mynamejoe

And fine taste in mustard, I'll say; I've tried both. The German one on the left is especially good.

Finally the truth comes out that not only are you guilty of tahini abuse, Tommy, but also you are a hypocrite and a perjurer. Now please get the right product before you waste any more of our time. Objection, counsel is badgering the witness. Stefany, I'm not sure I understand why tommy should not use sambal. It is a gift from the gods and they would be offended if it were not used. BTW, tommy, see jon's post above.

I see your point, Steve. I agree that it does no harm to let a customer know, should they ask. However, some or most chefs do not know their schedules far enough in advance to let diners that are making reservations ahead of time know whether they will be in on any given night. Another related point: sometimes it doesn't matter if the chef is there. In my last position (chef de cuisine, more or less), 3 orders of lamb chops went out to the dining room, one night. Two of them were grossly over-cooked. I was standing right there on the line. I even checked one of them. As bad luck would have it, I happened to check the one that was cooked correctly. I (or any other chef I know) don't have time to check every detail of every dish. So, it doesn't really matter whether the chef is there or not; mistakes happen and we can't catch all of them, as much as we'd like to.

Same general area, whichever animal you are talking about. I could see the term "brisket" being used for pig. One thing I learned about food a long time ago is to label things in a way that the everyday customer can understand.

No, say what's really on your mind. I don't generally make it a policy to tell people that I do not know that they are idiots, but if you cannot see that this is not a purely business relationship, well, draw your own conclusions as to what I think. If it weren't for this "more than just another customer" relationship, I would have to agree that the owner's reaction was out of line. Did you ever stop to think that perhaps it was because of this more personal relationship that he did not treat you as he would have any other customer? First you say that you are friends, then you claim to be offended because you were not treated as any other customer would have been. Does the phrase "you can't have your cake and eat it, too" mean anything to you? Or, are you just peeved to have found something that all your money could not buy?

Like you've stopped being interested in other forms of fermentation recently, Mr. Ketel One! And, yes plunk, that's the very same Kyle.

I must be getting slow(er). I've been following this thread, and I just now noticed this. Brisket is not a cut found on a pig, it's cut from a cow. Good thing Applebee's managers know their product.

Simon, please. At the root of all this is people trying to sound well-versed in knowledge about something they know nothing about. The end result of this is naturally comic to those of us that do have the knowledge. All a person has to do to keep themselves out of the "rube" group is have the nerve to publically admit that they don't know of what they speak. Until they get that nerve (which is the first step to learning anything), I will still find them hilarious and not feel the slightest bit guilty having done so. And the "teriyaki sauce" couple? They held me up in a discussion with the server trying to figure out what they wanted or were talking about for a full 5 minutes on a slamming Friday night. That's a lifetime in a restaurant kitchen; a lifetime I could have spent on our other paying customers. All they had to do was ask if we still served the same sauce with the steak, instead of trying to put a name to it (teriyaki-sweet, demi-closer to bitter; I still don't see how they made a connection). I say yes, done deal. Now, off the soapbox for me!

You should be getting a stronger flavor out of the chuck and sirloin. I think some reasons that rib-eye isn't commonly used as meat for grinding is that it grills just fine without being ground and it's costlier. There's nothing wrong with experimenting, though. Ask the butcher for chuck-end rib roast; it's got more fat.

Not so. You can do the pan-flipping thingy, remember. In addition, you can survive on this board; if that isn't an indicator of some kind of good reflexes, I don't know what is.

For the more organized and polite ones, yes. The others make them by cell while standing in front of the host podium.

Good job, Malawry!! Keep being your own worst critic; it seems to be working well for you.

lizziee, right click on basildogs name after you have messenger running, select "view web cam" from the drop-down menu that appears. should get you going pretty easily, but pm me with details of what isn't working and I could probably give you more useful info. Got to go, I'm watching Dave work

Open yahoo messenger, first. You should gey a pop-up with a list of friends, basildog should be on it with an icon of a face next to it. If it's gray, he's not on-line. If it's yellow and smiling, double click on his name. The rest should be easy. If you still have trouble, just post again with any other questions.

Sounds like that would work better than toast. Those of you that haven't mastered this yet, don't feel too bad. I took a job at a newly-opened German restaurant a couple of years ago. The guy that they had hired as sous chef couldn't do the pan-flipping trick thingy. Then, the chef I had formerly worked for (an incredibly talented man) came by and worked with us for a couple of days while his country club kitchen was closed. Sous chef sees him doing the pan flip, and is inspired to teach himself. We spent weeks cleaning up errant bits of food from behind the stove.

Well, seeing as I was the one who brought it up again! I recommend it to anyone, basildog is a gracious host. And the commercials are tastefully done, I might add.

Any news on the kitchen cam, basildog? I'm a currently un-employed chef, so it would be the next best thing to being back in the trenches!

The most important part about knowing how to do this is mastering the look of nonchalance while flipping things. Makes it look even more impressive. I had a member of a country club I once worked at ask me in awe "how do you do that", while I was flipping omelets. I told her that you had to know in your mind that the omelet would land back in the pan before you flipped. The zen of it was apparently beyond her, and she walked away looking very confused. It was a smart-ass thing to say, but it's true.

Steve, restaurants order some produce by size, depending on what they need. As you stated, large (referred to as "jumbo", in purveyor-speak) onions are easier to work with for general purposes, so we usually order large. As to the difference in taste, I believe Margeret is correct that a larger onion is milder. A related example would be elephant garlic, which is milder than regular, smaller garlic.

Next lesson is to keep two pans going at the same time, grasshopper. Only then can you leave the temple. A good thing to practice with is dry toasted bread. edited to add some actually useful info to this post

Lucky you! My sanitation instructor was Nyquil in human form. Very knowledgeable man, but the sonorous, monotone voice that he delivered his lectures with usually had at least half of the class sleeping within 30 minutes. Oddly enough, he didn't seem to mind.

A friend of mine worked the Kemper Open last year (he works for TPC). If you were ever in the kitchen at some of these big events, you might not eat at the course again.

Kate, my point of contention here is that the students have to clean up after the chef, instead of cooking. This does happen in some commercial kitchens, but at that point you are the payee, not the payor. Most of all, I consider it very important that people clean up after themselves in the kitchen, as their mothers have an irritating habit of not stopping by and doing it for them. So, I have no problem with students having to do some dishes or cleaning whatsoever. As long as it isn't set up like Johnson & Wales/Charleston, where you could find yourself doing dishes from the end of lecture to the end of class. Hopefully for you, things have changed or are different in RI (I would be better known to you as Greg, former moderator of the culinary students forum at cheftalk, if you are wondering). P.S. How long before you start?

Steve, I see the reasoning behind what you are saying (and definitely don't think a chef-instructor should be doing dishes at any time) but I'm definitely in favor of the teaching assistant solution. In absence of that type of program being in place, a quick post-demo wipe down and transport of used utensils to the dishroom is what I think would work best. The type of detail cleaning Malawry so diligently engaged in should not be done during valuable classroom time, IMO. That could be done after class when the students are cleaning the rest of the kitchen. Can you tell that I think that schools should mirror the actual real-world of cooking professionally (as I see it, anyways) more than they do? Malawry, I'd be happy to bemoan this and any other realities you may come across for you, absolutely free of charge.

1.3, 3.1, whichever! It still looks good. How did the mint work with the rest of the flavors? I would normally think it to be too overpowering, so haven't ever experimented with it.