chadzilla

raw food

We handle quite a variation of groups and events throughout the various outlets in our resort.  Food allergies are one and special diets are another, and it's beneficial when someone contacts us ahead of their arrival allowing us time to communicate the situation to our staff.  I was put on the spot last night by a different sort of dietary request.

The raw food diet has been around for a few years now.  Despite it's fair existence, I have never personally had to deal with it.  I guess that by keeping myself ignorant (even with great books such as the Charlie Trotter Raw book which has been our for a few years... and which I have never purchased or read), I left myself open for a spontaneous challenge.  That challenge came in as part of a party of 20.  Two women in the group claimed to be on the raw food diet, and I found out with less than 30 minutes to their reservation time.  Even worse, they were owners of a condo next door... who are famously high-maintenance and we can never seem to please for some reason... despite our best efforts.

So with a quick and fruitless internet search, I cursed our slow network and found a morsel of information.  People choose the raw food diet because they believe that vital enzymes and other nutritional goodies are lost when food is taken above 116F... that's just a little over room temperature in south Florida!  Also, 75% of their diet must consist of raw foods... that makes sense considering that certain flavorings and oils must undergo a good deal of processing (usually involving heat).  Dairy (considering the pasteurization process) I was not sure of, so I avoided it.  Raw meats... well, they fit the bill, but I wasn't sure on their acceptance.

Here was my submission to "Battle Raw Food."  The tuna component on the right is there only because I found out (again, only 10 minutes before dishing) that although the girls were on the diet, they absolutely allowed themselves the vice of seared raw tuna and soy sauce... whatever.  So the tuna went on, cold smoked with the new smoking gun, and topped with soy-infused shaved red onion.

The rest of the plate was my spontaneous creation... compression-braised watercress (smoked with peach wood, then compressed with grilled peanut oil), vacuum-infused eggplant with white anchovy oil, garlic, and preserved meyer lemon dust (compression technique again), slow-warmed teardrop tomatoes, and shaved pecans.

The watercress was interesting... allowing smoke and wilting without heat.  Strong meaty flavors there.  The eggplant was also interesting.  My train of thought was that although the dieter could not enjoy anchovies themselves, I could use the oil with compression to offer a similar flavor to the diner... this falls in accordance with the 75% rule in my book.

Next components.  To add more umami, I threw some tomatoes in the Alto Shaam for a short time on low temp.  This slow-ripening or pulling of flavor reminded me of MFK Fisher's story of placing orange wedges over her radiator in her French Apartment.  It's a slow dehydration and glutamate builder.  Taking something naturally good, and making it incredible with very little effort... only patience.  The shavings of pecan are just for extra flavor dimension and texture.  I wanted to incorporate some sort of nut shaved on the microplane, but which one could I use without toasting?  Maybe it was conceived years ago by growing up with a pecan tree, but the flavor of raw pecans are much better than toasted pecans.  I'm not sure if I'm the only one out there who feels this way, but it makes the pecan an anomoly among nuts.

So what's the conclusion here... when I offered to answer any questions about what they were eating, both ladies declined.  They also both ate the tuna from the plate and did not even touch the rest of it... insult to the chef!  I try not to let such things get to me, but I did run around hyped up for a good 40 minutes on this dish while organizing the rest of the parties food.  It wasn't a masterpiece, but I was momentarily proud of it (at least in technique and flavor... not in presentation).  Miami is full of trendy wannabe nobodies without a freakin' clue.  Rise above, Zilla!  The bright side is that it allowed me to educate myself on yet another ridiculous food diet and its unnecessary rules.

electrolyzed

We took a little step towards being a slightly richer shade of green.  Well actually not we as in the kitchen (it's our housekeeping department), but we as a hotel.  A trial basis set-up for producing electrolyzed water for cleaning was installed.

This is going to replace a lot of the chemicals that the housekeeping department uses to sanitize rooms.  I filled up a few spray bottles of it to use in the kitchen for spraying down work areas and tools.  Aside from not putting harsh chemicals into the ground, it's efficient and economical... it's just water.  It's pretty mind-blowing how the stuff smells like bleach and if you stick your head to far under the top lid and take a deep breath, you will get knocked on your ass.

