TheFoodTutor

Breakfast? Sheesh! And look at that fancy presentation! Who cooked that, you or/and lambfries? ← A Birthday Week breakfast, for sure, and one where we've been gathering ingredients for a class, so we have leftovers to use up. To use up happily, I might add. Lambfries made this for me, while I was showering for work. When planning to do this, I said to him, "How about we do a blog around my birthday? We could budget to buy a whole lobe of foie gras, to use as we wish." And his eyebrows raised, contemplatively, and we started plotting out the lovely week we'd have. It's been really lovely. Amazing, actually.

Around $18-19/lb. I've seen it go for a little less, but it's very high quality, so it fetches a pretty high price nearly everywhere, especially when we live pretty far inland. I often visit that particular market for a couple of hours at a time. If it had been me there today, you would have seen a meal of a $1.25 tamale from the snack counter, which I regret not being able to include in this blog, because of working so much. They're very large, so it's a whole meal for that price,and they taste especially good when one is sitting on the hood of one's car, after shopping a bit for ingredients.

Lambfries visited our favorite farmer's market while I was at work, and he took pictures. I'd been missing out on putting up photos of another market where we shopped for the class, because they don't allow photography there. But this market does allow cameras, so here they are: I like to get my roe here, whenever possible. Very fresh selections. Sashimi counter, which I visit for purchasing tartare ingredients, or sometimes just for a snack. Korean dumplings, and the dumpling maker. Always demonstrations and samples going on, and here we see a noodle dish, and Korean pancakes. Careful with those live carbs. And you've gotta love a place where they make their own tofu.

Bingo! Except it's not a cocktail, but a local beer. Our first winner is the foodblogmeister himself!

OK, not much time left to finish my blog and leave my mark in eGullet history, so I thought we'd play a game. I, of course, worked a long Sunday lunch today, and you all know I'm a server, so my main purpose in life on Sunday lunches is to be a Transporter of Fluids. People love to play the Disappearing Beverage Game on Sundays, since they're all dehydrated from drinking on Saturday nights, so I ate nothing since breakfast. I did, however, pull one chit from my server book, and I took a picture of both sides of it: Beverage order. Food order. Start guessing, please. You have a day and a half to figure out what they ordered, and if you ask questions, I will give you clues. And you have to try to beat therese at it, since she's good at reading abbreviations, though she's handicapped by the fact that she does not eat at this particular restaurant, hardly ever. I think she's eaten there twice in her whole life, so she doesn't know the menu. The chit is pretty sloppy, because I wrote very quickly, and they were throwing modifiers at me and asking questions the whole time, so there's a good bit of shorthand, but I think it's decipherable. Go.

Now I know what I look like when I'm ripping a lobster in half. And so does everyone else. Gotta go to work, but here's breakfast: French toast, foie gras, strawberry puree and balsamico. Some cats have all the luck. They didn't get a piece of foie, but they did get to lick the fat.

Exactly. We refer to them both as "crumbers," which kind of confused me, when I first started working at the less fancy place. Actually, I find the little towel most useful for carrying very, very hot plates, something which the other tool is entirely unsuitable for. Cool answer to the Entremetier question, GG. At some restaurants, the Entremetier not only does all the side dishes, but he readies the plate for final composition, so he's the last person touching the plate before it goes through the window, to the Chef who's expediting, who will then put on the finishing touches.

Getting ready for work, again. These 2 items have the same name, and they basically do the same thing. The one on the left went to work with me last night, and the one on the right is going to work with me today. Can you name the items? Can you tell me why I have one of each?

Awesome to have someone to help document the week, since my schedule is pretty hectic as well, and posting all of these photos can be very time consuming. Thanks, therese, and thanks for providing a very nice kitchen for this event. Sorry about the mess. I forgot this pic last night: New dessert on the menu. A cheesecake made with cremosina, topped with strawberry jam and mint sauce, candied lemon and a lightly spiced cookie on the bottom. Very good. Now, I wonder if I have time for leftover foie gras for breakfast. . . Edit because I remembered the type of cheese for the cheesecake.

