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andrewB

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Everything posted by andrewB

  1. andrewB

    Foie Gras: The Topic

    throughout Europe, Rougie is quality. they have 2 grades, both very expensive. If you are making terrines and pates, Hungarian goose is great and funny enough, Bulgarian is decent for terrines/ pates but not for searing...
  2. Wasn't really the point of the post.. Now having resources, can anyone recommend a good site to search for cook resumes and post a listing?
  3. I am coming back to the states after being in Slovakia for 6 years now. The restaurant where I am consulting at present has asked me to try and find them an American Chef to fill a position in their steakhouse restaurant. Does anyone out there know of any places to look for chefs, particularly ones who want to go to Europe? Most sites require paying a listing fee which is not possible at the moment. thanks for the help...
  4. Which statement? I said that the vast majority of Chinese people do not use fish sauce in their cuisine, which is kind of shown by its lack of availability and the fact that few people have heard of it. (I now learn from this thread that Fujian may be different, but that hardly makes it universal in China.) Your answer was that it was invented in China, therefore I must be wrong. Maybe it was. I wasn't commenting on where it may or may not have been invented. I was commenting on where it is used. A totally different concept. The Roman stuff is called liquamen (or garum). ← my apologies then
  5. It is a truly fascinating read. As it is in paperback, it is not so expensive. Amazon.com lists the price at about $11.00. As the book is packed full of information on salt and its use, I don't remember a whole lot in reference to fish sauces. One bit I do remember is that original Chinese soy sauce was made with fish and soy beans originally and later the fish was removed. Also, salt was so expensive that it was never placed directly on food, and only used with brines and sauces etc. The sprinkling of salt on food was only for the high society...
  6. On the Amalfi, they make a kind of 'fish sauce' as well by salting anchovies and then reserving the liquid which is leftover...
  7. I would highly disagree with this statement. Chinese are said to be the founders of fish sauce which predates their use of soy sauce. I can't quote exact dates etc., but a fantastic read on the subject is Salt: A World History: by Mark Kurlansky this will tell you all about the worlds fascination with start starting with China..
  8. andrewB

    Milk solids

    Milk is mostly water, about 90%. Milk solids are what remain once the milk has been dehydrated: fat, protein, and minerals. I have always assumed that milk solids listed as an ingredient in food is simply powdered milk. The reasons for using powdered milk versus fresh milk in mass produced baked goods would be a lower production cost and a longer shelf life.
  9. The low rate of pay in NYC and San Francisco (as I can say from experience), is largely due in part to the simple principal of 'supply and demand'. In San Francisco, the CCA pumps out so many students per semester, that there is an overflow of cooks in that city. This is one reason why the rate of pay is so low. Working shift pay in SF had me working for a mobil 5 star kitchen making less than minimum wage.
  10. keep your knives sharp, station clean, ask as many questions as you possibly can, put in extra time and go above and beyond, and most importantly 'go big or go home.'
  11. With Marco Pierre White as an example, chefs and cooks of the past decades did their fare share of smoking. Thankfully gone are the days of stirring the soup pot with a butt dangling from the cooks lips, but how many chefs and cooks still smoke? what are the rules in the states regarding this, ie. smoke breaks, how far from the building they must smoke etc. i have read various reports on if infact smoking does alter the palate and it seems to be related not to smoking but to the nicotine. whats the verdict?
  12. andrewB

    Sausage and Broccoli

    broccoli and sausage quiche...
  13. when this is done to the wing, i've heard it called a drumette
  14. my experience tells me 1T of whole spice yields 1 1/2T or just under
  15. sweet! i'm movin back to the bay and for some reason i have this itch for a tiki bar. funny thing about them is that there has been a recent surge in popularity for them in Europe. We went to one in London which was across the street from the Ritz and it paled in comparison to what i remember in SF...
  16. i seriously second that emotion. living in Europe, the servers tend to douse themselves in cologne before during, and after their shifts. our change room in the morning smells like a brothel with so many mixed scents. although somedays i wonder what they might smell like without the cologne camouflage!!
  17. does anyone know if the tiki room is still open? it was in the basement of an old hotel in nob hill..
  18. ...same can be said of a mathematician who has his face buried in a book the majority of the time... i would challenge anyone to do something, anything, for 100 hours a week 51 weeks a year, and see how well rounded they would become.
  19. would grinding the seasonings with the meat have any effect on if the meat would become crumbly or not?
  20. definitely that. there are lots of farms in SE Asia, Indonesia especially that are producing massive sized prawns. the two biggest problems with them are that they have a massive head relative to the tail, so you get proportionately less edible meat per lb, and that they tend to be blander/mushier textured than other types of shrimp or langoustines for that matter. ← you can get prawns now which are size 1/2 which would run even bigger than that and can be up to 450g.
  21. andrewB

    The Rolling Boil

    on a tangent to water boiling, adding salt will raise the boiling temperature of the water so it will take longer for the water to reach a boil but the temperature would be higher and take less time for the substance to cook. no? Adding salt to water will raise the boiling point less than 0.1 degrees and, in the amounts one is likely to add in the kitchen, shouldn't meaningfully affect the length of time it takes for the water to come to a full boil. Depending on when you add the salt it may, however, help to create the impression that it is taking longer. This is because the salt crystals act as nucleation points and can release a fair amount of dissolved gas if the salt is added at just the right temperature. The result is that it takes longer for bubbles to appear, but the length of time it takes for the water to come up to 100C is not meaningfully changed. ← so then adding salt to water only after it has boiled is indeed a 'grandmother's clause' in cooking?
  22. andrewB

    The Rolling Boil

    on a tangent to water boiling, adding salt will raise the boiling temperature of the water so it will take longer for the water to reach a boil but the temperature would be higher and take less time for the substance to cook. no? wasn't it either Alton or heston who gave a chemical reasoning for adding salt to the water prior to it boiling?
  23. Well which came first the chicken or the egg? were we non-planners before we started into this life or are we a product of its environment? i would sway to the side of us being a product of our environments. planning my days outside the kitchen are easy, but in the kitchen, sometimes its a waste of energy. i had a woman who i work for break down to me the efficencies of a purely proactive person, a purely reactive person, and one who is somewhere in the middle. i think that people in the business tend to be 90% reactive based on the stimuli of our environment with the massive amount of variables it can throw us in a second's notice. you can be proactive and start doing your MEP 3 days out before a large event, but then 2 cooks don't show, one goes to the hospital after the tilt kettle's latch broke spilling 150L of boiling fish fumet over him, the drains in the floor back up and start seeping sewage, you have a health department inspection, and they bumped up the count by 150... But i will agree with FG about us having certain personality traits in common. we are like moths to the flame. i can only speak about BOH, but we seemingly tend to be night people, overly emotionional and often mellow dramatic, and addicted to stress and adrenaline.
  24. One of my chefs at school recently said 90% are out of the business after 10 years. ← God bless the other 10% of us then...
  25. recently ran up a 880GBP($1,750) for a meal in London at Sketch for 4 people. This was only slightly more expensive than the meal i had at Pierre Gagnaire in Paris, 1300euro($1,700) for 4 persons, and i think its because we ate lunch in Paris versus eating dinner at Sketch... I would pay it over and over and over again for both of those restaurants.
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