Chef at Home

Archive for the ‘Egg Beater’ Category

if you know me, you know i adore the mermaid day parade in brooklyn.

if you really know me, you know why. 

if you’ve known me a long time you have seen me dress up for it at least once.

if you have no idea what i’m going on about, now even you mermaid day parade virgins can listen to the whispering words of the wild & wacky isle of coney.

if you want to come/go this year, i cannot endorse, suggest, cajole, force, beg, suggest, carry, kidnap, mention, guilt, announce, and/or tell you enough.

i can personally guarantee that   you’ve never seen,  whispered, sorted, bitten, felt, tasted, touched, licked, breathed, smoked, peeled, sliced, diced, sanded, snorted, cooked, eaten, plugged in, sweet nothinged, ridden, nibbled, undressed for, taken the subway to                       anything else like it!

you have my word{s}.

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Just in case you live anywhere near Arlington, Virginia, USA, please consider making your way to my uncle Ricky's new play, Sycamore Trees.

Writer David Hoffman for the Fairfax Times writes about this incredible work best.

Twenty five years in the writing, almost 50 years in the living, and directed by Tina Landau, something tells me you won't be disappointed by Sycamore Trees. The only disappointment I have is I live far away.

You have about a week & a 1/2 more to go.

Signature Theatre, 4200 Campbell Ave., Arlington, VA 22206
| 703-820-9771

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Making Katmer from anissa helou on Vimeo.

Anissa Helou, a friend I was honoured enough to meet, eat with, and feed, in London is busier than most of us dream to be. Here is a short video she's made worth watching if for nothing else than to watch someone's brilliant hands handling pastry more pliable than pizza dough, as thin as strudel. And look at the color of that pistachio dust! 

The world of pastry is an endless as the hands and the cultures that dream them up! Never be limited by what merely lives in the books and kitchens of your home country. All pastry is related, bound by common history.

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I haven't disappeared.
but maybe I have.
it depends on how you look at it.
many people will tell you I'm more present than ever.
many of these last days have not been spent in the kitchen.
but soon that's the only place I'll be.

These days I'm shaking hands with a lot of guys who sell big machines.
They say things to me like, "Why are you being so fucking polite?! We don't trust you if you're too nice…" {Not gonna lie– It's a strange acclamation to go from London to NYC.}

Excel has become a great friend of mine. 

I've built a database in fact.
One wouldn't think a pastry chef could do such a thing.


The database does all sorts of mathematical tricks.
And all the pages talk to each other.  
VLOOKUP and Dropdown Menus, yo.
So few restaurants, and less chefs {who are not hotel/corporate trained, which I am not} understand the power of internal, back-end organization.
The Excel document is a list of all raw product, a compilation of recipes, a break down of all product to show price per gram, a relay of price per gram embedded in each recipe to cost out each recipe, and, as we move through costing out each product, we can add these "working products" to our "list of ingredients."
So if you want to know the cost of butterscotch ice cream you take the cost of ice cream as a recipe and add to it the cost of butterscotch, a working product, by the gram amount you need.

If this sounds too nerdy for you, or if this doesn't sound like cheffing as you know it, think about it this way:  for every skill you add to your resume you become that much more valuable, can garner a higher wage and you might even be able to keep your job when the economy tanks.

This is the second restaurant database I've written, and if we all use it to its potential it will also help us with inventory, ordering, wholesale/catering, and price tracking.

Or think about it this way: It's easier to work in your business than on it.

When you think, "I want to be a chef when I grow up," remember that just being a great cook is not enough.

What else am I doing? 
Test baking,
measuring my station and the equipment I've ordered,
having lots and lots and lots of menu meetings,
talking to future staff about the possibility of working with me, with us, 
visiting the future home of the restaurant in all its stages: raw, midrare etc. {we are going to inhabit a building that basically needed to be gutted & rebuilt from the inside-out},
tracking down an ice cream machine,
attempting to navigate the farmers market and taking notes on which farmers have what produce during which weeks/months/seasons,
organizing recipes & recipe notes,
finding hard to find product through available purveyors and looking under rocks for the rest,
going on field trips to places I won't be able to once we open the doors to the public,
and spending as much time with my family and friends as I and they can and have time for.

