Culinary School Confidential

Steak n' Mousse

2010-05-26T18:21:00.000-07:00

No theme today, just the next week hanging over us -- next week is the last class, and we will be serving dinner to the friends and families of the students and a number of the staff, perhaps 25-30 mouths all together. So today was all about making some fancy labor-intensive desserts for next week, and a few simple dishes to get us fed today.

Pastry chefs run in a slightly different world than the rest of the kitchen, due to the fact dessert is usually NOT a la minute -- it can be prepared hours, if not days in advanced, and will not lose quality. These workers can come in early and take over the kitchen and make complex recipes like the following, before the main staff come in to prep the rest of the menu....

TRIPLE-CHOCOLATE MOUSSE CAKE

Yield: 2 cakes, 24 to 36 servings

BOTTOM LAYER
Butter, cut into 12 pieces 6 oz
Bittersweet chocolate, fine chop 14 oz
Instant Espresso powder 1 ½ tsp
Vanilla extract 1 tbsp
Eggs, separated 8 each
Salt 2 pinches
Light brown sugar, crumbled 2/3 cup packed

MIDDLE LAYER
Cocoa powder, dutch process 4tbsp
Hot water 5 oz
Bittersweet chocolate, fine chop 14 oz
Heavy cream, cold 3 cup
Sugar 2 tbsp
Salt ¼ tsp

TOP LAYER
Powdered gelatin 1 ½ tsp
Water 2 tbsp
White chocolate, fine chop 12 oz
Heavy cream, cold 3 cup

Shaved chocolate or cocoa powder for serving

BOTTOM LAYER:
Preheat oven to 325˚. Grease bottom and sides of 2 10”spring form pans. Slowly melt butter, chocolate and espresso powder in double boiler, stirring until smooth. Remove from heat. Wait 5 minutes. Whisk in vanilla and egg yolks. Set aside.
In stand mixer with whisk attachment, beat egg whites and salt until frothy. Add half sugar and beat until combined. Add rest of sugar and beat until soft peaks, scraping down sides half way through.
Fold egg mixture into chocolate mixture one third at a time, until no white streaks remain. Pour into two prepared spring form pans.
Bake 13-18 minutes, just set but soft in middle. Cool for 1 hour, leave in pan.
MIDDLE LAYER.
Combine cocoa powder and hot water, set aside. Melt chocolate in double boiler until just smooth, take off heat and let cool 2 minutes.
In stand mixer, whip cream, sugar and salt together to soft peaks.
Whisk cocoa powder mixture into melted chocolate until smooth. Fold whipped cream into chocolate 1/3 at a time until no streaks remain. Spoon into spring form pans on top of bottom layer. Smooth with spatula and clean off any drips from the inside sides. Refrigerate for a minimum of 15 minutes.
TOP LAYER.
In a small bowl, sprinkle gelatin over water. Let stand for at least 5 minutes.
Bring 1 cup cream to a simmer in a sauce pan. Remove from heat and add gelatin mixture, stir until dissolved.
Pour cream mixture over white chocolate in a bowl, whisk until smooth. Let stand 3 to 5 minutes
In a stand mixer, whisk remaining 2 cups of cream to soft peaks. Fold into white chocolate mixture, one third at a time. Spoon over middle layer.
Set in fridge for at least 2.5 hours. Serve with garnish of cocoa or shaved chocolate.

This recipe was adapted from Cook's Illustrated, which was much more wordy and full of explanation of why. Which is great for someone like me, but a bad distraction from students just trying to get the thing done in the time given.

We cooked off a few flank steaks in the oven -- ideally it would be on a grill, but we had no access to one, so into the convection oven we went. The marinade was blended to smooth, the steak poked fill of shallow cuts with the tip of a chef's knife.

CHIMICHURRI FLANK STEAK

Yield: 12 servings

Flank steak, trimmed & scored 1 each
Vegetable oil 2 floz
EVOO 2 floz
Cider vinegar 2 floz
Garlic cloves, minced 2 each
Cumin 1 tsp
Oregano, fresh 1/3 cup
Cilantro, fresh ½ cup
Parsley, fresh 1 cup

Combine all ingredients except steak. Puree in blender. Marinate steak in ½ of marinade for 1 hour.
Cook in oven at 300˚ until internal temp reaches 135˚. Rest 10 minutes, slice against grain, serve with remaining marinade.

135 is medium rare, and as I found out, feeding medium-rare meat to this population of students is about as likely as serving a vending-machine hamburger at Nobu. So I cooked off each of the three steaks differently -- medium rare (135), medium (142) and well-done (150), but even the well done was not well-done enough for them. There was no pink, but it was still juicy. After it was sliced, one student put it in a sautee pan and cooked it until it had browned edges, and the consistency was closer to tough leather than unctuous steak. Blech! Over-cooked meat is part of a culture of fear of illness from undercooked meat, particularly established in lower economic rungs, where access to good meat is more rare.

A student last week suggested collards, and we did a pretty standard version.

COLLARD GREENS

Yield: 12 servings

Smoked ham hocks 2 lbs
Water 1 g
Salt to taste
Collard greens 4 bunch
Cider vinegar 1 cups
Sugar 3 tbsp

Place the pork, water and salt in a pot. BTB, skim off any fat that rises to the top. Reduce temperature to low and let simmer for 30 minutes.
Meanwhile, prepare greens. Discard damaged or yellow parts of leaves. Cut away the tough ends from each leaf. Place greens in a colander, wash thoroughly. Fold each leaf in half at its center vein, fold over once or twice more, then cut in half.
Stir prepared greens into the simmering liquid. Let simmer all together for approximately 1 hour over low heat. Add half of sugar and vinegar, taste and adjust. Serve.

One student decided to "spice" it up at the end, throwing in a bunch of dried spices and a bit too much hot red pepper flakes. Regardless, the long boiling in the smokey stock eliminated any bitterness, and the vinegar gave a nice kick.

One student has been bragging about his skill making banana pudding since the day I met him, but unfortunately he did not show up today. When everything was well underway, I decided to fit this in at the last minute.

BANANA PUDDING

Yield: Two 9 x 13 pans

White sugar 10 oz
AP flour 2/3 cup
Salt ½ tsp
Egg yolks, beaten 6 each
Heavy cream 1 qt
Vanilla bean, scraped 2 beans
Rum 1 oz
Butter, softened ¼ cup
Bananas, peeled & sliced 4 each
Nilla wafers 12 oz

In medium saucepan combine sugar, flour and salt. Add eggs and stir well. Stir in cream, and cook over low heat, stirring constantly. When mixture begins to thicken, remove from heat and continue to stir, cooling slightly. Stir in vanilla, rum and butter until smooth.
In two 9x13-inch dish, layer pudding with bananas and vanilla wafers. Chill at least one hour in refrigerator before serving.

We went off the reservation with this recipe a bit. First, we ran out of cream so substituted coconut milk for about 1/3 of the cream. Second, in deference to next week, we decided to make mini banana pudding cups in cupcake papers. Third, we were given horrible "reduced fat" Nilla wafers, so we ground them in a blender and added a few sticks of butter to unreduce it. In the cups we pressed in some of the Nilla mix, a layer of the rum-vanilla pudding, a few slices of bananas, then a layer of simple whipped cream. When we serve it, we'll sprinkle some cinnamon sugar.

Next week, the wrap-up!

Italian with Mario

2010-05-19T20:30:00.000-07:00

I started today's lesson with a personal story, which seems to be an effective way to start a class -- seems simple, why didn't I figure this out sooner? A few years ago I was visiting an old friend outside of London, England, where she took me to her best friend's house for dinner. The friend made a lasagna "from scratch". It certainly looked like a normal lasagna. When I cut a piece off with a fork (felt right), I placed the bite in my mouth and tasted...nothing. At all. I was not sick or stuffed up, but I took a paper napkin and quickly blew my nose to make sure it was clear -- the only time I ever had an experience like this was when my nose is stuffed, preventing nerve ending in the nasal cavity from detecting taste. Nope, the lasagna tasted like nothing.

I politely said it was great, and helped clean up. At this point I was able to do some detective work. Premade sauce from a jar. No-fat diet ricotta cheese. Pre-cooked lasagna pasta sheets from the refrigerator section. No-fat diet mozzarella cheese. Dried herbs, probably been sitting in a jar for years in her spice rack. No sign of salt or olive oil. Wow. That pretty much explains it.

Today, we would make an Italian baked pasta dish, truly from scratch. But to make something like a Baked Ziti, you don't just go and buy the components, some of them you should make... particularly the bescamela sauce, the bread crumbs and, of course the tomato sauce....

BESCIAMELLA

Yield: about 5 cups

Butter ½ cup
AP flour ½ cup
Whole milk 1 quart + ½ cup
Salt 1 tbsp
Nutmeg, freshly grated 1 tsp

In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat. Add the flour and stir until smooth. Cook, stirring until light golden brown 6 to 7 minutes.
Meanwhile, in another saucepan, heat the milk to just under a boil. Add the milk to the butter mixture about 1 cup at time, whisking constantly until very smooth, and bring to a boil, whisking. Cook, whisking, until thickened, about 10 minutes; remove from the heat.
Season with the salt and nutmeg. Transfer to a bowl and let cool, then cover and refrigerate until ready to use.

BASIC TOMATO SAUCE

Yield: 8 cups

EVOO ½ cup
Onion, small dice 2 large onion
Garlic, minced 8 cloves
Thyme, chopped ¼ cup
Oregano, chopped ¼ cup
Carrot, grated 2 each
Basil, chiffonade ¼ cup
Whole peeled tomatoes, milled Four 28oz cans
Salt to taste

Heat olive oil in saucepan. Soften onion, then add garlic for 1 additional minute.
Add thyme, oregano and carrot and cook until carrot is soft, about five minutes
Add tomatoes and basil. Simmer until thickened, about 30 minutes.

BREAD CRUMBS

Yield: about 4 cups

Italian bread, thickly sliced 1 loaf, fresh

Place bread slices on a sheet into a cold oven. Heat to 200˚
Remove when bread is dry but not too browned. Place in a food processor and pulse until only crumbs remain – not too chunky, but not a fine powder, either.

I had three teams of two bang out these three, and as they finished, I had them work on the other components of the ziti -- pasta that is undercooked then chilled fast, grate the cheese (NOT pregrated, of course) and good imported buffala moz chopped into cubes.

ZITI AL TELEFONO (BAKED ZITI)

Yield: 8 servings

Ziti 2 lb
Tomato Sauce 4 cups
Besciamella 4 cups
Buffalo mozzarella 2 lbs
Parmigiano-Reggiano, grated 1 cup
Bread crumbs, fresh 1 cup

Preheat oven to 425˚.
Bring 3 gallons of water to a oil in a large pot, and add 2 tablespoons of salt. Cook the ziti for 2 minutes short of the package instructions; it should be too al dente to eat. Drain and rinse under cold water until cool. Drain a second time and place in a large bowl.
Add the tomato sauce, besciamella, mozzarella and Parmigiano to the ziti and stir to mix well. Sprinkle with the bread crumbs.
Bake for 20 minutes, until bubbling and crusty on top. Serve immediately.

When all six components were laid out in front of us in mise bowls, I called the students over and gave a short lecture about Italian cooking. These six ingredients -- pasta, tomato sauce, cheeses, white sauce and bread crumbs -- are all not only simple common things, but used in thousands of configurations to make hundreds of different regional styles. Italy has literally had thousands of years to develop their cuisine, while being limited to a relatively small group of ingredients. Pasta alone, there are hundreds of shapes that grab sauce in particular ways, changing the taste, texture and experience of a dish. Angel hair pasta in tomato sauce can have the same exact ingredients as spirals in tomato sauce, but will be quite a different dish.

And then we got all Grandma with it and mixed everything together, topped with crumbs and slammed in the oven.

Last weeks, one of the kids requested fried shrimp, and pretty much every cuisine will have a version, and here is an Italian one...

FRITTO DI GAMBERONI (FRIED SHRIMP)

Yield: 6 servings

EVOO Enough for deep frying
Large shrimp, cleaned 3 lbs
Lemons, 1/8” slices 2 each
Cornstarch 2 cups
Wondra flour 2 cups
Salt to taste
Black pepper to taste
Lemons, wedges 2 each

Set up deep saucepan with fryer basket. Heat oil over medium heat to 375˚.
Place shrimp in a bowl. In another bowl, combine flour and cornstarch.
Combine half the shrimp, half the lemon slices and half the flour mixture in a 3rd bowl. Toss quickly with hands to coat, then toss in a colander and bat against your hand to remove excess flour mixture.
Place coated shrimp and lemons in fryer basket and gently lower into hot oil. Cook until golden brown and crisp, 1 ½ to 2 minutes. Transfer to a drying rack to drain.
Once oil returns to 375˚,immediately repeat with remaining shrimp and lemon slices.
Season with salt and pepper, serve with lemon wedges and tomato sauce for dipping.

The kids were a bit freaked out by the deep fried lemon slices, they didn't like the pale color of the final product or the lack of crunch, BUT they liked it anyway. They're used to the fried shrimp out of the Chinese takeaways, but appreciated this different spin.

BROCCOLI AL FRASCATI

Yield: 6 servings

EVOO 3 oz
Garlic, sliced 4 cloves
Broccoli, cut into spears 3 lb
Frascati or other dry white wine 1 cup
Hot red pepper flakes 1 tbsp
Lemon zest 1 each
Orange zest 1 each

In a large sauté pan, heat olive oil with garlic over medium heat until just sizzling.
Add broccoli and cook, tossing frequently and gradually add the wine to keep the garlic from browning, until stalks are tender, 8 to 10 minutes.
Add red pepper flakes and zests, tossing well.

I was impressed by this recipe, but I had never made it before, and unsurprisingly the kids didn't dig it. Redolent of wine and fruit without being sweet, the broccoli was tender but crisp, and nice spicy kick that made the wine and fruit flavors pop.

As I was doing the final cleanup after the students ate and left, I found this copy of the recipes, from a student who I assumed was not paying attention, because she stared at her sheet and doodled through my entire lecture. As it turns out, she was taking notes AND drawing little hearts!

Norbert Thursday (A momentary lapse into veganism)

2010-05-14T06:37:00.001-07:00

Edie is doing better, but she's used to eating just formula all day, so spending more time with her as she sits with solid food is a focus. We went out on foot today for a solid 4 hours and she was totally back to normal, food excepted.

AM SNACK: 8:30am, large glass of iced mint green tea

BREAKFAST: 9:45am, organic whole grain chex with organic dead milk, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5

LUNCH pt 1: 11:30am, large green salad, .75 bowl, hunger 4/5

LUNCH pt 2: 1:30pm, slice of 'zen' pizza, small cup of vegan chocolate 'ice cream', 1.25 bowl, hunger 4/5
A big ol' vegan lunch in honor of the HVS. Went to Viva Herbal to have the spelt-crusted green tea-infused soy mush and other stuff thing. Walking down the street, felt the urge for sweets but didn't want to go too far into the red, so stopped in at Stogo, for their so-called "ice cream", but what I ate was kinda gritty, bland and bitter punctuated by dry, pasty chunks of "brownie". Ick.

PM SNACK: 2:30pm, bottle of unsweetened green jasmine tea
Thirsty after a short Wholefoods shop, I picked up a bottle of Tea's Tea unsweetened green jasmine tea, the same kind of tea I've used in my last batch of ice tea. I wanted to taste green jasmine in unsweetened form, and it surprised me -- the jasmine flower flavoring gives a depth of flavor that is kinda like sweet without the sweetness. No wonder my iced tea tastes so sweet, the jasmine perfume is amplifying it.

DINNER: 7:30pm, roti cannai with curry dipping sauce, spicy shrimp & vegetables over brown rice, chocolate experiment, 1.25 bowl, hunger 4/5
I plan to make the MOST DECADENT OVER THE TOP RE-GOT-DAMM-DICULOUS chocolate ice cream for Edie's birthday, so for Saturday's brunch, I'm going to serve experimental chocolate ice cream, a winged-recipe based on a creme Anglais base. I put one ramekin of the custard in the freezer just to taste it for sweetness when cold -- it was good. The balance ain't there yet (less instant espresso, a different technique to get the chocolate less gritty needed) but it's a good start.

Breakfast

2010-05-13T06:13:00.000-07:00

Most of the food we've done in class is lunch or dinner or dessert or snacks -- nothing particularly aimed at the first meal of the day. I purposefully excluded eggs because of two reasons: one, the many methods and techniques of cooking eggs can be a class to themselves and two, I absolutely despise eggs as a dish. Probably because my mom made me eat really poorly cooked eggs, but that's a rant for a different kind of blog.

My lecture was short and sweet and about sausage. By taking "off" cuts of meat, cuts of the tougher, less palatable cuts and grinding them up and added spices, the sausage method made previously unusable parts of the animal not only usable, but quite delicious. I showed them the meat grinder and took it apart and explained how it worked, and discussed why it's important to cube the meat into small pieces -- the connective tissue between muscles, or "silver skin", will get caught in the blade and create friction and heat, which will cause the fat in the chilled meat to warm up and run out, creating dry, crumbly sausage.

BREAKFAST SAUSAGE

Yield: 6 servings

Sage 1 tbsp
Salt 1 tbsp
Pepper 1 ½ tsp
Marjoram ½ tsp
Brown sugar 1 tbsp
Red pepper flakes 1/8 tsp
Cloves, ground 1 pinch
Pork butt, chilled 3 lbs
Fatback 1 lb

Combine all ingredients except meat in a bowl and mix well. Set aside.
Cut meat & fat into 1” cubes, then run through grinder twice – first through the big dye, then through the small dye. Keep meat on iced bowl to keep fat emulsified.
Combine spice mix with meat with hands, quickly. Form into equal sized patties. Sauté patties in a large skillet over medium high heat for 5 minutes per side, or until internal pork temperature reaches 160 degrees.

We had a "pork butt", which is actually the shoulder, and the students watched while I broke it down, removing the skin and the center bone. When the ground meat came out of the machine, they were surprised that it looked just like the stuff they bought in the shop.

Toward the end of class we cooked off the sausage in small heaping-tablespoon patties in peanut oil, and the students were impressed how delicious they were -- like real breakfast sausage. I told them they COULD just buy ground pork and mix in spices and make the sausage very simply that way -- and it would be hella more healthful than the Jimmy Dean crap you buy in a freezer case.

Speaking of healthful, the next recipe is probably the healthiest thing I've cooked with this class. This is my riff on the Olive Oil Granola that was made popular by the NY Times.

GRANOLA

Yield: 4 servings

Old-fashioned rolled oats 3 cups
Raw pistachios, hulled 1 ½ cup
Raw pumpkin seeds, hulled 1 cup
Shredded dried coconut 1 cup
Maple syrup ¼ cup
Light brown sugar ½ cup
Extra virgin olive oil ½ cup
Salt 1 tsp
Cinnamon, ground ½ tsp
Cardamom, ground ½ tsp
Vanilla, 1 tbsp
Dried apple, chopped ½ cup
Dried cherries, chopped ½ cup

Preheat oven to 300˚. In a bowl, combine all ingredients except the two dried fruits. Spread on a rimmed baking sheet in an even layer and bake for 45 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes, until golden brown and well toasted.
Transfer granola to a large bowl and add dried fruit, tossing to combine.

One student was moaning about how she didn't like coconut, but when it came out and she tried it, she loved it -- the coconut was very subtle and was nice and crispy. Staff from the whole building visited the kitchen, as the aromas of the granola got everywhere. Which makes me wonder about ventilation....

The next two recipes were done at the same time, as they both involved frying in a pan. The students had only ever made pancakes from a mix, and the french toast they had made at home was always disappointing because it was leaden and hard, probably due to the kind of bread they were using.

FRENCH TOAST

Yield: 4 servings

Milk 1 quart
Eggs 8 each
Sugar 2 oz
Cinnamon, ground pinch
Nutmeg, ground pinch
Salt pinch
Clarified butter, for frying as needed
Challah bread, sliced 12 slices

Combine the milk, eggs, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt, and mix them into a smooth batter. Keep this batter refrigerated until ready to use.
Heat a sauté pan over moderate heat, add the butter.
Dip the slices of bread into the batter, coating the slices evenly. Fry the slices on one side until evenly browned. Turn them and brown the other side.

PANCAKES

Yield: 4 servings

AP flour 24 oz
Sugar 3 oz
Baking powder 1 tbsp
Salt 2 tsp
Baking soda ½ tsp
Milk 24 floz
Eggs, lightly beaten 3 each
Butter, melted 2 oz
Canola oil as needed

Sift together the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and baking soda into a large mixing bowl.
In a separate bowl, whisk together the milk, eggs and melted butter.
Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and pour in the milk and egg mixture.
Lightly whisk the dry ingredients into the wet, stirring until just combines.
Heat a large sauté pan or the flat side of a griddle over medium heat.
Brush lightly with the canola oil.
Ladle the batter into the center of the pan using a 4 ounce ladle
Cook the pancake until the underside is brown, the edges begin to dray and bubbles begin to break the surface of the batter.
Turn the pancake and cook until the second side is brown.

Both turned out great. The french toast was light, fluffy, creamy, crunchy, all at once. The pancakes will rich and pillowy. We had real maple syrup on hand, but one student insisted on going into the school supplies to get some "pancake syrup", and insisted that it tasted better. Both my supervisor (pictured above) and myself were a bit horrified and amazed, and had to take a picture. You can lead a horse to water....

Not sure what we're cooking next week, but I'm leaning to Italian...

Chinese Take Out, Made In

2010-05-05T11:43:00.000-07:00

The kids all know and like, if not love, Chinese take out. It's cheap, it's available, it's filling, and strongly flavored. Outside the fact that it's "Chinese" and tends to be made in shops with Asian people in it, there is not too much deep knowledge going on.

I started the class with a story about my friend Sonja, a Brit who liked to travel and have adventures, and when she got married, she and her husband decided to have the trip of a lifetime for their honeymoon. They flew to Hong Kong, took a train out as far as it would go, then took a bus even further, then hitch hiked further, then the roads ended, and they hiked into the countryside, where the villages are connected by foot paths.

As you can imagine, there is no hotel, no restaurants, no running water. In the villages, you are invited to sleep in the barn of a farmer, and the village came out for a communal meal to welcome their odd, foreign guests. Sonja & hubby remember being served, with great pride, a plate of white rice topped by a whole, roasted and crispy field mouse. This was the best the village had to offer, and it would have been poor form to do anything but eat it with great smiles and gusto. Suffice to say, Sonja lost a lot of weight on her trip. And after the mouse, they turned back and headed home.

Part of the character of Chinese and Asian cooking is the use of all sorts of sources of protein and food, and nothing is wasted. Such a large country with so many mouths to feed and limited resources -- being resourceful is job #1 of the chef. Multiply that with 1000s of years to develop a cuisine, and it was inevitable something interesting would emerge.

I presented the students with smells of the different soy sauces, oyster sauce, rice wine, rice vinegar and of course stinky fish sauce, all part of the artillery that Asian chefs use to make plain stuff extraordinary.

I broke up the students into two teams -- one did the pork dumplings and pad Thai, the other did the scallion pancakes and the chicken & broccoli. There was some resistance from the students: despite knowing and loving much of the menu, the recipes seemed to be....so long and full of words. There's few things more annoying in life than taking the time to go over a recipe with a student step by step, and when it's time to get started, they first thing they ask is what is the first thing they need to do.

The pork dumplings went well, though upon tasting, adjusted with a little bit more soy sauce, sesame oil and rice wine.

PORK SHAO MAI

Yield: 60 dumplings

Pork, ground 2 lbs
Gingerroot, minced 3 tbsp
Scallions, mostly green, minced 4 each
Rice wine 1 tbsp + 1 tsp
Soy sauce 1 tbsp + 1 tsp
Sesame oil 1 tbsp + 1 tsp
Egg whites 4 each
Cornstarch 3 tbsp
Water chestnuts, fine dice ¼ cup
Thin round dumpling skins 60 each

Hand mix pork, ginger, scallion, rice wine, soy sauce, sesame oil, egg white and cornstarch. In batches, place mix in a food processor. Pulse to mix further, then puree.
Once the entire batch in pureed, fold in the water chestnuts. Chill until ready to use.
Place approximately 2 tsp of the filling in the center of a wrapper. Bring sides up and push/pleat sides together so that the dumpling has an “Empire waist” and some of the filling pushes out the top. Place the shao mai on a cookie sheet and cover with a damp cotton towel until you are ready to steam them.
Place enough water into a wok or pan so that it comes up to inch below the steamer basket. BTB. Open the steamer and arrange the dumplings in the steamer basket with space between them. Steam until meat is cooked through, about 5 to 8 minutes. Serve immediately with dipping sauce.

The pad Thai came out surprisingly well. The thing about this dish (and the Chicken & Broccoli) is that it's a stir fry -- it's pretty fast in the cooking, all the work is in the mise en place, getting all the components together.

PAD THAI

Yield: 8 entrée portions

Fettuccine-width rice stick noodle 1 lb
Peanut oil 1 cup
Tamarind paste 1 cup
Honey 1 1/3 cup
Fish sauce 1 cup
Rice vinegar ½ cup
Red pepper flakes 2 tsp, or to taste
Chopped scallions 1 cup
Garlic cloves, minced 4 each
Eggs 8 each
Nappa cabbage, shredded 1 head
Mung bean sprouts 2 packs
Peeled shrimp and/or pressed tofu 2 lbs
Cilantro, chopped 1 cup
Peanuts, chopped 2 cup
Limes, quartered 8 each

Put noodles in a large bowl and add boiling water to cover. Let sit until noodles are just tender; check every 5 minutes or so to make sure they do not get too soft. Drain, drizzle with a small amount of peanut oil to keep from sticking and set aside.
Put tamarind paste, fish sauce, honey and vinegar in a small saucepan over medium-low heat and bring just to a simmer. Stir in red pepper flakes and set aside.
Put remaining oil in a large wok over medium-high heat; when oil shimmers, add scallions and garlic and cook for about a minute. Add eggs to pan; once they begin to set, scramble them until just done. Add cabbage and bean sprouts and continue to cook until cabbage begins to wilt, then add shrimp or tofu (or both).
When shrimp begin to turn pink , add drained noodles to pan along with sauce. Toss everything together to coat with tamarind sauce and combine well. When noodles are warmed through, serve, sprinkling each dish with peanuts and garnishing with cilantro and lime wedges.

I never made this recipe before, and was happy how authentic they came out. One student who claimed to hate any kind of onion said that she really liked these, because the scallions were subtle.

SCALLION PANCAKES

Yield: 4 thin 8” round breads

DOUGH
AP Flour 9 oz
Baking Powder 1 tsp
Salt 1 tsp
Cold Water 5 to 6 oz

PREPARATION
AP flour for dough rolling as needed
Toasted sesame oil as needed
Scallions, thinly sliced, all white and a little green 2 bunch
Kosher salt as needed
Vegetable oil for pan-frying as needed

Add flour, baking soda and salt to the work bowl of a food processor and pulse to combine. With processor running add water slowly until dough forms a bowl
Remove the dough and knead into a ball with the heel of your hand until “earlobe soft”, 1 to 2 minutes. Coat the dough in sesame oil and place in a bowl covered with plastic wrap to rest for 30 minutes to 1 hour at room temperature.
Turn the dough out onto a very lightly floured board and knead until smooth, about 1 minute. Divide into 4 equal pieces and keep one covered with plastic wrap so it does not dry out. Roll out the balls of dough into 4 1/8” thick rounds.
Brush these well with sesame oil and sprinkle evenly with scallions and salt. Roll up the circle into a cylinder – not too tight or too loose. Pinch the ends shut. Wind this cylinder into a flat, round spiral. Press this to flatten and roll out to about 8” diameter. (THINNER is definitely better for this bread.) Keep the breads covered until you cook them. (If they become too rubbery and hard to roll out, simply cover and wait 15 minutes. The gluten will relax.)
Heat a heavy skillet. Add oil to the depth of 1/8”. When oil is hot, add the bread – it should sizzle. Cover and cook over moderately low heat, shaking the pan occasionally, until the bottom of the bread is golden, about 2 to 5 minutes. Check frequently.
Flip the bread over and add more oil if necessary. Cover and cook again, shaking the pan occasionally, until the remaining side is golden, about 3 to 5 minutes. Slide the bread onto a cutting board and cut into pie-shaped wedges. Sere immediately

We used a Thai Jasmine rice for this, and it came out perfect. Nice and sticky, flavorful, everyone agreed they wished when they ordered take out, the white rice would come like this.

CHINESE LONG-GRAIN PLAIN BOILED RICE

Yield: 10 servings

Long-grain white rice 4 cups
Water 8 cups
Salt 1 tsp

Wash rice well with cold water. Drain. Put rice and 7 ½ cups water into heavy sauce pan. Add salt, bring to boil.
When water boils, lower heat to a simmer and cover. Cook 15 minutes, no more. Turn off the heat and quickly pour the extra half cup of water in around the edges of the rice. Then cover and don’t touch, uncover, stir or move the rice or pot. Just leave it to steam for another 10 minutes.
Uncover the pot and fluff the rice with a fork. Fluff onto a serving platter or bowl. Try not to mash or break the grains.

