweating, when there's a violent hiss that means they are searing. The difference is in the movement of water. Sweating, as you could imagine, just gently leaches out the water in the onions where a great part of their flavor is. Searing leaches that water out very quickly and evaporates it almost in the same instant. That's how you get fond and nice crusts, but we don't necessarily want that in this situation. You want the onions to give up their flavor in the natural, sweaty way (delicious, I know) as opposed to deglazing them off with the wine later. When you deglaze you get strong, caramelized onion flavors. You just want the more subtle sweated flavors because you shouldn't really taste the onion, which is why it's important the dice is small. You don't want to bite a big chunk of it. It will just support without you really knowing it's there (kind of like a Wonderbra).
Now watch, when your onions become translucent you are ready for the next step. Note: even Alton Brown had a hard time describing what "translucent onions" really are, because they certainly aren't see-through. You will have to learn by sight what that exactly means, but basically it's when they become .. less opaque. I'm sorry if that's vague but know that if they start to brown up a bit on the edges, you've gone a bit too far. Now drop in your rice.
The goal is to cover the individual rice grains with a bit of fat. You don't want to toast the grains here, none of them should color, but you do want them to absorb a little of that EVOO/butter combo (did I just use a Rachael Ray term?) They will kind of clump up at first but then when they separate back in to individual grains you will know it's time to drop in the wine.
If there are any browned bits I wouldn't worry too much. Just deglaze them off with your wine. I know I made it sound like you will ruin your risotto if you brown up your onions, but in all reality I doubt you would notice. But if you are going to make risotto you might as well make it perfect. Drop in your wine, stir your rice a bit to incorporate the liquid and smell...
When you cook alcohol you can feel the raw bite of it in the back of your throat as you breathe it in. You want to cook the alcohol off, I can't think of many food applications of alcohol where you wouldn't want to. Keep stirring, making sure your rice never sticks to the pan and keep getting your face in there to breathe in the vapors. Once it no longer has that alcoholic burn to it, you are ready for the next step.
Step Two: Never Disengage, Maverick
You guys know what I'm talking about? That scene in Top Gun where you think Tom Cruise pooses out on his wingmen and is cracking in the heat of battle? And the angry, bald man at the comm is yelling "Reengage Maverick! Reengage!" while smoking a manly cigar? And then finally Tom Cruise gets his shit together, stops crying over Goose, bangs Kelly McGillis and saves Iceman and the proverbial day?
Yeah ... NEVER DO THAT WHEN COOKING RISOTTO. GOOD MEN WILL DIE!
In other words, do not leave it, do not ignore it, once you have begun you cannot stop (until a certain point I will mention later... so I massaged the truth, big deal). Ladle in enough hot chicken stock to cover the rice in an even layer, nearing the top of the grains. How high your heat is will determine how quickly it cooks, but generally medium-high is desirable.
You will need to stir often with your wooden spoon. Now I told you earlier you don't need any precise set of motions like Polyjuice Potion requires, but generally scraping the edges up and then stirring the center is a pretty effective way to get everything to work. You don't have to constantly stir, but my guess is that some rice will begin to stick after 30 seconds of not getting any attention (I know, risotto is such a needy whore). Stirring releases the starches from the grains in to the stock and helps the rice absorb the stock evenly. It is the most essential mechanic to making this dish. Do it well.
When enough liquid has been absorbed and evaporated, and the rice is looking a little drier add more stock. You will be doing this several times throughout the process for about 10-15 minutes. The stock is both cooking the rice and providing a medium for the starch. Now get ready to get in there and touch...
Don't burn yourself but periodically pick up a grain of rice and squeeze it. When it is far from being done you can feel the hard, raw core of the rice. But check every time you need to add more stock and you will feel the rice softening around the core. Eventually you will reach a point where the core of the rice grain breaks in to 2-3 pieces. You will see a fragmented rice grain when squeezed between your thumb/forefinger. At this point in the game you are about 70% there.
At this juncture you can start testing doneness by biting in to a grain. When the rice is still just a bit hard to the tooth, you can now stop if you choose. This is about where restaurant cooks will stop. They'll pull it off the stove and cool it in the refrigerator at 85-90% done. Why? Because risotto takes 15-18 minutes to go from raw to done, it would be extremely impractical for actual dinner service. Doing it this way, when a ticket is called for risotto we put it on the stove and it can finish in about 3-4 minutes. You can do the same, preparing for dinner that night or even a meal a few days away. There is actually a potential benefit to doing this step and to explain it I'll turn to my boy, McGee.
"...the traditional way until it's just short of done, then refrigerating it. This allows some of the cooked starch in the rice to firm, giving the grain more resilience than it would have if cooked fully and simply rewarmed. Then just before serving, the chilled rice is reheated and finished with hot broth and enrichments." (McGee, 475)
The grain having a bit more bite is a good step in my opinion because risotto can easily reach a pudding like consistency. Clearly that's not what you want. You want a creamy semi-liquid that gives a bite. You want textural diversity, not textural uniformity. Do what you like but I think it's definitely important to at least be aware of this step.
Okay, so you've been ladling in the stock, you've been stirring it and catering to its every whim, you've brought it to near completion ... it's the final countdown...
Step Three: Finish Him!
Season your risotto with a healthy amount of salt and keep constantly tasting. In professional cooking we are tasting through every step of making a dish. It's the only way to keep track of what's happening with the food, the unique characteristics of every ingredient and the subtle changes produced by heat. You'll know when it's good, it will be ... surprise, surprise ... very creamy rice.
The traditional way to finish it is with a healthy handful of parmigiano-reggiano cheese, and a few knobs of butter. I recommend you do this almost regardless of what you're planning in the end. My chef makes a big point of this step and ragged on me for a long time to get it right. You've got to take the risotto off the heat. Kill the burner or preferably move the pot, it's time to say good night to the flame for now.
The liquid that suspends all that lovely rice is essentially a sauce. When the heat is on, and you add butter and cheese, it just melts and then you have some melted butter here, some cheese there. Now when you take it off the heat and you stir like a mad man, then you're making some magic. Stirring vigorously combined with the residual heat of the risotto will emulsify the butter and cheese in to this "sauce" that is your cooking liquid. Emulsification in food takes too long to explain properly here, but you are making a thicker, more balanced sauce. Basically,
The butter is physically beat and melted in to bajillions of tiny particles evenly suspended in the liquid, creating richness and thickness.
The stirring is releasing the final coatings of starch and further thickening your flavorful liquid.
The stirring evenly incorporates the cheese much like the butter.
Okay I guess that wasn't too hard to explain, so fucking do it. That's right, it's a command. God knows I've had that barked at me many a time.
Now spoon a bit of risotto on to a plate. Look at it, there shouldn't be liquid running away from the pile and the rice shouldn't look tight and sticky. Bite it, it should have resilience but otherworldly creaminess as well. Taste it, does it need more salt? Is it delicious? Listen to it ...
...
Okay just kidding, that won't help you.
Edit: If you make too much risotto for one meal it also kind of has a finicky storage policy. You should set aside extra at the 85-90% point, rather than completely cooked risotto. Thoroughly cooked risotto keeps cooking with its own residual heat and dries out and becomes a gooey mass. You can reheat it with stock but don't expect very fantastic results. Keep this in mind.
Step Four: The Step That I Probably Should Have Put Before the Other Steps
Now what can you do with the flavor of this textural wonderment that is risotto?
