Mikeb19

Agree with you. IMO as long as the food arrives on time, the proper temperature, and my glass is never empty that's good enough. I really don't want to talk to my server because I know they don't care about what I have to say, and I really don't care about what they have to say (unless it's a friend of mine). Besides, when I go out to dinner, it's to be with friends and family, have a good time and eat good food. That's it. If the food is memorable, it's a bonus (although it rarely is...). I really don't need someone telling me how the food is made, if I wanted to know I'd ask.

Lol, so true. Especially for some pretentious types... Honestly, some of the best dishes I've ever had are just down to earth, simple dishes with simple names. I've also had some terrible 'fancy' dishes. Good food is good no matter what you call it or how you dress it up, I'd rather have good tasting food that looks like garbage than fancy looking food that tastes like garbage.

No one can 'own' a recipe. You can take away your recipes if you wish, they can't do a thing about it except try stealing them (copying them from your book) from you, in which case you couldn't do anything about that. That's why my important recipes are never (ever) written on paper - they're all in my head (or locked away at home). I never let my employers get hold of my recipes. I also never take recipes with me from a job (I haven't seen any worth taking anyway...).

What exactly is 'fancy'? Does it have to have a French or Italian name to be fancy? Rack of lamb... Pretty much the most expensive cut of meat you can get, I'd sub this out for something else (leg of lamb, shoulder). Roast nice and slow with herbs and garlic. Soup - I'll second the recommendation for vichysoisse, and add cold beet soup w/ cucumbers (aka cold Borshch, but they might not like it if you call it that). Side dishes - risotto is relatively inexpensive to make, always a crowd pleaser. You can also make other grain dishes, buckwheat kasha, polenta, quinoa risotto... Mashed potatoes are always good, not sure if they qualify as 'fancy' though (call it potato purée!). Vegetables - grilled veggies are usually pretty popular, can also boil them, either way to finish toss them in a vinaigrette with herbs - easy, tastes good. Greens - mesclun salad, homemade lemon-herb dressing (lemon juice, dijon mustard, shallots, emulsify olive oil into the liquid, finish with fresh chopped herbs, season with a touch of salt and sugar/honey) Appetisers - blini with eggplant caviar, bruschetta on crostini, miniature chicken salad sandwiches, tuiles filled with salmon mousse, hummous and crudités... Dessert - whatever berries you can find with simple crème chantilly, or maybe sabayon made with a sweet white or rosé wine. Good vanilla iced cream with peaches, if your skills are up to it you can try making some french macarons filled with chocolate ganache... Honestly though, making a 'fancy' meal has little to do with what you make, and everything to do with how you make it....

Bacon or sausage with maple syrup is classic... Pretty much every Canadian I've ever known does this. Even better, seared foie gras laquered with maple syrup served with a fried quail egg. Always gets good reviews from the customers.

If you work in a pro kitchen on the hotline, roll those sleeves down.... Cooks seem to like to brag about burns, like it's some sort of badge of honour. I prefer not to burn myself. Of course I have a few on my hands (2 from the last 3 months), but they're all very minor, and never blister thanks to my leathery hands.... If you're burning or cutting yourself constantly you're a sloppy cook IMO.

These are throwbacks from my childhood and teenage years. Grew up poor (still am pretty poor, though not as bad as back then), so ate many things that would probably horrify people around here. Heck, as little as 2 years ago these were still staples... And to think, at work I was cooking with foie gras, caviar, truffles, then after work would go home and eat this stuff.... - Cheddar cheese (the cheap yellow kind) melted on top of soda crackers, then covered in hot sauce - Grilled cheese sandwich, dipped into canned tomato soup - Boiled spaghetti, hot sauce and parmesan 'seasoning' - maybe some cut up hot dogs thrown in if we could afford it - Ground beef, cream of mushroom soup (in a can of course), mixed together and eaten on top of toast - Plain white rice with a can of broth poured over top (to make a soup-kind of dish), plenty of hot sauce added Occasionally I still eat these things just as a reminder of the good 'ol days...

I can guarantee, most servers at high end places can indeed afford $800 shoes, unless they have some sort of drug habit (and I've known enough servers who DO wear $800 shoes, Rolex watches, and drive BMW or Mercedes cars). It's kind of silly how big a disparity there is between what the FOH and BOH make in fine-dining restaurants, but I'll try not to get into that too much. Let's just say though I've known servers and bartenders who will make 60-70K a year, working 20 hours a week. Obviously those are the excellent servers, but many more are making 35-50K a year, still part-time hours (only counting a single job, many have 2 or more jobs). The last job I worked most of the servers were making more money than the Executive Chef.