This was the most complicated recipe of the day, involving a lot of mise, and several times of using the wok, cleaning it out then using it again on different components before doing the final thing. The final result was really good, but the broccoli was a little over cooked and we should of doubled up on the sauce...

CHICKEN WITH BROCCOLI

Yield: 8 entrée size portions

Chicken breasts, 1” cubed 2 lb
Egg white 2 each
Cornstarch 2 tbsp
Salt ½ tsp
2 tablespoons oyster sauce 4 tbsp
Light soy sauce 2 tbsp
Dark soy sauce 2 tbsp
Water 2 tbsp
Broccoli 2 lb
Water 1 cup
Salt ½ tsp, or to taste
Sugar 1 tsp, or to taste
Garlic cloves 4 each
Cornstarch 2 tsp
Water 2 tsp
Peanut oil 5 cups

Mix together egg white, cornstarch and salt. Add mixture to chicken cubes, coat evenly. Marinate the velveted chicken in a sealed container in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.
Prepare the sauce: mix together the oyster sauce, light soy, dark soy, and water in a small bowl and set aside.
Prepare the thickener: mix the cornstarch and water thickener and set aside.
Prepare the vegetables: wash and drain the broccoli. Cut the stalk diagonally into thin slices. Cut the florets into 3 or 4 pieces. Crush the garlic.
Preheat a wok. Heat 2 cups oil in the wok until it reaches 275 degrees Fahrenheit. (Test the heat by placing a piece of chicken in the wok - it should float). Add the chicken cubes, and let cook until they just turn white (about 30 seconds), using a wooden spoon or chopsticks to gently separate them. Quickly remove the chicken cubes from the wok as soon as they turn white, and drain in a colander or on paper towels.
Drain the oil out of the wok or preheat a second wok on medium high to high heat. Add 2 tablespoons oil. When the oil is hot, add the crushed garlic and stir fry for 10 seconds.
Add the broccoli, sprinkle the salt and sugar over, and stir fry briefly, turning down the heat if necessary to make sure it doesn't burn. Add the 1/2 cup water, and cook the broccoli, covered, for 4 - 5 minutes, until it turns a bright green and is tender but still crisp. Remove from the wok and drain.
Clean out the wok and heat 2 more tablespoons oil. Add the broccoli and the velveted chicken, stirring and tossing to cook the chicken through. Add the sauce and cornstarch mixture in the middle of the wok and stir quickly to thicken. Mix everything together and serve hot over steamed rice.

Next week, breakfast foods!

Sugar All Around

2010-04-28T20:27:00.000-07:00

Today was the first completely new lesson of this round. The semester was two classes shorter last time, and we dedicated two classes to Thanksgiving. While one could argue this lesson deviates from our mission to teach how to cook with nutrition in mind, one also must be a realist -- we eat sweets, even if our bodies don't need them to live, because they are delicious. Better to eat sweets that are made by your own hand than by the industrial complex.

Cheesecakes take a long time to bake -- after baking off and cooling the crusts, the filling must go into a hot 475 degree oven for 10 minutes before being turned down to 200 degrees for two hours, then sitting in the turned off oven for another hour. Why? It's all about getting all the eggs in the recipe setting without getting tough, to get that unbelievably silky cheesecake texture, rather than bits of cheese sitting in little granules of scrambled eggs...

NEW YORK CHEESE CAKE

Yield: 3 Cakes, 48 servings

Butter, melted 2 cup
Graham cracker crumbs 4 cups
Sugar ¼ cup

Cream cheese, softened 5 lbs
Sugar 3 ½ cup
AP Flour ¼ cup
Eggs 10 each
Egg yolks 4 each
Vanilla 2 tbsp
Orange zest ½ each
Lemon zest 1 each
Heavy cream ½ cup

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Grease 3 10” spring form pans, line with parchment. Bring a large pot of water to a boil.
Make the crust: Combine butter, graham cracker crumbs and sugar. Spread to the edges of the pan. Prick all over with a fork, bake 15 minutes. Allow to cool.
Increase over to 475 degrees. In a large bowl, combine cream cheese, sugar, flour, whole eggs, egg yolk, zests and vanilla and mix thoroughly. Add cream and mix only enough to blend.
Place boiling water in a pan that will fit on the bottom of oven. Pour filling over crust and bake for 10 minutes at 475 degrees. Reduce temperature to 200 degrees and continue to bake for 2 hour. Turn off oven and leave cake in for another hour. When done, it may look a little jiggly in the center.
Chill overnight.

So when the kids arrived a little after 3, instead of waiting until 3:15 to lecture, I grabbed them as they came in and started them on the cheesecake. The first tow just did the crusts, greasing pans, processing cookies, melting butter, cutting parchment and getting it into the oven. I had two teams of two each make a half batch of cheesecake batter in the mixers. It's amazing that even though the recipe is basically throw everything in the mixer EXCEPT the cream, I had to catch one of the teams about to throw the cream in before turning the thing on. During this lesson, when asked simple questions, a lot of the time I said, "The answer is in the recipe, you just need to read the recipe before touching anything."

While the crusts baked, we quickly cleaned then sat for a lecture. And being that today was about sweets, the lecture was primarily...a chocolate tasting!

To paraphrase Tropic Thunder, we were in danger of going "full retard", but I stopped myself from serving 100% baking chocolate, which is bitter and painful to eat straight. I put out a spread from 86% down to white chocolate, and two milk chocolates -- a Giradeli and a Hershey's.

Chocolate is made from the cocoa bean, the seed of the fruit of the cacao tree. It must be 'conched', or processed by grinding into a paste called "chocolate liquor". This is pure chocolate, which can be processed into bars. 100% chocolate liquor is baking chocolate, and as you add sugar, it becomes dark chocolate. A 65% chocolate content means that the bar is about 35% sugar. Chocolate liquor is basically made up of two things, the cocoa which can be processed out into a dry cocoa powder (good for drinks, deepening the flavor of baked goods) and cocoa butter, the fat of the liquor. White chocolate is not actually chocolate at all, as all the cocoa (the flavor of the chocolate) is all removed -- it's just cocoa butter and sugar.

The kids hated the darkest chocolates, too bitter and it made them screw up their faces. The darkest most seemed to like was the 50%. The two milk chocolates were a revelation for them -- they were all used to the Hershey's style of slightly sour-milk flavored chocolate, but when they tasted the other high quality milk chocolate, I really got them talking about why it was better. It melted smoother in the mouth, it was less sweet and more chocolaty in a mellow way. One put it, "It just tastes more elegant!"

As they gobbled the rest of the not-too-dark chocolate, I spoke to the importance and reasoning behind creaming butter and sugar, when a recipe calls for the butter and sugar to be put into a mixer and paddled until it's, well, creamy. Creaming allows the fat of the butter to envelope every grain f sugar, while taking in millions of tiny air bubbles that will end up in the final product. When all these millions of air bubbles get into the oven, the air expands and makes everything more light n' fluffy.

To take in air, the butter most be soft at room temp, not hard and not melted. Sugar firms it up, by just beating the butter alone you'd get very very delicate bubbles that would dissipate with the addition of other ingredients. Using vegetable shortening will get you a lighter, fluffier product because unlike butter, it's 100% fat, but then you won't get the great flavor of butter.

From here I had two students do the donuts and glaze, and two teams of two do the chocolate chip cookies. The cookies were the standard Toll House chocolate chip cookie recipe, and yet the two batches came out quite different...

CLASSIC CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES

Yield: about 16-24 cookies

AP Flour 2 ½ cups
Baking Soda 1 tsp
Salt 1 tsp
Butter, softened 1 cup
White sugar ¾ cup
Brown sugar ¾ cup (firmly packed)
Eggs, room temp 2 each
Vanilla extract 1 tsp
Chocolate chips 12 oz

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Combine flour, baking soda and salt in a bowl.
In a mixer, beat butter, white sugar and brown sugar until creamy.
Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each. Beat in vanilla.
Turn off mixer. Gently beat in flour mixture and chocolate chips with a spatially until just combined.
Spoon rounded tablespoons of dough on a parchment lined baking sheet, a few inches apart. Bake 9-11 minutes until golden brown. Cool for 2 minutes, then transfer to wire rack to cool completely.

After I blathered in my lecture about why we cream, why creaming is important, etc etc, one of the two teams added an egg to the creaming butter and sugar. To the left of the pictures are light, cookie-looking cookies. To the right are smooth rock-like orbs, much tougher due to the egg-proteins developed into long strands.

I had never made donuts before, and teaching students how to make them is not the ideal situation to learn, but hey, whataya gonna do -- I don't typically bring a few gallons of hot lard to scalding temps in my kitchen to make many dozen donuts...

CINNAMON SUGAR CAKE DONUTS

Yield: 24

AP Flour 4 cups
Sugar 1 cup
Salt 2 tsp
Baking Powder 2 tbsp
Cinnamon 1 tbsp
Nutmeg ½ tsp
Butter, melted ¼ cup
Milk 1 cup
Eggs, beaten 2 each
Oil for frying
Sugar enough for dredging
Cinnamon enough for dredging
or
Vanilla glaze enough for dipping

Heat oil in appropriate vessel to 375 degrees.
In a large bowl, sift together flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, cinnamon and nutmeg. Mix in butter until crumbly. Stir in milk and egg until smooth.
Knead lightly, then turn out onto a lightly floured surface. Roll or pat to 1/4 inch thickness. Cut with a doughnut cutter, or use two round biscuit cutters of different sizes.
Carefully drop doughnuts into hot oil, a few at a time. Do not overcrowd pan or oil may overflow. Fry, turning once, for 3 minutes or until golden. Drain on paper towels.

VANILLA GLAZE

Yield: about 2 cups

Powdered sugar 1 ½cups
Milk 2 ½ tbsp
Salt ¼ tsp
Vanilla extract ½ tsp
Butter 1 tsp

Melt butter then add rest of ingredients. Mix until creamy

A gallon of peanut oil met with a few pounds of solid beef lard and with a thermometer, got it up to about 400 degrees (the donuts would bring the temp down to 375). The dough of the donuts were pretty straightforward to make, and rolling and cutting was simple. The frying, on the other hand, was a bit tricky.

The quarter inch rounds pretty much expand into donut-shape pretty quickly, then you go for the color you need. We did about 3 minutes on each side, and it was clearly over-cooked -- very crunchy, almost no chew in the middle. The finesse of this procedure is to make the donuts the right size consistently (we were using a combination of round cookie cutters, and getting all sorts of shapes) and a consistent heat of oil.

The sugar was fine, but we didn't make enough glaze, which was the most popular. By the time we sat down to eat cookies and donuts with milk (the cheesecakes were cooling, will have to be for next week), the kids were coming down from the chocolate high and weren't that hungry, he he he.

Next week, another new lesson -- explorations in Asian cuisine.

Meat, it's what's for the Lesson

2010-04-22T05:33:00.000-07:00

Once again, we had 3 hours to teach the students about the entire world of red meat. I started with asking why people are vegetarians -- answers were "don't like the taste" and "they like animals." I broke it down into two categories -- ethical and health, and would not address the 1st, as this is a cooking class, not a philosophy class. If your going to work in a restaurant 98% of the time you're going to have to deal with meat.

Health is another story. Today we were working with chopped meat, one of the most dangerous meat products out there. I explained the process of unhealthy, overcrowded cow pens in industrial farms, how they are forced to eat grains instead of hay, the use of antibiotics to keep them well, and the act of slaughtering is so fast that when the carcasses are cleaned, some poo remains. If you have a solid piece of muscle (like the pork chops we would be cooking), it's a relatively simple task to clean the meat at some point in production -- all the bad stuff is at the surface.

But if you send the meat to the grinder, all the bad stuff is mixed up all the way through. There are limited ways to make the meat clean now -- you can treat it with ammonia, but that stinks and destroys the meat's flavor. You can cook it thoroughly to kill all bacteria, but the fat runs out and you have tough, crumbly cooked meat with little flavor.

So you can do what McDonald's does -- take this crappy, cheap ground meat and add fillers to soften and give flavor to the meat, typically soy product and bean gums. And to a certain extent, that's what we'd be doing today with our meatballs (recipes here) -- adding things to the chopped meat so that it would still be delicious after being cooked at a fiery 550 degrees.

We set to work on making the meatball mix, a traditional spaghetti sauce and a sheet of polenta. Like last semester, the polenta failed -- we didn't have to to saute it, and it just looked and tasted unappealing. This time we used a big enough pot, and the pasta cooked correctly, but we let it go for the minutes on the package and was a tad too soft -- should of cut back by 2 minutes. The sauce was great, but not enough of it. The meatballs, well, Louis from the restaurant where I got the recipe recommended doubling the bread, but the meatballs came out TOO soft and mushy, despite being well done.

Lastly, I had the students saute pork loin chops in a pan, getting a nice brown fond on the meat and the pan before resting the meat on a rack, then making a simple pan sauce in the pan with wine, shallots, stock, salt and finishing with butter. The chops and the sauce went down surprisingly well.

Next week, a new lesson -- pastry.

Pizza Pizza

2010-04-15T08:48:00.001-07:00

Pizza. It's my specialty, and today's class was just about that. We were also feeding parents, who were coming to school to fill in some sort of survey, so the production of enough food to feed about 50 mouths were also on the agenda.

Alas, this was the lesson for bread in general, so I began by speaking a little bit to yeast and gluten. Yeast are these neat little bacteria that can be stored stably at room temp, but when you give them a combination of water, warmth and food (the sugars in flour or, umm, sugar), and they eat and poop out CO2, the gas that makes things puff up when baked. That which is puffing is defined by the proteins in the flour called gluten -- the more gluten you have, the firmer, tougher hole structure the bread will have. Less gluten, you have more tender, looser hole structure like for cake or wonderbread.

The lesson was rather straight forward. Make the dough, let it rest and rise for an hour while prepping the toppings. Stretch dough, top, bake, serve. It was nice that there was a good variety of tasks to keep every one hopping, and cleaning. I brought in two pizza stones for the convection oven, but the pilot lights on the two conventional ovens were out so we had a bit of a pinch point in our production. We produced about 30 pies, some of surprisingly good quality, some of pretty laughable looks. One student could not get the hang of stretching, and bungled 4 in a row and wanted to give up. I told her we made extra on purpose, and that she should just keep going. And she did, and the 5th was fine. I told her I wanted to smack her hard, in a good way.

I went on a bit about how less is more, how a properly stretched pizza skin can not accept too many topping without it becoming a soupy mess when it hits the plate. I also stressed the importance of keeping the pizza peel dry, or the pizza would stick and create an ungodly mess. A few times they left the pizza on the board too long and I showed them how to lift up an edge and blow, unsticking the raw skin. Funnily enough, no one's pizza died except for the very last one, where the student built her pie on a damp peel.

Undecided what to cook next week. On the sign in sheet, got some nice feedback, tho:

Last Minute Risotto

2010-04-08T05:21:00.000-07:00

I got a phone call a few hours before class was to begin -- the freezer had stopped functioning sometime over Spring break, and was at about 100 degrees when discovered. Our large pot of extra-concentrated chicken stock (and the lovely fat that rose to the surface) was now a bacteria cesspool, having easily been in the danger zone for what could be a week. I suggested to my supervisor that he go purchase a few gallons of sodium-free chicken broth and a pint of either chicken or duck fat.

The fat was a no-go, so I decided to simply eliminate the kasha varnishkes recipe this time around. However, when I checked in the groceries about 30 minutes before class, there was no farro, a grain kinda central to the Farro & Sausage dish...not an easy ingredient to source at the last minute. On top of that, with 90+ degree unseasonable Spring weather, was not expecting a big student turnout. I suggested to my supervisor that we cancel, but he politely declined and suggested subtly it was up to me to pull something out of my butt....so....

Today is grains. We had the ingredients to do a simple pilaf using long grain rice, need at least one more recipe. Got all the other components of the farro & sausage.....sausage, fennel, potatoes, beans, tomatoes, stock....in the cupboard, found a couple of boxes of arborio rice: risotto! The risotto method is something that is very hands-on, and can repurpose the main farro ingredients....but I have no written recipe for the students to follow. I guess they're going to have to be real cooks, and wing it by vibe, under my tutelage....

Only three students presented themselves, making it much more possible to teach a hands-on method without a recipe. A brief lecture about what a grain is (the combination dried fruit/seed of a cereal grass) and what they are (wheat, corn, oat, rice etc), the parts of the grain (inedible husk on the outside, the bran that makes brown rice brown and has vitamins and fiber, then the starchy endosperm, then the core germ, where the rest of the vitamins and the fat is. An explanation of long grain versus short grain (light fluffy separate grains vs starch sticky grains) got us into the hands on of making a simple rice pilaf.

We made the rice pilaf with long grain Thai jasmine rice, sauteing onion in butter, sauteing the rice, covering with stock in equal amounts, adding a few herbs, then baking covered for 20 minutes. I thought it came out perfect - firm with nice chew, fragrant and flavorful, but all the students agreed that it was too tough and tasted too mild. Oh well.

To work without a recipe, I made the three students mise everything and have everything in front of them before starting -- they could not start, as they had no instructions in front of them to jump ahead. Chopped onion, chopped fennel, hot Italian sausage crumbled and browned, pound of Parmesan grated, 1 cup of arborio rice measured, sautiors and wooden spoons and stock at the ready.

We set up four pans, and basically had the three students do as I did. Olive oil in the hot pan, enough to just sloosh around to get the bottom wet. When it shimmered, throw in a fist of onion and a fist of fennel. Move around until translucent and smelly, a little salt to get it moving. Toss in one cup of white wine from a measuring cup, as pouring directly from the bottle is a fire hazard. Start stirring constantly as you toss in cup of rice, blast heat. When the wine has been evaporated/absorbed by the rice, add about a cup of stock and stir until rice is almost dry. Repeat adding stock by the cup and stirring until the grains of rice are tender enough, and a starchy sauce has formed from starch coming out of the rice and the stock. This took about 25 minutes. When we got it where we wanted, turned off heat, threw in about 1/4 pound of grated parm and about 4 oz of marscapone, and 1/2 pound of the browned sausage. Stir to completely combine, taste and season with salt and pepper. Serve immediately.

No real measurements, just looking at how your food behaves and cooking until done. One student was impressed by how it looked like rice pudding and added a bit of powdered sugar to hers, another student burned her onions and fennel a little, and her risotto had a reddish-brown tinge. The cooked wine sent a fennel-onion perfume through out the building and we had a bunch of staff stop by to compliment the students on something smelling wonderful.

Surprisingly, all three students were gaga over the risotto, eating large portions and asking, "Can you order this in a restaurant?" among other things.

Next week, making pizza for about 50 staff and parents....

Norbert Monday (Strengths, Weaknesses)

2010-04-05T19:54:00.001-07:00

I had some crazy idea that being it's Monday, I'd try for an all-green day, but the social meal of the day knocked me out with sweets and alcohol.

Did my first whole weight-work out this morning, felt a little feeble but it was fun with the music and the Edie observing from her crib. Improvised a potato salad with stuff laying around the kitchen, then attended a baby's birthday party. Edie was feeling awfully clingy, crying every time I put her down for the first hour, but she loosened up. Good thing I love holding her! Afterwards met up with B and walked home, rode out to Coney and back. Feel good.

AM SNACK: 9am, glass of iced mint green tea

BREAKFAST: 10:30am, crispy brown rice cereal with organic dead milk, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5

AFTERNOON TASTING: 12:30pm, bites of potato salad
Made a batch of potato salad for a kiddie party attending this afternoon, using stuff laying around the house. Bag of red bliss mini potatoes, egg yolks & olive oil with some mustard powder to make mayo, fresh rosemary, parsley, carrot and celery, salt, Worcestershire, some hot pepper, voila, potato salad...

PM SNACK: 1:30pm, large green salad, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

LUNCH: 3pm, 2 wedges of eggplant and zucchini hero, bits of industrial potato salad, macaroni salad and some of my own potato salad, 1 brownie, 1 piece of carrot-cream cheese cake, 1 glass wine, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5
At a 1 year-old's birthday party. They had a several feet of vegetarian hero and some bland sides, to which my potato salad sat with. Funny, the industrial potato salad was bone-white and was simply potato slices in loose white mayonaisy blandness. My potato salad was a rich yellow color (from the yolks in my mayo), studded with crunchy bits, herbs and the loose red skins coming off the quartered potatoes.

DINNER: 9pm, baked ocean perch, sofrito brown rice & beans, smoothie pop, water, 1.25 bowl, hunger 4/5
Got a frozen fillet of perch, sprinkled a bunch of old bay seasoning and wacked it in the oven -- before c-school, I'd be too intimidated to just cook a simple piece of fish without instructions, now it seems ridiculously easy.

Mac n' Cheese Marathon

2010-03-25T06:04:00.000-07:00

The class was psyched for today's lesson -- everyone loves mac n' cheese, and we were going to make three versions. The point was to get them thinking about sauces. It's one thing to lecture about mother sauces (which I did, which did not elicit much interest), it's another thing to make a sauce and apply it in real life.

Mac n' cheese is not just macaroni slathered in cheese -- if we did that, and baked it, you'd get a dry, burnt, excessively lumpy mass that would congeal and room temperature to something guaranteed to back you up (at the least.) That thing that makes a mac n' cheese something more is the sauce: Bechamel, a mother sauce which is white sauce made by thickening milk with a white roux. A roux is the classic thickening agent that is made by cooking equal parts fat and flour (in this case, butter and AP.) Once we have our bechamel, we add out cheeses and seasonings (see the recipe here), then into a pan with very stiffly cooked macaroni to bake and come together.

Traditionally, the seasoning is salt, pepper and mustard powdered, and that's what we did with one version. Another version we added crumbled bacon and extra mustard powder, and a third replaced the mustard with jerk seasoning and a bunch of softened diced onion.

This is not light food, so I thought rather than make another heavy sauce dish, make a protein and a veg to make a balanced plate of food. I got one student to just go for it, sauteing a bag of adult spinach leaves. Super simple: heat saute pan, add a little olive oil, drop in dry leaves, move around until wilted, then add more until it's all in pan. Salt while cooking to taste. Stop and remove from heat when all is wilted.

The protein was "shake n' bake" chicken. Simply, take chicken breasts cut to size and dredge in a flour and spice mix, then bake.

HOME MADE “SHAKE N’ BAKE” CHICKEN BREASTS

Yield: 8 servings

Flour 1 cup
Corn meal ½ cup
Old bay seasoning 2 tsp
Paprika 2 tsp
Black pepper 1 tsp
Salt 2 tsp
Chicken breasts 8 each

1. Grease baking sheet. Preheat oven to 350
2. Combine all ingredients except breasts in a bowl
3. Toss breasts in mixture then place on greased sheet.
4. Bake for 25-30 minutes or when meat thermometer reads 155˚.
5. Rest meat for 10-15 minutes covered in foil, then serve.

Old Bay Seasoning is basically celery salt and paprika, and the final result was surprising like the commercial shake n' bake mix, only without the extra chemicals or anti-caking agents.

The kids were not impressed with the chicken -- they liked the seasoning, but it was too "dry" for them (though due to the instant read thermometer, the bigger pieces did come out juicy, the smaller pieces were a bit tough.)

However, there was universal acclaim for the spinach. None seemed to ever have a simple spinach like this, done fresh -- usually, if at all, they've had it from frozen. I think a few kids said they're going to make that at home, which really made me feel like today's class wasn't JUST a fat n' carb festival.

We also made a vat of chicken stock, which will factor in to the next lesson: grains, including rice, farro and buckwheat...

Shrimp Poo

2010-03-19T07:37:00.000-07:00

We skipped any lecture to review the recipes quickly then, got straight into it. The first thing was shrimp for the Shrimp Louis. Everyone got a pound or so of jump shrimp, and I showed them the proper way of deshelling -- tail first, trying to preserve the tail meat. Then the rest of the exoskeleton can be pretty much easily removed. Then the back of the shrimp is cut with a pairing knife, about 1/4 inch deep, and the vein a.k.a. the intestine is removes. Most shrimp are starved for a day or two before processing so the intestine is empty, but occasionally you'll get a swollen blue vein full of sand, grit and purple stuff. Mmmm, shrimp poo!

I broke up the class into three at this point, after wiping down everything, washing the boards and washing hands -- you can never be too careful when dealing with raw seafood. One team of 2 made the sauce for Shrimp Louis (based on the herbed mayo we made yesterday), then made 2 large composed platters, with bib lettuce as the base, the shrimp in the middle, and garnishes like sliced hard boiled eggs and olives all around. The second team did a pasta salad, fusilli dressed in our mayo and grated Swiss, with a lot of vegetable mix-ins, also composed on platters. The third team did a simple Cesar with the dressing made yesterday, and cut up a few loaves of bread and tossed them with melted butter and salt before toasting them in a 450 degree oven for a few minutes.

While that was going on, I pulled on student aside who muffed up brownies yesterday. I pulled all the ingredients out for a batch of brownies, and had her make them on her own. I think he confidence might of been bruised yesterday because of distractions from her disorganized team, so letting her do this seemed like the move....and we can always use more good brownies in this world!

The 10 lbs of shrimp were dropped into a large pot of boiling water spiked with the juice of 4 limes, and after 2 minutes were taken out and placed in an ice bath. Not enough can be said to stress the importance of shocking when boiling shrimp. Few things nastier than rubbery overcooked shrimp.

Once the three sets of salad were out, we cleaned and set up for sandwich making. I spoke a bit about the importance of balance, erring on the side of too-little, folding the fillings so it's not too dense, putting oil-based spreads on the bottom to prevent mushiness, etc. Most of the kids never had prosciutto, which freaked them out when I told them it was aged for months and months instead of being cooked.

Sandwiches were banged out, the salads were out, the brownies presented. On a funny note, someone mistook the clumps of unsifted flour in the gluey mint brownies as nuts:

The kids seemed pretty happy, everyone pitched in with the cleaning, and the staff and parents had the kids come out of the kitchen for minute for a round of applause. Next week, sauces, featuring funked-out mac n' cheese...

Brownie FAIL

2010-03-18T06:10:00.000-07:00

Today was the first half of a two-fer: tomorrow is Parent Teacher Conferences, so we cooked in preparation for setting up a buffet tomorrow. It spring instead of fall, so rather than exactly repeating last semester, we're skipping the mac n' cheese in favor of a lighter pasta salad. (Though now that I think about it, I think I'll do mac n' cheese next week to demonstrate sauces.) Today we finished our vegetable soup, made mayonnaise and Cesar salad dressing, then 3 different kinds of brownies. Recipes can be found earlier on the blog here and here.

We started the class with a little lecture about the brigade system, the traditional organization of the kitchen roles, from Executive Chef to commis (trainee), but I could see the kid's eyes glazing. I did a demo of whisking oil and vinegar alone, and watching it separate, then whisking with a little mustard, and watching it stay set -- a simple emmulsion.

The kids set about processing a whole host of vegetables for the stock we made last week to make vegetable soup, including the the blanched, shocked peeled and scooped out tomato concase. We turned over, and I demoed mayonnaise before setting the kids out in teams to make it themselves. Some of the kids are sharper than others, and when I tried to get them to set up their mise-en-place before I demoed, one kid didn't understand the concept of pouring two oils into the same measuring cup, and didn't understand that mise didn't mean dumping everything into one bowl, but grouping stuff together in a way that makes sense -- the oil and everything else must be in two containers, as the method of making mayonnaise involves a lot of whisking while pouring oil slowly into the bowl.

I had two students that I had last semester go nuts on the Cesar salad dressing, making an evil mash of garlic and sardines, before making the emulsion that would be joined with a lot of Parmesan. Both the mayo and the dressing would be held until tomorrow.

We reset and I broke the class into two teams. One would make normal fudge brownies, one would make a batch with macadamias and chocolate chunks. I demoed with a third batch -- mint brownies. I never tried this method before, I just made it up, and I suspected it would fail, though I wasn't sure how. I replaced the 2 cups of sugar with 2 cups of mint simple syrup -- Boil two cups of sugar with one cup of water, then place a bunch of mint and let it steep for about 30 minutes. The problem is you are adding a cup of water. We tried the brownie immediately after and while it tasted good, it had the tough consistency of jello -- despite minimally folding the flour in, the extra water really developed the gluten to make it very non-flaky and weirdly elastic.

I demoed how to make powdered sugar, simply by putting normal sugar in a blender for a few minutes, and added a few drops of food dye to turn it green, green to sprinkle over the mint brownies and green because it was St. Patrick's day. We sat down to eat the soup and the inferior brownies, and we went around the table discussing what was good and what was bad about today's session. Most mentioned the brownies as a highpoint, despite it tasting inferior. Many mentioned that the soup didn't have enough salt, though it tasted salty to me -- it gave me an opportunity to talk about salt -- it's easy to add more, but impossible to take it away without a lot of complexity. That's why you have salt on the table of restaurants -- it's left up to the customer to season to taste.

Tomorrow, we bang out salads and sandwiches....

Feel like ch-ch-ch-ch-chicken toniiiite!

2010-03-11T12:01:00.000-08:00

For the second lesson of the second semester, I stuck to the recipes and format (see this post for the gory details) but ran the class a lot smoother, ending on time for the second week in a row. We started with the question: what is cooking? It is applying heat to food to change it's nature. Last week we were chopping, mixing, blending, all preparation. That's legit, and there can not be cooking without preparation, but it is not cooking. Last week we prepared. Today, we step up and cook!

