Sleepy_Dragon

Organic rhubarb at Puget Sound Consumer's Co-op in Seattle is only 1.99/lb as of today. (Fremont store, for the locals) Pat

Hi Chef. Thanks for your reply. Spice mixes made the day before are definitely part of the plan. Same for caramelized onions and other aromatics. I'll be prepping hotel pans of stuff for each station with spices carefully toasted, sorted and labeled. And there will be student names taped to each pan. And admonishments in their recipe sheets. Like don't just grab your neighbor's mix, it's not a substitute! If you accidentally spilled yours, make more like so... I will of course prep a little more than called for, on the assumption some burning will occur for the first timers. There will be demos, and the extra spices will be part of the food cost. Better that than sending out burnt spices or throwing the line into the weeds while they scramble to make more garam masala. As for "curries" and "tagines", I know what you mean :-p. I'm avoiding the c word entirely except in reference to karripatta, and will also explain to the student waitstaff ways to answer customer questions about it should those come up. Pat

Hard to answer without knowing the original recipe, not to mention personal taste, but fwiw caramelized onions can be frozen in ice cube trays for use as needed. Unless the dish relied on texture as much as body, of course. Probably the same applies to sauted garlic, though I haven't tried that. Also, based on my own experience, a certain amount of making peace with the occasional unreliable onion is necessary, due to variability in their water content. Well, that's probably true of all ingredients, but onions just come up a lot by dint of usage frequency. Pat

This kind of thing I bet could be easily resolved if they used a coarser grind of Oreo. Too fine a grind and it's just soggy crumbs that turn into sludge in the bottom of the cup. Wonder if it's possible to get them by request. Pat

Sure, I'll post the menu once I'm done tweaking it and dealing with the recipe testing. Already I've had to remove some items because it would be too much work within the time constraint we have. My kitchen for the day is the school's bistro, and we only get two hours to prep everything; anything beyond that is something I have to do by myself. I'm finding it pretty challenging to get a good menu together with such a compressed prep time for Indian cooking. I did know you taught at LCB, recall you mentioning that to another LCB student elsewhere on eG. Pat

Hi Chef. No worries, not personal at all, especially as I've mentioned it before, and also post my school's menus on the site. It's a local vocational school here in Seattle: Seattle Culinary Academy at Seattle Central Community College. Definitely French-based with additional emphasis on Pacific Northwest US seasonality, and some international as well, but none of the international units and menus were Indian. What I know about Indian cookery (a microscopic fraction out of something vast) has been largely self-taught, with much help from message fora like this one. I just like it a lot and am eager to keep learning. My final school project is going to entail running our bistro for a day with an Indian menu. Hope that answers. Happy to field more questions in private if we get off topic. Speaking of which, do you think salting larger beans would be ok in the beginning, or better to wait? Pat

Buffets are still Fridays from 11:15am - 1:00pm. I couldn't tell you whether or not you'd see the chops then, it all depends on our inventory. But we're running the same menu next week as well so you can catch the chops then. :) btw - we don't reheat stuff, in case anyone is wondering. Everything is made fresh each day, including Friday. We just have to do buffets on Friday because there's always a ton of product that needs to be cooked between the skills classes and various fabrication sessions and whatnot among four quarters' worth of students. Our customers can't eat it all either, though it's nice to see them try. After Friday service, all food gets cooled and bagged for delivery to a local homeless shelter. Pat

Color me impressed. No way could I cook Chinese food or any other Asian food like that. Sadly I don't think I inherited my mother's speed at the wok, but I'm working on it. In the meantime, it has to be mise en place. I also take a sort of pleasure in having a row of little containers with a spoon in each one, so I can just go boom boom boom boom boom right down the line adding spoonfuls of ingredients as needed. Thai, Indian and Chinese food = uber mise en place. Pat

