chromedome

I do a lot of haddock at my diner on the east coast of Canada. I generally season the fish before dipping it, rather than seasoning the batter. That works for me, FWIW.

So...how did you make out?

I haven't been in for a while, and I guess I missed this one while it was live. Did you ever get down my way, Violetfox? FYI, for anyone passing this way...drop me a PM or identify yourself as an eGullet member when you make your reservation, and I'll (a) make a point of being here; and (b) come on out for a chat.

That's the one I got for Christmas from my fiancee. I love this woman. I also got McGee for my birthday, and have picked up several others at Value Village and suchlike outlets. Best bargain-shop acquisitions were Anita Stewart's Canada, New York Times Cookbook, and Alford and Duguid's Home Baking. Total outlay? $15 CDN. God, how I love cheap books. Since my last post, I reckon 23 new ones. I've also opened two restaurants, so I'm damned if I know when I'll have time to read them.

FWIW, Peter, the Newfoundland side of my family does in fact pronounce it "bruise." Of course, each part of Newfoundland is somewhat different, too. Purity's "Hard bread" (not the "sweet bread") is the standard brewis across the Rock, as far as I'm aware. You should find it in Superstore or Sobey's in the seafood section, usually merchandised near the lobster tank. The fish would traditionally be salt cod, aka baccalhao etc. The fish is soaked and then simmered; the brewis is soaked until soft and then gently heated in the same water. Drain both, and serve with scrunchions. Onions in one or another form are ubiquitous, too...fried, raw, or sometimes marinated in a bit of vinegar. Leftover brewis would become dessert with a drizzle of molasses. Of course, brewis was "back-up" food. It was what you fell back on if your potatoes weren't enough to carry you through until spring.

Well, I played around a bit on the weekend. I made up three batters on the basic flour/water model: one consisting of just flour, water, and leavening; one with a percentage of cornstarch; and one with a percentage of rice flour. I also had separate bowls of flour and cornstarch for dredging, just in case that was a factor. I started out with baking soda and vinegar as the leavening, because in my previous experiments I'd found that this combination (or soda and lemon juice) eliminated the need for any extra ingredients to provide browning. I can certainly affirm that leavening is one of the most important factors: when insufficiently leavened, the batter gives a meager and leathery coating. Initially I tasted soda in the finished product, and I ended up at a ratio of roughly 3.5:1 (vinegar/soda). This left me with no discernible flavour of soda or vinegar, but was still inadequate. Rather than pursuing this any further, since the browning effect was already adequate, I added baking powder incrementally until I got the degree of leavening I was looking for. The batter made with all flour was definitely the best-tasting. The one made with cornstarch had a curious "non-flavour" in comparison, while the one with rice flour was fine but a bit blander than the one with all flour...nothing additional seasoning wouldn't fix. Initially, I used slightly over 20% of the alternate starches in each batch. I did a second version of the experiment, increasing the alternate starches to 33%. This time, the cornstarch batter was distinctly the loser in flavour. The rice flour batter was again slightly bland, and the all-flour batter was distinctly superior. As for texture, there was little to choose between them. All three, once the leavening was sorted out, provided perfectly acceptable crispness. None of them held especially well, though, with the crispness fading rapidly after about two minutes. All in all, I was not especially happy with any of them. At the last minute, in a spirit of whimsy, I made up a batch of my existing batter from the commercial mix, but with beer as the liquid rather than water. As is often the case, my "just for shits and giggles" experiment turned out to be clearly the best of the bunch. The batter browned to a richer gold than usual, and not only was the batter crisper than before but it also remained that way for several minutes. I'm very happy to have stumbled onto a significant improvement in my batter, but I'm still somewhat galled at having to use the commercial product. It definitely rubs me the wrong way. I'm going to play around some more, now that beer is back on my radar. I'll also experiment a bit with corn flour, which I see as an ingredient in the commercial mixes. I will not be re-introducing egg as a factor, since I've found in the past that it makes a cakier, fritter-like batter that's not at all what I'm looking for at the moment. Further reports as warranted...

Dogfish is not readily available where I am, while haddock is cheap and plentiful. More to the point, it's what's expected by my clientele...therefore, it's what I give them. I generally pay around $5/lb CDN (plus or minus a bit), which is about $3.70 USD. I've looked at several recipes that have the whipped egg whites (Jamie Oliver's, for instance) but I wish to avoid them because of the extra time involved. I do pretty much all things back-of-house myself, and after working 100hr weeks all summer at my other resto I'm not keen to do so all winter as well. Also, batters with the whipped egg whites won't hold their air very well over a four-hour lunchtime service. I could make smaller batches more often, but again that's taking time away from all the other things I need to be doing. Not to be a sourpuss or unduly negative, you understand. I just have some sharp constraints to work within. If this was easy, I wouldn't have needed the collective wisdom of the mighty Gullet, right? Have not had time to experiment today, but we'll see what the weekend brings.