As I mentioned before, I think a small dish of risotto as a sort of appetizer is amazing. Maybe some of you can just eat a giant bowl of risotto and love it, but the creaminess can be overwhelming and eventually boring for me. But it can be such a powerful vehicle for flavors that its short burst potential is great.
You can steep saffron threads in to the stock to make a perfumed, shockingly yellow risotto. You can saute some shrimp or bay scallops on the side and fold them in to the finished product. You can spoon a dollop of basil pesto on top to give a punctuation of acidity and depth. You can mix in a more melty cheese like fontina or mozzarella for that lovely, stretchy texture and tangy flavor. You can mix in some roasted butternut squash (very popular combination) for a sweet and luscious wintry treat. I can keep using as many seductive adjectives until I run out and just tell you that the possibilities are endless. Oh wait, I just did.
The best risotto I ever had? BLT Market, New York City. Creamy white lobster risotto with fresh chervil, black truffles shaved on top at the table. Risotto is a famous vehicle for fresh shaved truffles. The funky aroma of truffles seems to explode from the shaving process, tantalizing a diner's nose from the get-go, and the creamy liquid and truffle flavor seem made for each other, embracing one another immediately and deliciously.
If someone is really bored, can they tell me how many times I used the word "creamy" in this post? Thanks. Over/under 50?
Happy cooking, this has been a test of the Panda Educational Culinary Blog Experiment.
EP6
Thursday, February 11, 2010
The Beautiful Struggle
My chef was just chattering today while we were running through our Valentine's Day prep and he mentions the movie Julie and Julia. Now I've yet to see this movie, which is damn near heresy in the food-o-sphere, but I hear good things. Le Chef shares the opinion that many others do. Basically yay for Meryl Streep and Julia Child, boo for Amy Adams and whoever the hell she plays. He ends his quip with a question to me and asks, "Why don't you write a blog about your road to culinary school? Maybe people will find it interesting. Maybe for some reason they'll think you're interesting enough to talk about."
Well thanks for the faith in my life being somewhat intriguing, but actually I already started that so, :P.
But I realize some must think, "Oh look at Eric, trying to be so different and look at how exciting he makes his career out to be and how much he enjoys it. Ooooh fancy!" But that's not always the case. True, I do enjoy my career, it's the reason I'm pursuing it in the first place, but it's not all puppies and rainbows. It's kind of like the first year of a relationship. Everything's all exciting; you're learning new things, experiencing new experiences, everything is so goddamned lovey-dovey. But there are a bunch of roadblocks just on the horizon. All jobs are hard in their own way, kitchen work is just hard in a different sort of way. And when it gets hard it can really test your mettle.
Today was not a good day (Sorry, Ice Cube). Everything that could go wrong went wrong. And it all started because the guy who usually works the cold station really didn't prep his station at all. He wiped it out on Wednesday and left me a laundry list of shit to do and some. I knew that going in to the day and it still caused a bevy of hiccups.
I wish I had a photo (so you could see how shitty my handwriting has become) but here's what my prep list looked like. I usually write down the list of things on a blank sheet of receipt paper.
2 recipes budinos (2 sheet trays large, 2 small)
200 arancini
Basil pesto
Roast squash/zucc
Roast beet
Beet carpaccio
Pesto butter
Strawberries
Oranges
Normal prep
So basically what that means is I have to prep about 200 budinos, which are mini chocolate cakes essentially, 200 arancini, which are fried risotto balls, and then all that other shit on top of normal prep responsibilities for my station. I am pissed, I am fucked, I am so deep in the weeds I can't see the sky.
Making two recipes of budinos requires me to crack 64 eggs, and then separate 64 yolks, so 128 eggs and be careful to get no eggshells in the mix. 200 arancini means I have to cook about a pound of risotto and steep saffron, and risotto requires your undivided attention for at least 30 min. Cool it, add fontina cheese, form it in to 200 one oz. balls, bread it, fry it. And then all the other shit requires some time and I have about 3 hours until service to do it. Granted, I should have come in early to make sure everything was done in time but I fucked up and woke up late. Oh did I mention I have to make employee meal also?
I knock out the pesto, the roasted veg and start working on the budinos. Cracking eggs takes about 15 min. to my surprise, but mixing the bastard and then pouring it out into individual cake ramekins wrapped in plastic wrap takes almost 30 min. I decide to make jalapeno mac and cheese for employee meal and that takes me at least a half an hour as well. By the time 5 PM rolls around I'm not really close to being ready.
Around 6 PM my chef asks me where the arancini are. They are on the antipasti menu for tonight. I was under the impression they were being prepped for this weekend, not tonight. They were sitting in the cooler waiting to be formed in to balls and breaded. Shit.
We kind of half-ass a solution but the risotto is undercooked. My fault. I throw it back on the stove with some chicken stock and then I overcook it. My fault again. Things are not going well because orders are being called and I'm still trying to prep for the night. I'm running back and forth between the stoves and the pantry to stir my risotto and make salads at the same time. I am pissed off that I am left in this situation.
So I start acting like a child. Slamming cutting boards and oven doors, hacking off endive roots with brutal alacrity, cursing under my breath and shoving finished plates in to the window with careless bitterness. The staff starts to notice, and the Mexicans get annoyed. Finally, Luis curses me out after I slam the oven door right by his station.
"Huevon, a la casa!"
Huevon is an insult to mean a lazy, stupid person. I was taught this recently and I did not appreciate for a second that I was a) being called lazy when I was picking up someone elses' slack, b) being told to go home by someone who is not my boss.
I continue my immature behavior and shout back, "I'm not fucking lazy! Maybe Maestro should have done some fucking work yesterday!"
He retorts, "Shut up you little bitch" in English.
It's never good to get someone so angry they consider physical violence. It's especially never good to do this in a kitchen where there are a plethora of sharp knives and fiery objects around. Now I'm not very good at throwing knives (It's an optional part of the curriculum in Asian Parenting 101), but I do have a big one in my hands. I come much closer than I would like to admit to actually throwing the thing at Luis' face. It's pretty difficult to get me this enraged, but I've taken enough abuse for the day. I end up pointing the knife menacingly at him and taking an unfortunate amount of time to come up with a good riposte.
I can't call him lazy. This guy is actually fairly well-off in Mexico, but he came to America anyway to work 14 hour days. He starts at 7 AM at Bravo! Italian Restaurant and then comes straight to Va P to work a dinner shift. Shit, that won't work..
I can't call him fat, as immature as that would be, because he's actually one of the thinner guys in the kitchen. I can't knock him on his cooking because he's a solid and reliable cook. So my only choices are to be really stupid and say something borderline racist, or just give him a big "Fuck you."
I opt for the latter. I shout "FUCK YOU, pinchi culero," which translates to "FUCK YOU, you fucking asshole." Effective I know. He flips me the Mexican bird (which is kind of like a flick of the palm) and the chef comes in to give me a stern talking to. He doesn't think the dining room heard me, but I'm being loud enough that he thinks it's a problem. He gives me a prompt, "Shut the fuck up."
I am seething, but I've stopped my petulant behavior and just turned it inwards. The dark side of the Force is pouring through me, but I'm being good enough to release my anger in to solid cooking. I get plates out fast, I plate desserts real fast, I just stop talking and stop thinking and just doing. Before I know it almost everything is done, except the last recipe of budinos (all the eggs are cracked, and the ramekins are ready, he just needs to mix and pour).
