pastrygirl

Ugh, that was harrowing to read! There are definitely some chefs with anger management problems and substance abuse issues and somehow they manage to get away with it entirely too much. Glad you got out of there!

@MattyC, can I ask what your new job is? I see various industrial and cultural shifts happening. My first restaurant job started in 1999, after college and a few years of baking in bakeries and coffee shops, so it hasn't been forever, but it (the industry, the world) still seems to have changed in that time. Cooking school was not on my radar at all when I went off to college in 1988. I grew up watching Jacques and Julia on PBS, my dad was an avid gardener and my mom a skilled cook, we went out to restaurants for birthdays, and I liked to make cookies for my little brothers, but chef didn't seem like a career option. Men are expected to spend more time with their children than a generation or two ago. My dad was the old school dad, go to work, pay the bills, read the newspaper after dinner and pretty much ignore the kids unless someone was in need of a spanking. Kids barely get spanked anymore, and spouses want to see their partner and share in childcare. Once people have kids, working dinner service hours upsets the work-life balance. The whole concept of work-life balance is relatively new - Americans are becoming more willing to sacrifice money for happiness. The factory jobs are gone, women have careers, and there is a lot more encouragement to follow your bliss. It's great that food TV and chefs becoming celebrities have brought more legitimacy to the profession. But the explosion of cooking schools has not only sold thousands of people on delusions of grandeur, it has led them to believe that cooking professionally is a creative endeavor. I will not deny there being a creative element, but consistency and problem solving are probably more important. So you have all these cooks who think they are chefs and want to play and be creative. What happened to learning from the chef and executing as instructed? The same thing that happened to yelling and throwing pans? I think cooks have gone from working under a chef for at least a year at a time to working with a chef for as long as it takes to satisfy their curiosity. I don't know where the work ethic has gone. Even if you're only going to do a job for 5, 10, or 15 years, why would you not do it well? I think its more the special snowflake phenomenon, nobody wants to be told what to do or be uncomfortable. Everything is supposed to be fun and engaging. But is there really anything wrong with evolving into a new career? You kind of sound like you wish you could be in the kitchen forever. Some people do make it work. I definitely want to stay hands-on, but my long-term chocolatier plan is to get machines to temper and enrobe and retail staff to do the wrapping. And after 10-15 years of that, I'll either retire or try something else.

I don't know if it's any more prevalent now, but the hard long hours will take a toll on most of us sooner or later. I think trying to keep a restaurant open has gotten harder than ever with increased competition and increased wage demands. Right now it's so hard to find good cooks that one small place updates their hours on Facebook to reflect staffing - they've closed a few lunches this week. And I think it's one of the reasons why another place closed and is operating as an event space and catering kitchen. Lots of cook jobs means you can't piss them off or they'll leave, which drives up labor cost when you need to keep hiring and training. I do know one chef who went from CDC to catering to working for a local chain grocer in the interest of time and benefits for his young family. I think most cooks have to move up or out eventually, whether because their body is broken or they realized they need to save for retirement. it seems like a natural progression to go from cook to chef to restaurateur, but the business side is so different, that path doesn't work for everyone. Sandwich shop, artisan pasta or salami, private chef, "clipboard" chef at a hotel, product rep, teaching ... Many more ways to make a living than being on the line. I got got sick of the stress and drama and craziness of restaurants, now I work for myself which is a different kind of stress but much less drama.

I believe he does claim to outsource proteins - Amish chickens, fish, etc. Does all meat have to be processed in a USDA licensed processing facility? If he is using wild game and if that is not strictly legal for sale to the public, that may be why he is vague about suppliers.

Thanks, Rob! I believe you about a different way of thinking. So instead of planning a year's supply of something, you do different things with each plant, using or preserving them at different stages. And if you're doing tiny courses you don't need much. Very strange about the suppliers, too. Why so secretive?

You should absolutely be picky. Can you mold a test batch to see how the scratches show on the product?

Yay! I saw his post on Instagram (which I prefer for food photos) and thought of you. https://www.instagram.com/mlaiskonis/

Saw this article posted on another discussion site: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/08/29/damon-baehrel-the-most-exclusive-restaurant-in-america This guy supposedly forages almost everything from the 12 acres around him and is booked out for years. Some people are skeptical whether he really does as much as he says, and I have to admit I am one of them. I immediately thought of @gfron1 - Rob, I'd love to read your take on this. How possible is it that one person can do all that foraging, curing, grinding, pickling, etc and still have time to develop dishes and produce dinners? This reminds me of the Mast Bros expose' - he may be foraging and cooking, but with some exaggeration of production. I bet he cooks when he feels like it or several times a month, but nightly dinner service?

Can you give examples of foods that were several weeks old and got served? Many cheeses, mustard, pickles, olives, salami, eggs, sour cream, usually no problem. Foods that are cooked sous vide and kept sealed (and refrigerated) are supposed to have an extended life, and things like duck confit are designed to keep. But no, no generally agreed upon standards besides if it's bad, don't serve it, and if it will be bad tomorrow, serve it to staff Much will depend on the temp of the fridge and if any contamination was introduced. Take it as a reminder to pay attention to the product itself, not just an arbitrary number.