Opening a restaurant is like nothing else. Joanne Chang of Boston's incredible, incomparible Flour bakery put it best,

"There's a lot of 'hurry up and wait.' You have all this time to organize yourself, your time and the project. But you wait. A lot. And then when the restaurant is going to open any minute you have a thousand things to do and no time to do them!"

I know you want to know more about the project. Where it is, who its with, what my menu will be like, when we'll open. I promise you'll know, as soon as I can tell. 

Until then, eggbeater is taking suggestions for posts &/or 'bids' for guest authoring. Know anyone?

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I used to be afraid of making Marmalade. Afraid is maybe a soft word. I don't want to admit to you all how afraid I was. Scared like a cat hiding under a car scared.

Scared still.

Maybe not, though, for the reasons you might think.

I was scared of making marmalade because I respect it so much. Its craft, its patience, its perfect balance of sweet, gel, bitter, bite, fruit to peel ratio. All of it. When citrus marmalade is right, like so many things, its perfect is quiet, soft, shy.

A je ne sais quoi perfection.

It stemmed from having once, perhaps 20 years ago, done a bit of work for the British Marmalade Goddess June Taylor. June did it the old school way. Really old school, ancient. Cutting thousands of citrus orbs by hand. With a knife. No cutting of corners, no electric machinery.

I even took a marmalade class from her.

But still. Scared.

And then I was forced. Pulled out from under the car by my tail.

By the most wondrous citrus marmalade! Kumquat Marmalade! Anna Hansen, possibly by way of Christine Manfield, had one of the best, most straightforward, citrus fruit marmalade recipes anyone could possess & execute. I arched my back, hissed, and then looked as if nothing was ever wrong with hiding under a big dangerous machine.

When I tasted that gorgeous, bright, fruity Kumquat Marmalade I never looked back. When I landed back in America and began working at 10 Downing all of Florida's citrus was a' raging, I set to task. And marmalade I made! I made grapefruit, lime-ginger, Meyer lemon, Orange-Mineola Tangelo-Grapefruit-Navel Orange, lemon and grapefruit-fennel. If you go into that restaurant now you will still be eating my marmalades. /yeah, I went a little crazy once the fear left.

So, without further waiting & hoping, I give you my "recipe" which is more of a method than anything else.

For real live Recipes please check out Elise's step-by-step instruction for a Meyer Lemon marmalade recipe on Simply Recipes. But beware: it's a time consuming, old school method. And David Lebovitz has a great recipe for Seville Orange.

**TAKE NOTE: For your health & safety if you plan on jarring your marmalade you must follow proper 'canning' procedure.** I am a restaurant pastry chef and am not making marmalade for resale to the public. I am cooling down swiftly & keeping my product refrigerated indefinitely. 

LEMON, ORANGE, KUMQUAT, TANGERINE, MEYER LEMON MARMALADE etc*

• prep your fruit any way you like. I like to think in terms of bite size pieces but I have also been known to shake it up a bit. know that you will lose size when it begins to cook, like a cotton shirt you put in hot water & a dryer on the first go round. your knife should be non serrated and be sharp.
  make sure to discard only the stem end where the little green button resides. taste your fruit! even if they are lemons, eat it rind and all. yes. no whining. you need to know how sweet or sour your overall batch of fruit is. you cannot be psychic about this step. you have to know. for certain. empirically.
• pull, push, nudge out any and all seeds. SAVE YOUR SEEDS!! the seeds are money. do not throw
  
  them away.
• when you have all your cut up fruit, and your seeds in a separate container, weigh your fruit. write this number {I like to work in grams because they are easier, better, easier to remember & make more sense} on a piece of masking tape. put all your fruit in a container large enough to hold it & the step you are about to take next.
• fill your container with cold water from the tap. you may use expensive water too if you like. the fruit should BE COVERED AND SUBMERGED but NOT DROWNING. my most common mistake is I drown the fruit. you become sorry later, I promise you. if you have OCD and are worried about that fruit that floats to the top you can lay a folded clean dishcloth over the top and put a plate on top of that. but none of that is necessary. place this container in the fridge and affix that important piece of masking tape to the outside.
  