But I'm still furious and every time someone talks to me I grunt back and give them a dirty look. I avoid eye contact with Luis because it'll just make me more angry. I am hating every inch of this stupid kitchen and all the foreign Mexican chatter floating around. I leave with a serious urge to kill rising in my gut.
This was just one of those days that makes you hate your job. Every job has those kind of days, but in a kitchen these days usually coincide with the busiest weekends. Valentine's Day is fucking war, kids. Whether you think it's a stupid holiday or a great excuse to get laid, it causes upheaval and panic in the restaurant industry. Okay, good restaurants won't panic, and we aren't panicking, but it is stressing me out. I have a long ass weekend ahead of me and I just want it to be over.
But that's the reality of the job and I had the whole way home to think about it. And the more I thought about it I realized, I was being a little bitch. Alright, you got screwed that's true. What the hell does complaining about it do? Nothing. Do you want someone to feel bad for you? Sack up. What does acting like a child throwing a fit do? Throws everyone else's chi off and disturbs the rhythm of service, not to mention just annoys people. Cooks often call the start of service time "curtain call," which is a very apt description. As soon as service starts, the show must go on. No one fucking cares what kind of bullshit is going on back there. Paying customers show up and they expect results. In hardcore kitchens there are no sick days, there are no excuses. Customers don't care if your dishwasher decided to not show. They don't care if your shipment of beef didn't come in, or that you by accidentally let a box of frisee rot. They just want their food, their restaurant experience, and they'll leave their money for it. Just get the job done.
This Rule #76 (No excuses, play like a champion) attitude to the job is both exciting and disheartening. When things are smooth it can really jack up your adrenaline as you feel you are in a constant, but winning battle against the customers and the clock. When things are bumpy, it is terrible. You're fighting a losing battle to keep up and god keeps throwing wrenches in your plan. There's nothing you can do, customers get pissed off, then the waiters get pissed off, then the cooks get pissed off. Shit hits the effing fan, chain reaction to hell commences.
So it's good and it's bad. That's the case with everything in life, nothing is perfect. Do I regret base jumping in to a kitchen with no real experience? Not for a second. Had I gone straight to culinary school like I had originally planned, I think there's a good chance I would have washed out. The pressure, the pace, the stress might have broken me. Do I wish it were easier sometimes? Yes, sometimes, but as my mom and eerily enough my chef always says, "If it were easy, everyone would do it." The difficulties of any job are something you either kind of enjoy and rise to the challenge of, or something that breaks you. Only the truly successful, the cream of the crop enjoy life's endless obstacles. Though they shave years off your life, cause you terrible stress at the time, overcoming them is an achievement in itself.
So while I've somehow managed to wax motivational again, with this whole "Life is unfair, work is difficult" shpiel, I'm glad this happened. Though the steam is just done boiling out of my ears, I realized that all the inspirational shit I tell myself, I now must start doing. Showing up is not enough. Work is not playtime. You didn't come here to socialize, you came here to hone your technique, to learn what it's like to work the line, to fight through service. To be thrown in to the weeds and to hack your way out. Well I didn't do a great job of it today, but I'll be ready next time. No more excuses, no more shortcuts.
The kitchen doesn't teach me everything. I learn a lot on my own because I read a ton of cookbooks and just expose myself to a lot of food information in general. When I make jalapeno mac and cheese, I don't need a recipe. I see jalapenos, I see various cheeses, vegetables, milk, butter, flour = Bechamel sauce with mixed cheeses, sauteed onions and jalapenos, combine and enjoy. Chef Jeff never taught me what a Bechamel sauce is (Blonde roux + milk, salt/pepper, mother sauce). I learned how to make that myself, embarassingly enough from Bobby Flay on an episode of Iron Chef I think. I learned the principles of what makes it work from Harold McGee. I know what a chiffonade cut is, I know how to dice an onion, I know how to hold a knife, I know what sauteing vs. braising does to meat because I learned it myself. I think Chef assumes I learned it at Oceanique. I didn't really learn anything at Oceanique. Almost all the food knowledge I have is of my own doing.
My point is, I need to stop relying on people to sympathize, to pick me up when I'm down. True, kitchens require teamwork. But I want to be an island. I'll help as necessary, but I want to be so badass of a cook that I can bump you off your station and work 2 of them like it was nothing. That will require my ongoing personal quest for knowledge and a strong application of it in the field. This isn't a profession that people just happen in to or can't escape anymore. This is becoming an ultra-competitive profession that people will fight tooth-and-nail to succeed at. I'm not saying you have to cut people down on your way to the top, but you have to learn how to rely on yourself and your skills as a cook.
As a generation of young people who have no idea what they want to do with their lives is beginning to bloom, I think a lot of them are finding their way in to the restaurant business. It's an attractive industry for these kind of people who, like me, think of cubicles as galleys, and ties as nooses. Of course everyone would like to work for Thomas Keller at Per Se. It's the best restaurant in America. What are you going to do to earn that though? Thankfully, politics and appearances do little to get you there. It's all about how you handle service, how much you know about food, how unquenchable your thirst is, how impeccable you can be, and how well you can fight your way out of the weeds. At the end of the day it' just about how well you can fucking cook.
Recently an American cook quit Va Pensiero. He said he was really into molecular gastronomy and didn't really fit in with the food and the people here, but really he had sort of a meltdown one night like I almost did tonight. It was maybe 3 weeks since his first day. On his first day the Chef asked him to make our beef tenderloin dish, kind of as a tryout. Grilled beef medallions, garlic mashed potatoes, sauteed rapini, glazed shitake mushrooms, beef peppercorn sauce. The Chef asked for medium rare. I watched him cut it open to see a grayish ring of meat and a pink center. Medium, rested improperly. He knew he had kind of pushed it past temp and plated it too soon. The Chef hired him anyways. But now that he's gone, he has a sort of resentment that his cooking style was scorned for this newfangled scientific school of cooking. He tells me one day,
"That's great and all if you're in to molecular gastronomy. But before you do all that you got to learn to hit medium rare."
Lesson learned. Onwards and upwards.
EP6
Well thanks for the faith in my life being somewhat intriguing, but actually I already started that so, :P.
But I realize some must think, "Oh look at Eric, trying to be so different and look at how exciting he makes his career out to be and how much he enjoys it. Ooooh fancy!" But that's not always the case. True, I do enjoy my career, it's the reason I'm pursuing it in the first place, but it's not all puppies and rainbows. It's kind of like the first year of a relationship. Everything's all exciting; you're learning new things, experiencing new experiences, everything is so goddamned lovey-dovey. But there are a bunch of roadblocks just on the horizon. All jobs are hard in their own way, kitchen work is just hard in a different sort of way. And when it gets hard it can really test your mettle.
Today was not a good day (Sorry, Ice Cube). Everything that could go wrong went wrong. And it all started because the guy who usually works the cold station really didn't prep his station at all. He wiped it out on Wednesday and left me a laundry list of shit to do and some. I knew that going in to the day and it still caused a bevy of hiccups.
I wish I had a photo (so you could see how shitty my handwriting has become) but here's what my prep list looked like. I usually write down the list of things on a blank sheet of receipt paper.