We had a birthday on staff. The bartender's birthday is Sunday, so here's the cake she picked out to have made by Kristia: Ice cream cakes with Italian meringue. Kristia made 5 cakes in different flavors. 2 are chocolate, 1 espresso, 1 butter pecan and 1 white chocolate. I had a slice of butter pecan. I get my cake on Monday, because my actual birthday is Tuesday, and I get to celebrate for nearly a week, because I'm just lucky that way. Menus change nearly every day here, and we've got to try everything that's new, so here's the soup for tonight. Orange blossom heirloom tomato gazpacho. A ring of aspic decorates the bottom of the bowl, filled with a crab salad, and the soup is poured tableside. It's a really delicious soup. And there's lambfries at the end of the night, making out an order and asking Kristia what she needs for pastry.

I've never had this happen, but it sounds as if the corn you used might have been a little tough to begin with, perhaps? I only roasted the ears of corn in my oven for about 40 minutes, then let them cook in some cream for a bit, and they pureed easily in a regular blender. At any rate, tough membrane would be best strained out rather than cooked longer. Overcooked corn is really just overcooked corn, after all. Many people reading this blog will probably not be familiar with the term "Family Meal," as it applies to restaurants. Actually, before I worked in certain upscale restaurants, I wasn't familiar with it, either. If you work at a lower end restaurant, you usually get a 50% discount on food you buy before or after your shift, and there are many options for getting a small meal or a snack before working. As you go into higher end places, you really can't just order off the menu every day, and much of the time, your shift begins hours before the restaurant is open, with opening duties including polishing one's station - this refers to going over every bit of every place setting with a steamy linen, to make sure there are no smudgy wine glasses, no funky forks. So the kitchen of a fine dining place will often come up with a homey meal, mainly for the front of the house, because cooks tend to get fed whether or not you try to feed them. Lambfries goes into work at Eugene before I do, to prep, and he always makes up a plate for me before I get there and sets it aside. Not sure why he does this, other than that we did work at a place together where family meal would often run out if you didn't grab it in the first 5 minutes, or else you'd be stuck with eating the dreck that no one else wanted. Here's my plate tonight, which, as usual, is an overly large portion. Meatloaf, potato salad, bitter greens and salad greens. It was very good, except for the bitter greens. I don't know if there are Canadians who know how to cook good Southern greens, but the one who made these isn't one of them, if they exist. Sorry, but I just love to yank the chain of the Entremetier when I work over at Eugene. Can anyone tell me what an Entremetier is? Lambfries has to work Entremetier all next week, so if you can fill him in on what he's to do, that'd be helpful.

The corn froth is a simple puree of corn, cream and chicken or vegetable stock, which is then lightly foamed by holding the immersion blender at the surface of the liquid, the same way you foam milk for a cappuccino, by holding the steam wand right at the surface of the milk. It's not terribly hard to do, but it can make a big mess. I splattered the wall a bit when I was demonstrating this, which illustrates one of the things that's different between restaurant cooking and home cooking: In restaurants, you just make tons of mess all day long, and you just keep on cleaning it up. If you break a glass, you sweep it up and go on with the rest of your tasks, but most people really wouldn't want to have that much splattered food, airborne grease and shattered plateware in their home kitchens. And that's why, more often than not, if I need to do something in a deep fryer, I generally bring my own, because lots of people don't want to own one, since they really grease things up pretty well. So anyway, the froth bit originates in some of the more interesting aspects of modern haute cuisine, and the foams that all those molecular gastronomists like to use. Of course, you don't want to just start foaming up every little thing that you serve, in order to be trendy, but you do want to use these tricks in places where it will do some good. A foam on clams, for instance, is a natural, because often when you steam clams, they get a little frothy. If you emphasize that aspect, they look even more appealing, like they're covered in sea foam. In Atlanta, we have a very talented chef who uses these sorts of techniques, Richard Blais, whom I've admired for some time. I had an opportunity to work with him for a little while last year, and I'd have to say that he's had a bit of an influence on lambfries' and my approach to food.

I ate a couple of these today, too, brought home from dinner Thursday night.

