chromedome

Welcome to Edmonton! I am located just off the downtown of the city, conveniently close to both of my jobs and to the city's one significant natural landmark, the North Saskatchewan river. The river was Edmonton's original raison d'etre; like most of our western capitals it began life as a Hudson Bay Company trading post. In the glory days of the fur trade, it was possible to ship furs by canoe from the modern-day Yukon territory all the way to Montreal with no portage longer than 10km (far enough, with the loads they carried!). Today the river is primarily a tourist attraction, playground, and occasionally the instigator of insurance claims for flooding. I will take you for a quick stroll through a part of the river valley within the next few days, as weather permits (the lengthy drought broke when we moved here two years ago, though I can't take credit for that...). During the appropriate season there are many berries to be gleaned there, and it's always a pleasant walk. Photos will be a bit late in coming. My digital is painfully old and low-end, and essentially only works in perfect lighting. To supplement it I've bought a simple film camera, but that of course involves processing and scanning time. I hope to start posting some pics by Thursday evening (Friday at the latest), so please bear with me. I am not nearly as active on the board as some of the recent bloggers, so I'll provide you with a bit of context. I am a career changer, 41, originally from Halifax Nova Scotia. A couple of years ago, in one of those epiphanal moments, I realized that I'd just drifted into sales when I was young and had coasted ever since. Verging on 40, I thought that...just maybe...it was time I gave some consideration to what I wanted to do when I grew up... The choice was fairly obvious. I've been a dedicated home cook and baker since I was an adolescent; and while I knew going in that the life of a professional cook is a hard one, I reasoned that at the end of the day if you're doing something you love for its own sake you're ahead of the game. So I went to school. I took my first year at the Nova Scotia Community College in Halifax (honours) and my second at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (honours). I have been working, since my arrival in Edmonton, at this this respected fine-dining restaurant; upon graduation from school I added a full-time job in this popular market/lunch spot. Last summer, while still fresh out of school, I was inspired to blog a typical work week, for the benefit of the insatiably curious. It seemed that there was a lot of interest in how foodservice jobs work in practice, and I thought it might be of interest to many among the community. And that's where it would have stayed, except that a few weeks ago SobaAddict in his role of Foodblog Czar asked for those who are bakers or pastrychefs to step forward. Since I run the instore bakery at my day job, I thought that perhaps I should volunteer. So, here's Chromedome II...the return of the career changer. A few points to clear up at the beginning: for one thing, this is a serious "pot luck" blog. I have one or two special things I'm hoping to squeeze in, but I don't know yet what shifts I'll be pulling over the weekend. That means real life, folks...on the home front you may see souffles or you may see mac and cheese. I promise you I eat better than Wendy ( ), but her work photos are a LOT more interesting than mine will be. Still and all, this is what it looks like. I cook for my family, and they get what I have the time and energy to make. So...we'll be looking at some shots from one job at least, possibly both; my baking at work and at home; my garden; and to the extent that it's pertinent, a few bits and pieces of the city. My budget (wife, two kids, two student loans, the highest utilities in the country, etc) does not permit of special ingredients or excursions to the city's restaurants, and my kitchen is at the opposite end of the envy-inducement scale from Daddy-A's starship bridge and Jackal's vintage AGA. It's a come-as-you-are foodblog! From the subtitle of this blog (and the tone of the teaser Soba posted on Jackal's blog), you may be wondering just how I'm feeling about my career choice. Well...I'm still enjoying myself, but it's most assuredly not for everyone. I'll elaborate further in the course of this next week, and naturally I'm more than happy to answer anyone's questions about that or any other food-related topic. For now, though, I'm going to bed. Tomorrow morning is sneaking up on me, and it's got a cudgel in its grubby little clutches...

My Larousse agrees with Julia...Bearnaise with tomato.

You go, girl! This has been an amazing journey from day one, and I've certainly enjoyed the ride (a lot more than you have at times, I'm sure...). I never doubted that you had the mental toughness to ride out the tribulations of the early days. So here you are, one year in, the object of fawning admiration from the local press; attention from a national publication; and an integral part of a neighbourhood's daily life. What more could you ask for? ...well, I mean...aside from skilled staff, cash flow, and a few days off...y'know... Happy anniversary from "Mrs. 'Dome" and I, and hopefully nothing else breaks for a little while...

