Edward J

Don't know much about dry curing of meats, sounds fun and profitable though. However I do know a bit about walk-in construction. The rooms are air-tight and materials designed to maintain humidity. I don't know about running the coil fan, it will just circulate the same air over and over again. What do the experts say about humidty % for dry curing? What ranges? Do you need to run a de-humidifier, or pump in fresh air?

I have used the smaller commercial versions, with 3 rows of blses,and have one at home with the single row of blades, and have seen the "monster version" at meat packing plants, which would make Fredy Kruger green with envy. All in all I've got mixed feelings about it. It works, and it works well, no doubt about it. But frankly, I'm scared (blank)-less about cross contamination. A similiar device and method is used to treat blue cheeses with mold, and the thought of all of that surface area of those needles entering an un-molested piece of meat--which may or may not be cooked med- rare, tightens up the ol' sphincter muscle. Becasue the device is spring loaded, aprox 1/4 of the blade is covered by the plastic guard at any time. I've sanitized teh guy in commerical hi-temp d/washers, tied a string around it so the tips are exposed and washe it again, doused it in sanitizing solution, but I'm still worried about the sanitizing aspects of the device. And then I've used it in combination with vacuum packing for marinating meats (particularily satays) and have been pleased with the results. Tender meat is achieved by good cattle ranching proceses, good slaughtering techniques, and, mainly, with good marbling througout the meat. So yes, I can take a N.Z. grass fed- striploin with virtually no marbeling, take the meager fat cap off, remove the thick silver skin, porition out steaks, jaccardize them, and laugh all the way to the bank. And I have done that too, but I wasn't charging much for it, and I was making no claims to the pedigree of the steak. Didn't feel right, so I stopped it. Used to go through a lot of top rounds for R.B sandwiches too, but I never jaccardized, took grain fed Grade A removed the deckel, trussed it with additional fat, and roasted it, then when cold sliced it on the slicer. A decent product for a decent price. Deckels were used for stew, or rolled up, trussed, and braised. A lot of talk for one conslusion: Mixed feelings about it..........

To the original poster, you have recieved some very good advice. Basiclly, where copper makes a difference and can substantiate it's cost, is with sauting and sugar/preserves work. If you go with a reputable brand and buy only one piece, I think it's money well spent. You can always buy more pieces in the future. As others have said, the bigger pieces are HEAVY, so keep this in mind. Cleaning should be done on a regular basis. It's not the copper oxidization that's hard to clean--this can be done with salt and lemon juice or salt and vingear, and very quickly too. --No, it's the buildup of carbon and grease/oil which can be very hard indeed to clean off with out some form of abrasion or harsh chemicals if it is allowed to gather for a while. About tinned copper ware..... I haven't looked at the periodic table of elements in a looong time, but I know that tin melts at somewhere around 350F. Tinned copperware should not be used for sauting, sugar work, or roasting as it can, and will melt off. Tin will also wear off, and should be re-tinned periodically

My money is on the Robotcoupe R2, and with the s/s bowl. Many of the "household" processors have powerfull motors, but the devil is in the details. The shaft should be s/s and not plastic, as plastic will fatigue and deform before the motor gives up. The bowl should be s/s or if not, a high grade plastic, and NOT a clear acryic type plastic, as this will eventually fatigue. On any given day, I will use the robotcoupe to make ganaches and the like up to 10 times, and it needs to be cleaned and sanitized between each use. This means a trip in the high-temp dishwasher. Many plastics can not stand this kind of abuse. As with mixers, the additon of a second bowl and knife more than doubles your capacity and halves your prep time This type of machine (R2) runs about $1,000. Upgrades to s/s bowls, replacement knives, and other parts are available and stocked at restaurant suppliers in your area.

LokBot: You're barking up the wrong tree.... Look, school has one, and only one mandate: To learn the curriculum. Work has only one mandate: To turn a profit. School is not work, and work is not school. If you're lucky you will be shown the right way to learn techniques and procedures in the workplace, but it is not the employer's mandate to do this. If it is more profitable to say, make "omelettes" on the flat top, or to bake the crud out of them under the salamander, or to mark off a bunch of steaks and then finish them off in the oven, then it will be done. Speed is of the importance here. At school the focus is on the right way of doing things, but not speed. Then again you're paying to learn this stuff, so you might as well milk all you can out of the experience. Whatchyaneed is to find out what happens to cooks when they turn 40-ish. Actual cooking pays diddly-squat, and to earn a decent living you need to move into management--ie: a Chef. A good Chef can not be unless he/she was a good cook--just like a good coach can not be unless he was a team player beforehand. In life, nothing is finite. Don't take my word for it, ask around. Hope this helps

Selling a business is a lot harder than selling anything else--figure on 24-30 mths to sell a foodservice business with a 75% range of your original asking price.

