TheFoodTutor

That would be extremely helpful right now, since the party's tonight. Too bad you're so far away, but I appreciate the offer, and all of the birthday wishes! Incidentally, it's common for me to go the whole day without eating when I do a Food Tutor class, and then nibble when I get to the event. This morning, I had a very small bite for breakfast, and my choice of food was made in hopes of sneaking in a picture of someone. Canned tuna for breakfast. Not everyone's idea of a gourmet item, but I know someone who likes it. His name is Dahmer, and it's hard to get a good picture of him, because he's all black except for the little white cravat, whiskers, gloves and spats. In spite of his name, he doesn't actually dismember other kitties and keep their body parts in the freezer. I don't know what I was thinking when I gave him that name over 10 years ago, but he's stuck with it now.

I'm re-posting an earlier entry to the blog, as I needed to fix an error in the previous one. Went to the new Atlanta IKEA store today, and bought some furnishings toward finishing the list of things I need for the condo I bought in December. It's a great store, but shopping makes my blood sugar drop, so I got a 50 cent hot dog for myself, and one for lambfries as well, plus a Pepsi with no ice (they never have ice at IKEA). Lots of mustard on the dog, and a smidge of relish. That's a sharp contrast with the other pictures of things I've eaten, but the dog was enjoyable, in an eat-on-the-run sort of way. While we're on the subject of presentation, I thought I'd point out that there is another way to make dishes taste better, aside from photoshopping them. Great front of the house staff can heighten the enjoyment of a meal, by knowing about the food, and knowing how to talk it up. Here's one of my favorite men behind the curtain: The man in the lower left corner is Patrick Mitchell, the GM of Restaurant Eugene. This is the second restaurant where he and I have worked together, and I have a tremendous amount of respect for him. It's kind of ironic that I picked that name for this blog, and that he's actually a man underneath the curtain, helping to take down the curtain in this picture. He and Steve are taking the curtains down because this picture was taken on the day that Restaurant Eugene was flooded in February of this year. Anyway, it's a shame that Patrick won't be making an appearance in my blog because this week, he's having back surgery, so he'll be taking some time off. The reason I want to include him, however, is because he's so especially good at building the grand spectacle of fine dining. For instance, take the Farrow Beacham mushrooms. Who's Farrow Beacham, you ask? Well, click here for a little background on that. This guy cultivates mushrooms in his basement, basically, because he's a mushroom fanatic, and these mushrooms are really, really great. Let's look at some mushroom porn: Damn, those are some nice oyster mushrooms. We serve those at Eugene, and Patrick is fond of putting one of those big clusters on a plate and waltzing around the dining room, to show everyone how beautiful they are. And then the kitchen sautees them up, and serves them in a salad, with some Sweetgrass Dairy cheese and mixed greens. Folks, you've never seen a mushroom salad sell so well as this one does. And of course, they taste good, too.

Heirloom cherry tomato salad, with house made ricotta. Now this is where it starts to get obscene. That's a whole roasted truffle, wrapped in bacon, on potato puree, presented by Chef Linton Hopkins. King salmon, cucumber and mushroom, cippollini onion. Dry aged ribeye. Hoo boy! This is the cheese course. I forgot the name of the cheese, but that's sort of a crisp raisin tuille, and pickled sweet okra. Yes, there is now okra in my blog. I didn't show lambfries' plate for this one, because he requested bread and butter pickles, in place of the okra. Lavender flan with poached fig. An excellent finish to the meal. Now, I have a lot to do today, but I promise I'll try to sneak a picture of the kitties in here somewhere.

Viking has it. Possibly Cook's Warehouse, too. This is the bread service. Homemade rolls baked fresh every day. Oysters with grapefruit and black pepper granita. Lobster risotto. Sorry this one's so blurry. This is a foie gras "breakfast" with a corn pancake, peach compote, granola and a fried quail egg. It was really great.

Very cute. Obviously, he's quite enthusiastic about duck liver. So, it took me a minute to figure out how to use the extra space available for uploading images, but I'm ready to show you what I had for dinner last night. This is the bottle of wine I was setting aside for a special occasion. Kosta Browne Pinot Noir, one of the last bottles available until the next batch is ready to drink in September. I don't often bring a bottle of wine to a restaurant, but this one is legimitately not going to be found on many lists, and if one dines in a restaurant where one also works, corkage fees are waived, so this makes for a less expensive option for dining. Sitting at the bar, with some bread sticks and pimiento cheese.