But not before preparing. These kids still have no knife skills, so first thing was to whip out 20 lbs of russets and have them cube them off (rather than peel), then make small cubes. Once that was done, I took a few kids to be on potato duty, while the others did soup-chop on a selection of vegetables for stock. The potatoes were boiled, drained, spread on a sheet and baked for a minute to make them perfectly dry, run through a food mill then mixed with an obscene amount of cream, milk, butter and salt. I stopped the class, had everyone come over and had them taste it without salt. Then I seasoned and made them taste it again. I got the "AH HA!" moment I was looking for in the smoothies last week. Loose, creamy and outta sight!

The stock pot got full, covered with cold water and set to boil. After 20 minutes, I showed the class how to make a sachet d'espices (parsley, thyme, bay leaf, cracked peppercorn in a tied-off cheese clothe) and added it to the stock. Last time, I attempted to make vegetable soup in the same session but there wasn't enough time. This time, the stock went into the freezer right after.

Ten heads of Swiss chard were deveined, cleaned and chopped up. I took four students, assigned them one fat (chicken fat, butter, sesame oil and peanut oil) and had them slow saute onion half-moons to soft, then slightly brown. The chard got boiled for a minutes, drained, thrown in ice water for blanching and shocking. Once the onions looked right, we through in the chard, chopped up kalamata olives and adjusted with salt.

It was only 5pm! I made a promise if the kids were to hustle and clean up and we had time, I would show them how to bread and fry chicken breasts properly. I really expected to not do this, but these kids did not have to be ridden to clean up. Once they had finished their tasks, they started cleaning every time. So I busted out 8 breasts, sliced each one in half at a 33 degree angle to kinda keep the thicknesses even. I set up the SBP -- standard breading procedure. First bowl, AP flour. Second, egg wash with whole egg and milk. Third, the breading, in this case wholewheat panko breadcrumbs, AP flour and salt. In a preheated rondeau, dumped about 1/4 of an inch of peanut oil. Once the chicken got dipped in each bowl, using alternate hands to prevent the creation of a batter mitt, the chicken went straight into the oil. Flipped after about 5 minutes, when the first came out I asked them how do you know it's done? Ya take a small knife, make a slit on the underside and you peek into the middle! It looked fully white, but still juicy. One student insisted in looked slightly pink, but it was JUST right. It was probably pink 30 seconds before, but in this state it was still very juicy.

So the meal was pretty complete -- crunchy panko chicken breast, Swiss chard with onion, and whipped potatoes. As we did last week with the time, we went around the table after the main feed was done and said what we liked most and what we liked least about class. Most said the best part was eating. Some kids says there was no bad, which is nice, a few said tasting the kalamata olives were the worst, or the cutting of onions, or wot-not. Compliments all around about the chicken, which was nice. Makes me think I should make something like that, simple but interesting, at home more often.

Next week is salads, both mixed and composed, as well as some additional things, as we'll be cooking for Thursday's PTA conferences, too!

I'll be your Ratatouille, if that's what it takes.

2010-03-03T07:14:00.000-08:00

So it begins again. For the first class, I stuck close to the original lesson plan, so I won't go into too much details (you can get all the recipes and nitty gritty here.) We had a group of 9 students, including 2 from the last session who are graduating soon, but wanted to hang out and relive the memories. One was in class for the first half of the program, but dropped out because of personality conflicts with another student. I'm glad she's back, she's clearly very intelligent and motivated, but socially a little awkward -- I hope she makes it through this time, and I'll lean on her a little to be a little bit more responsible for things.

First was the lecture about contamination -- physical, chemical and bacterial. Had to inform two girls with long-ass fingernails that they had to either lose them and wear gloves during class, another had to remove her big hangy earrings, others had to tie hair back and put on a hair-covering. A brief explanation of how bacteria travels (contact), and how this understanding was revolutionary -- doctors used to cut people open and use unwashed hands, leaving behind all sorts of bacteria.

I could tell at points during the safety lecture I was starting to lose the interest of the students, but was able to pull them back in with personal, mostly humorous, anecdotes. In speaking of knife safety, in how you must announce yourself while travelling across a busy kitchen with a sharp knife, you must say "Sharp" as you pass. At the last restaurant I worked, a very sweet Afgahni fellow with a limited use of the English language pronounced it as "Shark", and it seemed there was a killer fish wandering around the kitchen whenever it got busy.

We got into the kitchen, washed hands, then I set up a station -- cutting board at the edge of the counter with a wet paper towel under, two knives at twelve o'clock. I showed how to hold a knife properly, then demonstrated on each veg how I wanted them cut for salsa -- tomato, onion, garlic, jalapeno, cilantro. It went well, I went around correcting their grips and consoled the two students crying over cut onions. The best I could recommend is not to hunch over the cut onions, keep your eyes out of the line of fire.

The students from last session jumped in and helped the new kids with knife skills, and helped direct them how to clean up. Surprisingly, the turning over of the kitchen from salsa to smoothies went lickity split -- we turned over, i.e. washed down our stations and reset up, to prevent cross-contamination. One blender walked away, so we were on one blender for 9 students. I demoed one smoothie, and then made a big goof. I wanted to show the importance of salt in increasing/improving flavor, so I divided my smoothie into two cups -- one with salt, one with out. Unfortunately, I way over-salted and it ended up tasting oddly briny.

As the kids got their mise together, they immediately started cleaning while waiting for their turn at the blender. As they produced them, I tasted each, asked them what they thought and why, and commented on salt-level. Some didn't follow the recipe closely enough and made them too thick or too thin, and only one student straight-up disliked their smoothie.

I had my experienced students prep the 10 cheeses for tasting, chop bread and a new student was shown how to slice an apple correctly. (Half it, take out the top and bottom stems with a paring knife, then remove the seeds with a melon-baller) The kitchen was cleaned and we sat down to eat by 5:30, earlier than usual, but gave us time to talk and really get into the cheese tasting.

The cheeses were sharp cheddar, smoked gouda, buffala moz, pecorino romano, morbier, tallegio, brie, marscapone, roquefort and stilton. I explained how the stinky cheese taste much better than they smell, and for the truely foul ones, eating it with a sweet fruit like apple changes everything. As I explained my own experience discovering the delicious smelliness of tallegio, then amping it up by eating it with apples, one student guffawed "Ratatouille!" and a bunch chimed in in agreement. I guess being compared to a food-loving cartoon rat is a good thing. There was a lot of hesitation to trying the cheeses, but when I explained that the smoked gouda kinda tastes like bacon, everyone tried it and all loved it. One kid said it tasted like a Bodega meat stick/cheese stick combo wrapped into one. There was uniform scorn for the blue cheeses, but a few kids liked the ashy wine-subtle smoothness of the morbier, which made me VERY happy.

It was a good start to the session. Next week, more focus on knife skills. We'll make the whipped potatos and vegetable stock, though I may mix it up with the chard, we'll see.

Teaching, Cycle 2

2010-02-12T15:45:00.000-08:00

Hello, everybody! I was at the high school today, recruiting student's for the second semester of culinary classes that I'll be teaching starting in March. Again, I whipped out a batch of brownies based on this recipe, and put them side-by-side with some bodega-purchased Lil' Debbie brownies.

Again, I put this info sheet out:

Spoke to about 15 interested kids. Talking with the supervisor about coming back in a couple of weeks to do a meatball demo class to further recruiting.

Basically, I'll be basing this round of classes on the curriculum I've developed, based on the C-CAP literature, but take it a step further. Now that I've done it once, I kind of know what works and what doesn't, what can be done in how long, etc. Should be interesting!

Student's Choice/End of Semester

2009-12-16T08:37:00.000-08:00

To close out the semester, the students suggested what they wanted to make. One said pork dumplings, another said fried calamari, the third suggested brownies, to which I steered to the next step up in elegance: flourless chocolate cake. One three students suggesting 2 appetizers and a dessert does not a meal make, so I rounded it out with a dish I wish I had hit up on grains day: risotto.

First up was making the cake. Flourless chocolate cake was trendy a few years ago, but now that everyone has taken a crack at it, people have recognized it for what it is: an extra dense brownie that doesn't have much chew.

FLOURLESS CHOCOLATE CAKE

Yield: 16 small serving

Semisweet chocolate 4 oz
Butter ½ cup
White sugar ¾ cup
Cocoa powder ½ cup
Eggs, beaten 3 each
Vanilla bean, scrapings 1 each

1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Grease an 8” round springform pan, dust with cocoa powder.
2. Melt chocolate and butter in a double boiler. Remove from heat, stir in sugar, cocoa powder and vanilla.
3. Stir in eggs. Pour into prepared pan.
4. Bake in preheated oven for 30 minutes. Let cool for 10 minutes, turn out onto a wire rack and cool completely.

This is a VERY chocolaty and rich dessert, requiring something to compliment and mute it's strength. Vanilla ice cream (which I made at home and brought in -- not enough time and not enough equipment to make it at school) is a nice, straightforward companion, but a fruit sauce is also pretty classic.

RASPBERRY SAUCE

Yield: 2 cups

Raspberries 1 pint
White sugar ¼ cup
Orange juice 2 tbsp
Cornstarch 2 tbsp
Cold water 1 cup

1. Combine raspberries, sugar and orange juice in a saucepan. In a separate bowl, whisk cornstarch into cold water until smooth. Combine cornstarch mixture into the sauce pan, BTB RTS
2. Simmer for 5 minutes or so until the desired consistency, constantly stirring. Note: sauce will thicken further as it cools.
3. Puree in blender. Pour through fine metal sieve. Serve warm or chilled.

Fried calamari is as simple as simple can be. I didn't really do any deep frying in class because it doesn't take much skill or talent to do it -- monkeys run the deep fryers at fast food restaurants. But if we were going to do it, I'm glad it was squid -- I got a student to take whole squid and take them apart. And unlike somethings, calamari only needs a minute in the fryer. Our first few batches came out perfect, but the last was a flop -- the temp of the oil dropped, and instead of coming out light and crisp, the last calamari came out heavy, greasy, overcooked and nasty. Mistakes are a learning opportunity.

FRIED CALAMARI

Yield: 16 small appetizer portions

Peanut oil 1 gallon
Squid, tubes & tentacles 2 lbs
AP flour 1 cup
Plain cornmeal 1 cup
Salt to taste
Ground black pepper to taste

1. Place oil in appropriate vessel. Bring to 375˚, measuring with fry thermometer.
2. Combine flour and cornmeal in a mixing bowl.
3. When ready to fry, in small handfuls, dredge the squid in the flour and cornmeal mixture and shake off the excess. In batches, gently lower the squid into the hot oil. Cook for 1 minute. The squid will not be browned, but lightly golden in color. Remove the squid and transfer to a cooling rack turned upside down set over a newspaper-lined sheet pan. Season with salt and pepper, as desired. Repeat until all of the squid is cooked. Make sure to check the temperature of the oil before each batch to ensure it is 375 degrees F. Serve immediately.

Dumplings at their core are meatballs wrapped in dough. In this case, a Chinese-style pork dumpling involves pureeing the pork to make a mouse, spiked with a variety of Asian flavors like ginger, scallion, garlic, sesame, soy sauce and rice wine. We didn't have time to make the dough, but the premade goza wrappers were pretty good.

The dipping sauce was made on the fly, mixing ingredients from the recipe (soy sauce, sesame oil) and spiking it with a bit of vinegar.

PORK SHAO MAI

Yield: 60 dumplings

Pork, ground 2 lbs
Gingerroot, minced 3 tbsp
Scallions, mostly green, minced 4 each
Rice wine 1 tbsp + 1 tsp
Soy sauce 1 tbsp + 1 tsp
Sesame oil 1 tbsp + 1 tsp
Egg white 4 each
Cornstarch 3 tbsp
Fresh water chestnuts, fine dice 2 oz
Thin round dumpling skins 60 each

1. Hand mix pork, ginger, scallion, rice wine, soy sauce, sesame oil, egg white and cornstarch. In batches, place mix in a food processor. Pulse to mix further, then puree.
2. Once the entire batch in pureed, fold in the water chestnuts. Chill until ready to use.
3. Place approximately 2 tsp of the filling in the center of a wrapper. Bring sides up and push/pleat sides together so that the dumpling has an “Empire waist” and some of the filling pushes out the top. Place the shao mai on a cookie sheet and cover with a damp cotton towel until you are ready to steam them.
4. Place enough water into a wok or pan so that it comes up to inch below the steamer basket. BTB. Open the steamer and arrange the dumplings in the steamer basket with space between them. Steam until meat is cooked through, about 5 to 8 minutes. Serve immediately with dipping sauce.

Risotto is a very interactive method. Once you have sauteed the aromatics and the rice andcooked off the wine, it's all about stirring while adding small portions of the liquid, to bring out the starch in the rice to make that thick sauce between the grains. Finished with lots of fatty things, it doesn't take a lot of add ons (in this case asparagus) to make a loud flavor.

CHICKEN ASPARAGUS RISOTTO

Yield: 14 servings

XV OO ½ cup
Onion, medium, dice 2 each
Garlic, minced 1 tbsp
Asparagus, peeled, diced 2 bunch
Asparagus spear tips 2 bunch
Rice, Arborio 3 cups
White wine 1 cup
Chicken stock, hot 16 cups
Butter, cold 8 tbsp
Parmegano-Regiano, grated 1 cup
Mascarpone 17.5 oz
Parsley, minced 3 tbsp
Chicken breasts, large dice 6 each

1. Sautee cubed chicken until medium rare. Set aside. Deep fry asparagus spear tips for 1 minute in 375˚ oil, set aside.
2. Heat oil in a large rondeau, add onion and asparagus, sweat until translucent. Add rice and cook until toasted and opaque, 3-4 minutes.
3. Add wine and cook until alcohol smell dissipates.
4. Add 1-2 ladles of stock at a time until absorbed, constantly stirring. Keep adding ladle by ladle, absorbing fully each time, until all is gone.
5. Remove from heat. Add butter, cheeses and parsley. Stir 30 seconds. Season. Add cooked chicken. Garnish with more grated cheese, parsley and fried asparagus spears.

And that was that. My wife and child came to the school, a few extra staff joined us, and rather than do family-style, I did some plating with the students, using garnishes to decorate appropriate sized portions.

After eating and clean up, I thanked the students, and told them that they were better than the other 7 students who dropped out over the semeseter -- in their professional lives, just being consistent and showing up will be a large part of what proves them to be successful, more than the flakes and the fakers.

There was some talk of starting a new semester in March, perhaps twice a week -- we could get through a lot more recipes and methods, and drill much deeper into theory and directed experimentation. So until then, have a happy new year!

I wanna pizza all day, and pizza each and every night

2009-12-09T08:49:00.000-08:00

I don't know if learning the ephemera and details of making proper pizza will help these kids figure out how to deal with the world at large, but it may help them appreciate good pizza just a little bit more.

I brought two pizza stones from home and immediately started preheating them in the convection oven full blast -- 550˚. Yeast, flour, honey,everything was laid out as orderly as possible to make dough by hand...

PIZZA DOUGH

Yield: 4 7-8 inch rounds

Warm water 2 ½ cup
Active dry yeast 2 1/2 tsp
Honey ½ tsp
Olive oil 1 ½ tbsp
AP flour 5 ½ to 6 cups
Kosher salt 2 tbsp

1. Make sure water is warm to the touch – not luke warm and not painful to the touch. Sprinkle yeast in water and let the yeast soften for a few minutes. Stir the yeast to dissolve it completely. Add the honey and the olive oil. Mix to combine.
2. Add flour one cup at a time to liquid and mix with spoon, fork or hand until a sticky mass. Add salt and knead to combine.
3. Turn out onto a dry, lightly floured surface and knead until you have a smooth, elastic ball that can be kneaded easily. Place in an oiled bowl, covered with a towel, and put in a warm place and rise until doubled.
4. Deflate dough and turn out onto a lightly floured surface. Cut into 4 equal portions and roll each into a ball. Let rest covered with towel for 15 minutes.
5. Stretch into a round disc about 1/8” thick.

The kids complained about how hard it was to knead the dough, I didn't have the heart to tell them that no one does this by hand -- it's all done in a mixer, either at home in a small kitchen aide or in a Hobart floor-model in a restaurant. Still, it was good to work it to a smooth state.

The dough had to rise, so during that time we mised all the toppings -- sliced and grated cheeses, made some simple tomato sauce (sent canned whole tomatoes through a food mill, seasoned with salt, balsamic and sugar to taste), loosed up some raw sausage, cleaned some raw shrimp, sliced pepperoni, roasted green peppers on the stove top, slowly caramelized onions in chicken fat, and arranged a toppings area that included all that plus prosciutto, red pepper flakes, salt, olive oil and ground pepper.

Stretching is not something that can be lectured about or written about, it must be shown, then repeated. There are many techniques, but there are certain commonalities. NO SLAPPING -- it knocks the CO2 right out of the dough and makes it more wafer like than pizza like. Spinning and throwing is fun and cool, but does not make for good pizza. Stretching, pushing, but not too much pulling, tearing is a no no.

I only distributed one recipe, and demoed it....

MARGARITA PIZZA

Yield: 1 8” pizza

Stretched dough disc 1 each
Tomato sauce to taste
Mozzarella cheese to taste
Parmesan, grated to taste
Oregano to taste
Olive Oil to taste
Salt to taste
Basil to taste

1. Place dough disc on peel. Pour sauce directly on the center of dough disc and spread evenly with back of spoon until there is more sauce towards the rim than the center.
2. Place cheeses on top of sauce, taking care to be light towards the center
3. Sprinkle with oregano.
4. Apply olive oil in a spiral, starting with a big loop by the cornicone and coming short of the center.
5. Sprinkle with salt.
6. Place pizza in a preheated 500˚ oven on a stone. Bake until crust is golden. Check bottom, as it may cook faster than the top. If the bottom gets dark golden first, it is done regardless of the top.
7. Apply basil, either whole, torn or chiffonade. Hit with more olive oil if it looks dry. Serve immediately.

With all the other toppings available, I let them go at it with just a few rules:

Less is more.
Heavy on the outside, light on the inside. Too much in the middle makes for a wet, uneatable pie
Finish with olive oil and salt, unless you're using a fatty, salty topping like pepperoni
It's easy to under cook a pie. It's hard to get it to the point where it looks a little burnt but not yet carbonized and bitter.

The school was hosting some representatives from some companies of some sort, so we provided several trays of miscellaneous pizza for the people, about 30 in all. The students did ok -- I had to correct a lot of stretching jobs -- mostly understretched. I let one go in and when it come out, it was a small, fat bready disc with toppings. A few undertopped their pies, leaving patches with nothing on it, not even oil or salt. But by the time each one of them got 7 or 8 under their belt, they seemed to get a feel for basic balance.

The next day, I met the kids and the counselor at the pizzeria I consult at for a tour and a snack. The kids were pretty into seeing a restaurant kitchen and talking to L, the chef/owner who is a bit of a character.

Next up, the final class of this group. I asked the kids to suggest what they want to cook, and we're gonna make a meal of it...

Meaty Meat

2009-12-02T19:23:00.000-08:00

How does one teach about the entire world of meat in one three hour session, when an hour of it is dedicated to lecture and clean up? One can not. On top of that, half the class was absent, probably due to a combination of being burned out of the two intense days it took to get Thanksgiving lunch out to 150 mouths and the pressures of the holiday season. One thing for certain -- they didn't flake because of the menu: they all love their meat.

Meat is edible animal product, typically muscle, fat and bone. Other animal products, such as skin and offal (organs), are edible but not "meat", and then there are certain animal products, like hair, leather and waste, which are neither meat nor edible.

The USDA recommends all meat be cooked to an internal temperature of 165˚. That would guarantee all meat to be at best well-done, at worst barely edible shoe leather. Meat loses flavor, texture, and color at these temperatures. If meat is sourced from a reliable (read: not dirt cheap), known vendor, is treated correctly, and cooked correctly, illness from meat (in this country) is very overhyped.

The exception to that is ground meat: Because the outside of the meat is where all the filth is -- and where it can be cooked away at temps well above 165 without destroying the meat, is broken up and mixed in, right to the middle and the sides. But won't ground meat be inedible if cooked well above 165˚? Well, not necessarily, because we can mix stuff in to help it retain what we like about it. Take this meatball recipe, for instance....

ESTELLE’S MEATBALLS

Yield: About 85 balls

Chopped Meat 10 lbs
Italian bread, chopped, soaked 2 loaves
Onions, finely minced 4 each
Romano, grated 3 cups
Parsley, with stems, chopped 1 bunch
Breadcrumbs ½ cup
Salt 4 tablespoons
Pepper 2 tablespoons
Eggs, beaten 4 each

1. Oil two hotel pans. Preheat oven to 550˚. Press chopped, soaked bread through colander to remove as much moisture as possible.
2. Loosen chopped meat in a large bowl by hand. Mix in soaked bread, onion, Romano and parsley. Mix by hand until just combined.
3. Add breadcrumbs, if needed, if mixture is too moist.
4. Add salt, pepper and eggs until just combined.
5. Roll lightly into 3 oz. balls – DO NOT OVERROLL.
6. Bake in oven until done, 10-15 minutes.

This recipe comes from the mother of the chef for whom I worked before my baby was born. While meat becomes gray, chewy, and dry if cooked at a high temperature in an oven, the feel of the ball is retained by the mushed bread and the mushed moist onion. Cheese and eggs also serve as binders and replace some of the fat that runs out of the meat during cooking. When these came out of the oven, they were very mushy to the bite; once they came close to room temperature, they firmed up to just the right consistency.

It's important in this recipe not to overroll and not to overmix, or your balls will turn into lead pellets when they cool.

And what's a meat ball without some nice tomato sauce...

BASIC TOMATO SAUCE

Yield: 4 cups

EVOO ¼ cup
Onion, small dice 1 large onion
Garlic, minced 4 cloves
Thyme, chopped 3 tbsp
Oregano, chopped 2 tbsp
Carrot, grated 1 each
Basil, chiffonade 3 tbsp
Whole peeled tomatoes, milled 2 28oz cans
Salt to taste

1. Heat olive oil in saucepan. Soften onion, then add garlic for 1 additional minute.
2. Add thyme, oregano and carrot and cook until carrot is soft, about five minutes
3. Add tomatoes and basil. Simmer until thickened, about 30 minutes.

I adapted this recipe from Batali, a nice simple sauce. He just adds thyme, which I find a bit one-dimensional, and I mill my tomatoes while he hand-smushes them, which I find makes for a very watery/chunky sauce.

Sauteed meat is an a la minute preparation -- once it's out of the pan and rested for half the time it took to cook, it needs to be served. So we made a simple polenta before we got our steaks on...

POLENTA

Yield: 8 servings

Water 4 cups
Yellow corn meal 1 cup
Salt 1 tbsp
Parmesan, grated ½ cup
Olive oil 2 tbsp

1. Grease a 9 x 12 pan. In saucepan, bring 2 cups of water to a boil.
2. In a bowl, combine 2 cups of cool tap water with cup of corn meal.
3. Slowly whisk water/corn meal mixture into boiling water. Add salt. Continue whisking until it comes to a boil.
4. Reduce to simmer. Cook polenta, stirring occasionally 35-40 minutes, until thick, creamy and no longer gritty.
5. Stir in Parmesan until incorporated. Pour into pan. Chill 30 minutes or until firm.
6. Cut into triangles. Reheat in oiled sauté pan, brown on each side.

Unfortunately, we were rushed and didn't have time to try to cook each steak to different degrees of doneness, which is more of an eye/feel/experience thing that can only be learned by doing. Basically, if you salt correctly, if your flame is at the right hotness, a nice brown layer will form on the surface of the meat, indicating deliciousness.

SHELL STEAK WITH SIMPLE PAN SAUCE

Yield: 1 serving

Steak 1 each
Salt to taste
Shallots, minced 2 tbsp
Red wine ¼ cup
Beef stock ½ cup
Butter 1 tbsp
Salt to taste

1. Heat sauté pan, add oil, medium high heat.
2. Rub down steak on both sides with salt right before cooking. Place steak in center of pan. Cook 3-5 minutes on each side, depending on size of steak. Cook to medium rare.
3. Set steak on resting rack.
4. Add shallots to pan, soften in pan while scraping up fond.
5. Add wine. Cook until au sec.
6. Add beef stock. Cook away half of liquid, or until thick.
7. Add butter. Add salt.
8. Serve steak with pan sauce pour over top.

Next week, we spend the day dedicated to my personal hero, Pizza...

Thanksgiving for 150

2009-11-25T05:49:00.000-08:00

We held class on Tuesday at the normal time, around 3:15. Only one student showed up on time -- after loading in 100s of lbs of food only minutes before, it sent a chill down my spine. Will all the labor of setting up a meal for 150 fall on my shoulders? Fortunately, 3 were outside smoking, and 2 more showed up late due to a conflicting class trip.

Tuesday was all about prep and cooking off what could be held. The mac n' cheese was made, but not baked. I had never held an unbaked mac n' cheese before. We saved the topping of the bread crumbs for the next day, too. Yams were scrubbed, forked and wrapped in foil, then put on the shelf. White potatoes were peeled, chopped, and put in acidulated water. Sausage was cooked off, stuffing was assembled, then refrigerated without the final baking.

The only things that were 99% cooked and ready to go were the drinks, but even that I held back. A whole case of lemons were squeezed with a rotating Kitchen Aid mixer attachment. Pots of syrup were made, one infused with mint. A gallon of strong tea was infused. I left them with out a lot of additional water, left them strong, because....they took up so much damn space! Watering them down with cold water to taste right before service made sense.

Smoked turkey necks came whole, so they had to be hacked apart. Placed in water and boiled to make a nice stock, but not enough time to cook off collards, so the whole pot was placed in the fridge along with bowls full of sliced up greens.

Before class, I took the two turkeys, stripped them of packaging, giblet bags, necks and plastic doohickies, and dropped them into large containers full of salt solution and got them in the walk-in. At the end of class, I had students remove them, pat them down and place them back in the fridge. The glaze for the hams were made and placed into large bags with the hams, then into the chilly walk in. Fresh pineapples were demoed then hacked up.

We were cleaned up by 8pm, and eating some pumpkin pie, cornbread and strong sweet tea. It flew by, everyone was busy. The potatoes were a lot of labor, but everything went smoothly.

I was back in the kitchen by 6:30am, cooking off yams. The first student joined me at 7am, and I had her doing fun stuff, like making additional cinnamon butter and making dessert arrangements. Some things were simple -- get the stuffings and mac n' cheeses in the oven, out, cover in foil, hold in a warm oven or above the ovens until service. The white potatoes were boiled off, then run through a food mill and folded into hot cream and butter and salt. The turkeys were rubbed down with butter, stuffed with chopped mire poix and fresh herbs, stabbed with an electronic thermometer, then off to the races. The hams were studded with cloves and pineapple, then placed in the oven to heat through -- being a smoked meat, it's already cooked. Cinnamon butter plated, drinks watered down to taste then bottled. Collards boiled in the turkey neck stock, spooned out and slathered in chicken fat.

Service was at 12:30, and everything except the turkey was locked and loaded by noon.
The only thing I was really unhappy with was the turkey -- I've never actually roasted a turkey before (because, well, I don't like turkey and we roasted plenty of other meats in c-school) and I now know why it has such a bad rep. I don't mean bad rep, like evil factory farms, animals bred into unwalking, unhappy mutants or unhealthy hormones, antibiotics and chemicals stuffed into these poor birds. I mean it's REALLY difficult to roast a bird this size AND have it all come out good. If you get the center of the meat to 165˚, the outside is gonna overcook, period. Brining only got us so far. Looking at the pic above, yes, it's a nice color and yes, the butter basting let the skin come out nice n' crackly, but about 1/4 of the dark meat and 1/3 of the white was dry and tough, despite me following every method and maxim drawn from my experience.

If I were to do the bird again, I would either a) forgo roasting the bird all together and fry the mother or b) choose 3 smaller birds instead of 2 large, brine for 8 hours instead of 4 and baste twice as much. Oh well.

Speeches of thankfulness were given, then the food rolled out finally by 1pm. It was pretty organized -- 5 big tables of about 20 people each, so each dish was either baked in or divided into 5 big portions. The amounts were pretty spot-on except for two dishes -- I should have doubled up on the mac n' cheese, and I should have done a different yam recipe, as they were nearly untouched. I think this population was used to a mashed, very sweetened yam preparation, and a simple baked yam with butter (albeit sweet, jazzed up butter) was a step too far to take with them. And by 1:30, it was over!

Only three more classes left: next week is meat, then pizza, then students' choice....

MACARONI & CHEESE

Yield: 30 servings

Elbow macaroni 4 lbs
Butter 1 ½ cups
Flour 1 ½ cups
Whole milk 1 ¼ gallon
Salt & pepper to taste
Worcestershire sauce to taste
Cheddar, cubed 1 ½ lb
Mozzarella, cubed 1 ½ lb
Monterey jack, cubed 1 ½ lb
Bread Crumbs 10 cups

1. Preheat oven to 350˚. Warm milk, but do not boil. Grease 5 large aluminum pans. Bring enough salted water to a boil. Add pasta, cook until very al dente – 2 minutes shorter than package suggestion.
2. Melt butter and stir in flour to make a roux. Whisk in warm milk a ladle at a time to make white sauce. BTB RTS. Salt and pepper to taste.
3. Remove sauce from heat, stir in three cheeses. Combine with pasta and stir well. Pour into 5 baking dishes.
4. Sprinkle tops with breadcrumbs to coat.
5. Bake 45-60 minutes, or until top is desired crispiness. Rest.