The William Tell........

I dunnoo...... Unless it's a pastry recipie, I very rarely follow the recipie to the "T". That being said, I'm a very strong advocate of using scales, and the metric system. I will NOT borrow, use, or purchase a book that gives quantities in volume, and if cornered, I will convert volume to metric. I have given countless classes to people ranging from 4 yrs old to 80 yrs old, and all have grasped the concept of using scales and the benifits of doing so within minutes. I do have some uni-taskers: A scale, sugar thermometer, smoked salmon knife, to name a few. That being said, I still find new uses for one foot lengths of 3/4" diameter plastic pipe.... I am of an "older generation" and have never purchased anything on-line, have never given out my credit card #, and I never buy anything I can't get my grubby little mitts on before I hand over the money. Restaurant dealers never sell in "Sets", and face it, the main difference between high end homeowner's sets and restaurant quality is the outside finish: Commercial quality never really bothers with a shiney finish on the outside, it's going to get scrubbed with a Scotchbrite pad in the first few days anyway. I have seen many, many people "re-profile" their knives (dead flat, hollows, too much belly, too shallow bevels, too steep bevels, wildly changing bevels, rounded over "dubbed" edges, you name it) with a hardware store 200 grit stone, and most usually place deep scratches in the blades. Many self proclaimed sharpeners remark on how quickly thier knives seem to "shrink"---"sharpening" is done with abrasive materials....... On the other hand I have seen sharpening done by knife stores that would make a lawnmover/chainsaw guy blush. If you don't want to sharpen your knives,(and I didn't for the first 15 years) the only thing to do is bring a "sacrificial knife" to a sharpener and judge his work after the fact.

Slice the apple as thin as possible. Dust well with powdered sugar. Lay on parchment paper lined tray and bake at low heat . Slices'll suck back humidity within a few hours if you don't use them right away or store in an airtight tin....

A bit off-topic here, but mutton tallow was traditionally used by wood workers to grease the soles of planes.....I guess bacon fat was used for cooking, beef tallow used for candles, but lamb and mutton was too, uh..overpowering for anything else.....

Get thee to thine local China-town and look in the emporiums for s/s fish tweezers. These are formed from a single strip of s/s, maybe 3/8" wide and the sharpened tips come together at an angle. I've done my fair share of salmon, and swear by these, which shouldn't be more than $10.00 Pliars (and hemostats) are not spring loaded. Opening and closing pliars for EACH tiny pin bone starts to become bothersome after the 6th or 7th side of salmon. Spring loaded is so much better, and the (Chinese) tweezer ends are the full 3/7" wide so it's very easy to find and grip and tiny pin bone--also very easy to toss into the d/washer to clean with no issues.....

A kwali (burner that the wok sits on) puts out 100,000 BTU's. In many cases the "smoky" flavour is from burnt vegetable oil.....