The foam is more of a light froth, actually. Lambfries took some of the creamed corn, pureed it in the blender, thinned it with veg stock, then frothed it with the immersion blender in a saucepan. Voila!

Whew! Nice questions! I buy spices here and there, as I need them. The whole nutmeg, for instance, is from an odd ethnic store where I stopped one day. Some are bought in bulk, and I try to grind spices last minute any time that's possible, as you can see the cardamom is whole, as are the cloves. The lids stay on very well, but neither screw nor snap. The lids fit snugly, and a slight vacuum keeps them in place. I don't label them on the front, because I like the clean appearance, but there's a little sticker on the back of each one (which reads "Bed, Bath and Beyond" - oh, yeah, that's where I got them) and I put a little abbreviation if I think there's any chance I might forget what's in there. The paprika, for instance, has a little note that says "pap" on the back, though I doubt I'd mistake it for anything else. I don't have enough space in my kitchen to take up a whole drawer for spices, and the whole room is kind of small, actually, but there are lots of cabinets, and all of them are used wisely. And we both work at Restaurant Eugene together, at least one night a week, aside from the Food Tutor stuff. He sees more than enough of me to be tired of me by now.

Not sure where Food Tutor bought her spice rack but I have seen them at Target for $29.95 ... another nice website is here: Caynes Housewares and something close but now $96 is this one ← Yes, definitely available cheaper than the $9.99 per resource linked above. Not sure I've seen them at Target, but I think I got mine at Linens 'N Things, where they're available in sets with a rack, or a slanted platform, or individually for $1.99 per. Thanks for pointing out that you can see the tattoo on lambfries' profile. He's very dedicated, of course, so his arm reads, "Mise en place."

Notice the reflection in the background of this picture. I have a mirrored backsplash that goes all around the counter of my kitchen, and even behind the stove. I hate it, frankly, as it can look dirty pretty quickly, and I'll be taking it out and replacing the surface with tile when I get a round tuit. I know some people have talked about installing one of these, and I really can't think of a benefit of having it, unless one really likes looking at one's midsection while cooking most of the time. It does give the effect of making the room look bigger than it is, though.

Good job! That's exactly what they are! They sell those containers with a metal rack as well, but when I realized I could just stick them to the side of my fridge, I thought it would be wonderful to save space that way, and I returned the platform part in exchange for more containers. I have about enough room for more than the number of spices I need.

For breakfast, I had the leftover lamb sandwich from last night's dinner, and lambfries not only insisted on getting a Mrs. Winner's cinnamon swirl, but he insisted on taking a photo, and showing exactly how food porn is done. The untouched photo of the swirl, which actually does taste pretty good as is. The Hugh Hefner airbrush version. Oh, and thank you for all the compliments. Please feel free to ask questions about anything. We'll be heading out to do more shopping in a bit, and we'll be back with lots more stuff for the party.

Stock for the risotto: Corn risotto. And the Money Shot:

Cooking in the middle of the night. I don't recommend this, for non-crazy people out there. Restaurant people tend to keep odd hours, nap, and then get up to do some more weird stuff. This is my spice rack. I like it, because it doesn't take a damned bit of room on my counter. Some industry "secrets." Immersion blender, squeeze bottle, foamer, ring molds (actually a set of cookie cutters), microgreens bought at Dekalb Farmer's Market, and the spoon, which is a very important part of all the presentation. Carnaroli, the unbeatable rice for risotto. Sauteed guanciale, draining, of course. Filleted halibut.

Went out for dinner tonight, though I know I shouldn't have. Plenty of work to do, and I shouldn't splurge so much on dining, but it is nice to try restaurant dishes from places where I don't work, to get an idea of what's trendy right now. Tonight we stopped at a place neither of us have tried before now, Eclipse di Sol. Cute place in the Poncey-Highland area, with nice patio space. Cocktails before dinner: A mojito for lambfries and a sangria for me. Appetizers of a mushroom turnover in very buttery pastry, and cured salmon with pink peppercorns, tapenade, cucumbers, pita and sour cream. The pink peppercorns were a bit much. Cold, sliced lamb sandwich with cucumber and radish for me, pancetta stuffed trout with white bean ragout for lambfries. Very good stuff. Giganto-java cup for lambfries. Cheese plate with a nice blue, a Spanish style, semi hard cheese, and some great cheddar. Possibly one of the least remarkable glasses of port I've had. Not a bad meal overall, though. It's kind of hard to think about cooking now, but the ingredients in the kitchen are calling to me. Edit to clear up confusion of which restaurant I meant, as there is an Eclipse di Luna and an Eclipse di Sol. And the area is actually Poncey-Highland, which the sangria caused me to forget. Oops.