Square One Menu, April 26 - May 5, 2005. 11:15am - 1:00pm Tuesday - Thursday, with Friday being our buffet day. ...served with a cup of Spring Pea and Mint Soup with Black Pepper Creme Fraiche or Warm Spinach Salad with Smoked Bacon and Beecher's Blue Cheese Rosemary Lamb -- $6.25 Lavender Jelly, Yukon Gold Gratin & Spring Vegetables Seared Pacific Cod -- $6.50 Artichokes, Pancetta, Roasted Tomatoes, Parmesan Potato Cake & Balsamic Reduction Grilled Duck Breast -- $6.25 Maple, Rhubarb & Thyme Demi, Wild Rice Pilaf & Washington Asparagus Tempura Fried Oysters -- $5.95 Sauce Remoulade & Radish - Mache Salad Savory Sweet Onion Tart -- $5.25 Herb Salad Thanks for your support, Pat

Menu for One World, it's Oaxaca Mexico time. April 26 - May 5, 2005. 11:15am - 1:00pm Tuesday - Thursday, with Fridays being our buffet day. Starters Guacamole con Totopos -- $2.75 Authentic guacamole with homemade corn hips Ceviche de Camaron -- $3.00 Gulf shrimp & fresh snapper marinated in lime and cilantro Salads & Soup Ensalada de Betabel Red beet salad with sauteed Swiss chard, oranges & aniseed dressing Ensalada de Nopales Cactus salad with heirloom tomatoes and Serrano peppers Sopa de Tortilla Classic tortilla soup with Poblano peppers, pinto beans & queso fresco Entrees Tamales de Rajas con Queso -- $5.95 Banana leaves filled with homemade masa, salsa verde, roasted peppers & manchego cheese. Served with Mexican rice Mole Negro Oaxaca: Oaxacan Black Mole -- $6.50 Authentic mole sauce with Slow Braised Pork, Corn Tortillas & Mango Salsa Enchiladas Verdes -- $6.75 Homemade tortillas filled with shredded chicken, salsa verde, and queso fresco Molotes de Papa con Chorizo -- $5.75 On lettuce with fresh Salsa de Jitomate Pollo del Mercado Juchiteco -- $5.95 With Mexican rice & fried plantains Pat

Once you get tired of blowgunning them at passerby, you can also line up a horizontal row of 6 or 7 of them behind your lips, open your mouth slightly, then smile sweetly at your companion. Pat

We could head for Vegas after that in one of those! Pat

Chinglish food. Nice. But do we have to drive modified Hondas in order to eat there? Pat, rooting around for matching Hello Kitty cellphone

Agree, I love that kind of food when I'm in LA, and got to taste bubble tea there years before we got it here, though still a good 10 years after its invention in Taiwan, hehe. Sadly, we lack the Asian population density in the city proper for more such places. Any of LA's individual Asian districts or neighborhoods is many times larger than the ID, and hopping with activity later too. It's ok though, there's a time and place for everything. I only wish Fort St. George wasn't so smoky. Pat

That is very exciting. Is the air date the same as the film date? Pat

Most definitely. It radiates great vibes to go along with the snackyness. Mmmmm, takoyaki. Maneki is also worth checking out for the same reasons, for those who haven't been. Only a tiny sake list but plenty of small traditional plates. Pat

It was April 29, 2004 when last I posted in this thread with my 80 books. I'm now up to 105. Most recent: Dakshin: Vegetarian Cuisine in South India Pat

The Hot Mama's vs. Piecora's battle could go either way, IMO. Hot Mama's crusts are to die for (in the NY Pizza tradition), but alas, they use those frozen sausage pellets that just depress me. Piecora's, in my experience, tends to be a bit off and on. But their pizza is much better on location than delivered. I'm still not sure why that is. ← True about the pellets, I agree, those things suck. I wish they'd use real sausage. I tend to forget they do that because I'm always ordering their veggie slices. Hot Mama's is the only pizza place where I actually prefer veg instead of meat because I don't want any meat to get in the way of that delicious crust! But Piecora's... I dunno, maybe I've just been getting them on bad days, but the wonderbready crust is as depressing as HM's sausage pellets. I used to like them around 7 years ago and got their slices regularly back then, but I've had far too many wonderbread crusts to make it worthwhile anymore. Pat