*

CORNBREAD & SAUSAGE STUFFING

Yield: 100 servings

Sausage, casing removed, crumbled 10 lbs
Onion, finely chopped 8 each
Celery, finely chopped 2 head
Salt & pepper to taste
Cornbread, cubed 10 lbs
Fresh sage, minced 10 oz
Eggs, lightly beaten 30 each
Chicken stock 10 to 12 cups

1. Brown sausage in large pot until browned and cooked through. Transfer to a bowl with a slotted spoon.
2. Add onion and celery to pot with hot fat in it. Cook until vegetables soften. Season generously with salt and pepper.
3. Toss sausage and vegetables with cornbread in a large bowl. Moisten with stock until correct texture is achieved. Divide into 5 baking dishes.
4. Cover and refrigerate until ready to bake – 350˚ for 45-60 minutes until top crust is achieved.

*
COLLARD GREENS

Yield: 50 servings

Smoked turkey necks, chopped 5 lbs
Collard greens, chiffonade 5 bushels
Salt to taste
White vinegar to taste
Chicken fat 1 cup

1. Cover necks in cold water. BTB RTS
2. Add greens, fat, salt and vinegar.
3. Simmer until greens are soft, 45-60 minutes.
4. Strain, refrigerate until service.
5. Before service, reheat in pans with chicken fat.

*
CREAMED POTATOES

Yield: 100 servings

Russet Potatoes 40 lbs
Butter, room temperature 8-10 cup
Milk, hot 1 g
Heavy cream, hot 1 g
Ground black pepper to taste

*
BAKED YAMS

Yield: 100 servings

Yams 100 each

1. Wash and scrub each potato. Fork each several times. Wrap in foil.
2. Bake 1 hour at 400˚
3. Test with fork – if fork meets no resistance, it is done.
4. Can be held, uncovered, for one hour. Serve with sweet cinnamon butter.

*
SWEET TEA

Yield: 5 gallons

Sugar 10 lbs
Cold water 3 quart
Loose black tea 1 lb
Hot water 2.5 gallon
Room temp water 2.5 gallon

1. Combine sugar and cold water. Bring to a boil. Allow to cool.
2. Infuse loose tea into hot water for 4 to 5 minutes. Strain into room temperature water.
3. Sweeten tea with simple syrup.

*
MINT LEMONADE

Yield: 5 gallons

Sugar 10 lbs
Cold water 3 quart
Mint 10 bunches
Lemon juice 1 gallon
Cold water 4 gallon
Salt to taste

1. Combine sugar and cold water. Bring to a boil. Add whole mint, stems removed. Simmer 30 minutes. Remove from heat. Let cool.
2. Combine lemon juice, mint syrup and cold water. Season.
3. Refrigerate until ready to serve.

*

GLAZED HAM

Yield: 100 servings

Smoke ham 2 each
Pineapple juice 1 g
Cherry juice 1 g
Mango juice 1 g
Lemon juice .5 g
Smoked hams 4 each
Salt & pepper to taste
Brown sugar 4 lbs
Fresh pineapple, sliced 4 each

1. Boil juices until reduced to syrup
2. Place hams in high-walled pans. Rub with brown sugar, salt and pepper.
3. Place hams in plastic bags. Fill with syrup. Refrigerate overnight.
4. Remove from bags, place excess syrup in pans. Place pineapple slices around the ham.
5. Bake until heated through, occasionally basting with syrup.
6. Rest 30 minutes, then slice and serve.

*
ROASTED TURKEY

Yield: 1 turkey

Turkey 1 each
Salt 1 cup per gallon of water
Onion, chopped 3 medium
Carrots, chopped 7 each
Celery 5 ribs
Thyme, fresh 4 sprigs
Butter, melted 6 tablespoons

1. Remove giblets and neck from cavity. Prepare bringing solution of 1 gallon of water to 1 cup salt and cover turkey in non-reactive container. Refrigerate minimum 4 hours.
2. Remove from solution, rinse turkey in fresh water. Pat dry, place on pan and allow drying in refrigerator overnight/8 hours.
3. Preheat oven to 400˚.
4. Coat vegetables and thyme with melted butter, reserve some butter for brushing turkey. Place in cavity of turkey. Bind legs, wings and body of bird with cooking twine.
5. Place bird, breast side down, on wire rack in roasting pan. Brush back of turkey with butter. Pour 2 cups of water in pan. Place in preheated oven.
6. At 45 minutes, baste.
7. At 1 hr, 15 minutes, turn over and baste.
8. At 1 hr 45 minutes, check temp with thermometer. Breast should be 165˚, deepest part of the thigh 175˚
9. Rest turkey for a MINIMUM of 30 minutes. Carve and serve.

Sweets for Thanksgiving

2009-11-18T07:26:00.000-08:00

Today's class was dedicated to preparing for (and storage of) next week's Thanksgiving meal. The meal is for the school -- about 150 mouths to feed; the logistics are a bit different than for serving 5 or 15. Desserts, whose high fat content makes them very freezable, were knocked off, as well as a special butter for yams and the corn bread for stuffing, which does not need to be fresh to be absolutely delicious.

There were a lot of recipes to get through, and only 6 students. I wanted to be out of there in a reasonable amount of time, I knocked off the easiest recipe off before the students came, a compound butter:

SWEET CINNAMON BUTTER

Yield: 2 pounds

Butter 2 lbs
Powdered sugar ½ cup
Cinnamon 3 tbsp
Salt 1 tbsp

1. Cut butter into uniform chunks.
2. Beat butter in mixer with paddle until soft. Scrape down sides with spatula. Add sugar, cinnamon and salt.
3. Continue beating until fully incorporated. Remove from mixer bowl onto center of large parchment paper square.
4. Roll into tight log, wrap in plastic, refrigerate minimum 2 hours.

This is probably the first (and will probably be the last) recipe that I simply made up. In conversations with the students last week about what was good and bad about last year's Thanksgiving meal, they described some sort of yam dish that involved marshmallows, which personally made my stomach tighten and twitch in a bad way. Next week, we will simply bake yams and serve them with this butter -- a candied, sweet element. At the end of class, we had an extra box of graham crackers and I served a little bit of the butter on them -- everyone really dug it.

The first recipe I had the students work on was the cheese cake. It can be complicated to make -- a batter of cream cheese and flavorings, slowly firmed by eggs.

PUMPKIN CHEESECAKE

Yield: 16 small servings x 5

X1 x5
Butter, melted 12 tbsp 2 lb
Graham cracker crumbs 2.5 cup 12.5 cup
White cane sugar 2 ¾ cup 14 cup
Cream cheese, room temperature 2 lb 10 lb
Sour cream ¼ cup 1 ¼ cup
Pumpkin puree 1 15oz can 5 15oz cans
Eggs, room temp, lightly beaten 6 each 30 each
Vanilla extract 1 tbsp 5 tbsp
Salt 1 tsp 5 tsp
Cinnamon 2 ½ tsp 3 tbsp & 1 tsp
Ground ginger 1 tsp 1 tbsp & 2 tsp
Ground cloves ¼ tsp 1 ¼ tsp

1. Preheat oven to 325˚. Brush 5 (five) 10-inch springform pans with some of the butter. Stir the remaining butter with the crumbs, 2.5/12.5 cups of the sugar and a large pinch/2 tsp of salt in a bowl.
2. Press the crumb mixture into the bottom and up the sides of the 5 pans, packing tightly and evenly.
3. Bake under golden brown, 15-20 minutes. Cool, wrap the outside of the five pans with foil, place in hotel pans.
4. Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Meanwhile, beat cream cheese in mixer until smooth. (Do 2 cakes in one machine if necessary, by doubling the ingredients of the “X1”column.) Add remaining sugar and beat until just light, scraping down the sides of the bowl and beaters as needed.
5. Beat in the sour cream, then add the pumpkin, eggs, vanilla, salt and spices and beat until just combined.
6. Pour into cooled crust.
7. Gently place the hotel pans with the springform pans in them into the oven and pour boiling water into the hotel pan until in comes about halfway up the side of the springform pan.
8. Bake until the outside of the cheesecake sets but the center is still loose, about 1 hour 45 minutes. Turn off the oven and open the door briefly to let out some heat.
9. Leave the cheesecake in the oven for 1 more hour, then carefully remove from the hotel pans and cool. Refrigerate at least 8 hours.
10. Bring cheesecake to room temp 30 minutes before serving. Remove from springform pan.

First thing were to press buttery graham cracker crumbs into pans and blind bake them for 15-20 minutes, until they were nice n' toasty. I made the students really look at the recipe and make batches of the mix-ins (everything that went in together, the pumpkin, the eggs, the spices) while another started whipping the cream cheese and the sugar. The crusts came out and went into the freezer to cool fast while the batter waited for its home.

While the students got on with the other recipes I put the batter into the shells, got the pies into water baths, then the water baths into the oven for a long bake time; then set to cool.

Brownies, revisited. I let one student, who was so proud of his brownies last year, go with it. I was a bit disappointed; he didn't set up his mise, and got slowed down by having to crack eggs after he mixed sugar into his melted chocolate and butter...

FUDGE BROWNIES

Yield: 120 small servings

Butter 5 cup
Unsweetened chocolate 20 oz
White cane sugar 10 cup
Eggs 20 each
Vanilla extract* 5 tsp
Salt 2.5 tsp

1. Preheat oven to 350˚. Grease a hotel pan
2. In a large pot, melt butter and chocolate over low heat, stirring constantly until fully melted and incorporated.
3. Remove for heat, stir in sugar. Allow to cool slightly.
4. Beat in the eggs three at a time, mixing well after each.
5. Add vanilla and salt, stir well.
6. Fold in flour, mix minimally. Spread batter into pan.
7. Bake 30-35 minutes. Brownies are done when toothpick is inserted into center and comes out clean. Cool in pan on wire rack.

*Can be replaced by scrapings of 3 vanilla beans

Apple crisp: A recipe I've been making for years at home, revising it slowly. Things I learned: Tart green baking apples work best. Butter has to be cold going in to yield proper crumble and crisp. And even when the dish comes out over-baked, it's still kinda good.

I found that we were running out of hotel pans, so we divided this up into 6 10" cake rounds.

APPLE CRISP

Yield: 100 servings

Sugar 3 cup
Lemon juice 1/4 cup
Water 1 1/2 cup
Cinnamon 2 tbsp
Apples, peeled, cored and sliced 36 each

Flour 4.5 cups
Sugar 3 cup
Salt 1 tbsp
Butter, small cubes, cold 2 ¼ cup

1. Preheat oven to 375˚. Combine 3 cups sugar, lemon juice and water in a hotel pan. Toss in apples, coat well.
2. In mixer beat flour, 3 cups sugar, salt and butter until crumbly.
3. Spread flour mixture over apple mixture, pat smooth.
4. Bake for 40-50 minutes, until apples are tender and crust is browned. Serve warm.

Cornbread stuffing (with sausage), a fundamentally simple method that depends very much on the quality of ingredients more so than skill. The last time I made cornbread at home, it was a flop because I used stale cornmeal that was in my cupboard for years. No such problem this time. This bread came out moist, delicious and got raves when we sampled it at the end of class.

BASIC CORNBREAD

Yield: 70 servings

Butter 2 lb
Sugar 5 ¼ cup
Eggs 16 each
Buttermilk 2 quart
Baking soda 1 tbsp & 1 tsp
Cornmeal 8 cups
AP flour 8 cups
Salt 1 oz

1. Preheat oven to 375˚. Grease a hotel pan.
2. Melt butter in a large pot. Remove from heat and stir in sugar.
3. Quickly add eggs and beat until well blended.
4. Add buttermilk and baking soda and stir into mixture.
5. Stir in cornmeal, flour and salt until only a few lumps remain. DO NOT OVER MIX.
6. Pour batter into prepared pan.
7. Bake in over 30 to 40 minutes, or until a toothpick in the center comes out clean.

The class went well, only 45 minutes late after making a selection of desserts for 150. Next week will definitely be a challenge, on every level from organizing the sourcing of ingredients to the serving...

Grains: Kickin' it with Kasha, Farro & Sausage revisited

2009-11-04T18:15:00.000-08:00

Today was a lesson on grains. I gave a quick lecture before reviewing the recipes. Sure, there is meat and veg, but a huge part of what we eat is something else. What do you eat during the day that comes from grain? Bread, cereal, and pasta are primarily grains, but when you start talking about foods with grain product in it (corn and its many many forms), it's a cornerstone of our diet.

The definition of a grain is the small, dry single-seeded fruit of a cereal grass; fruit and seed is one in the same. While we are familiar it being bought and sold in massive quantities on the commodities market produced by industrial farms -- wheat, rice, corn -- there are literally thousands of other grains and varieties out there in the world.

Most grains are made up of:

Husk – inedible sheath of some grains
Bran – outer layer, what makes brown rice brown. Full o' fiber.
Endosperm – carbohydrate inner layer.
Germ – small inner core, contains vitamins and fat

Long grain rice is the #1 grain in world, which cooks up separate and fluffy. Short-grain rice is more starchy and cooks sticky -- hello, sushi rice, and risotto's arborio rice!

First recipe was one of my favorite from c-school. It's based around farro, a kind of heritage Italian wheat which, when cooked with chicken stock, just comes alive. Add to that the flavor of sausage and a wallop of fresh licorice-like fennel, and the whole dish sings. A lot of starch comes out the farro, and it's helped along with potato and kidney beans. The kids liked the dish, and I think the ones who took some home are in for a treat -- it gets thicker the longer it sits.

FARRO & SAUSAGE

Yield: 16 servings

Sweet Italian sausage 2 lbs
EVOO 1 cup
Spanish onion, diced 4 each
Chicken Stock 1 gallon
Idaho potato, cubed 4 each
Tomato concassé 8 each
Fennel 2 bulbs
Farro 2 lbs
Red pepper flakes to taste
Water as needed
Salt to taste
Pepper to taste
Red kidney beans, cooked 32 oz

1. Brown sausage meat in olive oil. Add the onion and sauté until onion is soft.
2. Add the stock, potato, tomato, fennel, farro and red pepper flakes.
3. Cover the mixture with cold water. BTB RTS, season to taste, simmer for 30 minutes. Add more water if needed.
4. Add the kidney beans and continue to simmer for an additional 15 minutes
5. Serve hot or at room temperature, drizzled with additional EVOO.

Pilaf: Saute the grain before simmering it in a covered pot to absorb all the liquid. The sauteing of the fat does two things: it gives the final dish both a slightly nutty flavor and a richer undertone to the whatever fat that's used, allowing the grain to cook faster. We used a very plain straight-ahead recipe, which came out tasting very buttery and lightly floral.

RICE PILAF

Yield: 2 servings

Spanish onion, small dice 2 oz
Butter 2 oz
Long-grain white rice 14 oz
Chicken stock 14 floz
Bay leaf 2 each
Thyme sprig 2 each
Salt to taste
Pepper to taste

1. Preheat oven to 350˚. Heat sauce pan. Melt butter, sweat the onion to translucent
2. Add the rice and stir to coat well with the butter, cook for a minute while constant stirring
3. Add stock, bay leaf, thyme, salt and pepper
4. Bring liquid to a boil. Cover the pot and transfer to oven. Cook 18 to 20 minutes until the liquid is absorbed and the rice is tender.
5. Remove bay leaf and thyme sprig. Use a fork to separate the grains of rice and release the steam.

Half the class made pilaf and the other half made a dish that I've never actually made myself but ate many times growing up. Originating in the shtetles of Eastern Europe, Kasha Varniskes is Yiddish soul food -- egg noodles tossed with buckwheat and caramelized onions and finished with a healthy dose of black pepper, it packs a big flavor of the funky buckwheat.

KASHA VARNISHKES

Yield: 8 servings

Onion, diced 4 cups
Chicken fat 1 cup
Chicke stock 3 cups
Buckwheat 1 ½ cups
Salt to taste
Black pepper to taste
Bowtie egg noodles 1 lb

1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Meanwhile, saute onion in fat slowly, until dark golden.
2. In a separate medium sauce pan, bring 3 cups of stock to a boil, stir in buckwheat and about 2 teaspoons of salt. Cover and simmer until kasha is soft and fluffy, about 15 minutes. Let stand, covered.
3. Salt large pot of boiling water and cook noodles to al dente. Drain, combine with kasha and fatty onions. Season with more chicken fat, salt and extra black pepper.

Next Wednesday is Veteran's Day, but we will continue in two weeks with early prep for Thanksgiving.

Banging out a buffet

2009-10-29T04:21:00.000-07:00

The class reconvened with four students to present a buffet for the parent-teacher conferences. When I arrived, I took the chicken stock out and scooped off the hard layer of fat to find chicken jello -- just what you want. This is some triple-strength stuff, and will go a long way when we cook grains next week. I rendered the fat in a saute pan and put it away.

The mac n' cheese just got warmed in the oven and presented in the hotel pans, no fuss no muss. The brownies were a little over-cooked, so I had them trimmed of their edges -- voila, every piece is a center piece. Put on a shiny silver plastic tray and sprinkled with powdered sugar, it looked just as good as any fancy catering outfit. Salads were put out from yesterday, but yesterday's vinaigrette was rushed and not very good, so I had the students do it again.

SIMPLE RED WINE VINAIGRETTE

Yield: 2 cups

Red wine vinegar 4 oz
Dijon mustard 1 tsp
Olive oil 12 oz
Salt to taste
Pepper to taste
Sugar to taste

1. Combine vinegar and mustard in an anchored bowl.
2. Whisk in oil gradually.
3. Season with salt, pepper and sugar.

This time, I had them season it correctly -- meaning, a lot more than just a pinch. We tasted and tasted, and eventually the right sugar and salt balance made the flavor explode. At first it just tasted like oil, then suddenly....vinaigrette.

We received two 3-foot hero rolls; a lot of prep went into breaking down all the vegetables to go into the sandwiches -- tomatoes, onions, iceberg lettuce, etc. We took romaine leaves and made a bed for the sandwiches and, when one student suggested hard boiled eggs as a garnish, we knocked those out, too. We made mayo again -- always good practice.

HERBED MAYONNAISE

Yield: 2 ½ cups mayonnaise

Egg 1 each
Egg yolk 1 each
Salt ½ tsp
Ground pepper ¼ tsp
Olive oil ½ cup
Vegetable oil 1 ½ cups
Lemon juice 2 to 3 tsp
Chopped fresh herbs ¼ cup
(Parsley, chives, dill, etc.)

SANDWICH FORMULA

Four elements: bread, filling, spread, garnish

Bread: Open or closed. The base is the only element compulsory.
Spread: fat-based spreads applied directly to the bread provides barrier to keep bread from getting soggy
Filling: Focus of sandwich – hot or cold, substantial or minimal. Determines other elements of sandwich.
Garnish: Should compliment or contrast the filling. Either on sandwich or as a side garnish.

I showed them all the meats we had and discussed them: turkey, roast beef, Genoa salami, and prosciutto. We tasted and discussed each, and I gave a quick anatomy lesson about the leg of a pig (where prosciutto comes from), versus the belly (bacon). The ideas of balance, over-stuffed versus minimal meat, and spreads as a cohesive element that brings a sandwich together both physically and flavor wise were covered. Could not forget to show how to lay meat, with a fold to add spring and air rather than just stacks of flat stuff.

We did the sandwiches last; we were done with half of them when the crowds started to file in. The supervisor had to run out and get more bread (the sandwiches were very popular!), and we had enough fillings to keep going. It was nice to see the kids under a bit of production pressure, and pull through.

Next week, some rice dish, another grain, and using that jellied stock...yum.

Cooking in Quantity

2009-10-28T06:14:00.000-07:00

I really don't know what this poster in the school cafeteria was about. My supervisor didn't know, either. Something tells me I really don't want to know. Yum-o, I say. Yum. O.

The syllabus was all about stock and sauces, but we also needed to cook for PTA parent-teacher conferences tomorrow. Rather than be capped at 3 hours, we took 4 and a half to get it all done.

We started with a short lecture about mother sauces and the danger zone. The danger zone is 60 through 140 degrees -- the zone where bacteria will grow and multiply if given the three elements it needs: protein for food, moisture for environment, and low acidity. Stock has all three.

Bechamel, veloute, espagnol, tomato, hollandaise -- today we were making bechamel -- warm milk thickened with a roux. Roux is equal parts fat and flour, whisked while cooked to turn it into a paste. The darker it goes, the bigger flavor it'll have. This would be the base of our Mac n' Cheese....

MACARONI & CHEESE

Yield: 30 servings

Elbow macaroni 5 lbs
Butter 1 ½ cups
Flour 1 ½ cups
Whole milk 1 ¼ gallon
Salt & pepper to taste
Worcestershire sauce to taste
Cheddar, cubed 1 ½ lb
Mozzarella, cubed 1 ½ lb
Monterrey jack, cubed 1 ½ lb

1. Preheat oven to 350˚. Warm milk, but do not boil. Grease 4 large hotel pans. Bring enough salted water to a boil. Add pasta, cook until very al dente – 2 minutes shorter than package suggestion.
2. Melt butter and stir in flour to make a roux. Whisk in warm milk a ladle at a time to make white sauce. BTB RTS. Salt and pepper to taste.
3. Remove sauce from heat, stir in three cheeses. Combine with pasta and stir well. Pour into baking dishes.
4. Bake 45-60 minutes, or until top is desired crispiness. Rest 20 minutes before serving.

I had the kids taste the cheese sauce before and after adding salt and Worcestershire, really bringing home the importance of NEVER forgetting seasoning.

This was my own recipe -- the syllabus had a horrible recipe involving mustard powder. The teacher who lead this program the last two cycles stopped by and ate with us, and confided that the first time she taught this program, she stuck closely to the syllabus and all the kids pretty much were grossed out by the mac n' cheese. This recipe is pretty solid, except this was the first time I was using the ovens in this kitchen -- they ran hot, and they ran uneven. The final product was a little over-done, but still very edible, very rich and decadent, if not as loose as I would of liked.

Before class, I got chicken stock on the fire. We just had too much to do and this is a 4 hour affair, and I got whole chickens that had to be broken down without fuss or drama.

CHICKEN STOCK

Yield: 1 gallon

Chicken bones 8 lbs
Cold water 1 gallon
Salt 2 tsp
Mire poix, medium dice 1 lb
Sachet d’Epices 1 each

1. Rinse bones, place in stockpot, add water and salt.
2. BTB RTS
3. Simmer 2-3 hours
4. Add mire poix and sachet, continue to simmer 1 more hour, skimming scum as necessary
5. Strain. Use immediately (degrease by skimming if necessary) or rapidly cool and store for later use.

The mac n' cheese was done in one huge batch broken into three hotel pans. Once into the oven, I demoed the brownie recipe. One kid asked why we didn't use a double-boiler to melt the chocolate -- an excellent question. Because we were melting it with butter, it was protected by the water content in that fat. As long as we didn't boil it, we were safe over an open flame.

FUDGE BROWNIES

Yield: 12 servings

Butter 1 cup
Unsweetened chocolate 4 oz
White cane sugar 2 cup
Eggs 4 each
Vanilla extract* 1 tsp
Salt ½ tsp

1. Preheat oven to 350˚. Grease a 9x13 baking pan
2. In a 3-quart saucepan, met butter and chocolate over low heat, stirring constantly until fully melted and incorporated.
3. Remove for heat, stir in sugar. Allow to cool slightly.
4. Beat in the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each.
5. Add vanilla and salt, stir well.
6. Fold in flour, mix minimally. Spread batter into pan.
7. Bake 30-35 minutes. Brownies are done when toothpick is inserted into center and comes out clean. Cool in pan on wire rack.

*Can be replaced by scrapings of 1/2 vanilla bean

Since there is only four burners that are accessible at once, we broke into four teams and they made the brownies, with me looking over and giving guidance as we went. Soon enough, five trays of brownies joined the mac n' cheese in the oven.

Two students took on the Caesar Salad, and four students got to work on the green salad. The Caesar was pretty straight forward. First step was making the croutons...

CROUTONS

Yield: 1 lb

White bread 1 lb
Butter, melted 4 oz, or as needed
Salt 1 tsp, or as needed
Black pepper, ground ½ tsp (optional), or as needed

1. Remove the crust from the bread if desired. Slice and cube the bread into desired size. If bread is fresh, dry out cubes in over for 5 minutes before continuing.
2. Toss the bread, fat and season together on a sheet or hotel pan.
3. Bake at 450˚ until lightly golden, 8 to 10 minutes

The great thing about this was that it was super simple, and the end result was INSANELY better than the crap you buy in a box, industrial croutons that are designed to be shelf-stable forever and taste like weird chemicals. The student who I was directing to flip and stir the croutons said she really did not like croutons. I picked one up and put it in her mouth by hand, and I could see the lights turn on in her eyes. THIS is why we cook from scratch and not buy a box. Sure, it's cheaper, but the real reason is that it is so much better. Rather than an industrial interpretation of what a crouton is, here she had the REAL thing for the first time, just as they were made when they were invented. True dat. Hollah.

CAESAR SALAD WITH CHICKEN

Yield: 10 appetizer servings

Romaine lettuce, chopped 1 lb
Croutons 12 oz
Sliced chicken breast 25 oz

Garlic. minced 1 tsp
Anchovy fillets 5
Salt ¾ tsp, or as needed
Black pepper, ground ½ tsp
Egg yolks 2
Lemon juice 2oz
Olive oil 10 floz
Parmesan, finely grated 6 oz, or as needed

1. Separate romaine leaved. Clean and dry thoroughly. Tear or cut into pieces. Refrigerate until ready to serve.
2. Prepare croutons and hold at room temperature until ready to serve
3. To prepare dressing, mash together garlic, anchovies, salt and pepper in a bowl to form a relatively smooth paste. Add egg and lemon juice and blend well. Gradually add olive oil, whisking as it is added to form a thick emulsion. Stir in Parmesan. Adjust with salt and pepper as necessary.
4. Pan-sear chicken right before service. Slice when rested.
5. For each serving, combine 2 oz greens with 1 floz dressing, tossing gently until evenly coated. Garnish with a few croutons. Top with 2.5 oz sliced chicken.

The dressing's key is to mash the anchovies and garlic until it is homogeneous (a word I had to define for my student, which was cute!) before making the emulsion. Because of a student allergic to seafood, we had to serve the salad with the dressing on the side.

The other four got to work on the tossed salad for the meeting tomorrow. A lot of knife skills involved here, and I demoed how I wanted each element. I had them peel the celery, just like my wife likes....

SIMPLE GREEN TOSSED SALAD

Yield: 20 servings

Boston lettuce, chopped 3 head
Romaine lettuce, chopped 3 head
Carrots, peeled, rounds 2 lb
Cucumbers, peeled, sliced, quartered 4 each
Red onion, diced 2 each
Red peppers, diced 2 each
Celery, peeled, sliced 1 head
Simple red wine vinaigrette 2 cup

1. Toss all vegetables together in a large bowl.
2. When ready to serve, pour vinaigrette over, toss, serve immediately

We made the vinaigrette almost as an afterthought, and the student muffed it, with too little seasoning....

SIMPLE RED WINE VINAIGRETTE

Yield: 2 cups

Red wine vinegar 4 oz
Dijon mustard 1 tsp
Olive oil 2 lb
Salt to taste
Pepper to taste
Sugar to taste

1. Combine vinegar and mustard in an anchored bowl.
2. Whisk in oil gradually.
3. Season with salt, pepper and sugar.

We didn't have time to muck around with it, but will remake it tomorrow when we prep for the event.

The class ended with the four burners given over to saute pans. I demoed how to butterfly a chicken breast by cutting it length wise but leaving the two halves attached, so it could be opened like a book. Uncut, the cutlets would be too thick to cook all the way through and would have to be finished in the oven, which we just did not have time for.

SAUTEED CHICKEN BREAST

Yield: 1 serving

Chicken breast, boneless, skinless 1 each
Salt to taste
Pepper to taste
Vegetable oil ½ floz

1. Season chicken cutlet with salt and pepper
2. Heat sauté pan over medium-high heat, then add oil
3. Saute cutlet for 2-3 minutes per side or until done.
4. Rest ½ the time of cooking before serving or slicing.

The magic moment is when you turn the meat over and everyone sees the browning. A typical home cook will keep on moving the meat and no browning happens. It's a sexy "ooo" moment. Every one cooked at least one breast, and another student sliced the meat, to which I had to hold her up as to not cut unrested meat.

I dashed out a bit of whipped cream to go with the brownies as the kids cleaned up.

WHIPPED CREAM

Yield: 16 servings

Heavy cream 1 cup
Vanilla extract* 1 tsp
Confectioners sugar 1 tbsp

1. In a large bowl or mixer with whip attachment, whip cream until stiff peaks are just about to form.
2. Beat in vanilla and sugar until peaks form. Make sure not to over beat, cream will then become lumpy and butter-like.