Insert gratuitous pet photo number 1: That's Nancy. She would have liked to smile and pose for the photo, but she was too busy finishing my breakfast.

Okay, TheFoodTutor has clearly been kidnapped, or maybe she's just hanging out gawping at IKEA. Anyway, I'm going to go ahead and say that the walk-in in question is most definitely not the Varsity's: they likely use a frozen product, and I'm furthermore guessing that they actually get their fries delivered in dump trucks. The real tip off is that the Varsity most likely doesn't grind its hamburger meat on site. ← Not kidnapped, just at work. Sorry. I'll be around for a while now, since I've got the evening off, plus tomorrow and Friday to prep for the party, though I will step out from time to time to go marketing, and there will be a lot of other things to be done. I must say, photographing everything I eat has turned out to be a big project, if I'm to try to get photos anywhere near as nice as the ones I've seen here. I would have answered the same way. The Varsity does sell a lot of fries, and I'm certain they're frozen, probably crinkle-cut. I've only had the onion rings, and I can't say I was impressed. The Varsity is more of an "atmosphere" form of the Man Behind the Curtain, only in that particular case, the curtain doesn't cover up much of the reality. The place where I work serves something on the cusp of burgers and fries meets prime rib and steaks, with really just a lot of honest good food preparation. I can only say that we have a whole walk-in just for fries simply because they're really good, and so we sell a lot of them. And the ingredients are: Potatoes, vegetable oil, salt and pepper. Nothing hidden but the essentials of technique. Hand cut the fries, soak them in water, spin them dry, blanch at 300 degrees F, chill, then finish them in the fryer at 375 to order. It's amazing how easy it is to screw that up.

Before I left for work, this bowl was filled with duck cracklings. Somehow, the cracklings mysteriously disappeared in my absence, coincidentally during the same evening that lambfries returned from Buffalo. I guess I'll either have to make more, or I'll just scrap whatever it was that I was planning on doing with them. Well, at least he made me breakfast. An omelette with white cheddar and tomatoes. I guess you can tell that I like tomatoes a lot, huh? Today I'll be working lunch, and when I return, I can plunge into creative cooking in earnest. We'll probably be going to a market or two, possibly visiting the new IKEA store in Atlanta, and I'll be adding some pics of the small kitchen where we do all the prep for food classes. My home is on the 13th floor of a condominium complex in the Buckhead area of Atlanta, and while the view is lovely, the space is certainly limited. I do have a fairly efficient kitchen with a gas stove, and I arrange my appliances and workspace in such a way that I can prepare a good deal of food here. I have the next two days off, even! That's a lot of time for cooking.

The 10" Kershaw is the one on the far left, and there's another Kershaw paring knife second from the right. I like them, because they're very lightweight for their size, and I'm fairly small, so I don't like heavy blades. Some pictures from work last night: This restaurant where I work has 5 walk-in coolers, which is something I'd find really amazing, if it weren't for how much volume we do. This is the meat cooler, where you can see whole ribeyes, cuts of salmon (for grilling and smoking), grouper filets, marinating steaks and chicken breasts, and a cambro or two of diced bacon. The Hobart machine on the left grinds whole chuck for burger patties, and we put the meat through twice, and then we form the patties in the machine on the right. A prep cook actually comes into this cooler every morning to grind the meat and make the burgers. And the burgers are really, really good. Because of this process, I feel good about having my burger cooked anyway I like it, but this night, I didn't have a burger for dinner. This is the H-Rib, or Hawaiian Ribeye, marinated in soy sauce, pineapple juice and ginger. I don't usually have a dinner that extravagant, but it's nice to take advantage of my employee discount once in a while. The plate presentation would look a little more balanced if I'd gotten a side of fries, but I really wanted the vine ripes instead. Speaking of fries. . . One of my co-workers had an order of fries for her dinner. That was all she had, partly because she's a vegetarian, and partly because we have really good fries. The two silver bullets there contain our house-made ketchup. That's the co-worker in question. While all of my friends at work pronounced me to be Profoundly Weird when I explained that I was taking pictures of everything I ate for a week, she actually volunteered to be pictured. She's pretty cute, isn't she? I think she's pointing at the fries to make sure we know that they'll be ending up in her stomach soon. And, of the 5 walk-in coolers, this one is dedicated entirely to french fries, which is part of why they're so good. I think it's great that we go to the trouble of blanching fries properly, so they'll be just exactly as crisp as they should be. Oh, and please be a little understanding if parts of this restaurant seem a little worn around the edges. It opened in 1977, and it remains one of the busiest restaurants in Atlanta to this day, which is pretty outstanding. It's fairly hard to maintain every bit of a building for that long, under those conditions.

