chromedome

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.

"Crazy" is perhaps not the best way to put it. "Impractical" would fit, perhaps, or something along those lines. It's not a pragmatic choice for most people, that's for sure. Having gone into cooking at 40, I can certainly tell you you're not too old! Practical questions...can you budget around the ramifications of losing something like 40% of your income? Can your existing relationships work around the loss of about 90% of your free time? How many 16-18 hour days of shit and abuse will you tolerate before you say "To hell with this" (what's the UK version..."sod this for a lark"?)? Because many chefs will deliberately serve you an extra-large portion of Shit and Abuse with all the trimmings, just to determine how serious you are. Having said that, I'm still enjoying myself, and you may too. But it's really, really hard work.

so what do you call us that work both lunch/ dinner? ← Tired.

Ooooh...a redheaded slave who can cook...shame you live so far away...

Wow, a blog from my hometown! What a treat! At least I'm in the area, now (New Brunswick) so I'm not as homesick as I might otherwise be. Two of the vendors in your Brewery Market shots are among my very favourites: "That Dutchman" (used to be "That Damn Dutchman," but he toned it down) makes raw-milk Gouda and Edam cheeses...the real thing. Not to be missed, but I'd maybe hold off a couple of years before I fed it to the kids. Just in case. The bakery, Boulangerie la Vendeenne (sp?) is absolutely amazing. The owner is a classically-trained boulanger from France, and the breads there are some of the best I've ever had. I wouldn't panic if Pete isn't around the store for a little while. He's a pretty hands-on guy, right enough, but he also travels a lot. And yes, Prasantrin, he's a real person...exactly the person you see on TV, in fact. Not one of those guys who puts on a face for the camera. You could walk into his store any day, pick an item, and say to Pete "Tell me about this one" and get the full-tilt rave, just like on TV. I took my kids in there one day, when they were small (8 and 4, maybe?) and he cheerfully took them on the big tour all around the store. Very personable guy, with twice the energy of most people twenty years younger.

Crispness is a factor of sugar content, for the most part. Cutting back the sugar would have an impact. Creaming the fat for longer will help the cookies spread, as it introduces extra air into the cookie dough. For an entirely different approach to oatmeal cookies, "whizz" your oatmeal to flour in a food processor or coffee grinder. Use all or mostly oat flour in your favourite shortbread recipe. Goooood cookies...

...and perhaps Qualifirst, also out of Toronto. Too tired to plough through their catalogue right now, but I'm pretty sure I saw purees there.

As with so many other things, I like it and don't give a rat's ass if it's healthy or not. Having said that (again, like so many other things) I don't eat it often enough to be an issue.

In Canada, they're "beaver tails:" oblong pieces of thin bready dough, deep-fried and dusted with sugar. Some places offer maple syrup or applesauce, but more usually it's sugar or cinnamon sugar.

Wow, hydrogenated coconut oil...I can feel my arteries hardening, just typing the words! I'll check around, anyway, and see what I can find. Chances are, if it's available in Canada we can find a way to get you some...even in Newfoundland (haven't been back since '82, so I'm long overdue...).

Wow! Sounds exciting but exhausting. What kind of food are you thinking of doing? Hope everything goes smoothly. ← Evenings will be aimed at the casual end of the fine-dining spectrum. I have fresh fish coming from the waters outside my dining room window (one fishing wharf about 2km down the road, another about 8km); local producers for duck & foie gras/boar/organic beef/organic pork/heirloom veggies/sturgeon & caviar, etc etc. As I build momentum and get established, my plan is to feature a higher percentage of local product; for now the cool stuff gets to be the focus of the plate while I keep my costs in line with staples from Sysco and their ilk. Gotta make a buck or I don't get to keep doing it, right? Sunday brunches will be "nice," but not as upscale. Quiches, omelets made to order, that sort of thing. I'm going to do an Eggs Benny variation with duck prosciutto and Maltaise sauce, maybe another with house-made gravlax and some of the local caviar. Intended to be accessible to the blue-collar crowd as well as my target evening market...a way to get people in the door without the same $ commitment. During tourist season I'll also be doing cheap lunch (soup, salad, sandwich) for drive-up business as well as packed picnic lunches for the Inn's guests.