*Can be replaced by scrapings of 1/2 vanilla bean

We sat, ate with the supervisor and last year's teacher, and everyone seemed pretty happy with the food. I didn't like the over-doneness of the baked goods, but in the end, every one dug it so I didn't want to disrespect the student's efforts. Just because I'm hard on my own cooking doesn't mean I should be a spoilsport. Tomorrow we reconvene to make sandwiches, dress the salad, reheat the baked goods, plate the food and try to impress the parents...

Composing, with Salad

2009-10-21T17:02:00.000-07:00

Again, six students, a really good number. We started with a brief lecture. Today, the central portion was salad, the dish the Garde Manger (pantry cook) would make in a functioning restaurant, so we reviewed the brigade system. The Chef de Cuisine, the big boss, the man, the guy or gal who gets famous as a TV chef and doesn't actually cook in their restaurants anymore. The Sous Chef, the assistant chef, the boss when the Chef is out, who really makes sure the cooking gets done. The Chef de Partie, the line cooks, the cooks who cook your food. The Pastry Chef, who does baking and answers directly to the Executive Chef. And the Garde Manger, the cold pantry cook. Let's not forget the Stages, the assistants, the up and comers.

There are three kinds of salads -- tossed, composed, and bound. Tossed is usually greenery tossed with dressing. Composed is a body ingredient, usually a protein, on top of a base of greenery, surrounded by garnishes. The bound salad is an ingredient or ingredients within a theme, bound together by mayo, jello, or the like.

First thing out, we got down to knife skills, getting the vegetable soup on and out of the way...

VEGETABLE SOUP

Yield: 1 gallon

Olive oil 4 tbsp
Chopped leaks, whites only 2 cups
Salt 1 heavy pinch
Garlic, minced 2 tbsp
Carrots, thin rounds 2 cups
Potatoes, large dice 2 cups
Green beans, ¾” pieces 2 cups
Vegetable stock 2 quarts
Tomato concasse* 4 cups
Corn kernels 2 ears
Ground black pepper ½ tsp
Parsley, chopped ¼ cup, packed
Lemon juice 1 to 2 tsp
Salt to taste

1. Heat oil in large rondeau or stockpot and add leeks and a pinch of salt.
2. Cover and sweat the vegetables until softened, stirring occasionally, 7-8 minutes.
3. Add garlic, carrots, potatoes and green beans and cook for 4-5 more minutes, stirring occasionally.
4. Add vegetable stock, BTB RTS*
5. Add tomato concasse, corn and pepper. Reduce heat to low, cover, and cook until vegetables are fork tender, approximately 25-30 minus.
6. Remove from heat, add parsley and lemon. Season to taste. Serve immediately
*Tomato Concasse: peeled, deseeded and chopped flesh of tomato BTB RTS: Bring To Boil, Return To Simmer

While that was happening, I had a student boil some eggs properly, a garnish for our composed salad...

PERFECT HARD BOILED EGGS

Yield: 6 eggs

Egg* 6 each

1. Place eggs in a single layer sauce pan, cover with cold water by 1” to 2” minimum
2. Bring to a boil, then turn off heat and cover for 15 minutes
3. Remove, shock in ice water, peel

* Eggs that are NOT fresh will peel easier, ideally a week old

After soup, I had everyone set up their stations to make mayo. I spent several days learning to make proper mayo in c-school. The trick is to move fast -- the faster you get an even stream of oil into your eggs, the faster you beat it with a whisk, the faster it'll come together and thicken without a lot of drama.

HERBED MAYONNAISE

Yield: 2 ½ cups mayonnaise

Egg 1 each
Egg yolk 1 each
Salt ½ tsp
Ground pepper ¼ tsp
Olive oil ½ cup
Vegetable oil 1 ½ cups
Lemon juice 2 to 3 tsp
Chopped fresh herbs ¼ cup
(Parsley, chives, dill, etc.)

1. Place egg, egg yolk, salt, and pepper in an anchored mixing bowl. Whisk until blended
2. Whisking constantly, drizzle in the oils, gradually increasing the amount added as the sauce thickens
3. As soon as the sauce is very thick, thin with 2 teaspoons of lemon juice, followed by the remaining oil.
4. Add herbs, whisk to combine.
5. Taste. Add more lemon juice, if necessary. Season to taste.

Funny, most of the kid's mayo came out a little bit thin, and I had to show them how to lay in some "elbow grease" to make it come back to life.

After cleaning, everyone got a mound of shrimp to shell and de-vein. Some shrimp still had their last meal in them, which lead to a bit of twittering about not having doo doo in our food. Once collected, dropped into lime-squirted boiling water for a few minutes then ice. Everyone chipped in on getting the garnishes together.

SHRIMP LOUIS

Yield: 4-6 servings

Shrimp 2 lbs
Salt to taste
Bibb or Boston lettuce 2 heads
Tomatoes, sliced 2 each
Eggs, hard cooked, quartered 4 each
Lemons, quartered 4 each
Black olives 8 each
Bell peppers, thin rounds 2 each

Herb Mayonnaise 2 ½ cup
Chili sauce 4 tbs
Grated onion 2 tbs
Parsley, chopped 2 tbs
Salt to taste
Pepper to taste
Heavy cream 1 _tbsp +/- to adjust thickness
Worcestershire sauce 2 tsp, or to taste
Tabasco a few drops, or to taste

1. Defrost, deshell and clean shrimp if necessary. Set up ice bath
2. Bring large pot of water flavored with salt and lime juice to a boil.
3. Cook shrimp until just pink, 1-2 minutes. Remove and shock in ice water. Drain, place in bowl, cover and refrigerate until service.
4. Combine mayonnaise → Tabasco. Stir until blended. Cover and refrigerate until service. If too thick after chilling, add more cream.
5. Arrange lettuce leaves to cover large serving plate. Place mound of shrimp in middle. Place tomatoes, quartered eggs, lemon wedges, olives and pepper slices decoratively around the shrimp.

After eating the soup and salad, I found a big jar of Hellman's mayo in the back and we did a taste test of it versus ours. Hellman's tasted MEGA salty, and strangely rubbery compared to ours.

Next week, a tossed Caesar salad with chicken, proper mac n' cheese, and chicken stock.

No, that's not ice cream....

2009-10-14T17:45:00.000-07:00

Above is a picture of cold shmaltz, a.k.a. rendered chicken fat. A byproduct of making chicken stock, it floats to the top and, when refrigerated, solidifies, and is easy to remove. It's then reheated again over the stove; all non-fats evaporate and all non-fat solids burn and float to the bottom. Pour off the hot fat, refrigerate, and it's good for a year or so (if kept in the back of the fridge). And what better way to make some icky bitter greens magically delicious than adding a wallop of chicken fat...?

Today's class was about vegetable cookery, but really, how many vegetables can you really get into on 3 hours? First thing, we sat and I briefly lectured. What is cooking? Applying energy via heat to food to change its composition. There are only two classes of cooking: dry heat (baking, roasting, broiling, frying in all its forms) and moist heat (boiling, steaming, simmering). There is a bastard third, combination heat (braising, stewing, where something is browned in dry heat then moisture is added to finish).

Then we went quickly from abstract to solid, reviewing the recipes of the day...

“MASHED” POTATOES

Yield: 10 servings

Russet Potatoes 4 lbs
Butter, room temperature 6-8 oz
Milk, hot 12 fl.oz.
Heavy cream, hot 12 fl.oz.
Salt to taste
Ground black pepper to taste

1. Scrub, peel and cut potatoes into large pieces.
2. Boil or steam until tender.
3. Drain and dry over low heat or on a sheet pan in a 300˚ oven until no steam rises from them.
4. While hot, puree potatoes through a food mill or potato ricer into a heated bowl.
5. Add butter and mix into potatoes by hand or with the paddle or whip attachment of an electric mixer until just incorporated. Add milk, cream, salt, pepper by hand until smooth and light
6. Spoon potatoes onto heated plates or transfer to a piping bag and pipe into desired shapes.

The class started with knife skills. To save time, we didn't peel the potatoes; we just turned dirty round potatoes and rectangular skinless beauties into large dice. I already had a large pot of boiling water on, we dumped the potatoes in and I assigned a student to watch the potatoes, taste a cube for tenderness ,and call me when ready. I had the other students start the knife work for the next recipe -- while others drained the potatoes and pushed them through the food mill into a bowl heated from the ledge on top of the oven. I showed them the correct way to fold (with a rubber spatula, from 12 o'clock to 6 o'clock around the edge, then flip to the middle. Turn the bowl clockwise 90 degrees, repeat). Then came the butter and half-and-half...and finally the consistency was right. I had everyone taste; then I salted th dish and everyone tasted again and...what they tasted blew their minds. As I had promised, these were the best mashed potatoes they'd ever had!

VEGETABLE STOCK

Yield: 1 gallon

Vegetable oil 2 fl.oz, or as needed
Mire Poix*, large dice 3 lb
Nonstarchy vegetables* 3 lb
Salt 2 tsp
Cold water 1 gal
Sachet d’Espices* 1

1. Heat oil in large rondeau or stock pot and add mirepoix, vegetables and salt.
2. Cover and sweat the vegetables 10 to 12 minutes, stirring occasionally.
3. Add water and salt. Simmer 15 minutes.
4. Add sachet, simmer 10 minutes.
5. Strain the stock. Degrease by skimming if necessary. Use immediately or cool rapidly and store for later use.

*Mire Poix: 2 parts onion, one part carrot, one part celery
Non-starchy vegetables like leeks, tomatoes, garlic, etc.
Sachet d’ Espices: Enclose the following in cheeseclothe, bound by kitchen twine
3 to 4 parsley stems,
1 sprig of thyme or 1 tsp dried thyme,
1 bay leaf,
1 tsp cracked peppercorns

In the lecture I told them about mire poix, the mix of vegetables that are sauteed first before adding other things to add a certain flavor. It's French, but every culture has a version, like Spanish Sofrito (onion, green pepper, garlic) and New Orlean's Holy Trinity (Onion, bell pepper, celery) and the idea of stock -- a flavorful liquid that can be cooked with that brings an intensity of flavor rather than a dilution of flavor. A lot of soup-chops, and another student assigned to turning the veg in the stock pot until soft. We made a sachet, covered in cold water, then we were off on the next recipe. (Next week, we're going to make vegetable soup with the stock...)

We made tomato concasse. How-to: Score the bottom of the tomato, drop in boiling water for about 30 seconds. Shock in ice water to prevent any serious cooking. Peel off skin, which now comes off easily. Cut into quarters and cut out all the jelly and seeds, so just bare solid tomato flesh is left. This can be used in stock and soup, without generating scum, papery skins or bits of seeds floating everywhere.

SWISS CHARD WITH CARAMELIZED ONIONS

Yield: 6 servings

Olive oil/Sesame oil/butter/ shmaltz 2 tbsp
Onions, thinly sliced 2 medium onions
Salt A pinch or two
Swiss chard, stems removed, 1” x 4” chiffonade 1 bunch
Kalamata olives, pitted, rough chop ½ cup
Salt to taste
Black pepper to taste

1. Bring a pot of well salted water to a boil
2. Heat large skillet over medium heat, add oil
3. Add onions, stir to coat with oil and salt
4. Continue to cook onions, making sure not to burn or brown. If they turn brown within 5 minutes, reduce heat. Cook 20-25 minutes until caramelized (a golden brown color). If they get to dry, add more fat.
5. When water is at a rolling boil, add Swiss chard. Cook to tender, 2-4 minutes
6. Shock chard in a bowl of ice water, drain and remove all excess water.
7. Stir chard into the onions, cook until excess moisture has evaporated and chard is heated through, 2-3 minutes
8. Toss with olives and salt to taste. Serve immediately.

Everyone sliced onions, then two students de-veined and made chiffonade of the chard. Chiffonade is rolling the leaf into a cigar-like shape and cutting it thin -- it results in more even, elegant cuts and prevents bruising of more delicate leaves. Four others got on the oven and I introduced them to the saute pan. Heat the pan first then add the oil. As I discussed in the lecture, one of the least healthy things you can do is eat scorched and burnt oil. Not only does it taste bad, it has all sort of cancer-causing substances. Heat the pan first, then add the oil. Test with a piece of onion, then go for it, constantly moving with tongs, paying attention to color, adjusting the heat if it's browning too fast or not fast enough.

For interest, I had each one use a different fat -- olive oil, butter, sesame oil, and chicken fat that I brought in from home. The butter took noticeably longer, due to the water content in this fat -- the others were all lipid, but butter is actually a mishmash of fat, proteins, sugars and water. I had them taste, looking for the sweet flavor. Unfortunately we didn't have time to go the full caramel, but they were good.

The chard was blanched and shocked, dropped into boiling water for 3 minutes, then drained and dropped in an ice bath. I explained blanching -- and how, in this case, doing so cooks the leaf and removes tge bitter elements. The shock of the ice stops the cooking abruptly, and locks in the bright green color. Squeezed out, it was tossed in the pan with the onions with some chopped olives, then seasoned.

After cleaning, we sat down to eat and it was a lot of fun eating each of the chards with the potatoes. Everyone was gaga over the potatoes and took some home, but no one liked the chards enough to take any home. To my taste, it tasted more like caramelized onions and olives which had greens in it as an afterthought, but STILL they didn't dig it. They did agree that chicken fat tasted the best, but not enough to finish the plate. You can bring a horse to water....and you can make a healthy vegetable extremely unhealthy, but a teen still won't dig it!

Next week, salads, which will be matched with sauteing of tender cuts of meat. And that damn vegetable soup. Soup n' salad!

First time teaching, nobody died or stabbed anyone!

2009-10-08T06:16:00.000-07:00

Today went by in a flash. Woke up to a good fishy breakfast with sable I got from Russ & Daughter's yesterday. I spent the morning writing my first lesson plan and revising two recipes to fit the content of what I was teaching. By the time my momma-in-law came to take over Baby Birdie, I was getting nervous.

I shoved down a piece of rugellah then rode the bike through 50mph winds to a far corner of Brooklyn -- reminded me of the day in my cross-country trip riding through Kansas -- except those winds were steady across a plain, and I had to ride 50 miles through it, not 3.

I arrived early and helped the supervisor load in today's produce, which he got at a discount from a local market based on a list I gave him a few days earlier. A kid volunteer (not in the program) washed the bowls and utensils for me while I set up and checked things, then showed the kid how to use a wet stone to sharpen a knife. Soon, the kids arrived, I sat them down in the dining room, got them in aprons, and off we went.

The class went by in a quick fashion -- I had piled a little too much into our agenda, which meant constant activity....which, based on the feedback from the kids at the end of the class, was probably their favorite part of the whole thing.

We started with a lecture about food and kitchen safety: the definitions of physical, chemical, and bacterial contamination; and how touching a keyboard, a door knob, your face, your hair, or your ownbutt were all ways to get sickness into the food. So maniacal handwashing it was. The kids wanted to get into the thick of it, not hear a lecture, so I kept this lecture mercifully short.

Into the kitchen, basics of kitchen safety -- announcing yourself when passing behind someone, sharps, hots, how a hot pan should exist on a stove top (handle in, towel on handle if handle is hot). Everyone washed their hands and I noticed a bunch of dirty paper towels on the counter and floor. I had to channel Chef M, my mod 1 instructor, and barked, "I don't care you dropped the towels, but someone has to pick them up RIGHT NOW." And just stared at everyone until it happened. That's about as hard as I had to get.

First I demo'd a smoothie -- the basic flow of the class from here until they get comfy is: Me, doing a demo; then everyone mimics me. The curriculum had a horrible smoothie recipe involving juice and ice, thus I substituted my own:

FRUIT SMOOTHIE

Yield: 1 pint

Banana, ripe one
Mixed fruit* 1 cup
Greek yogurt ¼ cup
Whole milk ½ cup
Vanilla bean, scraped ½ bean
Salt to taste

1. Peel banana, break into 2”pieces and drop into blender
2. Drop fruit into blender
3. Add yogurt, milk, and vanilla to blender
4. Return lid to the blender jar and puree the fruit and liquid until very smooth
5. Season to taste
6. Serve immediately

*Use frozen fruit. If using fresh fruit, freeze the recipe’s ½ cup milk in ice cube tray

I had them all taste the smoothie before salt and after salt, and right there I saw I blew most of their minds. I think I won their trust at that point. All the kids used different combos of fruit; each smoothie came out differently. Using only two blenders for 9 kids, this took some time and cooperation, but I quickly got the idlers on dish and cleaning duty. Everyone was happy with their smoothies and when the supervisor came down, he said that compared to last cycle, these smoothies were vastly superior! I don't know if he was blowing air up my butt, but I'll take it!

After a bit of fiddle faddle tasting each other's smoothies, I went over knife safety -- how to hold, how to pass, how to carry, how to cut, then demo'd a simple salsa cruda.

SALSA CRUDA

Yield: 2 quarts

Tomatoes, chopped 2 ½ pounds
Jalapenos, minced 8 ounces
Garlic, minced 2 cloves
Yellow onions, diced 12 ounces
Cilantro, minced 1 ounce
Red wine vinegar 1 fluid ounce
Tomato juice 8 fluid ounces
Salt to taste

1. Mix the tomatoes, jalapenos, onions, cilantro, red wine vinegar and tomato juice.
2. Season to taste

This was a bit tricky to demo because though I requested one we had no scale. Salsa being a forgiving recipe, I eyeballed everything -- it was really about the knife skills anyway. By then we only had an hour left, so I put the hammer down. Two kids to dice tomatoes , 2 kids to dice onions, 2 kids to mince jalapenos, 2 kids to mince garlic, one kid to mine cilantro. I went around and corrected each as they went and approved each batch before being put into the communal bowl. I added tomato juice, red wine vinegar, salt and poof! Two gallons of fresh salsa.

After cleaning, I got the kids out into the dining room for chips n' salsa, as well as a cheese plate of 10 different cheeses, everything from Parmesan and mozz and cheddar to morbier, camembert and tallegio. Had them eat it both with french bread and a crisp, sweet apple. A few of the kid's minds were blown once again. Got a lot of compliments from both the kids and the supervisor, who popped in from time to time to see what was happening. Good times.

The kitchen is clean but a bit lacking in equipment. Though tighter in space than my culinary school kitchen it's a heck of a lot more space than any kitchen I've worked in. All the kids were pretty psyched to be there, and still seemed psyched by the end of class. Everyone helped with the clean-up, and a few just started sweeping and cleaning surfaces even though I didn't specifically ask any one to do those tasks. After the kids split, the supervisor and I finished putting the room away. Then we talked about how the first day went. He seemed really happy -- he was around at the end for the tasting, and was really pleased to see all the kids asking me questions, getting involved eating the cheeses, and sticking around even though we were 20 minutes after the ending time.

Next week, vegetable cookery, maybe some sweet fruit cookery too...

Taking Stock

2009-10-02T13:39:00.000-07:00

Today I went to the school I'll be teaching to interview some of the students who applied to the program, take inventory of the kitchen and meet with the head of the school to sign contracts. The kids, almost all female, have little cooking experience outside the home but all seemed genuinely curious about the hows of cooking. One said she never had eaten seafood in her life, because her mom never cooks it. When asked if there is anything they would never eat, one student said there is a lot of things she does not eat, but that's probably because "I never had a chance to try them." Her self-awareness and sharp sense of 'why' surprised me. A lot of kids just think they don't like things because they fear the new and unknown, but this girl already took the mental leap without me coaching her.

The kitchen supply closet was a bit of a mess, with some odd things -- enough apple corers to have two to a student, but no lids to any pot. Whisks enough to double fist any whip cream, but lacking in a functional food processor. Looking at the small production kitchen, I wonder how I'm going to set up 10 kids into mise stations to work with knives.

The director of the school was very kind, taking the time to tell me about the philosophy of their approach to the community they serve. This coming week I'm getting finger printed (all employees of the NYC Department of Education has to be on file), and Wednesday is the first session. I see safety practices, knife skills, chunky salsa, smoothies and massive mashed potatoes in our future....

Ending/Beginning

2009-09-25T16:11:00.000-07:00

I never really wrote about graduation from the Culinary Management program for two reasons, really. 1) The excitement of having a new baby was just too much and 2) graduation just didn't feel very exciting. The ceremony was very nice, but uneventful. But, fortunately, the blog is not ended on this off note, for starting in a couple of weeks, I am going back to culinary school....this time, on the other end: teaching!

A month or two ago, I interviewed at a public high school in Brooklyn looking for a teacher to head up a weekly culinary program for a group of 10-15 students. Starting in early October and going for 12 weeks, the curriculum will be based on CCAP materials, but I will have a free hand to structure the class in terms of content, recipes, pace and style. We'll be starting with knife skills, safety, and tastings of staples (funky cheeses, anyone?) and tackle some projects, like a big Thanksgiving meal for a large group of community members.

Next week, we'll be interviewing kids who applied for the program, and classes kick off the following week. I'll be blogging the classes here, and as I prepare lessons, I suspect I'll be referring to my notes in this blog to help get things together.

Today, I was at the school to drum up a little interest to increase our applicant pool. I manned a table in the cafeteria, and presented two trays of brownies for sampling. One were some seriously crappy brownies bought from the supermarket, the other made the night before in my kitchen riffed off this recipe (forget the walnuts, replace extract with the scrapings of the real thing, fold minimally instead of mix in the flour and let the batter rest to absorb the flour and prevent gluten formation.) The kids were happy to see brownies, as the lunch served looked both relatively healthy and like the kind that is more prepared and shipped in rather than cook-cooked. I laid out a little chart (above) listing the ingredients of each brownie, and showed how despite using a lot of expensive, organic ingredients, the homemade were STILL less expensive than the packaged, industrial stuff.

The overwhelming consensus were the homemade were really good and Lil Debbie's really whatever, but I guess I set the bar pretty low. This was my first opportunity to talk to the kids at the school, and it was a lot of fun vibing off their bubbling energy and some of their enthusiasm for the program (and my brownies, he he.) I guess I initially had some trepidation about interacting with the kids -- I ain't hep n' happenin' with whatever these young whippersnappers are "down with" nowadays, but it all seemed pretty natural and smooth. Will this be a "To Sir, With Love" minus the accents situation, or perhaps "Lean on Me" minus the redemption?

I remember in c-school, we had a few hours with a 'career advisor', and we went around the room announcing what we wanted to do with our futures. I think I said something like, "Cook superior pizza, have my own place eventually." I think it was Dora the Explorer, easily the worst cook in the class, the dirtiest working, who barely spoke English (she spoke Portuguese, which meant even the Spanish speakers couldn't really communicate with her), she actually said that she wanted to teach culinary. Yes, there was some eye rolling. Who would go to c-school just so they could teach? He he he. I guess I should eat my eye-rolling about now. I have a new baby, I can't do the 70+ hours a week for little pay that I was doing at L's restaurant, at least until the baby is a bit older. For now, I think this will be a good outlet to keep a finger in a working kitchen, keep my skills sharp, and heaven forbid, maybe learn a bit from these kids I'll be shepherding.

On a final note, here is one bit for those who've followed for a while. This is a video that was part of my PowerPoint presentation for my final project in management. It really didn't have much to do with my project, but I had been telling Louis stories all year, and this was an opportunity for a bit of entertainment to close out the class.

Customer Complaint Resolution / Student Presentations / Bubbly Tasting

2009-07-20T13:49:00.000-07:00

Our next to last class started with a brief Odds n' Ends. Everyone spent the weekend working on their final projects, or are in the midst of working on them. Richard told a story of a friend who had a catered event on his boat in Nantucket this past weekend. His caterer canceled less than a week out before the event because one of the caterer's employees quit to work for this friend in some non-food capacity. The friend scurried and found another caterer hungry for work, and as it turns out the caterer did an excellent job, and now this friend has gotten this new caterer a ton of work, and the old caterer's name has been dragged through the mud in a wide circle of friends. Be careful who you choose to punish.

When a customer complains, they are saying, "I would like to purchase again. What are you going to do to fix this?" So when a customer does not complain, they just pay the bill and leave an ordinary tip, they have given up on the company and it is unlikely they will return. A non-complainer's rate of return has been measured at under 10%, but a complainer whose issue is NOT resolved has a rate of return of about 40%. Complaining is cathartic, straight up. And when a complaint is quickly resolved, rate of return shoots up to around 90%.

The non-complainers are the bane of restaurants, and leaving out comment-cards for the customer to voluntarily fill out is not a very strong solution. An owner who sits by dishwashing waiting for full plates to come back so they can approach those particular customers will only go so far. There needs to be management on the floor looking at everything at all times, looking at faces and looking at tables. This may not be a reasonable expectation of a small restaurant on a tight budget, but someone keeping their eyes on a dining room, who is smart enough to react, is a hallmark of a successful restaurant.

An angry customer needs to be handled correctly, appealing to the emotional need to be taken seriously and taken care of. These steps are a framework to defusing a customer on the edge:

Listen effectively
Empathize and apologize if necessary
Determine problem
Propose solutions and reach closure
Follow through FAST
Do something extra

The ultimate objective is to make the customer come back. But on the other hand, there are situations where the customer is a liar. Guytano told a story of a group of 4 who came in on Mother's Day and claimed to have a reservation, though there was no record of it -- they might of called the wrong store. They had to be worked in, and catered to, checked in on -- like the restaurant is doing them a really great service.

We did some role playing, with one playing the host, the other the complaining customer. It definitely takes some fluid thinking to stick to the customer resolution framework while dealing with wound-up, questionably sane members of the public.

One role play was illuminating. A customer calls to make a same-day reservation for a large party, under the gun from his employer. One of the slower students played the reservationist, and her solution when confronted with the insistent customer on the phone was to....pass him off to the manager. And I thought the last 9 months we were here in these classes was studying culinary....MANAGEMENT. The solution, after listening, apologizing, and stating that it's not possible was to what Richard called a "Holiday Inn". Holiday Inn's policy was to never have a 'no vacancy' sign. If a customer came in and there was no space, the Holiday Inn would call other hotels and find a space for the customer. Even though the customer did not spend money on the Holiday Inn, it was an opportunity to leave a good impression and offer something for when they are back to spend money. The reservationist could of made a reservation fro them at another place, and offered a round of drinks or something when the next time the customer does come in.

Next up we went through three student presentations of their business plans (which means we have 15 or so to get through on Wednesday, including mine), and then we tasted a number of sparkling wines. Nothing particular jumped out at me, the Spanish cava was ok, the Italian Prosecco fresh, the French champagne musty.

In the News / Business Plan Review / Sequence of Service / Other Reds

2009-07-16T15:03:00.000-07:00

Like with the last few days of the school year every year up through high school, the last few days just feel...wistful, breezy, the last few grains popping through the hourglass. With Culinary Arts, we were jamming on our final buffet, with each student focused on pulling off three heur d'eurves. Now, we're just banging on about a template for a business plan for which much of the research will be made up, as there is not enough time to really get the information.

In the News was abbreviated, but dedicated mostly to pizza. Like last week's Bruni monologue on the state of the pie, this week brought a huge article in New York Magazine. The interview with Una Pizza Neapolitana's Anthony Mangieri made me want to just punch him in the face -- he's everything that is wrong with NYC pizza today. One thing that I really didn't like about NYMag's coverage is that it didn't really address where NYC pizza is going. Clearly, we're in a trend bubble and by this time next year many of the pizzeria's that have opened in the past 12 months will be closed.

Next up, Richard dedicated his time to reviewing the parts of the business plan template -- presentations start Monday. When mine is complete, all will be posted here.

Sequence of Service: basically what it takes to be a waiter or waitress. Up until now, I thought I could easily slip into this role with out experience. Now that we saw a training video for service staff at the Palm chain of steak houses....I definitely could be a server at a restaurant that doesn't suck as hard as the dickwads who are supposed to act like retarded monkeys towards the guests like at the Palm. I like service that is restrained and direct, clear and unobtrusive. At the Palm, they're all buddy buddy touchy feely, ick. SHUT THE F UP, I'M HERE TO ENJOY MY FRIENDS, NOT YOUR SMARMY ACTING!!

Still, there is a lot of detail work that goes into being a good server at a good place. Respect.

The class ended with a tasting of eight red wines, all of which tasted a bit like musty alchy vinegar, except for a barolo, that tasted like musty oaky alchy vinegar.

Legal / Financials

2009-07-15T13:19:00.001-07:00

Again, felt a bit zoned out in school today. Only a few sessions left. We opened with a dry discussion of legal issues. In summary, do not discriminate in the hiring or servicing of protected classes. Also, most lawsuits against food establishments are nuisance suits, but cost a lot in time and money if they aren't settled out of court. There was some talk of natural vs foreign rulings (a piece of spatula in lasagna is foreign, a small bone in a fish fillet is natural), and the parsings of various courts.

Class was interrupted by a talk from a eco-conscious caterer named Mary Cleaver, who was not the most compelling speaker. I thought it was just me, but most of my fellow students found her wandering story of her wandering business both unfocused and hard to follow.

The rest of the class was a review of the financial spreadsheets we will have to present in our business plans.

Odds n' Ends / Restaurant Design / Business Plan Review

2009-07-13T10:44:00.000-07:00

To be perfectly honest, I spaced out for most of this class. This is the last week. Monday and Wednesday of next week are business plan presentations, and Wednesday afternoon is graduation. Then we're dun, sun. There is a chance I may be TEACHING a once-a-week culinary class to high school students come Fall, and if that happens, with permission of the organization will be blogging about it here.