Spraying water = huh? Once they're nicely golden, turn down the oven to about 200F and let them ride until they're nice and crisp. Pull one out, and listen to it...you should hear little "rice krispie" noices from a fully-dried out puff or eclair.

They're slowly increasing the quantities of eggs and tweaking proportions of sugar, etc. The Philly is much "chunkier" than the variety we used to use, which was softer and creamier in comparison and contained less in the way of stabilizers. Fortunately, these products come from the bakery at our south-side sister store, so it's not my headache except as stated above. If it affected my muffins, now, there'd be war...

That's interesting. My head office just standardized on Kraft for specific products, and we're now using the Philly cream cheese. Our bakers detest it; our cheesecakes and cream-cheese topped brownie needed substantial re-working. The cheesecakes have come pretty much together; they break more easily than they used to and don't taste like they should but they're more or less functioning. The brownie has been more problematic, the only way we can cut the damn' things anymore is to put the sheet in the freezer for a half-hour and then use a knife heated in boiling water. Even at that, chunks still break off the corners. <sigh> We get 50 biggish squares from a full sheet pan, and since the switch I write off anywhere up to 15 squares per sheet. It's killing me.

I've seen them used at school, and have a serious case of the gimmes. The temperature control is spectactular, and for sugar work in particular they are breathtakingly fast. I also like the no-ambient-heat aspect, since I detest the summer heat and because my wife nannies a pair of two-year-olds. Overall I'd prefer to have gas (I don't) but I'd want induction as well in my dream kitchen.

I just weigh the damned things... Seriously, though, the 45-55g range is about right. Just use your best judgement, and add a bit more flour if necessary. Or beat the eggs first so that they're pourable, and add slowly until you've got the right texture (the rest becomes part of breakfast, or eggwash on another product). Of course if you haven't made this particular recipe before, the "right" texture might be difficult to guess...

When I was still crawling, I used to filch the pickled onions out of the jars of mixed. Does that count? Oh, and I tried to eat a frog that made the mistake of taking a shortcut across my blanket. The first thing I can recall cooking for myself was a trout that I'd just caught in a brook near the house. I breaded and panfried it. I didn't know to use milk and flour as well, just went right to the crumbs, so that part didn't work so well, but it tasted damned good. By the time I was eight I could skin a rabbit with a jacknife (but I didn't cook the rabbit stew, that was Dad's job). In grade six, on of my homework assignments was to make a classic French dish from one of the recipes in our textbook. I made a caramel mousse and a salade Nicoise. I can still remember watching the caramel melt, and thinking how bizarre and wonderful it was.

I spend a whole hell of a lot of time on the 'web, checking out sites of every kind imaginable. I have to say, the complaints above are all hot buttons of mine, too; this site has a lot of the bells and whistles I detest. Having said that... DAMN!...Content covers a multitude of design sins (okay, sources of divergent opinion), and the content here is friggin' amazing. I plan on sending the link to several of my former classmates, and at least one of my current bakers (the boy's got ambitions...).

ROI=Return on Investment My former pastry instructor goes down every summer to take a master class from Notter. My impression is that this primarily what his classes are aimed at, established pros looking to push back the corners of their own personal "envelope." I guess that would get you to the same place eventually. Just a question of whether you want to get your upgrade all in one go, or on the "installment plan." And of course, you'd be wanting to answer the sort of questions chefette's been asking, just for your own satisfaction.

...and let's not forget Ben Heppner, the heldentenor's heldentenor. A real quandary for me, since I love his voice and singing but detest most of the German repertoire.