Strait up, a lot of restaurants do indeed have FOH that are 'snooty'. I've even worked at a few. Not a fun atmosphere to be around. Lately however, the trend in Europe and elsewhere has been towards more casual restaurants still serving very high end food. Heck, from what I hear El Bulli is incredibly relaxed and un-pretentious. Just stay away from the restaurants that have a pretentious atmosphere. More than a few times I've had the host/hostess of a restaurant try to tell me I'm not welcome, until they are told who I am, then the apologies come... I agree, it can be frustrating when people judge you based on looks (sometimes I just want to pop into a restaurant before or after service, I don't dress up to do that), but that's just the way it is. I don't think much of it, because they're not the kind of people I associate with anyway, I have nothing to prove to them. I grew up poor, no one in the hood cared about what you were wearing, it was all about respect, loyalty. And those are the kind of people I still hang with, I don't have a use for the pretentious kind. Let it be known how you feel with your wallet. They don't treat you right, then don't give them your money again. Tell people. If you're a somebody in the industry then the word will get around quickly. Or even better, if you know the Chef then tell him what his FOH are doing. He'll straiten them out.

Maybe they've finally realised that theres a market segment (drunk and/or stoned people) that demands late-night food.

Induction cooktops are definitely the future. They're precise, they heat up extremely quick (cold water to boiling quicker than I've ever seen on any other heat source period). They seem to be pretty energy efficient, they don't consume oxygen to function. With gas you get alot of heat radiating into the kitchen. I don't know how many of you work in a professional kitchen, but it's not comfortable working in a 100+ degree kitchen. You get 12 burners, a grill, a broiler, and 3 gas ovens all going at once, not only are you heating up the surrounding environment, you're also taking away oxygen, it's stuffing, gets hard to breathe. It's not at all healthy to be working in such conditions. The biggest advantage to induction IMO is that there is no heat escaping into the surrounding area - the surface of the pan heats up and that's it. Sure, you need to change your style a bit, a lot of cooks are used to using 'tricks' with gas like raising the pan, putting it off to the side, etc..., but once you get used to cooking with induction you'll never want to go back. I used to always steal as many induction burners as I could and set them up on my station. IMO, professional cooking is as much about ego as it is about food (more about ego?), alot of pros refuse to give up ideas and techniques that are dated, and will do things just so they can say that they did (I've certainly worked with alot of these types). There is a certain allure to cooking with fire (back to ancient days cooking over a pit?), but honestly electric induction is the way to go. The kitchens of the future will be majority induction, the technology is there, cooks just need to embrace it.

My favourite taste would be my grandmother's perogies. The dough was incredibly tender (unlike most perogy doughs), and the potato inside was nice and soft, mixed with cottage cheese. Best potato preparation ever. Was also lucky that we got to eat the best produce ever while on my grandparents' farm. Even vegetables from the farmers' market don't quite have the same taste. Unfortunately, we only got to visit my grandparents a couple times per year. Anyhow, as a kid I grew up in a lower-class family (as far as income goes), so when I moved out at 18, I ended up living in a dirt poor housing complex - working in fine dining restaurants pays terribly, I could barely afford to feed myself. One night dinner was boiled spaghetti, with 'spice' (you know, the mass produced garbage spice) and hot sauce, washed down with terrible garbage beer. It tasted awful, but at the time it was the best thing ever, just because we were sooo hungry and it was food (if I didn't steal food from work then for sure I would have been starving). Wasn't exactly a high point in my life, also had some troubles with the law (ie. cops hassling us, threatening us but never being charged with anything), but I'm glad I went through it - I'm a much stronger person for the troubles I've been through.

Well stated. Sausage and Barbeque food though, I wouldn't really call 'cured' (well, some sausages). These foods are very easy and viable to do at home, and I have made them both. Smoked bacon can easily be done at home as well. In fact, I personally think Barbeque food should be done at home rather than in a restaurant, I mean, what's better than having a big barbeque in your backyard with plenty of cold beer in July? I'm thinking more along the lines of proscuitto, pancetta, bundnerfleisch, etc... Products which are aged for a much longer period of time (and are not 'cooked'). These types of products I definitely would shy away from making at home.

Yes, I can make better crèpes than you can buy, I'd better be able to being a professional in a high end restaurant. I have also done plenty of indoor smoking, as I worked in a barbeque restaurant for 6 months (we had a smoker with a 750 pound capacity working around the clock - I happened to be the cook in charge of all the meat). Sodium alginate? Not yet, don't really see the point (IMO it's a fad), however have done alot with agar and pectins, as well as sous-vide cooking... Gravlax, of course, did traditional gravlax, our own, as well as cold-smoked salmon. But what we were doing wasn't really charcuterie. Gravlax is left in the cooler, it's a quick cure, and we weren't smoking to preserve, rather for flavour... As far as making bacon, we had a go at that, but honestly I prefer the bought stuff (I'm talking buying direct from local producers, not grocery store). Proscuitto? Had a go at that too, but again, not nearly as good as the stuff from Parma. Our duck proscuitto did however turn out very nice (I wouldn't consider that a true proscuitto though - it was salt cured with spices and aromats then air dried for a few weeks in the cooler). Quick-cures are great to do yourself (our cold smoked salmon beat anything on the market), but the *real* charcuterie is best left to those with the proper equipment (ie. temperature and humidity controlled rooms, proper measuring devices, etc....). Just my professional opinion.