Anyway, odds n' ends was dedicated to discussing what we saw at Blue Smoke. Richard levelled with us, saying every time he's eaten there he thought the food was lacking. Once, he brought a management class there for their school dinner and the service and food was so over-the-top poor, the restaurant comped the whole meal and invited them to come back.

It IS a Danny Meyers restaurant, and there is a level of service and precision not expected in other restaurants, especially in a casual concept like Blue Smoke. Still, the employees who work in a place like this are different than one who would work in, say, Union Square Cafe -- Blue Smoke has the highest staff turnover of all of Meyer's restaurants.

Richard also went into a few details of the smokers we saw -- these pieces of equipment are so large and unwieldy, they had to be craned over the entire 15 story building and dropped into the backyard and slid into place. The 15-story exhaust flues that are tacked on to the side of the building needed a number of variances from the Department of Health, Department of Buildings, the condo board and on and on. Regardless, the cost and inconveniences of the smokers were built into the the idea of the restaurant from day 1. Literally, the whole concept is built around these very difficult-to-obtain fixtures.

Most of the day was comparing floor plans, casual versus luxury, and the flow. The story that is told when you first walk in is designed. If the first thing you see is a host and monster bar, that's different that a long hallway that opens up on a maitre'd station and a baby grand piano. The experience is designed.

We reviewed some ADA guidelines (a wheel chair must be able to turn in a 5 foot radius in a rest room) and logic of placement of different stations in a working kitchen. Class wrapped up with Richard showing us his CAD drawings of the coffee shop he once owned and ran, and a review of the excel spread sheets that we will fill in for our business plan finals.

In the evening, the majority of us met up at Peryali in the Flat Iron District for our final meal. It was good, with an obscene amount of wine. Funny how well you get to know people without even being aware of it.

Blue Smoke / In the News

2009-07-09T11:10:00.000-07:00

Today we met in class briefly, before heading out to Blue Smoke for a tour. The dining section this week in the NY Times was remarkably thin, and content-wise filler like what to do with left-overs were disturbingly dumb. However, Bruni's big piece on pizza was pretty cool. Richard thought he was too hasty in deciding to write about just post 2004 pizzerias (the year Franny's and Una Pizza Napoleatana hit), but I kinda agree with Bruni: the pizza restaurants that have opened up since then are by all accounts place pizza in a different kind of light that the older, classical places do. Maybe it's not totally fair to not compare them (as some older joints are simply better than the new joints), but the pretense of 'fancy pizza' is not really shared by any older places.

We briefly looked at a kitchen layout, a before and after of a real working restaurant, to point out the logics of flow and traffic in an industrial kitchen. Then we all picked up and walked over to Blue Smoke, on 27th between Park and Lex. It's part of Danny Meyer's Union Square hospitality group, which includes a lot of good and very varied places, from Union Square Cafe to Tabla to Shake Shack. We arrived around 9, and were met by the managing partner who was, simply put, seemed to have his shit together and all together happy with what he's doing with his life. He told us of his 17 years with the company, helping to open up the restaurant in the week right after 9/11, the adjustments to the concept and the systems as they started up.

He handed us off to the head of front of house, 13 years with the company, who started as a bus boy and worked his way up. He showed us the premises, the jazz club below, the prep kitchen. Then the chef showed us the main kitchen, all the stations, and the two huge smokers. Gas-fired, wood-fueled, with large flues in the back of the building that rose all the way up 15 stories to vent the smoke. The pork butts and ribs looked spectacular, I must say.

The common thread among the three people were that they started with the company many years ago at a low level position, stuck with it and rose, worked insane hours, now get paid and have benefits, with the first one actually sharing in an ownership stake. All three are clearly hard working, and get a buzz from the intensity that comes with working in a restaurant. I understand that -- when you work 6 14 hour shifts in a row, it's actually cool if it speeds by with constant action and you actually save money by not doing anything else. -sigh-

Leases / Wine Tasting

2009-07-08T16:05:00.000-07:00

I missed class on Monday, due to the extended weekend, a baby who endlessly fascinates, and an upended sleep schedule. The two subjects were restaurant design, including an exercise in putting the pieces together on a sheet of graph paper, and business structure. The former, I'm not too upset about missing, as I feel I have a handle on design and the logic of flow, but think I may have to go into the book and see just what kind of company I want to run in the future and why -- a Limited Liability Company? A sole proprietorship? Etc?

Today, we reviewed leases, briefly looked at layout, and then tasted a wide variety of red wines. Leases: you gotta read 'em before you sign 'em. Residential leases have lots of government regulation -- even if you don't read it carefully, you're relatively protected. With a commercial lease, however, what you sign is what you're in for, with some reasonable exceptions.

Never sign a commercial lease without professional oversight. Not necessarily an attorney, but someone with experience who ca tell you how a lease will effect you -- effect you with what is there, and effect you with what is NOT there.

If the business owns it's building, that obviously is an asset that can be sold along with the business. In the case of renting a space, length of lease determines the value of a business. You can have the most fabulously successful restaurant, but if you have 1 year left on your lease, no one in their right mind would buy it from you until a new lease is negotiated. If you're rocking and you have 15 years left on your lease, then you're in the money.

Landlords tend not to like restaurants -- it's not uncommon to see available storefronts with a sign that says, "no restaurants". Though restaurants close pretty much as often as any other kind of business -- but there is the perception of volatility. Then there is the garbage, the smells, the pests, drunk customers, late hours, fire hazards, etc.

The lease is made up of clauses. Though not exhaustive, these are the big guns:

Rent Structure: How you pay. Typically a fixed lease, where rent is determined by a schedule or formula, increasing from beginning to end. There are percentage leases, where rent is a percentage of gross sales, which means it will be in the interest of the landlord to drive traffic to the business, like in a mall. A Consumer Price Index lease ties rent to inflation (or, as the case may be nowadays, deflation.)
Taxes: Percent of real estate taxes that the tenant is responsible door. This is pretty straightforward, but what if the government reassess the real estate tax and doubles it? Could be a business killer. In the lease, the clause could establish a sliding scale over time for whatever increase (or decrease) happens.
Conditional Liquor License: Lease is only valid if a liquor license can be procured. If you sign a lease to open a bar, then the bureaucracy denies you a license, well...
Construction: Will you be allowed to do what you want to do? Landlord may require specific approvals, or his own approvals, Time frame: typically there is a rent abatement period for construction. Access: while building out, you and your crew needs to be able to get in. Also, ownership -- who will own what is constructed, that is attached to the building?
Utilities: You want individual metering, so you pay for only what you use. However, if there are common areas, a percentage based on traffic projections may be in order.
Quality Standards: If you propose a pizzeria, a landlord can write into the lease that you will be a pizzeria, going so far as to define how much you sell of what. On the other hand, the leasee can get 'exclusivity' -- if in a mall, here you can assure that the landlord will not open another pizzeria in the complex.
Time Standards: Times the operation is required to be open or closed. In a mall situation, this is pretty stringent.
Insurance: Liability. Landlord will want you to carry some.
Duties of Repair: Who is responsible for fixing what, in what time frame?
Demolition / Eminent Domain: What if the government clears the land and forces the landlord to sell? This clause can assure that the renter gets a cut.
Union: If the building is unionized, it'll probably require the business that come in to also be unionized.
Code Violation: If the building is not up to code, who is responsible? The codes change all the time...
Assignment/Sublease: The right to either assign the lease to another party, removing your own name from the lease. Or subleasing, where you are still on the lease and bear responsibility, and the subleasee pays you. With assignment, the onus is on you to find someone to take over your lease. At the same time, the landlord can restrict who you can assign to.
Personal Guarantee: You promise to pay, no matter what.

The last couple of hours of class were dedicated to tasting eight red wines, sniffing, discussing what fruits it smells like, food matching, etc. I'm still of the belief that wine by itself is not very appealing, but when drank with rich food, it comes into it's own, becoming a flavor enhancer. As with every class, I'm amazed how gross the thick sweet stuff like port tastes, but when matched with something savory or stinky, the layers of squiggly flavors race across each other making the most wonderful new flavors. But to serve a flight of 8 dishes for eight wines would probably push the school's budget.

In the News / Costing Beverage / Architect

2009-07-02T05:47:00.000-07:00

Class started with a short In the News. The NY Times had a stunningly boring article detailing the details of a superior hamburger, but didn't really add much to the canon.

There was a cool article, however, on the recent state of NYC food carts. Up until the downturn in the economy, there was peace upon the streets of NYC. Food cart permits were cheap and few and far between. They were handed down within families, as well as locations and street corners. The city was not much involved -- it only gave out 3000 licenses, and the licenses can be renewed by mail every two years, forever and ever. Because of lax enforcement, many carts are not inspected, or have expired licenses, or no licenses at all.

Now people who are being laid off from white-collar jobs and speak English as a first language are investing in food carts to deliver a different level of food to the streets. They get their permits, and then go wherever they are legally allowed to go...and into direct conflict with the underground economy of the long established immigrant class. When a new truck rolls up on a corner that has been claimed by a cart family without challenge for 20 years, there is going to be conflict. Used to be when two vendors got into a tiff, one would call the cops anonymously because everyone undoubtedly were doing something illegal. These food cart trucks tend to be on the up and up, and the old economic model is turning to intimidation and violence as leverage.

The sad thing is, because of the inadequate bureaucracy, the city is losing a ton of money and has little real power over the food carts. A vendor of a new fancy ice cream cart is quoted as scoffing that he pays a few hundred dollars for a permit, when his business model would allow him to pay $5000 a month during the warm season and still be profitable.

There were small pieces on the food shows -- the Fancy Food Show had a 25% rise in attendance, while the tone of the piece on the Unfancy Food Show as equal parts snobby and dorky -- why the NY Times sucks.

Next up was an exercise in costing out a mixed drink. Unlike a recipe card, each cost card is per drink, not a batch of drinks. Most booze is in liters and recipes in ounces, which is annoying, but even more annoying is perusing the price sheets for booze vendors. For a bottle of Bombay Gin, you have about 10 different prices. Half are for NYC and half for NYS (different tax and control procedures), and within each category different prices on different size bottles and discounts depending on how many cases you purchase.

The second half of the class was a field trip to an architect's office to talk about how we, as restaurateurs, would communicate and deal with an architectural firm, from initial concept up through plans detailed enough for a contractor to build from with precision. The architect went around the room and asked each of us our concept, and teased out some details that would help a design firm get on track.

Some of us had pretty clear ideas of what we were going for, and when one didn't, the architect was pretty concise in trying to get clarity. One student kind of scattershot mentioned a lot of different things she liked that she would like to see in her operation (mosiac! bar in middle of room! stage! fountain!) and the architect basically asked what is the focus? Do you want a candyshop vibe, a restaurant vibe or something else?

I had a pretty concise statement of what I wanted (Jewish Italian Grandma style filtered through an Eames lense) and didn't get any appreciable feedback. Guess I can skip hiring a design firm and just get some hacks to have the plans drawn up and approved by the city?

Richard, a few students and I went to a pizzeria nearby the archictect's office afterwards, not very good pizza but fun to be snarky about the menu, decor and oddly-pacing owner with some like-minded fellows and fellowettes.

Fancy Food Show Recap / Restaurant Design / Wine Tasting

2009-07-01T14:33:00.000-07:00

Class started with a discussion of the Fancy Food Show. The main issue attendees have is that it's really two shows in one. Some of the vendors there are showing off a product to sell to restaurants and food services right now, while others are there to find a distributor so they can sell at some point down the line. One of my classmates, who helps run a large family restaurant, spent a lot of time sampling wines, and when he found one that blew his mind, it turned out the wine is not available in this country yet, that they need a distributor to get them through the extensive legal hurdle of importation.

While the restaurant show during the winter was more about equipment, hardware and stuff, this show was all about the look, taste and marketability of food stuffs. Fellow students marvelled at sheer quantity in certain food categories -- how many soy-based vinaigrettes do people need? Why are there so many flavored cheddars? And how often does one have a craving for lemongrass water? The person working the booth for an Austrian sports drink (BIG on taurine, which rhymes with urine for a reason) admitted, when confronted, that it indeed did taste like ass.

We introduced ourselves to restaurant design. One has to take into consideration level of concept (fast food/pub, casual, luxury) and location (urban, non-urban) to really determine how many square feet per customer one will need to provide. Urban fast food, 8squft no prob, non-urban luxury, you can start at 25 sqft and go up. Based on the size and concept, one can work out budgets for monthly rent as well as how much it will cost to build out.

Building out a restaurant depends on a variety of factors, whether it's a raw space or an old restaurant, depends on what equipment is needed to cook everything on the menu, and, well, real estate markets.

At the restaurant I've been working at, the build out was from raw space, and quite ornate. As time has gone on, the corners cut came into strong contrast. For example, there is a stage for a piano and there has been live music played...but no more. The neighbors in the condo upstairs complained. Why did they hear it enough to complain? Because no sound proofing was installed between the ceiling and the bottom of the floor foundation of the apartments directly above. To install sound proofing after the fact would be a huge job that would shut the restaurant down, so the music is out.

The final part of the class was a wine tasting, preceded by a short documentary about the history of Burgundy, home of the vineyards that make the most expensive wines in the world. The monks of the medieval ages owned all the land and studied it, tailoring the wine to the soil. When Napoleon came in and took the land away, it got broken up into many different plots with many different owners. Unlike some regions, the local government decided instead of trying to make a standardized, blended product to stand in for the region, in Burgundy only one grape would be planted everywhere (pinot noir), and each vineyard would have a product which reflected it's own soil. Now the wines of the region can be priced out practically by where the vineyard lays in the valley. Towards the top, the good whites, the middle the good reds, and the bottom the 2ndary reds where the drainage isn't too hot.

The tasting was a wide variety of whites, from a tepid young pinot grigio to a sweet, thick Sauternes. Richard clearly gets off on this stuff, and the class ran 30 minutes long for the first time.

Fancy Food Show

2009-06-29T15:09:00.000-07:00

What I ate, between 10-11:30am this morning: various chocolates, cookies, small moz and tomato panini, brownies, 5 shots of various Manhattan Special products, 2 little cheese cake cups, a bit of duck sausage, 2 little wedges of Batali pizza, some things I forget...

Spent the morning at the Fancy Food Show at Jacob Javits, officially on school business for the second year, but I hope to be able to swing this every year -- all the new products, some established products, different countries showing off their culture, all on overload, most wanting you to taste a sample or talk about what they do.

Highlights: Manhattan Special had a booth, a company really hard to wrangle as a product buyer at the restaurant. I had some words with them, they promise to make some calls. Low and behold they have a whole line of different sodas, but I would of never known because no one ever tried to sell me on them.

Then there was the Metromint people from last year, which was quite shocking -- various mint-flavored mildly-sweetened waters. I almost barfed last year when I tried it, because I thought I was drinking someones toothpaste backwash. I was sure they would be out of business by now.

Batali's brand was hawking a new pizza sauce, which tasted exactly like a thousand other jarred sauces. They were making pizzas on soft pita-like shells and baking them in a toaster oven. The only good thing about the sample is that it was heavy on the sauce, usually shitty pizza is heavy on the cheese.

In other pizza-related things there, there was a booth for a horrible nightmare some company is trying to bring to the freezer aisle:

Pizza in a cone, baked in your microwave in a box that keeps it upright. In the literature, one of the selling points is "acceptable taste and aroma", I kid you not. Yikes!

It was nice to see a booth/pavilion for Fage yogurt, what I call the "good" yogurt. I was happy to see it, and felt compelled to take a picture not because I'm a huge fan, but because it's one of the few foods me and B eat and love (though she eats the crappy fat-free version), and I remember when I was wooing her, we'd go food shopping in her neighborhood, like a trial run as a real couple. When ever we'd go, we'd always end up buying some Fage, and also talking about the prices of the stuff in various markets in the neighborhood. The foundation of my marriage was cemented thanks to Fage!

In the News / Break Even / Cash Flow Statement

2009-06-25T16:04:00.000-07:00

In the news rolled along nicely. Dave was excited about this French restaurant, Relais de Venise, famous for a menu that has only one dish - steak frites (which reminds me of the original concept of Kentucky Fried Chicken) They're opening a new location in NYC, and we're all a bit skeptical that it will make it here. How often do you have 4 people going out to dinner together who ALL want steak frites?

L.I. Jenni was featured in this week's LI Newsday in a feature about the best places in L.I. to get iced coffee. Spice Market, a monstrous and pretentious restaurant in the Meat Packing district, went from 3 to 1 star in a recent review in the NY Times. In optimistic news, in the "Off the Menu" section of Dining in the paper, there were no closings listed.

Since the bebe, I grabbed one quick meal at McDonalds and one quick meal at Burger King, and was impressed by how superior the former one was (but still not that good over all.) Unsurprisingly, fo the best half decade, McD's has been clobbering King, and the horrible ad campaigns that BK has been waging has not helped. Recently, a smutty BK ad from the Hong Kong market has been making it's way around the internet, which certainly doesn't help their case.

As bizarre as the gross burgers of McD's and BK are, you can always get stranger over seas. Most beverages don't involve meat and animal product, but it doesn't have to be like that....Swine placenta soda from Japan, Eel essence flavored beverages, garnishes of penis, etc...

The next part of class was working out a P&L statement and calculating various cost percents and break even points.

Dave, while working on his business plan, tracked down a quote from a contractor who is installing a restaurant kitchen from scratch. Going through the $400K item by item comparing to prices on the internet, the whole thing was outrageously padded. If one were to just buy the stuff themselves, it would probably knock a solid $100K off the bill.

The last thing we looked at was a cash flow statement: where the cash comes from, and where it goes. Pre-opening, cash comes from personal funds, loans, investors, etc, because there is no income from the business. As you move across time across the statement, business income is accounted for, but the outflow is, too. It shows in stark detail why many restaurants fail: the outflow overwhelms the inflow early on because it takes a few months minimum to get to a point where you can start paying off the debts. If you don't have a reserve to get you through the opening months, don't bother.

Break Even Point / Bar Design

2009-06-24T17:39:00.000-07:00

To be perfectly honest, I wasn't very awake in class today. The first part of the day was spent manipulating the break even point, to see what information can be gleaned out of the equation.

A straight break-even statement will show you how much business you need to do to neither lose or make money, but if you have investors who want a return on investment (ROI), you can do a break-even calculation that doesn't go for zero, but goes for a dollar amount that would be an attractive ROI for investors.

The second part of the class was a discussion of the physical design and equipment needs of a bar. Behind the bar you need a lot more than just booze. Storage both dry and cold, compartment sinks, ice (various forms depending on the biz), glassware, tap systems, beverage guns, trash areas, all arranged in a way for maximum flow and hygiene. Various equipment, from blenders and mixers to bar spoons and muddlers all make up the specialized tool of the bartender, which in a serious bar can be regarded as a "liquid chef".

We spent some time looking at business plans of past classes, which all had a wide variety in the choices of information given and level of design, but all the competent ones had a minimum level of financial reports .

Break Even Point, Budget, Spirits

2009-06-22T15:55:00.000-07:00

We started the morning off with odds n' ends. Dave visited a new restaurant in his neighborhood in New Jersey. An 8000 square foot casual Italian eatery took 5 years to open, spent 600K for it's liquor license. There are only 7 liquor licenses in the whole town, so while the disadvantage of the license is the price, it also limits the competition.

Maria's bar and restaurant in Queens had an unruly table on Father's Day, with a group of 3 kids at a 6-top running wild, upsetting many customers in the room. Thing is, the adults at the table were regulars of the last 15 years, Maria had gone to the woman's wedding, and other customers were yelling at them to control their kids. Not an easy spot.

Val and her husband went to Blue Hill and experienced some extremely over the top good service. When a piece of beet skin on a salad appeared to maybe be a bug, they took the salad back and brought out another app on the house. Then the waiter asked if the chef could change the vegetable component of their entree to match their wine, and THEN gave the a complimentary desert to smooth out the beet incident at the beginning of the meal.

On the other hand, Liz is working in a large Italian eatery by Yankee Stadium. A customer and his girlfriend/mother left their table after paying and the bussers cleaned the table, but then returned because he left his grillz (gold teeth) in a napkin. The manager basically said tough titties, but feel free to go through out garbage. The guy proceeded to pick through a few barrels of trash for an hour until he found the grills, but cursing and being loud and disorderly the entire time.

We looked at wine and beer last week, and today was a brief discussion of distilled spirits. Start with a sugar or starch and ferment. Something sugary like grapes becomes wine, grain becomes beer. Then distill by heating, which makes the alcohol evaporate first. It's captured, cooled, and collected.

No matter the source, at this point all distilled spirits are clear and neutral. They can be blended to make the product the same over large runs, or left to be unique. The spirit can now be aged in something like wood barrels for color and flavor (whiskey), or left alone (vodka), or infused with flavors (gin) or infused and sweetened (liqueur).

Next up was a practice example of a profit and loss statement with some predictions of the coming year, and we had to make the budget based on those predictions. A budget, after all, is just a profit & loss statement that is projected into the the future.

The balance of the class was dedicated to reviewing the concept of the break-even point, where you leave the land of loss and enter the utopia of profit. Remember there are two kinds of costs: fixed and variable. A fixed cost like rent is paid and then it is done -- it is independent of sales. A variable cost is incurred by sales. If there are no sales, there are no variable costs. But if you sell a burger, and it costs $2 to make, if you sell one or 10,000, it's still $2 a burger. So if you reach your break even point and you sell a burger for $5, your profit ain't $5. Sure, your fixed costs are done, but your variable costs are with you. So that first $5 burger after your break even point means a profit of $3.

Balance Sheet / Beer

2009-06-18T10:31:00.000-07:00

Class started with In the News, beginning with a classmate who never speaks, was totally unprepared, and makes one wonder why she bothers. The New York Times had an interesting article on how the recession is making stupid people with too much money "down-scale" their weddings, though they're still spending a whole hell of a lot, just on burgers n' shit instead of canapes and caviar. Another good article on the Shinn Estate of the Northfork -- only 8 years old and producing good quality wine, the fact of which runs counter to Richard's outline of setting up a new vineyard (which seems near to impossible to get a good wine out of a vineyard within 8 years).

So two gals dined and dashed from an IHOP, then promptly crashed their car into said restaurant. The father of one of the girls were befuddled, due to the fact she had $200 in her pocket...

Next up, we were given some numbers and we constructed a balance sheet, slotting items into current or fixed assets, short or long term liabilities, then figuring out the owner equity, no biggie. I can see the appeal of being an accountant -- figures are both reassuring facts, but at the same time by the way you arrange and make them interact, you can make them tell very different stories. And by the same measure, figures that seem to say very little can say a whole heck of a lot with a little bit of poking and prodding. What I'm learning: I'm definitely going to have to hire an accountant when I have my own biz.

Back into alcohol today's topic was liquid bread, a.k.a. beer. We reviewed the steps of brewing beer, then watched a film clip f a show I actually watch at home - the "Making Beer" episode of Modern Marvels. Malt is barley soaked in water to slightly sprout it, before roasting. Only in the U.S. are "adjuncts" allowed in addition to malt: corn, rice and cheaper grains that give a lighter product....and a different taste. In Europe, add these grains and you can't call it beer legally.

Funny, sake is called rice wine here in the U.S.....for tax reasons related to it's alcohol content. In truth, it is technically rice beer, as it is brewed, but without malt, with rice taking on the starring role.

The Balance Sheet / Wine History

2009-06-17T21:18:00.000-07:00

Back to school! Everyone was very sweet and curious about Ediebird, and I get the impression I didn't miss too much. The rest of the class gave menu presentations (I do regret missing Zach's "Cheesequake" concept...), Marc Murphy gave a lecture, and Richard went into details of a financial statement.

Today we looked at the basics of the balance sheet. A profit & loss statement is a summary of the past. A budget is a prediction of the future. A balance sheet is a snap shot of where a business is at at a singular moment in time. Typically done at the end of the fiscal year, the balance sheet has two main categories: Assets and Liabilities. Assets can be current (cash or easily turned into cash) and fixed (things that typically last longer than a year, like equipment and furniture.) Liabilities are either short term (need to be paid soon, like pay roll, rent, inventory invoices) and long term (loans and mortgages)

A third category is owner equity -- what the biz owns outright. Assets = Liability + Owner Equity. The total value of a business, everything that it is, is adding up everything that is owned by the business and everything that is owned by the bank or lenders.

Richard, whose passion is wine, got into the nitty gritty of wine history, much of which I had already heard when I took a 7-class wine course with him last year. The first wine is thought to have been made in what is now Georgia (in Eastern Europe). The grape varieties of Europe have always made better wine than American grapes, but a mite in the American soil killed off most European grapes in the 1850s, only saved by grafting old world vines to new world root stock. The U.S. had it's own natural disaster with Prohibition, with many old, mature vineyards being torn up for other crops. Richard ran through all the steps and choices it takes to start a vineyard -- not a simple or cheap task. It could easily be 10 years before the first bottle of wine can be brought to market from a new vineyard. That's a pretty steep entry cost!

We watched a film from the 1980s about the origins of wine. They showed an old Georgian farmer who still makes wine like they did 1000s of years ago. Pluck grapes, step on them, put them in clay cisterns, put them in the cold ground with a cover and let 'em ferment. After a month or so, take out and drink, that's it. Looked dirty-funky, but probably fun.

Interruption

2009-06-11T08:40:00.000-07:00

Due to the lil' critter above, I am missing class this week. Will be back on it Monday.

BTW, that's Edie Bird, about 36 hours old, and she loves to drink milk straight from the source, raw and unhomogenized.

In the News / Student Concept Presenations

2009-06-04T14:50:00.000-07:00

We began with in the news. After seeing a few documentaries about prohibition, it was pretty funny to see an article in the New York Times about the recent trend in new bars to be stylized after Prohibition-era speak-easies. The problem? Since the supply was illegal the quality of the booze was low and a lot of drinks had to be mixed with strong, sweet stuff to mask the flavor. I think this new trend should involve poor-quality bathtub gin, a total lack of licensing, and incorporate other illegal activities -- drugs, prostitution, and dancing without a cabaret license! Now THAT would be authentic.

Time Out New York had a pretty typical spread hyping a handful of new pizzerias in NYC, but more interesting was the recent article in Newsweek, which questioned the viability of all these new trendy pizzerias -- what about the old school slice joints that are getting squeezed out? I think the argument is specious -- the old school places have never had it so good, and the new places are riding their coattails. At some point the new places will shake out, but the places that have been around for years and years will survive.

The Times had a pretty ridiculous opinion piece about the U.K. judiciary that just ruled that Pringles are, for tax purposes, potato chips, unlike what Proctor & Gamble were calling them, "savory snacks," to get out of paying millions of pounds in VAT taxes.

Most of the day was dedicated to Jenni, Guytano, and Niko giving presentations on their concept menus. Both Jenni and Guytano's concepts were expansions to the restaurants where they are currently working. Jenni's restaurant owners are opening up a cafe and gelato shop, where they will roast their own beans and make their own ice creams, out in the North Fork of Long Island. Guytano's pizzeria is opening an attached wine bar with a small trattoria-style menu, out in Long Island. Niko gave a long and rambling talk about a Georgian wine & jazz bar, but with his thickly accented low monotone, he literally made me fall asleep.

Class concluded with a short P&L statement, working out the variance and variance percentages between years by costs and profits.

No class Monday, talk to ya Wednesday!

P and L Statements / Concept Presentation / Bar Design

2009-06-03T16:58:00.000-07:00

Today began with a passioned discussion over why people go to bars. There are different kinds of customers. Though some people fit more than one description, they are broken down thusly:

Diners at restaurants which have drinks
Drop-in customers on their way elsewhere
Meet-and-go customers
Entertainment seekers looking for relaxation or stimulation
Sports fans
Regular patrons of a neighborhood establishment

"Meet-and-go customers" was perhaps the corniest euphemism for people looking to get laid; the textbook description is kinda hilarious, so here ya go:

Meet-and-go customers. These individuals are looking for a relationship connection, whether a date for the evening or a longer-term plan. They go to singles-bars or "meet bars" that are attractive to others like themselves. They stay long enough to meet someone whom they would like to spend the evening with, and the tow may or may not move on to a place where the food and/or the entertainment is more suitable for leisurely conversation and an evening together. Today most singles bars include dancing and very-late-night hours.

Yeah, another place where the food and/or entertainment is more suitable....like mah pants!!

Anyway, as with any restaurant, the needs and wants of a bar's customers determine the concept, which breaks down into three fundamentals that reinforce each other: Design & Decor, Service, and Food & Beverage. Each group of bar customers, as listed above, has its own needs that must be catered to in these three areas.

There are certain standards that all bar customers expect in the U.S. Number one is a large variety of alcohol. Unless you desire something esoteric, chances are a typically stocked bar will offer you hundreds, if not thousands, of combinations and concoctions. The other main expectation among customers is that the quality of the drink matches the quality of the establishment. For example, one who orders a gin and tonic at a local dive bar can expect well gin and tonic out of a soda gun. From a 4-star restaurant bar? An expensive brand gin and house-made tonic with a juniper berry garnish.