I've read a little about the benefits of it, like how it kills salmonella, e. Coli, and many other potential harmful little critters.  Supposedly you can fill a bucket with it, and wash your lettuce in it.  It's completely food-safe.  The guy installed it drank a glass of it... I tried it myself too... what the hell?  I've put many far more harmful things into my disgestive system.

Has anyone out there had much experience with electrolyzed water?  I'm wondering how long the water stays that way before it returns to the state of being plain old water.  I even brought a bottle home.

sous-vide at home

Science versus Tradition.

I finally have my home kitchen set-up for sous-vide cooking.  This is something I hope to see a lot more of in the 'not so far off' future.  Even as chefs, we often draw a distinctive line between the food we can cook at work and the food we cook at home (at least it is if you utilize modern cuisine techniques at work).  Other labels are thrown on home cooked food such as comfort food or just good old home cooking... but what can be more comforting than an incredible piece of meat cooked using sous-vide methods.  Why should this experience be removed from the home.  True... there have been 'meal in a bag' type products in the past, but when we say sous-vide we mean controlled.  The ability to control a water bath to the degree is necessary.

So, what do you need to accomplish this.  Basically, 3 things.

A rice cooker or slow cooker as a heat source.  I am using this Black & Decker Rice Plus which has a great steam-lined look, holds 24 cups (ample water bath is important to control fluctuations in temperature as well as providing room enough to cook larger items when desired), and has a convenient little hole on top.  I tried a 'crock pot' type slow cooker before this one, and the rice cookers work better because the heating element is on the bottom and it can recover temperature drops more quickly.

The hole is important to the 2nd piece of necessary equipment... a PID (proportion, integral, derivative device).  This controls the amount of power going to the cooker while monitoring the temperature of the water bath.  The hole makes for a convenient place to slip the sensor wire.  The set-up allows the PID to keep the water at a constant temperature.  I am using a device called Sous-Vide Magic which I purchased from Fresh Meals Solutions.  Frank Hsu, who is president of FMS, went out of his way to back up his product.  He emailed me several times with information, and called me when I had minor issues with the device.  There is no lack of customer service at FMS.  Mr. Hsu also recommended the rice cooker that I am using above.

The last necessary equipment is a vacuum sealer.  In order to cook in a water bath, you must be able to seal foods in waterproof bags.  The Food Saver has made it's way into the American kitchen by being sold in most major retail stores (places that sell kitchen wares).  Although they promote it as a 'food saving' device (hence the name), hopefully we will see it used more as a vessel for preparing foods for sous-vide cooking.  Although the power on the Food Saver is not enough for compression techniques that we often use commercial vacuum sealers for, it does eliminate almost all of the air from around the food.

There is a certain appeal to what can be done with sous-vide once home cooks become familiar with the concept and practice.  It can even fall into the 'fix it and forget about it' category.  There is the power of control and 'fool proof' cooking that comes with this method.  There is the possibility of really reproducing restaurant food because you reduce certain uncontrollable factors.

This set-up can be added to your home kitchen for a small price.  $130 for the PID.  $50 for the rice cooker.  $100 for the vacuum sealer.  That's $280 for the whole system... when a Polyscience thermocirculator costs almost 3 times that.  It's tax refund time... go for it.  The home system actually does not circulate the water... but I've cooked several things in it already, and it does the job.  Imagine dropping eggs in before going to sleep and waking up to perfectly cooked eggs that only need to be pulled out of the water and cracked open.

So... with this leap, what are some other things that can be taken from the modern professional kitchen and brought into the home with interesting results?

... growing your own micro herbs and other edibles.

holding a candle

I have an idea that I may or may not be able to achieve... to make an edible candle.  True, there are edible candles in the sense that you can technically eat them (i. e. soy wax), but I want to make a candle that the diner will want to eat, not just have the ability to digest.  To my knowledge, this has never been done before (I'm sure I will be corrected if I'm wrong).

The first seed of this idea was born before chadzilla (the blog, not me!).  We were doing a dinner for the Chaine des Rotisseurs and the main course was lamb.  Being the Chaine, the courses were kept within the borders of traditional flavors... but where to take it from there.  We had the idea (and were able to successfully pull off) a candle made of rosemary mint butter that was lit and served on the plate.  As the wick burned down, it melted the butter into... let's say a 'sauce.'  The plan was to instruct the diners to either dip there morsels of lamb into the flavored butter, or simply pour it onto the meat.  Although we used votive glass holders, it is definitely possible to use a candle mold to create a free-standing candle that would melt onto the plate.  Everything worked out great, the Chaine was impressed (they later voted our dinner 'Best Meal of the Year'), and we all patted ourselves on the back.