Yup, that's the attitude I've been dealing with for the last 25 years... First, let's discuss your assumption about people who "argue against the 18%, or don't like it (IMO)don't tip shit,or at all". I'm argueing against it, and when I go out, I tip. Then again, I'm an owner, when I serve, I don't get tipped, becasue the customer knows I'm the owner and for some reason, and not entitled to a tip. Second:"When you room service and b'fst servers bust ass for $10.00 take home, it doesn't rub you the right way". Don't like $10.00 /hr eh? TAKE A NUMBER AND STAND IN LINE LIKE THE REST OF US. You think the cooks, busboys, dish-dogs or even the hostess is getting any better? How about the managers? Yes, they get salary, but they work 70-80 hr weeks, divide their paycheck by the hours, and it's under $10/ hr. We get paid crap because the competition is deadly, if overhead goes up too much, the guy acrsoss the street starts buying your equipment and taking your customers. We get paid crap becasue this industry has no standards, no payscale set according to standards, and no guild or Union to impliment standards. The woners very rarely make money either, which is why you see restaurantsand hotels change hands every few years-or go belly-up. Besides, most hotels already factor in that F&B is not a profit making dept., rooms division makes all the money. Thirdly: When you speak of the 18% tip, do you mean that money is soley for the waiter, or is it for everyone envolved? If it's just for the waiter, it's a heck-uva an acomplishment, for this suggests that the waiter is responsible FOR THE ENTIRE DINING EXPERIENCE: Everything from taking reservations, seating, pre-dinner drinks, preparation of foods, serving, dishes, decor, music, etc. If you feel you are responsible for all that, congratulations, you are entitled to the entire tip. Watch your back, and never call your guests "Dicks", or "Don't tip shit". Like it or not, they are the ones who pay the money, which in turn comes to you. You never know who's reading on a public forum .......

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll be trying them out

How do you figure? You raise your prices so the bill comes to $5 more, then pay your waiter $5. Or, I give the waiter $5 directly. Or, you add $5 as a "service charge" to my bill. It's still $5, my dining experience is still the same price, not a lot more expensive, not even a little more expensive. The same. If I hire an incompetent machinist, I fire him or retrain him, I don't let him loose on my clients' parts and then let them decide if he deserves 30% of my price, 5% or nothing at all, and I don't tack on 18% to my bill as a "service charge." His work is included in my price for the job, which I'll either deliver to a previously agreed standard or not at all, in which case I don't get paid, but the machinist still does. It's a risk that every business (except restaurants!) takes and we're so used to it we don't even think about it. Our industry has managed to survive like this since the start of Industrial Revolution, btw. I understand the tipping system is so ingrained in Western restaurants doing away with it one restaurant at a time is impractical, but replacing it with an included service charge is just absurd. The supposed benefit of ensuring properly obsequious service is removed without guaranteeing a living wage to the server, who basically becomes a commissionist. It's the worst of all possible systems. It would make common, practical sense to add $5 to the bill, or 5%, but the waiter would not be happy. Depending on type of restaurant, a good waiter can clear over $200 in tips per shift, the salary is just beer or rent money. I have trouble too, with the concept of giving the waiter 15-20% of the ENTIRE DINING EXPERIECE. Granted, the waiter is entitled to a tip, but he/she is not responsible for the entire dining experience and should be tipped accordingly. %5 sounds fair. How do you make it stick? There is no private or Gov't body that has the "right stuff" to impliment this, the Unions do pay well, but Union Hotels (Union restaurant are virtually non-existant) make up maybe 10% of the entire hospitality industry, and no one would vote on a 10% reduction of income (15-18% tip vs a %5 tip) What's a machinist earn? A good plumber charges around $70.00 per hour, our Strata pays a handyman $35 an hour to fix fences and do odd-jobs. Pay the waiter $12.00 an hour, and now he's making more than the cook, and now you've got trouble 'cause the busboy and the dishwasher want in too. You can't raise the menu price by only $5, you've got to raise everyone's salaries, they're all part of the package. In Europe...... Yeah, yeah yeah. But seriously, in Europe there are standards for waiters (most countries it's a 2 yr apprenticeship), for Cooks, (3-4 years) and actual fuctioning Unions who set wages--irregardless if it's a union shop or not, as long as you have the qualifications. The employees are paid a fair wage, and most places have a 10% sevice charge built into the menu, and it states very clearly on the menu NOT to tip ontop of the menu prices. Here in N.America we have no such standards, and the employers pay as cheaply as possible--because there are no standards, and no one to stick up for waiters, or any other employee. Unions only care for their members, and even at that, it's "seniority based" so you can work a loooong time at starvation wages in a Union place before you can earn what you're worth. No one is setting any standards, with most other trades it's the Union who does this, but not in the hospitality business, the Unions are only here to garnishee pay cheques...... I have to disagree with you on the bit about restaurant's risk of not getting paid. There are frequent cases of "dine and dashs", which is, theft. Many cases of patrons refusing to pay for an item because they felt it was not worth it, thousands upon thousands of dollars given aways as "Comps", or compensation for poor service or food, and the chiseling, conniving and industrious customer that EVERY business gets trying to get something for nothing. But automatically tacking on an 18% charge onto the bill? That's going to go nowhere fast. On the other hand, it does leave a rather nice paper trail, and I'm sure the tax boys will sit up and notice........