• in order to make marmalade you NEED a stainless steel HEAVY BOTTOMED pot. your pot should be twice the size of the batch of marmalade you are making. please do not crowd the pot. you spent all this time prepping the fruit and taking out all the seeds…
• you will also need a piece of cheesecloth the size of a dishtowel. you may also use a jelly bag, but you may not use a paper coffee filter. if the mesh on the cloth you are using is too tight, your marmalade will not get thick enough. or, it won't get as thick as if you use cheesecloth.
• the next day {although truth be told you can also cook this two days after you submerge it under water} dump all the contents of the container into your stainless steel pot.
• you know you have just the right amount of water in there when, upon pressing down on the fruit, you feel a mass like washing a sweater in the bathroom sink. if it feels like floating, amorphous fruit, your fruit is drowning and you need to pour away some of your water.
• turn the heat on to medium or medium high.
• do not leave the house.
• but you may want to plan an afternoon activity. the next step, depending on your batch size, could take 3+ hours total cooking time.
• you are cooking your prepped fruit until THE PEEL IS TEETH TENDER. you are not making mush. you do not want a rapid boil. you do not want aggressive water or to stir the mass aggressively. be firm but fair with your wooden spoon or heat-proof spatula.
• AS SOON AS THE PEEL is palatable by way of feel and taste, you are going to measure out 40-60% of the fruit's total weight {which you wrote on that piece of masking tape} in sugar. white sugar. so. if you have 1500g lemon slices, you probably want 750 – 900g sugar. lemons are sour. but if you have 1000g Navel oranges or Meyer lemons you may only want 400g sugar. see? see why grams are better? easier, that's for damn sure.
• now you want to turn the flame down to an exact medium. not medium high, not medium low. call in one of the Three Bears if you can't decide. if you're lucky the Christian Right will not have locked up Goldylocks just yet.
• see those beautiful glistening seeds? touch them. fondle them. feel their slimyness? that slime is natural pectin. fruit protein of the gods.
• dump out your seeds into the cheesecloth. you probably want to have folded your cheesecloth in half, though, so it's not too porous.
• wipe out any excess pectin that's clinging to the sides, with your cheesecloth. every molecule matters. I'm not joking.
• make a little package of your seeds. NOT TIGHT. do not suffocate your seeds. they are like bees– give them room and you will be much rewarded. tie top with food grade twine or a rubber band. plop in the center of your hot fruit mess.
• stir infrequently, but intentionally.
• do not leave the house. but you may water the garden or dust.
• place a saucer or two in the freezer.
• this is what you are looking for:
• your marmalade is done when it begins to thicken and your bubbles get lazy. yes, bubbles. you want your mixture to simmer on the high side.
• your marmalade is done when the mixture darkens but it is overcooked if it begins to take on a golden hue.
• when you think you're getting close, spoon out a bit of the mixture & drop it onto your frozen saucer. when the droplet firms up instead of melts out it is ready.
• do not plotz if your first batch does not set up stiff like a tight skirt. like a three piece suit. you are making a homemade something wondrous and it will not look like any commercial jam, jelly or marmalade you have in your condiments section.
• when you think your marmalade is done, pour it immediately into a large vessel and place that in a larger vessel filled with ice. or you can leave it out at room temp, uncovered, until it can be handled.
  

*This recipe is good for "soft" skinned fruits. By this I do not mean limes or grapefruits. If you are dead set on making either or both, let me know in the comments section and I will tell you how I deal with these fruits. I definitely do not suggest starting your marmalade making with limes or grapefruits as they are tricky in the frustrating kind of way.
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This is amazing! If you want to see more by Vincent Talleu he has a vlog for bread baking on YouTube.

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I go through phases of answering questions from readers, and fellow cooks. People "email me on the side" when their letters are too long for the comment section, or when they want to remain anonymous, or when their question(s) are too many to fit a singular post. Sometimes people approach me personally. I try and make sure someone has read everything I, and you all, have written before answering people's questions. I give advice/guidance freely, when I have time.

In these last months, for some reason, I've fielded dozens upon dozens of inquiries! I don't always have time to dedicate to a long email, but a few days ago, I did, and this, below, is what came out of that.

This letter struck me particularly, and the person has agreed to allow
me to post our correspondence. I try to direct most people's questions
to the comments section, where all of you can benefit from the inquiry
& response, because a lot of the questions are the same.

I only ever use my own experience as a place from which to give advice.
The rest is up to you.

