Chef at Home

Archive for the ‘Egg Beater’ Category

Some of you want to know where I'm working now. Now that I'm back in NYC. Seemingly, for good.

The restaurant has a lot of names. None of them names, per se. The address is the name. The name is the address. The address is not one you'd know, unless you knew the West Village really well.

10 Downing Street. No, not the famous UK address. {But ironic, dontcha think?}
10 Downing Street, on the West side of the street, just a blink South of where Bleeker criss-crosses 6th avenue, aka Avenue of the Americas.
Downing Street intercepts Bedford street, the two being tinier than the next.

We have a nice view of the Empire State Building, are a corner space with sidewalk to ceiling windows and boast an intriguing art collection…

But better than the view or the space or even the marble bar with the handsome, witty bartenders, is the chef, Jonnatan Leiva, and sous chef, Matthew Wilbur, in the kitchen. And our amazing team. We don't have a single 'extra' person. Everyone counts, works hard, and is growing leaps & bounds before our very eyes. I sound like a proud parent, I know. It's how I feel.

I'm proud to say I work with and amongst them. 

The jury is out on whether Jonnatan's clean, beautiful, vegetable forward, seasonal, soulful, whole animal, vegetable stock based food is what New York City wants, but we'll keep on until they catch up.

Jonnatan arrived at 10 Downing at the end of October, Matthew followed soon after in early December, and I was hired right before Christmas. All of us spent a great deal of time working in & living in California, but I never met either of them until I arrived.

I've been having a lot of fun with my menu, as you've seen. {*Lemon, *Gingerbread, *Chocolate,  *Butterscotch.} And as winter slips slowly, sleepily into Spring, our menus change and grow out of the outfits they get tired of wearing. 

Gingerbread, gone, Hazelnut, brown butter & pears in. Rethinking chocolate. Slipped in a lebne cheesecake with kumquat marmalade, then it exited stage left. Am playing with an apple chausson with rosemary caramel cream & a weird and wonderful pickled apple & pomegranate salad. And for those of you looking for something slightly less obvious ~ supple chocolate & pistachio cream, rose petal sugar, sour cherry sauce, toasted kataifi & cool rose-mastic cloud…

I'm also having a good time with our Saturday & Sunday brunch menu. I've revamped the granola by buying local honey, omitting nuts, replacing regular yogurt with lebne & making it with as "unsweet" as possible by using maple syrup & honey instead of brown sugar.

I've been bold & nudged in my favourite breakfast item: EGG BABIES! Aka Dutch Pancakes.

And I never thought I would do it, but I have overcome my fear of making marmalade & right this minute you could be served one or all of the following with your French Toast, Dutch Pancake 'Souffle,' and/or'Pastry Basket': kumquat, lemon, blood orange, Meyer lemon, or Mineola Tangelo!! We just yesterday finished a grapefruit-fennel marmalade that was one my first attempts.

Although brunch service happens only 2 days a week I've gone all out for the pastry basket. Every week I challenge myself with a new yeasted something. This past weekend I was utterly ecstatic to find Deb's Monkey Bread recipe in time for Friday testing.

If you came in this past weekend, your pastry basket had toasted flour & almond Polverone, ANZAC, cornbread, buckwheat-banana-walnut-coffee-candied ginger muffin, Monkey Bread & a cheesy-pear biscuit.

A lot of you have come in, introduced yourself and allowed me to meet you in person. What a joy this has been! Thank you thank you for supporting the restaurants where I work. It means so much, especially these days.

For any of you who want to see more behind the scenes photos of 10 Downing St. Restaurant kitchen & cooks, I've put up three sets on Flickr. One, Two & Three. Yes, I will continue to bring my camera in & document menu changes & cooks cooking.

And if you live anywhere near or in NYC, I hope to meet & feed you soon…

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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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I don't know if you have a bakery in your town that has marshmallows on strings hanging from its ceiling.

But I do.

City Bakery, Maury Rubin's masterful bakery palace on 18th street, just a few paces West of 5th avenue.

Marshmallows edible & knitted.

Hanging on strings, piled in bowls, packages in fluffy clear packages like edible pillows, waiting to be floating, sunglassed, in a pool of thick velvety rich hot chocolate, the flavor of your choice.

Because February Is

 
The City Bakery annual Hot Chocolate Festival Month.

And this year, it's 17th year running,

if you're free the night of Thursday February 18th

you could learn

HOW TO KNIT A MARSHMALLOW!!!!!

yes. I'm way excited. too.

Come one, Come All, Come Knitters or Chocolate Lovers or both or neither!

Last night I had Lemon Hot Chocolate. Mmmm lemon & chocolate.

But there are many other flavors to be had– check out the hot chocolate festival interactive calendar…

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Butterscotch Pot de Creme, Dulce de Leche & Brown Sugar-Cumin Roasted Pecans

You could say I know Butterscotch. I know it well. And more than most people, I know what Butterscotch is not, never was and, if it's up to me, which of course it's not; because I need the help of all pastry chefs worldwide, not to mention the massive corporations who decide what you eat, in what form, and, {did you know?!} with what flavorings… But I digress.