Whew! I'm finally home from work. Glad to see that lambfries posted a pic of the knives, including the Kershaw that I like to borrow from him as often as I can get to it. I was a bit delayed this evening, and talk about your strange work anecdotes: We weren't that busy this evening, but we had just enough tables arriving very late to ensure that I'd have to stay well past closing. I have to wait until all of my tables leave before I can finish up the last bit of the side duties for my shift, which include making sure my section is spotless, plus another sort of sidework, which is assigned according to a chart. Tonight, my sidework included "spec"-ing out the restrooms, both men's and women's, and I hit a bit of a snag at the last minute. I tried to change out the trash in the men's room, but as soon as I opened the door, I heard the toilet flush, so I made a quick U-turn out of there. I try pretty hard not to embarrass a guest, and I'd not have even gone into the men's room if it hadn't been pretty late already, and I assumed no one would be in there. So I waited. And I waited. Another man walked into the restroom and came back out, but the stall was still occupied. I tried to duck my head in again, but there was just constant flushing, so I couldn't investigate, other than to confirm that there was, indeed, someone in there. And then I waited a bit more, growing a bit anxious that perhaps someone was quite sick and might need medical attention. Finally, I grabbed a male co-worker and asked him to check out what was wrong. He went into the restroom, and didn't come back out for a long time. When he finally did emerge, he told me that he'd changed the trash for me, and that I was free to go home. So what happened? Well, it seems that a man was taking some time to roll a special sort of cigarette, and he needed some privacy to do so, so he used the stall to do that, and he had a bit of trouble doing it, as he may not have been as focussed as his usual self. And that was the holdup. I actually found that to be extremely funny, even though I was tired and ready to go home. So I have some pictures, but I'll wait until the morning to upload them, because I need a little sleep before I go back to work at 10. Thank you for being patient, and I promise that the pictures will get better and more interesting in the next few days, as we've got some really neat stuff planned.

There is going to be a little break in the action coming up here, as I'll be going to work, grabbing a bite to eat before my shift, and working through the evening until quite late. But lambfries, the guy I mentioned earlier, will be returning from Buffalo shortly, and when he gets home, he'll certainly check the progress of this thread. I'm wondering if, perhaps, he could be enticed into contributing something. Perhaps, if you asked him nicely, he might tell you what a tournant is. What do you think? Is there anything you'd like to know about living the life of a linehog, working in the kitchen day in and day out? You could ask him about his knives. He loves his knives. Well, if he doesn't answer any questions you ask him, I'll just beat the answers out of him when I get home, I guess.

Oddly enough, I haven't had that problem. The sushi class was the most difficult for the students to execute, as rolling sushi takes quite a bit of practice, but even if you make a sloppy roll, it still tastes pretty good, as long as the rice is properly cooked. We ate lots and lots of sloppy rolls that night. There are a couple of other things that are challenging, though. Probably the biggest challenge I've seen was trying to get some clients to try things that they perceived as being a little more adventurous than their normal diets. I had one class, on Valentine's Day, where the client insisted up front that there be no raw fish, no organ meats, and generally no "weird" food. OK, so how about a little caviar, at least? "Oh, no, we're not fond of caviar." She didn't like truffles, either. That was kind of difficult to work around, since I wanted the food to be really romantic. And I had one class where the clients had been dieting for some time, but they wanted to splurge on the foods they'd be eating that night, so they starved themselves the whole day in anticipation of my arrival. It was a little difficult when I had to explain to them that it actually takes a little time to prepare the food, so there wasn't anything to feed them right away. I did manage to throw together something that would hold them over as the first demonstration. Oh, and because the events go on for a few hours, with lots of participation, the clients have a tendency to eat too much of the first dishes we prepare, and by the time we're done cooking everything, they're too stuffed for dessert! I'll have to work on that part.