*

Dear Shuna,

 
I have been following eggbeater for some time now, quietly observing, privately cheering and consistently marveling at your victories in the kitchen and in life. I have read and re-read so many of your entries. And I have read & re-read many of the user comments that follow. I know how many people proclaim you an inspiration, so I fear that my own claim of such may not hold the weight that I wish.
 
This being said, I am shaken to my core by your words, your observations and your honesty. Or perhaps “ignited” is a better word. Your understanding of passion as torture, of drive, of food and cooking as a true art – one to perfect over a lifetime – resonates deeply with me. Perhaps your words resonate so powerfully because, up until recently, I have focused my passions on another life-long study, visual arts – even attaining a degree in them last winter.
 
Or perhaps your words ring so holy to me because I find myself at the back door of a restaurant I adore, with no culinary background (aside from my own kitchen) and a gut-wrenching desire to work in a professional kitchen that nearly brings me to tears.
 
I am 23 years old, a young woman with a college degree in a field I love, but am not “ignited” by. And I am now staring down my future. I have spent the last few years playing off my passion for food as a hobby, slowing chipping away at my art degree until graduation. I do not regret my degree – I think it has broadened my perceptions of the world, refined my tastes and actually helped me to realize where my vocational passions lie.
 
To say that I was pleased when I stumbled upon your blog would be a massive understatement. I became fidgety with an excitement reserved for sugar-saturated toddlers. In the past few years I have devoured countless writings by chefs and cooks that serve as both affirmations to the initiated and warnings to the misinformed. And as I step up to test my resolve, I do not fear the hard work, the long hours, the cuts, the burns, the tears. In actuality, I welcome them with a kind of foolish enthusiasm I myself cannot explain. At the heart of it all, the choice to pursue a career in cooking feels like one of the first truthful choices I have made for my future in 3 or 4 years.  
 
I suppose that the reason I write you this letter (aside from my awe-inspired praise) is to seek a connection with you on some level. Guidance perhaps. My pawing at the restaurant’s door paid off. I received an interview, which resulted in a subsequent interview. Proud of my own pluck, I went to the second interview yesterday. I spoke with both the chef and the owner. I was nervous, but collected. Suddenly, the interview was underway… or rather the lecture. The owner took the reigns. He was honest and blunt, and I respected his “no bullshit” attitude. But at the bottom of everything, I felt his unspoken assumption that I was some starry-eyed school girl with dreams of becoming the next Food Network personality.
 
I wonder now how I might have been interviewed were I taller, brawnier, penis-ier. Would the undertones of warning have been so prevalent? There is no denying, I am small and doe-eyed (some have said) and perhaps it seems crazy that I shouldn’t want to work front of the house. But that is not where my heart lies. The owner ended the interview by offering me a job as dishwasher “if I want it.” And now I am sitting here at my computer (taking up far too much of your time) sharing with you my first hurdle… and curious about your thoughts. I went into the interview ready to accept whatever bottom-of-the-totem job they had to offer. I went in ready to learn and work my way up, but I left questioning myself (and this was far worse than any interviewing skeptic). Does it reflect a lack of passion if I question myself? God, I hope not.
 
If you have had the time to read this far, thank you. I apologize for how long this letter has become. I began merely to tell you how much I love your blog. Please keep writing. Please keep teaching. I only hope I have the privilege to someday learn from a chef and mentor like you.
 

