chromedome

My paperback copy of "Joy" is holding up pretty well, except for Volume 2 breaking in half. My daughter's got that, for the time being. It's the same 70's edition, but I bought it in pristine condition from a used book store in Chilliwack in '93. My most battered, bedraggled cookbook is my grandmother's wartime "Victory Binding" of the American Woman's Cookbook, a vintage competitor to "Joy." It has a special section at the back of work-around wartime recipes, cognizant of rationing and shortages. My mother has a more modern edition from the mid-50's, which was the first cookbook I remember ever reading or using. I got my grandmother's copy about ten years ago. It's falling to bits, holding itself together from sheer bloody-mindedness. Several pages have decades-old recipes clipped from newspapers and magazines, others conceal handwritten recipes. Lots of them have annotations and corrections in my grandmother's hand. I was looking at it earlier today, with mixed feelings. After caring for her for nearly 20 years, my parents finally had to place my grandmother in a home, two days ago. Her Alzheimer's had progressed to a point requiring round-the-clock supervision, and they simply were unable to keep up. She is 93.

Yeah, they're not exactly a cutesy fish, are they? I like working with sturgeon, though. It's got a very delicate flavour, so you can go for subtlety, but it's also very firm and meaty, so bolder preparations are an option too. Unfortunately, the supplier is on shaky ground...ACOA originally gave them $1M less than their business plan called for, and seven years later they're slowly suffocating for lack of that same million dollars. The Saint John river has the last healthy population of wild North American sturgeon, which is where the original breeding stock came from. It's a shame...sturgeon is one of the most-pressured fish, and there are only a handful of companies trying to offer a sustainable supply. I hate to see them go splat, but I sure don't have the bucks to put into it, myself. I'll definitely let you know how the auction goes. The other chefs will all have an established clientele, so this'll give me a yardstick to measure the impact of my writing.

Geez, is it really two months and more, since I've been here? It's amazing how time flies. I've been plugging away on a number of fronts. I'm still writing my bi-weekly column in the Telegraph-Journal, and will soon be contributing longer articles to the paper's "Salon" section. I've discussed a number of possible articles with the editor there, and it looks like we'll be focusing primarily on local/sustainable agriculture, and local foods in general. I'm all for it...my soapbox just got bigger. Once I have a couple of longer pieces to show off, I'll probably try to get a foot in the door at Saltscapes magazine (the premier regional mag, for those of you outside Atlantic Canada). I've also been giving my attention to the nuts and bolts of my business...analyzing last year's results, preparing for next year, laying the groundwork for future catering, and so on. It's not as exciting as the kitchen side of things, but it's all got to be done. In December I fulfilled a long-standing promise to myself... I spent 14 Christmases in retail, and I swore if I ever had my own business I would close over the holidays. I did just that, taking two weeks off to visit my kids in Edmonton (it's my slow season, remember). It was a great visit (sorry I didn't look you up, Merlin) and I came back rested and relaxed for my New Year's Eve function. I've been approached about participating in the Fundy Food Festival, coming up next month. I'll almost certainly get involved in the chef auction, but I'm still debating whether to have a table there. I've asked for some information about who else participates, what sort of crowd they get, and so on. If nothing else, it'll be a late opportunity to generate some business for my Valentine's Day. I'm still blogging at the Diningpick restaurant portal, as well. Here's the link to my January entry. I'll try to keep everybody up to date a little better, over the coming months. If all goes well, there'll be lots to report. Hopefully, my brain will be a bit less tired than it is tonight.

I love it...that's hilarious. I had a hard time learning to let my kids get involved in the kitchen. Before I became a cook, my kitchen was *my* domain, and others intruded at their peril. Especially to "help." When my kids got to the age of wanting to get involved, though, I decided I had to get over my big bad self. I wanted my kids to be at home in the kitchen as much as I am, and that meant encouraging and nurturing their interest in food. My daughter is now 14, and wants to follow in my professional footsteps (an ambition I'm decidedly ambivalent about, but we'll see). My son has his sights set on a more-lucrative career, but was the envy of his high school class by reason of his knife skills. It's been Winter Wonderland here in New Brunswick, as well. Old-timers hereabouts are debating exactly how long it's been since we got this much snow, this early, but it's got to be at least 25-30 years. I have someone arriving from California in a little while, and she's been cringing my accounts of -24C and snow up nearly to my hips.

