TheFoodTutor
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I know that most bloggers feel a slight sense of apprehension when embarking on a foodblog, that apprehension stemming from comparing one's self to those who've gone before, and I'm certainly no different, especially on the heels of Varmint's fabulous Southern food and his adorable children. Of course, I have to do everyone one better, in that I'd been meaning to title my installment, "My Acquaintance With the Man Behind the Curtain," and yet I didn't even think to check as to whether there were too many characters in that sentence to fit in the allotted spot. But that's just one of the things I love about being me: I never seem to tire of proving to myself, over and over again, that I'm not nearly as smart as I think I am.
By way of introduction, I suppose I can clarify that I am not, in fact, a man, and the man referred to is figurative, and not literal. Restaurant work is my career of choice, and over the years, I've come to know my way around a kitchen and every other position that can possibly be worked in a dining establishment, so I'd like to think that I know a few things about adding value to food and beverage, and making every bit of the guest's experience worthy of a relatively high price tag. Currently, I work in two restaurants, both of which put a great deal of effort into packaging an experience that will make the guest feel that he or she not only was fed, and fed well, but that everything about that meal from beginning to end was part of a seamless performance. Restaurants as theatre, food as entertainment.
And then I have this other little job: That of running my small business, wherein I step off the stage and teach people how to make that restaurant magic happen in their own homes. I'll be preparing for a FoodTutor event this week, and showing some of the shopping and prep necessary for planning the menu, as well as documenting the things that I actually manage to eat. As a restaurant worker, I must admit to having an irregular eating schedule, similar to some of the previous industry bloggers, but I'll be making an effort to have slightly more normal meals this week. You know, the kind that civilized people have, where they put food on actual plates and sit down to eat it, as opposed to just shoving things into one's mouth while standing at the refrigerator.
So I'll start with this meal:
Sweetbreads and eggs. The sweetbreads were braised late last week while we were toying around with ideas for a tasting menu, so I simply had to dredge them and fry them up to go with a nice soft scramble, and the biscuit is actually just reheated from a small batch I made a few days ago. Ideally, I'd have gotten up hours ago and made a fresh batch of warm, fluffy biscuits like Varmint's, but heck, I worked a double shift yesterday for the July 4th holiday, so this will have to do. Besides, the biscuits were really more of a vehicle for shovelling strawberry jam (also made by me a few days ago) into myself, and these worked nicely.
Throughout this blog, I'd like to answer questions about any aspect of restaurant work that piques anyone's curiosity, and I'll be including some pictures from both of the places where I work, hopefully. I can't share certain specific restaurant recipes in some cases, though some will be very easy to duplicate, but I would like to go into exactly as much detail as everyone would like to see. Really. Ask me anything, and I promise I won't bite.
Questions like:
Why do you work in two restaurants? Isn't that inconvenient?
What are sweetbreads? (No doubt another eGulleteer could answer that faster than I could.)
Who is Farrow Beacham? (More on him later.)
What, exactly, do you teach TheFood to do?
Now it's probably time for a little nap. That double shift really whooped me, and I've got a big week ahead of me.
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Ok, TheFoodTutor - HOW did you make the cardamom creme fraiche ice cream? I'm used to making fruit ice creams (recipe up this weekend, I hope) but I'd be at a loss for something like you're talking about. Spill, please! Also, how do you go about doing an herb ice cream like tarragon ice cream?
Ooops. I should have thought to post recipes.
First, I'll start with my very simple ice cream base, which I got from my boyfriend, actually:
1 quart half and half
10 egg yolks
1 cup sugar
Everything else is a matter of how you flavor that base. If you want vanilla, you scrape a vanilla bean and steep the bean and seeds in the half and half. For tarragon, it's the same. I used about a handful of tarragon stalks with leaves attached to get a nice tarragon flavor. I strained the tarragon out before finishing the base.
For cardamom creme fraiche, first I made the creme fraiche. I took about a pint of heavy cream, added a couple tablespoons of buttermilk, and left it out overnight, letting it "clabber." During this process, I added a small handful of crushed cardamom seeds, ground in my mortar, and letting the cardamom flavor the cream while it was souring was really effective. I strained the larger bits of seed out, but it's still got a couple of black flecks in the finished product.