Oh, yes. Time for a snack. I need to go shopping, but first I had to look through the refrigerator to see what I have too much of, or not enough of. Turns out we've got extra, overripe mango. It's the result of one of our experiments for the tasting, this mango curry lobster salad: So I decided to have a mango smoothie with tapioca pearls. First, the mango pulp: Notice how I'm not showing pix of cutting the mango, as I can make an egregious mess when cutting an overripe mango, so I'm sparing you the carnage. Next, the pearls. Sorry about that blurry pic. After boiling the pearls, it's best to let them sit in some simple syrup to sweeten for a bit, but I was feeling pretty peckish, so I went ahead and had my smoothie, complete with a wide straw to suck the pearls up from the bottom. That's a little blurry too, I'm afraid. I'll work on some of these photos a bit later and see if I can clear them up a bit. I've really got to go get groceries now, though, and then get ready to go to work.

The topic for the class is always decided by the client, and if they don't already have something in mind, I quiz them about their favorite restaurant dishes, and things they've always wondered about how to make. Ever wanted to make osso buco? How about sushi making at home? Duck confit, or perhaps some homemade lemon curd? It's really pretty easy, and most people can think of at least one thing they've always wanted to learn to do. I always go to the person's home, but my partner and I may be setting up some public demonstrations in conjunction with some local kitchenware stores soon. The time part can be tough, sometimes, and I'm always being asked to work more. The only way I manage to fit it all in is to limit my number of scheduled shifts, and I can occasionally pick up extra shifts at either restaurant when needed, but on a week like this one, I simply learn how to say, "No." The family that was confronted looked pretty shocked for a little while, but they really had their hands too full with the kids to dwell on it for very long. A manager did stop by their table to apologize, too, even though we really have no control over customers who confront each other that way.

Yes, that's correct. I am a server, and I sometimes work as a host, a bartender, and in another job code referred to as "Team Captain" or sometimes "Shift Leader." And sometimes I'm referred to as a Sommelier, though I really can't claim the amount of training needed to earn such a title. I just try to be as informed as I possibly can be about the wines carried on the respective lists of the places where I work, and I pay attention to all the guidelines of wine service. As a shift leader, I sometimes expedite in the window, which is what I did for the second half of my double shift yesterday. Not to go into expediting too deeply, this means finishing any dishes that need to be garnished or sauced, checking to make sure that the food actually matches what is printed on the ticket, gathering hot food and cold and putting the dishes in the proper order (so they can be set down in the correct positions at the table without asking people what they ordered), checking the quality of the food and plate presentation, and finally gathering runners to take the food to tables. OK, so maybe that was a little exhaustive in describing the process of expediting. The expediter is the bridge between the front and back of the house, which brings us to the next question: Self taught, with no formal education, outside of reading about a bajillion cookbooks. I threw myself into my first kitchen job years ago, at The Cheesecake Factory because, while it's not the greatest restaurant in the world, it is a great place to get experience doing loads and loads of prep, honing knife skills and dealing with fast service, high pressure and lots of volume. I worked through several kitchens and found that, in a short period of time, I was being pushed toward management positions, because I was very good at training others, and I speak a good deal of Spanish, so I was used as a translator often. Because money was tight for me at that time, and I was going through a divorce, I ended up in very stable management jobs working for large companies, and the sorts of restaurants that don't really serve haute cuisine. Management, of course, is very stressful, and after I'd been doing that for a couple of years, we had sort of a "family emergency" of sorts. Well, what happened was that my SO had a heart attack, and I decided that life was too short to go on working for Chili's (not that there's anything wrong with Chili's ). I decided to take things "easy" (ha!) and work as a server for a while, so I'd have a flexible schedule to be able to do other things, and SO decided to chuck his other career and become a line grunt. He has now worked his way up the ranks to become Chef de Tournant at Restaurant Eugene, which is one of the two restaurants where I work as well. This was really an accident. I was working at a fine dining place one day, as a server, chatting with some guests about the Pastry Chef there, and the guests asked me if that particular chef would be able to come over and teach them how to make this delicious mushroom risotto that they were eating at the time. Of course, I didn't mention the fact that our Pastry Chef wasn't the one making the risotto, but I simply said that I'd be able to teach them how to make the dish, since risotto is just a matter of learning a technique, and then I went with the idea from there. I put up the website, and started thinking about ways to market this service. It hasn't been really easy getting clients all the time, but the times that I do get lots of calls are tremendous and fun. It should be wonderful to show the details of preparing for a class this week.

Sid is evil. Believe me, you don't want to know about Sid. Oh, yes, in spite of the complete lack of a sentence reading, "Please do put pictures of any critters running around your home into your blog," in the eGullet Foodblog guidelines, I believe a couple of gratuitous pet pictures may be imminent. The trick will be making sure there's food somewhere in the shot, too. Given that all 3 of them will actually sit on my dining room table and watch me eat, if I let them, that shouldn't be too hard.