Ummmmm....Ultimatly, its the customer who pays for everything. Start paying everyone above minimum wage, and the dining experience becomes alot more expensive. You see, there are Unions in the hospitality industry, but they don't actually do anything---not in the way Unions for other trades do, anyway. There's far too much competition in this industry for anyone to actually take a stand and start paying everyone what they're worth. And the customer votes with his feet. So tips, or just higher prices, one way or the other, it's the customer who pays..............

I have an off/on experieince with pear butter ganache for chocolate bon-bons, and now I've hit a brick wall. In the beginning....I used a commercial pear flavouring, boosted with pear eau de vie, which worked fairly well. Except I didn't like the ingredient list on the flavouring, and the purveyor stopped carrying it after a few months anyway. So I tried homemade pear butter (reduced pear puree, a'la apple butter), Williams (pear eau de vie), table butter, and white couverture for my ganache. Flavour was O.K. but the shelf life was terrible, and I wanted to get at least 2 mths with a butter ganache. Then I tried dried pears, chopped fine and soaked in williams, the theory being that the dried pears would soak up the williams and somehow, sort-of "trap" it. Lousy flavour, and the dried pears (which were fairly white to begin with) oxidized and turned a nasty pink after a week or so--and the williams dissapeared too. I had a heck-uva time finding non-sulphered dried pears, and then it finally dawned on me to dry my own--picked up a food dehydrator. No treatment of any kind, just peel and slice and dry overnight. Then, for good measure I tried my hand at candying pears. Dissapointed with the colour, but the flavour is O.K., and I hope the shelf life should be good. Back to the alchemy, ran the dried pears and the candied through the meat grinder and soaked them with williams overnight. Turned pink again and the flavour was only of Williams--which I am certain will dissapear within a week anyway. What if..... I macerated the dried pears with the Williams under vacuum? Put it all in a vacuum bag, suck the air out, and let it soak overnight? Most meat purveyors use the same technique, called "vacuum tumbling" where meat, brine, and flavourings are put in a barrel, air sucked out, and tumbled. The meat picks up all of the surrounding liquid--which is why most supermarket and commercial chicken is sold as "seasoned" (with 17%-25% of soy protien added).... But I digress. Anyone have any luck getting the flavour of pears in a chocolate?

Yup. Or if you want to be sneaky, sub clarified butter for regular, or if you have the $$ sub cocoa butter for some of the regular butter

Mmmm... C.B.C. morning radio has always featured Asian cuisine, as well as non-mainstream food I myself have been featured in one of Maggie Gallagher's broadcasts, as well as included(and many of my business neighbors) in a 2 page spread in the Courier, and managed to wrangle some coverage on "Breakfast TV--which does feature Asian cuisine as well. And Eat!Vancouver usually has a high proportion of Asian cuisine as well, which does attract media attention. True, these are not traditional newspapers, but media sources none-the-less.

Agree with you on many points, especially about newspapers. Ironically enough I don't have the "Sun" or the "Province" delivered to my place, instead I get the "Globe and Mail". And no, you can't stop the tide, especially with blogs. On the whole, I deal with many happy customers, and many of them are returns. Still, maybe 5% are "upset" or feel I display "unprofessional behavior" to some. Well, It's is true! (in the same way a broken clock tells the time accurately twice a day) take for example the other day, customer wants "the strongest coffee" I have. After being served, customer dumps half of the coffee in my garbage can, fills the cup up with honey and cream before even tasting it, and then remarks that the coffee isn't strong at all. Me and my big mouth, dryly remark that the coffee was strong enough but now it's only half as strong, since it's only half coffee. That one was a blogger, and he took out his revenge on me. Last year at Eat! Vancouver I really lost it and gave one customer the ol' "one/two". We had a booth in the restaurant corner (where none of the participating restaurnts or alc.beverage people were handing out samples) and it was the last day. For the upteenth time I found my self defending my postion on not giving out free samples. "Hey, I paid entrance fee you know, why aren't you handing out samples?" Right hook to the face: "Oh you paid entrance fee? Now, how much do you think I paid for this 10' x10' booth? Then the left jab to the kidney: "And those tickets you buy for the food and alcholic beverages? When we cash those tickets in, you don't actually think we'll get 100 cents on the dollar , do you?" It's true, I have a stupid big mouth, and maybe I shouldn't have told her off like that. But once the Genie is ot of the bottle, it's out......