If it were solely up to me, I would make sure everyone, e v e r y  one, knew the true, real taste of Butterscotch.

At my current workplace, I appear to be doing a good job of just this sort of delicious education. Because, contrary to popular plated dessert menu logic, this Butterscotch Pot de Creme is oftentimes selling better than my chocolate dessert.

I kid you not.

The People?

They appear to want the real thing.

Take that you imposters! You pretenders! Take that artificial butterscotch chips! POW! Artificial flavors be banished!

The People have spoken. With their mouths full. 

Butterscotch, the passion. Who knew? Underdog or trendsetter, flavor or philosophy, back road or freeway, Butterscotch could very well be bipartisan. Who do you know that can cast aspersions on Butterscotch?

In some ways you could say Butterscotch is simple. It is merely the flavor of its parts. No fancy flips or one-handed emulsion tricks, no major machinery needed, no ingredients you can't get at your local regular supermarket.

Dark Brown Sugar. Butter. Cream. Madagascar "Bourbon" Vanilla Extract. Salt.

See? Easy. Easy as a pot on a stove, whisk in hand, a dash of patience & a good, solid, belief in the seasoning & balancing power of salt.

All that said, pot de creme? It's not so easy. I worked for a pastry chef once who, after I asked nervously, "How do you know when they're done, when they're just set?" said, "You'll come to have a pot de creme sense. You'll know before the timer goes off. The oven will talk to you. Listen. The custards, and their corresponding ramekins, will teach you. You'll see."

And she was right.

But not everyone has it.

You have to be a student of the egg. You have to understand coagulation. You have to understand why. You have to be a Why Asker. You have to get quiet. Really quiet. Because when eggs talk, when eggs school, they do so quietly. Eggs are great whisperers. 

You have to understand steam. You have to know what a water-bath does. You have to understand your oven. You have to understand the physics of ratio. Ratio of ramekin weight & depth to liquid custard. 

You have to be patient. You have to have a gentle touch when checking up on your setting pot de cremes. You have to have the eye. Your eyes need to be connected to your mind, but also your heart. For an overcooked pot de creme looks a lot like an underset one.

And you have to know something about carryover cooking.

Yes, carryover cooking isn't just for meat cooks. All protein, all baked goods, experience carryover cooking.

All that warning aside. A pot de creme is worth it. Worth every worry, worth every every ramekin of wobbly, custardy joy, worth every pot de creme you have to dump immediately in the garbage bin because you waited 1 minute too long.

Pot de creme is not forgiving. Overcooked pot de creme? Scrambled eggs. Literally. Not smooth texture. Overcooked pot de creme feeds the garbage gods, who laugh in your face. But you have to stare them down, even with tears streaming into their hungry, mean mouths, and get back on the pot de creme pony.

A perfect pot de creme will evaporate in your mouth faster than cotton candy. A perfect pot de creme will keep you from sharing. A perfect pot de creme will leave you wordless. Will humble you.

I promise.

And so… the dessert at hand.

Butterscotch plays well with others. Butterscotch pairs with many other flavours sweet & savoury. Being that we're still in the thick of January & winter's brittle clutch, my dessert menu leans heavily on warm, hearty compositions. Butterscotch can still taste like itself up against some pretty powerful ingredient egos. Like cumin.

Who says cumin has no place in desserts? I seem to remember proving y'all wrong a few years ago when I made a Cumin Pot de Creme with Heirloom Apple Salad & Bee Pollen.

Cumin can be a bit frightening because of it's sharply bitter edge which is never demurely hiding against the wall waiting for Coriander or Black beans to ask it to dance. Cumin will more likely steal your car than open the door for you. So, yes, you do have to be careful with cumin.

But, up against Butterscotch, cumin checks her guns at the door. She hooks the arms of one slender, dashing, buttery pecan, stands up straight as an arrow, shows off a little leg, and lets a night of brown sugar, butter & sea salt take her away.

And if you're still not convinced, these brown sugar-salty butter-cumin roasted nuts sit on a deeply colored dulche de leche: one of the world's most voluptuous, silky, milky, caramel known to all whose tongues have come   with across it.

I make one final stroke. {You could say I learnt it in London.}

To offer a bit of 'refreshment,' brightness, & mystery to the dessert, I pour a thin stream of cream on the butterscotch pot de creme's surface. The taste of cold cream is one of life's rare, secreted, pleasures.

If you were a wee bit afraid of whether butterscotch were going to be too sweet for your elegant palate, the cream is there for your tempering pleasure. If the plate were slightly too wintery browns for your intelligent eye, the lid of juxtoposed white would immediately balance the plate's aesthetic dynamic.

And if you, were anything like me, you would allow me to blindfold one of your five senses, and trust me to take you on a journey filled with familiar & unfamiliar, common & uncommon, rich & deep sensations, beyond your wildest imaginings.

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