Kind of an odd one...I downloaded Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management from Project Gutenberg. It's not just a cookbook, there's a lot about dealing with servants and suchlike (a big part of my day, for sure....) but there are a ton of vintage recipes. I was amused to note that she even costed them out! For those who aren't familiar with it, this is one of the great Victorian best-sellers. Isabel Beeton wrote it when she was 22, and she died at 29 or thereabouts, but the book continued to sell in a great many editions through the second half of the nineteenth century. FWIW, Project Gutenburg also has a church cookbook from 1894 available for download. I might go back for that.

Uhhhh....yeah. Duh. One of my hot buttons, and I've vented here before about gloves once or twice. They're only cleaner than my hand when I take 'em out of the box. And that's assuming that some half-trained part-timer hasn't spilled half the box onto the floor, and put them all back in (I've caught that one happening a couple of times at different places). After that, they're *exactly* as clean as my hand, and for the same reason: that I've got the training and attitude to work in a clean and hygienic fashion. We've all been in chains where they issue one pair per staffer per shift...don't kid yourself.

Haggis is just blood pudding. Nothing special, lots of places have their own version. A good stout, a haggis, some neeps and taties...nothing wrong with that. I dunno about fur seal, but harp seal is fair-to-middlin'. I'm not as keen on flipper pie as the old-timers, and I'll confess the meat is dark and gamey (I still like it), but the liver is absolutely wonderful. Far and away the best part of the seal. Haven't had that in years, it's just about impossible to get outside of Newfoundland.

I don't know anyone who's acquired a taste for Marmite or Vegemite as an adult, having grown up without exposure to it. But that's an easy one. Coming from the east coast, I'd say that the glory of fish 'n' brewis eludes most "come from aways." Salt cod, poached hardtack, rendered pork fat, and maybe some raw onion and a drizzle of vinegar. Cod cheeks and tongues won't usually have outsiders slavering, either. Present company probably excepted.

I actually got a whole long weekend, which never happens. Neither job needed me for the whole three days. My big plan for the weekend? Sleep. Lots. Yesterday I did barbecue, after a fashion. I've recently been given a gas barbecue but didn't have a tank for it (and too broke to buy one, this week) so I went looking for a bag of charcoal. Nobody had that, either, within my immediate area. So I came home and broke up a bunch of dry hardwood limbs that'd been cluttering up the back corner of my yard, and built a small fire in a broken terracotta flower pot. Whizzed ginger, onions and garlic to a paste with my immersion blender, spread that on skewers of pork shoulder, and grilled them one at a time over the tiny fire in the flowerpot. I could only get about 2 skewers done before refreshing my bed of coals with new twigs, so I spent a lot of time hunched over puffing the fire back into life. As a consequence, I have a few new burns on my hands today and had to trim my beard to get rid of the scorched whiskers (I was due for a trim anyway, mind you). When all was said and done I had fun, provided the wife with some head-shaking amusement, and the pork tasted great. How bad can that be?

Got back to the thrift store, and picked up the five remaining Time-Life books: Italy, Middle East, Caribbean, Latin America, and China. My total expenditure for the seven volumes? $14 Canadian.

I've recently bought A Drizzle of Honey by Gitlitz and Davidson. Although it's primarily focused on the cooking of the "converso" community (Sephardic Jews converted to Catholicism) in the 15th/16th centuries, there is a lot of background information on the Moorish influence. You may find some useful tidbits there, and as a multi-award winner it shouldn't be hard to find.

American recipes that called for "sticks" of butter irritated the hell out of me when I first started cooking. I'd never seen that, so it was like German recipes calling for "one envelope" of vanilla sugar. Fortunately, I had German friends who'd lived in the US, so they were able to clear up both mysteries for me.

Two more for me, this weekend. I was at my local thrift store and spotted a dozen or so of the old Time-Life books on one of the shelves. I grabbed the French Provincial and Spain/Portugal volumes, and will be back for the others within the next day or two.

