BeetsandBlueCheese

Hot searing death behind!

I started work at this amazing three star restaurant at the beginning of July and for the first time I have been having serious back and knee pain issues. I've worked in The Industry for about two years and have just finished culinary school, but am now working sixteen hours a day five days a week. I've had Danskos, but like Sanitas better for their fit and durability and have some pretty good insoles that a friend recommended to me. The meat cook had to leave recently due to blinding back pain and an inability to stand, and nobody knows if he's going to be able to come back full time. I am looking ahead to a long career in this field but I don't want to be hobbled by chronic pain, but I know some of it is unavoidable, but I don't want it to be something that will keep me from working. Does any body have any suggestions or experience in dealing with this? I'm open to pretty much anything.

As a culinary student, I've had good luck with Cascade or comparable dish washing detergent used to scrub the jacket in particular trouble spots and then add some to the laundry detergent. "Sheet tray grease" is notoriously hard to get out, but I've had the best luck with the previous method. I also go through a gallon of bleach about every three weeks.

I'm going to ahead and say something that's probably been said and put it simply: You should be able to kill anything that you are going to eat. It may not be easy, it may not be pretty, but you if you aren't willing to kill it yourself then you don't deserve to eat it.

I've never tried the Krispy Kream recipe, but I worked with a pastry chef who made a twinkie tiramisu for family meal on day. It tasted so good yet so bad at the same time.

I've looked over many of the criticisms, and there may be merrit to some, nothing really struck me while I was reading it. I was too engaged by the story, I felt too propelled by it's energy and momentum to notice any real faults. As a young, impressionable cook(the closest thing to this book's target audience, if it has one), I was simply inspired. Not by the prose, or the narative structure, but by it's, and consequently his, passion, which was conveyed brilliantly by this book. It also served as warning, a way of saying "this is what it takes to create this level of food".

Mushroom Stuffed Mushrooms. White button mushrooms stuffed with a duxelle of crimini, shiitake and oyster mushrooms, sauteed with shallots, seasoned and mixed with a little panko. Goes well with a mellow vinagrette.

I personally believe that the power will always ulitimately rest with the diner. Restaurants, after all are a buissiness and they require returning customers inorder to stay in business and continue serving the food they love. In the restaurants I've been lucky enough to work in, the chef will honor just about any request that isn't physically impossible. You'd like a Pritikin(no fat, no salt) Caeser Salad? No problem. A four course mushroom tasting menu? We can do that. One out of every three tables seems to have a special request(SOS, no cheese, gluten intolerant, alergic to nuts, alergic to onions, no garlic, no alcohol, etc.). Some of the more unusual requests are entertained by the front of the house(in hopes of scoring a larger tip) and are then foisted on the back of the house, but it generally seems beneficial to everyone to comply with such requests. The axiom that the customer is always right seems to hold true for the most of the restaurant industry. There does seem to be exception, and that is the stratosphere of the culinary pantheon, the kind of places with just tasting menus, as those are the dishes the chef wants you to have in that exact order. Chefs at this level aren't often willing to compromise what they see as their 'gastronomical vision', and will probably not heed your request to have a shrimp cocktail for your second course, but I would be suprised if chefs at this level didn't honor simple food alergies or requests for the sauce on the side. The power will always rest with the dinners as long as there is a choice of where to eat. And regardless of how mind blowingly amazing the chef thinks his food is, if other people don't eat it, enjoy it, and return, then he is going to be out of business very soon.