I lived in Vancouver for most of the 80's, and I loved Barber's restaurant reviews. The Urban Peasant was the first cooking show I made a real point of watching...to this day, I think, about the only one I sought out consistently. He was entertaining and knowledgeable, and his food made sense to me. It was simple, it was quick, it was easy, and he used what was on hand. To the end of my days, I will remember his beaming face explaining that you could deglaze the pan for such-and-such a dish with wine, or cider, or apple juice, "...but today we're going to use water, because that's what we've got." I can imitate his "...that's what we've got" very well indeed; it was a great catchphrase of his that I adopted in fun. Barber inspired me to be more adventurous and improvisational in the kitchen; on some levels perhaps he set me on the course that ended in me becoming chef of my own restaurant. Be that as it may, I will always be indebted to him, and I will always remember him fondly. I can't help feeling happy for him, though, in one respect. So many people die miserably, in pain or fear: James died peacefully at his kitchen table; a cookbook in front of him, a pot of chicken soup simmering on the stove, and his longtime love somewhere not far away. I should be so lucky, when my time comes.

Preach it, Brother Richard! I use as much as I can at my restaurant - local organic fingerlings at $4/lb, not wholesale russets at $4 for 20lb, for example - but it all comes down to the shoppers in the markets. I've been writing a column in the major local daily, profiling local growers and producers (mainly, but not exclusively organic) and letting readers know where to buy their product. Perhaps that's an option that others here could explore...most community newspapers, in particular, are in chronic need of content.

Oh, and for what it's worth... having read "Making of a Chef" and "Soul of a Chef," I would give any of Ruhlman's books a place in my queue. He's earned that from me, just as I'll watch any movie the Coen brothers put out. I don't always like them, but even their failures are more interesting than most others. I read a great many food-related books. Some have been more valuable than others, but even one nugget, or one train of thought that might not otherwise have occurred to me, makes even the tedious ones worthwhile. And Michael's are never tedious.

I have the luxury of ordering veal bones from a wholesaler, now, but in the past it was always a struggle. Supermarkets here in Canada stock very little veal; the odd chop or piece of stew meat is about it. I *think* I've seen veal breast once, but I wouldn't swear to it. To make demi for myself, while in cooking school, I schmoozed the meat manager for months. I got one shinbone every week, and it took me a couple of months to accumulate enought to make my stock. Perhaps if I"d lived in cities with more "gourmet" markets, it wouldn't have been such an issue.