Sincerely, Respectfully, Passionately, s.

~~~~~

Hello s.,

First of all, thank you. Look how brave you are!
zow. I am honoured to be on the other side of your words. The internet
never ceases to amaze me. What I would not have given for such a
resource when I began.

I hope you'll forgive that my letter will be shorter than yours.

Without
knowing the details of where you reside, what your expenses are, how
big your commute is, the name of the restaurant/chef you're speaking of,
I will say this:

Take that dishwashing job. Proudly. Defiantly. Go in there and kick
ass. I washed dishes as one of my first jobs and I HAVE NEVER REGRETTED
it. I am not being ironic or facetious or downwardly mobile or spouting some anarcho
bullshit. Because I know how to wash dishes on a commercial dishwasher
my dishwasher person & machine does not have me by the balls. {Which
is a power play they often make.} Because I've worked that station I
teach my crew how to respect them. "Dishes" don't go the dish pit with
gobs of product left on them. I bake in such a way so as not to give
them more work. I soak all my pots. I pitch in and help when I have a
moment. It always takes them off guard. In a good way.

Hear This:
If you start at the bottom of a kitchen no one can
give you shit. no one.

You roll up your sleeves and eat
humble pie and the kitchen is in awe. Because it's a hard fucking
station. It teaches you order, cleanliness. It teaches you what the
diners eat and what they don't. It teaches you to be part of the gang. And, in most of the USA, it teaches you Kitchen Spanish. Also, if you
work fast enough, when you're not washing dishes, you're doing prep. And
that's the way all people move up in kitchens: when you finish your
list you learn something new by asking someone else if they need help. And someone always needs something done that 1. they can't get to &
2. they loathe doing.

All that said: if this is not a Michelin rated {well you know what I
mean here} restaurant you don't want to spend more than 3 mos on that
station. Keep your eye on your
prize s. Know what your goals are and, very quietly,
privately, stealthily, achieve them!

Show those owners up. They might think you need a penis to do that
job, but you know you don't. You know that there have been women in
history before you who have done harder jobs. ain't no thang, girl. You
know, I know what I can and can not do and that doesn't make me a woman
it makes me human.

I ask one something of the people who write to me for advice:
write
me again in 6 months and tell me what you ended up doing, if my advice
was taken, if it helped, how it didn't. and what you think you'll be
doing in another 6 months.

Thanks again for writing. I hope you step into this profession no
matter who/what tries to get in your way.
Good luck.

all the
best,

shuna fish lydon
e g g b e a t e r
cooking,
baking &
nifty photos
http://eggbeater.typepad.com/shuna/

><((((º>

&

twitter.com/shunafish

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A fine line is walked in kitchens.

Sharp as a knife wet against stone.

We are to stand book straight but hope it is only quiet discipline we exude. Never to be mistaken with vapid cockiness.

The line we walk is as fine as cable pulled taut between two towering buildings, and we are to stay alive by balancing between:

confident & humble
knowing & clueless
teachable & skilled
frightened & brave
deferential & friendly
macho & passive
one-of-the-guys & on-the-outside
aggressive & patient
smart & base
experienced & young
cocky & stupid

always.

Sound easy?

It's not. In fact, one might say, in the whirl of confusion these colluding and colliding directives create, one achieves it, merely by spinning out of control in an attempt to be all things to all chefs in all kitchens everywhere.

And while it can be said that all kitchens speak the same language, it's impossible to know which costume to don from one kitchen to the next.

So what I say to you is this:

walk in to a kitchen like it is someone else's home. walk in to their home like they are colleagues of your parents or your grandparent's friends. do not walk in like it's  frat house. do not stroll into the small dog park if you're a rottweiler. do not take up a lot of space with your voice or your person or your neediness or your fright. be professional and courteous and pay close attention to the customs so you can follow them with as much ease as you can muster. walk into the kitchen on time. {"if you're on time you're late," as a friend of mine says.} walk in groomed. walk in with two sharpies in your pocket & a notebook beside it. one sharpie is thin for taking notes, the other is bold for masking tape labels. ask what the chef wants to be called. pay attention to the tone, the volume, the attitude the other cooks display and make sure yours, as a guest in that kitchen, is softer, more polite and clearer than the rest. 

but

never act like you are above anyone. not other cooks, not the pastry department, not prep staff, not dishwashers, not waiters, not bussers, not coat check, not owners. no one. you are above no one. you are a worker among workers. no matter what your title. no matter what it says on your jacket. no matter where you went to school or who you worked for last.

When you first walk into a kitchen, you are humble. You own humility. Look it up. It does not mean you exist only to be humiliated. It does not mean to exude shame. It does not mean you attach a green light to your forehead and affix a sign between your shoulder blades that says, "Step on me. I am a rug you should feel delighted in wiping your muddy feet on. I am a doormat, a stupid rock, a worthless piece of poo."