Then I just subbed the creme fraiche for the half and half in the recipe, just using a pint for a half recipe of ice cream. I always chill the mixture completely before putting it in the ice cream maker, so it will be more dense and not get so much air whipped into it, as I just have the Cuisinart freezer bowl model.
I promise I'll take pictures next time. I'd show you both ice creams, but they really look just like vanilla. They taste a lot different from vanilla, though.
Edit to add that of course I cook the custard base in a double boiler, but I'm sure you already knew that.
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It would be very nice to make a Viennese Iced Coffee with it--fill a parfait glass with scoops of well-frozen ice cream, fill with strong, iced coffee and top with whipped cream. Or you could make an espresso affogato in a dish-- ice cream w/an espresso poured over.
For something fruity it might go nicely with a plum and nectarine compote or with a peach cobbler.
And I wonder how a bittersweet chocolate sauce would taste with it?
Those all sound really delicious. I tried it with some strawberry jam I made, but I didn't like that pairing as much as the strawberries with tarragon ice cream I did before. I really like the coffee idea, or perhaps even the strong sort of Vietnamese iced coffee with chicory - no sweetening in the coffee, but just the ice cream.
Very good ideas, thanks.
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A few days ago, I made some cardamom creme fraiche ice cream, and I'd planned on doing something slightly silly or creative with it, by using it to garnish a bowl of chilled carrot and ginger soup. The ice cream is delicious, and the texture is great, but I hate the soup, because I find it a little too sweet for my tastes.
Anyone have ideas for what else I could pair this with?
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While you might find this annoying, and I can totally understand that, I happen to work in a restaurant that sells more orders of spinach and artichoke dip than McDonald's sells hamburgers. The ritual, for the many people who visit this restaurant regularly, goes like this: Sit down, server greets the table within 10 seconds, gets drink order, and you say, "Spinach dip." 30 seconds after you've sat down, there's a bowl of steamy stuff with chips on your table.
Sure, for non-regular customers, I can get a puzzled look when I ask if there's anything I can get them right away, and sometimes they protest that they haven't even had a look at the menu, but the regulars know the menu hasn't changed in years, mostly, and they know what they want. Moreover, should they happen to be on the border of collapsing from starvation, they know that stopping into our restaurant is the next best thing to getting a glucose IV drip.
I see myself as a paramedic of sorts, keeping people from suffering severe cheese and corn chip deficiencies.
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Tasting flights of ANYTHING other than beer. The whole concept originated in the 80's at microbrew bars - when I see it in any other context, I still feel like I am back in college, standing at the bar at the Sunset in Brighton MA, knocking back microbrew pale ales.
Call me uneducated, but I've always associated tasting flights with wineries and wine bars, which would seem to me to be an older tradition than microbreweries.
Am I wrong?
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We frolicked on the beach for a couple of hours. Here we all are.
Wow. What an adorable family you have. You and Mrs. Varmint make beautiful food, and beautiful children.
Damn. I'm speechless. I think I need to figure out a way to get my shifts covered so I can come to that Pig Pickin.'
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I lament the loss of the green sauce at Taco Bell.
They still had it a few months ago, you just have to ask for it.
Very cool to know. Although YMMV - individual franchise stores may or may not carry all products in all locations. Ask and you might receive.
Along the lines of discontinued items that you can get by asking for them, put me in the category of liking the "old cut" from Subway, better than the "new cut." The old is the one where they dig a channel out of the bread, as opposed to slicing straight across the middle. All Subway employees are supposed to be taught how to do it "old school," so ask and ye shall receive.
That post from Steverino was probably the nicest piece of fast food poetry I've ever read in my life. I, too, was happy to see the enchirito back on Taco Bell's menu, and not just because of my vivid memory of seeing some of one come out of my sister's nose, because she was laughing especially hard at a high school joke. If I remember correctly, the number of olive slices should be exactly 3, spaced equidistant in a line across the enchirito.
Now, the possibility of getting an enchirito wit' da green sauce?