2 recipes budinos (2 sheet trays large, 2 small)
200 arancini
Basil pesto
Roast squash/zucc
Roast beet
Beet carpaccio
Pesto butter
Strawberries
Oranges
Normal prep
So basically what that means is I have to prep about 200 budinos, which are mini chocolate cakes essentially, 200 arancini, which are fried risotto balls, and then all that other shit on top of normal prep responsibilities for my station. I am pissed, I am fucked, I am so deep in the weeds I can't see the sky.
Making two recipes of budinos requires me to crack 64 eggs, and then separate 64 yolks, so 128 eggs and be careful to get no eggshells in the mix. 200 arancini means I have to cook about a pound of risotto and steep saffron, and risotto requires your undivided attention for at least 30 min. Cool it, add fontina cheese, form it in to 200 one oz. balls, bread it, fry it. And then all the other shit requires some time and I have about 3 hours until service to do it. Granted, I should have come in early to make sure everything was done in time but I fucked up and woke up late. Oh did I mention I have to make employee meal also?
I knock out the pesto, the roasted veg and start working on the budinos. Cracking eggs takes about 15 min. to my surprise, but mixing the bastard and then pouring it out into individual cake ramekins wrapped in plastic wrap takes almost 30 min. I decide to make jalapeno mac and cheese for employee meal and that takes me at least a half an hour as well. By the time 5 PM rolls around I'm not really close to being ready.
Around 6 PM my chef asks me where the arancini are. They are on the antipasti menu for tonight. I was under the impression they were being prepped for this weekend, not tonight. They were sitting in the cooler waiting to be formed in to balls and breaded. Shit.
We kind of half-ass a solution but the risotto is undercooked. My fault. I throw it back on the stove with some chicken stock and then I overcook it. My fault again. Things are not going well because orders are being called and I'm still trying to prep for the night. I'm running back and forth between the stoves and the pantry to stir my risotto and make salads at the same time. I am pissed off that I am left in this situation.
So I start acting like a child. Slamming cutting boards and oven doors, hacking off endive roots with brutal alacrity, cursing under my breath and shoving finished plates in to the window with careless bitterness. The staff starts to notice, and the Mexicans get annoyed. Finally, Luis curses me out after I slam the oven door right by his station.
"Huevon, a la casa!"
Huevon is an insult to mean a lazy, stupid person. I was taught this recently and I did not appreciate for a second that I was a) being called lazy when I was picking up someone elses' slack, b) being told to go home by someone who is not my boss.
I continue my immature behavior and shout back, "I'm not fucking lazy! Maybe Maestro should have done some fucking work yesterday!"
He retorts, "Shut up you little bitch" in English.
It's never good to get someone so angry they consider physical violence. It's especially never good to do this in a kitchen where there are a plethora of sharp knives and fiery objects around. Now I'm not very good at throwing knives (It's an optional part of the curriculum in Asian Parenting 101), but I do have a big one in my hands. I come much closer than I would like to admit to actually throwing the thing at Luis' face. It's pretty difficult to get me this enraged, but I've taken enough abuse for the day. I end up pointing the knife menacingly at him and taking an unfortunate amount of time to come up with a good riposte.
I can't call him lazy. This guy is actually fairly well-off in Mexico, but he came to America anyway to work 14 hour days. He starts at 7 AM at Bravo! Italian Restaurant and then comes straight to Va P to work a dinner shift. Shit, that won't work..
I can't call him fat, as immature as that would be, because he's actually one of the thinner guys in the kitchen. I can't knock him on his cooking because he's a solid and reliable cook. So my only choices are to be really stupid and say something borderline racist, or just give him a big "Fuck you."
I opt for the latter. I shout "FUCK YOU, pinchi culero," which translates to "FUCK YOU, you fucking asshole." Effective I know. He flips me the Mexican bird (which is kind of like a flick of the palm) and the chef comes in to give me a stern talking to. He doesn't think the dining room heard me, but I'm being loud enough that he thinks it's a problem. He gives me a prompt, "Shut the fuck up."
I am seething, but I've stopped my petulant behavior and just turned it inwards. The dark side of the Force is pouring through me, but I'm being good enough to release my anger in to solid cooking. I get plates out fast, I plate desserts real fast, I just stop talking and stop thinking and just doing. Before I know it almost everything is done, except the last recipe of budinos (all the eggs are cracked, and the ramekins are ready, he just needs to mix and pour).
But I'm still furious and every time someone talks to me I grunt back and give them a dirty look. I avoid eye contact with Luis because it'll just make me more angry. I am hating every inch of this stupid kitchen and all the foreign Mexican chatter floating around. I leave with a serious urge to kill rising in my gut.
This was just one of those days that makes you hate your job. Every job has those kind of days, but in a kitchen these days usually coincide with the busiest weekends. Valentine's Day is fucking war, kids. Whether you think it's a stupid holiday or a great excuse to get laid, it causes upheaval and panic in the restaurant industry. Okay, good restaurants won't panic, and we aren't panicking, but it is stressing me out. I have a long ass weekend ahead of me and I just want it to be over.
But that's the reality of the job and I had the whole way home to think about it. And the more I thought about it I realized, I was being a little bitch. Alright, you got screwed that's true. What the hell does complaining about it do? Nothing. Do you want someone to feel bad for you? Sack up. What does acting like a child throwing a fit do? Throws everyone else's chi off and disturbs the rhythm of service, not to mention just annoys people. Cooks often call the start of service time "curtain call," which is a very apt description. As soon as service starts, the show must go on. No one fucking cares what kind of bullshit is going on back there. Paying customers show up and they expect results. In hardcore kitchens there are no sick days, there are no excuses. Customers don't care if your dishwasher decided to not show. They don't care if your shipment of beef didn't come in, or that you by accidentally let a box of frisee rot. They just want their food, their restaurant experience, and they'll leave their money for it. Just get the job done.
This Rule #76 (No excuses, play like a champion) attitude to the job is both exciting and disheartening. When things are smooth it can really jack up your adrenaline as you feel you are in a constant, but winning battle against the customers and the clock. When things are bumpy, it is terrible. You're fighting a losing battle to keep up and god keeps throwing wrenches in your plan. There's nothing you can do, customers get pissed off, then the waiters get pissed off, then the cooks get pissed off. Shit hits the effing fan, chain reaction to hell commences.
So it's good and it's bad. That's the case with everything in life, nothing is perfect. Do I regret base jumping in to a kitchen with no real experience? Not for a second. Had I gone straight to culinary school like I had originally planned, I think there's a good chance I would have washed out. The pressure, the pace, the stress might have broken me. Do I wish it were easier sometimes? Yes, sometimes, but as my mom and eerily enough my chef always says, "If it were easy, everyone would do it." The difficulties of any job are something you either kind of enjoy and rise to the challenge of, or something that breaks you. Only the truly successful, the cream of the crop enjoy life's endless obstacles. Though they shave years off your life, cause you terrible stress at the time, overcoming them is an achievement in itself.
So while I've somehow managed to wax motivational again, with this whole "Life is unfair, work is difficult" shpiel, I'm glad this happened. Though the steam is just done boiling out of my ears, I realized that all the inspirational shit I tell myself, I now must start doing. Showing up is not enough. Work is not playtime. You didn't come here to socialize, you came here to hone your technique, to learn what it's like to work the line, to fight through service. To be thrown in to the weeds and to hack your way out. Well I didn't do a great job of it today, but I'll be ready next time. No more excuses, no more shortcuts.
