Cooking tips, tricks, and advice from professional kitchens
Oddities
You know it’s hard out here for a chef
Mar 6th
When you attend culinary school, you’re told of all the amazing opportunities that being a cook presents: you can travel the world, run your own business, make a fortune working in foreign countries, or even become a celebrity chef. Unfortunately, reality is quite different. If culinary instructors told you about the abuse, sexual harassment, low rate of pay, the required and unpaid hours of prep, long days, split shifts, canceled shifts, broken equipment, burns, cuts, swollen knees, stress, nepotism, and random crap that goes on in the food service industry, I think most people would drop out before their second term.
Making a career in the food industry requires more than just a love of food, cooking, or people. It requires you to get used to not sleeping or eating regularly, working 8-12 hours on your feet without a break, and putting up with things that should just not be the way they are. Sure, not all jobs in the field are like that, but you’d be hard pressed to find a workplace that doesn’t have at least one of these issues.
The issue least mentioned in culinary schools is the seasonality of the job field. In the restaurant world, don’t expect to get holidays off. Do expect to get random weeks of very short shifts, or no shifts at all. If you’re in an area that gets a lot of summer tourists, you’d be smart to save your pennies for October – March. Banquet operations tend to do a ton of business from November to December, but it slows January through May. That’s a long time to be part time employed, especially if you’re not wanting to live check to check.
I think Three Six Mafia said it best:
You know it’s hard out here for a pimp
When he tryin to get this money for the rent
For the Cadillacs and gas money spent
Will have a whole lota bitches jumpin’ ship
Free Martha Stewart Living Radio Thanksgiving cookbook
Nov 14th
Here’s a nice freebie from Martha Stewart Living Radio on Sirius/XM sattelite radio: A complete, professionally designed cookbook in PDF format packed with Thanksgiving themed recipes from celebrity chefs.
You’ll need Foxit Reader or Acrobat reader to open it.
The real truth about restaurant specials
Nov 1st
It is often difficult to know whether or not to order a special at a restaurant.
Specials have associations with being less than fresh, or somewhat inferior to the regular menu. In Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain, he mentions that it’s probably not a good idea to eat fish on a monday. I would like to thoroughly discredit this myth. Thanks to the wonders of modern technology and businesses, deliverys arrive at all days and times as required. This includes sundays and mornings. The old idea that Monday’s fish is from Friday and that’s somehow bad is totally outdated.
It now takes less time than ever to get product from field or ocean to table. Reputable wholesalers are under tremendous pressure to provide the freshest produce possible, which translates to less time in warehouses before it gets to restaurants and supermarkets. Specials are often an opportunity to try out new menu ideas before the full menu can be changed or to let junior chefs get their ideas out there without the commitment of a regular menu item. At very high end restaurants, as you may have seen on kitchen shows such as ‘Hells Kitchen’ or ‘Kitchen Nightmares’, getting a special on the menu can be a higly motivating reward to junior chefs and cooks. They are also a way for restaurants to cut costs, as specials may result from a wholesaler giving a deal on surplus product. Again, this isn’t because the product is spoiled or old, it is because they are trying to clear it out because they don’t want it to become less than fresh.
Specials are also a great way for restaurants to take advantage of exceptional seasonal produce with no home on the menu. Items such as chanterelle or bluefoot mushrooms have very short seasons, so unless a restaurant changes their menu more than once a month, it can be difficult to use these tasty treats. A turkey special the day after thanksgiving isn’t necessarily yesterday’s leftovers reheated. It might be that on the thanksgiving menu, they used only the white breast meat, and the special is turkey thighs, or it’s possible they expected 100 reservations for that night, ordered accordingly and only got 70. This leaves 30 portions of perfectally fresh raw turkey and no use for it.
Specials can also offer exceptional value. When an expensive item is over ordered, and can only be kept for a few days, such as lobster, using it on a special, and using a lot of it on each plate, can be a great way to get back the money spent on it.
These rules don’t necessarily apply to every special, every time, but I hope that they have made you less scared of ordering them.
Check out Heat of the Kitchen
Sep 15th
Heat of the Kitchen
I just wanted to throw this out there, a shout out/plug for my friend Zak, who’s been putting in a lot of work on his blog in his few and far between off hours.
Check out some videos and posts over at Heat of the Kitchen to get a taste of real kitchen life, rather than my mindless lectures and rantings. Keep up the great work man.
Crimes Against Food, a hilarious podcast
Jul 10th
If you have some free time, and are into the whole Podcasting thing, give Crimes Against Food a listen. Podcasts are just mp3 [or other files] shared using RSS and/or iTunes. You don’t need an RSS reader for them, or even iTunes or an iPod, because most podcast shows are downloadable from their parent websites.
Crimes Against Food is a weekly food show presented by Gloria Lindh and Mia Steele, two hilarious, and occasionally potty-mouthed English ladies. It’s easily one of the best food related podcast shows I’ve heard, and the EXPLICIT tag on iTunes adds a nice touch. These two love their food and are passionate about thing being done ‘properly’. Each episode [generally] focuses on a particular crime against food, hence the name [...yeah].
You can get episodes of Crimes Against Food in MP3 format by visiting their page at Simply Syndicated here, or check them out through iTunes.
Cynar Artichoke liquer
Mar 26th
Did you know that there is an artichoke liqueur? This is one of the stranger things I have accidentally discovered browsing food pages online. It’s called Cynar, and is from Italy, where apparently according to this commercial I found, it is still popular. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_2Duf6W6bg
It’s made by the same people that make Campari (one of my favourite aperitifs), but it is not available at BC Liquor Stores. If, in my various excursions around the city’s private liquor stores, I find this I’ll post about it – or if you live in Vancouver, and you see it, please let me know. I will probably pick up a bottle, if only to see if the experience lives up to the commercial.
No tip, but here’s something funny
Mar 20th
Since I haven’t finished writing today’s tip yet, here’s a episode 1 of BBC’s hilarious Posh Nosh.