Dang. Where are my car keys? -
What might be cool would be to change the name of this thread, and veer the topic toward "Line cooks who hide stuff - What's in your lowboy?"
Years ago, when I first started cooking in prep kitchens and on the line, I was bewildered at how I could never seem to find the equipment to do my job. I'd get 2 towels for the day, then I'd have to hunt down a knife (I started in kitchens where knives are sometimes provided, but you'd better keep an eye on yours), 1/3 pans and other containers I needed, ingredients for my prep and gloves. After being frustrated for what seemed like hours, I'd talk to management and try to see if I could have some of these things brought out of supply, but managers would always explain that they'd put out enough for the day, and I just needed to look harder until I found the stuff.
And then I figured it out.
All the "seasoned" cooks had grabbed an assload of all of these things - stacks of towels, boxes of gloves, extra pans and whatnot - and stashed all of this in any hidden area around their stations. And they did it to the extent that I didn't have even the bare minimum of what I needed to do my job correctly. Day after day I was faced with either being deceitful and stealing as much of everything I could grab, or going without the tools to do my job. Until I started managing kitchens myself, that is. After that point, any time cooks complained about not having enough towels, I'd just hit all the lowboys on the line and chew out whichever cook was hiding them.
I just simply cannot tolerate that kind of thing.
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but I would assume that one of the first steps would be to actually offer it on your menu and see how well it's received?
Well, that's exactly what I was referring to, when I made my initial comment. I managed a restaurant kitchen that did, for a test period, offer baby backs as well as a separate, fattier and meatier cut of rib. It wasn't a barbecue restaurant, which would have made this a more workable option, but we did go to the extra expense and trouble of doing this, to see how it would work out. And it didn't. Work out, that is.
The extra cost was very large, especially in that we had two entirely different smoking procedures for the different cuts, meaning we couldn't put both batches in at once, and we had different sauces for both of them, and as I mentioned before, they both took up a good deal of space in the walk in coolers and freezers. Extra prep means extra labor cost to prep it, and ribs are pretty expensive anyway.
The end result was that we went back to just selling baby backs. My experience, of course, only applies to restaurants where I've worked, and possibly others may be able to do this more easily than we did. I don't know, and I don't claim to know anything outside of my own experience. Sorry if I provoked or offended anyone.
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This one will be really obscure, and it's possible no one will remember it: Wendy's opened a separate chain, called Sister's Chicken, and they had creamed chicken on a biscuit that I really loved. When I had my first car, I'd go over to their drive through and get an order of it, and park somewhere so I could eat it before I went home.
Man, I miss that.
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The worst Taco Bells that I've seen, by the way, seem to be the ones which are combined with other chains into one location (most often KFC, from what I've seen). Those places don't do ANY of the food well.
I have noticed that. I think I was in a Taco Bell/KFC combo about 7 years ago, and I tried to order a chicken soft taco, and they said that they didn't have any chicken.
Umm. No chicken? Well, OK, then. I mean, I know that the Taco Bell product is different from the KFC product, but I also understand that, to the average consumer, that doesn't make sense.
I think it's probably best if fast food establishments just try to do one thing correctly, if they can do that.
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Food Tutor, when you worked there did people call up wanting to have a phone put in? I knew a guy who moved to New Mexico and honestly made that mistake.
Oh, now that's funny.
I never heard that one, but I guess we did see some strange customers from time to time. I lived in Ohio, which is where I was raised, and we used to charge sales tax only on food eaten in the restaurant. Sometimes, people would order food "to go," and then sit in the dining room and eat it out of the bag, to avoid paying the sales tax. Doesn't that sound strange?
And I remember the lard was in one pound sticks, and I think it was 2 pounds of lard per every 40 pounds of beans. And it seemed like we used a healthy dose of salt for the beans as well, but no other seasonings that I remember. They tasted pretty good, though.
And we served the "BellBeefer" when I was there - basically a sloppy joe sort of thing. Doesn't BellBeefer sound like a derogatory name for an overweight person? Maybe that's why they don't serve it anymore.