The kitchen doesn't teach me everything. I learn a lot on my own because I read a ton of cookbooks and just expose myself to a lot of food information in general. When I make jalapeno mac and cheese, I don't need a recipe. I see jalapenos, I see various cheeses, vegetables, milk, butter, flour = Bechamel sauce with mixed cheeses, sauteed onions and jalapenos, combine and enjoy. Chef Jeff never taught me what a Bechamel sauce is (Blonde roux + milk, salt/pepper, mother sauce). I learned how to make that myself, embarassingly enough from Bobby Flay on an episode of Iron Chef I think. I learned the principles of what makes it work from Harold McGee. I know what a chiffonade cut is, I know how to dice an onion, I know how to hold a knife, I know what sauteing vs. braising does to meat because I learned it myself. I think Chef assumes I learned it at Oceanique. I didn't really learn anything at Oceanique. Almost all the food knowledge I have is of my own doing.
My point is, I need to stop relying on people to sympathize, to pick me up when I'm down. True, kitchens require teamwork. But I want to be an island. I'll help as necessary, but I want to be so badass of a cook that I can bump you off your station and work 2 of them like it was nothing. That will require my ongoing personal quest for knowledge and a strong application of it in the field. This isn't a profession that people just happen in to or can't escape anymore. This is becoming an ultra-competitive profession that people will fight tooth-and-nail to succeed at. I'm not saying you have to cut people down on your way to the top, but you have to learn how to rely on yourself and your skills as a cook.
As a generation of young people who have no idea what they want to do with their lives is beginning to bloom, I think a lot of them are finding their way in to the restaurant business. It's an attractive industry for these kind of people who, like me, think of cubicles as galleys, and ties as nooses. Of course everyone would like to work for Thomas Keller at Per Se. It's the best restaurant in America. What are you going to do to earn that though? Thankfully, politics and appearances do little to get you there. It's all about how you handle service, how much you know about food, how unquenchable your thirst is, how impeccable you can be, and how well you can fight your way out of the weeds. At the end of the day it' just about how well you can fucking cook.
Recently an American cook quit Va Pensiero. He said he was really into molecular gastronomy and didn't really fit in with the food and the people here, but really he had sort of a meltdown one night like I almost did tonight. It was maybe 3 weeks since his first day. On his first day the Chef asked him to make our beef tenderloin dish, kind of as a tryout. Grilled beef medallions, garlic mashed potatoes, sauteed rapini, glazed shitake mushrooms, beef peppercorn sauce. The Chef asked for medium rare. I watched him cut it open to see a grayish ring of meat and a pink center. Medium, rested improperly. He knew he had kind of pushed it past temp and plated it too soon. The Chef hired him anyways. But now that he's gone, he has a sort of resentment that his cooking style was scorned for this newfangled scientific school of cooking. He tells me one day,
"That's great and all if you're in to molecular gastronomy. But before you do all that you got to learn to hit medium rare."
Lesson learned. Onwards and upwards.
EP6
Friday, February 5, 2010
The Restaurant Model, The Restaurant Dream
There are a few universal characteristics of the restaurant industry that, with all the details and specifics aside, represent the unique nature of the business.
It is generally not a lucrative endeavor, though that fluctuates slightly depending on what type of food you do and where you are in the country.
There is a low return-on-investment. And we're not just talking monetary investment, but time and energy commitment as well. A responsible and dedicated restaurateur will be there 6-7 days a week.
There is a low return-on-investment. And we're not just talking monetary investment, but time and energy commitment as well. A responsible and dedicated restaurateur will be there 6-7 days a week.
It is vulnerable to the capricious whims of the public. Although the mob can seem unfair and implacable, this is a harsh reality that all Star Fleet capta.....errrr, hopeful restaurateurs must face. Keeping up to date with trend changes as they are happening and appealing to your clientele are paramount to success.
I suppose there are more difficulties that only restaurateurs really have to deal with, but to me those are the trickiest to handle adeptly, and most clearly define the difference between success and failure.
I'm sure many of you have gone to a fancy restaurant and wondered why a pasta dish costs $18, or why a bottle of wine seems jacked up to $50. There are specific reasons for this and it's not merely a price-inflating tactic to line the owner's pockets.
A standard restaurant model goes like this. Every food item, all the money that comes in and is spent must follow a basic guideline.
35% food cost
35% staff wages
20% overhead (equipment, rent, repairs, etc.)
10% profit
So when you could make a pasta dish for like $4, then a restaurant could (hopefully) do it better for you at a higher price. Every dish needs to follow that model somewhat, but every restaurant has slightly different numbers. Some places get away with cheaper food cost, some with cheaper labor. Some places, like restaurants in New York City, have to charge exorbitant amounts to compensate for the high price of land (Ever eat in Times Square? Yeah a $19 hamburger at Friday's is ridiculous just to enjoy that illuminated piece of real estate, but tourists = suckers). And believe it or not, four-star dining has some of the worst profit margins because staff and food costs are skyrocketed. They need the best cooks and front of house management, and they demand the best ingredients. So when those numbers edge closer to 40% each, the profit margin takes the hit. This is why a good chef must be a good manager of efficiency. Every bit of waste will hurt the overall profit. When I clean vegetables in the kitchen my chef will walk by and inspect my trimmings. If they aren't exclusively waste product he will always point at the pile and remind me, "That's the difference between being open, and being closed."
Wine generally follows a 2.5-3x mark up rule in restaurants. A high-end restaurant will need to pay one or more sommeliers, manage the space to store all those bottles, and hunt down all those fine wines to keep a diverse and balanced wine list. So a bottle that is sold at $10 from the vineyard will probably reach your table after you cough up $25-30 bucks.
But if you look at it that way, what are we really making? Two or three dollars per dish? A little more on wine? And this is only real profit once we clear a certain hump. If it's a slow month, you still got to pay the worker bees. And as is the case with so many restaurants, most of the profit must often go back in to the restaurant. To constantly adjust and improve your establishment is a result of being a good cook, a personality quirk that you acquire sometime throughout your career. Every day, you must do better than the last, you must constantly be in a pursuit of perfection.
So what does that mean for me? Michael Ruhlman speculates in The Soul of a Chef, that true money, lavish riches are bestowed upon only the most enterprising of chefs. Chefs that can create empires, make themselves a household brand, are the ones who reap the true rewards. There aren't millions to be had by most restaurateurs. Only chefs like Roy Yamaguchi and Wolfgang Puck can earn the kind of money we attribute to celebrities and power executives.
But I'm not really looking for that kind of money anyway. I've had personal fantasies of being a recognized chef, of being a famous name that lights up the culinary blogosphere every week. But if it never happens, I won't exactly be heartbroken. I truly try in convincing myself to keep my head down and always have the end goal just in the back of my head. To just focus on every day as it comes. The goal is to own and manage a fantastic restaurant. To reach that first goal I must build a solid foundation of culinary technique. To reach that goal, I have to go to Va Pensiero and give it 110% every day I step in to that kitchen.
If fame and fortune ever reach me, it will hopefully be because I was prepared and ready when opportunity came knocking. Time and chance happen to us all, and it will require no small bit of luck to attain meteoric success. I should focus on controlling what is controllable, myself, and push onwards from there.
