chromedome

FWIW, in my neck of the woods the herb of choice for such things is summer savory. It's not one of the more common herbs, but it's nice to have on hand...it has hints of thyme and sage, but with a pleasantly peppery bite.

One further point I'll mention is that a gloved hand provides a perfect environment (closed, warm, humid) for bacterial growth. Many training programs don't adequately address the necessity of scrupulous handwashing after glove use, and between glove changes.

I'm familiar with the study you cite. Another, conducted more recently, tested numerous hand dryers to assess how far they distribute pathogen-containing droplets. If you're interested, the Dyson AirBlade is the current champ. IIRC, it could transport pathogens up to 30 m/100ft, though there are relatively few pathogens that can survive long on inorganic surfaces in the open air. Either way, I'm a big fan of paper towels as opposed to the huff-and-puff machines. Just to be clear, I'm not anti-glove and don't advocate for their non-use. My primary point was that in the absence of closer scrutiny (and mandatory glove laws), "glove/no glove" tells you little about how safely the kitchen is run. As for your last point, well yeah...absent a mandatory glove law, keeping a given food off your hands is a perfectly good and valid reason for using them. At home, for me personally, it's often the deciding factor.

When I closed my second restaurant I had about 200 pounds of haddock left, and neighbours (actually my now-GF and her now-ex) offered to store it for me in a spare chest freezer in their barn. At some point that spring somebody accidentally shut off the wrong breaker, and by the time I went around to retrieve some of my fish it had all liquefied. That was not a happy day for any of us.

Gloves are clean until they leave the box (the first time, that is...I've seen soiled gloves put back *into* the box). After that, a gloved hand or a bare hand is exactly as sanitary as that person's training and work habits dictate. Glove laws are popular because they give the appearance of sanitation, but they do not ensure the reality.

LOL Yup. The chef I worked with when I was going to culinary school had a saying: "We may eat with the eyes first, but we eat with the mouth *most.*" She was not one for prettifying plates with frills and furbelows, needless to say.

...and hotly anticipated, I don't doubt.

They're pretty unpredictable here in my neck of the woods, where there's always a high risk of someone sticking 'em in a walk-in cooler at some point along their path to my local supermarket. ...and of course for several months of the year they can get way too cold just sitting on a loading dock.

I used to serve grilled sturgeon at my restaurant. The river here has a healthy wild population of Atlantic shortnosed sturgeon, and a couple of local entrepreneurs captured breeding stock from the river and farmed them. The primary goal was caviar, but sturgeon comes as a side product of that.

I was excited to learn I could get such things through my library, but in practice I mainly use it to view papers in academic journals.

I've found them in Superstore.

Local ones have just arrived, here. Mine aren't producing yet, but the commercial growers have 'em.

I find that eating the blossoms and fingerlings takes much of the sting out of zucchini season. The "ounce of prevention," as it were. If you pick them young and tiny, you can actually serve 2 or 3 zucchini per person as a side dish.

That's a better price than I've seen all year up here, where they're landed.

I would feel the same compulsion. Next up, "wallabiryani"?

Shades of Monty Python's "Summarize Proust" sketch...

My GF and I have just gotten to that episode of Chef's Table on Netflix. Haven't watched past the intro yet, though, because it was late by that time.

If it makes you feel any better, you're 3-4 weeks ahead of me.

Use a solid fat. Cream it together with the flour ahead of time, then brush the mixture onto the molds as thinly as you can manage. Oils and sprays aren't going to cut it on a non-stick surface, as you've already discovered.

Yeah, it's rare the butter here goes on sale for less than $3.98/lb, which is about what I pay anyway (regular price at the supermarket is roughly $1 more, but there are two retailers that regularly sell for around $4/lb). Costco puts it on for less once or twice a year, but the other places I buy butter do so more consistently. When it gets down to around $3/lb I'll typically pick up 20 lbs or so and stock up my freezer. Costco's meats here haven't impressed me especially with their quality, and unless there's a spectacular sale their prices don't come close to what's on special in a given week at my local supermarket. Their rotisserie chickens are a steal, though...they sell here for $7.99, which is usually cheaper than buying an uncooked chicken.