Cod is closely related to haddock, but cooks differently. The flesh is firmer and has less moisture. Haddock is in some ways less than ideal, but it is the standard fish-and-chips fish in my area and is very cost-effective. My stopgap solution of commercial batter is not a bad one, it's just unsatisfying to me intellectually. I have a perfectly acceptable product, but dammit I don't want to settle for "perfectly acceptable"! The closest I've come was with thin flour-and-water batters that had varying degrees of chemical leavening. The best was with baking soda and lemon juice or vinegar, but getting the proportions just right was maddening (and was costing me a lot of fish). I have no issue with breaded haddock, but to my mind it works best when pan-fried rather than deep-fried. Panko I wouldn't use because I'm in a very conservative area: I've had people send fish back on occasion because it wasn't cooked to dryness. For the same reason, Helen, I'd probably not use your kara-age suggestion. Not at this location, anyway. Thank you all for your suggestions. I'll experiment with several of them, and report back. In the meantime, if anyone else has anything to offer, by all means let me know.

I don't find that the marrow adds a whole lot of flavour to my stock, but I still try to not eat more than half. The rest goes into the pot. Rather than all bones, I like to use a fair portion of sliced bone-in shank: say at least one part shank to two parts bones. I favour marrow bones and knuckles, given my druthers. If you want to be really frugal, fish out the shanks after they've simmered to tenderness but before they've yielded up all their flavour. They make good soup or stew, if you don't mind cutting out some of the bigger chunks of gristle (I put those back into the stock pot, of course). I don't use tomato paste, because I don't like the flavour it gives my stock and I can do just fine without the colour if the bones and mirepoix are roasted adequately.

When we recently opened a second restaurant, we knew that fish & chips would be a major part of our stock-in-trade. We're in a fishing area, for one thing, and the east-coast fish fry is a strong tradition here. Also, it's what the tourists expect (come summer). My fiancee had a reliable beer batter she'd used for years on onion rings and (her personal choice for battered fish) smoked salmon. We thought we were good to go, until we tried it on haddock. The only adequate description of the result is...blecch. The batter didn't crisp up or colour properly, and was doughy on the inside. We pounded our way through hundreds of recipes in books and on the 'net, and were unable to come up with something that satisfied us. The beer batters were all much of a sameness, involving roughly equal portions of beer and flour by volume, with various other additives more or less on the whim of the individual. None of them worked worth a hoot. I also looked at several non-beer batters, some of which came close but failed us in one way or another: either not colouring enough, being too doughy, not crisping, not staying crisp for more than a few seconds after cooking... you name it. What I'm looking for is a thin batter that puffs nicely, colours to a nice golden-brown, and remains crisp for some minutes after the fish comes out of the fat. The ideal recipe would not involve an unreasonable number of steps or ingredients, nor be procedurally finicky, since this will be used in a production kitchen (in my case, anyway). Ultimately, failing to find a suitable recipe in the limited time I had available, I went with a commercial product. Two, actually, since we found that a blend of the two was better than either of them in isolation. My personal gold standard is the fish and chips at the Saint John Alehouse, which is far and away the best I've had in years. I now have a nasty case of batter envy. I wonder how much hooch I'd have to pour into Chef Jesse to get his recipe?