How's that for fucking motivational, yeah!? Too bad it's always easier to give advice than to follow it. I'm very good at giving advice to others, and to a somewhat detached sense of myself. But actually carrying out those orders in my CPU is a whole 'nother matter. Here's to trying though.
Now let's talk about "trending" and public appeal. Catering to your audience is the most important thing a chef needs to consider. A certain restaurant model that works in New York might not work in Chicago, or in a suburb, and vice versa, ad infinitum. For instance, my mom's restaurant? High-quality but standard Chinese-American food in a neighborhood of mainly Jews. For some reason, Jewish people love their Orientar food and my mom is more than happy to oblige. Va Pensiero delivers fairly traditional, high-quality Italian food for older, richer, North Shore folk. Nothing too far outside the canon of Italian cuisine so as to confuse, but we have high-end dishes that are necessary crowd pleasers given our price tag. We're practically required to have a beef tenderloin dish, even though it's not necessarily prepared in an "Italian" manner (and even though I think filet mignon is the most overrated food item in all of restaurant history).
Chef Michael Symon of Lola fame brought high-end cuisine to Cleveland. He did it by introducing familiar ingredients and making something high quality out of something simple for the people of Cleveland. He essentially let Midwest folk test the waters, feet first. Bratwurst is a common Midwest grill food that everybody here grows up eating. Now how about foie gras bratwurst? Even if you don't know what that is, a waiter can explain that to you in an instant, and you'd then be able to visualize it and be tempted to try it. Another important thing; he kept every entree under $25. He figured out how to make great food for cheap, knowing that Midwesterners weren't about to shell out big bucks for this kind of food yet. You got to know your audience.
But a restaurant in the city, somewhere in New York for example, can really push the boundaries of what we call food. Molecular gastronomy is the next hot thing, and the temples for this cuisine all reside within major metropolitan areas. Could those places really exist somewhere where people aren't ready to be so adventurous with their food? Maybe, but I doubt they would enjoy as much success. Same goes for fusion food, and any experimental cuisine.
But this is the current trend, and it seems that if you want some real recognition you're going to have to hop on this bandwagon. Of S. Pellegrino's Top 50 Restaurants of the World's list, I would gather that at least 70% of those restaurants use "molecular gastronomic" techniques (probably means they have liquid nitrogen and nitrous-whipped sauce foams somewhere in their kitchen). And many are of the aforementioned "temple" establishments, restaurants focused solely on scientifically tinkering with food. So people are hungry for it, people are ready for it, the question becomes if you want to do it that way.
I think high-quality ingredients prepared with flawless technique will always have a place in this world. Be it well-done "junk" food or old-school white tablecloth, there will always be a market for shit that just tastes good. And that should always be the focus for anyone who wants to serve food. That's great and all if you can magically turn something from ethereal foam to satiny sauce on the plate. I respect the technique and research behind that. But if it tastes like crap, then I am not so impressed. I am probably judging prematurely as I've yet to eat at a place like Alinea, or Moto, or El Bulli, but I like traditional preparations as of right now. Today's culinary school graduates are all wide-eyed about new kitchen techniques, but I'm not so intrigued yet. I guess I'm more of a Kevin Gillespie than a Michael Voltaggio.
What do I want to do, you ask? Well, I have a couple things in mind...
At some point in my life, I want to open a sandwich shop. They are the perfect food item, combining starch, veg and protein all in a convenient, hand-held package. Wally & Agador's near my apartment was a fantastic, high-end sandwich shop that unfortunately failed. Maybe the market for expensive sandwiches is difficult to maintain. But if a shop offered braised pork belly BLTs, soft shell crab sandwiches, duck confit on country wheat, and expertly cured Italian meats, could you say no? Alongside a pile of homemade chips or fries? Rick Bayless maintains what is essentially a very good sandwich shop. I guess the key is to establish yourself first in a good restaurant ... which brings me to my next point.
I'm sick of Chinese food. Correction, I'm sick of bad Chinese food. I say this as objectively as possible, but I think the best Chinese food I've had is from my mom's kitchen. Chicago Chinese food has thus far been lackluster. The Koi/Chen's chain is the only thing remotely high-end, and they are in my opinion, pretty bad. The rest consist of cheap take-out places and dim sum done with little enthusiasm. All Asian cuisines seem to be advancing in to the realm of fine-dining, but Chinese cuisine is stagnating on this side of the world.
So what's the logical choice for me? David Chang used his background in French culinary technique and his experience growing up with Korean home cooking to create his Momofuku empire. He has elevated humble ramen noodles and steamed pork buns to a high place of culinary honor. I'm not saying I want to follow his model and method, but I think that's a logical place to work if I want to try and do something with Chinese cuisine, a place that embraces French technique seamlessly melded with Asian cuisine.
But what do I know and love of Chinese food? Thanks to crappy take-out and poorly realized restaurant ideas everybody thinks Chinese food equals sweet-and-sour chicken, cornstarch laden sauces and thick-skinned dumplings. Everybody thinks of MSG infused wonton soups and greasy egg rolls. That is a travesty. I've never been to the homeland (something I plan to fix), but I've had real and good Chinese food before. The myth about a menu for white people and a menu for Chinese people is not really a myth. There's a whole bevy of Chinese dishes featuring exotic ingredients and techniques that Chinese restaurateurs fear the white man ain't ready for. Which is kind of true. But as people are beginning to appreciate food more; appreciating slow food, sustainable food, locally grown food, something beyond the borders of hamburgers and hot dogs, of steak and fries, of endless protein/starch/veg dishes, I think we are developing a generation of diners who are ready for a bold step in to the unknown.
So how do you blend (or to use Ted's word, "blound") two cuisines? Fusion has been a pretty popular idea for a while, but its execution has generally been awful. Asia de Cuba, Lespinasse under Gray Kunz, Vong and Momofuku are the only successful examples I can really think of. The key is to have a deep, deep understanding of the two cuisines you're trying to throw in the blender. You have to know at heart what that cuisine represents and then make educated decisions as to pairing flavors together. It requires experimentation from a well of knowledge. I remember at Spice Market, Jean Georges' casual fusion establishment, I had a braised prime beef short rib with Asian buckwheat noodles. Hints of star anise, Sichuan peppercorns spiked a traditional red wine and veal stock braising liquid. The natural succulence of well-braised meat is usually paired with something like the texture of risotto or mashed potatoes, but the fall-apart beef was pleasant contrast to the soft bite of buckwheat noodles. The dish came together wonderfully and my mother immediately sought to develop her own version.
Jean-Georges spent years working in Bangkok, familiarizing himself with the food and ingredients there. Gray Kunz grew up in Singapore and had a childhood that smelled like kaffir lime, cardamom and lemongrass. His lifetime of experience with exotic spices, ingredients outside the canon of classical French cuisine, allowed him to show the adaptivity of serious French technique. Good "fusion" chefs would never use the word "fusion" with any seriousness or pride. They would more likely say they were showing the flexibility a background in solid French technique allows. They would more likely say they were presenting diners with exciting new flavors and presentations that they were deeply knowledgeable of. I guess the true difference lies in subtlety and authenticity. The goal isn't to throw in unusual flavors and assault the palate. The goal is to introduce an unfamiliar yet pleasant sensation that rings true to all cuisines borrowed from.