Hang on, no said you're not allowed to discuss anything. You can discusss anything you want. Fact is fact, and opinion is opinion. But when bloggers write " The prices are up there" without telling you what the prices actually are, or that "I found the service unprofessional" without giving any examples, you kinda figure that that person shouldn't be writing anything if they can't back up what they say. So....Maybe I can comment on the building you live in or work in, and hap-hazardly guess/predict on it's construction, or it's impact on the neighborhood?

n owner myself, I get kinda squeamish about internet reviews. opinions are highly subjective. What one person finds reasonably priced another will find expensive or cheap. Same goes with service. I don't mind discussions on facts: Prices in dollars, menu ideas. When my place opened up, it was disccused here, had good comments and I had people using the opportunity to whinge about the location, and the actual building itself.

Watch out! Mycro is cooca butter, but cocoa butter is NOT Mycro.... To make Mycro you take hot (aprox. 45 C) cocoa butter and spray it on a frozen marble roller in a cold room. In effect, what you have is pure beta 6 crystals. "Regular" cocoa butter does not go through this treatment and may or may ot be tempered. I was shown the Mycro technique by Callebaut Pastry Chefs "On tour" here in Vnacouver. It works, and it works quite well, but-tum, erh, well.... You need to have your couverture at almost precisely 35 C, and you need to know your weight of your couverture so you an scale out your 1%. For me, It' far easier to have my couverture warmed at around 45 C overnight, and when I come in the morning, I seed it and cool it down with regular couverture chips. Very simple, very easy. I don't know what a kg of Mycro is costing, I'm paying around CDN $15 / kg for "Kessko brand" cocoa butter.

The way I've done salmon for the pasty 20 or so years is with a cheap Victorinox sandwich knife (serrated blade) and a ho-hum but sharp 10" Chef's Behead the fish with the sandwich knife, then with the blade resting on top of the spine, bring it down all the way to the tail, remove the side. There will be a bit of meat clinging into the hollow of the spine,and this is virtually inmpossible to remove with any filleting technique. Use a soup spoon and scrape this off--good for farces, quiches, etc. Flip the fish over so it's spine is resting on the board, put the blade of the same sandwich knife again ontop of the spine and draw it all the way to the tail, remove second side, and scrape the flesh from the spine with the soup spoon. I tend to remove the skin before de-boning, as I find it easier to remove the pin bones after the skin is removed. For the skinning, I find a heavy--albeit sharp- RIGID blade works best. Make a cut about 1/2" in from the end of the tail and rest the edge of the blade into this cut and on the skin, angle the blade almost level to the cutting board and pull the tail skin with your hand against the blade, wiggling the knife a bit as you go all the way up to the other end. What's left of the rib cage is best removed with a sharp chef's knife, then the "belly flaps" are cut off. Pin bones are best removed, I find, with a pair of cheap-o s/s tweezers I found in China town. The ends of the tweezers are a good 1/2" wide and angled, with sharp ends. As this is "spring-loaded", I find it much less effort than to use a pair of pliars which must squeezed open and closed

Hang on there a sec... "Wholesale" has a few advantages. True, it's not perfect, but it has it's advantages. 1)It's a contract and it's sold. Say you get a job for a wedding, 200 boxes of 2 pcs. You know your costs, you know your labour, and when it's done, it's sold--no sitting around getting old waiting for someone, it's sold. 2) If you have a shop like I do, you know you have to have labour at-the-ready to serve. Yes We're a Mom & Pop, but it's still labour filling up display cases and waiting on customers. With wholesale you don't have this wastage, and you can schedule your labour to the greatest effect. Now, other people buying my stuff and marking it up another 40% or 50% to sell in thier stores is NOT my idea of doing business, and have so far avoided doing it. But I will offer prices better than walk-in prices for weddings, showers, parties, catering, etc.--as long as it's ot for retail. I can also customize my products (i.e match the wedding colour scheme...) and charge for this service--but only on volume. It's something to think about....