My guesses for @BonVivant #1 peppers drying - maybe hungarian paprika peppers? #2 smoked pork skin? #3 green bean french-er: cut the stems off with the blade at the end then push the beans through the smaller hole with more blades to get thin, "french-cut" pieces?

Yeah, sorry, that'll take some experimentation. I do think that a combo of coconut oil and cocoa butter sounds like a good way to go for the fat, as all coconut oil would be a bit soft and all cocoa butter would be a bit hard. Good luck!

Ouch, that was unnecessary. Eat what you want, but no need to insult all the dedicated and amazing pastry chefs, chocolatiers, confectioners, and home bakers here.

Thanks, @JoNorvelleWalker and @cookielady, I told my mom I don't need it. Two liters is too small to do much in a professional setting, even if it was effective for tempering chocolate.

I love sour cream in mashed potatoes!

Ooh, that's not good. Try to get your freezer down to 10f or below if you want things to stay solid. Even if you could make ice cream, it won't stay ice cream at 31f due to the sugar content. It will be soupy

You should be able to sear the skin to crisp it up. Works with moist-cooked chicken, salmon, duck confit ...

Weird. Is it possible that there is a crack in the bowl and some of the liquid has leaked out? 20 years is a decent life span, for small appliances though.

Any updates on the heated mixing bowl? My mom found it in the Williams Sonoma catalog and thought it might be a useful thing for me as a chocolatier, and my birthday is coming up... Reading through the thread, it sounds like it's probably too small to do much with if it only holds 2 quarts. But did anyone ever figure out how to temper chocolate with it? If so, how many lbs or kg of chocolate will fit? Would anyone recommend it for anything besides small batches of ice cream? I have a 6kg mol d' art melter that I use for chocolate when I feel like letting it melt overnight, but in practice mostly I use a pretty big bowl (about 12" diameter) over hot water so I have room to dump molds back into the bowl, and I've gotten used to polishing molds and otherwise multi-tasking while I wait. Thanks!

I guess you're the only one staying cool enough to make anything! I'm pretty much taking the rest of August off - temps in the high 70's to 80'sF and a shared kitchen with poor ventilation make me more inclined to sit around eating ice cream than struggle with chocolate

All three of those links say the muscle has a longer shelf life, and I would certainly hope that a commercial seller is not harvesting from waters where PSP is an issue. I do remember seeing scallops in the shell with roe once in restaurant kitchens but I don't know where they would have come from or recall how they were stored. If Dennis lives through tonight, I'd love to hear how dinner turned out!

I don't see the point of freezing them overnight. Yes, you may want to shuck them and trim off the roe if they are not still fully alive, but scallop meat should keep (well chilled of course) for a few days. Why spend the money on fresh if you're going to freeze them and potentially affect the texture?

In the bag, I'd say a 6 quart with the red lid. I don't recall whether my flour is in a 6 or 8 quart square, whichever it is holds about 10# of flour out of the bag. The 8 qt holds 12-1/2 pound of sugar (I get 25# bags and divide it into two cambros).

Probably sugar, you'll know if you scoop a little out and feel the texture.

Which is why, as a chef, I'm surprised you went there. I know I'd rather blame FOH! It does sound like it was actually a salmon dish, not cross-contamination. So do you think the restaurant is liable? Negligent? I mean, I try to keep my peanut butter and my wheat flour away from other ingredients, but I've had cases where people put a sample in their mouth - that had a sign saying 'contains gluten' - then asked what that crunch was and spit it out when I told them it had wheat. One would think that people with severe allergies would have had enough bad experiences to trust no one, but also hope that telling someone twice was enough to protect yourself. And who knows, maybe the diner was drinking too and didn't pay attention to the food when it arrived. There have been similar lawsuits, haven't there been some involving peanuts resulting in jail time, like a recent one in the UK involving curry?

In what scenario would the kitchen be ON the hook? Server ordered salmon, kitchen made salmon, server served salmon = 100% server error. Server ordered beef, kitchen made salmon, server served salmon - it is still the server's job to match the plate with the ticket and catch an error, whether it was supposed to be sauce on the side, extra cheese, or a different protein or dish. If the kitchen did make a mistake and the server didn't catch it, the server still bears at least half of the responsibility, especially if he was the only one who knew of the allergy. Unless the kitchen was out of beef and substituted salmon without telling anyone ... Unfortunately, I've worked with some servers whose knowledge of food was embarrassingly poor. It's possible the guy was just too dumb or drunk to know he was serving the wrong dish, but I still can't blame the kitchen for that! Should the server be held criminally responsible? I don't know about jail time, but I think some community service and education about food and allergies would be appropriate. And hopefully the restaurant has liability insurance that will cover medical bills (if, despite being Canadian, that's an issue). Sad story, but happy that the diner pulled through. It must have been a horribly traumatic evening all around.