I could second just about everything that's been said. I love to cook; really, really love to cook (and bake). I graduated cooking school at 40 with an entry-level job and student loans, 'cause that's what I wanted to do for the rest of my working days. When I come home, after cooking and baking at two different jobs for umpteen highly-stressed hours a week, what do I do to relax? I cook and bake, of course, what else? Okay, I'm a freak. But it's a very deep, primeval thing. I've always loved to eat, from earliest childhood (when, of course, my tastes were rather less developed...I thought Cheez Whiz and Velveeta were pretty damn good, back then). My father has always dreamed about self-sufficiency, and subscribed to Organic Gardening and Mother Earth News since my early childhood; so I've always known where my food came from. At various times we raised pigs, rabbits, ducks, and chickens, and I participated in the cycle of raising and slaughtering the animals from about the time I started school. My father also took me hunting and fishing when he was home from sea. The first thing I can reliably remember cooking for myself was a trout that I'd caught myself in a nearby stream. It's rather "old-school" for one of my generation (very tail-end of the Boom, or very beginning of Gen X, depending on how one measures...I don't think I fit either group, but whattaya do...), but I remember as a teenager bitching my way through the annual berry-picking marathon, with my father snarling at me that if I wanted jam through the winter I could damn' well shut up and pick. I knew he was right, but I sure wanted to grumble, just the same... I guess it all comes from that same sense of urgency that makes me haul out the Mason jars come fall; even though I can usually buy jam as cheaply as I can make it. It's not the same, and at some level I guess I'm impelled by the notion that I can feed my family regardless of how tough things get. If push comes to shove, I know how to snare rabbits (and could skin and joint one, unaided, by eight). I can make preserves, or pickles. I can dry or preserve berries and wild fruits. I can be inventive about making meals from almost nothing...during one especially tough stretch a few years back I fed my tribe for over a week on a pumpkin, a cabbage, a dozen eggs, a sack of flour, and the various seasonings and such in my cupboard. I was pretty happy to get a part-time job that paid me in organic vegetables; we were still broke, but we weren't going to be hungry. That's a pretty visceral thing. We've lived an unsettled life this last several years. Every time we move, no matter how all-over-the-place things are during that first couple of days, I always unpack enough of my kitchen things to make a pot of soup and a batch of bread. For my wife and kids (and for me) those smells mean that, appearances notwithstanding, we are in fact HOME and all is well. That's a powerful form of magic, or alchemy if you will. In fact, just this past week, I've started proofing bread dough overnight so that it can be baked off first thing in the morning, and the house will smell of fresh sourdough all day. That way I'm here, even though I'm away at work. I love the energy, the chemistry, the science, the sheer "improvisational jazz" of it. I love the sixty-second stirfry and the 24-hour slow-cooked casserole. I love the flame broiling and the slow-poaching and the gust of steam from the freshly-opened papillote. I love artfully-arranged composed salads, and big random "splotches" of stew served family-style right from the pot. Got a pretty serious case, haven't I? No wonder this place sucks up so many of my non-cooking hours...

I moved away from Chilliwack in early 1993, and I don't think I've bought corn more than twice in the intervening years. Just didn't seem worth it...

It's a very interesting notion, Chef S, and I surely do hope you can make it happen. Not everybody's going to be onside with this sort of a scenario, but you knew that from the start (and if you didn't, you've definitely been informed by now). Personally, I would love to work in a restaurant like that...if it wasn't 'way the hell and gone in NC... I think you'll find an upside-downside scenario as re staffing. Obviously, it's hard enough finding good people for either FOH or BOH; finding people enthused about working both will be even harder. On the upside, I think people who buy into the concept will tend to stick around and be enthused about their jobs.

I was a Navy brat in Atlantic Canada, and my mother got into a lot of Tupperware/Avon type parties just to have some grownups around while Dad was at sea. Deviled eggs were a constant. And celery with Cheez Whiz. Being a kid, I thought that was great. And being a young boy, I thought that deviled egg farts were the greatest thing to bring to school the next day... There are two general kinds of cheezies. The little hard Hawkins style crunchy ones, and the bigger, puffier, softer ones (like Cheetos). I can tell it's time to stop drinking beer if I crave either of them, but the Hawkins ones are definitely the better of the two. It always amuses me, listening to people from other places talk "smaller than thou." My high school graduating class had 13 people, and that was in a school that served five communities! (...northern Newfoundland, for the terminally curious...)