Some of you may well have wondered if the 'Dome was still around anymore. Well, I haven't been on the site much in my copious free time, but I'm still kicking. My second summer was easier than the first. That was partly because of having some experience to draw on, and partly because I had a practicum student from the local community college to help out. He's from China, and was very diligent and reliable...an absolute godsend. I got to meet another eGulleter - Opus came for sturgeon on his way through from North Dakota - and generally managed to keep myself busy and out of trouble. I shortened my weeks down to 100 hours by bringing in a commercial dishwasher. That may sound like a hellacious work week, and it is, but it's a serious improvement over last year's 120 hours. Those last couple of hours a day are the ones that really grind you down, trust me on that. Tourism was down badly in my area this past summer. There has traditionally been a falling-off during presidential election years, so that was part of it. Then of course there was the exchange rate and the cost of gas, so what with one thing and another it was something of a "perfect storm." We held our own at my location, though, managing to maintain something very close to last year's numbers despite the downturn. The problem, of course, was what to do about the off-season. There is certainly winter business to be had in our area, but it's going to be a long slow process without significant amounts of cash to throw into promotional efforts (and just for the record, I am without significant amounts of cash). So, rather than remain open like last year, bleeding money and working the phones, we decided that we'd close for the season. The initial strategy was to seek a part-time position for a couple days of the week, while continuing to hustle catering gigs the rest of the time. In the event, though, a more interesting alternative came to the surface. We've opened a second restaurant. Not far away from my original location, there was a small diner in one of the gas stations. It had closed down in August, because the woman who used to run it decided she was getting too old for the daily grind. We were able to work out an arrangement with the owner of the gas station/convenience store, and opened up as Harbour Diner on November 3rd. It's very close to the big generating station at Point Lepreau, which is currently being refurbished, which means that thousands of contractors drive by us every day. I think that should provide enough business to keep us going until we're financially solid. It's an unpretentious little place, with just eight tables and twenty-five seats, but we do a pretty good trade out of there. We crossed our break-even point (speaking in terms of daily sales) by the third day, and have been on the black side of the ledger ever since. We're only turning the most tenuous of net profits, but by God we're in the black in our first month and how many restaurants can say that? It's a short menu. We do fish and chips, some damned good burgers, hand-cut fries, hot sandwiches...the basic necessities. We're still using local products where we can, even here: our potatoes, onions, carrots, and beef are all local, and our seafood comes from local suppliers. We're in a fishing area, so fishermen are a big part of our clientele as well. We also serve breakfast, which I think will eventually be a good line of business once the workers at the generating station figure out that we're open by 0600. These guys work twelve hour shifts, so our takeaway breakfast sandwich is a monster: three eggs, "Texas Toast," and six strips of bacon. We also have my elegantly-named "Big Honkin' Breakfast," which has two eggs, Texas toast, a quarter-pound each of fresh country sausage and sliced ham, four strips of bacon, a piece of French toast, and a big mound of country-fried potatoes. It's been popular, although at least once a week it will vanquish an ambitious first-timer. It's been fun doing the simpler food. We came in with a pretty straightforward philosophy: give people food they already know they like, but do it better or bigger than they expect at the price. So far it seems to be working. The plan is to have one or two cooks hired and trained before spring, so that I can continue giving my attention to the Mariner's Table when the season rolls around again. Last summer's practicum student will be coming back again as my de facto sous-chef, which will be a boon, and I should have both a kitchen student and a server from the community college this coming year. I'm hoping to trim my work week by another twenty hours, if all goes well, by the simple expedient of having people available to delegate to. We'll see how that works out in practice.

For forward planning...where can I find a source of good statistics (ideally, for free) for industry averages? I'd like to see some ranges based on type of restaurant and type of venue (ie strip mall, industrial park, standalone). Poking about online, I've found that 6-8% of gross revenues is what's most commonly mentioned. In the case of a restaurant located within another establishment - ie, a theme park or hotel - this can go into the range of 8-15% of gross, based on the assumption that the other establishment provides a consistent stream of backsides in seats. Feedback, anyone? Specific examples from personal experience may be offered up by PM, rather than aired out here in public. Thanks, -'Dome

It'd be great to be there and work with you and Chris. Sometime before the season gets underway, I really have to get down for a proper day's visit.

As I've mentioned in other threads, I feel that the Maritimes could and should become a destination for gastronomic tourism. One piece of groundwork I'm laying right now is to locate as many existing events as possible, and try to get some networking/cross-promotion efforts in place. If anyone knows of existing festivals or events across Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and PEI, will you please post them in this thread? I already have the two I'm involved with, the Fundy Food Festival and Indulge NB, but am interested in anything else that's going on. Thanks!

Well, the Fundy Food Festival was fun, if not nearly the success I was hoping for financially. There was snow on the day, which cut down on the turnout, and my table was directly across from the dais where the student cooking competition was held...so during the busiest hour of the day, you couldn't come near me because of the crowds watching the kids play Iron Chef. I got auctioned off for $250, which was the lowest price of the day. I'm not upset, though, since all of the other chefs involved have been around the area for a lot longer and have solid reputations. Also, the people who bought my services told me that their boss had sent them in with firm instructions that they were to bid on me, specifically. That's always a boost for the ego. I've been asked to participate in another festival, "Indulge NB", this fall in nearby St Andrew's. I've been brainstorming a bit with the organizer, because this ties into one of my longer-term ambitions. As I've mentioned before, I want to pull together as many local chefs/producers/events as I can, to turn this whole region into the gastro-tourism destination that I think it can and should be. On that head, I'm in search of some advisors to help me make connections, decisions, etc. I'm going to start a couple of new threads for that specific purpose, but if anyone reading this has some connection/interest there, I'd like to hear from you in a PM. I'm looking for those who have been active participants in gastro-tourism (ie, have planned vacations around specific events/regions), or have promoted events, or are in the travel business and look for festival/tour opportunities. I will not be able to respond to any PMs for a couple of days (I'm leaving for a funeral in Nova Scotia in the morning) but will be happy to hear from anyone with any constructive input for me.

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.