We looked at the space requirements of a properly designed bar. Between the back bar, the space for people inside, the front bar, the rails, the space in front and behind a stool, the total space for ONE bar customer is 28 square feet (2 feet wide by 14 feet deep). That's a hell of a lot of space to dedicate to one seat. We also looked at layouts: How one places the bar in relation to the seating, dance floor, and restaurant will influence flow and either work with or fight against the concept (and the kind of customer that's being served). An airport bar will be long and skinny with an open front so that people can get in and out quickly to make their plane. A pick-up joint will have a central bar where people can congregate in 360 degrees and check each other out from all angles.

Mid-class, Maria and I gave presentations on our concept. Maria's idea centered around a very straight-ahead tavern with an extensive American bar menu. I used a PowerPoint presentation to give some details of a neighborhood pizzeria and pasta shop, about 30 seats, maybe in Brooklyn, named after my mom's maiden name (with my mom's image as a young hipster all over it -- see enclosed).

The last part of the class was an exercise in reading and understanding a profit & loss statement. It looks like a big scary sheet of numbers flying out in all directions, but when looked at part by part, it's actually quite simple. First part is the money you take in, broken down by food and bev, then added up. The second part is what you spent just on food and bev, and the third part is what you spent on everything else. The money you made on food and bev after paying for the food and bev is the contribution margin, and that margin should cover all expenses AND give a profit to the owner. And man, the expenses just go on and on. By analyzing cost percents (cost of an item divided by total sales) across different years, one can figure out what's efficient and what's slacking. Really, there are multiple ways to read the numbers, all true but all suggest different actions to be taken. Accounting, it's a hell of a game.

Monitoring Various Costs / Responsible Alcohol Service

2009-06-01T17:51:00.000-07:00

Class started with a brief odds n' ends. I described the odd experience on Saturday of being in Coney Island at 10:30 in the morning meeting friends coming off a half marathon, and finding mobs and mobs of healthy runners lined up to buy hot dogs at Nathan's. Health freaks! Dave described a restaurant where he was there with a few people for dessert, it was empty, 1 of the four deserts they ordered was out, were charged for it anyway AND all the prices on the bill were higher than on the menu. Richard described a time when the bill for a glass of wine was higher than the menu price, and when called on it, the waiter returned to say that the menu was wrong and the bill correct. To which Richard replied, well, I'm going to pay the advertised price. Which is also the legally binding price. Liz was in Las Vegas over the weekend and was surprised how empty every single restaurant was, even the big names. Overbuilt, over hyped, overextended, goodbye to the last gilded age of over consumption.

Anyway, we continued talking about the other expenses of a restaurant, outside of food and labor. There is rent. There are three ways to pay.

Fixed: simple, the same every month, just like residential rent. Whether the business is crap or your raking it in hand over fist, it's the same.
Variable: The landlord gets a percentage of gross income. This in effect makes the landlord a partner, where its in his interest to generate customers for you. Mall and hotel situations see this. Makes most sense in a seasonal operation, like in a summer community.
Mixed: Fixed fee with a variable percentage on top. Most common. As with variable, has to be an element of trust between both parties.

We spent some time on a few examples, showing how the Cost % ratio can be applied to anything in a restaurant. Cost % = Cost /Sales, so Linen Cost % = Linen Cost / Sales or Linen Cost per guest = Linen Cost / # of Customers. By comparing these number from day to day, month to month, an idea of how efficiently they're being used can emerge.

Class finished with a discussion of alcohol. Until prohibition, the law's attitude was from the medieval period. If you were an able-bodied adult, you were responsible for your own actions. If you went to a bar and got drunk, then went out and killed someone with your car, you and you alone were responsible for the harm your caused. Since prohibition, there are what are called "dram shop laws", which assign different percentages of responsibility to 3rd parties who provided alcohol to the 1st party who harmed the 2nd party.

The big no-no with 100% liability is selling alcohol to a minor, which in the U.S. is anyone under the age of 21. It's odd to regard someone who is 20 years old, who can vote, be drafted and die in the military, drive, have sex with whoever, run for elected office, work for a living, sign legally binding contracts, BUT can't drink alcohol.

Another big no-no is causing a person to become intoxicated by providing alcohol. In the U.S., the legal definition of intoxicated is .08% blood alcohol, which is 1 drink per hour for a small person and 2 drinks per hour for a medium sized person. Most bars and booze-serving establishments pretty much break this law regularly. Related to this, it is illegal to provide alcohol to someone who is already intoxicated.

We saw part two of the video about prohibition, and what a cluster-f@ck all that was. Like marijuana today, drinking alcohol became so commonplace under the ban that it eroded respect for the rule of law. Three groups were helped: criminals got a market to themselves, corrupt police and politicians buddied up to the criminals for a huge payday, and...women were now drinking in social establishments alongside men, drinking, smoking, dancing and generally getting jiggy with it like never before. Basically, everything the Prudes wanted to happen, the opposite happened. Within 4 years of the laws going into effect, city and state-level authorities gave up and handed over the responsibility and HUGE cost of enforcing prohibition to the Feds. The Feds, understaffed, underpaid and overwhelmed, became even more corrupt than the smaller bureaucracies, with Herbert Hoover's (who was a drinker himself) cabinet notorious for being totally on the take. As the criminals got sharper and more organized, it's leadership amassed so much wealth they were able to spread around their cash enough to enter the legit world. Bronfman brought Seagram's from a bootlegging operation to a multinational conglomeration, and a man named Joseph Kennedy was known as a Prohibition-era alcohol middle man who never quite got tagged for it, though his clan certainly benefited from the dirty money.

In the News / Labor Cost / Misc. Expenses / Benefits o' Booze

2009-05-28T14:17:00.000-07:00

During today's In the News segment, I defended pizza: in the $25 and under section of the NY Times dining section, they reviewed Roberta's of Bushwick. They said it was good pizza, but despite that they offered some good interesting dishes. Hrumph!

A good portion of the class was dedicated to labor cost. Based on how busy a dinner shift was, we scheduled servers, bussers, hosts and bartenders, taking into account how much they were paid, expected number of covers and average check. I don't like exercises like this because the feedback you get from it can be guesstimated from just vibing the business of a room. In the resto biz, when things are slow, it's acceptable to send extra staff home, and it's also normal to call up people who are on informal call. Filling us students with formulas and numbers...I don't know, there needs to be a balance, an expectation that we will learn when things really need to be calculated, written and statistically analyzed, and when things can just be winged.

Up to this point, we studied cost control in terms of food and in terms of labor. Today we looked at "other expenses". While a restaurant only has one primary source of income, there are plenty of sources of expenses aside from labor and food.

Operating expenses (linen, uniforms, china & glass, kitchen utensils, cleaning, decoration)
Music and entertainment (live or mechanical, ASCAP, booking agents, meals to musicians)
Marketing (mail, phone, internet, comped food, ads, signs, copies, public relations, agents)
Administrative (data processing, office supplies, postage, cash over or under, bank fees)
Facility maintenance (fixtures, equipment, air conditioning, refrigeration, electrical, floors and carpets)
Occupancy (rent or mortgage, equipment lease, real estate tax, insurance, depreciation, licenses)

This is a very annotated list. If I was working up my business plan, I'd be tearing my short hairs right now...

To control costs like this, there are two key ways to categorize them. The first way is by fixed, variable or mixed. Ask this question: If no one comes to the restaurant one night, will the expense cost less? If people come, will the expense cost more?

Whether people come in or not, rent and salaries will remain the same -- fixed. If no one comes in, I can send lower level salaried people home and the food can be served tomorrow -- variable. If no one comes in, I still have to pay for air conditioning and side towels, but if people come in, I'll have to crank up the air and use more side towels -- mixed.

The other way to categorize costs is by controllable or uncontrollable. Hourly wages are controllable -- if the biz starts to go south, I can cut people's pay or lay people off to adjust in the short term. Rent for a restaurant is usually determined by a multi-year lease -- if the biz is tanking, it could be years to a lease renegotiation, therefore it is uncontrollable.

The last part of the class was more talk of our friend alcohol, which is leading to Monday's discussion on liability issues. Alcohol has beneficial qualities. The wine industry had to sue the FDA to go public with scientifically proven evidence that alcohol can be a positive influence, but still the government insists that bars post signs warning pregnant women away from booze, despite the fact that all the studies from the 80s that claimed alcohol hurts fetuses have all been disproven. It's been shown that moderate alcohol consumption through out pregnancy does NOT hurt babies, and it's been shown that alcohol abuse in the 2nd and 3rd trimesters also does not hurt unborn children. Only alcohol abuse in the 1st trimester, a time when many women don't know they are pregnant, has been shown to cause all sorts of developmental issues.

There's the whole French paradox thing, where despite eating much more animal fats than the U.S., the consumption of red wine keeps down cholesterol. In fact, in recent years the French have had an anti-alcohol (oh, excuse me, anti drunk driving) move that has directly lead to a spike in heart disease. Alcohol thins blood, letting less stuff clump up -- the same rason docs recommend an aspirin a day, only this is so much more tasty and pleasurable. Moderate (2 glasses or less for the averaged size person) on a daily basis has health benefits, but 14 glasses one day a week would lead to all the alcohol problems reviewed yesterday.

Labor / Trends / Alcohol Physiology

2009-05-27T12:30:00.000-07:00

Class started with an odds n' ends. Jennilee was at a Mexican restaurant where an old-school piercing fire alarm went off for a solid half hour. She was one f the few people in the establishment, and no one ever came over to explain what was happening, the staff just sat around dumbly, neither moving or calming. What basically had a negative outcome could have been spun positive by just a little human touch, or perhaps a free drink. I told the tale of the miserable meal I had with B at Kelly & Ping in Soho (who the hell fills a shumai with tuna fish and doesn't warn the customer?) Liz and her boyfriend ordered food from Dominos, and had a good time following along on the site as they informed her that her pizza was being prepped, in the oven, packaging for delivery, on the way, etc. Richard suspects it's all a bit of bullshittery, but ya never know.

We crunched numbers on labor costs. Spinning for the # of guests served, labor hours used, average wage and average guest check amount, all sorts of statistics were spun out: labor dollar per guest served, guest served per labor hour, labor cost percentage, etc. A restaurant can be broken down into parts, whether it's simply back of house and front of house or by station, and a sales per labor hour can be calculated for each person. If one part is over or understaffed for whatever reason, these stats will tease it out.

We had a guest speaker from an ad agency who specialized in restaurants and food retail, and was pretty underwhelming. A one-dimensional PowerPoint listed trends this year, some a little interesting, some self-evident, some totally inane. Maybe part of it was the speaker, a lower level rep who was stepping in for someone who got badly bitten by a pit bull. But part of it was their list of current trends: Food as pop culture (with a pic of Rachel Ray in a bikini top licking a fudgy wooden spoon while gazing at the camera with wide dumb cow eyes) is a gimme, as is the local-seasonal-green-community angle. But "blind dining", the trendlette to eat a meal while in the dark or blindfolded? Do I need to pay an ad agency to tell me that comfort food, cheap food and international street food are trendy?

Even more egregious were the tips for guerrilla marketing. First, if I'm going to pay an ad agency, aren't I committing right there to mainstream traditional marketing? Isn't the point of guerrilla marketing so I DON'T have to pay an ad agency? The list of tactics kind of reached this conclusion for me: website, social networking, reach out to food blogs, etc -- all stuff that can be done free or on the cheap.

The only trends that caught my ear was tea -- as an ingredient. People tend to think of tea as 'healthy', and the flavor profiles of different teas could be kinda cool, Another was 'micro-size'. Portions have always been either too huge, or back in the 80s ridiculously small. Reducing portion size to reflect a healthier way of eating AND reduce prices (while maintaining a good food cost percent) kind of turns me on. But for these two cool trends, the agency person spouted silliness like "underground dining", informal food clubs and hosted dinners where instead of being with friends, you pay strangers to enter their homes and eat their food. I think people are doing that to totally escape the reach of douche bag trend marketers....

Class concluded with a look at the physiological effects of alcohol....or more precisely, alcohol abuse. A drink of booze is not such a bad thing. Drinking too much will destroy you. As is the modus operandi of most fear-mongering absolutists (hello, MADD!), what is defined as 'abuse' is never really made clear, but the results of abuse abundantly so.

From a drink, a small amount of alcohol can be absorbed in the mouth. So even if you taste and spit, you can theoretically get drunk, Down the throat, alcohol is toxic to the lining of the esophagus, and abuse will increase the chances of cancer here. In the heart, abuse will raise blood pressure and increase heart size due to increased fat. Most alcohol is metabolized in the liver, where abuse will turn it into foie gras -- fatty and enlarged, a.k.a. cirrhosis. Twenty percent of alcohol enters the bloodstream through the stomach, where too much will tear up stomach walls and have all sorts of pleasant symptoms. Most alcohol enters the blood through the small intestine, which is why a vodka enema is so dangerous. Inflammation, pain, bleeding, I need not write more.

And the kicker to this is what the U.S.A. now defines as abuse: the legal definition of alcohol intoxication. A blood alcohol level of .08% makes it illegal to drive. That's one drink for a petite woman, 2 drinks for the majority of the population within one hour. If that is 'abuse', then we are a world of abusers. Who says prohibition can't happen again?

Introduction to Beverage Management

2009-05-21T18:58:00.000-07:00

The day kicked off with a long missing in the news segment. According to daily freebie AMNY, food stylists actually take pictures of inedible things that look edible! Shocker! Down where the old Fulton fish market used to live on the old southern tip of Manhattan, a new foodie market is emerging. After seeing the new fish market up in Hunts Point, which is literally the middle of nowhere, it's nice to see a real market pop up where the people are.

Richard covered the history of the beverage -- from the dawn of man to its presence on today's college campuses -- in a few hours with enough time to spare to show a documentary about the U.S.'s 13 years of Prohibition. In the beginning, there was water, and it was good. Juice from fruit and extracts, too. About six to eight thousand years ago, alcohol was not so much discovered so much as stumbled upon. When a sugar or starch is introduced to yeast in a properly moist environment, fermentation occurs. Yeast eats the food and produces CO2, heat, and alcohol. The first naturally occurring alcohols to be consumed by man were most likely fruit-based, as the grain-based fermentation take a bit of processing of the grain.

In early history, alcoholic beverages became the go-to daily drinks for health and hydration because it was safer. No one knew why relieving one's self in the same river from which you drink was a bad idea, and they didn't know why that water made you sick (while the beer and mead made from the water did not). It was a short step to steeping healing herbs and berries in alcohol to create tonics and elixirs that also happened to get you messed up. Gin, that's simply distilled alcohol steeped with juniper berries.

Distillation was introduced by the Moors, most likely for the purpose of making perfume, not drinkin'. Distillation is simply cooking the fermented beverage, collecting the evaporated alcohol, and re-condensing it. This process lead to stronger, condensed alcoholic beverages that could travel longer than an unpasteurized beer. Ahoy, pirates and brandy! Colonists ditched the boats at Plymouth Rock because they were out of beer. There was nothing else safe to drink unless they went inland.

All major religions at one point or another embraced alcohol in ceremonies, as alcohol was revered for its safety and pleasure-giving qualities before the establishment of religion as we know it. That said, due to alcohol's ability to be transcendental and give relief, it was also in conflict with certain aspects of religious practice, and has been suppressed by all sorts ever since.

The young United States found that towns tended to have two social centers: the church and the saloon. In the Church, you sat there and got spoken to. In the saloon, you socialized, you pleasured yourself, and the business of the day got done. Politics were at the bar. The problem with this formula was that saloons were all male (unless you were a certain kind of lady); it was this imbalance of power that lead to the original women's movement being focused on temperance.

We watched a documentary on Prohibition, during which the United States basically destroyed all the foodways that anchored society to a healthy perspective on alcohol. The ban served to do exactly the opposite of what the banners hoped: alcohol consumption rose, a large criminal underground swelled, people drank more for the pleasure of being naughty, respect for law and government was eroded, and in the end one group emerged as drinkers where they never drank before: women.

To this day, the United States is under the yoke of the aftershocks of Prohibition. When Prohibition was lifted, a lot of the controls on booze that were introduced remain n effect today. Why? Because the government can closely track -- and tax -- all alcohol being produced. Food consumption is easy to fudge; not so with booze, from a restaurant's liquor license down to a distributor's tight controls on inventory. It's just too profitable for the government to let go of. Now imagine if the government did to marijuana and prostitution what it does to booze and ciggies! We'd fuck and bong our way out of the recession...

There is a mini-Prohibition going on in college campuses today. It's a weird situation in which part of the social community is under 21, another over, and they both hang out. Underage drinking is the standard, and lately college presidents have called for a review of the drinking laws....after which they were mercilessly attacked by Mothers Against Drunk Driving (among other naysayers) who don't appreciate that history repeats itself: ban booze, and people flout the law, drink more, and do more damage than if it was not banned. -sigh-

It's nice not to fall asleep in class!

Labor

2009-05-20T17:26:00.000-07:00

After the last few days I've had (with my wife going into false labor), the subject of the class gave me a sore giggle. The food cost of a hamburger is pretty straight ahead: add up what the meat patty cost, what the bun cost, what the bits of topping costs, add 'em up, and you got your food cost. But adding up the labor cost isn't that easy: if a cook is earning $8 an hour and turns out one burger a minute, it's $1/burger, but what if he's cooking up 1 burger at a time when it's slow, and 20 at a time when it's slamming? And what about what it costs for the server to bring it from kitchen to table?

The rest of class was dedicated to discussing the pros and cons of fixed pay (salaries) versus variable pay (hourly wages), and a lot of different formulas to figure out ratios and percentages which which I doubt any restaurant with less than 100 seats ever really concern themselves. I'd go into it more in detail here, but to be honest, I'm suffering a bit from baby fever, and the baby that is soon to be upon us....

But one formula did catch my eye, because I wish I could plug in the numbers and show it to my current boss. Turnover rate = # employees separated / work force. If a place has 50 employees and loses 50 employees over one year, that's a turnover rate of 100 percent. Some places, particularly fast food joints, are notorious for having turnover rates of 200 to 300 percent (i.e., the whole staff turns over 2 to 3 times a year). The cost of turnover is in expending the resources to find new employees, train them, and all the mistakes they're going to make by being new. The main ways to reduce turnover rates: TREAT YOUR EMPLOYEES WELL, pay them fairly, schedule to their needs, benefits, etc. -sigh-

Pork and Poultry Fabrication

2009-05-14T21:19:00.000-07:00

Today's class was again up in a kitchen, with Chef Ted fabricating a side of pork and a few birds. This would be pretty exciting to see this demonstration, except for the fact I spent a few weeks fabricating pork and poultry first hand in c-arts. Watching some one else do it, and talk about it, is, well, unsatisfying. I did like Ted's brief lecture. It seems there are three general classes of pork in the U.S.: Western, Southern and "Metropolitan" or "Swirl", which are defined by where they are raised and the feed they are given. Western pork get a diet that is composed around chestnuts and apples, while Southern centers on peanuts and soy. "Metropolitan" tends to be raised outside of cities, and are primarily fed....denatured food garbage. Mmmm. Because pigs can pop out of a litter of 50-60 piglets every 6 months, pork has always been cheaper than other meats. Too bad about that kosher/halal business.

Yield & Purchasing / Menu Pricing / More Yield Tests

2009-05-13T15:31:00.000-07:00

We began class with a review of yield and how it influences product purchasing. Vegetable scraps can be saved and used in vegetable stock. But if you're making beef stock at a steak house, the cost of bones can be significant. So your meat purchasing will be influences. The cost of buying subprimals (parts of the animal, bones and fat and all) and the cost of buying fabricated meat (deboned, trimmed of fat, cut to edible portions) change when you have a use for the bones that would be missing in a fabricated cut.

We spent a few hours discussing product pricing. This is determined first by the kind of menu the establishment has. For a cycle menu: one with a fixed daily menu (like in a corporate cafeteria or prison -- what's the dif?) prices will be determined to an extent by the limitations that the host has determined. The law firm where I worked, for instance, had a cheap-ass caf with good food, undoubtedly restricted by a contract the food service had with the firm. Also, because the menu changes every day, the uses for carry-over (a.k.a. left overs) are more limited, thereby raising food costs. In a school cafeteria, today's hamburgers can become tomorrow's chili, but a corporate cafeteria's clams casino is a little bit more tricky.

A restaurant's menu that changes completely everyday is tricky because of the carry-over issue, but gives the flexibility of going to market every day and getting what is fresh and cheap, though in smaller more expensive quantities. A standard menu can have specials, which can use up what's in excess or what's cheap at the moment. Specials have to be thought through, or a "creative" chef can drive up the food cost of a special into unprofitability.

Factors that influence menu pricing:

Local competition
Service level -- table vs. counter service makes a perception of quality, and determines turn time of the tables
Guest type -- what are the customers willing to spend?
Product quality
Portion size
Ambiance
Meal Period -- a.k.a. dayparts. Weekends can get a premium over weekdays, dinners get more cash than lunches,
Location, location, location
Sales mix -- different menu items will be more profitable than other.

There are different ways to assign a menu price, and a lot of places use the dumb cudgel of the food cost percent. You can assign a 20% food cost to everything (if a dish costs $4, you charge $10) but if the food cost of a steak is $25, the cost of a pasta dish is $3 and a glass of lemonade is $.03, the perception of a $125 steak and a 15 cent glass of lemonade will seem a bit crazy to a customer.

The desired cost percent can be determined by looking at what the other expenses of the restaurant are. If sales = 100% of income, fixed costs like labor, occupancy, desired profit and operating expenses can be subtracted to find what % of the income can be dedicated to the cost of the food.

The number that is much more important than the food cost percent is the number where the money is: the Contribution Margin.

Contribution Margin = Sales Price - Cost

Also known as the Gross Profit, the CM is not a percent, it's the MONEY. Alternately, the Sale Price = Cost + Contribution Margin. A steak house typically has a huge food cost and a tiny profit margin, but because steaks go for hundreds a throw, the contribution margin is going to mean big profits regardless.

For the remainder of the class, we revisited the butcher test card and theoretically broke down a whole chicken, which had a lot of parts: drumstick, thigh, wing, back and neck, giblets, waste, and breasteses. Each part has a different value per pound. Literally, the value of the whole chicken is not necessarily the sum of the value of its parts. Hence, supermarkets love to sell chicken parts because the perceived value is a lot higher than the perceived value of the whole carcass. Mmmmm, carcass.

Odds n' Ends / Production Cost Control / Guest Speaker

2009-05-11T20:14:00.000-07:00

Back from the weekend, we shared some odds n' ends. Some Japanese fellows got a machine to detect flavor, and determined that humans taste like...bacon. Someone popped a snake head into a dish at TGIFridays in hopes of landing a big ol' lawsuit. I told a story from my weekend, how L fired the hostess between lunch and dinner services, forcing me to step in to help, wearing a kilt, wet shoes, and a t-shirt a few sizes too small. It was an experience.

We got into cost control in food production. Turning the "as purchased" portion into an "edible portion" is an ordeal with a lot of opportunity for waste. If the minimum-wage prep cook is not monitored, for instance, he may cut an onion and toss out too much usable trim. It's not unusual for head chefs to pick around the garbage to inspect what is being thrown out.

Overcooking is another problem -- cook a piece of meat too long and it shrinks. Over the course of a year, one can lose 100s of pounds of meat And of course there is over serving: a bartender free-pours too big a glass, steak that's not weighed could go too big or small.

Inventory control: Without proper rotation, a lot can be wasted. "Carry over," the restaurant term for left-overs, is a big potential source of loss if not managed correctly.

The choice to make or buy something is tricky. Ice cream can be purchased, but the ingredients are relatively cheap. However, a proper batch freezer, electricity to run it, and the talent to run it are not. It's a balance that his to be determined from case to case.

Of course there are the twin buggaboos of pilferage and stealing: stealing is cut-and-dried taking stuff out of the store, either booze or cash or sides o' beef; pilfering is more casual, such as the hungry prep cook popping a few cucumbers into his mouth while getting the salad station together. Then there are the employee meals -- are they expensive to make or made with food that would go to waste otherwise?

This list killed me, as I see how the restaurant I'm at now is just being so wasteful, preventing us from getting on the goodfoot financially.

At 10pm, we had a guest lecturer, Anne Saxelby of Saxelby Cheese, a cool little cheese counter on the Lower East Side. She sounded really interesting, pretty much inventing herself as a cheese monger, but I was overtired and fell asleep.

Food Cost / Yield Test

2009-05-07T21:23:00.000-07:00

Class was again Chef Ted breaking down proteins. This time, he had a two sides of beef, and we did a yield test on them -- weighed before, then the trim was weighed, then calculated the real price of the edible portions. It was pretty straightforward stuff, but had it been intended for a full menu with many moving parts and recipes embedded within recipes, it would be quite a bug bear. I would have been more involved in the discussion, but I was sleepily checking in and out.

The waste on a large tenderloin of beef is amazing. We started with 9 pounds, and after the fat was cut off, the different muscles that didn't belong to the tender portion, the silver skin and connective tissues, we were left with less than 5 pounds. I asked Chef Ted out of an entire cow, how much is usable. There is relatively little prime meat on a cow, but everything is usable. From the skin into leather, the bones into gelatin, the organs and offal to vendors overseas, to stomach bile for cheese making and paint, it's all used. The meat, the steaks and burgers, are really a very very small part of the cow that we use. And the meat that is graded "prime" is only 1% of all meat produced.

Fish Fabrication / Training

2009-05-06T19:22:00.000-07:00

Today was an odd day. Chef Ted came in and basically fabricated a large variety of fish in front of our eyes -- round and flat fish, a salmon, 2 lobsters, shellfish, bivalves and a squid -- things that we took several weeks to work through in culinary arts, here we were shown in 3 hours. The point was to illustrate how in the end, a whole fish is only 45 to 50% usable, and the rest is garbage. Makes one appreciate how valuable fresh proteins are. Chef also lectured a bit about how expensive some species are today that were considered garbage fish 30 to 40 years ago: skate, yellow fin tuna, cod. Back in the day, it was just salmon and Dove Sole. 99% of all shrimp in the U.S. is both farm raised and imported.

The last hour of the class was the finishing of a topic that I missed on Monday, due to the James Beard Awards. It seemed pretty self evident, but Richard presented a flowchart of sorts for job training. Determine the duties, show the duties, let the employee practice the duties, evaluate and go from there. Have written descriptions of responsibilities, blah blah blah. All very nice in an ideal world, but in the real world, you hope your staff knows what's up, and try not to give them too much rope to hang themselves with. The staff a manager hires is a reflection on how good the manager is -- it will never be better than the manager who assembles and directs them. I understand that; still, it grates on me a bit whenRichard presents this stuff like it's a formula. Real life seems so much more complicated and compromised.

Student Product Presentations / Food Cost

2009-05-04T12:00:00.000-07:00

Due to my commuter bicycle breaking down and the F train not running because of the heavy rain, I did not get to class until 8:30, then had to leave at 9:45am to go to Lincoln Center to pick up cheap tickets to the James Beard Awards this evening. So I got to see three late student presentations -- strawberries, chicken, and a rather captivating pizza-oriented presentation about Guytano's family restaurant's home-made mozzarella. He even brought in samples, which were quite good.

So I spent the rest of the class time on line at Lincoln Center, and had some nice conversations with the students around me. One was a pastry student at my school who had a good head on her shoulders, the other was a culinary student who works in the web department of the Food Network, who seemed very young and a little bit too timid to work in a restaurant kitchen.

Later this week, a chef professor is coming in to break down chickens and help us analyze food costs further.

Student Product Presentations

2009-04-29T19:20:00.000-07:00

Today started with a bang -- student presentations on various products. This is a test run for our final projects, which will be presenting a business plan for a new restaurant. Everyone chose a product, and had to present about the characteristics, grades, history, and purchasing of said topic. Richard stressed the use of PowerPoint, which some students did use, some to hilarious effect, some to...less than hilarious. Others just gave out a handout and spoke, some did...less. The topics ranged from blackened spices to mission figs to spinach to horsemeat (which only became illegal a couple of years ago). I did canned tomatoes, and exported my presentation above for all y'all to peruse. The export function didn't get the animations, in which the word "SEX" flashes over selected slides to keep things humorous -- the first, the last, and of course, the slide with a picture of a pizza.

Best of today's bunch was probably LI Jenni's, in which she shared he passion for specialty coffee -- she's a manager of a Northfork beanery, and really knows her stuff. No Powerpoint to lean on, she brought in a mess of visual aids, from a sack used to transport the raw beans to raw and roasted beans to the grading and testing. She had this cool kit of a few dozen vials of essential oils, which is used to train the coffee nose. She had samples of all different kinds of bean rejects, from insect damage to "floaters" (when the beans are washed, the ones that come to the top have gaps in their structure, which lead to uneven roasting and will give bitter tones to an otherwise properly roasted batch). I don't even like coffee, but Jenni made me want to go to a fancy coffee shop and taste a flight of brews with her.

Recipe Costing / Hiring

2009-04-27T19:02:00.000-07:00

In today's odds n' ends, I reported on the machinations of the restaurant where I've been working as manager/kitchen captain/prep cook/expediter/inventory clerk, and also sought advice from Richard about how to quell some of the issues we're having -- in particular: where to look for a point-of-sale system, as our register is seriously out of date and inefficient. I also spoke of the Bohemian Beer Garden I visited yesterday, on the first super warm day of the year -- we got there, hungry, at 3:30 but the kitchen was closed until 4. We ordered soon thereafter and it took 45 minutes to get our food; when we got it, it was cold, dry and not very good.