The menu that was up when you last saw my site was actually intended as a stopgap...something to get me started, which I would change once the season got underway. Yeah, right. Somehow, I was unable to fit menu changes into my 110-120hr/week schedule (go figure). Live and learn...I'll go into my next peak season with a couple of menu changes already plotted out and ready to roll as required. Ingredients are pretty good, for the most part. My biggest issue has been with the wine list: every time I found something I liked on ANBL's product list, it would be discontinued or go out of stock. Eventually I learned to check how much inventory they had before adding anything to my list. There are always judgement calls to make, as the year progresses. A signature ingredient here, for example, is fiddleheads. Unfortunately, they come and go very quickly just before the tourism season starts. So, I bought 150lbs of the little darlings, and blanched them and froze them. They were on my plates all summer, and provided aesthetic value as well as a little taste of a local specialty (one lady made my week by asking me how I got the asparagus to curl up like that). Now, I was ambivalent about that, because it ran counter to seasonality. Ultimately, though, we've always taken the seasonal items and preserved them however we could for later; so serving my frozen fiddleheads all summer was a compromise I was prepared to make. With the arrival of fall, though, I pulled them (I'll use up my last pound or two in quiche or soup or something, or maybe just eat them myself...). I couldn't see serving the quintessential spring ingredient once the leaves have turned. My top-selling entree over the peak season was local halibut, a truly exceptional product. Unfortunately, the fishermen have quotas to observe, and most of them cannot take any more halibut until the new year. That meant a mandatory change, so I dropped the halibut (saved the last piece for myself, mind you) and switched to sturgeon. The sturgeon is farmed about 25 minutes away (the breeding stock were taken from the Saint John river, which has the last healthy wild population of Atlantic sturgeon), and it's uncommon enough to attract some attention and (I hope) some good sales. Sturgeon is kind of fun to work with: the flavour is very delicate, so you can go with subtle preparations; but the texture is very firm and meaty, so you can play off that and go bold. In my case I give it a dry spice rub and cook it in a cast-iron grille pan, and then serve it on saffron rice with a sauce that's basically a "localized" version of pipian (cut back on the heat, and use local organic yellow tomatoes instead of tomatillos). I'm pretty much at the end of local produce for the year, except for the old-school long storage vegetables like carrots, cabbage, and rutabagas. Right now I'm using a medley of large-diced veg (carrots, parsnips, rutabagas, beets, and sweet potatoes) as my standard side/garnish. I also have braised locally-grown purple cabbage on the wild boar dish (along with local berries, honey, and cider), and lots of other local meats and fish. So, to answer your question...yes, I can still get ingredients. They're just not the same ingredients.

My new cold-weather menu is up, now. Click the link in my sig to view... Also, my blog on Diningpick.com.

Speaking from my personal experience, it's almost impossible to make it through culinary school as a vegetarian, much less a vegan. As a matter of fact, I left behind my vegetarianism on the day I started culinary school. Most vegetarians who want to go to culinary school end up doing a pastry program, and I befriended several vegetarian pastry students while I was in the culinary program at my alma mater. (As a recent ex-vegetarian, I was sensitive to making sure they had good food choices whenever we were feeding the pastry folks.) The reason why my particular program would have been difficult to pass as a vegetarian or a vegan? Even if you don't taste foods, you're going to be graded on how they taste. Some people claim they can work wonders with animal foods without ever sampling them (Indian chef Suvir Saran is in this camp), but I personally find this hard to get my brain around. Also, the pressure on a vegetarian or vegan culinary student would be relentless to say the least--there is very little tolerance for people with these diets in most culinary schools. Finally, the vegetarian or vegan student would be expected to prepare animal foods just like everybody else--and they certainly couldn't pass any respectable program without doing so. (Most of the vegetarians and vegans I've known don't exactly feel like grilling a steak or trussing a chicken when they're in the kitchen.) Could a vegetarian or vegan student make it by working through the restaurant world to earn their stripes? Good luck. As we've discussed on this thread, there aren't exactly great vegan restaurants in every town training the next generation of vegan chefs. And if you think the attitude in culinary schools is anti-vegan, wait till you see what most restaurant cooks and chefs think of people who make those dietary choices. As I reflect on this question, I think lack of training may be a significant reason for the lack of great vegan restaurant food. ← It's an interesting situation, to be sure. I had a few vegetarians in my group, and while they were not exactly singled out it could not have been easy for them. Here's the thing: no matter what your personal dietary choices, chances are that most culinary grads will be cooking for omnivores. That means preparing non-vegetarian food, and that means needing to taste what you cook. It is possible for a gifted cook to work "by touch" without tasting (a Jewish classmate turned out the best Portuguese pork-and-clam stew in our group, without sticking a spoon in it once), but it's still doing things the hard way. I have no particular axe to grind on this issue, but I am a big believer in tasting what you cook. Ultimately, I guess everybody needs to make their own decisions. I have no issue cooking vegan for anyone who comes through my restaurant...in fact, next summer (peak season) I plan to have at least one dish in every course that is vegan-friendly. To those who aren't looking for it, they'll just be lighter dishes; to the vegan it'll be "Hey, I can order right from the menu!"