Being humble means being teachable. It means asking pertinent questions and paying close attention to the answers. It means being quiet and learning by watching before doing. It means being one with your fellows. It does not mean terminally unique. 

being humble
is the opposite of 
feeling entitled.
standing with
is the opposite of
privilege.
acting like a worker among workers

means just that.

I may sound like a Socialist or a Communist or like some hippy radical intellectual academic philosophizing pollyanna. You can call me whatever name you want.

But I've worked in a lot of kitchens.

And I've stepped into even more. 

And I am usually invited back.

Because no matter how many years I've worked, and how many amazing people I have worked with and for, and how many services I've been demolished by, and how many mistakes I've learned from, and how many tears of mine have fallen on the floor– only to co-mingle with fryer oil food scraps, and no matter how many jobs I haven't gotten, no matter how well I know The Weeds, and no matter how many cuts & burns I've accumulated and patched up on others, and no matter how many times I've packed my knives & said goodbye,

no matter how many,

whether the number be one or too many to want to remember

I remain a worker among workers.

I stand on the same line, on the same side, with.

*

/this post was inspired by these two quotes:

"Why We Do What We Do. It’s about the peo­ple, the places, the peo­ple… Not for­get­ting how to
make things, how things are made, who is mak­ing them and why… show­ing
it to oth­ers and want­ing to share what we find in the world, it’s
about travel and dis­cov­er­ing and learn­ing." ~ Kiosk.

"This is my living faith, an active faith, a faith of verbs:
to question, explore, experiment, experience, walk, run, dance,
play, eat, love, learn, dare, taste, touch, smell, listen, argue,
speak, write, read, draw, provoke, emote, scream, sin, repent,
cry, kneel, pray, bow, rise, stand, look, laugh, cajole, create,
confront, confound, walk back, walk forward, circle, hide, and
seek. To seek: to embrace the questions, be wary of answers." ~ Terry Tempest Williams

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In lieu of my recent restaurant departure I've come to have a few thoughts about how there are a lot of different kinds of pastry chefs, and how "comparing one's inside's to another's outsides," can lead to dangerous territory.

By this I mean– competition and self doubt and keeping up with the Joneses and all those icky feelings that crop up when we're worried about who we are and what we do, and instead of just being who we are and doing what we do, we stop, and peer around the edge nervously, spying on our counterparts, and reading each others press, and worrying.

We worry that we have the wrong desserts and we employ the wrong methods.

We worry about how we might be too boring, or not boring enough.

We worry we're too old fashioned or not sticking to the Classics.

We worry about how closely we're sticking to the seasons and if any Eat Localvores are going to arrest us for putting strawberries on our menu one day too soon.

We worry our menu is not approachable enough for the clientele we are serving. We worry our chef will keep making her/his portions bigger and bigger and keep complaining that dessert sales are too low to keep us on. We worry our desserts are better than our chef's savoury food & one day he'll notice and fire us for some bogus reason.

We worry.

We worry even when we're drunk or asleep or lounging easily on the bar or flirting with waiters or yelling at our cooks or trying to fix our Kitchen-Aid with masking tape or hiding our chinois in our lockers or doing our endless laundry or on a date or walking around nonchalantly as if we've not got a care in the world, on our one day off.

Sometimes the worry takes a vacation and ends up in a place it gets stuck because a volcano has decided to erupt or an earthquake has taken over the newsreels or someone in our family has died and

for a minute

we can breathe, worry-free.

But then it starts again.

We pick up a food magazine and see yet another recipe for a stupid dessert or a cliched pairing or the name of a pastry chef who's been getting press since dinosaurs opened ice cream parlours

and then the worry begins again.

Of course I'm being a little silly.

Not all pastry chefs worry around the clock. There are a few cool, calm & collected ones. A few Clark Kents who are just as wonderful even before they do a quick-change in a diminutive telephone booth. A few who know exactly who they are, where they came from and make desserts from their heart, their heartland.

But I do think a little worry is alright.

Because a lot of complacency is what I see on most dessert menus, wherever I eat, wherever I work, whenever I travel.

It's all too easy to make dessert cliches. It's all too easy to easy to conform. It's all too easy to become the undead pastry chef. It's all too easy to do only what you were taught in school. It's all too easy to perpetrate crimes against plated desserts, pastries, sweet thangs.

Because the masses want same. Sameness sells. Lowest common denominator flies off the shelf. Boring rules. The bottom line is infatuated with mass production.

Sugar is a siren.
The population is its ship.
Sugar spins web of deception.