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I've actually cleared things up a bit with google and found an interesting Taco Bell testimonial. This page has a lot of info.
Among other things, it claims:
- The whole bit about guns are caulking guns, and that's for the sour cream and guacamole, not beans.
- The beans apparent come as a dried powder and are reconstituted.
- Ditto for most of the sauces.
- Meat and nacho cheese come in pre-portioned boil-in-bags.
- Lettuce arrived at the store pre-shredded
- Tomatoes were peeled and sliced on-site.
Mind you, this one person was talking about when they were 16, and they don't say how old they are now.
Interesting details, and as I'd figured, they certainly did change their bean procedure. I was surprised that it's a powder, and not a canned bean product, but I'm sure they did analyses to determine what would be most cost effective, and produce the best tasting product, within reason.
When we used to make the beans, and this was 21 years ago, I thought the weirdest thing about it was that, after cooking the pot of beans, we'd whip them with a rotary beater attached to the end of a power drill. "Drilling" the beans was actually really tiresome, so employees bigger and older than I usually did that.
Both beans and meat were cooked in huge pans, meant to hold 40 pounds of product, each. For the beans, this was the second "frying," and for the hamburger, raw meat was cooked with the seasoning this way, and we used large rakes that looked like oversized potato mashers.
We did chop tomatoes with a wall slicer, and there were grates of different sizes for onions and tomatoes. Cheese was shredded in house, and we fried all the taco and taco salad shells, the pizza shells, and they had a fried flour taco shell at that time, too. They usually didn't make me do fryer detail, as they made male employees do it instead. I'm not sure why, because other fast food chains didn't distinguish between whether it was a male or female working the fryer.
Nacho cheese and guacamole came in cans. I'm not keen on the canned guacamole, and I don't think many other folks were at that time. We didn't put the guac in guns, because I don't think we sold that much of it, but we went through 8 or 9 cartridges of sour cream on a shift.
That pretty much covers everything that I know about the Bell. I have absolutely no idea why I wrote this, by the way, as I'm sure no one could possibly find it interesting.
- The whole bit about guns are caulking guns, and that's for the sour cream and guacamole, not beans.
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I worked at Taco Bell when I was 16, and it wasn't really bad at all. It was a little lower tech back then. There were no computers in the restaurant, and I wrote the orders on a blackboard over my head, so that cooks behind me could construct the burritos and tacos as ordered, and I had to memorize all the prices so that I could add them up on an old fashioned cash register.
Anyway, our food prep back then was a lot simpler, too. When we made the refried beans, we started with whole, dried beans and cooked them for hours until they were soft enough to puree. I guess they have a different process now, but the recipe for their beans must be really different, too, because back then a pot of beans called for 2 great big sticks of lard. Nowadays, they really wouldn't be able to do it, because of vegetarians and people who are scared of pork fat.
But I guess I don't have a really bad opinion of Taco Bell. Some of the food is kind of tasty, even, though it is all pretty simple.
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Again, I don't see what the big deal is about offering both types of ribs?
You don't? I've managed kitchens, and I'd say that offering one type of ribs involves a considerable amount of expense, space in the walk-in, and time in prep, all for an item that is very high food cost, and not extremely profitable. Offering both types of ribs is twice the expense, twice the space and twice the prep.
And then, if you don't have enough customers who like both types of ribs, you get to throw away the ones you prepped that didn't get sold. So that's exactly what the big deal is.
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The web site that Gifted Gourmet links to needs some updating, the chef listed (Garry Mennie) has been replaced by a woman (whose name I can't recall at the moment---something that doesn't immediately sound like a woman's name).
Carvel Grant.
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This has been a great blog, Chromedome. Let me just say that I think your pictures display an incredible amount of care in your food preparation, and the descriptions of your daily activities are incredibly impressive.
Thank you so much for sharing this with us.
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The Food Tutor: The phenomenon of diet soda's does not promote gluttony. Drinking a lot of anything under your definition is gluttonous: "drink a lot of water if you're thirsty". If your thirsty, how can that be gluttony to drink a lot of water or diet coke for that matter? I drink a lot of diet coke because I am thirsty, because it tastes better than water, because it tastes better than regular soda, because I hate to pay $3 for one soda at a restaurant. Constantly overeating is a sign of gluttony, not drinking diet coke.