I will add my voice to the chorus of approval for Claudia Roden's books. All three of those mentioned are great reads, and I think Roden has to be considered the "gold standard" within the field. I would also recommend Anissa Helou (Lebanese), Nevin Halici (Turkish), and Najmieh Batmanglij (Persian). If you want to follow the Turkish and Persian influences farther afield, Anya von Bremzen's "Please to the Table" has a lot of Central Asian recipes in it. Pastryelf, if you ever get up to New Brunswick let me know and we'll get together and binge out on Middle Eastern food.

The discrepancy between want and need is always interesting to explore, isn't it? In my restaurant, I use three knives constantly: a chef's knife, a short boning knife, and a good paring knife. These account for at least 90% of my usage. I have a serrated slicer, a long skinny flexible "salmon knife" for gravlax, and numerous other special--purpose items, but that's all I really use most of the time. I also picked up a couple of cheap-ass Cuisinart santokus, just to have something for my part-timers to use and so that I'd have something to use at home (I live on-site, and cook most of my meals in the restaurant). At home it's the cheap santoku, a paring knife, and my dirt-cheap Chinese cleaver most of the time. I'm not a knife snob, the bulk of my kit is inexpensive Victorinox knives with the occasional yellow-handle Henckel. I sometimes think it would be nice to have a collection of truly superior knives (I like the look and feel of Mac, and everybody I know who has one loves it), but the ones I've got get the job done. That's all I ask.

I don't know how often I'll be able to update (lots on my plate, doncha know) but I'm blogging on NB restaurant portal Diningpick.com, so you may want to check there periodically. The site is down tonight, but I'll post a link when it's back up. Here's a link to my most recent column, for those who're interested... October 13, 2007

I'd often thought about dropping you a PM while I was in Edmonton, but it never seemed to be when I was around a computer. Funny how that works, isn't it? I'll be back in town over Christmas to visit with the ex and kids, so perhaps we'll find opportunity to say hello while I'm there.