Chicago Liz got laid off from the Mexican restaurant where she was a line cook -- it seems her boss was trying to cut expenses and cut back everyone's hours, but then she line-listed the restaurant's policies and habits, and how it's literally wasting money left and right. Kyle took her anti-NYC boyfriend to Masa, where he had a hard time ordering, but once he got the food, he fell in love with it and couldn't stop raving.

We then saw another episode of "Opening Soon," about a couple of ex-professional hockey players opening a steak house in Ontario. Neither of them cook nor have ever opened or run a restaurant; they also believe ketchup is the best sauce for a steak. Very odd. They pay a contractor to build out their space for an opening date in 6 weeks. Not surprisingly, the contractor takes 6 months and goes way over-budget, and who the heck pays a contractor in full in advance? After designing the place, they get a chef almost as an afterthought -- they hire the first person who answers their classified ad. The show glosses over a lot of details, but according to the rules of the show, the place must go on to be successful. (It doesn't show any of the growing pains that I've been witnessing firsthand.)

The next part of the class was dedicated to cost control and the concept of recipe costing. It's not too tricky, in an ideal world. You have a recipe; you know the quantities, price, and serving size of your ingredients; and you work out the cost of each dish. Divide that by what you sell it for (cost/sales) and blammo, you have your food cost percent.

We finished class with our last talk about hiring and selecting employees. Testing: today it is popular in many industries to give psychological tests to determine whether a candidate is trustworthy or not, with questions ranging from "Is it OK to steal?" to "Have you ever taken paperclips from the office home?" Damn, that sounds really stupid. The politics of the reference -- an HR department will only volunteer a confirmation of the dates of someone's employment and his or her title. You can ask, however, if the person "available for rehire." If the answer is no, that could be an indication that things did not work out well. Privately-held companies tend to have looser lips, but all sorts of laws prevent people from saying more.

Training is key, of course. Today in the food industry, the first introduction to the kitchen is a trail, when a worker goes in and follows someone around without doing anything, just observing. The problem with this is that by law trails must be paid. Previously, a person was given a test to see if they knew how to handle heat and procedure. A cook can be asked to make a perfectly done omelet, a baker can be asked to bake a cake -- in that, the proof is in the pudding, and legally, the trailer does not have to be paid. The first step is orientation -- welcome, job-role info., where everything is. Job training: performance standards. And finally, retraining: if the job changes, if they never did the job right, if there is new equipment or a new menu item.

In the News / Recipe Yield / Interviewing

2009-04-23T21:47:00.000-07:00

A quiet Filipino kid who hasn't said 10 words in class lead the In the News segment this morning. Newsday had a silly article about the supposedly newness of the villainy of salt, and how NYC gov is trying to restrict it -- despite the fact that most people are not sensitive to salt. The flagship Armani store on 5th Ave just opened a restaurant within its own doors, which means you can eat while you shop for $500 jeans. The NY Post is predicting an explosion of cart food now that our economy is a limp fish. Pizza Hut just hired a celebrity chef to foof up their salads, and a main impersonating a waiter grabbed a whole mess of cash in NJ -- guess a uniform is also a safety measure.

Next up was recipe yield, working formulas involving AP (as purchased), EP (edible portion) and PP (portion of product) A side of meat may be $100 for 20 lbs, but cut away the inedible stuff and you may have half the material, but it's still $20, so the AP is $5/lb., but the Edible Portion is $10/lb. Yield Percent is Edible Portion / As Purchased Portion. We played around a lot more with this formula, but I was falling asleep. We also did mock interviews with each other, forcing us to think about how we would hire -- to make a decision based on 15 minutes of chatting is pretty difficult -- in the food industry, throwing people in for a day or two to shake out who is and who ain't is more appropriate.

Food Production / Interviewing

2009-04-22T18:56:00.000-07:00

Food production literally deals with a restaurant's, uhhh, production of food. Richard introduced the concept of the "production schedule" or "prep sheet" -- a document in which everything that needs to be done to create the menu is laid out in a schedule with quantities, sometimes in a format that people can update and pass along, like a laminated sheet that can be written on with dry erase markers.

Today's Production = Forecast + Safety Factor - Carry Over

What is produced today is determined by a prediction of how much is going to sell, usually based on year-to-year records, plus a bit more to ensure one doesn't run out during service. Food is only considered a cost when put into production; while in storage, it is a cost, sure, but what is in storage is in bulk -- you may have enough onions in there for a day, a week, a month. What is "pulled" out of storage for the day is accounted for as part of the daily food cost, which can be calculated against the daily income to create all sorts of wonderful figures, like OPEC:

Opening inventory + Purchases - Ending Inventory = Cost of food

We also did a quick overview of restaurant theft. What's the second most often stolen? Liquor and booze. I asked what the 1st most stolen thing was -- pizza, flatware, soda? Money: Duh! Richard reviewed the idea of giving limited numbers of people the ability to pull out liquor, stamping everything to show it belongs to the store, etc etc. More on that later.

We watched another "Opening Soon" video, this time of a restaurant that is literally down the street from the school. Righteous Urban Barbecue (R.U.B.) looks like an interesting joint. Turns out it took 3 years before the owner could find investors to put up $500K to get it open; he just barely opened before totally running out of money. Chaos, hurt feelings, drama -- it all sounds vaguely familiar to me. I hear he is now opening up several more to form a mini chain. I gotta go and get a bite there.

The last part of the class was dedicated to interviewing candidates of a position. The resume is what they want you to know -- it can be a good tool to discriminate the wheat from the chaff, but it also can be faked. The application is what you want to know of them -- it's of the moment, and harder to fake. The interview is when the actual hiring happens -- and most interviewers know within the first 5 minutes whether they will hire the candidate.

Negotiating pay is a tricky situation, because whoever mentions the first number is in the weaker position. The employee has a minimum at the bottom, what they want at the top, and what they'll settle for in the middle. The employer has what they want, their max and what they'll settle for in the middle. The two parties can soft pedal it back and forth, but in the end, the employer can just stare the employee in the eye and say, "Look, enough. What do you want?"

Beverage Management

2009-04-20T20:33:00.000-07:00

In Odds n' Ends, New Jersey Dave went to "Famous Dave's" with a date and forgot his wallet. Chicago Liz's general manager at the Mexican restaurant where she works paid cash in advance for a beer and liquor delivery that never materialized, and the place only had a case of beer....for the entire weekend. Guytano told about a conversation he had with a local town board member, who didn't want to discuss why a new pizza competitor got a parking lot immediately, even though it took years for his restaurant to get one. The board member basically told him to mind his own business, implying that something very shady was going on.

I told two stories, one about the new egg cake cart-storefront that just opened near the dirty old egg cake cart run by an old Chinese guy, who always has a line. While the new cart-storefront is very nice looking, it's $2 for 8 pieces and $5 for 24 -- while the old cart is $1 for 20 pieces. Really, as you can see in the pic, he has a line and the new place got zilch.

I told the story of the Saturday we just went through at the store...an excerpt from my personal blog....

I got in at 4am, after working 14.5 hours in the restaurant then riding about 30 miles round trip to Coney Island for hot dogs and some listening to the waves. The day at the restaurant started on a high note, then slowly slipped away inch by inch until coming to a complete crashing by the end. Friday was long, and nobody got enough sleep to start on Saturday. We open at 12 instead of 11:30 on Saturday, but its still not enough time to prep. L and his family were late by an hour, and by the time they arrived, I had everyone in and prepping, moving along well, got L in a good-ish mood. Then service started, we weren't finished with prep by a long shot, and we got slammed with too many customers, a system where only 1 pizza is made at a time, kept on running out of stuff, prepping to order, L started getting yelly at everyone, and on top of it, for some odd reason the air conditioning decided to not function and the temp in both the dining room and kitchen rose close to 90. We broke for lunch and closed the restaurant for an hour and a half. I had the guys do some prepping, but the dishes were backed up and as it turned out, even with a dishwasher, there wasn't enough dishes -- we had to serve on paper plates at one point in the night! We cancelled delivery, but L took an order for 17 pizzas anyway -- at 8:30pm, at the height of the rush! Things spiralled downwards, with the refrigeration in the back failing because of the excessive heat. Between moving food between units, suffering a lazy dishwasher and a delivery person who was sent back there to help but didn't do shit, L withdrawing and losing his energy and focus, the heat rising, my guys prepping and never catching up, and just wanting to hide in the cold walk-in refrigerated room and drink lemonade until it all just stopped.

And that was that!

The next half of the class was beverage management (during which I got a call from L and spoke for a while, missing a good hunk of the accounting side of this topic). In a nutshell, McDonald's would rather sell coca cola than hamburgers. The soda is a shelf-stable product that is only made when ordered, takes very little special equipment, little training, is made by someone else but is more profitable than the stuff they make. Beverages in a restaurant simply are a huge profit center, often more than food. Liquor licenses maybe hard to get, but they can be worth the hassle.

Beverages are basically broken down into four classifications:

Beer - fermented grain
Wine - fermented fruit
Spirits - fermented and distilled
Soft - non-alcoholic

And soft drinks are further broken down into:

Coffee & tea
Soda
Juice
Dairy
Waters

As with food, one needs standardized recipes to help predict ordering and revenue. A one-ounce pour of wine is a heck of a lot different than a 1.75 ounce pour. Richard discussed a system in which a pourer is connected to a wine bottle, and a magnetic ring is attached. After a pour, the magnetic rind locks the pourer until the drink is rung up on the register. Now THAT is beverage control!

Purchasing can be tricky, especially for a full bar -- people tend to expect their favorite brands, which can add up to a lot of inventory. A place with a specific concept can get away with a shorter inventory.

Recruiting / In the News / Cost Control

2009-04-16T21:57:00.000-07:00

Before we got into the week's news, G described the ongoing saga of the server they let go for sexual harassment -- the guy has been calling his regular customers and basically saying the restaurant is going out of business and letting people go without cause. Richard recommends a lawyer send him a cease and desist order.

In the news, we discussed the silly video above and, in particular, the response video recorded by the president of Domino's the next day:

Shouldn't they maybe try some sort of education and rehab for those Beavis & Butthead types rather than lawsuits?

NY Times had an interesting article about bidders on the contract to run the restaurant which is now Tavern on the Green. The place, despite having a bad year, made over $36 million last year, and its rent is fixed by the city at 3.5% of revenue. So what's the downside? The article didn't say, but other members of the class saw the paperwork -- it seems the contract holder would be responsible for a very very crappy building that's landmarked, an infrastructure that hasn't been invested in, an inability to change anything, and rules up the wazoo. Huh.

If course you can't ignore the alleged Hamburglar who showed up at a McDonald's, recently...

We reviewed cost control, accounting for inventory inflows and outflows, the same stuff I fell asleep during yesterday....and now again today. Richard then did an hour of PowerPoint review, to help people with their product presentations next week...particularly boring for me, as I've spent a few years as a PPT designer...

The last part of the class was back to supervision -- recruiting. It's always a balance of how much work vs. how many works, and this market is definitely in favor of employers. Still, it's important to keep in mind things will turn around, and it's how well you treat your staff that determines loyalty. Food service is founded on low-paid, dirty, smelly, cramped jobs, with shitty pay and shitty hours, so it's one of the most diverse sectors, with a good deal of illegals. Richard spoke about internal vs. external hiring (and what it means when someone emails versus when someone shows up) but over all, it all sounded pretty hypothetical and up to the quality of the human resources people. It takes a modicum of common sense and awareness to conduct a good interview.

Asleep again

2009-04-15T19:49:00.000-07:00

Fell asleep in class again, will recap what I can remember with tomorrow's summary. Restaurant hours are not short hours.

Inventory

2009-04-13T13:48:00.000-07:00

We started the day with odds n’ ends. G continued his ongoing story of the waiter who was let go last week for sexual harassment. G’s tune had changed a bit. Last week he felt bad about it, and despite having to fire him, came to his defense. This week, however, he expressed dismay at the content of some of the letters on file about this guy -– it wasn’t just verbal, it was physical, too. In addition, some of this waiter’s favorite customers were very upset at his absence, and let G know about it.

G was a little loss for words, and Richard advised him that when a customer expresses outrage and strong emotions about this situation, G should also appeal to their emotions -– tactfully say that he regrets having to let the guy go, that it’s a shame, but that it was for the safety and security of the entire staff. One thing G can NOT do is show them the evidence against the waiter, because if this case ends in court, that could be used in an accusation of slander. It’s not an easy issue, and one I hope to never deal with.

Chicago Liz had a bad experience at some old pizzeria on Court Street, Brooklyn, where she and her boyfriend ordered non-pizza items off the menu, they came out burnt, and the waiter refused to acknowledge or return the food. Russian Pam Anderson raved on about a restaurant she dined at in New Orleans over the weekend, and NJ Dave was surprised at the expense and mediocrity of “Bobby’s Burgers,” a chain with TV Chef Bobby Flay’s name on it.

The rest of the class was dedicated to food purchasing, which gave me bit of a giggle -– the systems that Richard described were all 'ideal world' scenarios –- and I interjected several times during class what really happens at the restaurant where I’ve been working (in which the chef/owner is computer-phobic). Quite a different story.

We went line by line down the story of how food enters the store, gets processed and accounted for, and finally out to the customer or into the trash. In an ideal world, one develops spec sheets from the menu -- every ingredient has a file in which it is exactly described. A tomato is not just a tomato, it is a canned tomato of a certain brand and can size, salt, and herb content, either whole or diced or pureed, from a certain area or country.

Inventory -- how much we need on hand at all times, or 'par level' -- ordering should always be done to maintain a par level, which can be a lot for shelf-stable staples like flour or very shallow for things like fresh fish. Once that is determined, a bid sheet can be created, also known as a "market quotation sheet," in which prices from various sources can be compared. Then comes the purchase order, or P.O., which is sent to the purveyor, and copies sent to the end user (the chef or manager who made the menu, or is cooking the menu), accountant, and the receiving department. The receiving log accounts for when the stuff comes in, and directs good into either 'direct' (for working now) or into store, which is inventory. Here, what is received can be matched with the P.O. Now inventory can be recalculated and the whole story can repeat itself.

One of the tasks I've been working on at the restaurant is keeping inventory. L's style is all about being quick; it's based on instinct and visuals. He calls it in, doesn't write anything down. I'm developing inventory check lists, so as things arise during the day, I can check it off, and when it comes to the end of the night, when I'm all frazzled, I know what to look for, and know what I don't know yet...

Cost Control / Cheese tasting (Cheese, Tasty and Nutritious)

2009-04-08T11:06:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the skipped day, I did go to class on Monday but pretty much had to put toothpicks in my eyeballs just to stay vertical. Didn't take notes and in retrospect, should have stayed home and slept -- the restaurant is kicking my ass, in a good way. Opening week, I put in 83 hours. Today, however, I took off to attend a Passover Seder.

Since we're off tomorrow for the holiday, we started off with an abbreviated In the News, oddly all pizza-related. The Bruni reviewed Co. and gave it a single star, which is quite good for the low expectations that pizza brings to the table. Another article, from the past Sunday, was about how Cobble Hill's South Brooklyn Pizza is hosting a gay disco on the night they are closed. Insert perverted pizza joke.....here!

The next part of class was a continuation of the discussion of food cost control. It starts with a standardized 'recipe' -- what you need, how much you need it, and how much it costs per serving. Computer programs like "Chef Tech" will tie in to a point-of-sale system that the servers use to register sales and calculate how much is spent to generate exactly how many sales. No fuss no muss.

After a talk about weights and measures (which was also covered in Culinary Arts), we discussed inventory control. Capacity of your storage (refrigerated or not), perishability, vendor delivery schedules, savings on quantity, the potential harm of a stock outage -- all are part of puzzle that comes together to keep a restaurant running profitably. Par level, or the build-to level, is the amount of stock you want to achieve your minimum -- when you go below, you order more. Some is easy; dry goods like flour and sugar are "stores" (that can be stored indefinitely), and you can seek the absolute lowest price via quantity. Something like fish, however, has to be of the moment; no matter how good the price, ordering too much will probably be wasted.

"Spec" was discussed -- what exactly should be ordered. You can call a purveyor and order a loaf of bread, but unless you specify exactly what your looking for, what you get could be almost anything -- how large, what kind of style, how thick the slices, etc.? Providing specs (everything for quantity and style to grade and use) means less waste and less wasted time in inventory.

The second part of the class was dedicated to the series of silly videos above, and a taste of a variety of cheeses, from plain cream cheese to stinky Maytag blue. This was all stuff we hit up in culinary, only in culinary, Chef M did the ordering and got us some fantastic things (I'm still a fan of tallegio due to that day.) The aged goat cheese was surprisingly tasty, the cheddar too ordinary, and the blue way too strong, though pairing it with a fortified, sweet port proved the power of a good matching.

Guest Speaker/In the News/Cost Control

2009-04-02T22:34:00.000-07:00

I played hooky yesterday to spend a full day at the restaurant for its soft opening. Didn't miss a beat today, other than feeling awfully sleepy. In the News was silly, again run round robin by a table of people who were all too scaredy cat to do it themselves. Outback Steakhouse ran a big menu promoting cheap meals in the New York Post -- is that really news, people? Man on a motorized barstool charged with DUI? What? Domino's forced to give out 11,000 pizzas due to an incorrect internet promotion? ZZZZZZ.

The only two interesting stories were about an 1825 vintage bottle of bubbly that was recently uncorked and tasted. Unsurprisingly, it was past its prime and had notes of 'rotting leaves'. Mmm, delicious. Also, a pimp paid his ho in Chicken McNuggets. 'Nuff said.

We had a great speaker, Ariane Daguin of D'Artagnan, a producer of out-there high-quality meat stuff like foie gras, buffalo sausage, and organic bacon. She described how "humanely" raised veal are treated....in an open farm house, free fed only cow's milk, never grain. The open room has a wall of nipples onto which the calves come and suckle. When they stand there, the floor acts as a scale; that, plus the digital IDs in their ears, communicates their weight. If they are too skinny, cream comes out of the nipple; too fat, skim. Purty cool! All the calves are uniform in weight when they get axed. Sigh.

We reviewed some accounting stuff, comparing receipts over time, but I felt really drowsy.

Cost Control / Odds n' Ends

2009-03-30T20:45:00.000-07:00

The day started with odds n' ends. Japanese cooking dude spoke about his weekend, his first cooking at the new Fatty Crab uptown -- only 2 weeks old and doing over 350 covers on a Friday night -- with only 60 seats. That figure made me nervous since the restaurant that I've been involved with is opening up....tomorrow.

Long Island Guy spoke of the new video screen system his restaurant bought for the chef, so the chef can see what orders are going to what station in real time, and cook his pizzas accordingly, making it easier to coordinate the different cooking stations with the front of house staff.

I spoke a little about the pizza class I took the day before, and how one of the wine pairings actually kind of rocked my word -- Lambrusco and pizza, a fantastic combination.

The rest of the class was dedicated to the Profit & Loss statement, a master spread sheet to record money coming in (few) and the money going out of (many) a restaurant operation. It went from easy-to-understand principles (revenue minus expenses equals profit!) to a bit more complex (the cost of good sold for food and for beverages must be kept separate as they are very different and if calculated together will skew the final figures.)

2009-03-26T06:17:00.001-07:00

We kicked off with the 'In the News' segment -- this week, our table was chosen to lead, but unlike the other scaredycats in class, we got one brave soul to get in front and handle it rather than have the whole table trundle up and act like goons. There was a pretty heated debate about a New York Times article about the state's proposal to license grocery stores to sell wine. On one hand, the system we have now was set up eons ago by puritanical joy-killers that only serves to put barriers in the way of people enjoys the grape. On the other hand, it's a money-grabbing move by the state that'll make low-rent mass-produced wine brands common in all corners while making it harder for smaller, more artisan producers to make a living.

On the cover the dining section, two writers made multi-course meals for 6 people each, for a budget of $50. They came at that number as the lowest price two diners can get a meal at a restaurant. Bruni reviewed the meals very tongue in cheek, not giving it too much seriousness -- if the Times were to take home cooking seriously, the restaurant establishment wouldn't be too amused. Maybe it's time for a new section, like how the Arts is split up between pop culture & movies and fine arts & classical. One dining section for eating out, one dining section for eating in?

To continue the critique of the Times, there were two similar stories about food in Wednesday's paper, one about the new stadium for the Yankees, and another about the new stadium for the Mets.

We went around the class and did presentations of marketing ideas for the fictional Juicy Rib. Most of it was just people talking unenthusiastically, a few people did little adverts and banners, and I was the only one who did a PowerPoint....I thought most people would, but I guess that's my egg-head graphic design background talking. Here is a video export of my magnum opus:

There was more talk of motivation after the break, but I dozed off. We received a new text book dedicated to Food Management and Cost Control, which we'll start in on Monday,

Motivation / Marketing

2009-03-25T06:45:00.000-07:00

Today's class started with an overview of the concept of price per square foot of space -- in NYC and any urban area, each square food is costly, and each square foot must be made to pay. Depending on concept and menu, the kitchen is typically 1/3 of the space, though to minimize the kitchen could lead to a more profitable restaurant. A place like Per Se is over 50% kitchen, which makes one wonder if they actually make money over there, despite the high prices.

The first half of the class was a continuation of the discussion of Equal Employment Opportunity law, which I will not parrot here. We discussed an interesting case of a group of men who sued Hooters for discrimination -- they wanted to be servers, but lacked the boobage. Hooters won -- They proved that being a woman for the position of Hooters Girl is a BFOQ -- Bona Fide Occupational Quality. Being that they had a history of discrimination and it was written into their concept from the beginning, from a time before these laws, they were in effect grandfathered in. They also showed that men had other opportunities at Hooters: bartenders were predominantly male, as was....management! Which seems like another case for discrimination against women, but what do I know. Gender, race, disability and religion are protected classes -- beauty is not. Yep, Hooters can not hire you based on your bra size or if you're just fugly.

Next we reviewed our marketing plans to improve sales at the Juicy Rib, for which we will give presentations tomorrow. I'm working on a silly and hopefully humorous PowerPoint that I'll try to post up on in here, y'all.

To end the class, we got further into the supervision book, about motivation. There are various theories of motivation, including but not limited to:

Motivation through Fear: Threaten to influence behavior. Good in small doses, but does not work in the long term, like the boy crying wolf. While some people do need an occasional kick in the pants, long term this generates hostility, resentment and revenge.
Economic Person Theory: People are economic units that are plugged into the business. Self fulfilling prophecy -- if you treat people like the only reason they are there is for the pay check, they'll act it.
Human Relations Theory: People who are happy will be motivated to work. Hello, benefits and insurance!
Maslows Hierarchy of Needs: Just like marketing theory, same goes for motivation. From the base of the pyramid to the tip, it's physiological (pay), safety (benefits, pension), social (friends at work), ego (job title) and self-fulfilment (a challenge).
Theory Y & Motivation: Work is as natural as rest and play, and should be a motivator unto itself.
Herzberg's Motivation-Hygiene Theory: This says that for a worker to be motivated, first there must be a standard of 'hygiene', or maintenance, in place -- fair company policy, safe working conditions, fairly compensated staff and helpful supervision. If that is in place, then the following motivators can improve productivity: recognition, responsibility, achievement and work itself.

Marketing / Theories of Leadership

2009-03-23T20:08:00.000-07:00

We rolled open with odds n' ends. A random article on the ins and outs of tipping (our foreign students just don't get it -- are you supposed to tip if the service is bad? And what the deal with tip jars at Starbucks?) Slovack Ricky Martin went to Waverly Inn and was just shocked (Shocked! I say) that the food wasn't very good. Of course it wasn't, it's a an old village stalwart taken over by some pretentious literary scenester-types to turn into a snobby clubhouse, food is beside the point. An article appeared recently that a lot of illegal food carts have been popping up around the city due to the economy -- it's quite easy to get a license to sell food, it's just a test of one's knowledge of food safety, and the city issues an unlimited number of them. A permit, however, allows a person to actually sell food on the city streets, and is limited to 3000 only. The cops have been sweeping up carts with people holding licenses but no permits.

The class broke into groups by table and had us come up with three marketing plans for the fictional 'Juicy Rib' restaurant, based on the demographic and customer stats from the case study. Here are the three we came up with:

Goal 1: Maximize lunch time profits. Objective: Raise soft drink sales in the lunch daypart by 20% within 3 months. Strategy: Deeper penetration of target market with core product. Tactic: Offer combo meal, hitching the soda with the popular BBQ sandwich and a side. Budget: Low, just a few new signs for in house promotion, maybe an ad in where ever. Evaluation: Success determined by sales figures generated in house.
Goal 2: Increase market share in the underrepresented 20-35 year old segment. Objective: Introduce BBQ by the pound for delivery, particularly to the college market and sell at least 20% of deliveries to that market in 3 months. Strategy: Diversification and product development. Tactic: Late night delivery, advertise on college campuses, co-brand with a beer distributor. Budget: Delivery people, advertising, pay off the beer distributor, cost of keeping the kitchen open late. Evaluation: Keep database of where the new product is delivered. Demographic research will tell us the ages of the areas.
Goal 3: Appeal more to women. Objective: Increase sales to mall shoppers by 20%. Strategy Market development. Tactic: a BBQ vending cart in the mall. Budget: High. Cart, permit, license, staff. Evaluation: Keep track of who is buying at the cart.

We spoke more of the definition of leadership. Formal authority is given by the title, the right to command. Real authority, however, must be earned from the subordinates. It's a bad situation when the one with formal authority and the real authority are two different people.

Theories of leadership, there are numerous. The old style boss was autocratic: all carrot & stick, reward and punishment, shut up and do your job as your told.

Theory X & Theory Y supposes that the old style assumes everyone hates work and just want the security of a paycheck -- employees must be ridden, while the new style supposes that work is the same as play or rest, and if a worker is motivated by commitment to a greater goal, work is not inherently despised.

Situational Leadership says it's all, well, situational, with a mix of directional behaviors (show ya how to do it) and supportive behaviors (care & support & praise.)

Transactional Leadership appeals to the worker's self-interest, but is a problem because whenever you ask the worker to do something, there must be a transaction to go with it. I understand why this may not work in the budget-conscious restaurant industry, but when I worked in an animation studio of a major network, whenever I was asked to stay late or do an extra project, it was strictly transactional and very satisfying emotionally and financially!

Finally, Transformational Leadership is all about always looking forward, communicating to in spite, challenge and lead by example. Hello, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates!

Culinary School Confidential

Steak n' Mousse

Italian with Mario

Norbert Thursday (A momentary lapse into veganism)

Breakfast

Chinese Take Out, Made In

Sugar All Around

Meat, it's what's for the Lesson

Pizza Pizza

Last Minute Risotto

Norbert Monday (Strengths, Weaknesses)

Mac n' Cheese Marathon

Shrimp Poo

Brownie FAIL

Feel like ch-ch-ch-ch-chicken toniiiite!

I'll be your Ratatouille, if that's what it takes.

Teaching, Cycle 2

Student's Choice/End of Semester

I wanna pizza all day, and pizza each and every night

Meaty Meat

Thanksgiving for 150

Sweets for Thanksgiving

Grains: Kickin' it with Kasha, Farro & Sausage revisited

Banging out a buffet

Cooking in Quantity

Composing, with Salad

No, that's not ice cream....

First time teaching, nobody died or stabbed anyone!

Taking Stock

Ending/Beginning

Customer Complaint Resolution / Student Presentations / Bubbly Tasting

In the News / Business Plan Review / Sequence of Service / Other Reds

Legal / Financials

Odds n' Ends / Restaurant Design / Business Plan Review

Blue Smoke / In the News

Leases / Wine Tasting

In the News / Costing Beverage / Architect

Fancy Food Show Recap / Restaurant Design / Wine Tasting

Fancy Food Show

In the News / Break Even / Cash Flow Statement

Break Even Point / Bar Design

Break Even Point, Budget, Spirits

Balance Sheet / Beer

The Balance Sheet / Wine History

Interruption

In the News / Student Concept Presenations

P and L Statements / Concept Presentation / Bar Design

Monitoring Various Costs / Responsible Alcohol Service

In the News / Labor Cost / Misc. Expenses / Benefits o' Booze

Labor / Trends / Alcohol Physiology

Introduction to Beverage Management

Labor

Pork and Poultry Fabrication

Yield & Purchasing / Menu Pricing / More Yield Tests

Odds n' Ends / Production Cost Control / Guest Speaker

Food Cost / Yield Test

Fish Fabrication / Training

Student Product Presentations / Food Cost

More Presentations / Food Cost

Student Product Presentations

Recipe Costing / Hiring

In the News / Recipe Yield / Interviewing

Food Production / Interviewing

Beverage Management

Recruiting / In the News / Cost Control

Asleep again

Inventory

Cost Control / Cheese tasting (Cheese, Tasty and Nutritious)

Guest Speaker/In the News/Cost Control

Cost Control / Odds n' Ends

Motivation / Marketing

Marketing / Theories of Leadership