Fast forward... present day.

Although the butter candle is interesting on its own, I am still haunted by the idea of creating a candle made from a water-based gel (at this point the gel can be of any flavor within the realm of infusing into a liquid) that would 'melt' into a sauce as the candle burned.

I tried an experiment with 5 different gelling agents (given that they all produce unique textures and have different melting and gelling points).  Sounds good on the surface, but they all just fizzled out when the flame neared the gel.

Is it because the gels are in fact, water based... and fire doesn't like water?  There is water in butter, but also a high amount of fat.  Wax is a lipid (in case you were wondering what in the hell wax is in relation to cooking).  It is sometimes used to smooth out chocolate or coat cheeses.  The simplest forms of wax are actually methane and then octane.  The solid waxes we are familiar with are more complex and take the solid form we all know.  There is also something called gel wax (which sounds like the right road to take here), but it is made from a mixture of wax and mineral oil... still not appetizing when you think about it.  Is there any combination or amount of gel that would work here... a gel mixed with an oil?

If it weren't for the fact that the butter candle actually worked, I would abandon the idea.  Does the candle have to be limited to fats alone (there were also milk solids, water, and flavoring herbs in the mix).  If so, I have some nice snowy white Berkshire fat sitting in the walk-in.  Great possibility, but how would a guest react to having a shot glass of melting lard on their plate?

Where to go next?  Any suggestions?

cookie tech 102

While I was playing around with a corn base and hydrocolloid synergies, Fabian came in with some cookies and an interesting discovery...

These 3 cookies were all made with the same recipe.  The only variation was in how the baking soda was introduced into the mix.

The cookie on the left (the really flat one) had the baking soda mixed in dry with the flour as in most traditional cookie recipes.

The cookie in the middle (good but not best) had the baking soda mixed with cold water before introducing it into the recipe (the ratio was 1 tsp water for every 1/2 tsp soda).

The cookie on the right (the fluffiest and fullest) had the baking soda mixed with very hot tap water first (at the same ratio of 1 tsp water to 1/2 tsp baking powder).

Although the 2 on the right have water added (which truly introduces a new variable), the difference in how the baking powder is treated creates amazingly different results (nicer browning as well as more rise).  The next obvious thought was the how and why?  Although we are not qualified to answer that, it seems that the baking soda (as do hydrocolloids) benefits greatly from being dissolved or hydrated (as in the case of the hot water) before being introduced to the other ingredients.  Possibly, the swollen starch encapsulates some of the baking soda and inhibits a lot of it's power.  This makes sense considering a dry mix of flour and baking soda will be introduced to water at the same time, and the flour starches may easily begin to hydrate or swell before the baking soda and prevent it from hydrating fully.  Also consider that most cookie recipes insist on not overmixing, so the leavening agent is never fully incorporated into the mix.

This is probably common knowledge to an entire slew of pastry chefs out there, but to Chef K and I it was something new... and learning something new everyday is a good thing (and neither of us recalls ever reading this in any cookie book).  It had us thinking about other applications of baking soda (such as frying batters) that may benefit as well from this knowledge.

Thanks, Fabian.  If not for these cookies, I would have just had a bunch of pictures of corn pudding to post.  This is much more interesting.

nostalgia

There is always a reassurance when your thoughts seem to come from the collective consciousness, like an affirmation that you are somehow on a wavelength with other great minds somewhere.  Sometimes someone will blog about something that you were just talking about or playing with in the kitchen.  Maybe it's just that new car syndrome... you buy a new car then suddenly you notice every other vehicle of the same make and model on the street when before you didn't... simply because you were not paying attention.