Ordinarily I spend a lot of my time online, both for social reasons and because I use eGullet and a few other destinations as significant professional-development tools. This summer I've been absent in a big way, because of opening my restaurant. That whole 16 hrs/7 days thing cuts into one's online presence drastically...not to mention the entertainment of bullying my wireless card into working with Linux. So, now that things are easing a bit, I wanted to take a few minutes to update everybody on how things have been going. Some of you have been inquiring, or have passed along words of encouragement by PM or e-mail; thank you for thinking of me. My goal was to target the casual end of the fine-dining spectrum: quality dishes, but plated simply and with nice, clean flavours. I'm not one for a great deal of garnish or embellishment to begin with (some would find my platings rather Spartan), and my scenario did not permit of anything too elaborate anyway. I work in a very limited kitchen indeed (two domestic electric ranges, a domestic dishwasher, microwave... no broiler, no fryer, no walk-in), and my kitchen help has been minimal. Working up a solid menu around these limitations was an interesting challenge. I settled on two soups, two salads, six entrees, and four desserts. I thought that a tightly-focused menu was really necessary in my situation, and that I'd be better doing a few things well than several things in a less-controlled manner. Half of my entrees featured local seafood, and the other three covered the necessary beef/pork/chicken standards. The first menu was designed to be safe and conservative, the idea being that once I'd had time to get a feel for the kitchen and find more local suppliers, I'd change it for something more interesting. In practice, once the season hit, I was just too damned busy to create a new menu, so I'm only getting to that now. I was really surprised at the range of products available to me locally. I'd known that New Brunswick was something of an agricultural powerhouse, but traditionally that had been built around just a few products...potatoes, apples, dairy products, and so on. I was surprised to find caviar and foie gras being produced locally, just to pick a couple of noteworthy examples. There's artisanal pork, beef, lamb, and wild boar available nearby (all of them will be on my next menu in one way or another), and I've found numerous organic growers, raw-milk cheeses, and several other interesting things. This unexpected bounty got me to thinking. For some time I'd felt that I could write effectively about food, given a suitable forum. So, having noted a lack of local food writing in the major provincial daily, I hit them up with the idea of a column profiling local food producers. My timing was perfect, since they were just revamping that section of the paper, and we arrived at an agreement very quickly. I've been writing the column now since mid-August, and have done a couple of other articles for them as well. I see it as a win/win/win situation: the paper gets local content; the local growers and producers get exposed to a large number of potential customers; and of course I get to raise my profile much more quickly than I otherwise could have done. That last is important to me. I'm new to the area, and I have no personal contacts here beyond eGullet's own Reverendtmac. I'm confident that, over time, I can build a solid clientele from word of mouth, but that's a slow process. So, I'm looking to promote myself into a degree of local recognition by being an unabashed media whore. I've gotten involved with a local restaurant portal called Diningpick (www.diningpick.com), and through them have done a couple of segments for local cable TV. Over the offseason I'll be looking for opportunities to do more TV, perhaps some radio, whatever I can find. I think that my ability to communicate is the primary non-culinary skill I bring to the table, so I'm going to exploit it as much as I can. Five years from now I don't expect to be the best chef in the area (there are some very skilled people working around here), but I do intend to be the best-known. It's not as lofty a goal, but rather more pragmatic from the business perspective. Aside from the ridiculous hours, and the consequent wear and tear on my joints, it was a pretty good summer. Feedback from the Inn's guests and my outside diners (for those who haven't been following the story, my restaurant is located within a charming country inn outside Saint John, New Brunswick) has been very favourable. The most common theme, expressed in various accents and with varying degrees of tact, has been “I really didn't expect to see food like this out here in the middle of nowhere...” Many of the guests have told me that the best meal of their vacation was at my place, which is always gratifying. I'm not, to my mind, in the same league as the region's top handful of chefs. I do think I can make a case for being fairly in the second echelon. Over the next year I'm going to try to eat at as many top restaurants as I can, in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. After that I'll have a better picture of where I fit in, and of course it's also professional development. I don't think of it as scoping out the competition: to me the other chefs in the area are colleagues; and the stronger each of us is, the better off we will all be. One of my longer-term goals is to establish a network of like-minded chefs and try to put the region on the map as a destination for gastro-tourism. We have some excellent chefs in the Maritimes, great local ingredients, a burgeoning wine scene, a couple of distilleries, and some world-class microbreweries. All that's missing is the will and some organization... and I've brought the will. On a related note, if any of you are flying Continental this month you'll see a little write-up on the Mariner's Inn in a sidebar of their in-flight magazine. That's the inn where I'm located. One of the editors was here this spring, and was delighted with the whole package. Not a bad little piece of free advertising, I think. Now that the peak season is sputtering to a halt, I'm planning a number of initiatives to keep busy during the slow months. I'll be doing cooking classes, both for private individuals and for companies; one of the area's few sit-down (non-buffet) Sunday brunches; and I'll be cultivating the local business community to establish myself as a place for retreats, lunches, and company functions. What with one thing and another, I'm pretty confident that I can pay the bills through the cold months. If any fellow eGulletters are going to be in the vicinity during the year, by all means drop me a line by PM and let me know. So far only ReverendTmac and his very pretty girlfriend have been here to see me (they live nearby in Saint John), but I'm always up for visitors. More later, as developments warrant... -Fred

