not a rant, but more of an observation of sorts...
This is in reference to temperatures. There exists an entire spectrum of ideal temperatures beyond the adjectives 'hot' and 'cold.' I have been reflecting on this much lately. Obviously, the ideal state for any edible object requires a more accurate description than these 2 defining words.
Our entire staff has been reviewing our Mobil standards lately. Many of the point system factors are centered around outdated concepts of food. A lot of them are Euro-centric and imply that stepping out of this parameter will prevent your rating of excellence (all the way down to the cheese course specifications). Hot soups must be boiling hot... should they really? Cold foods must be kept cold... how cold exactly? Sure, we've all had the adage of 'hot food hot plate/cold food cold plate' drilled into out brain matter as cooks, but shouldn't we get more specific about things.
This was also sparked by last seasons Top Chef when Collichio ripped up one of the European guys for 'freezing' his fresh fish in order to cut it nice and thin (I'm still confused over that remark). There is a difference between freezing something and allowing it to firm up in the freezer. Obviously the longer is stays in there, the more it will descend to the temperature of the enclosure (eventually destoying the texture) until the entire mass of food is one equal temperature (like controlled cooking in reverse). All food can be tempered... not just butter and chocolate.
We utilize our freezer many many times during prep to firm up set foods just enough to pop them out of molds without jeapordizing the integrity of the texture or to faciliate some other purpose. The same concepts apply to heat. How will this plate component be best appreciated... room temp? body temp? slightly hotter than a hot day in Florida? These are the gray areas. It's a juggling act.
A more recent example is the latest Top Chef Masters episode where Wylie's food is labelled as sci-fi simply because of the way he cooked his egg (yeah, yeah the sous-vide chicken too, but it's the same argument). They must have edited in some different plate shots because I didn't notice anything utilizing Martian technology. He did cook an egg properly instead of dropping it into boiling hot water and overcooking it (and the egg was not sous-vide... there was no vacuum involved). Is that sci-fi? Is perfection futuristic to the point where it's alien to us? All I noticed was a chef creating a damn fine plate of food and trying to get each ingredient to exist in it's optimum state... isn't that what all chefs do (or at least they should)?
The last Paradigm dinner we did was 2 Fridays ago, and we were hit by a freakish tropical storm (rendering some places in South Beach without a roof or even flooded). Our damage was having water blown into our hood system motors which shut the entire ventilation system down for the night. As temperatures in the kitchen rose, we struggled with many plate components. Such delicate foods require specific conditions and losing our control over this one area made for a very frustrating evening.
Hopefully all is well tonight and all of our gray areas remain their proper hue.