That was the coincidental feeling I had when clicking onto and reading the NY Times article on Yoshoku by Norimitsu Onishi yesterday.  It was basically an examination of western food (our foods) as interpreted by the Japanese chef.  This yoshoku style (or Western food) has become as nostalgic for Japanese who grew up eating it as our American bastardations of other ethnic foods have become for us.  Last night I made gringo tacos at home (which also coincidentally was the feature of the quick fire challenge on the Top Chef episode) because I was craving those flavors and textures from my childhood.  Crispy perfectly-fabricated taco shells, ground meat with ketchupy taco sauce, cheddar and mozzarella cheese, sliced up iceberg lettuce seasoned with Heinz salad vinegar... would any Mexican even relate to such a taco.  I mentioned pasta with ketchup in my crab rangoon post.  What about the salad with corn flakes I had in Taiwan over a year ago?  Mayonnaise with jimmies?

Onishi traces the trend in Japan to early relations with the western world in the late 1800's.  While other Asian countries such as China rejected western ideas and foods, Japan embraced them and even believed that eating a western diet would cause the Japanese people to grow taller.  The Japanese emperor suggested that the average short height of his people was due to a diet based on rice and not on potatoes, wheat, and other grains.  (This world view of America being a meat and potatoes country was always difficult for me to grasp years ago since I grew up in a predominantly rice-eating area of the US.)  Just like the early influx of Chinese and Italian cuisine in America in an era when the culture was very different gave us ample time to completely morph these new dishes into something a Chinese or Italian would scoff at, the Japanese with their lack of true western ingredients and understanding of it had created western dishes that really do not make much sense to the western tongue.  The only other Asian countries that have yoshoku-style restaurants are Taiwan and South Korea due to their influence from Japan.  This clears up a lot of the confusion I experienced from eating western dishes in Taiwan.  I'm still not really sure what was on that pizza.  Even my inlaws do a version of spaghetti in their restaurant that had minced beef and ketchup over long pasta and is garnished with limes.  It took me quite some time to grasp that one (not that I have any sort of grip on it now).  Part of me wanted to pick up a pan and show them what spaghetti is supposed to be, but the ketchup version is what they relate to.  Besides, what would I have shown them anyway... my own American bastardation of the Italian staple?  It's such a vicious cycle.

Perhaps the focus on these bastardations or interpretations of other cuisines is simply the next step from the retro-cuisine trend that had pastry chefs making twinkies and allowed meatloaf to appear on fine dining menus.  The beauty of it is that it removes the stigmas from foods that were previously shunned by fine dining chefs.  It's just like music... in the nineties, no one would even admit to ever listening to 80's pop music or metal and now there are entire radio stations dedicated to bringing it all back.  It is really all about nostalgia and whatever the current generation perceives as sentimental.  I'm just glad I can finally dig out my Motley Crue and Poison CD's without any loss of dignity.

corn people

My first real awareness to a 'corn diet' was from reading "The Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan.  It was one of the unexpected realities that I walked away from while reading it... especially in contrast to an Asian cultural background as I read it while Ming and I were in Taiwan visiting family.  It highlighted a fact that if any Americans are not aware of now, they soon will be.  I have not seen the movie 'King Corn,' but it looks like it can offer the same publicity as 'Super-Size Me' did for previously available books such as 'Fast Food Nation.'  It it a testimony to the fact that Americans are made up of 2/3 corn.

So what in the hell is so bad about corn?  It helped the first American colonials to survive after being shown how to grow it by the Native Americans.  They ate it at the first Thanksgiving, right?  Corn tastes good and is more American than apple pie.  We are truly a 'corn-bread nation.'

Part of the highlighted problem is that we have based our diet around one single plant... just like our society is dependent on one single fossil fuel.  Instead of becoming more diverse in our system of nourishment, we have tunneled ourselves into one big ole corn hole.  We use corn to feed the livestock that supplies us with meat everyday... the big 3 American proteins beef, poultry, and pork... all fed on corn.  Cows cannot even sufficiently digest corn, but they are corn-bred because we have mountains of corn piled up.  Corn is further processed into the basic ingredients that all processed packaged items and fast food menus are made of.  Colas and sodas commonly nick-named sugar water are in actuality corn water.  HFCS makes its way onto almost every label on every package on our shelves and coolers.