Both approaches to the field are valid, from what I've seen. I have talked to other chefs about this, and they've all had good and bad experiences with both field-trained and formally-trained cooks. Those who've learned hands-on will often (not all the time, and not as a broad generalization) have cooler heads when things are going to hell all around them. Within their limitations, they will have tremendous ability to execute under pressure. Those who've gone the culinary route will, in general, have a broader base to build on: they've been shown the basics (and perhaps some advanced skills) in a well-planned and well-rounded curriculum. When they do come to the kitchen, of course, there's always that period of sheer panic while adjusting to doing everything at full speed, under extreme pressure, and not always by the book. In short, not every field-taught cook is a lusus naturae, and not every culinary grad is a self-absorbed prima donna with a sense of entitlement. Both routes have strengths and weaknesses. Your own personal attitude, and your own personal work ethic, are what will make the difference for you. Here in Canada, cooking is a regulated trade, just like pipefitting or welding. It takes three years to become a certified journeyman, whether that be three years in the field or two years of school followed by a year in the field. These standards were developed by the industry in partnership with the government, so a year in the field and a year in school are de facto equivalents here.

That's one of my pet peeves. I truly detest getting a plate that's styled and ornamented to the nth degree, and tastes like nothing in particular. I may eat with my eyes first, as they say, but I eat with my mouth most.

I have found that, oddly enough, weaker coffee tends to give me "gut-rot," while stronger coffee does not. I can handle a cup from my moka pot, or a cup of drip coffee made my way (strong!!!) with no problems, but I can't drink coffee from most restaurants or coffee shops until midday. Espresso is fine, too...it's just mediocre, conventional coffee (you know, the kind that's everywhere) that gets my stomach upset. I guess that works out okay, come to think of it.

My fish supplier here sends along racks and heads periodically, along with my regular order, for stock-making. The 45 minutes of simmering that are necessary to make fish stock leave large heads nicely falling-apart soft, but still flavourful. I'll usually pick out 2-3 good ones for my after work snack. The cheeks and tongues, of course, I'll have already "liberated" and panfried as my before work snack...

A basic rule of thumb is that if fresh (cake) yeast = 100%, then active dry yeast = 50% and quick-rise yeast = 33%. By that reckoning, 7g of the quick-rise would correspond to 10g of the dry. Most recipes, in my opinion, call for too much yeast anyway...but that's just a personal preference thing. I'll generally halve the yeast and double the rising time, because it makes for better tasting bread.

At home I cook all the time in sock feet or bare feet, because my early training was that shoes came off at the door. Even today, if I'm entering someone's house and they say, "Oh, don't worry about it, just keep them on..." I am uneasy for the duration of my visit. At work, of course, I want the stoutest footwear I can get. Steel toe, steel shank, non-skid soles, the works. I've had boiling water on my feet, deep-fry fat (that one still got me pretty good...some got onto my ankles), I've dropped knives on my toes (or had other people do it for me), and - the best of all - had a deliver driver drop a pallet of produce on my foot as I was explaining to him that the pallet jack could not come onto the elevator. Good times.

My prep cook in Edmonton took up smoking for that very reason, at age 15. Smokers got to go slack off for 5-10 minutes every couple of hours, and non-smokers didn't...so he started lighting up. Me, I'd just spend several minutes "looking for an elusive ingredient" in the walk-in...

Could be a regional thing. Most of Italy calls air dried cod stoccafisso (stockfish), but in Veneto it is called "baccalà", which is what the rest of the country calls salt cod. ← Stockfish is dried, but not salted. Baccala is both salted and air-dried. See Kurlansky's Salt or Cod. The Norse originally traded in stockfish, but later lost major marketshare to the more durable salted product. I can remember helping my grandfather in Newfoundland turn the cod on his flakes, back when I was a wee critter. I remember thinking that they were the strangest thing I'd ever seen (I was young).

Brining some of the cod briefly is also an option, when you want a simple preparation. We used to leave fillets in a light brine for just an hour or so, along with some cracked peppercorns (I suppose you could do a reduction of some sort to add extra flavours to the brine, if you wished). This has the dual effect of lightly seasoning the cod, and also helping to firm up the flesh. Then you can just poach in court-bouillon or something, and you're good to go. Keller, being the off-kilter individual that he is, salts his own for making brandade, but that seems like a lot of work to me.