When my late wife was in the hospital here, the meals all had the look of something prepared in a commissary 1000 miles away and shipped out frozen. The "turkey dinner," for example, consisted of watery mashed potatoes, pallid once-frozen mixed vegetables, some pale gravy substitute or other, and - I only wish I was kidding - two slices of inexpensive deli turkey roll, the kind you get in sandwiches from the gas station. Patients were, as Liuzhou says, patently there only to disrupt the smooth operation of the ward. One doctor would tell her, for example, that it was crucial she get enough rest to help her body recover and therefore he would order her a sedative for 10 PM. A nurse would then come around at 11, when she was just drifting off, to take a full set of vitals or a vial of blood. Then she'd be awakened at 6 AM for something else, and no sooner she'd manage to doze back off than breakfast (soggy toast, cold coffee, egg whites that had undoubtedly come from a carton) would arrive and wake her up again. She was there for 10 days in total, and it took her until the fourth day to cow the staff into submission (she was a woman with great force of will) and the food situation resolved itself when I pointed out that she did, in fact, have a personal chef who could bring things from home.

Oh, and the issue with hours cuts both ways. The regulatory environment is changing all the time, and if you can't demonstrate that you're in compliance with local labor standards there's potential for a malicious employee or former employee to create trouble by reporting you.

Yet, much of the reason for the turnover is that wages are too low. It's an ongoing problem for restaurateurs that wages squeeze already-thin margins, but cost of living in many cities makes it almost impossible to live on what a line cook makes. Even high-end restaurants, the kind any ambitious cook would want to work for, are frequently finding it difficult to keep staff because it's a losing proposition. Competition from non-restaurant players, and the effects of lower grocery prices, were also main points of the annual Baum + Whiteman restaurant trends report this year.

Motivation is a slippery thing. The last time I worked for someone else, the owners of the restaurant were brilliant, highly focused people with a clear vision, but they were amateurs. The restaurant was successful and the food was good, but turnover was a serious issue for them. I found out why very quickly when I went to work for them. There were two owners, a man who mostly handled the business side and a woman who was the hands-on manager. The female partner (they were not a couple) was the driver, the male partner was the investor and business brain. The female partner was in the kitchen at least once or twice every day, going "Full Ramsay" on one or another of the cooks for some minor infraction or other. The issue was that she expected every single employee - at $1.00 over minimum wage - to treat the place as if they were owners. At the slightest misstep, she'd be all over them in a fury. I was aghast to see her light into a poor kid who'd only been on the job three days, fuming afterwards (within his hearing) that he was "another bad hire who wouldn't last two weeks." Understandably, he didn't bother coming back after his shift. In a small city with a limited number of restaurants this kind of reputation gets around quickly, and has a real impact on your ability to keep a kitchen properly staffed. This is an extreme example, but many restaurateurs show similarly counterproductive attitudes and behaviors when seen through outside eyes. In that restaurant, I explained (very) carefully to the owner that buy-in has to be earned, not demanded, and that she was sapping all the spirit out of the kitchen through her interactions with the cooks. I "suggested" that she filter any feedback through me, rather than approaching line cooks directly, which helped greatly. As I got to know them I gave them opportunities to stretch their wings a bit, canvassing them for suggestions about improving the kitchen's organization and work flow, so we could get food out more efficiently. I also challenged them to create new dishes out of our existing ingredients and prep, putting them on as daily specials with that particular cook's name on them (ie, "Brad's Killer Vegan Panini"). Even the malcontent cook who'd been pointed out to me as "the next lazy b*stard I'm going to fire" when I came onboard was starting to come around and enjoy his shifts, laughing and joking with the others instead of scowling sullenly at the flattop and tuning everyone else out. Then she fired me for not driving an hour in to work through a raging blizzard on a day when the whole city was shut down anyway.

My mom's doing the same, as a recent widow. She's also revelling in the luxury of watching an entire show all the way through, as my father'd had the habit of flipping back and forth between shows. Seeing half of each show was more or less the norm.