Chef at Home

Archive for February, 2010

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Like a bouquet of flowers, oyster mushrooms come attached to each other. They have to be cut with a small scissor before being washed quickly, then dried over a towel to absorb the remaining humidity. Oyster mushrooms are best sauteed with fresh butter and a bit a chopped chive. They have a mild flavor with a light fragrance of anise and they are best when young. With any protein, or in a soup, they are very enjoyable.

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In the digital world, everything changes, evolves, and transforms. We have been taking pictures of food for over five years now and have only occasionally taken the time to print them out and experience them on a wall. There is something evocative about the transformation from computer screen to reality. The idea of bringing tangible versions of our work to the table has been on our minds. Recent requests have spurred us to take things to the next level.

There is often the question, what should we put on our walls? What is artwork, what captures a feeling and inspires thought? We have created a gallery of our favorite images that will found inside the egg. We’ve received our copies of each print to check out the quality and clarity and they will be available for perusal and for purchase in about a week.

If you are in the Philadelphia area and are interested in obtaining one of the pre-release copies of these photographs e-mail us.

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A pile of greens is a great inspiration. There are many approaches to dealing with an ingredient, or part there of, which is often discarded. Today we looked at the bush of greens and stripped through the excess. The result was a crisp stem with a flag of leafy greens which can be taken in a number of directions. Originally we worked on a complete daikon centric dish. That much daikon just does not come together properly. Tomorrow we shall take a closer look at which direction we shall go with these beautiful greens.

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Coming from Southern Oregon, this wild fish already has a delicate flavor, a meat which is softer than a farm raised salmon with an orange brownish color. Salmon can be cooked on very low heat or high heat up to medium rare and let rest for few minutes until the heat is diffused though the meat.

Before being grilled over a robatayaki, the Coho salmon is wrapped in fig leaves, then wrapped in a thin sheet of cedar wood. It not only creates a spicy burned fragrance all over the kitchen, but gives the salmon a woody flavor that compliment the meat very well. Cedar wood is the smell of the deep forest. When it cooks over the grill, it burns lightly but also protects the fig leaves from burning.

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Medai, or butter fish, has been beautiful over the past few weeks. The fat content and the quality of the meat itself is offering the  best of what a fish can offer. It has a pink-whiteness with a translucent aspect that set the standard. It can be served raw or slowly cooked, butter poached being my favorite.
 

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I don't have to tell you that the economy of your country, city, town, continent, family has tanked.
I don't have to tell you anything about it. You know.
I don't have to tell you to hold onto your job. You have. As long as you've been able to.
I don't have to tell you not to spend your money on frivolous items. You either have or you have not; either out of need or need to rebel.
I don't have to tell you how many restaurants have closed, how many cooks and chefs and pastry chefs are out of work.
I don't have to tell you that if you love, really love a restaurant, you may want to become a regular.
I don't have to tell you that if you really love a chef or a pastry chef's work, you should tell everyone you know to go eat at said person's workplace. You know.
I don't have to tell you the power of positive press is far quieter than the power of negative press. Whether you rant indignantly on Yelp, or feed a piece of barely true gossip to Eater, or pan a place on Chowhound, or talk doo-doo on your own blog/Twitter/Facebook about a particular place,
you play a part in the wild fire that will surely consume said business.
I don't have to tell you anything. You know why? You know.
You're smart.
You read as much as I do.
Probably more.

I don't have to tell you what happened on September 11, 2001. I don't have to tell you that the Internet Bubble, based on money which did not exactly exist, but which was generating thousands of businesses to be born, and invite more people than could even fit in San Francisco & beyond to move there, and displace thousands more, burst. At about the same time as September 11, 2001.
O yes. It was a fun year. A great time to be working in a luxury industry making food people neither needed nor could afford.
I lost my job of 2 years that year. After that I was unemployed for longer than I have been since I started working, at age 14. I witnessed over 6,000 restaurants close in San Francisco. In one year.
You probably remember that time as well as I do.
I know you remember what you were doing that day.
And if you lived in NYC or the Bay Area, you remember the recovery time.
It took years.

It is for these memories, these reasons, these experiences, which I still feel, still know, viscerally, that I remain forever grateful to have a job, when I have one.
It is for these memories, these reasons, these experiences, which I still feel, still know, viscerally, that I have grown.
It is for these memories, these reasons, these experiences, which I still feel, still know, viscerally, that hope to always know perspective, even the smallest amount, is utterly important.

Because

a little perspective

goes

a long way.

When it happens all over again. History is only important, if you can learn from it.

There are very few restaurants that do not have to worry. About food costs. About labor percentages, about inventory, rent, the economy, holidays, weather, natural catastrophes, equipment, vermin, waste, stealing, lawsuits, worker injuries, etc. Very few. Not none, but probably less than a percent I'm guessing.

Everyone thinks it's so much fun to be a chef. So creative. So nifty. So delicious. So exciting. So glamorous.

And they're right.

Some of the time.

The rest of the time they're wrong. Very wrong.

Because sometimes the most creative things you're doing is

• figuring out how to cut costs without firing your entire staff
• changing your menu overnight because none of your purveyors will deliver to you because of outstanding invoices
• working every station even though the kitchen is composed of 6 stations in the layout of a 3 bedroom house
• juggling a myriad of medication to take while working sick
• offering every kind of 'special' that will attract every kind of diner at any price point you think all of these people can or will want to afford
• filching your numbers to reflect what the owners want to see
• keeping your management away from the bar where you know they're drinking away any of the profits you might otherwise be barely seeing
• figuring out how to serve food you worry is going off but can't afford to throw out
• shaving ounce after ounce off of your plates of food in ways diners won't notice so you don't have to raise prices, which diners always notice
• keeping your body alive on 3 hours of sleep, no food and coffee as your only imbibement
• switching arms, hands, wrists, because your primary one is so injured you can no longer use it well
• and
• p.s. you don't have health insurance
• even though
• you work in one of the most physically challenging indoor workplaces you know of

Menu Changes.

These words are a stand in for other words.

Menu Changes mean a variety of things. A menu changing is a symptom. Menus Change because they have to.

After September 11th, 2001, Menus Changed. In order for restaurants to stay afloat, they had to lower prices, drop expensive proteins, lay off extraneous staff {ie pastry chefs}, ask the staff that stayed to take pay-cuts & do twice the work.

A lot of Menus Changed and many restaurants started making Comfort Food. The United States needed comfort. A lot of it.

So tonight, when I was asked to change my menu, radically, I understood. I didn't like it, but I didn't stomp my feet and say, "It's not fair!"

I understood its implication. I know its history.

I had my "reactionary, emotional, angry" self tempered, calmed {silently} by my 'Grounded Self,' and I took the order as a challenge.

For I am only one of millions who has [had] to Change Menus. Change plans. Change on a dime. 

Change Menus. Get grateful. Turn challenge into lesson. Know life is full of lessons. Have perspective. Calm down enough to see the forest through the trees.

Because you know what?

Changing Menus is changing directions is life changing, and

the only thing you can rely on is change.

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