What I am basically getting at, after this long winding, talking road of Chinese food and fusion food, is that I think it's time someone stepped up to the plate for true Chinese flavors. China has such a rich culinary history and an expansive repertoire of dishes that I am not aware enough of. Chinese-American food, though often cheesy (in the stylistic sense, not the literal sense) and dumbed down, has promise. And I thoroughly enjoy both. I love when my mom's head chef from Shanghai throws down a crayfish and snail stir-fry that tastes like nothing else I've ever had. But I can't deny the simple pleasure of well-done sesame chicken with a bowl of white rice, as that was my favorite dish growing up. And I can't resist well-done dim sum. Translucent, paper-thin skins that just barely contain an impossibly flavorful filling. I don't care if it's gringo-pleasers like shrimp shu-mai or something a bit more traditional, like pork and Dungeness crab soup dumplings. I love it all, I want to learn to make it all.
So here we are at an important life juncture. I must continue to refine my French culinary technique (also known as "skizills") while educating myself in traditional Chinese cuisine. I must also use the Chinese-American kind of food that my mom does so well as a bridge. If I get deep empathy for all those cuisines, then I think some kind of unholy Triforce of culinary wonderment can be had. Some sick, twisted brainchild of mine that can wow your mouths (that's what she said). And somewhere along the road, I'll make sandwiches and maybe rest on my laurels. If I'm lucky.
So we're kicking it old school. Not like Nick Cannon in Drumline, replete with cassette tape sessions and snare drum showdowns to sort out his daddy issues. No, nothing quite that lame or contrived (Sorry, when I hear "kicking it old school" that line spoken by Orlando Jones haunts my dreams). We're talking an intrepid, head first dive into a Chinese kitchen. And I think I have one in mind. We're talking an expedition, nay a pilgrimage back to the homeland is in order (though to be perfectly honest, I'm not sure even I know the difference between China and Taiwan ... and boy do large throngs of Asian people terrify me .. cameras and peace signs everywhere ::shudder::). How long I can stand Asian parenting and the hideous dystopia that is Long Island again though is the first question. I'll enjoy Chicago while it lasts.
EP6
I'm sure many of you have gone to a fancy restaurant and wondered why a pasta dish costs $18, or why a bottle of wine seems jacked up to $50. There are specific reasons for this and it's not merely a price-inflating tactic to line the owner's pockets.
A standard restaurant model goes like this. Every food item, all the money that comes in and is spent must follow a basic guideline.
35% food cost
35% staff wages
20% overhead (equipment, rent, repairs, etc.)
10% profit
So when you could make a pasta dish for like $4, then a restaurant could (hopefully) do it better for you at a higher price. Every dish needs to follow that model somewhat, but every restaurant has slightly different numbers. Some places get away with cheaper food cost, some with cheaper labor. Some places, like restaurants in New York City, have to charge exorbitant amounts to compensate for the high price of land (Ever eat in Times Square? Yeah a $19 hamburger at Friday's is ridiculous just to enjoy that illuminated piece of real estate, but tourists = suckers). And believe it or not, four-star dining has some of the worst profit margins because staff and food costs are skyrocketed. They need the best cooks and front of house management, and they demand the best ingredients. So when those numbers edge closer to 40% each, the profit margin takes the hit. This is why a good chef must be a good manager of efficiency. Every bit of waste will hurt the overall profit. When I clean vegetables in the kitchen my chef will walk by and inspect my trimmings. If they aren't exclusively waste product he will always point at the pile and remind me, "That's the difference between being open, and being closed."
Wine generally follows a 2.5-3x mark up rule in restaurants. A high-end restaurant will need to pay one or more sommeliers, manage the space to store all those bottles, and hunt down all those fine wines to keep a diverse and balanced wine list. So a bottle that is sold at $10 from the vineyard will probably reach your table after you cough up $25-30 bucks.
But if you look at it that way, what are we really making? Two or three dollars per dish? A little more on wine? And this is only real profit once we clear a certain hump. If it's a slow month, you still got to pay the worker bees. And as is the case with so many restaurants, most of the profit must often go back in to the restaurant. To constantly adjust and improve your establishment is a result of being a good cook, a personality quirk that you acquire sometime throughout your career. Every day, you must do better than the last, you must constantly be in a pursuit of perfection.
So what does that mean for me? Michael Ruhlman speculates in The Soul of a Chef, that true money, lavish riches are bestowed upon only the most enterprising of chefs. Chefs that can create empires, make themselves a household brand, are the ones who reap the true rewards. There aren't millions to be had by most restaurateurs. Only chefs like Roy Yamaguchi and Wolfgang Puck can earn the kind of money we attribute to celebrities and power executives.
But I'm not really looking for that kind of money anyway. I've had personal fantasies of being a recognized chef, of being a famous name that lights up the culinary blogosphere every week. But if it never happens, I won't exactly be heartbroken. I truly try in convincing myself to keep my head down and always have the end goal just in the back of my head. To just focus on every day as it comes. The goal is to own and manage a fantastic restaurant. To reach that first goal I must build a solid foundation of culinary technique. To reach that goal, I have to go to Va Pensiero and give it 110% every day I step in to that kitchen.
If fame and fortune ever reach me, it will hopefully be because I was prepared and ready when opportunity came knocking. Time and chance happen to us all, and it will require no small bit of luck to attain meteoric success. I should focus on controlling what is controllable, myself, and push onwards from there.
How's that for fucking motivational, yeah!? Too bad it's always easier to give advice than to follow it. I'm very good at giving advice to others, and to a somewhat detached sense of myself. But actually carrying out those orders in my CPU is a whole 'nother matter. Here's to trying though.
Now let's talk about "trending" and public appeal. Catering to your audience is the most important thing a chef needs to consider. A certain restaurant model that works in New York might not work in Chicago, or in a suburb, and vice versa, ad infinitum. For instance, my mom's restaurant? High-quality but standard Chinese-American food in a neighborhood of mainly Jews. For some reason, Jewish people love their Orientar food and my mom is more than happy to oblige. Va Pensiero delivers fairly traditional, high-quality Italian food for older, richer, North Shore folk. Nothing too far outside the canon of Italian cuisine so as to confuse, but we have high-end dishes that are necessary crowd pleasers given our price tag. We're practically required to have a beef tenderloin dish, even though it's not necessarily prepared in an "Italian" manner (and even though I think filet mignon is the most overrated food item in all of restaurant history).
Chef Michael Symon of Lola fame brought high-end cuisine to Cleveland. He did it by introducing familiar ingredients and making something high quality out of something simple for the people of Cleveland. He essentially let Midwest folk test the waters, feet first. Bratwurst is a common Midwest grill food that everybody here grows up eating. Now how about foie gras bratwurst? Even if you don't know what that is, a waiter can explain that to you in an instant, and you'd then be able to visualize it and be tempted to try it. Another important thing; he kept every entree under $25. He figured out how to make great food for cheap, knowing that Midwesterners weren't about to shell out big bucks for this kind of food yet. You got to know your audience.
But a restaurant in the city, somewhere in New York for example, can really push the boundaries of what we call food. Molecular gastronomy is the next hot thing, and the temples for this cuisine all reside within major metropolitan areas. Could those places really exist somewhere where people aren't ready to be so adventurous with their food? Maybe, but I doubt they would enjoy as much success. Same goes for fusion food, and any experimental cuisine.