We had time to take pictures because the class lasted for 5 hours, plus we passed cameras around back and forth, to get shots of different people doing the preparing. It is true that I have tried and failed many times before to take pictures during classes, because it's just too easy to forget about the camera and focus on the food. But this was the longest class I've ever done, and the people attending were the sort of people who like food and pictures of food. The gyoza wrappers were one of the very few things bought in a prepared state at all. Well, I didn't bake the brioche, either, but everything else was pretty much from scratch. I could make my own wrappers, but they are very inexpensive to buy, and they are separated well with flour to keep them from getting all stuck together, so I just try to find a brand I like and stick with it. This variety was a little thicker than some of the ones I bought before, which is good for a class, because thicker means more forgiving and less likely to tear, so the students can just focus on the wrapping technique. Today's breakfast was a half slice of naan, sauteed in a little butter in a non-stick pan. I'm a little hung over, and still pretty tired, so I think I'll wait to take a picture of family meal tonight at work, as anything else I'm eating isn't really remarkable. Working tonight and tomorrow morning, then a double on Monday - the sort of double that involves working lunch at one place, going home and changing and heading to the other place. Good thing both restaurants are close to where I live.

Oh, I wanted to mention that I got an interesting call yesterday. A gentleman called me up and said that he'd run across my website. "The Food Tutor, eh?" he said, "You must be really good at what you do." "I like to think so," I answered. And then he said that his girlfriend's birthday is this weekend, and he wanted to know if it was too late for him to arrange a class for that evening. OK, I'm good, but not that good. I do need some time to prepare for a thing like this.

I don't have the complete set of pictures for everything, though I may be able to gather a few more from another camera. Here's what I have right now: Multiple pots: Risotto, clams in wine, creamed corn, caramelizing onions to go with peaches. The finished lobster salad. Slicing the lobe. The finished halibut dish. OK, any questions?

Second course: Fold and pinch, fold and pinch. Gyoza!

I wish I had video of this, because the lobsters were very active. This woman's kitchen is not normally cluttered with bags of prep items everywhere, but the enormous amount of prep for this party makes many of these pictures look like this. Just look at the food, and ignore that other stuff. Then we let the lobster chill, since it doesn't appear until after the first 2 courses. Itty bitty blini. First course. We had ginger and truffle flavored caviars, and I opted to demonstrate two different presentations, with the ginger caviar perched on top of the halved eggs, and the truffle in a quenelle with the creme fraiche, blini and quail egg.

Final prep before heading to the client's home: Tarragon ice cream base. Duck confit, cabbage, ginger and scallion. Potato for blini. Dressed and ready to go.

Tasting menu class went well. I'm exhausted, with a screeching headache, but I need to resize photos and get the process of uploading underway, but I'll post the menu first: Blini, caviar, creme fraiche, quail egg. Duck confit gyoza. Mango curry lobster salad. Foie with warm peaches and brioche. Halibut, clams, corn risotto, corn froth. Chilled strawberry soup with tarragon ice cream. Pictures up next.

By the way, I am taking more pictures of things that are being prepped, but it's so close to the party that I don't want to show everything I'm doing until the end, and after that it should take me a little while to get everything set up. I'm just about to head out now.

I have a feeling that cirrhotic livers do not taste good. I'll taste the fattened liver later today, and I'll even get a doctor's opinion on it, and I'll get back to you on whether the duck had a drinking problem or not. I questioned lambfries' sanity over wanting to eat a whole one between the two of us. I've seen many people share one among a 4-top, but I've definitely never seen anyone eat one all by himself. The truffle is 1 ounce, roasted with the bacon, and the drippings are served in a little cup on the side. The price is $50. Now, I have seen one person eat the $100 36-ounce porterhouse by himself at Eugene, though. Edit to change 1/2 to 1 ounce.

Sid started getting really upset that he was the only cat not pictured so far, and he threatened to bite me, if I didn't post this. Sorry. I think my jeans look good on him. Don't you? The food aspect of this picture is that, well, you just don't get a butt that looks like that unless you eat your fair share.

Force feeding builds character. At least, that's what my mother used to tell me. You'd think that my cats are force fed, to look at them. They don't seem to think that eating too much is a bad thing at all.

This is a duck's liver. This is also a duck's liver. There's a bit of a disparity there. Ya' think?