So if cows ate grass, wouldn't we all be made of grass?  Not exactly.  Aside from being present in everything we eat, corn molecular structure is based on a 4 carbon molecule instead of the more common 3 carbon molecule.  This is a corn adaptation that allows the plant to photosynthesize by maximizing its carbon dioxide intake while minimizing its water loss due to evaporation.  Corn doesn't pick and choose carbon like most plants and intake a sizeable amount of not-so-popular carbon 13 isotopes.  Once cows eat corn they contain carbon 13 isotopes, then we eat the beef and contain carbon 13 isotopes.  When corn is processed into many of the disguises that exist on the ingredient labels of packaged foods, those foods contain carbon 13 isotopes that we in turn ingest as well.  We are carbon based life forms so this is a very important consideration in our diets.  Eons after we die, if someone digs up our remains and puts us under an electron microscope, they will see carbon 13 isotopes (ever heard of carbon dating?).  This isotope is part of the permanent fingerprint of corn.  We have more corn in our bodies than the people of Mexico who have integrated corn into almost every meal of their daily diets!

It's all a real shame too.  I love corn in its pure undisguised form.  I love corn cobs in my seafood boils.  I love corn tortillas and maque choux.  I love popcorn.  I love grilled corn with butter.  I even love grits and polenta.  It's a real shame... like a relationship gone sour by an overly dominating partner.  Like Edna Lewis said about grits in response to the many non-traditional grit dishes chefs were playing with years ago... "people should just leave grits alone."  We should all just leave corn alone too.

trump 57

I've never been a bottled steak sauce fan, opting more for a nice compound butter, bearnaise, appropriate roasted bone-based sauce, or even chimichurri... but I realize that there are many people out there who are.  I can't remember the exact reason I even created this recipe a few days ago (I think it was on a prep list somewhere), but it came out exceptionally good.  Most bottle varieties, especially A1, tend to taste too similar to ketchup.  I'm not sure if that's the base of their appeal for some... like the redneck guy in "Waiting..." who said, "nothing sets off the flavor of a good steak like ketchup."

Here's a little smear of it alongside a piece of (sous-vide slow-cooked then grilled) cote de boeuf.  The flavor is surprisingly 'friendly' with even a world class chunk of beef such as this earthy dry-aged specimen.  I guess balance is key with steak sauces.  I've even considered bottling it up and trying to peddle it in the restaurant, but what for the name?  Trump 57 does have that nice 'familiar' ring, but with probable legal issues.  I also kind of like 'Trump Steak Toupe... the perfect topping for your steak,' but that may prove detrimental to my job security if word gets out.  Anyway, here's the recipe (no hydrocolloids, just well-balanced ingredients)...

1 C mango nectar (or juice)

1/2 C golden raisins

1 C orange juice

1/2 C soy sauce

1/2 C spiced Carribean rum

1/2 C yellow mustard

1/2 C ketchup

2 Tbsp aji panca (Peruvian panca chile puree)

1 C dried diced mango

1/2 C worcestershire sauce

zest of 1 lime

juice of 2 limes

Place all ingredients in a sauce pan, and bring to a boil for about 2 minutes.  Remove from heat and allow to cool naturally until just lukewarm.  Puree fully in a blender.

Things have been crazy, and with crazy goes comedy.  Here are a couple of examples.

I tried a new approach to shutting up all of the noise from people congregating and asking a million questions at the expo since yelling has caused my voice to strain.  For the record, this didn't work either.

... and what would the day be without a little illiteracy from the waitstaff (this example comes from the beach servers)?  It was hard to resist not sending these dogs out with a bite taken out of each one.  I get so many of these I could actually start a weekly special section of chadzilla from them (maybe take it a step further and request chefs all over the world send me photos of their 'questionable' orders... but that may be a little to Jay Leno-ish).

cheffin' & bloggin'

Shuna at Eggbeater requested a few of us to post on the topic of being a chef blogger and more specifically on the subtopic of disclosure (whether it be who you are or where you work or who you work for).  The world of the chef has changed so much in the past quarter century, and throwing factors like 'blogging' into the mix causes more lines to blur.