I didn't say "drink a lot of water if you're thirsty." I said "drink water if you're thirsty," meaning satisfy your thirst with water, and I stand by that statement, as I think drinking water is healthy for you. If your body is telling you it is thirsty, that means something specific.
My point of view about diet sodas promoting gluttony is based on what I've seen in my family, my friends and myself. Many people I've known who used to drink an occasional soda once in a while, or once a day, switched to drinking cases of sodas and 2-liters when they began drinking diet sodas. I fell prey to this, myself, when I started managing restaurants and had access to a soda fountain all day, so I'd just keep refilling my Diet Coke. After a number of months, I developed some problems with sleeping and my general health, so I went to see a doctor, who pointedly asked me how many sodas I was drinking per day. Now, in my case, I lost about 14 pounds in that time frame from overworking and lack of sleep, but I still think it's unhealthy to drink diet sodas when one is thirsty, so now I mostly drink water.
I know I have no shortage of controversial opinions, and I'm sure I'm often wrong. Heck, I even believe dieting, more than being correlated with overweight, causes weight gain. Or at least it does in the manner that most people diet, excluding the successful members of WW around here.
But what do I know?
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I'm not surprised at all. Carbonated beverages help to empty the stomach faster, and the intense sweetness of diet sodas actually stimulates hunger and craving for sweets.
Just observing the behavior surrounding diet sodas makes this connection intuitive, don't you think? When people drink diet sodas, proudly labeled as containing "zero calories," they think that they can have all they want, and I notice that many people in restaurants who would normally only have one or two Cokes with a meal (one only if there are no free refills) will have 7 or 8 Diet Cokes. The phenomenon of diet sodas itself promotes gluttony.
Drink water when you're thirsty. Have a diet soda, or a regular soda now and then, as a treat. People weren't meant to suck syrup all day.
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There are a couple of fish names that I'm sometimes unsure of, because I haven't heard them spoken, or if I have, I'm not sure the person who spoke them was correct.
Like hake and turbot, for instance.
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Mine, is not prolific enough to do anything sensible with, except put the occaisonal cucumber flavoured sprig in Pimms.
Several questions and comments are springing to mind, so I hope you don't mind if I don't raise my hand individually for each one. Lovely 'blog, Jackal.
First, on the bacon question, the Lyonnaise you made looks absolutely terrific. Personally, I love frisee paired with bacon in a salad, and perhaps a little radicchio, because of the flavor and texture contrasts with those items. Of course, my single favorite combination is bacon with a side order of more bacon (my cats back me up on that one.)
In the comment department, your Aga makes me covetous.
And then I'd like to know about what is referred to, by you on the last page, as "boiled beef." I've often heard of "boiled dinners" when people are referring to things that are distinctly British, and I've never eaten the particular dish to which you refer, so I wonder, how is it good to boil beef? I'm sure there's more to it than just dropping a hunk of meat in a pot of water and fishing it out when it's done, right?
Oh, and the comment above referring to "University" as opposed to "college" is a little confusing to some here in the U.S., since most people on this side of the ocean use those terms synonymously. As always, two countries separated by a common language.
Again, great blog.
Edit to add that I forgot to ask how you take your Pimms, as I've never had that, either. Perhaps I should just go order one at a bar and stop bothering you, huh?
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On the page that shows 5 of them the first one is saying over and over "anata mo watashi mo pocky" Anata is you watashi is I (myself), so basically it is something like "Your pocky and my pocky".....
The second one is the same music and the mother steps into the room breaking up the almost kiss and says I brought a snack for you. Then music continues with more of the "pocky for you and me" song.
Initially, I translated this pretty much that way, but given the context of the commercials, I took a different slant. I thought they were saying "Anata mo watashi no Pocky," indicating (since this is a commercial for Men's Pocky) that the young women were defying the labels on the boxes, choosing which type of Pocky is for them.