The blind lead the stupid lead the lemmings.
All to their creative death.
And so it goes, round and round.

Because sugar, or the taste of sweetness, harkens back to our childhoods so strongly, and nostalgia is at the root of most classical dessert creations, it's difficult for people to allow pastry chefs to take chances with flavours/ingredients/pairings they love and hold close dearly.

Perhaps so close they suffocate pastry chefs!

So I beg of you this:

stop worrying and—–>

start thinking outside the pink box.
start coming up with some slightly new flavor pairings.
stop only ordering from your purveyors and begin going to health food stores and online sources for some of your ingredients.
start reading of-the-moment chef blogs and start looking more closely at food photos and buy some food magazines & cookbooks not written in your native tongue and get your mind out there– even if you can't afford to travel your body on that culinary airplane.
delve deeper into the ingredients you think you know– try different animal eggs, animal fats, animal & grain & nut milks, various flours with and without gluten contents. toast your flours, taste new salts, experiment with as many kinds of sugars as you can find– jaggeries, muscovados, raw/turbinado/demerarra, coconut sugar. taste honeys from all over the world. taste all strengths of Manuka honey. attempt using miso in replacement of salt, or even sugar.
substitute labne or Greek yogurt or sheep's milk yogurt for creme fraiche. substitute fromage frais for ricotta. or better yet– make your own ricotta!
if you always use mascarpone, look into Crescenza or other triple cream wonders. try goat butter for your next batch of shortbread.
challenge yourself to a week of vegan baking. gluten-free baking. nut-free baking.
if you've never used fresh herbs in your muffins, cakes, cookies, buttercream, try it today. buy small batches of Organic non-irradiated ground spices and see what a difference they make compared to what your dry goods supplier is sending you. think they're too expensive? you only need 1/4 of the ginger root powder if it actually tastes like itself.
go to restaurants just for dessert.
get yourself out of your personal cave of dessert making and try someone else's creations. for all you know they're on twitter or facebook too and if you have questions imagine how happy they'll be to learn that you, another fellow pastry chef, came to eat their food & now has questions about some of their plates!
do something besides sleep on your next day off.
try getting inspiration from not just other food related sources. go to a gallery, a museum, get on a rollercoaster, take someone's kid to the zoo, or lay in the moss under some redwood trees and look high up into their canopy for perspective.

what are some other things you do to clear your head when your chef or the owner or your customers want you to make the same boring desserts they

remember from their childhood
had their last pastry chef make
know how to pronounce/eat/serve
think they know how to make themselves
eat year round whether those ingredients are in season or not
are oppressing you with only boring dusty 1980's (or earlier!) ideas

?

Enquiring pastry Chefs want to know.

Remember this:

the first chef who made something which strayed from his tradition/culture/local ingredient list/ etc. had to work hard to convince others of his and its merit.

the comfortable spot you've cornered yourself into keeps you and me and other chefs and future diners dumb.

guerilla acts of change are necessary to facilitate education, growth, change and to open one's mind one might sometimes need a crowbar as well as a spatula.

Go to Source

I'm not sure I could be convinced of my life's happenings were they not happening in such close proximity to me.

Apparently the road I live on is full of hairpins, spectacular views, death defying fissures, thousands of volunteer wildflowers, and unmarked exits.

And while change is the only thing we can rely on, many times it can take us off guard.

Without further ado, I bring you this bittersweet news~

my last official day at 10 Downing Street restaurant is Wednesday April 21. I am leaving on the best possible terms with the full support of my chef, sous chef, management & cooks. I gave a long notice and am doing everything possible to smooth out my transition, including the possibility of guest appearances in May.

It would be impossible to sum up, with mere words, my incredible experience of working with Jonnatan Leiva & Matthew Wilbur. It's very rare to be {a pastry chef} treated with such respect, equality and generosity. I could not recommend working with these true gentlemen enough. Whoever takes over the pastry helm next should consider themselves lucky, and honored. Not only do I depart adding two new colleagues to my close repertoire, but I add new friends for life.

You might be wondering why I would leave such an amazing kitchen. It is only for an an opportunity I would be crazy to pass up. Opening a[nother] restaurant. Nothing kicks your ass more. Nothing teaches you more in a shorter, more intense period of time. Few experiences in a cook's career are more amazing than opening a new business from scratch. Especially when one is chosen to be a key manager.

It's been a pleasure these last months to meet you, to feed you, and to, in turn, have your support. I look seeing you again should you walk in the door of my next adventure. Until then, who wants to have dinner at 10 Downing with me?

Go to Source