To address this, I have to first state my purpose for doing it in the first place.  I've always enjoyed writing, although I definitely don't have the chops to do it professionally.  When blogging, it is appropriate to take on a professional tone, but it is done freely with no editor or publisher or anyone else with a big red marker correcting and rephrasing or just simply deleting whole sections of your thoughts.  Basically, you type in a bunch of stuff, hit a button, and it's made freely accessible to anyone with an internet connection across the planet... and maybe beyond that.  The ease of blogging takes the pressure off to a degree.  There must be a billion blogs in the world.  I do believe, however, that there are not so many chef blogs.  Sure there are tons and tons of food blogs, but to have a chef blog you must 1.) be a chef, and 2.) be committed to a blog.  It does not simply take a love of food, but to be an active member in the industry.  You start out simple, feeling your way around this new world, readership is miniscule at first, then... if you stick with it... and somehow hit upon some magic formula... you might have a real blog on your hands.  So now what?  I think that Aki and Alex are right when they say that the blog becomes this strange permanent fixture in your life... even when you're not pounding away at a laptop.  You go to work each day, and get bummed if nothing post-worthy happens.  Sometimes, tons of things happen and you try to organize yourself and your future material.  You begin to question if certain subjects are even worth posting.  I know that I've put lots of things on Chadzilla that most people feel I've wasted my time with... this post may very well be one of them since it has little to do with food, and thus violates my loosely-bound credo.  Truth is, whether something is post-worthy or not, your personality doesn eventually come out and you begin to get what we call skillz.  Your writing does improve.  However, you are still not a professional writer.  It has taken me many years, many lessons in humility, and a lot of heaping spoonfuls of pride swallowed to get to the point where I can accept true criticism of my food... to have someone rip up my writing is another story.  I'd rather write under the radar and not be subject to critique than take a different career path at this point in my life.  I am a chef number one and first foremost.  It is the reason that I do this in the first place.

When I began to blog, we were trying to get a grasp on this new cuisine.  Aside from El Bulli books, and other books written in Spanish only, there was no source of information for what was going on.  Either you booked a plane to Spain, apprenticed under Blumenthal or Achatz or Dufresne, or took a hit and miss approach to it.  Our style is typically the hit and miss variety.  Chef K, Fabian, and myself all took personal interests in learning this stuff, and we each began blogging around the same time.  As things go, I ended up being the only one who committed almost daily to documenting what we were trying, taking pictures everyday, and basically made it part of my daily routine.  I sort of became the 'secretary' of our team.  This role is one I am comfortable with, and it has helped me tremendously in the ways stated above.  There were only a tiny amount of sources available for new techniques and these new powders called hydrocolloids. Ideas in Food were one of the few sources at the time giving away pieces of the puzzle here and there.  We spent hours searching the web, thumbing magazines, and referencing books.  We tried things and I posted the results.  It has helped us all to grow.  Our main driving force at the time (and today still) is to learn what we can from others, and make that information a little more accessible to other chefs and cooks than it was for us in the beginning.  Ego has very very little to do with it.  There are chefs out there who are the innovators, and we are the imitators.  Sure we have small moments of glory here and there but basically it breaks down to this... Wylie Dufresne is Led Zeppelin.  We are Whitesnake.  We may try to sound similar, or borrow a riff here and there, and our own voice does come out, but... you get the point.

Oh yeah, I was supposed to talk about disclosure.  Well, now that you have the storyline built up, the explanation is easy.  In the beginning (and for a long time afterwards), the blog was representative of our endeavors unrelated to the Sonesta-corporate umbrella we work under (and still do for a few more days).  Each of us has been employed by Sonesta for over 10 years, and the relationship has had its ups and downs (hell, I even went through the biggest natural disaster in US history with them).  We've all been through a lot.  Cherished the time, but looking to the future.  I never mentioned Sonesta at any point in my blog simply for the fact that what you see on the blog is not reflective of what we do everyday.  If you came into our restaurant, you would not see the menu you were led to believe we had.  It's not out of deception that we do this.  We are a hotel restaurant (ok... for the record here goes... we are at the Trump International Beach Resort Miami in Sunny Isles Beach, Florida.  On 1 April, we will no longer be under Sonesta management, but instead will go independent under a new management company formed by our general manager and the building owners).  When I say that, it does not mean that we are an independently operating restaurant housed within the walls of a hotel... we are the hotel chefs.  We have a family-oriented restaurant (which means 'NO CRAZY STUFF!!!') and we do crank out banquets, and we sling out hamburgers and chicken tenders to the pool & beach all day long... and all out of one kitchen.  As chefs, we run an incredible operation.  That's the only place any inch of ego comes from.  We, and more specifically Chef K, have created an operation that allows us to handle our business on a daily basis and allows us small windows of time to play with food the way that we want to.  It is truly an orchestrated work of art.  Restaurants shut down daily and job security is a true luxury in the food industry.  We are a very rare animal indeed in who we are and what we do.  Sure, I get frustrated at the days when 10 of the 12 to 14 hours of my work day are spent doing things that are not post-worthy, but it's the 30 minutes here and there of trying new ideas or learning something new that I may in turn share over the web that make it worth it.  I have met lots of great chefs through Chadzilla... people I would have probably never met otherwise.  It has helped me to learn more than I would ever learn alone.  There is a new commraderie among chef these days... especially the experimental chefs.  We do not embroider the entire alphabet behind our names on our jackets and we don't go to meetings.  We go to congresses, send emails, and occasionally talk and work together.  My goal is to stage with other chefs like us and learn whatever I can... and to post away!!!