One of the films shown to my class included the workings of a conventional chicken processing plant, where rows and rows of chicken corpses were strung up conveyor style, into a machine with scoop-shaped knives which went into the chicken's back end and out again, thus scraping out most, but not all, of the innards. But for the part where workers snapped the chicken bodies up into the belts by their legs, the entire process was automated. Then all of the birds were plunged into gigantic vats of water, for cleaning. Except the water was hardly changed throughout the day, which meant the chicken was basically swimming in fecal soup. Hence, salmonella. Pat

Pffft. Piecora's wishes they could carry Hot Mama's pizza stones. Neener, Pat

Clean as you go. Not enough space in my effete urbanite shoebox to leave piles of anything around, especially in the kitchen. Though the majority of dishes still get done in the end. I (heart) my dishwasher. Pat

Organized with mise en place. Otherwise it's just courting disaster. I wish I could cook better on the fly, sometimes I even manage it in a pinch, but it's stressful and unpredictable. I also live in a studio apartment, so I have to be organized. There's just no space for anything else, and a wrench in the works can really screw things up. Pat

Our lunch service begins today for Spring 2005. Here are the menus for the next two weeks Tuesday - Thursday 11:15am - 1pm, with Fridays being our buffet days: SQUARE ONE BISTRO ...served with a cup of Coconut Chicken Soup or Green Papaya & Mango Salad... Grilled Wild Salmon -- $6.25 Coconut - Ginger Infused Broth, Steamed Mussels & Jasmine Rice Vegetarian Spring Rolls -- $5.25 Coconut Rice, Cucumber Salad & Housemade Plum Sauce Pad Thai -- $5.95 Wok Fried Rice Noodles, Shrimp, Eggs & Vegetables Grilled Beef Salad -- $6.00 Hot & Sour Dressing Velvet Pork in Red Curry -- $5.95 Shiitake Mushrooms, Bamboo Shoots & Coconut Milk Desserts -- $1.75 Thai Iced Tea -- $1.00 Beverages -- .75 ONE WORLD Appetizers Grilled Asparagus & Chevre Salad with Balsamic and Hazelnuts -- $2.50 Fava bean, Spring Onion, Fennel Salad with Basil Aioli -- $2.25 Wok Fried Clams with Chinese Black Beans -- $4.00 Soup & Salad Gingered Carrot Soup & English Pea Coulis Mesclun Greens with Fresh Herb Dressing, Candied Walnuts Entrees served with soup or salad Swiss Chard & Goat Cheese Raviolis -- $5.95 with Golden Beets, Sage Brown Butter Sauce Shiitake Stuffed Chicken Breast -- $6.95 with Saffron Risotto, Citrus Reduction Sauce Ancho Sauteed Halibut Cheeks -- $7.25 Baby Carrots, Celeriac Puree, Mint Pesto Pan Roasted Salmon -- $6.95 with Fennel Roasted Baby Beets, Arugula & Red Onion Salad Stout Braised Short Ribs -- $7.50 with Horseradish Mashed Potatoes, Haricot Verts Desserts English Toffee Cake with Warm Caramel Sauce Lemon Cakes with Thai Basil Syrup, Cinnamon Whipped Cream ... Oh yeah, our school won the chicken cookoff among local culinary schools for Taste Washington over the weekend. Pat

Sumo guys training regimens include naps after big meals of chanko nabe, for weight gain. Chanko nabe isn't a fatty food, in fact it's very nutritious, but it is high in carbs, which convert into all that bulk during sleep. Personally, I can't eat a big meal before sleeping, I always wake up feeling nauseous. I do whatever I can to resist the afternoon sleepies after a heavy lunch, usually by drinking tea with it. I also wake up in the middle of the night if I sleep right after dinner. I chalk that up to something similar to the alcohol effect, where people who get sleepy from drink end up waking up a few hours later because of the sugar from alcohol digestion. I figure it's the same with food. Pat

Agree, I do the same. Dig out the two oysters, and at the same time, rip a sizeable piece of crunchy skin off of the back, roll the whole thing up and shove it into my craw, hehe. The neck is for earlier in the roasting, as something to snack on while the rest of the bird cooks. Pat