But this is the current trend, and it seems that if you want some real recognition you're going to have to hop on this bandwagon. Of S. Pellegrino's Top 50 Restaurants of the World's list, I would gather that at least 70% of those restaurants use "molecular gastronomic" techniques (probably means they have liquid nitrogen and nitrous-whipped sauce foams somewhere in their kitchen). And many are of the aforementioned "temple" establishments, restaurants focused solely on scientifically tinkering with food. So people are hungry for it, people are ready for it, the question becomes if you want to do it that way.
I think high-quality ingredients prepared with flawless technique will always have a place in this world. Be it well-done "junk" food or old-school white tablecloth, there will always be a market for shit that just tastes good. And that should always be the focus for anyone who wants to serve food. That's great and all if you can magically turn something from ethereal foam to satiny sauce on the plate. I respect the technique and research behind that. But if it tastes like crap, then I am not so impressed. I am probably judging prematurely as I've yet to eat at a place like Alinea, or Moto, or El Bulli, but I like traditional preparations as of right now. Today's culinary school graduates are all wide-eyed about new kitchen techniques, but I'm not so intrigued yet. I guess I'm more of a Kevin Gillespie than a Michael Voltaggio.
What do I want to do, you ask? Well, I have a couple things in mind...
At some point in my life, I want to open a sandwich shop. They are the perfect food item, combining starch, veg and protein all in a convenient, hand-held package. Wally & Agador's near my apartment was a fantastic, high-end sandwich shop that unfortunately failed. Maybe the market for expensive sandwiches is difficult to maintain. But if a shop offered braised pork belly BLTs, soft shell crab sandwiches, duck confit on country wheat, and expertly cured Italian meats, could you say no? Alongside a pile of homemade chips or fries? Rick Bayless maintains what is essentially a very good sandwich shop. I guess the key is to establish yourself first in a good restaurant ... which brings me to my next point.
I'm sick of Chinese food. Correction, I'm sick of bad Chinese food. I say this as objectively as possible, but I think the best Chinese food I've had is from my mom's kitchen. Chicago Chinese food has thus far been lackluster. The Koi/Chen's chain is the only thing remotely high-end, and they are in my opinion, pretty bad. The rest consist of cheap take-out places and dim sum done with little enthusiasm. All Asian cuisines seem to be advancing in to the realm of fine-dining, but Chinese cuisine is stagnating on this side of the world.
So what's the logical choice for me? David Chang used his background in French culinary technique and his experience growing up with Korean home cooking to create his Momofuku empire. He has elevated humble ramen noodles and steamed pork buns to a high place of culinary honor. I'm not saying I want to follow his model and method, but I think that's a logical place to work if I want to try and do something with Chinese cuisine, a place that embraces French technique seamlessly melded with Asian cuisine.
But what do I know and love of Chinese food? Thanks to crappy take-out and poorly realized restaurant ideas everybody thinks Chinese food equals sweet-and-sour chicken, cornstarch laden sauces and thick-skinned dumplings. Everybody thinks of MSG infused wonton soups and greasy egg rolls. That is a travesty. I've never been to the homeland (something I plan to fix), but I've had real and good Chinese food before. The myth about a menu for white people and a menu for Chinese people is not really a myth. There's a whole bevy of Chinese dishes featuring exotic ingredients and techniques that Chinese restaurateurs fear the white man ain't ready for. Which is kind of true. But as people are beginning to appreciate food more; appreciating slow food, sustainable food, locally grown food, something beyond the borders of hamburgers and hot dogs, of steak and fries, of endless protein/starch/veg dishes, I think we are developing a generation of diners who are ready for a bold step in to the unknown.
So how do you blend (or to use Ted's word, "blound") two cuisines? Fusion has been a pretty popular idea for a while, but its execution has generally been awful. Asia de Cuba, Lespinasse under Gray Kunz, Vong and Momofuku are the only successful examples I can really think of. The key is to have a deep, deep understanding of the two cuisines you're trying to throw in the blender. You have to know at heart what that cuisine represents and then make educated decisions as to pairing flavors together. It requires experimentation from a well of knowledge. I remember at Spice Market, Jean Georges' casual fusion establishment, I had a braised prime beef short rib with Asian buckwheat noodles. Hints of star anise, Sichuan peppercorns spiked a traditional red wine and veal stock braising liquid. The natural succulence of well-braised meat is usually paired with something like the texture of risotto or mashed potatoes, but the fall-apart beef was pleasant contrast to the soft bite of buckwheat noodles. The dish came together wonderfully and my mother immediately sought to develop her own version.
Jean-Georges spent years working in Bangkok, familiarizing himself with the food and ingredients there. Gray Kunz grew up in Singapore and had a childhood that smelled like kaffir lime, cardamom and lemongrass. His lifetime of experience with exotic spices, ingredients outside the canon of classical French cuisine, allowed him to show the adaptivity of serious French technique. Good "fusion" chefs would never use the word "fusion" with any seriousness or pride. They would more likely say they were showing the flexibility a background in solid French technique allows. They would more likely say they were presenting diners with exciting new flavors and presentations that they were deeply knowledgeable of. I guess the true difference lies in subtlety and authenticity. The goal isn't to throw in unusual flavors and assault the palate. The goal is to introduce an unfamiliar yet pleasant sensation that rings true to all cuisines borrowed from.
What I am basically getting at, after this long winding, talking road of Chinese food and fusion food, is that I think it's time someone stepped up to the plate for true Chinese flavors. China has such a rich culinary history and an expansive repertoire of dishes that I am not aware enough of. Chinese-American food, though often cheesy (in the stylistic sense, not the literal sense) and dumbed down, has promise. And I thoroughly enjoy both. I love when my mom's head chef from Shanghai throws down a crayfish and snail stir-fry that tastes like nothing else I've ever had. But I can't deny the simple pleasure of well-done sesame chicken with a bowl of white rice, as that was my favorite dish growing up. And I can't resist well-done dim sum. Translucent, paper-thin skins that just barely contain an impossibly flavorful filling. I don't care if it's gringo-pleasers like shrimp shu-mai or something a bit more traditional, like pork and Dungeness crab soup dumplings. I love it all, I want to learn to make it all.
So here we are at an important life juncture. I must continue to refine my French culinary technique (also known as "skizills") while educating myself in traditional Chinese cuisine. I must also use the Chinese-American kind of food that my mom does so well as a bridge. If I get deep empathy for all those cuisines, then I think some kind of unholy Triforce of culinary wonderment can be had. Some sick, twisted brainchild of mine that can wow your mouths (that's what she said). And somewhere along the road, I'll make sandwiches and maybe rest on my laurels. If I'm lucky.
So we're kicking it old school. Not like Nick Cannon in Drumline, replete with cassette tape sessions and snare drum showdowns to sort out his daddy issues. No, nothing quite that lame or contrived (Sorry, when I hear "kicking it old school" that line spoken by Orlando Jones haunts my dreams). We're talking an intrepid, head first dive into a Chinese kitchen. And I think I have one in mind. We're talking an expedition, nay a pilgrimage back to the homeland is in order (though to be perfectly honest, I'm not sure even I know the difference between China and Taiwan ... and boy do large throngs of Asian people terrify me .. cameras and peace signs everywhere ::shudder::). How long I can stand Asian parenting and the hideous dystopia that is Long Island again though is the first question. I'll enjoy Chicago while it lasts.
EP6
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