my space

With a few days of technical problems preventing me from logging onto typepad, I'm taking a different approach to my posting today...

Most of our chef management team is enjoying a week with 3 days off each.  This is very much appreciated after the past few weeks which have kept us running and running and running.  In our kitchen line-ups, we had a nice 'quote of the day' a few days ago... 'You don't drown by falling in the water.  You drown by staying in the water.'  I cannot remember who this is credited to, but it truly fits the kitchen/hospitality life.

So, what kind of water have we fallen into lately... busy busy moments of outlet business keeping us jumping around, busy banquet moments (days when I have had to devote myself fully to banquet prep, which is not my favorite thing to do, but my blue-collar maturity forces me to accept without whining), battling a very weak and hoarse voice which is on its 7th day now (I never give it a break, so it just never gets better... and now I'm coughing like an 85 year old chain smoker every morning), preparing for a busy forthcoming holiday week, going through dead stock from the freezer (barramundi, rouen duck, cote de boeuf, coho salmon, monkfish, some 1 year old Activa) and trying to utilize it somehow, internal personal dramas, learning the baby steps of setting up websites, preparing recipes and outlines for near future demos, and reorganizing and coming up with new future challenges to keep this thing rolling.

This is my workstation (which for some strange reason always photographs blurry).  It has taken me over 2 years in this kitchen to finally secure one and I must defend it daily.  That may sound strange to some cooks working in independent restaurants, but in a hotel/resort situation like ours, it is constant chaos all day long from early morning breakfast to late night receptions).  This space is a testimony to my changing view on food.  Besides the basic stuff (cutting board, knives and tools, blah, blah) I have situated myself to have everything I need to play with food more often.  Hopefully this encourages more experimentation and ideas (or just simply keeps me more organized at them).  Things that are not normally seen at a chef's cutting board are a calculator and gram scale.  Converting all of my recipe thinking into percentages was a huge hurdle for me.  It is not easy to change from years and years of old-school kitchen thinking, but I have been nuturing my new mentality over the past few months.  I've also realized that everyone needs their own space... without it, I was all over the place.  Now my thoughts are becoming situated and constructively organized like my workspace.  I've just added an eraseable marker board to my wall which has proven to be indispensable.  Next to it is a C/F temperature conversion chart.  I have all of my hydrocolloids, additives, and special dry spices and blends on the shelves above me.  Higher above those on another shelf sit a couple of immersion blenders, spice grinder, kitchen-aid mixer, larger weight gram scale, a couple of special strainer and chinois, special oils, many plastic containers of all sizes for quick weighing and keeping mise en place, a thermomix (which is high on my list of things to start utilizing more), a Vita Prep, an outlet (obvious but necessary) and a bottle of green tabasco (which is in fact, the only good tabasco sauce... and that's coming from a Louisiana boy).  The only thing missing is a computer, which I really do wish I had space for in the kitchen... but there should always be something to shoot for in the future.

As for now, I am in the middle of my off days... resting my voice finally, and enjoying a cool March day in South Florida.  I'm sure that when I return, I will have to start throwing all of the crap that has accumulated in my space out of the way... nature really does abhor a vacuum and the kitchen staff hates a clean clutter-free space.  They'll learn sooner or later.  I will not give up my corner.  I've earned it!