The stories in the commercials indicate that these women suffer consequences from their choice of Pocky in their love lives. The girl who chooses regular Pocky (not Men's) struggles with her beating heart as she offers some to the boy in the schoolyard. The other girl who likes regular Pocky is confronted with this reality as she's trying to steal a kiss with her boyfriend, when her mother comes in to offer her her regular snack. The other girls who like Men's Pocky seem to be indifferent to men in some way. It's all part of the overly dramatic nature of Japanese film, in my perspective.
I guess I take my Pocky a little too seriously.
However, I have no explanation for the girl who twists her ankle while carrying the Pocky.
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Some of the things people are complaining about in this thread are just matters of taste. Hummus can never be a "tired trend"; it's a classic, basic item in Middle Eastern food. It would be like calling hamburgers or fried chicken or eggs over easy a "tired trend." And there's nothing wrong with beets for people who like them. Nor is there anything wrong with fajitas when they're good.
No kidding. I make my living selling spinach and artichoke dip. I don't see anything wrong with that.
And I like tater tots.
Ha!
eG Foodblog: TheFoodTutor - The Man Behind the Curtain.
in Food Traditions & Culture
Posted
Industry insiders whining about the toils and troubles of serving the public? Why, I've never heard of such a thing!
Actually, on my end, I've done quite a bit toward elevating this sort of whining to an art form, and I find that a little humor can make some of that negative talk a lot more entertaining than just a constant stream of, "My feet hurt. It's hot in here. Damn, this job sucks." I will probably share a few restaurant anecdotes in the course of this week, but only in a lighthearted sense, as all the work I've got planned for the week should be the sort of work that's great fun.
Some of the best stories to relate are when people simply do inexplicable things in restaurants, and I get to see my fair share of that. On Sunday, for instance, we had lots of children in the restaurant for the holiday weekend, and lots of them were clearly having a hard time behaving in any sort of restrained manner at all, because it is a big festival weekend with lots of fun activities, and once you wind children up, they tend to just keep going and going and going. . . So there was one table whose children were so loud that the specific noise from that table made it difficult for me to tell the specials at my table. The kids were using their silver as drumsticks and pounding out a little tune, which they complemented with all sorts of verbal noisemaking. The parents at my table, whose children were much quieter, simply smiled and made a quiet comment about the "music."
But another table didn't take it quite so well. The gentleman had apparantly had absolutely all of that music that he was going to take, so he got up and walked over to the noisemakers, looked straight at the parents and yelled, "Take 'em to f***ing McDonalds!" And then he walked out, without finishing his meal or paying his tab. Now some people might find that sort of story shocking, or it might anger them, or maybe they'd even feel bad for the children, that they'd been introduced to that word all of a sudden by a stranger. But I just really thought it was hilarious, and it kind of lightened the mood a bit, because at that point, everyone could agree that what he did was inappropriate, but now that he had brought up the point about the noisemaking, well. . . This kind of people watching really keeps my job interesting. Interesting in the sense of the confucian mixed curse/blessing, "May you have an interesting life."
So, back to my plans for the week. My main focus will be this "tasting menu" that my SO and I are putting together for a class/event we're doing Friday. The topic for the class will be centered around making the sort of fancy-schmancy stuff that one gets in a really high end restaurant, but doing every bit of it at home. This is one of my favorite things to do, and SO (lambfries on eGullet - I'm hoping he'll contribute a bit here and there, but he's a little shy when it comes to posting) did a tasting menu for me on my birthday last year. Here's a picture of one of the dishes he served to me that night:
Foie gras with warm Georgia peaches and toasted brioche. Of course, not all of the courses we'll be preparing will be filled with rich, organ meats, but I do find it's best to eat courses like this as often as you can get them. Life goes better with foie.
Oh, and I'll be eating exactly one high end, fancy-schmancy restaurant meal this week as well. It will be my birthday dinner for this year, since my birthday actually falls on a day that I'll most likely be working. I'm hoping to get lots of good pictures of food, as well as some nice prep pictures, and fill you all in on the background of the restaurants where I work, the philosophy behind the cooking, and some more things about TheFoodTutor.
First, though, I have some shopping for ingredients I need to do.