I need to add something here. My grandmother (and her sisters) were/are among the best cooks I've ever known. The techniques I see in the top restaurants are the same my grandmother was using. Even fine-dining restaurant food generally doesn't come close to what my grandmother used to make us (in flavour anyway). My mother, although not as skilled as my grandmother, was still a pretty good cook (better than most my friends' mothers). Yet I also work as a professional cook, and have only worked with a single half-decent woman in the kitchen (a middle-aged chinese lady who couldn't speak english). Most of the woman I've worked with can't take the heat, can't take the hours or the stress, their standards are lower (this is one thing I can't stand - I'm always shooting for perfection, I can't take people who are content with mediocre), and they work slower. Many got fired due to constant screw-ups. This is not opinion, just my experiences.

Pretty much the same as you. Eggs/sugar/starch together, heat up milk/cream, add to egg mixture, put back on heat, bring to a boil (whisking all the while, of course), add a tab of butter.

[Note: I've just split these posts off from the food safety when curing meats topic, since they're not really about food safety. -- CA] I know it's fun making charcuterie, but honetly, theres some things I'd rather leave to other people. Many people devote their entire life (or at least career) to curing meats, I'd rather buy from them than make it myself since they are much more knowledgeable (not to mention have the proper facilities). Same goes for cheese and wine - sure I *could* make it myself, but whats really the point when you can get a superior product from someone else?

Perhaps start off with a nori 'tea' (make it strong). Cook sugar to caramel, let cool a bit, add the 'tea', heat on low until it's all incorporated. That would be my guess, there might also be some butter or cream in there....

First off, a WELL done Insalata Cesar is a beautiful thing, very hard to find though. As is an Insalata Caprese (with buffalo cheese). Another real good one I had was a walnut dressing and pear salad. The real key to a good salad is finding good lettuce/herbs/weeds to put into it, and a vinaigrette with a good balance of acidity and fat. And make sure to season the salad, nothing worse than a bland salad. One of the best salads I've had was simply mesclun, herbs, and a lemon/herb vinaigrette.

Now, I don't know how Wylie does it for sure, but this would be my professional guess. - Make the caramel/reduction, put it into small moulds, freeze it. - Put the foie gras into larger moulds/ramekins. Insert frozen centre, and cover with more foie on the top so the caramel is completely encased (think molten chocolate cake - the foie gras replaces the batter, the caramel replaces the ganache) - Let stand in the fridge for a day or so (let the centre melt, the foie gras harden) - cook briefly at low-ish temp (enough to 'temper' the foie gras), then serve warm, or put back in fridge to be served cold later Is he serving it warm or cold anyway? The above is just my guess as to how it is accomplished, I've never seen Wylie in action or been to his restaurant/kitchen.

What chances are you talking about? I'm confused by this post.... ← Keeping a raw custord mix carries the risk of bacterial growth. The ingredients are an ideal culture. The risk is small, but present even if you are careful about refridgeration. ← I don't know about you guys, but when I make a custard such as that for iced cream or crème brûlée, I cook it to a temperature of ~85 degrees C (crème anglaise). That's enough to kill any bacteria, plus it gives it a nice rich, creamy texture. Not cooking the custard is IMO bad technique... As for resting the mixture, it's done for the same reason as letting a soup sit overnight. Gives the flavours a chance to combine, develop, plus you want the custard as cold as possible before it goes into the iced cream machine.

Canada day, I'm working... Do people even eat in fine dining restaurants on Canada day? (I believe this is the first I've had to work) Oh well, as quick as we can clean the kitchen I'm going back home where the roomates and a bunch of other people are having a BBQ - steaks, burgers, hot dogs, and most importantly plenty of beer.

Wow, wish I had seen this earlier. Anyhow, I just finished watching Ukraine beat Switzerland on penalties, now they're going on the the quarter-finals! And as someone who grew up on Ukrainian food, I think I'll have to celebrate by making some cold borsch, vareneky (perogies), holubsti (cabbage rolls), and for dessert a childhood favourite my grandmother always made us, raspberry soup.

Who cares where they went to school? We've fired more cooks that graduated from culinary school than we've kept..... Honestly, I've not worked with a single culinary school graduate that lived up to expectations. Experience is #1 in this biz. And I honestly think GR is too easy on these fools.

Just a funny story. A restaurant wanted me to do a stage for them. So I come in at around 3 in the afternoon. I end up preparing a bunch of canapés for a function, school the apprentice that was supposed to be 'showing' me around, plate the function, and then plate every dinner in the fine dining restaurant for the rest of the night. After all that they gave me a staff meal that was a little questionable tasting (but I didn't want to say anything) and guess what, the next day I come up with a brutal case of food poisoning. Wasn't too impressed with that restaurant (and told them so)....